Chapter Thirteen #2
“You have come into town with your books, your certainty, and your soft voice that somehow manages to order a man around without raising itself. You look at my hand and do not turn away. You say things I cannot forget. When you are there, a room feels less empty.” His right hand curled once at his side.
“I do not know how to want that without fearing what my wanting will cost you.”
“It costs me more when you decide for me.”
“I am trying to spare you.”
“You are trying to spare yourself from watching me choose. If you want me to choose someone else, then let me know. Now. Today. I don’t want to waste another minute.”
That struck him silent.
Lottie breathed through the ache in her chest. “Ask me.”
His brows drew together. “What?”
“Ask me what I want.”
He looked toward the marked boards, toward the schoolhouse, toward anywhere that was not her face. Then, with visible effort, he looked back.
“What do you want?”
“You.”
His mouth parted slightly. She did not rush to soften it.
“I want the man who built a shelf before anyone asked. I want the man who knows flowers because his mother named them aloud. I want the man who reads Tennyson and pretends he only gets by. I want the hand you hide and the name you keep back and the truth you are forever trying not to say.” Her voice trembled but held.
“I want you, Peterson, because you are worth choosing.”
He looked as though she had stepped close and put both hands against a wound.
His left hand rose once, then fell. “You do not even know my name.”
“I know the name you allowed me to use.”
“That is not the same.”
“No.”
She glanced toward his vest pocket where he had tucked the folded paper. “I think I may have seen more than you meant me to.”
His face changed in a way needing no explanation. He knew at once what she meant.
“The drawing?” he asked.
“Mr. Stafford’s paper. It was on the lending table this morning before he took it back. I saw the measurements.” She gazed at him. “I saw your name.”
His shoulders stiffened.
Lottie kept her hands folded before her, though every part of her wanted to reach for him.
“I did not say it,” she said. “I will not. Knowing a name is not the same as being given it.”
The stiffness eased out of him slowly, painfully. He looked down at the dirt between them. One boot stood inside the marked foundation. One stood outside it.
For a man like Peterson, that seemed about right.
“Cecil,” he said at last.
Lottie’s breath caught.
He kept his gaze lowered. “My name is Cecil.”
“I know.”
“No.” He looked up then. “I mean, you may call me Cecil.”
The wind moved through the pines behind the schoolhouse. Lottie had imagined hearing his name given. She had not imagined it would feel like this, quiet, grave, and more intimate than the kiss behind the meeting hall.
“Only when we are alone?” she asked.
A faint, strained smile touched his mouth. “For now.”
“For now, is a beginning I can honor.”
He swallowed. “Say it, then.”
Her heart beat hard.
“Cecil.”
His eyes closed. Not as if the name hurt this time. As if it had finally come home by a road he had stopped watching.
When he opened them, Lottie’s own eyes had filled, but she refused to look away.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For trusting me with it.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. The air between them warmed at once, remembering last night. Remembering his hand in hers, his arm around her waist, the kiss that had taken them both by surprise and yet somehow felt inevitable.
He stepped closer.
Only one step.
It was enough.
“Lottie,” he said, and her name in his voice made every sensible thought scatter.
She lifted her face.
“Cecil. Are you going to kiss me?”
“No. Not because I don’t want to.”
She could see the wanting now, plain as sunlight on the lake. He stopped because the schoolhouse windows looked out over the yard and the street was near enough for voices. He stopped because the very library he was trying to build had begun with her asking to be seen as capable and not careless.
The restraint frustrated her deeply.
Cecil reached for the folded paper in his vest pocket and handed it to her.
“This is the first drawing,” he said.
Lottie unfolded it carefully. The sketch was simple, but clear. A front door. Two windows facing the lake. Shelves along both walls. A stove in the back corner. A little desk near the front where the afternoon light would fall.
There, in the lower corner, written in his careful hand:
C. Peterson.
Lottie touched the letter with one fingertip.
Then she folded the paper and held it against her heart.
Cecil looked away.
“You may change it,” he said. “The windows. The desk. All of it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“It is exactly right.”
“You have not measured the shelves.”
“I trust the man who drew them.”
His face tightened, but this time it was not from pain. Something in him looked close to surrender.
Luke came around the side of the schoolhouse carrying a clam-shell post-hole digger over one shoulder and stopped short.
“Beg pardon. I was told to fetch—”
Cecil stepped back. Lottie nearly sighed aloud.
Every time the man was within two breaths of kissing her, Wild Rose Ridge produced a logger with business. Luke was especially talented at being in the wrong place at the wrong time from Lottie’s perspective.
Luke looked from Cecil to Lottie, then to the drawing in her hands. “I can come back.”
“No,” Cecil said. “We need the holes marked.”
Luke nodded, far too solemnly. “Yes. Holes. Very pressing.”
Lottie hid a smile. Cecil did not.
At least not quickly enough.
Luke’s brows lifted. “I will look at the ground now.”
“A wise choice,” Lottie said.
Luke became fascinated with the two sides of the digger. The moment had shifted, but it had not broken. Lottie could feel that as surely as she could feel the folded drawing against her bodice.
Cecil had given her his name.
He had shown her the library and admitted it was not pity. However, he had not promised to marry her.
That was the next battle.
She looked at the staked-out ground, then back at him. “When will the building begin?”
“Soon as Stafford can spare the men and the town approves the lumber.”
“The town will approve it.”
“You sound sure.”
“I am sure.” She glanced toward the meeting hall and thought of Mrs. Beck’s cookies, Mrs. Schulte’s lists, Mrs. Hanford’s rules, Cornelia’s steady faith in children, and Delly’s ledger columns. “This town loves a cause almost as much as it loves meddling.”
“That may be true.”
“You have given them both.”
He looked at the schoolhouse lot. “I only asked a few questions.”
“You started a library.”
“You started the library.”
“I brought the books,” she said. “You are giving it walls.”
Cecil’s gaze returned to hers.
For a moment, they stood on either side of the marked foundation, looking at what was not yet built and all that already was.
Then he said, very quietly, “I still do not know if I can marry you.”
The words hurt, but they did not surprise her.
Lottie nodded once. “I know.”
“You should be angry.”
“I am.”
He blinked.
“I am also patient,” she said. “The two qualities are not mutually exclusive.”
Luke made a strangled sound from near the post-hole digger. Cecil ignored him, though his mouth betrayed him again.
Lottie stepped back toward the path. She did not want to leave. That was precisely why she knew she should. He had given her a great deal today. If she pushed for the rest now, he might try to take back what he had offered.
“I will be at the meeting hall,” she said. “I have a library to run while you build another one behind my back.”
“It was beside the schoolhouse.”
“That is not a moral distinction.”
His eyes warmed. “No.”
She turned to go, then stopped.
“Cecil … I mean Peterson.”
He looked at her.
The name stood between them, new and tender and wholly given.
“Thank you for my library.”
“It belongs to the town.”
Lottie forced a smile. “Of course it does,” she said through her teeth.
She turned on her heel and walked back toward Main Street with the drawing pressed to her heart, leaving him in the schoolhouse lot with Luke, the stakes, the twine, and the beginning of something he had not yet admitted was hope.
Behind her, she heard Luke say, “So. Two front windows?”
Cecil answered, “Three.”
Lottie smiled all the way to the meeting hall.