My Stubborn Heart (26 page)

“You in the mood for a movie tonight?” Kate asked him a couple days later. Matt was working, and she was sitting on her customary bucket taking a break, drinking bottled water, and surreptitiously admiring him from every angle. “I could pick something up on my way over tonight.”

“Sure.”

“How about
Pride and Prejudice
?”

“What's that?” he asked warily. “It's not one of those movies where they all wear old-fashioned clothes and walk around talking in British accents, is it?”

“That's exactly what it is.”

Matt groaned.

“It's romantic! Maybe one of the most romantic stories ever.”

He paused to study her. “What do you think is romantic?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. What's romantic? To you.”

She took some time to consider. “Okay,” she said when she had it.

“If it's an English guy,” he said, “wearing a top hat and tight pants, then you're fresh out of luck.”

Kate laughed. “No. There's this couple who live in my neighborhood at home. They're old. Really old. And I think the wife might have Alzheimer's. They go on walks together every morning. I get the feeling that her husband buttons her into her coat, picks out her shoes, combs her hair. And then the whole time they're walking, he's supporting her, kind of holding her up.” She couldn't help it, she got teary.

Matt watched her with concentrated attention.

“That's romantic,” she said. “ ‘Till death do us part' is romantic.”

Silence and dust motes drifted between them. Matt unbuckled and set down his tool belt. “Come to my house with me.”

“It's one-thirty in the afternoon.”

“Which means we can watch your movie and hang out together for the rest of the day.”

“What about your work?”

“Screw it.”

“Gran will wonder where I've gone.”

“Leave her a note.”

She gaped at him for a surprised moment, then chuckled. “All right, let's do it.”

When they got outside, she headed toward her Explorer.

“I can drive you home tonight, Kate,” he said. “I want to drive you home. Let me.”

But she held firm and took her own car to the video store. As she steered from there through the now familiar streets toward Matt's house, she called herself every kind of idiot.

Here she was, in love with him. She. Loved. Him. And yet she kept holding like a life preserver to a couple of things: (a) she always drove herself to and from his house in her own car, and (b) she still occasionally turned down his invitations and stayed home in the evenings with Gran. As if either of those strategies could protect her heart now! And yet she continued to cling to them. She clung to them because she couldn't shake the feeling that things weren't going to end well for her and Matt. It had become a persistent, gnawing, unsettled ache that lived all day beneath her other thoughts and emotions.

Things aren't going to end well.

She shoved the worry aside.

Problem was, the more she shoved it aside, the more aware she became of its silent and ominous presence.

The days she had left with Matt began to escape Kate's reach like a smooth stone skating away from her down the glinting surface of a playground slide. She couldn't stop or catch back her time with him, which filled her with helplessness.

Just five days before she was to leave, she met Matt in town. They had dinner reservations, and any sane person would have gone straight to the restaurant on such a cold, snowy evening. But it hardly ever snowed in Dallas, and Kate loved walking through the falling flakes. So like a good sport, Matt had agreed to meet her early so that they could walk along Main Street together to window-shop and marvel at all the Christmas lights that had been strung on trees and along storefronts.

She'd just locked her car door behind her when she spotted him, big, muscular, and darkly handsome, walking toward her through the snow. Carefully, she memorized the image: his long dark dress coat, his flashing eyes, the serious cast of his jaw.

When he was a few feet away she noticed that he was carrying a coffee cup from Main Street Coffee. He extended it to her. “For you.”

“Wow, thank you.”

“You're welcome. I don't want you to get cold.”

She took a sip. He'd ordered her a latte with extra whip and, she'd bet, chocolate sprinkles. “Exactly how I like it.”

“I'm good, aren't I?”

“Very good.”

The coffee was perfect, she thought. Just like him. And she almost burst into tears right then and there. To keep herself from doing so, she slid her arm through his and they set off down the street.

“Listen,” he said. “I'm worried about you breathing in this freezing air. That's one of the things that can set off your asthma, right?”

“Yes, but I have my inhaler.”

He gave her a concerned look. “I don't want it to come to that.”

“It won't.”

“If I hear so much as a cough, Kate, we're going to the restaurant.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

She hid a smile behind the guise of another sip of latte. It was nice—really, really nice—to have a manly tough guy fussing over you.

They shared a leisurely and delicious dinner at the restaurant, then went to Matt's house for dessert.

Kate had discovered from Matt's mom that Matt loved chocolate chip cookies. Plain ones, without nuts or oatmeal or any other imaginative ingredient. Kate had asked Elaine to write her recipe down, and Elaine had scribbled it off for her gladly, from memory.

Kate, who almost never cooked, had followed the recipe religiously that afternoon. However, either Chapel Bluff's ancient cookie sheet or its ancient oven hadn't functioned quite right. The cookies had come out too brown on the bottom. They'd tasted okay enough, though, that she'd boldly announced to Matt earlier that she'd made dessert for him. Now that they were at his house and she was about to uncover her simple, oddly shaped cookies, she had to wonder what she'd been thinking.

“Let's see what you've got.” He rubbed his hands together.

She peeled back the foil. “I made your mother's chocolate chip cookies.”

“You made these for me?” Matt looked genuinely pleased. “I love these.”

“That's what she said.”

They both took one and ate, leaning against opposing granite countertops. “These are incredible,” he said. “The best ones I've ever tasted.”

Kate let out a peal of laughter. “Liar. They're too brown on the bottom, and they're really cold from my car.”

“The best ones ever,” he insisted.

“Maybe we should microwave them.”

“No, I like 'em just the way they are.” He palmed two more.

She could remember times, early in their acquaintance, when she'd thought him rude, indifferent, unkind. She'd been dead wrong. All that had been a shield. Underneath it, he was the opposite of every one of those things.

“Before you and Beverly came I never ate dessert,” he said.

“That's pitiful, Matt.”

“I guess I won't be eating it after you leave, either.”

“Well, we can't have you missing out on dessert! I guess we're going to have to stay.”

“I'd like that.”

“Nah, you just like chocolate chip cookies. That's all.” She picked up her second cookie, an embarrassingly deformed one, and took a bite.

“Actually,” he said, “I'm serious.”

She almost choked.

His expression turned solemn, his attention steady and determined. He curled his hands around the edge of the granite on either side of his hips.

Trying to look composed, she set aside her cookie, finished chewing, and swallowed.

“I don't want you to go,” he said.

She only stared at him, tasting chocolate and hope.

“I want this thing between us to continue,” he said. “I'm not ready to pack up your car and say good-bye to you.”

Her pulse thrummed fast through her veins. “I . . . I have a job I have to go back to.”

“I know. I'd never ask you to leave it unless you wanted to.”

She chose her words cautiously. “Even if I wanted to leave it, I couldn't. Not at the moment, anyway. I don't have another job lined up.”

“I could help you find one here, if you wanted to stay. Maybe an antique shop of your own. I could get you set up somewhere, buy all the furniture you'd need to get started.”

She let out her breath in a soft, admiring whistle. He'd offered her something almost unbearably tempting. Except . . . What was she going to do? Accept capital from him, someone she hadn't even had a define-the-relationship talk with? “That sounds amazing,” she said truthfully. “But I couldn't accept money from you.”

“A job then at one of the antiques places that are already here? Theresa's, maybe? Or we could find you something completely different. Something where you could use your social work degree.”

She couldn't believe they were even
having
this discussion. She'd known he liked her, cared about her, but she'd thought he'd accepted the fact that she was moving home in a few days. She'd had no clue that he'd been thinking along these lines. That he was serious enough about her that he wanted her to remain in Redbud.

“Or if you return to Dallas,” he continued, “and keep the job you have, I was thinking . . .”

She waited, resisted the urge to bite her lip.

“I don't know.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I was just thinking that I could use a change of scenery. I wouldn't mind moving down to Dallas, giving it a try.”

He's willing to move to Dallas?
His offer was an over-the-moon miracle, something she'd only dreamed of,
more
than she'd dreamed of. She wanted to shriek and throw herself into his arms.

Except that same sense of uneasiness that had been dogging her for days intensified right alongside her excitement. Matched enemies, wrestling inside her. “You have a house here,” she said.

He shrugged. “I'll hold on to the house.”

“What . . . what kind of work would you do in Dallas?”

“Same as here. They must have old houses there, too, right?”

“They do.” She could see the vulnerability in the depths of his brown eyes. This was costing him, to put himself out here like this, and she didn't want to hurt him. Not for the world. “What about your hockey?”

“Hockey's not a factor. I've been thinking about it like I told you I would, but it's just not going to happen, Kate.”

“Why not?”

“Too much time has passed. It's not the kind of thing you can just pick back up and put on again like an old coat.”

“I know it won't be easy. But I have—” she pursed her lips— “I just have this gut instinct that you can do it.”

“Kate. Do you know how hard it is to get yourself to a level where you can compete in the NHL?”