While father and son were closing a gap, Kate strolled with the third generation of O’Connell male.
“I didn’t wheedle, right?”
“Wheedle?” She sent him a shocked stare. “Why Handsome Jack, Mama and I had to practically force that plane on you. We had to beg you to accept it.”
Jack grinned up at her. “You’ll tell Dad?”
“Of course. He’s going to want to play with it, you know. It’s a very cool plane.”
Jack swirled it through the air. “It’s like the one I got to fly on, all the way to New York and back again. It was fun. I told everybody thanks in the cards I sent. Did you like your card? I did it almost all by myself.”
“I loved my card.” Kate patted her pocket where the thank-you note, painstakingly printed, resided. “It was very polite and gentlemanly of you to write one to me, and to Freddie and Nick and to my grandparents.”
“They said I could come back. Papa Yuri said I could sometime spend the night at his house.”
“You’d like that?”
“Yeah. He can wiggle his ears.”
“I know.”
“Kate?”
“Hmm.” She bent to untangle Mike from his leash, then glanced up to see Jack studying her. So serious, she thought, so intent. Just like his father. “What is it, Handsome Jack?”
“Can we…can we sit on the wall so we can talk about stuff?”
“Sure.” Very serious, Kate realized as she boosted him up on the wall in front of the college. She passed Mike up to him, then hopped up beside them. “What kind of stuff?”
“I was wondering…” He trailed off again while Mike scrambled off to sniff at the grass behind them.
He’d talked it all over with his best friends. Max in New York, and then Rod at school. It was a secret. They’d spit on their palms to seal it. “You like my dad, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I like him very much.”
“And you like kids. Like me?”
“I like kids. I especially like you.” She draped an arm around him, rubbed his shoulder. “We’re friends.”
“Dad and I like you, too. A whole lot. So I was wondering…” He looked up at her, his eyes so young, so earnest. “Will you marry us?”
“Oh.” Her heart stumbled, then fell with a splat. “Oh, Jack.”
“If you did, you could come live in our house. Dad’s fixing it up good. And we have a yard and everything, and we’re going to plant a garden soon. In the mornings you could have breakfast with us, then drive to your school and teach people how to dance. Then you could drive home. It’s not real far.”
Staggered, she laid her cheek on the top of his head. “Oh, boy.”
“Dad’s really nice,” Jack rushed on. “He hardly ever yells. He doesn’t have a wife anymore, because she had to go to heaven. I wish she didn’t, but she did.”
“I know. Oh, baby.”
“Maybe Dad’s afraid to ask you in case you go to heaven, too. That’s what Rod thinks. Maybe. But you won’t, will you?”
“Jack.” She fought back tears and cupped his face. “I plan to stay here for a very long time. Have you talked to your father about this?”
“Nuh-uh, ’cause you’re supposed to ask the girl. That’s what Max said. The boy has to ask the girl. Me and Dad’ll buy you a ring, ’cause girls need to have one. I won’t mind if you kiss me, and I’ll be really good. You and Dad can make babies like people do when they get married. I’d rather have a brother, but if it’s a sister, that’s okay. We’ll love each other and everything. So will you please marry us?”
In all her dreams and fantasies, she’d never imagined being proposed to by a six-year-old boy, while sitting on a wall on an afternoon in early spring. Nothing could have been more touching, she thought. More lovely.
“Jack, I’m going to tell you a secret. I already love you.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do. I already love your dad, too. I’m going to think really hard about everything you said. Really hard. That way, if I say yes, you’re going to know, absolutely, that it’s what I want more than anything else in the whole world. If I say yes you wouldn’t just be your dad’s little boy anymore. You’d be mine, too. Do you understand that?”
He nodded, all eyes. “You’d be my mom, right?”
“Yes, I’d be your mom.”
“Okay. Would you?”
“I’m going to think about it.” She pressed her lips to his forehead, then hopped down.
“Will it take a long time to think?”
She reached up for him. “Not this time.” She held him close before she set him on his feet. “But let’s keep this a secret, a little while longer, while I do.”
She gave it almost twenty-four hours. After all she was a woman who knew her own mind. Maybe the timing wasn’t quite perfect, but it couldn’t be helped.
Certainly the way things were tumbling weren’t in the nice, neat logical row she’d have preferred. But she could be flexible. When she wanted something badly enough, she could be very flexible.
She considered asking Brody out for a romantic dinner for two. Rejected it. A proposal in a public restaurant would make it too difficult to pin him down, should it become necessary.
She toyed with the idea of waiting for the weekend, planning that romantic dinner for two at Brody’s house. Candlelight, wine, seductive music.
That was her next rejection. If Jack hadn’t spilled the beans by then, she very likely would herself.
It wouldn’t be exactly the way she’d pictured it. There wouldn’t be moonlight and music, with Brody looking deep into her eyes as he told her he loved her, asked her to spend her life loving him.
Maybe it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be right. Atmosphere didn’t matter at this point, she told herself. Results did. So why wait?
She started upstairs. It was good timing after all, she realized. He was just finishing the job that had brought them together. Why not propose marriage in the space they had, in a very real way, made together? It was perfect.
Convinced of it, Kate was very displeased to find the rooms over the school empty.
“Well, where the hell did you go?” She fisted her hands on her hips and paced.
School bus, she remembered, spinning for the door. It was one of his days to pick up Jack. She glanced at her watch as she sprinted down the stairs. He couldn’t have been gone more than a few minutes.
“Hey! Where’s the fire.” Spence caught her as she leaped down the last steps.
“Dad. Sorry. Gotta run. I need to catch Brody.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, no.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and wiggled free. “I need to ask him to marry me.”
“Oh, well…whoa.” She was younger, faster, but parental shock shot him to the door in time to snag her. “What did you say?”
“I’m going to ask Brody to marry me. I’ve got it all worked out.”
“Katie.”
“I love him. I love Jack. Dad, I don’t have time to explain it all, but I’ve thought it through. Trust me.”
“Just catch your breath and let me…” But he looked at her face, into her eyes. Stars, he thought. His little girl had stars in her eyes. “He hasn’t got a prayer.”
“Thanks.” She threw her arms around her father’s neck. “Wish me luck anyway.”
“Good luck.” He let her go, then watched her run. “Bye, baby,” he murmured.
Brody made a stop for milk, bread and eggs. Jack had developed an obsession with French Toast. As he turned into his lane, he checked his watch. A good ten minutes before the bus, he noted. He’d mistimed it a bit.
Resigned to the wait, he climbed out, let Mike race up the hill and back. Spring was coming on fine, he thought. Greening the leaves, teasing the early flowers into tight buds. It brought something into the air, he mused.
Maybe it was hope.
The house, the ramble of it, was looking like a home. Soon he’d stick a hammock in the yard, maybe a rocker on the porch. Maybe a porch swing. He’d get Jack a little splash pool.
Jack and Mike could play in the yard, roll around on the grass on those long, hot summer evenings. He’d sit on the porch swing and watch. Sit on the swing with Kate.
Funny, he couldn’t put a real picture into his head anymore, unless Kate was in it.
And didn’t want to.
He’d have to take his time, Brody mused. Get a sense of where Jack stood in all of it. After that, it would be a matter of seeing if Kate was willing to take everything to the next level.
Maybe it was time to give her a little nudge in that direction. Nothing was ever perfect, was it? Everything in life was a work in progress.
It was like building a house. He figured they had a good, solid foundation. He had the design in his head—him, Kate, Jack and the kids who came along after. A house needed kids. So it was time to start putting up the frame, making it solid.
Maybe she wouldn’t be ready for marriage yet—with her school just getting off the ground. She might need some time to adjust to the idea of being a mother to a six-year-old. He could give her some time.
He stood, looking over his land, studying the house on the hill that just seemed to be waiting.
Not a lot of time, he decided. Once he started building, he liked to keep right on building. And he wanted Kate working on this, the most important project of his life, with him.
The first thing to do, he decided as he walked to the mailbox, was to talk to Jack about it. His son had to feel secure, comfortable and happy. Jack was crazy about Kate. Maybe Jack would be a little worried about the changes marrying her would bring, but Brody could reassure his son.
They’d talk about it tonight, he decided, after dinner.
He just couldn’t wait any longer than that to start things moving.
When he and Jack were square, he’d figure out what to say to Kate, what to do, to move everybody along to the next stage of the floor plan.
He got the mail out of the box, and was sifting through it on the way back to the truck when Kate pulled in beside him.
“Hey.” Surprised, he tossed the mail into the cab of his truck. “Didn’t expect to see you out this way today.”
After she got out of the car, she picked up the mangled hunk of rope Mike spit at her feet, engaged him in a brief bout of tug-of-war, then threw it—she had a damn good arm—far enough to keep him busy awhile.
Watching her playing with the dog, all Brody could think about was that he couldn’t wait very long.
“I just missed you at the school,” she told him.
“Problem there?”
“No, not at all. No problem anywhere.” She walked to him and slid her hands up his chest, a habit that never failed to pump up his heart rate. “You didn’t kiss me goodbye.”
“Your office door was closed. I figured you were busy.”
“Kiss me goodbye now.” She brushed her lips over his, arched a brow when he kept it light and started to ease back. “Do better.”
“Kate, the bus is going to come along in a couple minutes.”
“Do better,” she murmured, and melting against him shifted the mood.
He fisted a hand in the back of her shirt, another in her hair. And indulged both of them.
“Mmmm. That’s more like it. It’s spring,” she added, tipping back so that she could see his face. “Do you know what a young man’s fancy turns to in spring? Besides baseball.”
He grinned at her. “Plowing?”
She laughed, linking her fingers behind his neck. Yeah, the frogs were still jumping. But she liked it. “All right, do you know what a young woman’s fancy turns to? What this young woman’s fancy turns to?”
“Is that what you came out here to tell me?”
“Yes. More or less. Brody…” She nibbled her bottom lip, then just blurted it out, “I want you to marry me.”
He jerked, froze. There was a buzzing in his ears—a hive of wild bees. He had to be hearing things, he decided. Had to. She couldn’t have just asked him to marry her when he’d spent the last five minutes trying to figure out how and when to ask her.
To get his bearings, he retreated a step.
“It’s not very flattering for you to gape at me as though I’d just hit you over the head with a two-by-four.”
“Where did this come from?” Maybe he was just dreaming.
But she looked real. She’d tasted real. And the thundering of his own heart wasn’t the least bit dreamlike. Besides, in his dreams, he asked her. Damn it. “A woman doesn’t just walk up to a man in the middle of the day and ask him to marry her.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” How was he supposed to think of reasons with all those bees in his head? “Because she doesn’t.”
“Well, I just did.” She felt her temper sizzle into her throat and managed to swallow it. Her fingers shook slightly as she lifted them to begin ticking off points. “We’ve been seeing each other exclusively for months. We’re not children. We enjoy each other, we respect each other. It’s a natural and perfectly logical progression to consider marriage.”
He needed to take control back, he realized. Right here, right now. “You didn’t say let’s consider marriage, did you? You didn’t say let’s discuss it.” Which had been his plan if she’d given him the chance. “There are a lot of factors here besides two people who enjoy and respect each other.”
And love each other, he thought. God, he loved her. But he needed to know what they wanted for the future—separately, together, as a family. There were things they were just going to have to set straight, once and for all.
“Of course there are,” she began. “But—”
“Let’s start with you. Right now, you’re free to pick up your dance career any time you want. There’s nothing stopping you from going back to New York, back on stage.”
“My school is stopping me. I made that decision before I met you.”
“Kate, I saw you. I watched you up there, and you were a miracle. Teaching’s never going to give you what that gave you.”
“No, it’s not. It’s going to give me something else, the something else I want now. I’m not a person who makes decisions lightly, Brody. When I left the company to come back here, I knew what I was doing. What I was leaving behind, what I was moving toward. If you don’t trust me to make a commitment, then stand by it, you don’t know me.”
“It’s not a matter of trust. But I wanted to hear you say it, to me, just like that. You say you mean to stay, you mean to stay. I’ve never known anybody as focused on a goal as you.”
He’d thought, moments before, he’d known how he would handle this. The steps he’d take toward asking her to share his life. Building on that foundation. Now the woman had finished nailing on the trim and wanted a wreath for the door.
She was going to have to back up a few steps, because he built to last. “I’ve got something more than a career decision to consider. I’ve got Jack. Everything I do or don’t do involves Jack.”
“Brody, I’m perfectly aware of that. You know I am.”
“I know he likes you, but he’s secure the way things are, and he needs to be sure of me. Kate…God, he’s only ever had me. Connie, she got sick when he was only a few months old. Between doctors and the treatments and the hospitals…”
“Oh, Brody.” She could imagine it too well. The panic, the upheaval. The grief.
“She couldn’t really be there for him, and I was just trying to hold it all together. The world was falling apart on us, and I had nothing extra to give Jack. The first two years of his life were a nightmare.”
“And you’ve done everything you can to give him a happy and normal life. Don’t you see how much I admire that? How much I respect it?”
Flustered, he stared at her. He’d never thought of parenting as admirable. “It’s what I’m supposed to do. Thinking of him first, that’s how it has to be. It’s not just you and me, Kate. If it were…but it’s not. A change like this—a life-altering one—he has to be in on it.”
“And who’s saying differently?” she demanded.
“Well, damn it. I can’t just go tell him I’m getting married, just like that. I need to talk to him about it, prepare him. So do you. That’s the kind of thing you’d be taking on. He needs to be as sure of you as he is of me.”
“For heaven’s sake, O’Connell, don’t you think I’ve taken all of that into account? You’ve known me for months now. You ought to be able to give me more credit.”
“It’s not a matter of—”
“It was Jack who asked me to marry you in the first place.”
Brody stared into her flushed and furious face, then held up his hands. “I have to sit down.” He backed up, dropped down on a flattened stump. Because the dog was shoving the rope into his lap, Brody tossed it. “What did you just say?”
“Am I speaking English?” she demanded. “Jack proposed to me yesterday. Apparently he doesn’t have as much trouble making up his mind as his father. He asked me to marry you, both of you. And I’ve never had a lovelier offer. Obviously, I’m not going to get one from you.”
“You would have if you’d waited a couple of days,” he muttered under his breath. “So are you doing this to make Jack happy?”
“Listen up. However much I love that child, I wouldn’t marry his bone-headed father unless I wanted to. He happens to think we’d all be good for each other. I happen to agree with him. But you can just sit there like a—like a bump on that log.”
Not only had Kate beat him to the punch, Brody thought, his six-year-old son had crossed the finish line ahead of him. He wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or delighted. “Maybe I wouldn’t be if you hadn’t snuck up on me with this.”
“Snuck up on you? How could you not see? I’ve done everything but paint a heart on my sleeve. Why haven’t I moved my things out of storage and into that apartment, Brody? An organized, practical woman like me doesn’t ignore something like that unless she has no intention of ever living there.”
He got to his feet. “I figured you just wanted…I don’t know.”
“Why have I squeezed every minute I could manage out of the last few months to spend with you, or with you and Jack? Why would I come here like this, toss away my pride and ask you to marry me? Why would I do any of those things unless I loved you? You idiot.”
She whipped around and stomped off toward her car while tears of hurt and fury sparkled in her eyes.
There was a fist squeezing his heart. Brutally. “Kate, if you get in that car, I’m just going to have to drag you out again. We’re not finished.”
She stopped with her hand on the door. “I’m too angry to talk to you now.”
“You won’t have to do that much talking. Sit,” he said, and gestured to the stump.
“I don’t want to sit.”
“Kate.”
She threw up her hands, stalked over and sat. “There. Happy?”
“First, I don’t intend to marry anyone just to give Jack a mother. And I don’t intend to marry anyone who can’t be a mother to him. Now let’s put that aside and deal with you and me. I know you’re mad, but don’t cry.”
“I wouldn’t waste a single tear over you.”
He pulled out his bandanna and dropped it in her lap. “Get rid of them, okay? I’m having a hard enough time.”
She left his bandanna where it was and dashed tears away with her fingers.
“Okay, this is a box.” He pointed at the ground. “Everything we’ve just said is going into this box, and I’m closing the lid. We can open it later on, but we start fresh right here and right now.”
“As far as I’m concerned you can nail the lid on it and throw the entire thing into a pit.”
“I was going to talk to Jack tonight,” he began. “See how he felt about some changes. I figured he’d have liked the idea. I know my kid pretty well. Not as well as I assumed since he’s going around proposing to my woman behind my back.”
“Your woman?”
“Quiet,” he said mildly. “If you’d been quiet a little while longer, we’d have started out this particular area of discussion more like this.”
He moved closer, took her lifted chin in his hand. “Kate, I’m in love with you. No, you just sit there,” he told her as she started to rise. “I was trying to work out how I’d do this right before you drove up.”
“Before I…” She let out a long breath. “Oh.” As her heart began to thud she shifted her gaze to the ground. “Is the lid on that box really tight?”
“Yeah, it’s really tight.”
“Okay.” She had to close her eyes a moment, try to clear her head. But the thrill racing through her refused to let her think straight. And that, she decided, was perfect. Just perfect.
“Would you mind starting again?” she asked him. “With the I love you part?”
“Sure. I love you. I started sliding the first minute I saw you. Kept thinking I’d get my balance back, that you couldn’t be for me. Every once in a while I’d start sliding fast, I had to pull myself back. I had lots of reasons to. I can’t think of a single one of them right now, but I had them.”
“I was for you, Brody. Just like you were for me.”
“That night in your sister’s house, I couldn’t pull myself back anymore. I just dropped off the edge in love with you, I’m still staggering the next day when I see you dance. Not like I saw you that day in your school where it was pretty, and like a dream. But strong and powerful. That messed me up some again.”
He crouched down in front of her. “Kate, a few minutes ago I was standing here, putting a picture in my mind. I do that sometimes. You and me, sitting on a porch swing I still have to buy.”
Tears wanted to come again, but she held them back. “I like that picture.”
“Me, too. See, I was figuring we were building a house—not the kind up the hill there. A kind of relationship house. I take my time building things because it’s important to build them right—to build them to last.”
“And I rushed you.”
“Yeah, you rushed me. Something else I figured out. Two people don’t always have to move at the same pace for them to end up at the same place. The right place.”
A tear escaped. “This is the right place for me.” She framed his face with her hands. “I love you, Brody. I want—”
“No, you don’t. I’m making the moves here.” He drew her to her feet. “See that house up there on the hill?”
“Yes.”
“Needs work, but it’s got potential. That dog chasing his tail in the yard’s just about housebroken. I’ve got a son who’s coming home from school on a bus that’s running late. He’s a good boy. I want to share all that with you. And I want to come to your school sometimes, just to watch you dance. I want to make babies with you. I think I’m good with them.”
“Oh, Brody.”
“Quiet. I’m not finished. Come summer, I want to sit out in the garden we’ll plant together. You’re the only one I want to have all that with.”
“Oh, God, just ask me before I fall apart and can’t even answer you.”
“You’re pushy. I like that about you. Marry me, Kate.” He touched his lips to hers. “Marry me.”
She couldn’t answer, could only lock her arms around him. Her heart poured into the kiss and gave him more than words. The dog began to yip and race in desperate circles around them. Clinging to Brody, Kate began to laugh.
“I’m so happy.”
“I still wouldn’t mind hearing you say yes.”
She tipped her head back, started to speak. And the rude blast of the school bus’s air brakes drowned out her words.
She turned, sliding her arm around Brody’s waist and watched Jack burst out the door. The pup took a running leap into Jack’s arms.
“Let me,” Kate murmured. “Please. Hey, handsome.”
“Hi.” He looked at the tears on her cheeks and sent a worried look at his father. “Did you get hurt?”
“No, I didn’t. Sometimes people cry when they’re so happy everything bursts inside them. That’s what I am right now. Remember what you asked me yesterday, Jack?”
He bit his lip, glanced warily at his father again. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, here’s the answer for both of you.” With one hand still caught in Brody’s, she touched Jack’s cheek. “Yes.”
His eyes went huge. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Dad! Guess what?”
“What?”
“Kate’s going to marry us. That’s okay, right?”
“That’s absolutely okay. Let’s go home.”
They left the truck and car parked where they were, and started walking toward the house together. Jack raced ahead, the dog at his heels. At the edge of the lawn, Brody stopped, turned, kissed her.
No, it wasn’t okay, Kate thought.
It was perfect.