Say You Will (Trust & Tequila Book 3)

15. Franki

fifteen

With a crooked smile, Henry draws his hand back and shoves it in his pocket. “You’ve never been to a pumpkin patch?”

“Never. It sounds . . . pumpkin-y.” It sounds romantic, actually, but Henry says he doesn’t do romance. So, I’m guessing maybe it has something to do with his niece or a favor for his sister.

Henry shakes his head and fake scolds me, “City girl.”

“You’re a city boy,” I remind him with a smile.

He tilts his head to the side. “I’m a city boy out of necessity. My businesses are there, and it’s where I was raised. If I could do anything I wanted to, I’d live somewhere like this. There’s nothing in the world like being able to go for miles and never see another person. It’s peaceful in the country, and there’s minimal light pollution.”

I’ve traveled some, and I’ve occasionally seen a beautiful night sky, but I spent most of my time surrounded by concrete and artificial lights. None came close to the places Henry and I discussed wanting to see. “Stars?”

“The porch roof is outside that window. On a clear night, I can lie out there and visibility with the naked eye is unlike anything you’d find in populated areas. It’s better if I take a telescope out to one of the fields, but even without one, it’s incredible.”

His enthusiasm makes me smile. “I’d like to see that.”

“Then I’ll show you.” He guides me out of the bedroom with a hand on my lower back.

True to his word, as we descend the stairs, he keeps pace beside me and gives no indication of being in a hurry. When we reach the front door, he holds my short, red trench coat for me, and I place one arm, then the other in the sleeves. I pull my hair from beneath my collar and reach for the first button. When the closure gives my stiff fingers trouble, I decide to leave it open. I’ll wrap the belt around to stay warm, instead.

Henry lightly brushes my hands away but doesn’t go further. “May I?”

Did he notice me struggling? “Why?”

He grins like a naughty schoolboy. “Because I want to touch you.”

“Oh.” I grin. “Okay.”

He completes the buttons, ties the belt, then ushers me out the front door.

“Should we tell anyone where we’re going?” I haven’t seen Bronwyn yet. It feels rude to run off before saying hello to my hosts.

“Absolutely not. I don’t want anyone to tag along or turn this into a group event.”

The idea of seeing where things go with Henry has me the next thing to giddy, but I’m not going to make assumptions again. The night in my hotel room was brutal, and I can’t even lay the blame entirely at his feet for him being insensitive. The reason it hurt so much was because I had expectations of something else. Kissing me back and admitting to wanting to touch me doesn’t mean that he’s changed his mind about relationships. I’m not going to allow myself to get excited over nothing. I need him to tell me what this is.

We walk to his car where it’s parked in the drive. “You said you had no interest in dating, but this seems a little date-like, doesn’t it?”

“I love the way you don’t dance around things. This type of blunt communication is by far my preference.” He opens the passenger door to his SUV. I take his hand as he assists me into my seat, then prop my cane against my legs and fidget with the belt on my jacket as I wait for him to say more. He may love the way I communicate, but he hasn’t answered the question.

He leans in. “Dating would require significant amounts of both effort and attention from me.”

I huff and lean back in my seat. So, he likes me but doesn’t want to have to make an effort? I have news for him, he already has been. All last week. Just because we didn’t leave the penthouse and go somewhere didn’t mean that he wasn’t paying attention to me.

“The idea of finding things to do together that we both enjoy and learning about you . . . listening to you? I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to anything more. So, if you’re amenable, one small-town, pumpkin patch, apple-cider-donut date coming up.” He watches me with an assessing gleam in his eyes.

I scrunch my nose and smile, my cheeks warm. He was teasing me. “Okay. We’re on a date.”

He closes my door, walks around to the driver’s side and folds himself into his seat. I spend the first few minutes enjoying the scenery as we drive. The sky is a blue so bright it almost doesn’t look real, with fluffy white clouds floating overhead. The trees are a riot of color that look straight off some screensaver or calendar. Almost too perfect not to be photoshopped.

“What are we going to do with the pumpkins when we get them?” I ask.

“It depends on the kind of pumpkins we get. We could carve faces in them. Stick a candle in them and put them on the front stoop.”

“I’ve never carved a pumpkin in my life. Is it fun?” It sounds idyllic.

“Some people think it’s fun.”

I give him a knowing smile. “You don’t.”

He shoots a glance my way. “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s a feeling I have.”

He sucks on his eye tooth briefly before he admits, “Pumpkins have guts.”

“What do pumpkin guts look like?”

His lips turn down in an exaggerated grimace. “They’re cold and slimy and stringy at the same time.” He gives me a sly grin. “We could shoot the pumpkins.”

“Shoot them?”

He mimes an explosion with his right hand. “We’d need a lot of pumpkins, or it would be over fast, but a hollow point bullet makes them explode.”

I laugh. “What did the poor pumpkins ever do to you?”

“The pumpkins don’t care, Franki. We’re not hurting their feelings.”

“Then it’s wasteful.”

“More wasteful than using them as candle holders?”

“Good point, but, yes, anyway,” I tease.

“How do you feel about shooting at paper targets attached to hay bales?”

“Much less squeamish than shooting at poor, unsuspecting gourds.”

His lips twitch in a suppressed smile. “Grandma Miller gets little pumpkins that she turns into pie.”

My eyes flare wide. “Have you made pie before?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

I twist my lips and laugh. “Me neither.”

“Do you want to?”

“We don’t know how.”

“Not knowing how to do something has never stopped me from doing it,” he says dryly.

I laugh, but I suspect he’s not kidding. If he doesn’t know how to do something, he figures it out. “Is that your motto?”

“My family already has a motto. I don’t need another one.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Love hard. Remain loyal. Fight dirty.”

“That’s the one.”

“I like the first part, anyway. Not sure fighting dirty is something to aspire to.”

“When it comes to survival, there’s no such thing as fighting too dirty. If you’re ever in a position where you need to protect yourself, I hope you use every dirty trick you can think of,” he says.

He has a point.

“What’s your motto?” he asks.

“There’s always a silver lining.”

Henry looks like he wants to argue with me, but all he says is, “The silver lining on not knowing how to make pie is that it’ll be fun to learn.”

“I really want to do that.” Carving pumpkins and making pies with Henry sounds like a blast.

He taps the steering wheel and muses, “We could also make pumpkin bisque soup.”

“Could we?”

“Why not?”

I laugh. “Right. Why not?”

He lifts a finger in a “just wait” gesture, and says, “Siri, call Grandma Miller.”

Two Hours Later

“Put them on the table.” Henry’s grandma waves an arm.

We dutifully deposit our pumpkin offerings onto the long, scarred farm table that seems to be fulfilling the job of a traditional kitchen island.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Miller. This is so kind of you.” I smooth my hands down my thighs and smile nervously. I haven’t seen Henry’s grandparents since I was a teenager, and then almost always as part of a large crowd.

With a look of mild disappointment, Henry pokes through a ceramic cookie jar shaped like a pig on her counter. He settles for an oatmeal raisin cookie, huffs, then takes a begrudging bite.

Henry’s grandma pats my arm. “It’s no trouble at all. And don’t call me Mrs. Miller. Call me Grandma.”

I shoot a cautious look Henry’s way. I’ve never called anyone Grandma. It feels presumptuous, as though I’m claiming a relationship I have no right to. “Er . . . um . . . I couldn’t call—”

I stop talking to figure out what Henry is trying to communicate as he nods with exaggerated enthusiasm. He mouths “It’s okay.”

“I . . . er. Thank you . . . Grandma.”

She beams. Warmth spreads through my chest, and I smile back.

Grandma waves her hands in a shooing motion. “Henry, show Franki where the bathroom is. The two of you go wash your hands and find some aprons in the pantry. We don’t want to ruin your clothing. You’re too beautiful to get messy, Franki.”

My mother wouldn’t think so. She’d find my messy bun sloppy, and she’d be horrified by my comfortable outfit.

A curly wild shock of faded brown and gray hair wreathes Grandma”s head. The wrinkles creasing her face, especially around her eyes and mouth, are evidence of an awful lot of smiling and some pain. She has such kind eyes.

Impulsively, I take her hands in both of mine. “You’re beautiful too.” I hope she hears how much I mean it.

She smiles and lifts a hand to my cheek. “Such a sweet girl.”

Turning to Henry, she says, “That’s the kind of girl you need. Someone nice. They say opposites attract.”

I shake my head, grinning at the way she teases him. “Henry’s nice.”

Henry puts an arm around my waist, guiding me from the room. Shouting over his shoulder toward the kitchen, he calls, “Did you hear that, Grandma? Franki thinks I’m nice.”

She hoots with laughter. “I’m not deaf, Henry. But that poor girl might be blind.”

Twenty minutes later, Henry wields a big-ass knife with expert skill, then scoops the guts into a bowl.

“I can’t believe you keep surgical gloves in your car,” I say.

“I keep a lot of things in my car,” he drawls.

“It’s convenient that you have them.”

He uses his shoulder in an inefficient attempt to push his glasses back up his nose. “I can still feel the guts. They’re cold and slippery.”

I slide closer to him. “Do you want me to do it?”

He frowns. “No. Then your hands would get cold.”

I reach up and push his glasses back into place for him. Sunshine streams through the window over the sink lighting Henry’s blue eyes, but the sparkle in them looks more like mischief than sunlight to me. When I step back, he murmurs. “Oh, no you don’t. You need to come back here so I can say ‘thank you.’”

I glance toward the kitchen door where Grandma disappeared about two minutes ago when a neighbor stopped by to pick up a carton of eggs. She’d handed over the carton, then followed the woman out the door relaying how Grandad has had to beef up the fencing around the farm because the coyotes “won’t stay away from them chickens.” Their fencing is robust unless coyotes climb walls taller than I am.

Henry nods at the door. “Grandma will be talking for at least fifteen minutes. Will you come back, so I can I say thank you?”

Over the years, I’ve fallen for so many people pretending to befriend me for so many different reasons that I don’t trust my own instincts. My own mother is at the top of that list. The more I think about his flirtation, the more suspicion creeps in about Henry’s motives.

I feel like an umbrella where one minute the rain was pouring down on top of me, and I was doing my umbrella thing, fighting off the deluge. Then the wind came at me from another direction and whipped me inside out. Am I naive to believe this doesn’t have anything to do with trying to get me to marry him? I don’t know. There’s nothing in his behavior that hints at deception. Nothing inconsistent or manipulative. Except for the timing.

“I can hear your ‘thank you’ from here.” I need to think.

Henry heaves a sigh, then relents. “Thank you for fixing my glasses.”

Women were all over him at that wedding reception. He could easily find someone more mercenary and significantly less demanding than I am if he’s still looking for a wife to meet his deadline. Does he plan on marrying someone else for business purposes and dating me on the side? It sounds so unlike him that I dismiss the thought immediately.

I turn back to the open cookbook to read through the list of ingredients, double-checking that I’ve got everything laid out. Flour dusted on the counter? Check. Rolling pin? Check. Egg wash? Ready to go.

“Dammit.”

At the sound of Henry’s swearing, I turn and choke on a laugh when I see what he’s done.

“Is this funny to you?” he asks with great dignity, one arrogant eyebrow lifted.

Henry must have forgotten he had pumpkin guts on his hands and attempted to push his glasses up again out of habit.

“Did the pumpkin guts attack you in self-defense?” I ask.

He has an orange smear across one of his lenses, and an entire goopy, slimy string, complete with a seed, hangs from his cheek. “I could use a hand here when you’re done chortling.”

With a smile, I move closer, removing his glasses first and setting them on the counter. Then I wet a paper towel and wipe his face clean. I’m inches from Henry, definitely in the kissing zone, and there’s that glint in his eyes again.

“Thank you, Franki.” His voice is entirely too pleased.

No way. “Did you do that on purpose? You hate pumpkin guts.”

He lowers his forehead to mine. “I hate you standing so far away more.”

Dropping the paper towel to the counter, I shake my head against his. I don’t want to fight this. Not right now. I’ll think about it later.

When I kiss him this time, it’s different from the first. Gentler and less wild, but no less wonderful. Because his gloved hands are covered in pumpkin, he holds them out away from both of us, almost in a gesture of surrender.

Henry stands completely still as I press my body against his warm, hard, lean strength. When he chases my tongue with his, I shiver in response. Then I place my palms on the crisp cotton covering the ridged surface of his abdomen and slide my hands up over his chest.

“Harder,” he says against my mouth.

I freeze, and Henry says, “Don’t stop touching me. Please. Just press harder.”

I kiss him again, and I touch him using a firm, sweeping pressure until I’ve got my hands in his hair.

I can feel his erection, long and thick, as he presses against me. Still, those hands of his remain in the air in a posture similar to the one he’d held that night on the library balcony. With a very distinct difference.

I draw back so I can look into his eyes. “Henry.”

I don’t know why I say his name or even what I want or expect in response. For the first time in my life, I feel powerful. I know he wants me, but he’s also content to stand there and coax me, allowing me to come to him.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Franki.”

His expression is so smug I want to laugh. “What?”

“You kissed me first. Twice.”

Technically, I tried three times, but I don’t remind him of that.

The creaking of the screen door alerts us a split second before Grandma re-enters the kitchen. When she sees me pulling my hands back and stepping away from Henry, she plants her fists on her hips. “You’ll have to go home to your own kitchen for that kind of funny business. We’re here for pie and soup, not making baby batter.”

Henry snickers like a little kid, and nearly covers his mouth with the back of his hand before he remembers the pumpkin at the last second and uses his forearm, instead.

When he sees my embarrassed reaction, he sobers. “No funny business, Grandma. I had an accident with some pumpkin guts, and Franki was giving me a hand.”

“More than one, looked like.” Grandma winks at me, and, when Henry turns back to preparing the pumpkin to be pureed, she gives me a thumbs up.