Her Minnesota Man (A Christian Romance Novel) (7 page)

"No, sorry. They were out."

She peered inside the bag and laughed. "I can't believe you would lie to me about something as important as ice cream!"

Grinning, Jeb slung an arm around her shoulders. Didn't she know he'd have scoured every store in Minnesota to find her favorite flavor? As for lying to her, he never had and never would. There were any number of things he couldn't discuss with her, but he had never told her a lie.

That didn't mean he was above teasing her in order to provoke her gurgling laughter and see those blue eyes dance.

In her kitchen, Jeb shrugged out of his leather jacket and hung it beside the door, on the same wood peg he'd been tossing his jackets over since he was eleven.
Laney set the ice cream on the counter, then removed her cardigan and handed it to him.

He draped it over another peg. "Are the Graces still knitting these things faster than you can wear them out?"

"Umm-hmm." She pushed up the long sleeves of her dress and rummaged through the commodious leather bag she'd parked on a chair. "And I still donate an old one to charity for every new one they— Yes,
here
it is." She pushed a mass of exuberant curls away from her face and flourished a plain white envelope. "They sent you a welcome-home gift."

"The Graces?" Jeb's mouth tilted into a wry smile as he took the envelope and eased his thumb under the flap. No doubt they'd sent him a selection of business cards from local real estate agents. The Graces were about as subtle as—

Hockey tickets?

Even more surprised when he noticed the seat assignments, Jeb whistled. "How did they get on-the-glass seats for the Minnesota Wild?"

"Some kind of trade, I imagine. You know how they operate."

He knew. Nobody was better connected than the Graces. They had probably called in a favor from the second cousin of somebody's neighbor's dentist.

Looking more closely at the tickets, he found his pleasure swamped by a fast-rising tide of regret. Leaving aside the question of why the Graces, if they really were trying to get rid of him, would give him tickets to a game more than three weeks in the future, how could he risk staying that long in Owatonna? If Laney got too used to having him around, she'd be devastated when he left.

He ransacked his brain for words that would let her down gently. "Laney, I'm not sure I'll be—"

"I'll keep them." Plucking the tickets from his hand, she elevated her delicate, honey-colored eyebrows in that way she had of trying to disguise her disappointment. "If you're not here, I'll find somebody to go with me."

"I'm sorry," Jeb said. "I just don't know how long—"

She cut him off with a sharply raised hand. "You just got home, Jeb. Don't ruin it by talking about leaving, okay?" She turned away to replace the envelope in her bag.

Silently castigating himself for not handling that better, Jeb shoved his hands into his pockets and wandered through the kitchen's archway into the hall. From there he could see the living room, still furnished in the cozy style Hannah had called scruffy chic, which Laney claimed was French for "stuff bought at garage sales and refurbished." His gaze lingered for a moment on the upright piano tucked against the half-wall next to the staircase. Then his feet turned toward the dining room.

Stopping before the antique sideboard, one of the flea market finds he'd helped Hannah haul home and refinish, he picked up a framed photograph of Laney and himself as teenagers. Unaware of the camera pointed in their direction, they'd been sharing a laugh as they laced their ice skates on the snowy bank of Owatonna's Straight River.

"Mom's favorite picture." Laney took it from him and gazed at it for a moment before setting it back where it belonged.

Turning away, Jeb noticed an assembled jigsaw puzzle on the far end of the oak dining table. A familiar scene of Paris at night, it was the single discordant note in a house full of precious memories.

"Why is that still here?" he asked.

In the last few years of her life, Hannah had begun buying puzzles—stress busters, she'd called them—depicting the European capitals she longed to visit.
One by one, she'd framed her finished projects and hung them in the hallway, souvenirs of the trips she took only in her dreams.

With a stab of grief, Jeb recalled the day of her funeral. After the graveside prayers and the meal in the church basement, he'd brought Laney home. Worried by her thousand-mile stare, he'd made her a cup of herbal tea and coaxed her to sit down with him and work on the puzzle her mother had left unfinished. They had almost completed the task when they discovered a piece was missing.

Jeb had dropped to his hands and knees and searched every inch of the carpeted floor for that tiny black bit of nighttime sky, without success. In the end, a tearful Laney had decided to hang the puzzle without it.

"I thought you were going to improvise." Jeb turned to look at her. "I gave you a black guitar pick to glue behind—"

"I can't, Jeb." Her voice was heartbreakingly subdued, just as it had been on that awful day two years ago. "It doesn't feel right to put it on the wall, but I can't break it up and put it back in the box, either. I don't know why, but I'm just not ready. So there it sits."

He ached to draw her into his arms, but encouraging her to look to him for emotional support at this point was a bad idea. As soon as she answered his questions about God, he meant to slip back out of her life. She'd be hurt at first, but in the long run, she'd be happier without him.

When she hugged herself and inhaled deeply, getting control, he felt a rush of admiration tinged with foolish disappointment.

"When I have guests for supper, we eat in the kitchen," she said. "Or I just cook and serve everything at your house."

Laney loved his mother's gourmet kitchen and her antique china. She adored everything about Jeb's house, from its high ceilings and ornate period furnishings to the hot tub he'd installed on the screened porch after his father's death, so Jeb
encouraged her to treat the house as an extension of her own. He liked to think of the old walls absorbing her laughter, diluting the bitterness they'd soaked up during the long years he'd lived there with his father and Mrs. Lee.

Laney still wondered why his mother had so painstakingly restored and decorated the house only to take her own life almost as soon as it was finished. Jeb could have enlightened her, but that memory exercise on the plane aside, he carefully avoided thinking about his parents.

Determined to haul Laney out of the melancholy mood she'd slipped into, Jeb grasped one of her corkscrew curls and gave it a teasing tug.

"You look good," he said.

She smiled. "And you look like Mowgli."

"Who?"

"The wild boy from
The Jungle Book
. Remember? Rudyard Kipling said Mowgli had long, straight black hair that fell like curtains around his face." She turned and went back to the kitchen.

Jeb tucked the "curtains" behind his ears and followed her. It was no good protesting that he'd been too busy for a haircut. That was part of it, yes. But Laney knew how much he hated sitting defenseless while a scissors-wielding stranger snipped and clipped and tried to engage him in conversations he didn't want to have.

She also knew she was welcome to get out her electric trimmer any time she wanted.

"We're grilling steaks," she announced as she stowed the ice cream in her freezer. "And I'm making your favorite garlic-and-cheddar mashed potatoes."

Jeb's stomach greeted that news with an enthusiastic tremor. He was more than ready to drag Laney's grill out of her garden shed and light a mound of charcoal, but he hadn't missed the longing gaze she'd bestowed on that carton of ice cream.

"Dessert first," he suggested.

She gave a little whoop of joy and retrieved the ice cream.

Now
, his heart urged his brain.
Tell her now.

He cleared his throat. "Laney, I have something to—"

She spoke at the same instant: "Jeb, I never told you about—"

They both stopped and shared a look of amusement.

"You first," Laney said. "I've been doing all the talking since you got here."

"Princess." Jeb shook his head at the ceiling. "You've been doing all the talking since the day we met."

He caught the bubbly laugh he'd been fishing for. He also received a playful swat on the arm. Grinning, he nudged her aside to open a drawer and collect two spoons.

"What were you going to tell me?" he asked.

"I got engaged last month." As casually as if she'd just made some unremarkable statement about the weather, she curled an arm around the ice cream's cylindrical container and pried the lid off.

Jeb had stopped breathing, but this was hardly unexpected news. The last time he'd been home, Tom Johansen had been making a nuisance of himself. Every time Jeb came over to borrow Laney's newspaper or raid her cookie jar, Tom had been here, occupying Jeb's favorite chair and hogging the sports section while he scarfed down the last of the seven-layer bars, the ones Laney always made without nuts because Jeb didn't like nuts.

"Engaged? That's great." He couldn't pull off looking delighted, but he managed what he believed to be a credible smile. "So when's the wedding? And why didn't you call me?"

"There isn't going to be a wedding." Laney's eyes gleamed with defiance. "We broke up the very next day."

Sick relief, Jeb's initial reaction to that news, was quickly replaced by self-reproach. She'd been desperately lonely since her mother's death, and she longed for a husband and children to love. Didn't he want her to be happy?

"That's too bad," he said carefully, hoping her eyes weren't about to fill with tears. "Tom was an okay guy."

"Nathan Anderson," she corrected as she claimed one of the spoons Jeb had forgotten he was holding. "Tom and I broke up on New Year's Day."

Ten months ago? Why was he just now hearing about this? Maybe he'd never come right out and asked how things were going with good
ol
' Tom, but why hadn't she said anything? And who, exactly, was this Nathan character?

Dazed, Jeb sank onto a chair. "Why?"

Laney set the tub of ice cream on the table and took the chair next to his. "Why did I break up with Tom?"

Tilting his head to one side, Jeb allowed her to see his exasperation. "Both of them."

She held up her spoon, the back of its bowl facing Jeb. He observed their childhood ritual by clicking his own spoon against it.

"Tom hinted about marriage," Laney said as she dug into the ice cream. "But we started arguing a lot."

"About what?" The words were barely out of Jeb's mouth before he wished he'd swallowed them, instead. He had a pretty good idea what Laney and Tom must have argued about.

"My business, for one thing," she said. "I wouldn't take his advice, and that made him mad." She slipped a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. Closing her eyes, she moaned blissfully.

"So he told you how to run the tearoom," Jeb prompted as she went for another bite.

"He sure tried," she said with her mouth full. "I needed to extend my hours. I needed to advertise more. To hear him talk, I wasn't doing anything right."

Jeb snorted. If Tom had failed to value her strength and intelligence, good riddance to him.

"I told myself he was just trying to help," she continued. "But then he started harping on—" She hesitated. "Well, on other things."

Things like her being so emotionally attached to another man? Yes, Jeb had seen the resentment in Tom's eyes. But even before Tom, he'd been trying to distance himself from Laney, trying to become less important in her life so she'd be able to build a healthy relationship with whatever man she chose to marry.

It hadn't been enough, obviously. He was going to have to try harder. He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.

"I'm sorry, princess."

"Don't be. He thought I was too involved with the Graces, too. He said—"

"That's ridiculous," Jeb interrupted. "The Graces are your family."

"Tom said I was a fool to tie myself to three old ladies who will just become burdens when their health fails." As she often did when irritated, Laney twitched her left shoulder. But then she grimaced as though the movement had caused her pain.

Jeb's gaze sharpened on her. "What's wrong?"

"Just a pulled muscle." She smiled ruefully and rubbed her shoulder. "It was feeling better until last night, when I strained it again changing a flat tire on Francine."

Disturbed by the thought of slightly-built Laney struggling to lift a heavy wheel out of Francine's trunk, Jeb made a mental note to give her an auto club membership for Christmas. How was it that he'd never thought of that before now?

"But back to Tom," she said. "I think I must have talked too much about Mom, and about how hard things were before she died."

"You never resented taking care of her," Jeb pointed out. "You couldn't possibly have given him that impression."

"Maybe he was just projecting. His own mother died of lung cancer a few years back." Laney shook her head. "Anyway, he said I didn't owe anything to the family of the man who abandoned my mom when she was pregnant with me."