One major distraction, p.19
One Major Distraction, page 19
Flynn stepped past Tess and draped his arm around Laura’s shoulder. The two redheads were face-to-face, and a nervous Stokes watched. They didn’t know how to start, but Flynn did. He looked into Laura’s green eyes, smiled and said, “Once upon a time…”
In the movies, Cal and Kelly probably would’ve run into each others arms to rising, emotional music. Sadie waited for that to happen—without the music, of course—but it didn’t. Instead the brother and sister stepped toward one another almost cautiously. The girls from the soccer team had all gone their own way, and Cal had been left alone in the middle of the field.
Kelly stepped with caution, since her high-heeled shoes were not made for walking in the grass. Cal walked slowly because he didn’t yet understand what he thought he saw.
“Kelly?” he said, as if he wasn’t quite sure he could believe what his eyes told him.
The girl nodded as she stepped closer to her brother. “Yeah.”
They stopped for a moment, and then Cal laughed and swept his little sister off her feet and spun her around. “Thank God. I swear, girl, I thought we were never going to find you.”
Kelly was breathless when Cal finally put her back on her feet.
They had a lot of catching up to do, and Sadie’s job was done. She took Truman’s hand and backed away, but Cal caught her eye.
“Hold it right there,” he commanded, and he left Kelly behind to walk toward Sadie with that fierce expression she knew so well on his face. “You didn’t call? You didn’t think to warn me?”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Sadie said with a sly smile.
Cal lifted her off her feet, too, though with a tad less enthusiasm than he had shown for his sister. “I hate surprises,” he said softly.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I will never be able to thank you enough,” he said as he released her.
“Go get reacquainted with your sister.” She patted him on the cheek before turning away to take Truman’s hand. Together, she and her husband walked back toward the parking lot.
“You can quit now, right?” Truman said as they left Cal and Kelly hugging once again.
“I suppose,” Sadie said. “For a while.”
“For a while.”
Sadie grinned, and glanced back over her shoulder once. It was a good feeling, to accomplish something that changed two nice people’s lives for the better. “Well, when you’re elected sheriff, you’ll need a lead investigator…right?”
Laura had been surprised to learn the details of her birth, and she’d cried, a little. She’d been understandably shocked, but she’d accepted the truth quickly and completely. There hadn’t been a quick and easy ending, like a fairy tale, but they were working on it. They didn’t have all the bugs worked out, and maybe they never would.
But they were trying.
Lunch was over, and preparations for dinner hadn’t yet begun. Since it was Saturday, the evening meal would be simple. Soup and sandwiches, tonight, along with brownies she’d made this morning. Tess wiped down one particularly messy table, her mind straying to the subject that had been plaguing her, lately.
In the week after he’d left the Frances Teague Academy, Flynn had called her twice. Their conversations had been brief and friendly. He’d asked about Laura, and Bev, and some of his other students, and then he’d ended the conversations abruptly.
The following week, he’d called just once. Again he’d asked about Laura and Bev, and she’d asked him how Mangino was doing. Better, Flynn said, but not yet himself. He brought her up to date on Murphy and Cal, and she told him how the girls were all comparing Mr. Hill’s teaching methods to his. They missed him. She did, too, but she didn’t say so.
In that third phone call, she told him that she wasn’t pregnant, just in case he was worried…not that he’d sounded worried. Or had bothered to ask.
In those three phone calls, Flynn hadn’t once mentioned marriage or said he loved her or talked about coming back. She’d been right when she’d suspected that the only reason he’d asked her to marry him that day was because he was still reeling from what had happened to Serena Loomis.
He wanted to protect her, he wanted to fix her life. That was very sweet, but it wasn’t love. But oh, she missed him. She missed him more than she’d imagined she could.
“There you are!” Laura said brightly as she and Bev burst into the dining hall.
Tess lifted her head and smiled at her daughter.
“Here,” Bev said, thrusting a long, flowing plastic bag falling from a coat hanger toward Tess. “You have to put this on. Quick!”
“I don’t want to take that, my hands are dirty,” she said. “What have you girls got there?”
Bev lifted the end of the plastic bag to reveal the skirt of a long, champagne-colored dress.
“Where did you get that? Laura, did your father…”
“No,” Laura took her hand and dragged her toward the doorway. “Come on, Mom. He’s waiting. You don’t want to make him wait too long, do you?” In a month they had gone from Ms. Stafford to Tess to the occasional Mom or Mother, depending on Laura’s mood. There were more Moms lately, which was nice.
“Who’s waiting?” Her heart skipped a beat, and she knew. Before Laura said a word, she knew.
“Mr. Benning, of course. He said this time everything would be perfect. You should see him. He looks like James Bond!”
Tess held back her response that Flynn was James Bond, in his own way.
As they rushed up the steps to her apartment, Bev said, “Mr. Benning really does look very nice. And he has—”
“Don’t tell everything,” Laura interrupted. “You’ll spoil the surprise.”
The girls escorted Tess to her apartment, where in high-pitched excited voices they instructed her to change her clothes. When the dress was out of the bag, Tess shook her head several times. It was too fancy, too low-cut, too expensive.
But it was also exquisite, and the right size, and it didn’t take a lot of encouragement from the girls to persuade her to put it on.
A gown like this one couldn’t be just thrown on. It required a shower, the proper shoes and a touch of makeup. A fancy hairstyle would be nice, but she didn’t think Flynn would wait that long. An hour after the girls had run into the dining hall, she was ready.
As ready as she’d ever be.
“Mom, you look beautiful!” Laura exclaimed as they left the apartment together.
“Yeah,” Bev said softly. “Really beautiful.”
For the first time in a long while she felt beautiful, and it had nothing to do with a fancy dress or a little bit of makeup. Flynn was here for her, and he’d come in style. She should’ve expected no less.
Tess held her breath as she stepped outside, into the warm spring day that smelled of new growth and flowers. The sky was a bright, clear blue, the lawn and the trees were spring green…and Flynn stood in the middle of it all, on a section of the winding sidewalk just a few feet away. Dressed in a tuxedo and carrying a huge bouquet of red roses, he did look a little like James Bond. Or a very nicely dressed swashbuckler.
His face was solemn at first, and she suspected she’d left him waiting too long. He was not a patient man. But as she drew closer he smiled at her. “How’s this for perfect, Red?”
And with those words it was as if he’d never been gone. “As usual, you’ve gone above and beyond.”
“I’m a man who’s willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want. Get used to it.”
She couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. What he wanted was her.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said.
“So are you.”
He handed her the roses and got down on one knee, again, and then he offered her one palm. She laid her hand on that palm, and he closed his long fingers over hers.
“You make me want a better life, and if you’ll say yes, that life starts here and now. Marry me.”
They didn’t have anything settled between them. He had a dangerous job; she wanted babies and he didn’t; she didn’t want to leave the daughter she’d just found and claimed.
But no matter what the obstacles were, she did want Flynn. For better or for worse. He had been right all along. Somehow, it would work. “Yes,” she said softly.
He took an outrageously large diamond solitaire from his pocket and slipped it on her finger, and then he stood and kissed her. Since others were watching…a lot of others, though they maintained a proper distance…the kiss didn’t last nearly long enough.
“I realized while you were gone that I had perfect with you from that first kiss,” she said. “This is all very nice, but you didn’t have to go to so much trouble. If you’d asked me to marry you while I was in the middle of serving lunch, and you were covered in scalloped potatoes and I was covered in chocolate…I still would’ve said yes.”
“Nice to know,” he answered. “Still, the effort wasn’t wasted.”
“Of course not. This is beautiful and special and I’ll never forget it.”
He put his arm around her and they began to walk back toward the main building. “Yeah, and it’ll give us a story to tell our children, when they’re old enough. We won’t tell them exactly what happened afterward, but…”
Tess stopped walking and turned to him. “Did you say our children?”
He grinned at her and swept her off her feet. Literally, this time. “Yep. I haven’t been sitting around twiddling my thumbs for the past month, you know. I’ve been busy.”
“Busy,” she repeated skeptically.
“Cal was going to quit, but I convinced him to stay on and run the agency from headquarters.”
“I thought that was your job.”
“It was. Now it’s Cal’s job. His first step was to hire his sister, but I would’ve hired her myself so that’s not a problem as far as I’m concerned. Besides I don’t have time to worry about day-to-day operations of the business. I’m going back to school in the fall. There’s a college just about an hour from here, and I only need a year or so of classes.”
“To do what?”
“To get my teaching degree. I have a degree, I have all the qualifications to be a substitute, but if I want to teach full-time I need a few more classes.”
He carried her toward the main building, like a bride being carried to her new home. “So you want babies, and you’re going back to school, and you’ve given up your job.”
“Yep. Money’s not a problem,” he said quickly, as if he suspected that was why she sounded uncertain. “I have a lot of it, actually. The agency has been very successful, and I haven’t had anything to spend money on for a while. If I’m going to be a family man, I can’t very well go running off to chase bad guys all the time.”
Flynn carried her inside, and thank heavens—no one followed them in. The girls all headed back to their own dormitories. For them, the show was over. For her, it had just begun.
“Are you sure? About the babies, I mean?” Tess asked as Flynn carried her up the stairs. Just a few weeks ago, he had insisted that he didn’t want to take that chance again.
“If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t be here,” he answered. “I wouldn’t ask you to marry me unless I was ready to give you everything you want and deserve. It’s what I want, too,” he added in a lowered voice. “I didn’t realize that’s what I wanted until I tried to picture what my life would be like from here on out without you in it. I want it all, Red.”
“So do I.” She’d never imagined that she could truly have everything she wanted. Laura, Flynn, babies. She leaned in close and whispered in his ear. “You make me unafraid, Flynn. I love you so much.”
Outside the door to her apartment, he said, “I think we should get started on that first baby right about now. What do you say?”
She buried her face against his neck, smiled, kissed and answered.
“Damn skippy.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6676-0
ONE MAJOR DISTRACTION
Copyright © 2005 by Linda Winstead Jones
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Linda Winstead Jones, One Major Distraction
