Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dean set down a basket of piping hot dinner rolls on the table at his mother’s house and inhaled their rich, buttery aroma eagerly.
He could just taste the way the soft, flaky rolls would feel on his tongue.
He thought to himself cheerfully that his mother made the best dinner rolls he’d ever had.
She didn’t always prepare them for her family dinner nights, but whenever she did, he was elated.
“The pies are almost ready,” Vivian announced, stepping into the dining room. “Just a couple more minutes.”
“I can’t wait,” Samantha announced eagerly. “I haven’t had chicken pot pie in a million years.”
Hazel laughed. “It has been a minute, hasn’t it? I’ll have to make it again soon.”
“And I haven’t made it for so long because we have so many people here for dinner nights now,” Vivian said fondly. “Which I wouldn’t change for anything in the world—but it’s hard to make enough chicken pot pies to feed that many people.”
“Especially when they’re so good that everyone wants to go back for seconds,” Dean said with a chuckle.
Julia looked up from where she was carefully folding the dinner napkins into perfect triangles. “It’s just us tonight, you realize that? Everyone else had a conflict. Just our immediate family, like old times.”
Dean grinned. Julia was right. Terrence was out of town visiting his cousins, Jacob had been called in at the last minute to fix an outlet that had been creating sparks and was clearly a fire hazard, Faith and Ryan were visiting Faith’s friends in Boston for the weekend, Cooper was on a business trip and had elected to take Macey with him since his company provided child care during meetings, Grayson had been so tired that he’d decided to stay at home and catch up on sleep, and Noelle was out with her grandparents on their boat.
It was perhaps the very last time that just his immediate family would ever sit down to dinner together again.
Although it was a bittersweet thought, and he wanted to appreciate the significance of the evening, it also made him happy that their weekly dinner night numbers had been expanding.
Everyone new that had come into their lives was wonderful, and they brought new energies to the family circle that only made it more interesting and fun to be a part of—especially Noelle, who had changed his life for the better in so many ways.
He always enjoyed everything a bit more when she was there with him.
At the thought of his girlfriend, the squirming feeling he always got when he thought about how he still hadn’t proposed returned.
He sighed, wondering what on earth he was going to do next.
He wasn’t naturally a romantic guy and had designed the romantic dinner based on Hazel’s suggestions.
The romantic movie night had been his idea, but he’d soon come to the conclusion that it wasn’t romantic enough.
So what do I do on my own? he thought with a sigh. What other romantic things could I do that would properly set the stage for my engagement to Noelle? And then, once I’ve set the stage, will I have the nerve to say the words?
He’d considered memorizing his proposal speech as exactly as if it were lines in a play, but he didn’t like that idea.
He had a feeling that if he did that, his words would just come off as wooden and insincere.
He wanted the words to feel fresh and full of emotion, because that would better represent the way he felt about her.
The pot pies were ready in another couple of minutes, and Vivian and Julia brought them to the table. The Owens family began to dig into the pies, the dinner rolls, and the roasted butternut squash cubes that Vivian had made.
“Mom, this is just delicious,” Hazel said enthusiastically.
“We need to make chicken pot pie, Mom,” Samantha said. “Tomorrow.”
Everyone laughed, and Dean joked, “Can I come over for dinner tomorrow, Hazel?”
“You know you’re welcome anytime,” she replied with a grin.
The conversation soon steered toward Julia’s wedding, since all of the women in Dean’s family had been helping Julia with the preparation work even more than usual, and they were eager to keep talking about all of the details.
Dean found himself zoning out, his brain preoccupied with how he was going to propose to Noelle.
“That’s enough people, then, for sure.” He heard Julia saying a few minutes later, looking overjoyed.
That brought his attention back to the conversation. “For the repairs at Turtle Dove Hall?” he asked. He’d volunteered to help with the work as soon as Julia had asked him, and he knew how much the hall being repaired in time for the wedding meant to his sister.
“Yes!” Julia’s eyes shone. “Jacob asked people for help, and so did Lindsay, and of course Cooper and I did. Lindsay’s got this whole spreadsheet of what needs to be done and times for doing it.
People have been signing up for various times, and Jacob looked at the list and said that with all that help, the repairs should be done in plenty of time before the wedding. ”
Julia’s relief and happiness was apparent on her face and in her tone of voice.
“Rosewood Beach has come through for our family again,” Vivian said with tears in her eyes. “And of course for Lindsay as well.”
“I love living here,” Alexis said. “What a wonderful community we have.”
The conversation shifted toward remembering all of the good things that people in their close-knit community had done, and Dean’s attention wandered away again. Before long, he was staring down at the tablecloth with a frown, even his delectable slice of chicken pot pie forgotten.
“Dean?”
He looked up, startled. From the perplexed expression on his mother’s face, it was clear that she’d called to him more than once.
“Yes? Sorry.”
“Is there something on your mind, honey?” Vivian asked. “You’re just sitting there staring at the tablecloth.”
“There’s definitely something on his mind,” Hazel piped up with an impish grin on her face. “He’s thinking about his multiple failed attempts to propose to Noelle, I’m sure of it. That’s what’s ailing you, right, Dean?”
Dean picked up his napkin and pretended to throw it across the table at Hazel, even though he was laughing.
“You’re going to propose to Noelle?” Samantha squealed.
“Yes.” Dean shook his head, groaning. “That’s the plan. But Hazel is right. I’ve tried twice now, but I had no idea it would be so challenging for me.”
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone until you did,” Hazel said, chuckling at him. “But I’ve decided it’s time for a family intervention. You need more womanly advice than I can give you, Dean.”
He made a face at her, even though he agreed with what she was saying.
“You just need to be romantic, Uncle Dean,” Samantha said, as if it were perfectly simple. “Do something special for her and then get down on one knee and say, ‘Will you marry me?’” She dropped her voice, apparently imitating Dean’s baritone, and everyone laughed.
“I wish it were that easy, Sam.” Dean sighed.
“First of all, I’m not good at coming up with romantic ideas.
And second of all, I just—I keep getting tangled up in knots.
I get too nervous or I feel like I’m not starting out right.
She’s probably wondering why I keep starting these longs speeches about how much I love her.
It’s because I keep trying to start a proposal speech, but then I feel like it’s going badly and I give up. ”
Vivian laughed affectionately. “You know, you could just drop down on one knee and say the words. She already knows how much you love her.”
“And you’ve already done a bunch of romantic stuff for her, so it’s not like she thinks you’re not willing to put in the effort,” Alexis pointed out.
“I know, I—” Dean sighed. “I just love her so much that I want everything to be perfect.”
“But nothing’s ever perfect,” Vivian reminded him gently. “We’ll never be content with our lives if we want everything to be just so. Life is messy and that’s okay. It’s very often beautiful at the same time.”
“Mom’s right,” Julia said, nodding as she poured herself a glass of wine.
“I had quite the vision for what I wanted my wedding to be like when I was a kid, and even now. I want it all to look just so and be perfect. But Cooper reminded me that things don’t have to be perfect for it to be beautiful.
It’s beautiful because Cooper and I love each other, and we’re vowing to stay true to that.
That could make any place look beautiful to us.
And the same is true for your proposal to Noelle.
No matter what happens, she’s going to feel like it’s beautiful and romantic because it’s a proposal.
That’s romantic and beautiful in and of itself. ”
“So true.” Alexis got a dreamy look in her eyes.
“I remember when Grayson proposed to me. We were just walking along the beach together in L.A.—nothing all that fancy. I mean, it was a beautiful night, but there were people shouting and being obnoxious while having a party on the beach, and we could hear the traffic, but I never think about that. I wasn’t paying attention to it.
All I was thinking about was that the man I loved had asked me to be his wife.
It was one of the most romantic moments of my life, and I think it would have been even if he’d proposed to me in a shoebox. ”
“I don’t think Noelle would fit in a shoebox,” Dean said, delivering his joke with a deadpan expression. Julia playfully punched him in the shoulder.
“What we’re trying to say is, maybe you should stop waiting for the perfect moment and simply tell her how you feel,” Hazel said, smiling fondly at her twin. “Don’t worry about making the perfect speech. Just get down on one knee and get out the four words that really matter.”
“Which are, ‘I have a stomachache’?” Dean joked with a groan.
“You won’t have a stomachache once she vaults into your arms after saying yes,” Alexis pointed out with a grin. “Come on, Dean. You can do this. All you have to do is keep it simple. You want to be engaged to Noelle, don’t you? Sooner rather than later?”
“It’s obviously causing you stress, Dean,” Vivian pointed out. “You only frown like that when you have a problem that you feel like you can’t fix.”
“Just take the pressure off yourself,” Hazel urged him gently. “Just keep it simple. I promise you she’ll be over the moon.”
Dean thought about it for a moment. At the back of his mind, he still felt nervous that Noelle might say “no” or “not yet” after all, but he had to admit that a romantic proposal was unlikely to change her answer.
Noelle was an independent woman who spoke her mind under all circumstances, even though she usually phrased her answers with delicate kindness.
“I have a feeling you’re right,” he finally admitted. He smiled, his mood suddenly lifted considerably. Proposing to Noelle seemed achievable, now that his family had talked him into keeping it simple.
“I think it was meant to just be us tonight,” Julia said. “This way we had the privacy to have this conversation with Dean without anyone but the family here.”
Dean chuckled, having to agree with her. He would have felt even more embarrassed if Cooper or Grayson had been there, since they’d successfully proposed to their partners and might have found his plight silly—and of course, they couldn’t have talked about it if Noelle had been there.
“Thank you all.” He smiled fondly at the women sitting around him. “I think this was the jolt that I needed for me to see sense about all this. I’ll find some way to propose to Noelle without overthinking it or wanting everything to be perfect.”
“That’s the spirit,” Alexis told him with a wink.
Dean sighed with relief as he helped himself to a second slice of chicken pot pie. Next time, he was going to succeed in asking the woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with to be his wife. He felt absolutely sure of it.