Chapter 18
Eighteen
C annon opened the door of his truck, and his wife got in.
He was nervous, as nervous as though this were their first date.
He was tempted to run his sweaty hands down over his jeans, but he at least needed to wait until she got in the truck and then try to unobtrusively do that while he was walking around to get in the driver’s seat.
He had been nervous about asking her, and then he’d managed to go and screw everything up by scaring away the dog that she was trying to tame. But that dog looked all mangy and sick, and he really didn’t want his wife anywhere near it.
Not because he hated the dog, but because he didn’t want anything to happen to his wife.
Why was it so hard for her to understand?
Maybe he just needed to let go. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was his job to protect her and to see dangers that she didn’t.
While she saw things that would help make him more comfortable, like saving the last of the eggs for him or getting him the exact blanket that he needed to be completely comfortable for the night.
Anything heavier and he would have been too hot, anything lighter and he would have been too cold. It was perfect. And she knew it.
“I just want to apologize again about the dog,” he said after he had gotten in and started the engine and put his seat belt on.
“Don’t worry about it. She ended up coming back over and eating the food I left there, so she got what I wanted her to.
I just…wanted to tame her down a little bit and have her trusting me so that when it comes time for her to have her babies, I can help her take care of them.
There’s no shelter outside, and I’m pretty sure she used to be a house dog.
She’s wearing a collar, but there’s no tag on it. ”
“She might be microchipped.”
“Yeah. But I can’t tell, and I can’t get a hold of her either.”
“True.”
“I think the closest veterinarian is down in Blueberry Beach. We really could use one here in town.”
Maybe this would be a good time for him to ask her what she was planning. And perhaps it would be a good time for him to tell her what he had decided.
“I… I don’t want to open a can of worms, because I didn’t ask you out to eat with me so that we could fight.”
“I don’t really think we ever had too much trouble fighting, did we?”
“No. I guess not. I guess I’m just…a little gun-shy right now.”
“I’m sorry. That’s my fault. I can promise I will try as hard as I can not to get upset about anything.”
He figured that was probably the best promise that he could get. But he didn’t know what subjects were touchy for her and which ones weren’t.
“I wanted to know how long you’re planning on staying here?”
She didn’t say anything for a bit, twisting her hands in her lap and looking out her window before sighing.
“When I left, I was planning on moving here permanently. I wanted to open up my mom’s bakery.
I’ve always wanted that, and we talked about it whenever she came to stay with us, remember? She was worried about it.”
“Yeah. And you wanted to come out here and keep it open for her, and take care of her too. I thought that was going to be too much for you.”
“And you were right. By the time she got really sick, it was all I could do to take care of her, and that was even with some help. There is no way I could have run the bakery too.”
He thought that she just said that he was right. She’d given him credit? He glanced over, but she didn’t seem to be keeping score or at least wasn’t tallying up anything on his side of the scorecard, so he assumed not.
“So you said when you left that’s what your plan was. Is that still your plan?”
“I don’t know. I honestly didn’t think that you cared whether I was there or not, and that was informing what I did.”
“I’m sorry you got that impression. And I understand how you got it.
I did a lot of thinking last night, and I realize you came to a perfectly logical conclusion.
If I don’t spend time with you and on you, and I don’t think about you and make an effort to…
know you, then you have every right in the world to think that I don’t care.
But just for the record, that’s not true. ”
“I think I figured that out. I… I don’t know what to do. I guess maybe I was thinking that we could talk about that today.”
“All right. Well, I actually was talking to George today, and he’s been interested in buying the company for a while.
He’s talked about buying other security companies, if I wouldn’t sell to him.
I just brushed it off, because I have a couple of other guys who will take his place if he does decide to open his own business. ”
“Okay,” she said, looking at him uncertainly.
Of course she had no idea where he was going with that. Because he’d never said a word to her.
“He’s going to see if he can get funding, and then if he can, he’s going to purchase the company from me.”
“You’re selling your company?”
“I’m moving here. I didn’t know if you’d let me live with you, but if not, there’s a house up the street that’s for sale.
The sign just went up a couple of days ago according to Matteo, and I thought I might see what they wanted for it.
The lease is up at our apartment in Cincinnati in two months anyway, so we wouldn’t be losing a whole lot.
And this is a nice place. A good place to raise children. ”
There. He’d said it. He realized that after the miscarriages and losing her mom, she felt lonely.
She wanted a family. Not just him. She wanted children.
Look at her and the stray dog. She was constantly bringing people around her, and…
she deserved to have a family. When they got married, they were planning on it.
“Cannon?” she said, like she didn’t quite understand what he was saying.
“You can think about it. I haven’t made any firm plans. I did want to talk to you about it first. But George is going to do some talking to a couple of different bankers and see what he can come up with.”
“Oh my goodness. All right.” She seemed stunned. Not necessarily happily stunned, just stunned. He wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
They didn’t say too much more as he navigated the road toward Blueberry Beach. He needed her to give him a few extra directions, since he wasn’t as familiar with these roads as she was.
“If it’s okay with you, I thought we could eat before we go grocery shopping. I want to get a few things that need to stay cold.”
“That’s just fine.”
“All right. The diner should be right over here, you can park anywhere along the street.”
He found a spot, pulled into it. He shut the engine off and got out, intending to open her door, but she didn’t wait for him. How long had it been since he’d opened her door for her?
They hardly ever drove anywhere together. Except church, when he went.
He wanted to take hold of her hand, but he wasn’t sure where they stood. She…hadn’t said that it was okay for him to be with her. She had left him, after all.
He needed to ask.
The waitress showed them to their seats, and they ordered their drinks and browsed the menus. He waited until after they had both ordered the special and the waitress had delivered their drinks before he folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward.
“I guess I might have been getting the cart before the horse. You…le ft me. I’m not sure where that leaves me in our relationship.
Do I have the right to hold your hand? Have you changed your mind about leaving me?
Where are we? Because… I guess I need you to help me navigate the relationship-type things, because where I can see the danger in the stray dog easily, I don’t understand relationships very well. ”
There. That was as honest as he could be. He wanted to do it right, he just wasn’t sure what that was.
“I guess… I guess if you don’t want me to leave, I won’t. But I think that we should have the talk that we should have had before I left. Instead of leaving, I should have calmly and rationally gone to you and tried to talk to you about this.”
“I thought about that. I’m not sure I would have listened. I think that maybe you did the only thing that you could have done to get my attention, and that was to walk out. If you had just talked before you walked, it wouldn’t have caught my attention.”
She sighed and looked over at the window, which faced an alley.
Then she looked back at him. “No. I know you would have listened. I could have asked you to hold me, and you would have. I could have asked you to take a day off work and do something with me, and you might have groused about it, but you probably would have done it.”
“But I wouldn’t have liked it. I wouldn’t have understood.
I wouldn’t have seen how desperate you were.
How serious you were. How much you felt like I didn’t care or love you.
I don’t recommend doing it again, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to any other woman, but I think I needed this as a wake-up call. ”
She nodded, but she didn’t smile in triumph, even though he had basically told her that she was right.
Lauren wasn’t like that. She was sweet and funny, kind and considerate, not the kind of person who gloated or liked to rub anything in anyone’s face. Instead, she’d go out of her way to avoid hurting someone. That was the woman he’d fallen in love with.
That was the woman he was still in love with.
“Okay, just so I know I understand, we’re still together, but we’re working through some things.” He lifted his brows, wondering if he’d got it right.
“That sounds good. Yes. Working through some things. ”
“So how do you feel about me selling the business?”
“I can’t believe it, to be honest.”
The waitress came with their meals, chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes and a vegetable on the side, and it smelled delicious. Maybe even homemade.
He waited until the waitress left, and he had said grace, before he picked up his fork and then said, “So you’re okay with it?”
“I don’t really want you to have to sacrifice everything.
I mean, I’d love to be able to run my mom’s bakery, but it’s kind of impossible for you to have a business in Cincinnati and me to have a bakery in Raspberry Ridge.
So we need to figure out who gets what they want and who gives up what they want. ”
“I guess that seems obvious to me. We’ve been married for ten years, and in those ten years, I’ve been building my business the entire time. I’ve got what I wanted. It’s your turn.”
He didn’t really mean that as a consolation.
He meant that sincerely. He’d built his business into a multimillion-dollar thing, and while he highly suspected that George was not going to be able to come up with the money, he thought that it wouldn’t be hard to sell to an investment group.
The business had been profitable for the last six years, and before that, it had been borderline.
He had jobs lined up to last him the rest of the year, and his reputation was known all around Cincinnati. Maybe he was mistaken, but it felt like he was sitting on, if not a gold mine, a nice little nest egg.
“I don’t want you to have to give it up.”
“I’m sorry that you ever thought that you were in competition with the business. You’re not. You mean far, far more to me than the business ever will. I’m willing to give it up. I want to, actually. I like Raspberry Ridge. Matteo’s growing on me too.”
“You hated Matteo,” she said dryly.
“I don’t hate Matteo. I only hated Matteo when my wife was laughing with him and not laughing with me.”
She closed her mouth and stared at him for a moment before he looked away. It was the truth. He didn’t hate Matteo, he just hated himself for not being able to make his wife laugh and for another man to be able to do it instead .
“Can we think about it?”
“Sure. You can think about it as long as you want to.”
“No. I mean us. Together. We can think about it. You might not even be able to sell your business.”
“Then I’ll just work out the contracts we have, and I’ll move to Raspberry Ridge anyway and close up shop.”
“Everything you worked for?—”
He lifted his shoulders. “It’s worthless without you.”
Her face softened, and she smiled at him. He felt like that was the exact right thing to say, although he hadn’t been saying it to curry favor. He’d been saying it because that’s what he meant.
“I need to get back so I can finish that security system, but maybe we can do something tomorrow?”
“Sure. I’d love that. I have plans to meet with Grace and Claire this afternoon anyway,” she said, looking across the table at him, and he got the feeling that he was on the right track.
After that, they talked about easy things. Things that weren’t going to bog down the conversation and make one or the other of them feel sad and guilty or bad in any way.
The weather, the school system around this area, since she’d gone to it and he didn’t. The idea of a small town versus a big city. Pros and cons. She told him he needed to see the beach, and he agreed to go, tomorrow.
He had never been a very big beach person. He hated sand. It got everywhere, like everywhere. He hated that. But she assured him that there was a pebble beach that was very nice, and no sand involved. Although, there was sand on part of the shore farther north.
He could endure sand for Lauren.
He realized why he had married her to begin with. He enjoyed being with her. She was fun, she was funny. She was smart, but not one of the smart people that were so smart that they were boring to talk to. Or uncomfortable to talk to.
She kept him humble. She saw things that he didn’t and gave him a wider perspective. He liked what she added to him, and he hoped that he added a little bit to her too.
By the time they were done eating, he was ready to be back to normal.
Whatever that was. He supposed that the reason she was hesitant was because their normal was him working all the time and her taking care of her mom, being sad about the miscarriages, and wishing that he was around, when he was oblivious.
They would have to create a whole new normal.
Plus, he figured that she was probably a little bit in disbelief, wondering if he might fall back into his old habits, once he had her securely attached to him again.
He hoped he didn’t. He wanted to set up his life so that he didn’t.
But he wasn’t sure what that would look like.