Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
S cott stepped through a doorway into heaven. Also known as Mrs. Brantley’s Kitchen. “That smells great!” The woman might try to plan everything within an inch of its life, but she was a great person and one of the best cooks he’d ever known.
Mrs. Brantley turned toward him with a smile. Her husband, James, was seated at the small kitchen table with a mug of what looked to be coffee in his hands.
“I thought omelets and coffee cake would be a good start for the day.”
Scott inhaled deeply and breathed out slowly. “I don’t think anyone can argue with that logic.”
James laughed. “I must agree. When I first met Emmaline, I wasn’t sure what to think. Then, when she helped nurse me back to health with her food, I may have fallen in love a tiny bit with it at first.” He winked at her and she blushed. “Of course, the woman herself was quickly behind that.”
Yes, she had a clipboard. Yes, it seemed as if she wanted to control his day. But she really wanted to give a visitor the best possible view of Two Hearts and make sure he wasn’t bored.
That alone made staying with her a little challenging.
What really bothered Scott was that he was in the same room as a pair of newlyweds. He felt they would be better left alone. His big sister would describe them as adorable, but he felt slightly embarrassed every time they did one of these adorable things.
Before he could take more than two steps toward the coffeepot, Mrs. Brantley had turned from the stove, poured him a cup of coffee, and added what he was certain was the exact amount of creamer he would have added himself. Then she turned around and held it out to him.
Cup of perfect coffee in hand, he sat at the table.
“Do you have a role in the shenanigans about Cassie and Greg’s wedding?” James asked.
Scott stared at him for a moment as he tried to process everything he’d heard while he’d been here. There had been talk of Greg wanting to get married.
“James! That’s supposed to be a secret.”
James whipped around to face her. “I thought it was only a secret from Cassie and Greg.”
His wife sighed. “It’s fine to tell Scott, I suppose. He’ll be involved with this. He just may not know it yet.”
Scott shook his head dumbly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” And he wondered again what he’d gotten himself into when he’d made the simple decision to take Greg up on his invitation to visit Two Hearts.
Emmaline plopped an omelet in front of each of them that appeared to be filled with ham, cheese, onions, and peppers. He loved Denver omelets, so his taste buds went into full action. She added a coffee cake. “Serve yourselves.”
“So, what am I involved in that I don’t know I’m involved in?” Scott put a square of coffee cake on his plate.
Mrs. Brantley brought an omelet for herself, sat down, and added coffee cake to her plate. “I can sum it up in a nutshell. Cassie wants to marry Greg.”
“I know Greg wants to marry Cassie. I’ve heard him say that several times since I’ve been here.”
Mrs. Brantley gave a single nod. “And that’s only a week.”
Had it really been that short of a time? He almost felt like a local.
“The problem is that Cassie was traumatized by a jerk of a first fiancé. She’s a wedding planner who doesn’t want to plan her wedding.” Mrs. Brantley shrugged, then took a bite of her coffee cake.
Scott waited for her to say more. “And?”
“Oh, I thought it was obvious. We’re going to plan the wedding for her. A surprise wedding.”
Scott waited for the punchline. This was a joke, right? “Is there such a thing as a surprise wedding? Aren’t the bride and groom both supposed to be ready for the day?” He asked the question tentatively, not wanting to offend anyone.
Mrs. Brantley grinned. “Cassie can decide not to marry Greg at the last minute. She still has an out, you know?” She paused. “I know there’s a risk of Cassie breaking Greg’s heart by running away, but I’m almost certain she’ll only be glad we’ve done this for her.”
He and James both nodded. The almost concerned Scott, but it did seem like a good idea when he went over what he knew about the situation from Greg’s side.
“So we’re providing them with the opportunity to get married. Cassie has said so many times that she wants to do this.” Mrs. Brantley beamed. “The wedding is scheduled for three weeks from tomorrow.”
In Chicago, one day more or less blended into the next. Sure, he had different assignments at work. Some of them were quite exciting. His skills had helped bring in criminals and put them behind bars. But it still felt, somehow, it was all the same. He got up, he went to work, he came home. Every once in a while, he thought about getting a cat or a dog. Something that would be excited when he walked in the door in the evening. But it didn’t seem fair to leave an animal alone all day.
In Two Hearts, things moved quickly. They didn’t wait for things to happen here. They made them happen.
“That all makes sense the way that you worded it.” He continued eating. The omelet and coffee cake were delicious. When he finished, he got up to pour himself another cup of coffee.
Mrs. Brantley said, “I’ll get that for you, dear.”
“No, please, stay seated. I need to move around a little bit.” As he did, he realized he was missing a massive piece of what they’d said earlier. Scott whirled around with his empty cup in his hand, glad he hadn’t filled it up. “You said I was somehow involved in this. What could a computer geek like me do to help a wedding come together?”
“Amy has some ideas. She’s working on a project and thought you’d be able to help her with it.”
At the mention of Amy’s name, a warm feeling stole through him. He told himself that’s what it was like with friends. They made you smile. That’s why life back in Chicago beckoned to him. He had siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, not to mention friends. Besides, he loved his job.
“Scott, are you okay?” Mrs. Brantley was watching him carefully.
“I’m fine. I’m just going to head over to Amy’s now.” He gestured in the direction of her newspaper office. Mrs. Brantley muttered something under her breath as she took a sip of her coffee. He had a feeling he didn’t want to know what the words were.
Scott stood outside the newspaper office. He could see Amy through the front window, bent over her laptop, working. When he opened the door, she looked up, and instead of the smile he’d expected, she had a frown. She’d been nice up to now, so he turned and looked over his shoulder to make sure there was no one behind him. Nope. She was frowning at him .
“Would it be better if I didn’t come in today?”
She stared at him for a moment with a puzzled expression on her face. “It’s fine if you come in. Why would you ask that question?”
“The expression on your face when I walked in the door.” His sarcastic tone made her smile.
“I was in the midst of uploading a picture to my website.”
He walked over and peered over her shoulder. “You know how to do this, so why look unhappy?”
She pointed at the screen. He saw himself kneeling in front of her with a ring box open and winced. “Ah! You don’t love the photo? Are there any you like?”
She blew out a breath in frustration. “It’s a proposal.”
Scott stared at her as he tried to figure out what was going on. He’d always heard things about a woman’s mind being different from a man’s. Sometimes, they saw things men didn’t. This instance had him completely baffled.
When no apparent light dawned over his head, she said, “It isn’t real. If I was going to get proposed to, I’d like it to be real.” She turned her chair to face him.
The defeated sound in her voice surprised him. There had to be a story here she hadn’t talked about.
“Something happened. What was it?”
She closed her eyes and sighed before continuing. “I dated a guy for a while. We dodged around the question of a future, but I thought it was understood.” She opened her eyes and looked up at him again. “I was alone in that assumption.”
He went through everything that they were doing with these fake proposals and reached one conclusion. “Why on earth are you doing fake proposals if you hate proposals?”
Amy groaned. “I keep asking myself the same question. In a nutshell, I’m trying to keep the newspaper not just alive but vibrant. I need it to support me here. I can’t stay if it doesn’t pay.”
He sat in what he’d come to think of as his chair and faced her.
“Instead of this craziness, is there something else you can do on the side? I’m fortunate because I can technically work from anywhere. At least in general in my line of work. I don’t know how the Chicago PD would think of me working remotely.” He had some idea that it wouldn’t be received well. “A beach. A mountaintop. As long as I have internet, I can work. But you?”
She brightened up a little. “I used to freelance articles and content for businesses. I’ve even thought about writing a book. In the end, I just love words.”
He nodded. “I understand.” She squinted as she stared at him, as though she was trying to see into his soul.
“You don’t have to say that just to be nice. I know not everyone loves books like I do.”
“No. I really mean it. Bookstores are one of my favorite places to be. Libraries. There’s the smell of a brand new book when you crack it open for the first time or the fun of discovering a new author and immediately downloading the book and diving in.”
Her smile lit her face. “You do understand. The thing is that I want to not just survive in Two Hearts. I want to thrive. The town is coming back to life, and somehow, I want to be part of that. But I’m not a wedding expert in any way. I know words and some graphic design. The town only seems to need that in a newspaper.”
“Let’s back up. Why are you in Two Hearts? I know that you’re from here, but you’ve lived in lots of different places.”
“Five states and three countries.”
“You see? You could live in so many other places.”
“This place. This town. Two Hearts was in my mind the whole time growing up. Moving from place to place, memories of being here are what kept me glued together. The people are kind. You know your neighbors. Are there mean people? There must be because a certain percentage of the world isn’t pleasant. But everyone I’ve spent time with here is nice.”
Amy smiled. “Until last year, I knew I couldn’t come back. Oh, I could have just freelanced from a little house here. But, even as a child, I knew the town felt dead. It was as though it had been boarded up, and the life had been sucked out of it.”
He thought about everything he’d seen and done since he’d arrived and found that hard to imagine. “I feel hope here.”
“And that’s why I came home. I was talking to my brother one night over the Christmas holidays and found out he felt the same way. He’d already rented a little house in town. He said I could move into the spare room, and here I am.” She blew out another frustrated breath. “But now I can’t support myself enough to get a place of my own. I’ve lived on my own for almost a decade, so my time here has been . . . interesting.”
She swiveled around to face her computer screen again. Then she moved the cursor over the publish button. He put his hand on hers and scooted it off.
“Are you sure you want to do that? Once it’s out there, there’s no turning back.”
She hesitated for a moment. “I’m positive.” She clicked publish. “Thank you for helping me and letting me talk it out. If this proposal thing draws attention to the newspaper in our little town, awesome. But I don’t see how it can actually earn me enough to do what I want and need to do.”
“Then it looks like you need a Plan B .”
He watched her mouth twitch. Then she brushed her hand across one cheek and the other. He’d made her cry. He hated it when his sister cried.
“I’m sorry, Amy.” Scott stood and moved behind her chair, wanting to do something to fix this. To make her happy again. A smiling Amy was a wonderful thing. She was one of those people who made him happy when she smiled.
She sniffed and reached for a Kleenex, wiping her eyes first, and then blowing her nose loudly. “I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said between gasps.
The woman was sobbing now. Who could he get to help her? As he reached for his phone to call Cassie, she stood up and held out her arms.
Scott stepped into her open arms and pulled her in tightly for a hug. He could feel her body shaking against his as she cried. He rubbed his hand on her back to try to comfort her.
Finally, she quieted down and sniffed a few more times. Against his shoulder, she said, “Scott, I have never been this humiliated in my entire life. I am so sorry for crying on you. For even letting you be within ten miles of me when that happened. I’m not normally a sad crier. Only a happy one.”
He leaned back to look at her face. “It’s okay.” He brushed a strand of hair off her face. “I’m glad I was here and that you weren’t alone.”
She nodded.
And then he felt electricity crackling between the two of them. He glanced down at her lips and started to lean down for a kiss.
When he realized what he was doing, he let go of her and stepped back. “Gee. Would you look at the time? I think I’m going to go take a walk. Yes, a walk is exactly what I need right now.”
Amy nodded her head vigorously.
“Okay. I think I’ll go over to the diner and get a cup of coffee. Maybe some pie.” He hurried out the door with barely a glance over his shoulder back toward her. If his face was anywhere near as red as hers, they both looked as if they needed some sunburn cream.
That had been an accident. Romance between the two of them was completely out of the question. She wasn’t ready, and he was leaving town.