Loved Either Way, page 20
With only his hands, of course.
Nonetheless, that boy had wrongly assumed that the moments the two of them shared meant more than it actually did and behaved toward her accordingly. Until it got to be too much, and Delaney had to let him know exactly that, too. In the end, she came out of that experience careful about who and how she shared herself—but especially her body.
It changed things.
It changed people.
Delaney would be a liar if that suggestive, knowing glint in Lucas’ eye didn’t call to something twisting viscerally inside her gut. In a good way.
For a moment, the two of them had seemed to forget that they weren’t back in the cottage deep in the quiet stillness of Birch Ridge. The man, who had finally finished tallying their total on the cash register, cleared his throat as a way to bring the two back to earth.
“Should I add a pack of these into the mix for good measure?” the man asked, producing a moderate-sized box of condoms from beneath the cash.
It made sense to keep items like that—probably a high theft item—where they couldn’t be easily seen or found.
Delaney could not meet the man’s eyes, no matter how hard she tried. Instead, she tossed the question to Lucas without saying a word, but by shifting her entire body toward him as if to ask, “Yes, should we?”
Lucas stepped forward to pay, giving the pack of condoms the man held a shake of his head to refuse the offer, and pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his dark-wash jeans with a cocky grin. “Let’s get this show on the road, eh?”
Delaney wished she could get the redness out of her cheeks, but no such luck. Her blush held strong through the time it took Lucas to pull out his debit card and stick it into the machine.
Behind the cash, once he got the paid confirmation on the debit machine, the man only replied, “Happy to do business, sir.”
All in all, their items fit between four bags with Delaney taking the one with more fragile items and the lightweight pack of toilet paper on the floor, and Lucas handling the other three bags and the box of beer between his two available hands.
He gestured, with dangling bags, for Delaney to head out of the store first, and so she led the way. Shoving the door open by turning her back to get the job done hands free, she found Lucas had stopped a couple of steps away at a rack he must have missed on the way in.
He stared, quietly subdued, at the sight of the newspaper rack for the Telegraph Journal and the other community papers. Tomorrow, the Telegraph, in particular, should be running the obituary Lucas had written for his brother.
In the end, he hadn’t needed very much of her help penning out the words on an old legal pad of paper with a pencil he’d sharpened using a kitchen knife. She didn’t ask to read it because he hadn’t offered, but she sat quietly beside him as he typed it out on his phone in the loft upstairs until he was satisfied with his work. Then, he asked her to read it before he plugged in the booster for the phones to send the obituary out.
Other than a passing moment before they left when she asked about a particular photo of an older Jacob—clearly adult age—and Lucas that she’d noticed on the sitting room wall, he hadn’t willingly brought his brother into their conversation. Delaney didn’t want to push him. Lucas should be allowed to grieve, even if that was silently, however he needed to.
No exceptions.
She’d simply agreed to be here while he did it.
That was all he asked of her.
His lengthy pause at the newspaper rack continued long enough for Lucas to ask over his shoulder, “You get the new edition for the Telegraph every day it runs?”
“By noon, at the latest. If the weather’s bad,” the man tacked on like that counted for something.
“Good to know,” Lucas murmured.
At that, he nodded once more to Delaney who continued holding the first interior door for Lucas to pass. He held the second for her.
*
Set on top of a small hill off the main road, the store had a good view of the logging trucks blowing past on their way to the sawmill upriver. Delaney helped Lucas to load their bags, and other items, into the back of the truck where he’d parked it alongside the hill after filling up with gas.
“At least nothing’s gonna melt sitting on the back,” Delaney muttered, still bitter about the cold and not afraid to complain.
Lucas didn’t seem to mind.
Much.
“It’s not that bad today, come on. There’s snowshoes in the cellar, by the way. We could get out on the trails—take a walk.”
That didn’t sound too bad, actually.
“Can we do something else today?” she asked.
Lucas leaned against the side of the truck and arched a brow. “Like what?”
“The main road is bare.” Which really meant that a driver had a better view of the asphalt covered in black ice. Lucas had managed the truck well, so far. What was thirty more kilometers? “How would you feel about taking the truck on a little drive?”
His lips split with a smile. “How little?”
“The Flats?”
She didn’t explain why she wanted to go to the quaint farming community just outside of the valley on the other side of Montgomery Mountain, but if he asked, then she would tell him on the drive. Delaney couldn’t justify being this close to her best friend’s home, and not making some kind of effort to visit Gracen.
Her pregnant, soon-to-be married best friend.
Didn’t they have things to catch up on?
Delaney couldn’t pass the opportunity up. Especially if she didn’t have to show her face in town where her family still lived and attended their long-time church, practicing their faith to the same smothering letter that had once sent her running away. Lucas being a part of her process of returning home, in a way, just happened to be a bonus.
Besides, the food would stay cold on the back of the truck, and hadn’t Lucas earned something—a drive and the chance to meet new, friendly people—to keep his mind off the sadness in his heart?
She thought so.
“That’s twenty minutes or more from here,” he said. “What’s there for you, family or something?”
Close.
“The only family I care to know,” she returned.
The best family was the one a person chose, after all.
No hesitation, Lucas nodded at that. “All right, sweets, then let’s go.”
Chapter 21
“Did you think we wouldn’t need the condoms?” Delaney asked.
The question that had been plaguing her mind from the moment the Arthurette store faded into the background in the passenger mirror.
Next to her in the truck, Lucas cleared his throat. “Sorry, you just … came right out with that question now?”
Perhaps it wasn’t the right time.
But still …
“It’s the next driveway—with the wooden bin and white painted numbers,” she informed. “But back to the condoms.”
Lucas chuckled. “Right, back to that.”
“Well, you told him to put it back. I’m still trying to figure out why.”
“I’m not going to assume we’re sleeping together until you say we are, sweetheart,” Lucas said, matter of factly.
“Were your fingers being inside of me this morning not enough of a clue?” Delaney returned.
The pleased, dirty smirk he leveled on her as they approached her friend’s driveway did the best, and worst, things to Delaney’s insides.
Goddamn this man.
“Well?” she squeaked in question. “I just wondered …”
“We can stop in again on the way back. The store stays open until nine Monday through to Sunday.”
Huh.
Delaney turned to stare out the passenger window instead of at Lucas as the truck slowed on the quiet road. “Good to know.”
“Yep. Is this the pregnant one?” Lucas asked, navigating the rumbling Chevy into the narrow mouth of a familiar driveway. At the crest of the gully situated along fields the farmer’s used for wheat, corn, or cows depending on the year.
Gracen sent pictures to Delaney of the cows that greeted her one morning—her second on the property.
Delaney laughed, not knowing how else to respond to Lucas’ question at first.
“What?” he asked. “Jesus, they must get a lot of wind, huh?”
Nestled deep in the gully behind a wall of tall birch trees sat her best friend’s two-storey farmhouse directly across from a tall gray barn. Sitting between both was the garage her friend’s fiancé had converted into a wood shop while Gracen had a small salon built onto the house shortly after the fire that devastated their beloved Haus.
“First,” Delaney said, “don’t call her the pregnant one.”
She couldn’t see that flying over well with Gracen. A woman was more than whether she currently carried a child in her womb, right?
Lucas rolled his eyes and scoffed behind the wheel. “I would not.”
“Well, you just—”
“I only asked because I meant to follow it up with whether or not it would be appropriate for me to congratulate her,” he filled in, matter of fact.
Enough that Delaney’s jaws snapped to keep from saying another thing to chastise him. She should have known better. Lucas proved often, and consistently, that he considered the people around him in ways others might overlook. Not being able to relate to someone else didn’t seem like an excuse he used not to be kind.
“She isn’t far along, right? That photo I saw—what are those called?”
“Sonograms?”
Lucas made a noise under his breath as the truck slowly rolled down the winding drive with snowbanks piled high on either side. “Whew, would not have thought that was the word.”
She laughed. “Are babies out of your realm?”
Delaney couldn’t imagine Lucas saying yes to that question, honestly. He seemed like exactly the type to make a good, devoted father. If he cared deeply about people he might as well consider strangers, what kind of love would he show to a child that belonged to him?
Then again, being a good man didn’t necessarily mean that man also wanted children.
He considered that question before answering. “Experience-wise, yes. That’s a bit out there for me.”
Fair enough.
But everybody could learn.
Delaney tried to do the math in her head, but couldn’t come up with a firm, exact week number for her friend’s pregnancy. Although, she was sure Gracen would know the second Delaney got the chance to clarify and ask. “If she’s past her first trimester, it’s barely. And no, Gracen doesn’t complain about the wind. I guess it kind of rolls off the crest of the gully, and the trees keep the house from getting the brunt.”
“Huh,” Lucas said under his breath.
Not that he differentiated the non-response to anything in particular.
Delaney grinned over at him. “Are you nervous?”
“What, why?”
His head swung her way, and those soul-deep eyes of his slammed into hers.
“I don’t know,” she said, suddenly more interested in pretending to pick at the French tips on her manicure. “I mean, I might be nervous if you asked me to randomly meet your parents, or something.”
Not two seconds after those words left her lips, Lucas pulled the Chevy into park behind Malachi’s truck parked next to Gracen’s new Four-Runner.
A recent purchase.
She wanted something bigger when the baby came, apparently.
“I assure you stopping in for coffee, or whatever, with your long-time friend is not comparable to meeting my parents, on any given day of the week,” Lucas tacked on at the end.
As if for good measure.
Delaney’s brow furrowed. “I know you’re not close, but do you think that given the current circumstances, things might change in the future?”
She chose every word carefully.
Lucas wasn’t as kind. “No. If you’re at all curious what a meeting with my parents would look like, it’d probably include my father finding something trivial about you to insult as a way to poke at me, and my mother would somehow play the perpetual victim, so she can feel better about all the shitty things she’s done. The casualty in every story which I can safely say would make everyone else the villain.”
Delaney blinked, unsure of how to respond.
Lucas shrugged, adding, “That is, if you could even get the two of them in the same room together. The divorce seemed to draw a firm line there. I think they’ve been face to face maybe twice. You know, once the ink dried.”
She tried to form words.
Even something sarcastic.
A joke, maybe.
Nope.
Delaney settled on a lame, “They sound … lovely.”
“Yeah, some people just suck the good right out of you, I guess.” Lucas laughed darkly. “Let me say, next week should be very interesting.”
“Why?”
Oh.
The second the question slipped from Delaney’s lips, she realized the glaring answer that she missed. She doubted, especially if they were the type of people who cared about appearances, that his parents would miss their youngest son’s celebration of life. Even if their oldest son had been the only one who made sure that memorial would even happen.
“Jacob’s memorial,” she filled in before Lucas did.
He smiled sadly as he turned the engine off and removed the keys from the ignition, but rolled his shoulders indifferently before reaching for the latch on the driver’s side door to shove it open. “Well, I’ll deal with that when I get there, huh?”
Delaney didn’t answer, but Lucas hadn’t bothered to wait for a response before slipping out of the truck, and closing the door behind himself. She couldn’t help but notice that he went with that when-or-if-it-happens outlook a lot. He put things off if they weren’t an immediate cause of concern. Who was she to judge the way he chose to deal with his issues?
Including his parents.
Who the hell was she to talk there at all?
So, Delaney didn’t.
Climbing out of the truck as well, she leaned over the bed of the truck on the passenger side to watch Lucas reposition the bags of groceries further away from the gas cans he’d secured to the far corner with rope. He worked in a sober silence. Even if he wasn’t nervous, as he’d claimed earlier, she couldn’t discount how he might be feeling otherwise.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I can understand why, or if, you would rather not do this today.”
“Sweets,” Lucas grunted, shifting the pack of toilet paper with the bags, “we’re already here, and if I didn’t want to be, we wouldn’t have come. Let’s go inside. My balls are freezing off.”
“Nice,” Delaney muttered as she rounded the front of the truck to meet him at the grill.
She found her way tucked under his arm, close to his side, the second she was within his reach. Lucas dropped a firm kiss that lingered on the top of Delaney’s head as they crossed the snow-packed drive to head up the stairs leading to the wrap-around porch and the front door of the farmhouse.
“Sometimes, you gotta say it how it is,” Lucas told her when she reached out to knock on the glass.
As it were, someone already waited, distorted by the frosted privacy glass designed with etched flowers and vines up the long panes, just behind the door. In fact, he opened the door just as Delaney told Lucas, “Gracen will like that part about you.”
“Gracen will like what, now?”
When it came to his woman, Malachi Anders never missed a click.
Delaney learned that lesson very soon after meeting the man, and thankfully, it was a quality she appreciated about him. She never had to worry about her best friend finding herself heartbroken and alone like she once did because there wasn’t a soul on this earth who loved Gracen the way Malachi did.
“Nothing,” Delaney teased, grinning.
Malachi smiled wide. “Hey, you. Long time, no see.”
“It’s not been that long.”
“Long enough,” Malachi returned.
She couldn’t really argue.
Then, his gaze shifted to the man standing just behind Delaney on the porch, quiet and still but an indisputable presence all the same. Lucas loomed tall at her back, his shadow spilling over her and onto Malachi. She could tell by her position that he had a few inches of height on the man who answered the door.
“And you are …?” Malachi questioned, trailing off but keeping his tone friendly.
“Lucas Dalton,” came her companion’s smooth reply. He leaned around her side to stick out a hand for Malachi to take and shake, which her friend’s fiancé did. “Nice to meet you. I almost felt like I could see this place before we got here. Delaney described it—”
“Delaney?”
The shouted call—clearly questioned—came from deep within the house.
Instantly, Malachi’s stare cut back to Delaney.
A knowing gleam found her there.
“Yeah, babe,” he called back over his shoulder.
The patter of footsteps from somewhere inside came like a herd of elephants getting closer to the front door.
“Delaney!”
Gracen’s background shrieking continued while Malachi only shook his head and opened the front door wider with a gesture inside.
“Come on it, get out of the cold—coffee, tea?”
“Coffee,” Lucas muttered, stepping in behind Delaney in the entry enclave, “would be perfect.”
Malachi smirked her way. “If I make you tea, she’s going to want you to have a splash of rum in it because she can’t. Your call.”
Delaney’s brow lifted high at the news. “Eh, I’ll try it.”
Anything was worth a shot once.
Right?
Once inside, Delaney understood the reason for the loud patter overhead when Gracen jogged down the stairs with loud footsteps. Never once had her ranting stopped, although, it only became clear when her feet finally touched the bottom level.
