Adding Up to Marriage Read online

  “And I said—”

  “I know what you said. And I think you had your reasons for not wanting to get tangled up. Obviously you still have ’em. But if I were to suggest we go back to my place for some good old-fashioned hanky-panky, my guess is you wouldn’t exactly jump all over the idea. Or me.”

  Her eyes to his. “But you wouldn’t do that.”

  Noah laughed. “In reality? No. Because A, that’s not what you want and B, Silas would kill me. But in theory? If Silas wasn’t my brother and you actually liked me…?”

  “I do like you, Noah! It’s just…”

  “Go on. Say it. I dare you.”

  “You’re a big meanie, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told,” he said. Grinning. Jewel let out a shuddering sigh, then spun around to prop her elbows on the bar and her head in her hands.

  “Dammit, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this! Silas was supposed to be safe, he wasn’t supposed to fall for me!”

  “What on earth gave you the idea Silas was safe? Because you wanted him to be?”

  She almost strangled on her own laugh. “I really am an idiot, huh?”

  Their burgers arrived, the fries still sizzling in their little paper nests. Noah grabbed several and stuffed them into his mouth. “I assume that’s a rhetorical question?” Jewel sorta growled at him. He laughed, then grabbed a ketchup bottle and shook it within an inch of its life. “You do know he hasn’t even…dallied since Amy, right? Until you, that is,” he said, drowning his fries, and Jewel thought, Oh, hell-on-a-stick.

  “So much for his not saying anything.”

  “Even if you hadn’t pretty much let it slip yourself a minute ago, the spring in Si’s step the next morning kinda gave it away.” When, groaning, Jewel let her head drop onto her arms, Noah said, “Which should’ve been your first clue right there, that things had changed. For him, anyway.”

  Head still down, she peeked up at him through crooked glasses. “Uh, yeah. Got that part.”

  The ketchup bottle thunked back onto the counter. “Then did you also get the part where, unlike some of us here, Si doesn’t get cozy simply because it’s convenient?”

  Slowly, Jewel lifted her head. “Got that, too. Not that he actually said he was, you know. Serious.”

  “Thought you just said he’d fallen for you?”

  Despite her adamant refusal to do so before this, Jewel dredged up her memories of the look on Silas’s face after they’d made love…in his kitchen the day she moved out. Now she wondered…was she remembering what she’d really seen? Or what…she’d wanted to see?

  “I thought he had, but…maybe I imagined it. He said he’d never hurt me, and I don’t doubt he meant it, but…oh, Lord, Noah—” she sighed “—all I want is for this to make sense—”

  “And maybe,” Silas said behind her, making Jewel spin around on the stool so fast she nearly fell off, “things might make more sense if you talked to me rather than about me.”

  Dear Lord, she could practically hear her blood pulse in her veins. Because what she saw in Silas’s eyes—well, past the annoyed-as-all-hell thing—was honest and soul deep and real. And she wanted all of it—yes, even the annoyance, it made him human—so desperately it hurt.

  Wanted it, yes. Trusted it?

  No.

  “Take me home, Noah,” she said softly, sadly, sliding off the stool and heading toward the front as Silas’s eyes burned a hole in her back, incinerating what last few scraps of dignity she had left.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Noah!” Although he’d already knocked, Silas thumped the heel of his hand against the door to his brother’s apartment over the Meriweather’s garage. “Your truck’s parked out front so I know you’re there!”

  “Holy hell, Si,” Noah said, yanking the door open. “Keep your shirt on.”

  He nodded at his brother’s bare chest. “At least mine is.”

  “And I’m not usually dressed for company at—” rubbing his eyes, Noah made a face as he apparently tried to get a bead on his watch “—six-freaking-thirty in the morning.” He grabbed a flannel shirt off the end of the sofa, shoving his arms into the sleeves but not buttoning it. “Where’s the kids?”

  “With Mom. They stayed over, she and Dad are taking ’em to church. Where’s Jewel?”

  “How the hell should I know? Although I’m gonna go out on a limb and say…her place?”

  “Her car’s not there.”

  “And did you see it here? No. So maybe she’s delivering somebody’s baby or something. Or here’s another thought—you shook her up so bad she’s fled to another state. Man, I need coffee…”

  Silently fuming, Silas watched Noah lumber into the kitchenette a few measly feet from what passed for a living room, banging up the switch to the overhead light. The odd thing was, Noah could afford something better. And larger. He simply couldn’t be bothered. “What do you mean, I shook her up?”

  Noah hoisted the Maxwell House. “Caffeine first. Explanations later.”

  Like a dog with a bone, Silas followed, pulling two mugs out of the cupboard and automatically rinsing them out.

  “Dude…” Noah yawned. “I’m a bachelor, not a cave man.”

  “Sorry. Habit. So…” Silas grabbed a dishtowel off the cupboard handle to dry the mugs. “You’re saying nothing happened after you two left the bar?”

  With a mirthless chuckle, Noah shoved the coffee basket into place and punched the on button. “Not that stupid, bro. Even if—” he yawned again “—she’d been even remotely interested. And we had that kind of relationship.”

  “You have ‘that kind of relationship’ with every female who crosses your path.”

  “And I’m gonna let that pass, but only ’cause I’m not awake enough to take offense.” Ruffling his hair, Noah sank onto an open step stool, his bare feet hooked over the bottom step, to stare at the coffeepot, like he was willing it to brew faster. “But I swear—no, nothing happened. Other than her crying her eyes out for the next two hours.”

  “Good crying or bad crying?”

  Noah pushed out a sigh. “All I asked,” he said to the pot, “was five minutes. But no.” Then soft brown eyes veered to Silas’s. “And I know you’re not that dumb, either. She’s in love with you, butthead—”

  “I know. She told me.”

  “She also tell you she’s totally freaked about it?”

  “In excruciating detail.”

  Noah gave him a did-I-miss-something? look. “You tell her you loved her?”

  “Not in so many words, but—”

  “Then you can thank me for filling in that particular blank.”

  “And why on earth would you do that?”

  “Because you were too boneheaded to do it yourself? Because after two hours I was half ready to tell her I loved her if it would’ve stopped the tears? Because—here’s a thought—it’s the truth? But mostly because the two of you seem incapable of getting over yourselves and just getting on with it, already—as opposed to getting it on, which I gather already happened…oh, thank you, Lord.”

  At the coffeemaker’s final, gasped gurgle Noah was on his feet, dumping the brew into his mug and indicating to Silas he was on his own. Three gulps later, Noah shut his eyes, exhaled, then gave his head a shake before looking at Silas again. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody more afraid to trust what she wants than that gal. All that crap she went through as a kid seriously messed with her head.”

  With a sigh of his own, Silas dropped onto the lone kitchen chair, a piece Eli had built as a sample for a client who then changed his mind. “Precisely why she needs the space to get that head screwed on straight.”

  “Okay, I was wrong. You are that dumb.”

  Silas cut his eyes to his brother. “Excuse me?”

  Setting his mug on the table, Noah curled forward to lean his palms against the edge. “Okay, allow me to break this down for you. For all they made us nuts, the one constant in our lives growing up wa
s that our parents loved us. Would always love us, no matter what we did, or how much we made them nuts. They weren’t gonna go off and canoodle with somebody else, or play favorites—”

  “Don’t be too sure about that,” Silas said, half smiling, and Noah leaned farther forward to take a wide swing at his head.

  “My point is—except for that batty mother of hers, Jewel’s never known what family is. Everybody she’s ever loved has either run off, or been taken from her—”

  “And it’s left scars. Noah, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  “I might if you’d shut your trap and let me finish. She doesn’t trust love because nobody’s ever shown her what that really means. From what I can tell, her mother’s love comes with enough strings attached to put a spider to shame. Everybody’s always expected her to be and do everything for them, but it’s never gone the other way. When has anybody ever put their butt on the line for her? Dude. Being left alone is the last thing she needs.”

  Holy crap. Either the caffeine kicked in, or Silas was in revelation-readiness mode, but damn, that was a lot of light in his brain.

  “Meaning, she’s taking my backing off to mean…I don’t care.”

  Noah sat back, his hands braced on his thighs. “Oh, believe me, she knows you care. But that’s what scares her, because people have ‘cared’ before and left. Or changed their minds. Or pretended to care in order to get something from her. So I’m not talking about caring—I’m talking about ‘you mean everything in the world to me’ kind of love. The kind of love that’s far more about giving than getting.”

  Silas looked at his brother like he’d turned into a pod person. “This, from the person who breaks out into hives at the mere suggestion of finding that special someone.”

  “My needs are not your needs, bro.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t understand how it’s supposed to work.”

  Silas pushed out a dry chuckle, then sat forward, letting Noah’s earlier words sink in. “I really thought I was doing the right thing, letting her come to me. But until she felt safe enough to do that…” He stood, carting his empty mug to the maker for more coffee. “How could she?”

  His second cup poured, Silas stood with one hand braced on the counter, frowning into the brew. “Even so, something tells me I could promise her ’til the cows come home I’d never abandon her and she still wouldn’t believe me. Words are cheap.”

  “Damn cheap,” his brother agreed, joining him at the coffee maker. “So you’ve gotta come up with, what is that called?” He lifted his refilled mug to him. “The Grand Gesture?”

  “Like…hiring a plane to skywrite ‘I love you’ so the entire town can see it?”

  “God, no,” Noah said, and Silas smirked. “Oh. Sarcasm?”

  “You might say.”

  His brother sank into what passed for deep thought, for him. “So what we need, is something that would make you look like a hero.”

  “What we need?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Silas snorted. “Get real. What could I possibly do…”

  The thought slammed into him so hard he nearly spilled his coffee.

  “What—?”

  Silas held up one hand to his brother, thinking. Not that he had any clue how he could possibly accomplish it, but if it worked…

  Oh, man.

  Oh, hell.

  The idea—it was beyond insane. The craziest, most out-of-control thing he’d ever even thought of, let alone actually tried.

  Which meant he had to do it now, immediately, before the left side of his brain got wind of what the right side was thinking.

  His heart punching his ribs, Silas finally met his brother’s gaze. “Road trip?” he said, and Noah grinned.

  “Jewel! Jewel!”

  Whipping around so fast she nearly clipped another shopper with her basket, Jewel barely had time to catch her breath before both Tad and Ollie slammed into her legs, hugging her and splintering her heart into about a thousand pieces. Oh, heck, she thought, sliding to her knees to hug the boys back, laughing and dodging Tad’s woodpecker-like kisses as she peppered both little faces with her own.

  Yeah, this would be the hard part.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, the same moment she heard Gene Garrett’s frantic “Boys? Where’d you go?” from over in the next aisle.

  “It’s okay, Gene, I’ve got ’em,” she yelled back, because this was Wal-Mart and nobody would bat an eye, adding “Aisle Three!” for clarification. A second later Silas’s father appeared around the endcap, huffing in exasperation as he trundled up the aisle toward his grandsons.

  “What’s the big idea, runnin’ off like that?” he said in the manner of someone who clearly spoiled his grandchildren rotten, and a lump rose at the base of Jewel’s throat which she quickly swallowed.

  His arms still looped around Jewel’s neck, Ollie said, “But it’s Jewel, Papa!”

  “An’ we haven’t seen her in forever!” Tad said, nodding vigorously. Then he turned to her, his mouth all turned down. “I miss you.”

  “Yeah,” Ollie said. “Me, too. It’s bor-ing without you.”

  “Yeah. Bor-ing.”

  “Aw,” she somehow got out, “I miss you guys, too.”

  “Then how come you don’t come see us?”

  “Yeah. How come?”

  “And you all talk too much, you know that?” Gene said, then pointed to the bakery a few feet away. “Why don’t you go check out the donuts, decide what looks good. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  The boys took off like a shot, leaving Jewel alone with Silas’s father. Tee-rific. “Well. How’s everything going?” she said brightly. “Donna healing up okay?”

  “She’s doing good,” Gene said, gripping the freezer case handle and effectively preventing anyone from reaching the frozen fish. His gaze lifted to keep an eye on the boys. “And you?”

  “I’m…doing well. Getting ready to move.”

  “Oh, yeah…that was quite a surprise, Eli selling his house that fast. Tess is one cracker-jack Realtor, for sure. He feels real bad about inconveniencing you, though. Look, if you don’t find a place after the Blacks return, you can always stay with us now that Donna’s sister’s gone back home—”

  “No, no…I mean, I appreciate the offer, really. But…that would be really awkward.”

  Gene gave her a funny look, until a mother with three kids in her cart shoved him aside to get to the fish sticks. “Yeah, I guess you have a point at that.”

  “How is Silas?” she finally asked, partly because it would be weird not to and partly because she really wanted to know.

  “I suppose he’s okay, although he’s been out of town for a couple of days, so I don’t actually know.”

  Jewel frowned. “Out of town?”

  “Yeah.” Another funny look. “With Noah. Personal business. Expect ’em back tonight sometime, in fact—”

  “Papa!” Ollie hollered over, waving both arms. “We decided!”

  “Okay, boys, I’ll be right there. Well, Jewel,” he said, angling his cart toward the bakery, “it was real nice seeing you. You take care, okay? And if there’s anything you need, anything at all, you just let me or Donna know. I mean that.”

  “I know you do,” Jewel said mostly to herself, watching him amble toward a pair of little boys she loved with all her heart. And with that, she decided it was now official:

  She was flat-out miserable.

  A misery that had relentlessly bloomed over the past couple of days, she irritably mused on the drive back to Eli’s house, like the sniffles exploding into the Cold From Hell: knowing you’d eventually no longer want to chop off your own head was no consolation now.

  And for the hundredth time she reminded herself her misery was all her own doing. Well, except for the communication cutoff from her stepbrother, that wasn’t her fault. But walking away from probably the most wonderful man on the entire freaking planet because she was b
asically a big, fat wuss, only now she had no idea how to fix what she broke without looking like a big, fat idiot?

  Yeah. If life was a comic strip, there’d be a big, fat red arrow pointing at her head right now.

  “Brother,” she muttered, walking into Eli’s house and grimacing at the tower of taped boxes stacked in one corner. “When you screw up, you don’t mess around, do you?”

  Then there was the sidebar issue of alienating her mother. True, Kathryn’s rosy-hued outlook on life would more than likely send Jewel to an early grave, but your mama’s still your mama, and Jewel knew Kathryn loved her, in her own bizarre way. Cutting the woman out of her life entirely served no real purpose, that one brief, shining, illusory moment of freedom aside. If Jewel wanted to be truly free, she had to stop blaming her mother for her own mistakes, her own growing pains.

  Not to mention cowering behind her dysfunctional childhood like that would somehow keep her from getting hurt, when actually all it did was keep her from living.

  Loving.

  Digging her new, you-can’t-find-me-now cell phone out of her pocket, she bounced it against her mouth for a moment or two before punching in her mother’s number. Because, you know, what earthly right did Jewel have to judge the woman for at least having the cojones to keep trying to find love? Funny, how she’d always thought of her mother as weak, when it turned out Kathryn was a helluva lot braver than her wimpy daughter.

  Irony, she thought that was called.

  “It’s me, Mama,” she said when Kathryn answered.

  Several moments slipped by. Then: “You call to yell at me again?”

  “No. I called to apologize for acting like…like a brat. I’m…I’ve been having kind of a rough time lately, and…and I took things out on you I shouldn’t have, when the thing is…” Tears bit at her eyes. “I need my mama.”

  Not surprisingly, there was a real long pause. Then she heard her mother sniff. “Oh, baby…I don’t think you’ve ever said that to me before. But then I don’t suppose I’ve ever given you much reason to, have I? No, you don’t have to say anything, I already know the answer.”

  Jewel picked at a loose thread on her knee. Man, this was hard. “You did your best.”