Nolan considered pretending that he didn’t notice her fumbling, but opted to drum his fingers on the table instead. Grace grew more embarrassed and finally blurted out, “Well, it’s not like you don’t
know
how handsome you are, so why should I pretend that I don’t either?”
“Thank you, Grace. What a lovely compliment. Brilliantly executed as well.” Grace only grew more flustered at the amusement behind his eyes.
Suggesting that Nolan set the table, Grace turned back to her dinner preparations. She heard Melanie’s chuckles floating from the recliner and snapped, “You knock it off, Mel, or no dinner for you.”
“You going to starve your niece? If I don’t eat,
she
don’t eat!”
Nolan chuckled at her groan and pulled out the plates and silverware. He mulled over Grace’s admission of her finding him handsome. Most of the women of his acquaintance would have used that moment to flirt with him. She was too forthright for behavior like that. She was honest and truthful, but she didn’t want to talk about him in such a familiar manner. Nolan found it refreshing… very refreshing.
His musings were interrupted when Melanie handed him Graceanna. “I need to excuse myself. Will you please hold her for a minute?”
Without waiting for a response, Melanie walked awkwardly down the hallway as if her legs needed re-circulation. Nolan’s heart raced. He held the baby in the gingerly-extended manner of most men. Grace took one look at him and quipped, “You know, most men hold a football more tenderly. Pull her inward, toward your chest. She needs to feel secure.”
He shifted his little bundle until the baby was tucked into the crook of his arm. Grace smiled to herself as she watched the big man grow goofy with delight at the baby’s soft sighs and gurgles in her sleep. His eyes didn’t leave the infant’s face until Melanie returned to claim her baby.
“I think she is ready for a nap now.” Melanie choked back laughter at the look on his face.
“You did that on purpose! She didn’t need to be held!” His voice startled the infant, which reminded him to moderate his tones. “You may live to regret that trick, Melanie!”
“Yeah… maybe, but you won’t regret it; I’ll wager.”
Grace interrupted before he could reply, “Nolan, what would you like to drink with your dinner?” A mischievous twinkle in Grace’s eye kept Melanie from taking the baby from the room.
“Well, what do you have to offer?” Nolan’s eyes were back on the sleeping infant, oblivious to the plot thickening around him.
“Well, I have soda, tea, coffee, lemonade, milk… or the house specialty.” Grace waited for his response and held her breath. Everything hinged on if he would ask.
“I feel daring. I think I’ll take the house specialty.” Nolan’s nonchalance was a relief to Grace, who consciously let out her breath slowly.
“Ok, one ‘universal solvent on the rocks’ coming up!”
Nolan’s jaw worked as the familiar phrase bounced through his mind. The women stifled their titters as they watched him consider how they knew of the incident. Understanding dawned swiftly. “Wait a minute. Paige! The beautiful woman seated behind my client—that was Paige Matthews, wasn’t it?”
Grace nodded and dodged the cherry tomato that Nolan picked out of the salad bowl and tossed at her. Graceanna whimpered in her basket as Melanie took up the fight. “Now look what you’ve done. Gracie is upset that you called another woman beautiful.”
Nolan, misunderstanding which “Gracie” Melanie spoke of, turned sharply to look at Grace and was confused. She looked amused rather than embarrassed. “I don’t—”
Melanie interrupted him before he could say something to embarrass both Grace and himself. “You’ve stolen her heart. My daughter is in love at the ripe old age of two weeks.”
Grace giggled. “Well, she’s over nine days old… she can’t be the ‘Naughty Lady of Shady Lane’ anymore.”
Narrowly escaping an embarrassing position, Nolan asked about the song. “I heard you singing that when I moved in. What’s up with you and the risqué songs?”
Melanie laughed and launched into a rendition of the misleading song. Grace quickly joined her in theatric harmony. Singing of trying to pin things on “her” that won’t hold water, and never refusing liquid refreshment, the two ladies ended with an exaggerated flourish.
Melanie sighed. “I’ve loved that song ever since I was a little girl. When I found out that Craig lived on Shady Lane, I knew he was the one for me.”
Nolan enjoyed observing the camaraderie between the two women. He had heard horror stories about “in-laws,” but these two women appeared to truly love and respect each other. Melanie didn’t seem to mind that her husband had another woman to “protect,” while Grace shared the big brother she had adored since childhood with tact and, well, grace.
They ate the meal amid laughter and much teasing. Grace held her own, and at times, Melanie appeared to be her twin. Nolan wasn’t the first to wonder how much of his sister’s personality Craig had looked for in a wife.
After dinner, Melanie spontaneously decided to make a Hungarian Coffee Cake. “It’ll be great! You guys go play some checkers in the living room, and I’ll join you as soon as I am done with the dough.”
“Mel! Those things take around three hours with all the risings and bakings and dipping… Are you sure?”
Melanie shooed the would-be checker players out of the kitchen. Based upon her observations, Melanie concluded that Grace was feeling awkward after her comments on Nolan’s appearance. She hoped by encouraging them to begin a game of checkers, Grace and Nolan would ease back into the comfortable friendship that had grown so easily between them.
Three hours later, they all munched on the cinnamony goodness of Hungarian coffee cake. Nolan and Grace took swipes of the icing drizzle that pooled at the bottom of the pan, while Melanie tried to nurse baby Gracie and lick her sticky fingers—at the same time. Feeling the exhaustion of an early morning, and now a very late evening, Nolan walked slowly home. As he entered his empty house, he prayed.
Lord, that is one incredible family. Please help me to build a family that is as close and loving as they are… and Lord… that baby. I want to put my order in now for a half a dozen just like her.
Chapter Nine
October
“You know what, Mel? This is just like cross-stitch. It’s not hard at all. Now, threading all of those needles…
That
was hard.” Grace counted the pleats in the fabric of a plain white dress and gave Melanie a play-by-play about her progress.
“Hey, whatever you are doing… just get good at it. I mentioned the dress you’re making to one of the ladies in my Bible Study, Leigh Ryder, and she wants one for Emme’s shower.”
“These won’t be cheap, though. The time investment will probably be at least four hours just for the smocking portion. Well, once I know what I am doing… This one will probably take me a month.” Despite her words, Grace was excited. Her reputation was going to ensure that she would sell as many of the hand-smocked dresses as she could produce.
“Oh, Grace, I was thinking. Did you get the impression that Nolan might be interested in getting to know Paige better? I was thinking about trying to set them up.”
Melanie did not like where she was taking the conversation, but she did know that her husband was not happy to hear that Grace found her new neighbor attractive. Craig had jumped at the news that Nolan could be interested in Grace’s best friend. His final words were, “Well, I don’t want Grace getting her heart broken. As much as I like Nolan, he’s too good looking for my sanity.”
Grace looked up from her sewing with a little smile. “Wasn’t that funny? Do you think I can talk her into riding with him for the progressive dinner next week?”
“Well, I had the same thought but… Well, what if we’re wrong, and he wouldn’t want to?”
Grace reached over and picked up her phone. As she waited for the answering machine to pick up, she snatched an afghan off the back of the couch, pulled it over her head like a shawl, and began singing
Matchmaker
from
Fiddler on the Roof
.
Moments later, she did a goofy little dance around the room and sang an impromptu little ditty about turning a page for Paige. “Now, to work on Paige. That won’t be as easy. Hmmm… I wonder… We could just tell her that she can choose between Chuck and Nolan. Do you think that she’d fall for it?”
“And she wouldn’t say, ‘Um, how about neither?’” Melanie looked skeptical.
Grace got the devious look in her eyes that always created nervous knots in Melanie’s stomach during a fierce game of hearts. “We just have to make her choose immediately; then she’s committed! She’ll try to back out, but if I make it scary enough, she’ll snatch Nolan before I finish offering Chuck.”
Within the half hour, Grace’s two friends had plans to share a car for the progressive dinner. Grace was excited. She hadn’t played matchmaker since she met a pretty, little southern blonde at the little Bible bookstore in town the year before her father died. She’d forgotten how fun it was.
~*~*~*~
Craig double knocked on the back door before entering. “Hey… there are my women! The three most beautiful women in the world are in this kitchen, and they are all mine!”
Grace snapped her brother with a wet towel as he made a beeline for his wife and daughter. “How was the convention?”
“I think these late night conventions are a waste of time. None of us could think clearly after dinner, and the late ‘lectures’ were on stupid things like, ‘How to wine and dine your client.’”
Melanie hugged her husband before getting up and gathering her things. “I don’t want to rush out of here, Grace, but I’m anxious to see how my kitchen looks and see if they cleaned up their mess.”
“You go home to your new kitchen. I know I’d be eager to see it in your place.” Grace quickly gathered the baby’s diaper bag and car seat as she rambled about the projects that the two women had started.
Grace felt a slight sense of loss as she walked through the empty house an hour later. She picked up a tiny sock that had worked its way into the couch cushions and gave a tight little smile. The scent of the baby’s bath cleansers and lotions lingered in the bathroom, and the impression of Graceanna’s little body was still evident in the beanbag chair. Melanie had propped her little daughter in the chair to observe as she and Grace cut out the little one’s spring wardrobe.
“Grace, get out of this house and work on the yard or something. Go rake up those leaves; pull out the dead flowers, anything but this!” Just talking to herself again felt good. Days of fighting the tendency had been extremely difficult.
Nolan watched as she raked the yard’s leaves into one enormous pile. He wondered if she planned to create a bonfire or if she was just a hyper-perfectionist. His laughter rang through his half-empty house as he saw Grace run and dive into the pile. Grace tended to be a little circumspect in her behavior, but her eyes always held a glint of mischief that made him curious. This was a side of her that he hadn’t seen. As she ran for a second dive, Nolan decided to join her.
“Hey, save some for me!” Nolan’s voice rang out across the street.
Grace grinned and began raking the pile back into the mini haystack that she’d been able to jump on. “Isn’t it fun? I can’t stand just leaving a perfectly good pile of leaves sitting there all lonely.”
They jumped and rolled for a few moments before Grace began transferring the pile of leaves into her wheel barrow and moving them to an enormous compost pile at the back of the house. As Nolan helped, he began questioning Grace about the progressive dinner the following night. “So, how did you pull that off? When you asked me about it, I thought that there would be no way that you could talk her into going with me. Spill it.”
Grace grinned wickedly. “Well, you have to promise to tell me everything about the ‘date.’ I won’t always pry, but I just
have
to hear this one!”
Nolan was thoughtful. “I think I can promise to tell you everything that Paige agrees to.”
“Deal. It was simple. I described a horror date with Chuck Majors and said, either that, or she could ride with you. She was so relieved to get away from Chuck that she agreed to go with you. Then, when she tried to get out of it, I told her that Melanie had already walked across the street to give you the good news.”
Nolan laughed at the mental picture that Grace drew before hesitating. He rubbed the back of his neck and finally came to a decision. “Grace, can I have her number? I think I should call and offer her an out. I don’t want her to feel trapped, or she’ll never relax enough to really get to know me.”
“You’re definitely interested in her, aren’t you?” Grace grinned at his discomfiture.
“I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s intelligent, or appears to be, she’s feminine, and she has a modesty about her that I rarely see. It’s hugely refreshing.”
Grace snickered. “And it doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous too.”
“How is it that she seems oblivious to that? Men must surround her like sharks.”
They sat in the last of the grand leaf pile and talked. With his knees drawn up to his chest, Nolan listened intently as Grace told the story of Paige’s awkward Jr. High and High School years. The teasing and torment that the girl endured had carried over to her adult years. “She still sees herself as the gawky, awkward girl that the guys tormented. To this day, if a man shows her any attention, she assumes that it is to dump her in an emotionally stripped heap later.”
“Ouch. That would be traumatic enough to make anyone overly cautious. Children can be cruel. My father had a business partner that home schooled his children before it was popular for that very reason. He spent hours in court fighting for the right to do it, but his daughter had an enormous port wine stain that made her an oddity, and he decided that adults were cruel enough. He wasn’t going to subject her to children too.”
Grace nodded with understanding. Her school years hadn’t been unpleasant, but she’d witnessed worse than Paige’s torment over the years. “I think, should the Lord bless me with children, that I’d like to home school them. I love children, and five year olds are so much
fun
! Why should I give them up, just as they get to be so quirky and intellectually spongy?”