Chapter 13
T he next day, Joseph walked into The Cozy Quilt Shop holding four bags of salted caramel fudge. Nate had beaten him in their first set of races, then doubled his prize when he’d won the next two.
At that stage, Joseph decided he was better off watching—until Shona picked up the controller.
With a smile, he’d watched her beat her son. Not once, not twice, but three times. Nate had eventually won a race, but it hadn’t been an easy victory. To say Joseph was impressed was an understatement.
“Hi,” Shona said to him from behind the sales counter. “You’re here early.”
Considering she’d been run off her feet yesterday, she looked happy and relaxed. “I wanted to see Nate before he heads back to college.”
“I’m here,” a muffled voice said from the storage room behind Shona. Nate appeared holding two boxes in his arms. “I’m helping Mom restock the shelves.”
Joseph held up the fudge. “I believe I owe you three bags of fudge. I bought your Mom one, too. Anyone who can drive a race car like she does deserves some candy.”
Nate left the boxes on the counter. “I thought you might have forgotten.”
“Not when it involves fudge.”
Shona opened her bag and sniffed the sweet, rich scent. “It smells heavenly. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Brooke made it this morning, so it’s nice and fresh. I thought you might appreciate it after how busy it was yesterday.”
“It was busy but enjoyable. Thanks for making dinner for us last night. It was delicious.”
“I’m glad you liked it. Food always tastes better when you’re sharing it with friends.” He looked at the stack of quilts on the counter. “Someone’s been busy.”
“The women from the Polson Quilting Club dropped their quilts off yesterday, but I didn’t have time to put them on the shelves.” She opened one of the quilts and touched the stitching. “This is gorgeous.”
He hadn’t paid too much attention to any of the quilts apart from Shona’s, but this one looked good. “I like the blue and purple fabric they’ve used.”
“They dyed the cotton before making the quilt.”
“Don’t ask Mom how they did it,” Nate warned. “You’ll get a lecture about how plants have been used for hundreds of years to permanently color fabric.”
Shona took the quilts across to a table. “It’s an important part of our history and it’s interesting. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t have remembered what I said.”
“I suppose so.” Nate bit into a piece of fudge. “Yum. I like this flavor better than the one I had yesterday.”
Joseph smiled. “It’s good that I bought you more than one bag, then. When are you heading back to Bozeman?”
“I’ll leave in a couple of hours.”
Shona frowned. “Where’s Adele?”
“She has an early choir practice at The Welcome Center, and then she’s staying with a friend until three o’clock. Hopefully, the residents at the center don’t mind listening to Christmas carols.”
“They’re far enough away from the meeting rooms that they shouldn’t hear too much.” Shona went back to the sales counter and opened a box. “I’d be surprised if anyone complains. The choir sounds amazing.”
Nate placed his half-finished bag of fudge on the counter and opened the other box he’d taken out of the storage room.
Shona pointed to a table beside the fireplace. “The felt animals are over there, Nate. If you can’t fit them all on the table, put what’s left back in the storage room. Do they all have price tags?”
He looked at the ones in his hands. “Yep. I’ll check the others, too.”
Joseph cleared his throat. With Nate here, what he wanted to ask Shona would be harder than he thought. “After Nate leaves for Bozeman, would you like to have lunch with me?”
Shona didn’t seem surprised or flustered by his question. Was that a good thing or was he about to make a fool of himself? He’d thought long and hard about their friendship last night. After a lot of soul-searching, he realized he wanted more from their relationship. But if Shona only saw him as a friend, he was in trouble.
She leaned against the sales counter and frowned. “I’d like to have lunch with you, but I can’t leave the store for too long. Aimee, a friend from our craft group, will be working with me, but she’ll need a break, too.”
“What would work best?”
“If I have lunch at about two o’clock, Aimee could have hers at one. That way, we’re both here if the store has a midday rush. Is that too late for you?”
Nate took another piece of fudge out of his bag. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you have an early lunch? I can stay here for an extra hour and help Aimee while you’re gone.”
“What about the things you wanted to do in Bozeman?”
Nate shrugged. “Doing them an hour later won’t make much difference. I know how to use the cash register, and most of the stock is easy to find.”
“Are you sure?” Shona asked.
“Positive.”
With a smile, she turned to Joseph. “It looks as though I’m all yours. How does eleven o’clock sound?”
“It’s perfect. I’ll see you then.” He left the store with an invisible weight partially lifted off his shoulders. Next stop, Sweet Treats. Nate deserved half a dozen bags of fudge for giving up his time so his mom could go out for lunch.
And if it helped Joseph figure out what Shona thought of him, he’d buy him all the fudge he wanted.
Joseph glanced at the picnic basket sitting on the back seat of his truck. He hadn't been this nervous about having lunch with anyone in years. But this wasn't a typical lunch. He wanted to tell Shona how he felt about her. How much she meant to him.
But he was terrified of telling her the whole truth about his life. It shouldn't matter how much money he had or the number of investment properties he owned. At some point, he’d have to tell her about the loan she’d received from his trust. He didn’t know how she’d react, which was why he wasn't telling her today.
He stopped the truck outside Shona’s store just as she walked out the front door.
Her smile was instant. With a happy wave, she hurried to the passenger door. “Hi, Joseph. That was good timing.”
“I didn't want to be late. Have you been busy?”
She pulled on her seat belt. “It hasn’t been too bad. Aimee took some photos of the quilts that were brought in this morning. If she gets a chance, she'll load them onto my website. I've spent the last hour serving customers and answering phone calls. Where are we going?”
“I thought we could drive to Flathead Lake and have a picnic on the grass.”
“That sounds wonderful. I don't know how much longer we’ll be able to eat outside, so it's great to make the most of each day.”
Joseph nodded and reversed out of the parking space. Although the lake wasn’t far away, it would give them more privacy than eating at a café.
“What did you do after you left the store?”
“I dropped into the old steamboat museum. We had an issue with a tiny home and I wanted to make sure it had been fixed.”
“And had it?”
He nodded and glanced at Shona. “We have good people building the homes. Some of the volunteers have worked for decades in the construction industry. It makes it easier to fix problems when everyone knows what they're doing.”
“Do you think you'll ever want to do something different than build the tiny homes?”
“Not at the moment. I can't think of any other job where I’d get as much satisfaction from helping other people.”
“That’s a wonderful reason to stay where you are.”
It wasn’t his only reason. He wanted to live and work close to Shona, to be able to spend as much time as possible with her. “Are you happy to stop somewhere along here?”
She looked through the windshield at the tall oak and spruce trees. “It's perfect. The trees should give us some shelter if the wind picks up.”
He stopped on the side of the road and turned off the engine. “If you get cold, I brought an extra sweatshirt.”
“You thought of everything.”
“I tried. We don’t spend a lot of time together without Adele or Nate.”
“I guess it's part of being a single parent.”
“Will you be okay after Nate leaves?”
“I’ll miss him, but I need to be positive. There are lots of good things about him being at college. I can have dinner whenever I want and visit my friends without letting anyone know where I'm going. But, best of all, I can watch every romantic movie on Netflix.”
Joseph took the picnic basket and blanket off the back seat and smiled. “I don't watch romantic movies, but I know what you mean about dinner and friends. Adele and I try to cook healthy meals, but her idea of a nutritious meal is having mushrooms on her pizza.”
Shona laughed. “That sounds like Nate. They have a lot in common.”
Thinking about their children made him even more nervous about discussing their future. Whatever happened would have to include Nate and Adele. Even though Adele was happy to spend more time with Shona, he hadn’t spoken to Nate. If he was even slightly apprehensive about his mom being in a relationship with Joseph, it wouldn’t work.
Shona walked along the shore to a group of trees that were closer to the lake. “Do you want to sit here?”
“Sounds good.” He left the picnic basket on the ground and unfolded the blanket. “I saw the Facebook posts Mabel made about the opening of your store. They were great.”
“I thought so, too. Andrea and Paris had a lot of people visit them yesterday, so, hopefully, all the advertising is paying off.” She opened the picnic basket and grinned. “I’m impressed. It must have taken a long time to prepare all this food.”
“Would you be disappointed if I told you I bought most of it from Andrea’s café?”
“You’re safe. I'm still impressed.”
Joseph hoped she still felt that way after they’d finished lunch. He handed her a plate and took the lid off some of the dishes. “Help yourself to whatever you like. There are chicken pot pies, a green leafy salad, sandwiches, and cookies.”
Shona reached into the basket. “And you brought knives and forks. You're more organized than I would’ve been.”
“That's because you have a lot more happening in your life at the moment.”
“You're busy, too. You’ve been helping me so much over the last few weeks. Have you had a chance to spend time with your other friends?”
“I work with most of my friends, so I see them each day.” He took a chicken pie out of the basket. “When Adele stays overnight with her friends, I try and make the most of it. But nearly all my friends are married and have teenagers. Their social life is about as interesting as mine.”
“We should start a club for parents. Sometimes, having another adult to talk to is worth its weight in gold.”
Joseph cleared his throat. If he didn't ask Shona about dating him, he wouldn't get the chance before she had to go back to work. “I wanted to ask you something.”
She took a sandwich out of the basket and frowned. “That sounds serious.”
“It is, but not in a bad way.” At least, he hoped not. “I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to blurt it out.”
Shona left her sandwich on the blanket. “Okay.”
“The thing is, I like you. And even though starting a new relationship was the last thing I wanted, I'd like to spend more time with you. What do you think?”
“About spending more time together?”
He nodded, too worried about her confused frown to do much else.
“Does this have anything to do with when I kissed you?”
“Only partly. I've always been worried about falling too deep into a relationship. Whenever I've loved someone, I’ve felt as though I was giving up something of myself. With you, it's different. You take me as I am and don't worry about things that don't matter. I like spending time with you.”
“I like spending time with you, too.” She looked across the lake. “Before I met you, I didn’t want a relationship with anyone. Chris has been gone for nearly four years. I loved him, and it’s scary even thinking about being part of someone else’s life.”
Joseph moved the picnic basket out of the way and sat beside her. “I didn’t have the type of marriage you had, but I understand. You get used to thinking about yourself with one person and nothing seems right when they aren’t there.”
“Did you miss your ex-wife when she left?”
“I did, but not for the reasons you might think. Our marriage was on rocky ground for years. But I was so preoccupied with my career that I never noticed. When Hillary left, Adele was four years old. I had no idea what to do.”
“You must have done something right. Adele’s a wonderful little girl.”
“Most of that has to do with her. She’s more resilient than anyone I know. My dad was amazing, too. He stayed with us until I could organize something with work. We took Adele to a speech therapist, and her stutter slowly improved. It wasn’t until I was negotiating our divorce settlement that everything disintegrated.”
“Were you angry with Hillary?”
He looked down at his hands. “Incredibly disappointed. She already had half of everything we owned, but she wanted more. I was appalled when she threatened to take Adele away from me. From the moment she left, she never wanted her. Why would you use your daughter as a bargaining chip?”
“I don’t know.” Shona pulled her knees up against her chest and sighed. “Her lawyer and new partner could have talked her into what happened.”
“Maybe.” Joseph hoped that was the case, but she’d never apologized or tried to rebuild her relationship with Adele.
“I’ve never been divorced, so I don’t know how it feels to go through that. Even after Chris died, I was cushioned from what happened.”
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“About five weeks. The accident caused a lot of damage around my pelvis and lower spine. I can’t have any more children.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been difficult to hear.”
Shona shook her head. “Not really. I was in my late thirties. Chris and I had tried to have another child, but it never happened. Nate was a gift, and we’d already resigned ourselves to being a small family. Have you thought about having more children?”
Joseph smiled. “Adele is enough. We’ve been on our own for so long that having more children in the house would seem strange. Besides, I’m fifty years old. I can’t imagine changing dirty diapers and going through teething issues again.”
“A lot of people have families when they’re your age.”
She’d said that with such a straight face that he thought she was serious—until he saw the twinkle in her eyes. “You almost had me fooled.”
“Only almost? I must be slipping.”
“Tell me about your husband. Do you miss him?”
Shona’s smile disappeared. “The hole in my heart is still there, but it doesn’t hurt so much. I used to feel as though I was betraying him if I tried moving on with my life.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
“Sometimes.”
The softly spoken word made Joseph’s heart pound. “Do you feel that way when we spend time together?”
“Only when I kissed you.” She sent him a shaky smile. “I’m a work in progress.”
“We can take whatever’s happening between us as slowly as you like. I have issues I have to deal with, too.”
Shona bit her bottom lip. “I think we should have our lunch before we talk ourselves out of spending more time together.”
Leaning sideways, he gently nudged her with his shoulder. “You could be right. Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“As long as there are no emergencies in the store, that should be okay. What about Adele?”
“I’ll ask Mabel if she’ll look after her for a couple of hours.”
Shona’s eyes widened. “You know what she’ll think, don’t you?”
“That I can’t take my eyes off the beautiful woman who’s opened a quilting store?”
She blushed. “She’ll think something’s going on between us. And, before you know it, half of Sapphire Bay will be talking about us.”
Joseph grinned. “That’s okay with me. As long as I speak to Adele before I ask Mabel to look after her, we’ll be fine.”
Shona picked up his plate and handed it to him. “Let’s eat. If I keep thinking about Mabel, it will spoil my appetite.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He dipped his fork into his pie and smiled. He was already looking forward to tomorrow night.