One Lucky Deal (26 page)

His hands traveled up farther and cupped her breasts. Her nipples were such traitors. They’d been hard and calling out to him long before he’d even touched her. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feel of him. She wanted this. She really wanted this. With him. Every morning.

“Tad.” She turned around in his arms. She looked up at his face—at his finger-combed hair and the two-day-old stubble that lined his chin. She found a tiny kernel of courage inside herself. She closed her eyes and said with as much moxie as she could muster, “I want more than this.” She made a spinning motion with her finger in the air as a pantomime for wanting more than what was going on between the two of them.

Tad took a step back. His eyebrows went up and he gave her a nod. She didn’t know what that meant as she held her breath and waited for him to speak. He didn’t speak. He didn’t say anything, and then her phone was ringing.

*

Tad knew it was coming eventually. He just hadn’t expected it to rip him in half. Of course she wanted more than him. He couldn’t change anything about his job, or how he looked, or felt. He looked around their kitchen. He looked around their house. It was small and shabby. It needed work that he hadn’t ever got around to doing.

He headed for the back door while she was on the phone with what sounded like her mother talking about this weekend’s baby shower. He opened the door and let the dogs run out into the yard. It was overgrown. He needed to get out and mow it. The fence was loose and dilapidated.

He looked around the inside at the colorless walls that he had never lifted a paint brush to. The furniture was all temporary, all hand-me-downs. He hadn’t purchased a single thing, besides the television, brand-new.

No wonder she didn’t want this—nothing around him, absolutely nothing was built to last. Everything was transient. That’s how he’d wanted it to be for so long that he hadn’t given two shits about keeping anything.

Something snapped in him as he watched that slender, leggy brunette pace the length of the room. Her adorable orange painted toes cushioned by the threadbare carpet. He had to do something about the only thing he could change before he really—if he hadn’t already—lost the one thing that he’d ever had even a fleeting thought about keeping.

Chapter 20

Candace had gone to work that day and it was busy. Once a month they opened the door to walk-ins at discounted prices, especially on spaying and neutering. Candace hadn’t even had a second to sit down for lunch.

On her way home, her mother had asked her to go to the store and pick up some things that she had forgotten to get for tomorrow’s shower. Candace also had to stop at the baker and change the cake flavor. Candace felt exhausted by the time she got home.

She just wanted to curl up on the couch, put her head on Tad’s shoulder, and fall asleep watching
Sports Night
on DVD. She pulled into the driveway and found their couch out by the road along with a whole mound of garbage. Candace stared at it as she headed for the front door. She walked into the house and found that the carpet had been torn up and the paint-splattered, distressed hardwood floor, had been revealed.

“Tad?” Candace called tentatively into the house.

He stood up from the floor and clicked the button on the tape measure to retract the shiny yellow metal. “We’re going to need new floorboards,” he said to her absentmindedly and mumbled some numbers to himself that she guessed were measurements. He jotted them down into a mini wire-bound notebook that he stuffed into his back pocket. He slid a pencil behind his ear and looked around the room intently—obviously seeing something she wasn’t.

Then again, all she could see was this sexy, sweaty man with his pants slung low on his hips—lower than normal with the weight of the tool belt tugging on his jeans. His shoulders and hair were covered in some kind of dust but that didn’t make him any less attractive. His biceps bulged with every one of his movements, but it was the determination of his brow and the intent in his eyes that really got her juices flowing.

“Where are the dogs?”

“The backyard.”

Candace went to the back door and peered out the window. She then realized that the shrubs had been trimmed and the lawn had been mowed. Sure enough, there were the dogs barking, lying around, and rolling in fresh-cut lawn clippings.

“Tad, what is going on?” Candace moved around their odds and ends shoved aside and went into the kitchen to set her bags on the counter. “Our couch is out by the road.”

“Yeah. We’re going to have to go shopping for furniture.”

“We are?” Candace couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice, mostly at the seriousness of buying furniture with Tad. She only hoped that he meant it the way she was taking it. Although, after his nonreaction from their conversation this morning she seriously doubted it.

“Yeah.” He nodded but he was distracted. That’s when she noticed that there were spots all over the walls in the kitchen that had been mudded over. She didn’t know when he had found the time all of a sudden to tackle so much at once. “A couch, a couple chairs. A table.” He pointed to their poker table.

“I actually really like that, that’s our table.”

“Okay, then that stays.”

“Tad?” Candace stalled his movements for a second with a hand on his sweaty, dusty, bulging bicep. “What is all of this?” She looked around.

“More,” he told her simply, barely lifting his head from the math he was doing on the pad of paper he’d pulled back out of his pocket. Her phone started ringing again.

“What?” Candace asked, shaking her head because that answer didn’t make a lick of sense to her. “Hold on.” She held up a finger and answered her phone.

“Candace!” Reagan’s voice sounded panicked. Candace wanted to beat her head against a wall and she hadn’t even heard Reagan out yet.

“What?” She looked back at Tad, who had lifted his gaze to look at her. She didn’t know what was going on but her intuition told her it was something important—something she should push him to explain to her.

“I need you.” Reagan groaned. “You won’t believe what happened. Are you busy?”

“Kind of, yeah.” Candace sighed. She felt bad. Reagan had just gotten back. Everyone was bustling, busy, and swamped with this upcoming shower and still a little frazzled from last night’s hospital visit. “No, what’s up?”

“So I was hauling the centerpieces from Mom’s house because she’s going to cart the gifts, and I’m going to be transporting the decorations to the hall tomorrow. But, uh, yeah, I dropped the box so the centerpieces are all discombobulated. I have to remake the diaper cake. The picture boards with the childhood pictures of Ronnie and Joe flew off into the neighbor’s yard. The wind lifted one up into their pool and the other one, Ronnie’s, got sucked up into his lawn mower. I can salvage Joe’s, but Ronnie’s was literally eaten up and spat out. I have a new board and I have pictures, but I need help.”

Candace laughed, because what else could she do? “Give me five minutes.” She gave Tad an apologetic smile. “I’ll be back.”

“You just got here.”

“I know.” Candace sighed. “Reagan needs me. You know … shower stuff.”

“I’m no expert but maybe the shower shouldn’t have come so close to the due date.”

“Good call, and if it hadn’t been for two weddings, Reagan’s extralong honeymoon, a sweet-sixteen party, and Joe getting shot in that robbery maybe we could have planned it better.”

“Yeah, it’s been a crazy year so far.” Tad laughed. He scratched his chest and leveled his gaze on her. “Well, have fun.”

“I’ll be back and we’ll talk. You can tell me what all of this is about.” Candace leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. He seemed surprised by it. Suddenly she was back to not knowing what the hell was going on with them. She gave his arm a tight little squeeze, and then walked out the door she had just barely stepped through.

* * * *

Candace spent all night at Reagan’s—literally, all night. The three of them, Reagan, Chloe, and Candace worked until the early morning on getting everything put back together. At some point Candace had sat down on the couch for a quick break and passed out cold.

She woke up to Reagan’s gentle nudging. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to go home and get yourself together. I’d let you get ready here and let you borrow something, but your skinny butt wouldn’t fit into any of my clothes. And Chloe, the lucky little duckling, gets to shop in misses.”

Candace sighed. “I’m going. I’m going.”

She drove home with an apology ready on her lips for Tad but his truck wasn’t there when she pulled up. She walked in and the strong smell of paint hit her nose. That’s when she realized that all the living room and entryway walls had been primed. There were three little patches along the east wall that had a light green, a soft yellow and the most beautiful robin’s egg blue that were obviously samples.

So she quickly went to the fridge and rearranged the letters so that they spelled out her vote. BLUE.

Once in the kitchen, though, she realized she was walking on some hard tar-colored flooring and not at all the chipping blue tiles that she remembered walking on yesterday morning. She couldn’t even fathom the kind of time he was putting into this. He must have stayed up all night.

She wanted to peek around every corner and take notice of all the small and large adjustments he was making. She didn’t have time. Her phone was buzzing again in her pocket. She pulled it out. It was her mother telling her to hurry up.

Candace quickly showered. She blew her hair mostly dry, and then slipped into that frilly girly dress she’d worn to church with Tad. She grabbed the things off the counter and the gift from her closet and headed in a hurry out the door.

* * * *

The shower was a hit. It was beautiful. Their mom had done such a good job on the food. Reagan’s centerpieces were gorgeous even after their disastrous accident last night. Ronnie had been so touched by the details that she’d cried actual tears. Candace had made sure she snapped a picture of that.

They had to make three trips just to get all of her goodies to Ronnie’s house. Once the hall was cleaned, all of Ronnie’s gifts were mostly set up and put away in the nursery, Candace was dead on her feet. She sank back into Ronnie and Joe’s big sectional and thought longingly about the days when she had nowhere to be and nothing to do.

“I think that’s it.” Ronnie sighed and eased down into a chair. “Great. I’m not sure I’m ever getting back up,” she joked.

“You’re enormous,” Candace pointed out. “I can’t believe it. The human body is an amazing thing.” Ronnie shot her a look that could kill, and Candace laughed. “Are you sure you’re not carrying twins around in there?” Candace grinned, goading her.

“Shouldn’t she be too tired to have so many wiseass remarks?” Ronnie asked Reagan, who looked fabulous in a little lacy summer dress. Her hair was all curly and pinned up with a big red flower tucked into the mess. Her skin was still so tan and gorgeous. Candace was jealous.

She closed her eyes and imagined a beach, cold beer, a nice breeze, and Tad
.

Mmm. Tad shirtless. Board shorts. Mmm.

“I’m exhausted,” Candace murmured.

“We all are.” Reagan nodded and plunked down beside Candace and kicked her feet up on the coffee table.

Candace let out a deep sigh.

“That was more than an ‘I’m tired’ sigh. What’s going on?” Ronnie lifted her eyebrows and placed a hand to her apparently still mildly contracting stomach.

“Oh, nothing.” Candace shook her head. She wanted to tell them. She’d been dying to tell them all summer but she was also really selfish. She wanted to keep it to herself, and truthfully, she didn’t want to hear what they had to say about it. Especially not if it was anything like what Tad’s sister had to say about it.

Reagan, who looked at Candace and realized what Ronnie had already realized moments before, was staring at her, mouth agape. “You’ve got something. I can tell. Something good, it’s just sitting there.” Reagan pressed a perfect fuchsia nail to her cheek. “You want to say it.”

Candace swatted away her sister’s hand. “I’m too tired to fight you off.”

“Then don’t.” Ronnie stuffed a pillow behind her back.

“I sort of—well—” She closed her eyes. “I think I might be … well—no, certainly—kind of—no, definitely—”

“Just spill it already.” Reagan laughed.

“I’m in love,” Candace said and a gush of stress left her shoulders. She had no idea that just telling her sisters would ease so much of that tightness in her chest. “I’m totally crazily irrevocably in love.” She smiled and tipped her head back, basking in the sudden relief that had begun to fill her.

“Who?” Ronnie asked.

Candace opened her eyes and looked at her sisters’ matching grins. “Tad.” Candace smirked and hid behind the accompanying wince. They didn’t say anything. Candace was just met with blank stares.

“So what seems to be the problem?” Reagan asked.

“What? You aren’t surprised?” Candace looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Are you kidding me?” Ronnie sucked in a tight breath and pressed a hand to her side. “We would have been surprised if you’d said it wasn’t Tad.”

“Okay?” Candace shook her head and wondered why it hadn’t been so obvious to her.

“So what’s the problem?” Reagan asked again.

“I don’t know. I want to believe he feels something for me, but I just don’t know.” Candace tipped her head back. She was so sore. She wanted to slip her tired body into a bubble bath and fall asleep.

“He just needs a nudge.” Ronnie nodded in agreement with Reagan.

“I don’t know how many more nudges I can give him.”

“Let us help.” Reagan grinned.

“Yeah, let us help.”

Candace opened one eyelid and watched her two sisters. They appeared to be sincerely interested in helping. “At this point, I don’t see what it could hurt.” Candace then told them everything—SparkNotes version.

* * * *

When she’d gone home that night she’d found Tad had painted the living room and entryway that pretty blue color she liked. He was also installing a new ceiling fan, which for some reason involved him going up to the attic to complete. She had waited for him in the only place left to sit, the papasan chair that was in the center of the room.