Delilah
“Are you coming to the wedding or not?” I only had about an hour before I’d agreed to swing back to Taylor Grove and help Abby do her hair.
After the all-day fiasco with Franco yesterday, Stella had sunk back into a funk.
I tried to prod my mother into getting ready for the wedding, but if she wasn’t going to budge, I wouldn’t let it keep me from the commitment I’d made.
“Just go without me.” Stella waved a hand in the air and held it to her forehead, her palm facing out. “I’ll be fine here by myself.”
“That’s it. You’re being ridiculous.” I hadn’t dared to use that sharp a tone with my mother before.
Stella must have realized it, too. She sat up on the bed and let her hand fall away. “I’m not being ridiculous. I’ve had my heart broken.”
“You and Walter dated for what . . . four months?” I rummaged through the dozen or more dresses my mother had hung in the small closet of the motel room. “Is your heart really broken or are you just lonely?”
“He told me he loved me. I thought he was going to propose over the holidays.” Stella shifted to the edge of the bed and flung her feet over the side.
I picked out a long, flowy light blue dress that would match my mother’s eyes. “Here, wear this. You’re going with me and that’s final.”
“I don’t know why you’re so worked up about this wedding,” Stella grumbled but took the hanger from me as she passed me on the way to the bathroom.
“It’s important to me. Jasper and Suzy and so many others pulled together in a crisis to come through for a complete stranger.
I want to see her reaction when they let the butterflies loose.
” And I wanted to see it with Jasper. In the past several weeks he’d become such an important part of my life.
I hadn’t quite decided what I was going to do when my time in Ido came to an end.
“I don’t know why you’re so wrapped up in all of these people’s problems. You’ll be heading home in another week. Won’t it be nice to get back on track with your own career?”
If I hadn’t figured out how I felt about Jasper, I wasn’t about to try to explain it to my mother. “Sure. Once the gala is over it will be good to be able to focus on the cosmetics line and stay in one place for a while. I was thinking when I get back to Dallas, about maybe getting a dog.”
“A dog?” Stella stuck her head through the doorway, a lip liner in hand. “Don’t be silly. You don’t want to worry about dog hair all the time, do you?”
“There are some breeds that don’t shed. Maybe something small to keep me company.”
“Darling, you don’t need a dog to do that.
That’s why you have me.” Stella finished filling in her lips with a deep pink stain.
“There. I think you’re right. Getting back out there is the best way to get over a broken heart.
Not that there are any eligible men worth considering here in Ido, but at least I can practice my social game tonight. ”
I didn’t bother wasting breath on trying to reason with her.
It wouldn’t do any good. Stella was set in her ways and didn’t take well to change.
Especially when it wasn’t her idea. I thought back to touring the dog rescue.
All of those sad eyes staring up at me, looking for love, looking for someone to see the value and worth they still carried inside.
I recognized myself in their gazes. I’d been waiting my whole life for someone to see the worth and value I carried.
Beyond the satin sash and perfectly plucked brows.
While I waited for Stella to pull on her body shaper and wiggle into her dress, I scrolled through the pictures on my phone again, something I’d taken to doing more often than I wanted to admit.
Jasper covered in butterflies. Jasper sitting on a blanket in the back of his truck bed.
Jasper covered in mud. The smile on his face tugged at something deep down inside.
Like a thread leftover from when I’d wrapped my heart up tight.
He seemed to be the only one who’d been able to unravel any of it.
Stella came out of the bathroom, ready to go. “All right. Let’s get this over with.”
“You look really pretty today.” I meant it. My mother had been beautiful once. Not that she wasn’t still a very attractive woman. But there was a hardness to her now that I didn’t remember from when she’d been younger.
“Thank you.” Stella offered a rare smile—the kind that actually reached her eyes and went deeper than the surface.
“What was your wedding day like? Do you remember?” We rarely talked about my dad. Stella always said it was too painful. As soon as I asked the question, a pang of regret twisted through my stomach. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”
But in a rare moment of openness, Stella reached for her wallet and pulled out a small photo. She and my dad stared into the camera. My dad had a huge smile on his face, the one I remembered from my childhood. But my mother’s lips barely tipped up at the corners. There was a sadness in her eyes.
I searched my father’s face. Brown eyes, that’s right. How could I have forgotten? The memory of him kneeling down in front of me and helping me with my shoes flooded my brain. He’d looked up at me, those deep, dark brown eyes shining with love.
“Why did Daddy leave?” I’d asked the question over the years, more times than I could count, but Stella always put me off with a flippant remark. She’d say things like “We were too much to handle” or “He wasn’t man enough to take care of us,” and I never pressed.
“I told you, sweetheart, he couldn’t handle being a husband and a dad.” Stella slipped the picture back into her clutch. “It was good while it lasted, but it wasn’t meant to be. When you start on shaky ground, there’s not much there to build a solid foundation.”
That was the most information I had ever been able to squeeze out of my mother. Maybe we’d reached a new point in our relationship. Now that I would be retiring from the pageant scene, perhaps Stella was ready to open up a bit.
“You don’t want to keep everyone waiting.” Just like that, the old Stella was back. “I hope you’re going to do something with your hair. It looks so much better when you pull it up. Let everyone see your beautiful face.”
I grimaced as my mother brushed my hair back from my cheeks.
“I’d planned on wearing it down today.” I didn’t add that Jasper liked it down. Stella had made her feelings about small-town life, and especially small-town men, pretty clear. If she had any inkling that I had gotten so involved with a local cowboy, she’d blow her top.
“You’ll wear it up.” With that, my mother opened the door and stepped into the early afternoon sunlight. “I’m going to go track down that mayor before she gets too busy at the wedding. I’ll meet you there.”
Jasper
I sucked in a breath as I stepped onto the porch where Delilah sat in the rocker next to Abby.
She had on a low-cut, flowery dress that accentuated her bust. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a mass of curls, but she’d left several tendrils loose that framed her face and drew my attention to her slender neck.
All of the reasons I’d come up with in the shower as to why I shouldn’t kiss her again seemed to disappear.
“You look beautiful.” I delivered the compliment with a shy grin, not sure how she’d take it after our talk the night before.
“Thank you!” Abby got to her feet and twirled, sending her skirt billowing out around her. “Delilah did my hair. French braids.”
I shifted my gaze to my baby sister. She looked beautiful, too, although she hadn’t exactly been the target of my compliment. “It looks really nice.”
“Can you tell I have on lip gloss?” Abby stepped in front of me and pursed her lips. “Delilah showed me how to put it on.”
“Does Mom know you’re wearing makeup?”
“Yes.” Abby drew the word out. “Of course, I asked her first. Do I look older?”
I shook my head. We were entering new territory if Abby was going to start wearing makeup and worrying about looking like a woman instead of a girl. I pulled her into my side. “You’ll always be Little Bug to me.”
“Stop it, Jasper. You’re messing up my braids.” She pushed on my chest, but her grin let me know that she didn’t mind the affection.
“Y’all ready to go?”
Abby ran to the door. “Hold on, I need to tell Mom we’re leaving.”
As she dashed into the house, my gaze slid to Delilah. My pulse ticked up as she stood and smoothed her palm over her dress.
“You look amazing.”
She smiled, her eyes holding just a trace of something I couldn’t identify. “Thank you. You look pretty good yourself.”
“Thanks.” I’d had to borrow a suit from my brother Trent since I’d burned my only pair of suit pants with the iron earlier. The jacket was a smidge tight in the shoulders, but I figured that would be a good thing. It would prevent me from being able to ask Delilah to dance to a slow song.
“About last night . . . ,” Delilah began.
But then Abby burst through the door again, barreling past us on the way to the truck. “Mom said to have fun and to have me home before eleven.”
“She might be a little excited about the wedding.” Delilah picked up her purse.
“A little?” I chuckled. “She’s been waiting for this all month. Do we need to swing by and pick up your mom?”
“I thought we were going to ride together but she decided she wanted to stop in and talk to Lacey before everything starts. Something about getting more exposure on Ido’s social media.” Delilah shook her head. “Who knows what she’s got up her sleeve this time.”
“Okay then.” I gestured toward the steps. “Let’s go.”