Chapter Eight
When Jillian was nervous, she baked. Cooking was the only thing that kept her from pacing.
She had done a lot of that in recent months while trying to self-analyze why she was in such a mood.
It worked most of the time. When she figured out what was keeping her from her work, she usually ended up with a whole kitchen full of baked goods.
Ninety-nine percent of what she made was donated to a homeless shelter on the other side of town, and she didn’t even mind paying a taxi fare to deliver it to them.
She tapped in the number she was supposed to call if she had any problems with the cabin and got a short, chirpy woman’s voice.
When she wanted to talk to someone, she hated getting an answering machine asking her to leave her name, number, and a short message.
The voice on the other end of the line always sounded upbeat and cheery.
By the time a real person called her back, she was not happy, and it usually came out in her tone no matter how she tried to be nice.
On Monday morning, she called the rental agency that she went through for her two-week lease on the cabin and got a recording.
She begrudgingly left a short message asking if she could possibly rent her cabin for two more weeks.
Then the wait from hell began. At ten o’clock, she gave up trying to paint and began to pace from the bed to the kitchenette, around the sofa, and back again.
She thought about going over to Wyatt’s cabin.
A rousing bout of sex would take her mind off the waiting game.
But then, the leasing company person could call at the worst time.
She would be frustrated if she answered it and ruined the mood.
She would be even more angry if a good bout of lovemaking was disturbed and she had to wait another day before she knew whether to pack or heave a sigh of relief.
Wyatt had mentioned in passing that she could always stay with him if she couldn’t keep the cabin, but he needed his time to write or plot, and she needed hers to finish up her showing pictures.
She went to the tiny kitchen and found a cupcake pan hiding on the top shelf of the cabinet.
She would have rather made something from scratch in her well-stocked cabinets at home, but at least she had everything she needed to take her mind off the phone call.
“If I have to leave by the end of this week, then I’ll give them all to Wyatt,” she muttered.
Eggs, water, a little oil and mix—but she didn’t have an electric mixer. That meant stirring the ingredients up with a fork.
“Oh, well,” she said with a shrug, and began to stir, and stir, and stir. All the while, she listened for the phone to ring … but it did not.
The tin only had room to make six cupcakes at a time, and the last of the batch was in the oven when her phone finally rang, and the rental company’s ID popped up on the screen. Jillian answered on the second ring.
“Hello, this is Jillian Williams and I …”
“Mrs. Sherry Johnson is on another line,” the tinny voice on the other end said, “please hold. Wait time is approximately five minutes.”
Even though she hated elevator music, she hit the speaker button and laid the phone on the counter.
The first batch of cupcakes were cool, so she opened a can of premade German chocolate icing and smeared some on the first ones out of the oven.
She was about to start the second batch when she remembered that she had set the timer on her phone for when they would be done.
No way would she take a chance on losing her turn to talk to the agent in charge of the cabins.
She turned off the timer with only thirty seconds to spare.
“Done or not, you are coming out of the oven,” she said as she took the last batch out and set them to the side at the same time a voice filled the room.
“This is Sherry Johnson. Thanks for waiting. What can I do for you?”
Jillian dropped the knife into the sink and explained that she would like to keep the cabin for two more weeks.
“I’m going to put you on hold and check the dates on that,” Sherry said, and immediately the irritating music began playing again.
After a few seconds, Jillian laid the phone down and managed to get the last of the cupcakes frosted before Sherry’s gravelly voice returned.
“That cabin is available for one more week, but not two. I can let you have it until Friday, the twentieth, but you will need to be out by ten o’clock in the morning to give my cleaning crew time to get it ready for the next folks to move in on Sunday. ”
“I’ll take it.” Jillian agreed without a moment’s hesitation. “Are you at liberty to tell me who will be moving into the cabin after I leave?”
“Not names, but I can tell you that the two behind you and the one you are in are being rented to families with lots of children,” Sherry said.
“They will be pitching several tents on the properties as well as using the cabins.” Sherry took her credit card information, and Jillian heaved a big sigh of relief.
“We are filling up quickly for next spring, so if you want to go back, you might want to think about reservations pretty soon. It’s been great doing business with you. Have a nice rest of your time at Bridal Veil.” Sherry singsonged in a voice that sounded like she was reading from a card.
Jillian said a few words before she realized the screen was dark. She set the phone on the counter, picked up Molly from the floor, and danced around the cabin with her. “Not ideal, but we got one more week anyway. Paint me happy for sure.”
Wyatt’s shoulders ached from hunching over his notebook all afternoon.
He rolled his neck and did a few jumping jacks to loosen up the muscles, but it did very little good.
Since he couldn’t pack up the sauna in his apartment complex in Dallas, he turned on the shower and let the hot water beat down on his back for several minutes.
Feeling much better for two reasons, he stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Number one was that he felt better, and two was that Jillian had said she would cook supper that evening.
If there had been a number three, it would have been that she should be there in a few minutes.
He got dressed, stepped outside, and his breath caught at the sight before him.
A gorgeous peacock with his tail all fanned out strutted around the backyard with several pea hens parading along behind him. He slipped his phone from his shirt pocket and sent a quick message to Jillian: Look out your back door, but don’t make a sound.
One came right back: Already did. Took like a million pictures.
The telltale squeak of Jillian’s back door didn’t even faze the birds. They continued to prance around the yard, sporadically pecking around at the grassy spots. She carefully stepped down from her porch and carried a tote bag toward his porch.
“Looks like they are used to people,” she said as she set a casserole and a loaf of what smelled like homemade bread on the table, along with a bowl of salad and a platter of chocolate cupcakes.
“Chicken spaghetti,” she announced when she removed a bottle of water from a six pack that she brough, and twisted off the lid.
“With all the moving around, when did you have time to learn to cook?” he asked.
“Here, there, and yonder. Mostly at church potluck dinners when the people I lived with insisted I attend services with them. The peacocks are providing us with a live show tonight. And …” She let the word hang while she removed disposable plates and salad dressing from her tote bag.
“I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first? ”
“Give me the good.”
“I got my cabin for one more week.”
“Fantastic!” Wyatt picked her up and swung her around the porch like a rag doll.
“Now the bad news. The reason I could only have one week instead of two is because the two cabins behind us, plus mine, are being let out to what I understood to be something like a weeklong family gathering with lots of kids. And …” she stopped and took a deep breath, “they are bringing tents to set up for the overflow of people.”
Wyatt set her down. “Well, that makes up my mind. I didn’t want to be here without you, so I’ll be leaving at the same time as you do. I’ll call the people tomorrow and let them know my place will be empty, too.”
“But you paid for a whole month, and the fine print said that an early departure did not mean a refund,” she reminded him.
“Dollars aren’t worth pulling all my hair out.”
“Please don’t do that. I’ve grown rather fond of your hair,” she teased, and led him back to the table. “But does that mean you don’t like kids?”
“Not really, but …” He frowned and dug into the casserole.
How did he explain being an only child, moving around so much when he was growing up, and being a loner? The words wouldn’t come.
She sat down across from him and said, “I love little kids, but then I was usually able to grow up with anything from a newborn baby to those who were my age, and later, those who were even older. I never was in a single home where I was an only child.”
“I’m right the opposite. I’ve never been around many children,” Wyatt said. “However”—his blue eyes twinkled—“if I was going to have a family, it would need to happen while I’m still young. I’d like to see them graduate from college and maybe have grandchildren some day.”
“Who says they would want to go to college? Could be they’d be a writer like you and not need anything but a natural talent.”
Wyatt took a drink from his water bottle and sent a broad wink across the table. “We haven’t even moved in together and you are growing our children from babies to college?”
“Oh, now they are our children?”
“I wouldn’t want anyone else to be their mother.”
Jillian did not fool him one little tiny bit when she stuffed her mouth full of the casserole. She needed time to digest that last sentence even more than food. When she’d swallowed and taken a drink of her water, she locked eyes with him.
“Thank you for that, but my biggest fear on this earth is that I would have children and turn out to have the maternal instincts that my mother had. That would be ten notches below zero.”
“Have you ever done drugs?” Wyatt asked.
“Nope, and never been drunk off my ass either. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a drink or a beer, but I learned what those two vices can do to a person when I was barely old enough to know what either of them were.”
“See there. Your choices are not what your mother’s were, so you can’t judge yourself by her,” Wyatt said.
“Are you trying to talk me into a family or something?”
“Not at all. I’m attempting to make you understand that choices come with consequences. Your mother made choices that led to where you are today. We don’t know what kind of life she had before she walked down the path she did.”
Jillian raised a shoulder in half a shrug.
“I’ve read lots of self-help and healing books.
They tell me the same thing you just said.
I’ve found more closure in the past couple of weeks than I ever did with those books.
No matter what her reasons or lack of them were, I’m a grown woman now.
If I’m going to have a bright future and feel like I have here in the woods, the past has to be boxed up and buried.
That’s not saying it won’t sneak back in and haunt me on occasion, but I don’t have to let it define me. ”
“Well said, darlin’.” Wyatt raised his bottle.
She touched hers to his. “What have you figured out since you got here?”
Most men were hardwired to not talk about emotion and feelings.
Even in his books, the heroes might admire a woman, even sweet-talk them into bed.
They might even have a romantic streak that would come close to making a woman’s panties crawl down to their ankles.
They could deliver their viewpoints on world news, politics, and sports at the drop of a hat.
However, talking about anything involving the L or M words was a seriously different matter.
“Well?” she finally asked.
“I’ve learned …” He wrote books for God’s sake. Words came as natural to him as breathing. He had joked about them living together, having children, but she wanted a serious answer, and delivering it was as tough as having a tooth removed with no anesthetic.
“What have you learned? That the sex is great, and we like spending time together?” she pressured.
“I have learned,” he started again, “that I do not need loud music to write, but that I do need you to be my muse. I’ve learned that you are the most honest person I’ve ever met. Most of all I’ve figured out that what I want for the future is far different than what I wanted when I arrived here.”
He felt like he was sweating bullets even though a cool breeze flowed through the trees, bringing that pungent scent of dampness after the rain a few days before.
“Was that hard to say?”
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand even though there was no moisture there. “You will never know. I was never encouraged to talk about feelings. Were you?”
“Oh, yeah,” she answered. “Group homes liked to bring in therapists and have round-the-circle talks with us. I hated those days and usually clammed up. Why rehash things that couldn’t be changed?
I’m glad we found each other out here in the boonies, Wyatt.
Talking to you is easy. You don’t judge me or pity me.
Drawing the charcoals has helped me dig a hole to put the past into. ”
“Your dark period,” he said. “That new one of the cabins you are working on is the transition from that time to the bright period.”
“Thank you for seeing and understanding that. But wait, I’m your muse? What happens when we leave here, and we don’t see each other every day?”
“I hope FaceTime works for both of us.”