Chapter Five – Elizabeth

Elizabeth was relieved to get back into her car, it was like a mini sanctuary, just as her house was her main sanctuary. A place where she could be herself, and not worry about the way people looked at her.

Not that Mrs. Closh had looked at her oddly at all. In Elizabeth’s experience, her birthmark made people react one of two ways; they either looked away immediately, as if they didn’t want to stare, or they looked at her for a moment longer than they might otherwise.

After their bakery visit, they had then crossed to the grocery store, which was so busy she might as well be invisible. Elizabeth was going to put this down as a successful trip.

“So do we have everything we need?” Elizabeth asked Dean. “Or do we need to stop somewhere else?”

“Nope, we have the chicken, the vegetables, and fresh bread. The only other ingredients are in my garden.” He looked pleased with himself. “I also have a nice bottle of wine chilling in the fridge.”

“OK, then.” Elizabeth pulled out onto the road and headed back the way they had come, taking a left toward Dean’s house. The butterflies in her stomach were back, but they were a gentle flutter, not a manic swarm. Everything was under control.

“Turn right here.” Dean pointed to a narrow road, and she took a right, and then another right into a driveway that led to a house called Sunnyside.

“What a beautiful house.” The house was situated in a slightly elevated position, facing south; Elizabeth guessed this was how it had earned its name. Even in the early spring afternoon, the front of the house was awash with sunlight.

“Thanks. I've lived here for more years than I can remember. I bought it as a family home, but the family never materialized.” There was a hint of sadness in his voice, and Elizabeth’s heart contracted with longing. If only they had met years ago and raised Suzie, along with other kids of their own, together,

“And that’s when you decided to foster?” She could understand the need to fill a void.

“It is. I met Fiona. She was visiting a child who had been placed in Bear Creek. We got talking, and she somehow twisted my arm into giving fostering a try.”

Elizabeth parked the car in front of his house, and they got out. Between them, they carried the groceries to the front door. While Dean got the key out and unlocked the door, she took the opportunity to survey the outside of the house. It truly was perfect. Back at her own house, she had a small garden that she tended with love and care. It was her favorite place to spend an evening, just puttering around, letting the stress of the day slip away as she weeded the flowerbeds and deadheaded the flowers.

Dean’s garden was something else: it encircled the house, and was filled with bright blooms that had fought their way out from beneath the still-cool ground to herald the summer which would all too soon be upon them. Tulips and daffodils turned their faces to the sun, while a bed of roses was filled with emerging buds.

“Do you like it?” Dean pushed the front door open and stepped inside.

“I do.” Elizabeth followed, with a wistful backward glance over her shoulder. “It’s a special place.”

“Does that mean you will live here with me?” Dean set his bag of groceries down on the counter in the kitchen and began to unpack it.

Elizabeth set her bag down next to his. Their arms touched, and she was sure she felt a burst of static electricity course through her. “I…” She took a carton of eggs out of her bag and set them down on the counter. “I’m not sure how to answer that.”

“Too soon?” Dean asked, moving across the kitchen to the fridge where he opened the door, took out a bottle of white wine, and put a carton of milk in its place.

“I may need more than a couple of hours to get used to the idea.” Elizabeth busied herself with the rest of the groceries. She wanted to abandon all sense, to shake off her reservations and throw herself into this relationship with the same complete commitment Dean possessed.

“Sorry.” Dean opened the wine and poured two glasses. “Here. Let’s make some stupidly absurd toast to us, and then I promise to drop it.”

“To us.” They touched glasses, their eyes meeting, and the longing she saw in Dean’s eyes spread more warmth through her body than the wine ever would.

“To us, and our future happiness,” Dean spoke those words as if her happiness was the most important thing in the world to him.

“Our future happiness.” She drank, the cool liquid sliding down her throat, while her skin felt hot and feverish. He was getting under her skin, into her bloodstream, and making her pulse quicken. He was making her feel alive. He was giving her a future. “What can I do to help?”

“You can peel the potatoes.” Dean opened a drawer and took out the potato peeler and a chopping board, which he set down on the wooden table situated in the center of the kitchen.

“I can do that.” Elizabeth sat down, imagining all the family dinners that must have taken place around the well-worn table. That was what she liked about the house, and about Dean. They were lived in, natural, molded by time and life, with no need to be perfect, to be something they were not.

If there was one way she could describe Dean, it was that he was comfortable in his own skin.

While she peeled and chopped the potatoes, Dean prepared the chicken. She watched him work; he didn’t weigh or measure anything, he worked on instinct. He also hummed. She smiled as she recognized the tune: it was an old sea shanty she had not heard since she was a girl. It brought back memories of her high school, but with Dean so close, the memories didn’t seem so sharp, they didn’t cut her so deep.

“Are they done?” Dean asked, and came to stand next to her, before scooping the potatoes up in his large hands and adding them to the pot with the chicken and some stock, then he placed it in the oven.

“What’s next?” Elizabeth got up from the table and washed her hands in the sink.

“Next, we have an excuse to go in the garden to collect herbs.” He drained his wine glass, and she did the same, feeling the slight buzz hit her brain. “Do you want a sweater?”

“Yes, please.” The light from the kitchen window was dimming, the sun was passing behind the mountains, and Bear Creek was getting ready to wrap up in the warm glow of the street lights for the night.

Dean left the kitchen to fetch her a sweater. While she waited, she took a moment to breathe. Elizabeth hadn’t realized just how tense she’d been. She rolled her shoulders, and turned her head from side to side, letting go of her pent-up nervousness. There was no place for it here with Dean.

“I can give you a neck massage if you want.” Dean made her jump as he entered the room.

“I didn’t hear you.” She accepted the sweater from him and put it on, inhaling the scent of fabric softener, mingled with something else: a musky smell, mixed with fresh pine.

“I’m the master of sneaking around.” He laughed at her surprised expression. “Don’t worry, I’m not a stalker or anything. But some of the kids I’ve fostered over the years have come to live here thinking they can fool me. You know, staying up late, drinking the beer from my fridge and thinking I wouldn’t notice.”

“So what? You sneak up on them?” Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at him but smiled all the same. Somehow she could just imagine this man sneaking up on one of his kids and giving him a scare. She remembered when she used to convince Suzie she really did have eyes in the back of her head.

“Yeah, I’ve snuck down those stairs more often than I should remember.” He took her hand and led her out of the kitchen, across the front hall, and down a hallway to the back door. There Dean took down a small basket for the herbs and some cutters. “Not exactly the right time of day for picking herbs, but it will do.”

Elizabeth followed him outside. The garden was bathed in moonlight shadow from the early evening moon. She breathed in the scent of damp earth, and mountain air. “I can see why Suzie likes it here so much.”

“In Bear Creek?” Dean asked as he made his way to a small herb garden and began to snip off sprigs of sage and rosemary. The pungent scents filled the air.

“Yes, it’s the kind of place you can set down roots, and really feel like you belong.” Elizabeth snapped her attention back to Dean. “At least, that’s what she tells me.”

“Sounds about right.” He placed the herbs in the small basket, and then turned to look at her, the moonlight shining on his face. “That just about sums up my experience of life here. I want it to be your experience too, Elizabeth.”

She liked the way her name sounded on his lips. Those wonderfully full, sensual lips. Her tongue slipped out and moistened her lower lip. Was she inviting him to kiss her? Would he pick up on her subtle body language that begged him to take her in his arms and kiss her?

“I don’t want to scare you off.” Dean’s voice was low as it rumbled in his broad chest. Of course, he had read her body language, but she wasn’t certain he couldn’t read her thoughts.

“I don’t scare that easily.” She tried to sound brave, even if she was shivering, despite the thick sweater that belonged to her man, just as she belonged to him. Elizabeth could read it in his eyes, and when he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close, she could feel it in his possessive embrace.

Yet, as he lowered his head to kiss her, there was a sense of vulnerability. She might belong to him, but he belonged to her in return. She held his heart in her hands, she held his future in her hands. What was it Suzie had told her? That was it. They were bonded mates. Dean had searched his whole life for her, and now he had found her, he would never be happy if she ever went away.

Dean lifted his hand and brushed her cheek, his fingers trailing over her birthmark. She didn’t flinch or duck her head; maybe it was because she could not think straight as their lips touched and he kissed her. Soft and gentle, his tongue exploring her lower lip tentatively. Sensations came too fast, too many, and her brain experienced an overload that forgot to send a message to tell her knees that they were supposed to support her. She swayed, but Dean tightened his hold on her and kept her upright, their bodies pressed tightly together.

Elizabeth had once thought she might be in love. She had believed that Henry Willis was sex on legs, that his kisses were moments of heaven.

Dean’s touch, Dean’s kiss, had exploded that myth.