*“I don’t know what to do,” Stevie said turning off the burner under the gravy before she picked up the knife to begin slicing the roast chicken. “There’s a spark, but”—her mouth tightened momentarily—“I don’t want to get involved with my best friend’s brother.”
Tess glanced up from the cutting board where she was dicing tomatoes. “That sounds like an excuse.”
Stevie paused, knife in the air. “What? Best friend’s brother?”
“That.”
Yeah, it sounded like an excuse to Stevie, too. Probably because it was.
She went back to carving the chicken. “If I have hesitations about getting involved, then I shouldn’t have to identify the source of those hesitations. Right? The concern is there.”
“Good point.” Tess dumped a bag of lettuce in their mom’s maple salad bowl then added the tomatoes. “You seem to be fighting pretty hard to avoid getting close to this guy. Any guy for that matter. Why?”
She spoke in a way that made Stevie suspect that her sister had already developed an answer to that conundrum and merely wanted her sister to come up to speed.
Stevie was about to say “complications” when Tess cocked an eyebrow and the word died on her lips. Her sister was right. She’d already waded into the complications water. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be thinking about it so much.
“Invite him out for a non-wedding related outing. Then maybe you’ll relax and see that this is nothing to be concerned about.”
“A date?” Stevie made a face. “After we’ve spent days telling people we’re not getting married?”
“Going out doesn’t equal getting married. Besides, part of you wants to.”
“It does,” Stevie agreed. “For his sake. He needs to get out of his rut.”
Tess snorted.
“I like him.” It felt oddly freeing confessing that to Tess, perhaps because admitting to liking Brant masked the fact that what she was feeling was more complicated. “It’s so ridiculously ironic that I spent all those years resenting him and now…” She let out a small huff of breath instead of finishing the thought.
“Life is funny,” Tess agreed.
“Talking about going out with your fiancé?” Pete asked as he came into the kitchen. The house was small, and he’d probably heard every word as he’d changed out of his work clothes.
Stevie sent her dad a look. “Maybe.”
“Good. You need to get out of your rut,” Pete said, going to the stove and lifting the lid of the mashed potato pan. “I love Sunday dinner.”
“I love it when you don’t work on Sunday,” Stevie said.
“After Valentine’s Day, I’ll take off every Sunday,” he promised. “So where are you taking Brant?”
“I’m not taking him anywhere.” Stevie poured the gravy into a bowl. “We see enough of each other as is.” She set the gravy on the table along with a ladle. “By the way, since everyone is so interested in my life, I talked to the high school principal, and they will start interviewing for the Health Ed position in March. I think I have a decent shot at it.”
“Why’s that?” Pete asked, taking a seat.
“Because he said, ‘I was going to call and suggest that you apply.’”
“That’s a pretty clear signal.”
“Well, I’ve practically been part of the staff recently. I was there for four months last fall, and two months the previous spring.” Both times for maternity leaves. “I’m a known entity.”
Tess set the salad on the table, then took her seat. “Yet, they still want you.”
Stevie made a face at her sister, who laughed.
“I don’t want this turning into a food fight,” Pete said.
“That hasn’t happened in a long time,” Stevie mused.
“Because Felicity always started it,” Pete said. He leaned back in his chair as Stevie set the potatoes in front of him before taking her own seat. “Now if I can just get her back to Holly, I’d be a happy man.”
Tess and Stevie exchanged looks. “That isn’t going to happen,” they said in unison.
“I know.” Pete helped himself to chicken then glanced at Stevie. “Wedding plans going okay?”
“Mine or Kara’s?” she asked dryly.
“Either,” he replied, playing along.
“I don’t think I’ll be planning my wedding anytime soon. I learned my lesson.”
“Five years ago,” Tess pointed out. “And I don’t think you were that scarred by the breakup.”
“It was a wakeup call,” Stevie said with a clip to her voice. She’d rarely minded discussing her near mistake, but tonight she wasn’t in the mood.
“Girls,” Pete said in his dad-squashing-the-argument voice. “Let’s enjoy Sunday dinner.”
“Thank you,” Stevie said.
“Who you do, or do not, date or marry is none of our business,” he added.
Stevie rolled her eyes, then stabbed a fork into her mashed potatoes. They were right. It was none of their business, but she’d been the one to bring up the matter with Tess, trying to clarify her own thoughts, which remained tangled.
Logic told her to weather it out for the few weeks leading to the wedding. Then they would part company and this push-pull of emotions would no longer be an issue.
Her gut told her that the logical plan was going to prove unsatisfactory.
She turned to her father. “How’s work going, Dad?”
Pete blew out a breath. “It’ll be close, but I should make the deadline. Thank goodness for Zachary.” His one worker who hadn’t bailed on him.
The conversation drifted from Pete’s work to Felicity’s recent promotion to the wedding plans. When dinner was over, it took a combined sisterly effort to shoo their father and his dish towel out of the kitchen.
Once he was settled in his recliner with a cup of tea, and the dishes were stacked and ready to wash, Tess leaned her shoulder into Stevie’s. “Sorry to get pushy earlier.” She plunged her hands into the dishwater.
“With Dad? It’s the only way to get him out of the kitchen.”
“With you. I shouldn’t have been snarky about your engagement.”
“You were right. Neither Rob nor I were scarred by the breakup. We’d made a mistake and figured it out in time.” Stevie swished the gravy boat Tess handed her under the running water. “I was trying to fill a void by getting married. My only comfort is that I suspect Rob was doing the same.” She shook her head as she set the boat on the drainboard and took a platter from Tess. “I’m not making that mistake again.”
“I understand, but…five years?”
Stevie set the platter next to the gravy boat. “Until I know what I want, and what I’m capable of, I’m not messing with anyone else’s life. It’s not fair.” Capability being a big part of the equation. She gave her sister a look. “That is what I mean when I talk about complications.”
“Ah,” Tess said softly.
“Do you remember when Rob got in that dumb bike accident? The one with the cow.”
“I do, although I never figured out if the cow hit him or if he hit the cow.”
“Nobody knows. Rob said it was a blur. Anyway, there he was with mashed ribs and maybe a punctured lung and I couldn’t bring myself to go stay in the ER with him for the X-rays. I went in and…I felt the panic coming on. In the end I waited outside the hospital. Too. Many. Bad. Memories.” Stevie pressed her lips together as she focused straight ahead.
“That makes total sense after Mom’s many trips to the hospital.” Tess slid a damp hand over Stevie’s shoulder. “Did it upset him that you left?”
“No. He understood. But what kind of wife would I be if I couldn’t put aside bad memories to accompany the man I was going to spend my life with into the ER?” She gave Tess a weary smile. “Which started the wheels moving on other aspects of our relationship, and fairness, and it wasn’t long before I knew I wasn’t ready to get married. I don’t know that I’ll ever be, and I need to be honest about what I’m capable of. More than that, I need to figure out what I’m capable of.”
“You seem so confident in the way you live your life that it’s easy to forget.”
“That I’m the wimpiest of the three of us?”
Tess laughed. “Well, there is that, but no. Everybody has stuff to figure out, Stevie. Don’t let it paralyze you. And for the record, I don’t think you and Rob were right for one another. You were two wounded souls.”
“I know.” Stevie gave her sister a faint smile. “We still keep in touch, you know. He’s about to become the father of twins and he seems really happy.” She reached for a dishtowel and began drying her hands, the confession she needed to make hovering on her lips before she let it fall. “I have fears I haven’t dealt with. I’m not ready.”
“There’s nothing wrong with sidestepping until you’re ready.”
“You think?” Stevie asked dubiously.
Tess nodded. “That goes for a lot of things in life. The challenge is to figure out when to sidestep and when to tackle things head-on.”
“I’m afraid of hurting Brant.”
Tess pressed her lips together. “That one you’d better deal with head-on.”
*
You’ve already dealt with this head-on, Stevie reminded herself as she parked next to the tree farm barn. You do not need to worry about misinterpretation of intentions.
She’d been upfront and honest when she’d told Brant not to get serious after they’d first kissed, and she’d been upfront again yesterday when she’d told him she didn’t want complications in her life.
Full disclosure had been made. There had been no sidestepping.
Yet, it didn’t seem like enough—probably because there were parts of her that didn’t want to abide by her own rules. Parts that wanted to surge forward and test new limits and see if maybe the fear factor wasn’t as great now as it had once been.
Which would not be fair to Brant if she discovered that it was. That was what she needed to keep in mind for the next several weeks. They were having a fun time working together. Brant was loosening up, and, as he’d said, they were good for each other, but that did not mean that they needed to go one step farther down this road. They could stall out where they were.
Stevie opened the truck door and jumped down to the snowy ground. She’d just opened the rear door and was maneuvering the box carrying the prototype table decorations to where she could get a decent grip on it when Brant came out of the barn.
“Morning,” he called. “Need help?”
“I’ve got it.” Story of her life.
“Anything else?” he asked as he looked over her shoulder into the back of her truck.
“This is it,” she said, noting that he looked great. Smelled great.
Stall out, Stevie.
“Harp Winslow called. He is going on vacation until the end of the month.”
Stevie’s stomach tightened as she turned to face him. “No.”
Brant reached out to take the box from her, and she barely noticed. “His daughters have been working up this surprise for some time and just told him that he’s going to Hawaii. He leaves day after tomorrow.”
Stevie pushed her scarf over her shoulder. “Does this mean we need to chain up the Corolla for the bride?”
“No.” Brant smiled. “He’s supposed to get back the day before the wedding, but with Idaho weather, there’s a chance he might not make it, so he’s bringing his sleigh and team here to the farm until he gets back.”
“Brilliant,” Stevie said, gently taking the box back. She liked to do her own carrying.
“The good news is that he’s not going to charge us for the use of the sleigh, because I’m working it off. And…”
“And…” Stevie prompted.
“Harp is giving us sleigh lessons. Just in case he doesn’t make it back.”
“When?”
Brant glanced at his phone. “He’s driving the sleigh over in about an hour.”
“This is the kind of wedding complication I can live with,” Stevie said, keeping hold of the box when he once again reached for it.
“Shall we take that to the house?” he asked. “Or continue fighting over it?”
“House.”
“I have coffee.”
“You always do.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“Never.”
After setting two cups of coffee on the table, Brant took a seat and opened the Notes app on his phone. “Today sleigh driving. Tomorrow Milt is stopping by to help build a partition and sideboards to use as a bar and we’ll start putting up lights and pine boughs.”
“Milt’s going to help?”
Brant glanced up. “I think he’s at loose ends now that the holidays are over. He offered and I took him up on it.”
“Great. He understands that we’re not engaged, right?
“I think I got that straightened out. And when Trevor emailed his menus, he asked if he’d misunderstood who was getting married.” Brant met her gaze. “I asked him to help spread the word that Kara is the bride.”
“Good.” She glanced over the menu he passed her way. The macaroni dish he’d described to them was there, which was good, because if it hadn’t been, Stevie would have had to insist he include it and every other dish was a twist on street food. He offered a pork belly street taco with roasted ancho peppers on a sesame tortilla; a filet mignon min-hero sandwich with aged provolone and arugula, which he noted was small enough in size not to break the bank, but brimming with flavor; a dish he called paradise on a stick, which was a deconstructed falafel sandwich, and of course, a mini hot dog on a brioche bun. There were also a variety of salads and fresh fruit.
“This will be fun. What’s he charging?” Stevie asked curiously.
“About seventy-five percent of Ms. Jennings’s first bait and switch menu. I’m going to leave him the rest for a tip.”
“Perfect.” Stevie settled back in her chair as she picked up her coffee cup. He continued to study his phone, scrolling through his notes, and she continued to study him, noting that he no longer held his face in the taut lines that gave him that uber-serious look. Instead he wore a sexy, relaxed look that emphasized the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and the slight creases in his cheeks.
“Theo emailed and said to make food for fifty, because they don’t have a lot of time for RSVPs.”
He glanced up and she met his gaze with a calm expression that she hoped shouted out, I’m not studying you when you aren’t looking.
“If they are agreeable, we can donate leftovers to the senior center for a Sunday brunch,” she suggested.
“Good idea.”
Stevie set her cup down and pulled out her phone. “On my end, the printed programs should be delivered early next week. The DJ confirmed and yes, he’ll set up in the loft, thus freeing up space. The speakers will be on the ground floor, so it will work.”
“Do you want to show me the table decorations?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, sure. We only did four, because the glue gun broke. I’m picking up a new one on my way home and I’ll finish the other ten tonight.” She pulled the box closer and opened the lid just as Brant’s phone rang. He frowned when he saw the number.
“I need to take this.”
“Sure.” She let the box lid flap shut again as he got to his feet and headed to the living room while answering.
“Raj, yeah, hi,” she heard him say before he moved out of hearing range.
You’re on vacation, she silently reminded him, reaching for her cup, which she turned in her hands, contemplating the worn flower design.
Maybe Brant being married to his job was a good thing, because it pretty much guaranteed that they would go back into their own worlds once this wedding was over. That would solve matters in the long run, but what about the next several weeks? What would be fairest to him?
She turned the cup once again, so the flower was facing away from her.
The answer was clear, even if it wasn’t her favorite solution.
Instead of stalling out, maybe she needed to take a step back, now, while she could.
The wedding would be over in twelve days. Brant would start commuting back and forth to Boise and they would rarely see one another. Then she wouldn’t worry about hurting him.
As she’d told him before, she was a woman who knew her limitations and perhaps it was time to pay heed to those limitations instead of sidestepping—for his sake.
*
Brant didn’t ask for a lot in life…just job security and no freaking mysteries like the one he was dealing with now. He got a great deal of satisfaction from working for Griffin Systems, and he generally did feel secure in his position there, but now he had to wonder why his supervisor wanted to meet that evening. He also had to wonder when and where until Raj sent him the promised text.
Was he about to be warned about some dire circumstance?
Why else would they be meeting?
But being preoccupied by the reasoning behind this out-of-the-blue meeting didn’t keep him from noticing that Stevie was also behaving differently after Raj’s call. Was it simply that he was a bad vacation guy and she was biting her tongue to keep from reminding him of that? If so, he could imagine how happy she’d be to know that he was having work-related meeting tonight. Although…was it work-related?
It ticked him off that he didn’t know.
“Watch carefully,” Harp Winslow said as he unfastened the harness on the sturdy golden brown Haflinger gelding that had pulled his sleigh the three miles from his place to the tree farm. Stevie left the fence where she’d been leaning to stand next to Brant as the demonstration began. She seemed to be taking pains to act normally and she gave him a pleasant smile, but it wasn’t the easy Stevie smile he’d come to appreciate.
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
“What’s to be nervous about?” Brant gave her a sideways look.
“Runaway sleigh?” she asked mildly.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
She made a face at him, making him wonder if he was wrong about her seeming distant…but he didn’t think so.
“Bob is as gentle as can be,” Harp assured them as he removed the gelding’s bridle and snapped a rope onto the halter the horse wore under the tack. After arriving, he’d unhitched Bob from the sleigh and informed Brant and Stevie that the first step was learning to put on harness.
“Ready?” Harp asked Brant.
“I am.”
“First, slip the collar over Bob’s head.”
Stevie started filming with her phone while Brant lifted the leather collar and slid it over Bob’s head and into place.
“Good. Now the pad…”
Brant continued following the simple instructions until the breeches were smoothed and the crupper was fastened under the tail and it was time to put on the bridle. The process went more quickly than he’d expected.
“I thought it would be more involved,” Stevie said. “So much leather.”
“It’s a matter of taking your time and making certain everything is in the right place and fastened correctly so that the horse is comfortable.”
“That’s to be said of a lot of things,” Brant said as he fastened the last buckle on the bridle.
“Right you are,” Harp agreed briskly. “Now…take it off.”
“Right.” Brant did as he was told, reversing the process as he removed the harness.
“Okay. Now put it on again,” Harp said.
Bob cocked a foot and twitched an ear, while Brant once again went to work, patiently enduring the process of being harnessed and re-harnessed.
“Don’t tighten the belly band until Bob is at the sleigh. I’ll show you then.” Harp folded his arms over his wool plaid coat. “And remember. All you gotta do is hold the bit in the palm of your hand and he’ll take it. Don’t go shoving it at him.”
“Got it,” Brant said.
Stevie started filming again as Harp backed Bob between the sleigh shafts, then led him back out again for Brant to take over.
Once Bob was hitched to the sleigh, Harp shot a look between them. “Who’s driving first?”
“Want to go first, Stevie?” Brant asked.
A smile lit her face, then disappeared. “You did the work. You should go first.”
“That’s okay.”
“If you insist.” She was on her way to the sleigh before the last word was out of her mouth. She climbed aboard, settling herself on the red tufted leather seat directly behind Bob’s broad backside.
“I always wanted to do this,” she said to Harp as she ran a hand over the reins looped around a silver hook. “I watched you drive your wagons in the parades as a kid and was totally jealous.”
“Wish I had known,” Harp said congenially as he double-checked Bob’s harness.
“Actually I wanted a horse of my own, but Dad said no.”
“Maybe something to do with the size of your yard?” Brant asked.
“Maybe,” she agreed as Harp climbed aboard, the springs of the sleigh shifting beneath his weight.
Brant leaned against Harp’s truck, folding his arms, and smiling a little as he watched the older man show Stevie how to hold the reins. She did as he showed her, gave a cluck with her tongue, and Bob obediently stepped forward.
She glanced over her shoulder at him as the sleigh moved down the driveway and Brant made a watch-the-road gesture with one hand. She smiled and quickly turned back, focusing on what Harp was saying to her.
His phone chimed and he pulled it out of his pocket to see a text from Raj that said, Bennington Inn, Meridian. 7:00.
Brant texted back ok and dropped the phone back into his jacket pocket. It was only noon. He had a long day ahead of him wondering what was up.
He rubbed his hand over the side of his face as the sleigh disappeared around the corner of the driveway.
Normally, not knowing what was going on would have driven him crazy. But that crazy was being muted by another more immediate crazy that had been driven home by Stevie’s retreat.
She, who had warned him not to get serious, had gotten under his skin.
And he didn’t know what to do about it.