Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
The band took a break, which gave Brodie the opportunity to thank Janette Rogers for the many dances—she just wouldn’t let him go—and slip away.
She wanted a quick selfie before he did, pressing their cheeks together as she beamed for the camera.
He caught Zoey doing an impression of Janette behind them, which made him struggle to keep a straight face.
When he went over to join her he said, “You gotta stop doing things like that, you’ll get me into trouble. ”
“Please don’t marry Suki’s mom. I don’t want to have to go to their house for Christmas,” Zoey said with a scowl.
Brodie frowned, and turned to lean against the stage where Zoey was sitting. “Zoey, I danced with her, I’m not marrying her. You don’t need to worry about spending Christmas anywhere other than at your home with your mom.”
“And you,” she said, without hesitation.
Brodie remembered the rising claustrophobia when she’d said it the first time, when she’d asked him if he was her dad and he’d denied it.
He may have managed to leap the dad hurdle but judging by the clamping of his lungs and the immediate denial on his lips, the instinct to say that he spent Christmas in St. Moritz every year, he clearly hadn’t made peace with the idea of being tied to Autumn Falls for the holiday season and beyond.
He was saved from having to answer by the band leader, John-Luke, who’d been drinking a paper cup of coffee while the band took their break, coming over and tapping him on the shoulder.
Zoey jumped down from the stage to dance with her friends because there was now a DJ playing loads of their favorite songs.
“Your dad tells me you might be interested in buying the orchard?” John-Luke said as he sipped his coffee.
Caught off-guard, Brodie smiled. “Oh… No we were just messing around.”
John-Luke seemed unperturbed, he said, “I did think it was a little weird. Can’t really picture you settling down and looking after apple trees.”
Brodie laughed along, but as he stood there, the notion that his dad had actually taken the comment seriously enough to mention it to John-Luke made him suddenly want to defend the idea. “Though I am interested in the vines,” he said. “I own a vineyard in Napa.”
John-Luke chuckled. “We’re small fry compared to that, Brodie.” The older man’s eyes twinkled at the idea of someone like Brodie tending his ancient orchard.
Again, Brodie laughed along, but in his mind he suddenly saw his life ahead of him split in two.
On one side was him on his yacht, bobbing in the waves, or careening down off-piste slopes in Switzerland with a bit of tinsel round his neck, waltzing in and out of his vineyard whenever he felt like it.
And on the other side, he was up a ladder pruning apple trees and tending a tiny plot of vines, picking Zoey up from school at three on the dot every day, maybe finally breaking down Maeve’s barriers and getting her to have dinner with him, go on a date even, but to what end?
He never looked to the future, and suddenly it dawned on him that he was currently chipping away at something that he was yet to envisage.
Yes, he was attracted to Maeve. Yes, she made him laugh.
Yes, she challenged him to try harder. But he couldn’t see her fitting in with his life, with the St. Moritz ski crowd, for example.
Or maybe that was unfair. Maybe he just wouldn’t want to inflict his skiing buddies on her and Zoey.
It all suddenly seemed very juvenile with Maeve there watching.
If he went skiing with Maeve and Zoey, he’d want fondues and mulled wine in a little alpine chalet.
Evening sledding, lit with twinkling lights, plaid blankets and thick hot chocolate round a roaring fire.
Maybe if he carried on down the path he was currently on, he wouldn’t just be going around to Maeve’s house at Christmas in a novelty holiday sweater but he’d be there every day.
Every. Single. Day.
Brodie swallowed down an almost suffocating panic at the idea, felt his throat close and his palms sweat, but before he could think much more about it, his dad was there, walking over with his own rosette for the Horse Showmanship, shaking John-Luke’s hand, reaching up to hand Martha a soda that she’d obviously asked him to go and get for her.
John-Luke said, “Brodie doesn’t want my orchard, Emmett.”
Brodie winced, feeling immediately his dad’s judgment.
Emmett’s only reaction was a raise of a brow but it was enough to shrink Brodie down to size. For a second, he even wondered if his dad had told John-Luke he might be in the market for the orchard just for this moment, to prove that Brodie would never have the staying power to make such a move.
He thought of Maeve saying that maybe he made his dad feel like a fool, that it was pride that provoked him to say certain things, to cut Brodie down to size.
He tried to stay calm and rational, but he was already too on edge and couldn’t help himself reverting to type.
Itching to defy his dad, to provoke for the sake of provocation.
He shrugged a shoulder, a smirk on his lips, and said casually, “I just don’t think apples are my thing. ”
And just as Zoey came skipping back over, his dad scoffed, like Brodie was a child himself, and muttered, “Might be about time you made up your mind what your thing is.”
In that moment, Brodie thought there might have been many times when his dad said stuff because of pride, but he knew deep down inside that this wasn’t one of those times. That was a look, father to father, questioning whether Brodie had it in him to step up.