Instructions for Love (23 page)
Read Instructions for Love Online
Authors: June Shaw
She listened a minute, didn’t hear sounds of him from the next bedroom, and eased out of bed. He had either come back so late that he was still sleeping beyond that shut door, or possibly he was still at the barn, tending to the youngster and her mother.
Either way, Erin determined while she luxuriated in a long shower, she would soon see him. And once she did, she would make certain he knew how she felt.
She wasn’t going to leave.
Happily putting on clothes, she considered that when she first saw him, she would quip and tell him of the silly names she had come up with. She’d also tease him about what they might have for breakfast—frog legs.
No, she decided, hearing movement in another room. She would dash up to him, wrap her arms around him and pour out her feelings.
The sounds came from the kitchen, making her quicken her approach. She couldn’t wait to see him again.
A different voice made her pause. It was Mom Bea’s voice, followed by her laughter.
Erin smiled. She’d enjoy seeing the older woman. The only problem was that her arrival at this time would cause Erin to put off saying what she yearned to tell Dane.
Well, she’d just have to wait. Maybe Mom Bea wouldn’t stay around too long. And at least Erin would get to be around Dane. He and Mom Bea were having coffee, she could tell by the aroma, tempting her to share a cup with them. Speeding her pace through the dining room, Erin felt a thrill hearing Dane’s deep hearty laugh.
“I’m glad it all happened, Mom,” he said.
“Erin believed everything, didn’t she?” Mom Bea said.
Erin pulled up to an abrupt halt, her heart in her throat. She could easily hear their words.
“She thinks everyone calls you Mom Bea,” Dane said, sending shockwaves through Erin.
“I’m glad,” said the woman playing the ruse with him. “I wouldn’t mind if she always called me that.”
“Maybe she will,” he said, and they both cheerily laughed.
Anguish squeezed through Erin, followed by fury as she heard herself be the brunt of their joke. What in the world had they planned? What had they done to her?
They spoke lower, and she quieted the harsh tones in her own head to listen.
“I always thought of Tilly as amusing and pleasant,” Dane said, “but I had no idea she could be so creative.”
His mother chuckled. “And me. Tilly was great, but don’t forget. She wrote her feelings about Erin, but I helped her come up with those instructions for each day.”
Erin’s heart pounded in her chest, not slowing its thrust when Dane spoke. “You two were quite a pair.”
“We were.” Mom Bea quieted, her next words softened. “I only wish we could’ve been around each other much longer.”
“Then no telling what you could have come up with.”
“That’s true,” his mom said, making Erin ponder what possible worse hoax they could have devised. “And Erin still believes that Tilly and Cliff owned this whole plantation?”
An arrow of pain jabbed Erin’s heart. Even her devoted aunt had lied to her—about everything?
“I told her the truth,” Dane said in the kitchen. “I said this place was mine, and Tilly had been staying in the cottage. But for some reason, she didn’t believe me.”
Humility hung its cloak inside Erin. She lowered her head, regretting that she hadn’t heeded at least that one truth he’d told her. Tilly hadn’t owned much in the past and obviously hadn’t even until the day she died, except the love of the man she’d found—if even that was the truth. And Dane Cancienne, chuckling at the table on the other side of the wall, possessed everything, maybe even the whole town.
“So we told her what to do through today,” his mother said. “After that, it’s all up to you.”
She bid him goodbye, exchanging a few words with him while their footsteps moved away. The back screen door slammed. Dane’s steps returned to the kitchen.
Erin dashed in, throwing her hands up. She glared at him with his eyes wide on the opposite side of the table. “What were the three of you planning, a new reality TV show, with me as the victim?” She craned her neck toward the ceiling. “Did you plant cameras to film all my stupidity?”
“Erin, how much did you hear?”
“Enough to make me sick to the stomach. Enough to make me feel like an idiot for ever believing I could truly mean something to someone. Enough…” She cast her gaze to the floor, the upheaval in her chest slowing, the hurt inside her building. How could she have been ready to give up everything she’d held onto and take a chance…
She peered at Dane, the vision of him blurring from the moist heat coating her eyes. Her tone softened. “Do you know that I was ready to ask you to marry me and have children with me?” She shook her head, the pain too great. She turned away, her words trailing over her shoulder. “I’ll get my things and get out of your house. I need to go back and find out if I can regain anything I’ve let go.”
She strode through the office, his office that held his furnishings, just like every other space in his house. Erin reassured herself that at least back at her place in New York, she knew what she had, even if nothing about it was perfect.
In the master bedroom, she yanked her dress out of his closet. She tossed it, her aunt’s pages, and her few other items back into her suitcase and snapped it shut. Grateful not to hear Dane or see him again, she tried without success to hold her head high while she stalked through the dining room he’d once shared with his wife.
Erin paused to glance up at the stained-glass window, where sunlight glittered through bits of the pink roses.
Biting back the ball of pain throbbing in her throat, she opened the door and went out, pulling it shut behind her. She rushed down the steps.
“You forgot something.” Dane stood outside the same door she’d just come through. Without moving, he eyed her near her car.
“Ship it to me,” she said, “and I’ll repay you.” With a second thought, she shook her head and gave him a sad grin. “No, you can afford the postage much better than I can.” She yanked her car door open.
“Erin, it’s the dove.” Dane disappeared inside the house before she could respond.
Maybe even the dove wasn’t real, she considered, although she had seen it in the floral spray on her aunt’s grave when Mom Bea—his mother—yanked it from the fragrant lilies to hand it to Erin.
The dove would be a physical reminder, Erin decided, stomping back up the stairs. She probably wouldn’t want to see anything that reminded her of experiences in this place, but maybe after some time, she’d be glad to have tangible proof of her aunt’s memory. For a moment she wondered why she hadn’t noticed the dove when she’d gathered her things, deciding anger had kept her from seeing much.
She tramped through the house, grateful not to see Dane. Erin reached the master bedroom, the room that had been his all along, angrily muttering as she shoved the door open from the foyer and noticed a sweet fragrance.
The white silk dove stood on its wire in a vase on the mantle. Surrounding its vase were many others, all filled with roses of every imaginable color.
Their scents and shades flooded Erin with pleasure, making her almost miss hearing the click of a doorknob. The door opened from the next bedroom.
Dane stepped through it. “I went out back and cut them for you,” he said, “when I got home from the barn during the night.”
Erin stared at the flowers, amazement welling up inside. “Where have they all been?”
“I left them on the porch out back until I could sneak them in here. I just ran back and gathered them.” His steps toward her made the loose floorboard squeak.
She grinned at the floor, his boots coming closer. “But all the deception,” she protested.
He stopped in front of her, making her eyes rise to meet his. “It seems your aunt and my mother played matchmaker. My mother just explained that both of them thought we belonged together. They believed that if they could keep you here a few days, we would also make that discovery.” His smile reached his eyes. “And you have a child to help name.”
His honey-colored eyes held such intensity that Erin felt herself being drawn into them, even while she felt her body being drawn into his strong arms.
“This is
your
bedroom, your home,” she said.
“Yes. And I want you to share it with me. Forever.”
“Dane…” Words couldn’t fit all the emotions she felt. Without trying to speak them, she traced her finger down the plane of his cheek, surprised to find it damp.
His eyelids had shut, but he opened them, his lashes darker with moisture. “I lost a person I cherished. Don’t let me lose another one now. Erin, I adore you…” His last words were smothered on her lips.
She tightened her grip on the man she cherished, and he held her close, making her know that in his embrace, she had finally found home.
The End
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