Worth The Effort (The Worth Series Book 4: A Copper Country Romance) (31 page)

He took another step, “Deni, you have no—” She held the hand up again, and he stopped.

“But I’m not Molly. My…
disorder
is mild, and it’s temporary.”

“I know that. I get that.”

She nodded, knowing that he did on an intellectual level. But she also knew that the emotional level was a whole different ball game.

“And you need to come to terms with the fact that you can’t fix me.
I
can’t fix me. And, quite frankly, the ten pounds and lost winter aside, I don’t really want to be fixed—I like how I am.”

His face gentled and his voice was soft when he said, “So do I.”

“But what I want—no, what I
need
—is someone who is going to fight for me—for us. I need someone who will hold my hand when it needs holding and who will leave me alone when I need that. Someone who will carry me to the shower and make me get in when I don’t want to.” His eyes narrowed at that. “And who will wait for me to get over the humps that need to be gotten over. And I’m not just talking about the sad humps. I’m talking about all the stuff that life throws you on any given day.”

“I…I…” He took a step closer.

Say you can do that. Please, please, say you can do that
. Some part of her was desperately holding out hope that this conversation was going have a different outcome than she’d calculated.

He didn’t take another step.
 

Please, please, please. Be the guy I know you can be.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Deni,” he said, regret in his voice.

She wasn’t mad, and she couldn’t blame him for being honest when she’d been so honest with him. In a way, he’d saved them the couple of years, probably, before they would have realized it wasn’t going to work.

And perhaps a whole lot of heartbreak, although she wasn’t sure heartbreak a few years down the road would be any less painful than it was now.

“Thank you for being honest,” she said, then rose from the table. She’d have to walk past him, smell that pine-tree scent, and she wasn’t sure she could bear it, so she waited for him to leave first.

“I want to, Deni. God, how I want to. But I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Only you can decide that, Sawyer. I believe you could, and I could fight for that—fight for you to realize it.” She sighed, wishing she’d just sucked it up and walked past him. “But I’m tired, and I don’t want to have to fight for love.” She took a deep breath and walked past him. Screw his lovely, outdoorsy scent. And even though she knew it probably wasn’t true, but only how she felt right now, she said as she passed, “And, quite frankly, I’m not sure you’re worth fighting for.”

Chapter Twenty Nine

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

~ Mark Twain

“H
e probably is, you know,” Alison said at their Friday session. “Worth fighting for. He’s one of the good guys. But you were wise to know you didn’t want to take that on.”

“Hmmm. I’m not feeling real wise right about now.”

Alison shrugged. “Wisdom and people in love don’t always go hand in hand.”

“I’m finding that out.”

“Still, though…pretty good parting line,” Alison said.

Deni smiled. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

“And how has the rest of the week gone?”

Deni shrugged. “Well, I haven’t barricaded myself in my bedroom with nothing but carbs and dirty bedding.”

“So, you’ve got that going for you,” Alison teased, making Deni smile.

She shrugged. “It’s been okay. Andy sent an email out on Tuesday that Sawyer would be working the afternoons for the foreseeable future until he had some personal projects cleaned up. I’m assuming that meant making the house in Laurium sellable.”

“And after that? Back full time?”

“The email didn’t say. So, I see him come in for the afternoons. I usually leave before he does. His office is in the back of the building. We really don’t even see each other. His dog comes and takes a nap in my cube but always goes back to him when I leave.” Still, it had been a small balm to her heartache to have Lucy literally underfoot.

“And the others in the office?”

“Charlie could tell something was up. And he’s offered to take me out for a beer so I can cry on his shoulder, but I haven’t taken him up on it. Yet.” She didn’t want to take advantage of Charlie, but she might just need that shoulder soon. “I think everyone else in the office just thought we’d been flirting around, a couple of dates, and it didn’t work out—no big deal. I don’t think they understood that…”

“You’d fallen in love?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and for the first time since talking with Sawyer on Monday, Deni started to cry. She didn’t need to hold out for Charlie’s shoulder after all.

Alison waited patiently while Deni cried it out. Not big, gasping sobs, just quiet tears that streamed down her face until Alison handed her a box of tissues.

They sat like that, not saying a word, until what was surely well after Deni’s time was up. Finally, she cleared her throat, wiped the last of her tears away, and said, “I’ll be okay.”

Alison nodded. “Yes,
I
know you will be. I’m glad you do, too.”

“It just sucks right now, you know?”

“I know. It’s going to suck for a long time. And then it won’t.”

“Promise?”

Alison smiled. “No.”

Deni laughed, and a last half-sob caught as a hiccup.
 

“But I
think
so, I really do,” Alison added. “And I truly believe that if two people are supposed to be together, they find their way back to each other.”

“And if they’re not? Supposed to be together?”

Alison shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I told you once that I sucked at guy stuff on a personal level, right?”

Deni laughed again.
 

They went through the regular assessment questions. When it came time for an “assignment,” Alison waved it away.
 

“I think you’ve been well out of your comfort zone enough for a while. Be gentle with yourself this next week. And call if you need me.”

S
he couldn’t go back to the office. She just couldn’t see Sawyer after crying about him for over an hour. She pulled out her phone and called Sue.

“Sue, I know it’s last minute, but I’m going to take the afternoon off as vacation time.”

“Oh, tell me you had a three-martini lunch and are in no shape to come back to the office. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Deni laughed, her throat aching from the crying jag. “Nope, though that sounds tempting. Maybe I’ll have a three-martini Friday afternoon.”

“Okay, Deni, you enjoy it. We’ll see you Monday.”

“Thanks, Sue.”

She thought about calling Charlie and having him meet her for lunch somewhere, but decided against it, preferring to just go home.

When she pulled onto her street, she saw Sawyer’s truck parked in front of her house. She couldn’t imagine what he was doing there; he knew she spent her lunch hour on Fridays at Alison’s. There was no way he could know she wasn’t at the office.

Why would he be at her house when he thought she was at the office? Damn. She should have listened to Twain and changed the hiding place of her spare key.

She didn’t bother with the garage, just pulled to the curb behind his truck. She peeked inside looking for Lucy, thinking that if perhaps Sawyer was just running in to her house for a moment—like, maybe he remembered something he’d left at her place?—he’d leave Lucy in the truck. No Lucy.

Uncertainty filled her as she made her way down the steps. She opened the door, and as she stepped into the foyer, Lucy bounded around the corner from the kitchen to greet her. She knelt down to pet the dog, and that was when she saw Sawyer. Or, more accurately, Sawyer’s legs. He was balanced on some kind of portable scaffolding three quarters of the way up her stairs.

She stayed kneeling by Lucy, watching Sawyer’s jeans until he slowly crouched and looked at her. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Um…isn’t that
my
line?”
 

She rose from her knees, took off her coat, hung it up, and walked past the entryway and fully into the foyer, where she could see the entire staircase. “What are you…” The words trailed off as she took in the display Sawyer was completing.

It was her sketches, framed and staggered up the tall wall of the staircase—just as she had imagined them. Except not.

“Those frames? They’re…” She stood on the second step, able to get up close to one of the sketches at the bottom. “Are those…?” She looked up at him. He’d moved from a squat to sitting on the base of the scaffolding, his legs hanging over the side. “No. Really?”
 

He rubbed his hands up and down his denim-clad thighs. “Do you like them? ’Cause I can take them down if you don’t. I didn’t cut the sketches. They can easily come out.”

“I love it. I love them.” Her sketches, the ones she’d done of unique views of interesting bits of architecture, had been placed in glass frames that were hollow on the sides and filled with stones. Hundreds of beautiful stones. They were subtle and didn’t overpower the sketches. Instead, they added just a touch of warmth and texture, offsetting her black and white drawings all the more.

“I knew you didn’t come home for lunch on Fridays. I wanted to have it all done and be gone by the time you got home. Although it’s nice to see that you like them.”

She just nodded, taking another step up and looking at the designs he’d created with the stones, different on each frame. “You must have used that whole container.”

He chuckled. “Yep. In fact, I ran out on the last one. The one I want to put right there.” He pointed to a spot high on the wall, almost to the wall of the landing. “I thought the stained glass would really play off the glass of the frames.” Then he held up the drawing that was to go in that coveted spot. It was the one she’d done of her imagined hermit’s hut.

A lump rose in her throat and she had to wait a moment before she could say “This is amazing, Sawyer. Thank you.”

He swung down from the scaffolding, landing on the stair above her. He took two steps down so that their eyes were level. “You’re welcome. I thought a lot about what I could do. Take you to back to the glass house. Something at Tootie’s. Find a miniature of the stained-glass canopy. But then I thought of this. It was a lot simpler than I wanted, but I thought you’d appreciate it just as much.”

“I don’t understand. Why were you trying to think of things to do for me?”

He shrugged and looked away, embarrassed. “You know, some kind of grand gesture. Something that would get your attention so you’d…I don’t know…stick around long enough to hear me out.”

“Grand gesture?”

“Yeah, I know. Stupid, right? Because then I thought, ‘Deni’s not the grand-gesture kind of girl,’ and it all seemed hokey.”

She didn’t know whether to be insulted or proud. “Oh, I don’t know. I think every girl appreciates a grand gesture…” She almost finished with “from the man they love,” but didn’t. The frames, and the thoughtfulness—and practicality—of them touched her. Deeply. But that didn’t negate anything she’d said to him on Monday.

“Yes, but Deni, while you might
appreciate
a grand gesture, you don’t
need
one. There’s a difference. And that’s one of the many reasons why I love you.”

“You do? Love me?”

“Yes, Deni. I love you.”

God, she wanted to wrap her arms around him, tell him she loved him back, and ride off into the sunset. But she didn’t.

“Here’s the thing,” he said before she could. “I was happy to use up the stones on these frames. And if you want more, I would love to go stone hunting with you next summer.”

She started to break in, but he gently put a finger on her mouth. His eyes dropped there for a moment before returning his intense gaze to hers. “But I won’t be collecting anymore. At least not alone. Or, at least, not in the semi-conscious trance I’d be in before.” His finger moved from her mouth, his hand cupping her face. “No more long walks that I don’t remember. If I’m hurting, I’ll hurt. I won’t hide anymore.”

“Sawyer, what exactly are you saying?” she whispered. She laid her hands on his chest. His other hand moved to her face, gently cradling it as he moved even closer.

“I’m saying you were right. I’m not worth fighting for. At least not in the state I’ve lived in the past ten years.
 

“But, Deni,
you’re
worth fighting for.
We’re
worth fighting for. And I think I can be the kind of man that
is
worth fighting for. And if you give me the chance, I won’t let you down again.”

Her mind buzzed, but it wasn’t the fog that enveloped her. It was hope. And love.

“I love you,” she said, and he kissed her lips tenderly, just the tiniest whisper of a touch.

“I love you, too, Deni. And I’m not saying you might not have to kick me in the ass from time to time and let me know what you need from me—even if it’s to leave you alone…”