Chapter Nineteen
Pippa sat cross-legged on her bed up in the cabin loft, facing that view as she always thought of it, and strummed the guitar for a few notes, then stopped, made a few corrections on the blank sheet music she was filling in, then played the same riff again, changing the last note. “Better,” she murmured. She flipped the page back to the beginning, and softly sang the lyrics she’d been fine-tuning all day. As she moved into the song, her gaze shifted from the notes and lyrics she’d penciled in, to the view beyond the window.
She let a little more body come into her voice as she got to the refrain, then a little more on the second run. She hadn’t, as yet, cut loose and sung full out. Her throat felt good. More than good, actually. It felt perfectly fine. She was babying it, doing all the warm-up exercises. She’d even talked to the vocal coach she’d hired and never used, and gotten some additional pointers on how to start pushing herself back toward her full vocal range.
Panic didn’t lock her throat up tight like it used to, but she and fear were still doing daily battle. Some days she won, some days she didn’t. Her legs still began to tremble when she started to push it, but she sang anyway. Just not very loud. Baby steps, she told herself. “Shoot, any steps,” she murmured, as she paused and erased a few words on the last line, then thought for a moment, pencil poised. She ended up putting the pencil down and played a little with that part of the lyric, filling in this word or that, then finally reached for the pencil when she found the right one.
She might still be struggling with the performance part, but her music was having no such baby-step issues. Her music wasn’t just back. It was back with a vengeance. It was like she had a year’s worth of pent-up soundtrack inside of her, trying to rush out all at once. It pushed her and prodded her, filling her mind up night and day, until she had to put it down on paper. There was no point in fighting it, and the truth was, she didn’t want to. For all that the slow singing progress was making her nervous, the music she was producing was good. Really good. And that gave her some much needed confidence. She might have lost faith in her ability to sing without restraint, but she hadn’t lost her faith in knowing when she was on to something good, something right, when it came to the music itself.
Pippa still hadn’t gotten the fiddle out yet. She wanted the songs polished first, before she worked on that part and started orchestrating the rest of the music for each song. It was all there in her head, so she knew there was no reason to worry. Not about that part anyway. It was really just a matter of whether she’d be able to actually sing the new songs as intended when it came time to finally record.
Don’t mourn what you don’t have. Love what you do. Mabry’s words came to her often these days. That was her mantra.
Pippa smiled, thinking about the time they’d spent together the day before. Mabry was still living full-time in a rehab facility, but he’d made great strides, quite literally, in the past two weeks. He was on his feet, or able to be on his feet. There had been a lot of nerve damage due to the puncture wound and from the emergency surgeries as well, so the progress was slow, but he was getting ever closer to going home again. Yesterday they’d gotten him in the indoor pool for the first time as part of his physical therapy, trying to help him build up his leg muscles faster. “Water aerobics,” he’d told her over the phone in disgust, not at all happy with that turn of events. Especially when he found out he’d be the only man taking the class.
Pippa had teased him about being the most popular guy in the pool, but she knew he was self-conscious about having to be seen in swim trunks, not at his finest. He was embarrassed, though he’d never admit it.
So Pippa had gone online and found him one of those old-fashioned men’s bathing suits from the twenties, the kind that would cover his torso without impeding his leg movement too much; then she’d gone down and gotten in the pool with him. He’d initially been mortified at her seeing him like that, but she’d gotten him past it. Mostly. Enough that the therapist had invited her to come back two days from now, and though Mabry had poo-pooed the idea, she planned to be there.
She looked down at the music book and flipped over to another song she’d been working on, about an apple farm and the wisdom to be found in the trees. She hoped Mabry liked it. She planned to sing it for him someday. She’d settled the guitar on her lap and started to strum it again, when she heard the sound of gravel crunching in the driveway below.
She set the guitar aside and crawled off the bed to peek down from the dormer window. Every part of her filled with pleasure when she saw Seth climb out of his truck. She liked his hair wild and loose, but she had to admit, when he braided it snugly down the back of his head, like he had today, it did show off his angular cheekbones and jawline, and showcased those beautiful eyes of his, and the neatly trimmed beard would forever draw her eyes to his mouth. Oh, that lovely, lovely mouth, and all the pleasures it had brought her.
She was so caught up, it took her a second to realize that he was carrying a fistful of what looked like wildflowers in his hand, and her heart melted a little more. “Whatever is he up to?” she murmured, and climbed down from the loft. If he thought to distract her from her work with a little afternoon frolic, Well, he might just be successful, she thought, her body already perking up in happy anticipation.
When she opened the door, though, it wasn’t to the confident, flirtatious, gregarious man she’d come to know and love. Actually, he looked a bit pale. “Are you all right?” she asked, taking him by the wrist and gently tugging him inside. “Has something awful happened?” She took the flowers from him and laid them on the small dining table.
“Those are for you,” he told her.
“Aye, yes, and they’re lovely indeed. I’ll get them into some water in a moment. But first sit down before you go down in a dead faint.” Her brogue always got thicker when she was worried.
“I’m fine, really, I just—”
But she’d already nudged him back until he sat down on the small couch. She perched on the coffee table directly in front of him. “You’ve been working too hard and not getting enough sleep. Maybe I should sleep here a few nights a week.” She let go of his arm and leaned forward so she could feel his forehead. “You don’t feel warm, so that’s a good sign.”
He took her hand from where she’d pressed it to his cheek, then tugged her forward until she was in his lap. “I’m fine,” he told her gently.
She looked into his eyes. “What is it then? Not bad news?”
“I sure hope not,” he said under his breath, then took in a breath and let it out again, very slowly.
Looking worried still, she placed her palms on his big shoulders and put her nose to his. “Out with it.” She leaned back and folded her arms.
Finally, his grin surfaced, and he was back to looking a bit more like himself, despite the high color that had suddenly risen to his cheeks. “I realized on my way over here that perhaps I didn’t plan this out exactly the way I should have,” he said, “but I just want to go on record now as saying I didn’t see it going quite this way.”
“Didn’t see what going what way?”
“I don’t know why that surprises me,” he went on. “It’s not like we’ve done any other part of this relationship like normal people.”
“Like normal peop—” She broke off and her eyes went wide. She swiveled her head and looked at the flowers on the table, then back to his neatly showered, braided, and trimmed appearance, knowing that wasn’t at all how he’d normally look in the middle of a workday.
Then he unfolded her arms and took one of her hands in both of his, and her other one flew straight to her mouth. “You’re not,” she whispered behind her fingers.
His grin returned, broader now, and it seemed the more flustered she became, the calmer he got. He took her other hand from her mouth and held that one, too. “I know our time here, living like this, can’t last forever,” he began.
And instead of the rush of anticipation and disbelief that had filled her suddenly, she felt like someone had punched her directly in the chest. Wait. He wouldn’t have gotten all neatly pressed and picked her a fistful of posies if he’d planned to end things and send her on her merry way back to Ireland, would he? There wasn’t a cruel bone in Seth Brogan’s body, but then whatever—
He leaned forward and whispered, “It’s all good, relax.”
Her face crumpled into a smile then. No, he wasn’t cruel. He was perfect. “I love you,” she said on a shuddery breath as tears gathered once more. Of course they did. That was all she did these days. But there’d be no holding any of it back, not anymore.
His eyes went dark and hot and she immediately wanted to squirm. He squeezed her hands so tightly she had to wriggle them a little to get him to loosen his hold. And every part of his reaction had been better than the perfect response she’d hoped for.
“That’s . . . really good to hear,” he said, the words thick with emotion. “It’ll make this a little easier.”
“Go on,” she said, her breath catching, her thighs trembling a bit now as tears glittered on her eyelashes.
“You’ve found your music now, and your life isn’t here in the mountains. Or it wasn’t, before you met me.” He paused and held her gaze. “I want you to know, I would travel the world over for you. And I hope you’ll show me your Ireland. I hope to find my place there, in your life, and come to love it, like you’ve come to love my home.”
“Oh, Seth—”
“Seeing as I’m tied to this land that I love, to these mountains, and to the people who live here, I’m hoping we can find a way for you to fit here, as I’m willing to fit there. It might take me some time before I can push the work off here for someone else to handle for long stretches of time, but that’s one goal. I hope you can find a way to do the same. I have some ideas about that. Actually, Moira was the one with the ideas, but they’re pretty bloody brilliant ones, if you ask me, and I think maybe, since you’re already writing here and composing here, that they’ll work for you, too.”
She could hear the nervousness climbing back into his voice as he spoke, feel the hands covering hers growing a little damp, which was so beyond charming, she could barely stand it. And she understood now, how he’d grown stronger when she’d grown flustered, because she felt the same now, as his face got a little warmer. He’d always be strong for her, want to care for her, and she would always be and do the same for him.
“Seth,” she said again, her heart already in a puddle, and when she could see he wasn’t sure what she was going to say, that he was truly worried, she leaned forward, met his gaze with her own and whispered, “It’s all good, relax.”
He grinned then, a bit crookedly this time, and she watched as his beautiful eyes grew a little glassy. Maybe it wasn’t her knees trembling, but his legs that were shaking a bit. More likely, it was both.
“I want to make this work,” he said. “And I’m willing to do whatever that will take. Because I love you, too, Pippa Mavreen MacMillan.”
How he knew her middle name, she had no idea, but her breath had caught in her throat now, because he’d finally said the words she’d wanted to hear him say to her for what felt like forever now.
“So I think, if we’re going to put in all the effort that it’s going to take to find a way to make our very different lives fit together, it would be best if we started out on that adventure truly united.” He let go of her hand and fished in the pocket of his pants, then came out with an old, worn, black velvet box.
And her hands flew right back to her mouth again.
“This is my great-grandmother’s ring,” he told her. “She lived to be one hundred and five and was married for more than seventy-five of those years. Would have been longer if my great-grandfather had lived as long as she did.”
“Oh, Seth,” she whispered shakily.
“She left this to me.” He grinned. “I always was her favorite.”
“Of course you were,” she said, her voice no more than a rasp, and they shared a short laugh.
His voice was shaky and the sheen in his eyes was brighter still. “I know she’d have loved you, and I know this would make her happy. But it will make me far happier still if you’d agree to be my wife.”
He opened the little box and the most impossibly tiny little ring sat wedged into the worn, yellowed satin. There was a small amethyst in the middle, set on either side by two delicate little diamonds.
“I know there’s not much to it in terms of size, but I thought it suited you. It needs a good cleaning,” he said, “and possibly a fitting, though your hands are small like hers were. We can change—”
“Not a single thing,” she breathed, then looked from the sweet, heartbreakingly delicate ring to the man who was going to be her husband. “It’s perfect,” she told him. “And I will wear it proudly, cherish it greatly, and hope I can come close, someday, to honoring the memory of the woman who first wore it. You’re going to have to tell me all about her.”
“Is that a yes, then?” he asked her, and she swore she could hear his thundering heartbeat echoing in the space between them, or perhaps that was her own.
“Aye,” she said softly, “that’s a yes, then.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and he slid her fully into his embrace. “That’s a forever yes.”