Bloom of Love, page 13
“I like this one, Carla!” he called over Christian’s shoulder. “Come. Let’s meet the rest of the clan.”
After that, it was an overwhelming mass of adults and small children who seemingly belonged to no one at all and ran willy-nilly, screaming and yelling and beating each other with foam swords.
In other words, he felt right at home. After a scrumptious meal of pot roast and potatoes – Christian’d had to run back to the truck to grab the bottle of wine he’d been so nervous, he’d left it behind – they got out Uno and began playing. It became quickly apparent that card games at the Grahame household was all about building alliances, and trash-talking your opponent.
“A red reverse,” Carla crowed, laying the card down atop the precarious pile. “Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?”
He pretended to study his hand for a moment, and then laid down a blue reverse. “Nothin’ much,” he said nonchalantly as the family broke into cheers. Defeated, Carla began pulling cards from the stack one at a time, muttering more than a few choice words under her breath with every draw.
After the game – which Christian had won, and had thoroughly enjoyed rubbing it in Carla’s face, as any good boyfriend would – they packed up and headed out into the warm evening air to calls of goodbye and invitations to come back again soon. He was in a daze.
Did that really go as well as he thought it did?
He sneaked a peek at Carla and she beamed up at him.
“They love you!” she half whispered, half laughed.
“They do!” he said in disbelief, still a little stunned by that stroke of pure luck.
More than that, though, he was even more stunned by an even better stroke of pure luck – somehow, this beautiful woman liked him. After an evening of watching Carla eat and laugh and talk, he couldn’t stand it anymore.
As soon as they got into his truck, he pulled her towards him, kissing her hard. He wanted her.
“Let’s go back to your place,” they both said, and then stopped.
Chapter 19
Carla
I’m not saying I’d like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely.
~Westley in The Princess Bride
Carla looked at Christian in surprise. Her place? They didn’t want to go to her place. She had yet to see Christian’s house and she really wanted to, plus her “house” was a converted attic.
No, it was much better if they went and saw his place.
“But, I haven’t seen your house yet,” she finally said.
“I haven’t seen yours,” he countered.
She stopped, biting her lip and staring at him. “My house isn’t very interesting.”
“Neither is mine.”
This really, really wasn’t going well.
She was still biting her lower lip, staring at him, when he groaned and turned away. “Please, don’t do that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Stare at me like that. With your lip and stuff.”
Automatically, she looked down to see what was wrong with her lips, but of course, she couldn’t see them. She flipped the visor down and looked in the small mirror. “What’s wrong with my lips?”
Hmmm…
Actually, she should probably apply another coat of lipstick. She rummaged around in her purse, searching for it.
“Nothing. It’s just…”
She touched up her lipstick, and he grew silent again. She finished, studied herself in the mirror, decided this was as good as it was going to get, put her lipstick back into her purse, and looked at him expectantly.
“It’s just what?” she prompted him when he didn’t say anything. He looked like he was in pain. “What’s wrong?”
“Carla, you could kill a grown man off,” he growled.
“I…what?!” She would never hurt a man in her life! Why would he say something like that?
He closed his eyes and let his head drop back onto the headrest, beating against it softly. Carla was wondering if he was having a seizure or something when her mom popped her head out the front door. “Everything okay?” she called.
Oh yeah. They were still parked on the street in front of her parents’ house.
They should probably go somewhere. Anywhere.
She gave her mom a thumbs up and a jaunty smile, and then turned to Christian. “We gotta go, even if it’s just to the park. My mom’ll be over in a minute if we keep sitting here, and I really don’t want to tell her that we’re debating about where to go have sex.”
He nodded, still looking like he was in pain, and pulled out into the street. They headed to the park and he pulled into a nice sunny spot, letting the warmth of the sun heat the cab.
She realized that soon, it’d be winter. There was something she didn’t want to think too much about. She hated winter – everything dead and frozen, no flowers in bloom except poinsettias and honestly, those shouldn’t even be counted as flowers.
She decided to focus on her boyfriend’s reticence to showing her his place instead.
“Why don’t you want me to see your place?” she asked softly, putting her hand on his arm and stroking it.
“I could ask you the same thing!” he countered.
Ugh.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she finally blurted out when the tension in the cab reached epic proportions and she couldn’t stand it anymore. He turned and cocked an eyebrow at her, and she laughed. “Oh Lordy, I sound like I’m in sixth grade,” she said with a groan, waving her hand in the air as if to wipe the words away. “I do not think those words mean what you think they mean,” she said in a terrible thick Spanish accent, quoting one of her all-time favorite lines from The Princess Bride.
“Okay, but really,” she said finally. “I’ll show you my place if you show me yours.”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, staring at her, his face a blank mask of nothingness, and then after an eternity – or two – nodded.
“You first,” he said. She glared at him. He shrugged unrepentantly. “You know the rule – women first.” He put the truck into reverse and then stopped in the middle of the street. “Where is your house?”
“Let’s just go to the flower shop.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her again.
“Just go. I promise, I’ll show you everything.”
Maybe if she stripped when they got up to the attic, he’d be too sidetracked to realize that she lived in quarters better suited for a 20-year-old bachelor. A poor 20-year-old bachelor.
The drive over was dead silent, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife. She didn’t know why he was so worried – it wasn’t like he lived in the kind of square footage only a mouse would find luxurious. She trailed him miserably from the truck to the front door and then, left with no other choice, she unlocked it, her hands visibly shaking.
Without looking back, she started up the stairs.
Only her parents knew where she lived. Her siblings had never asked, and everyone else was fine with her simply saying, “Meet you at the shop!” when they wanted to get together for something.
No one seemed to question the fact that the florist in town was always at work. Maybe Sawyerites thought she was a workaholic who never left her business to go home.
She’d heard of people sleeping on couches at work so they could get up and get more done before actually going home for the night. That’s probably what everyone thought she did.
There was a theory she could get behind. She wasn’t much for lying, but in this case, she wasn’t so sure she’d set a person straight if that’s what they believed. It was a sight better to be thought of as a workaholic instead of what she really was: Stuffed into living quarters too tiny to hardly turn around in.
Even as she ducked through the open doorway to her attic room, her breath was getting choppy. Why did she care so much about where she lived? Why did it embarrass her so much?
Were there even answers to these questions?
All she knew was, in that moment, she would’ve chosen to strip down naked and run down the streets of Sawyer rather than show Christian her place.
Naked and jogging down Main Street would’ve made her feel less exposed.
“Welcome to my abode,” she said sarcastically, sweeping her arm to indicate the tight quarters, and rapped her knuckles against a figurine, knocking it to the floor.
Of course.
It was the momma cat with her baby from the Roberts’ mansion, and her breath hitched just that much tighter with panic at the thought of breaking it. She still hadn’t gotten it into an antique shop to have it evaluated, and a chip off the momma’s ear would—
She bent over to snatch it off the ground just as Christian did, and they smacked heads together. Groaning, Carla rubbed her head, grabbed at the figurine again, studied it for damage – none that she could see – and plopped it down onto an overstuffed shelf she kept promising herself she’d clean off one day.
“Well, are you happy?” she snapped, and then groaned again. Christian’s back went ramrod straight at her tone, and he looked pissed. “I’m sorry. I just…I’m not proud of this place, is all.”
“Why?” Bella had made it out of her hiding place and was wrapping her way around their legs, meowing and begging for attention. They both ignored her.
“Why?!” she snapped back. “Are you…look at it! It’s tiny. No shower. No washer and dryer. I still have to do my laundry at my parents’ house, and take a shower there too. It’s embarrassing.”
“You’re embarrassed?” His face was unreadable.
“Well, yeah…? I guess. I just…what kind of a 37 year old am I, anyway? I’m a successful businesswoman. I should at least own my own shower, dammit.”
She felt tears welling up in her eyes and was astonished. Why was she being so emotional about this? She wasn’t even sure.
All she knew was, she hated being this exposed. She was a very outgoing, loving person, but there were parts to her life that she didn’t share.
This was definitely one of those parts.
“If you’re a successful businesswoman,” he said slowly, “but you hate this place, then why live here?”
“Well, because I hate debt even more. Like, with a living, fiery passion, I hate it.”
They were standing too close – with only a few free square feet available, it shouldn’t be surprising, but still.
She couldn’t breathe.
She took one step over and then plopped down on the edge of her bed. There. If they were really dedicated to the cause, they might be able to fit a yardstick between their bodies. This would have to do. Bella jumped up onto the bed beside her, continuing to wrap herself around Carla, meowing incessantly.
“I’m almost done paying off my student loans for my bachelor’s degree,” she said dully, picking up Bella and settling her on her lap, “and then I want to start saving for a down payment for a house. It’s not sexy. It’s not the cool-kid thing, I know.”
She was staring at the floor, unable to meet his eyes.
“My parents taught us kids from a young age to never go into debt for anything, and then I did anyway, to go to college. I hate the debt. It’s just hanging over me, like an ax that can drop at any moment. Threatening me. Oh, how I wish I hadn’t taken it on. So stupid.
“I thought I had to get a business degree if I was going to run a business. Turns out, lots of people simply take online courses and learn what they need to as they go along. I waayyy overthought the situation, and ended up with this debt. This is one of the reasons that I love what you’re doing with your sister. Yesenia deserves to start her career without student debt strangling her every moment of the day.”
She was drained, all of the fight gone out of her. She wanted to curl up on the bed and go to sleep; let the world and all of its problems fade away. Bella had settled into a ball on her lap, purring her contentment with the world.
At least someone was happy. Carla sure wasn’t. She was damn exhausted.
Slowly, Christian nodded, his face still inscrutable, and then held out his hand for hers. She cocked an eyebrow at him, but complied, setting a grumpy Bella down on the floor, clasped his hand, and let him pull her to her feet.
Without a word, he headed back towards the open doorway.
Still holding her hand by awkwardly hitching it up behind his back, he headed down the stairs, her right on his heels, until suddenly, he seemed to be hit by a sneezing attack. He leaned against the wall of the stairwell as sneeze after sneeze overtook his body. Finally, he straightened up, and, never letting his grip on her hand slacken, started back down the steep stairs again as if nothing had happened.
“Christian!” she said, a little annoyed now. “Are you okay? That was a hell of a lot of sneezing you just did. Are you getting sick? Maybe we need to go buy you some orange juice or something.”
He didn’t answer.
Equal parts curious and annoyed, she managed to lock the front door to Happy Petals one-handed. He only let go of her hand after he helped her into the truck, but hurried over to his side and retook possession as soon as he slid inside.
She was his lifeline, and she didn’t have a damn clue of why.
Her imagination, usually so eager to fill in the blanks, was giving her a shrug of the shoulders this time. No crazy theory that she’d disavow later on had ever popped into her mind.
She had nothing.
She wasn’t sure she liked that state of affairs.
They were driving out into the countryside now, and Carla figured that she could at least guess where they were going – the Miller farm. Stetson, the youngest Miller brother, owned it now with his darlin’ wife and son.
He also was, of course, Christian’s boss.
Christian took another right and with that, Carla knew for sure that they were heading to the Miller farm. There was nowhere else to go after this point except the farm.
And this was a big deal because…?
She turned and studied Christian’s inscrutable face. If she lived to be 100, she’d never understand men.
Chapter 20
Christian
True, but that’s hardly common knowledge, now is it?
~Westley in The Princess Bride
He was going to show Carla his piece-of-shit single-wide, and then they could talk about crappy housing. Hers was crowded and small, sure, but it was also cute. Everything Carla touched was cute.
His single-wide was not cute. It was many things, but “cute” was not on that list.
He couldn’t look at Carla, even as he clung desperately to her hand. What if he looked at her, and he broke, and he turned around and headed back to town? He’d promised her that he’d show her his, if she’d show him hers. He couldn’t break his promise.
But showing his piece-of-shit single-wide to her was…
Terrifying.
Yeah. That.
Because there was no way she’d want to date him after this. Of course, there was no way she’d want to date him if he broke his word, either.
He felt a sheen of cold sweat cover his body.
The truck bumped its way into its usual parking spot in front of the single-wide, through the ruts and holes, and came to a stop. They both sat and looked at the trailer for a moment, its dull, worn metal siding glinting in the rays of the evening sun.
Somehow, it looked even worse than normal – more dilapidated. More rundown. More shitty.
Or maybe it was because he was seeing it through her eyes: The cobwebs everywhere. The torn screen on the front window that he’d “repaired” with duct tape. A dirt yard.
Oh Lordy, the dirt yard. When he’d moved in, there hadn’t been a yard, and he sure as hell hadn’t had the time to put one in himself.
He hated it – on windy days, it meant there was a fine layer of dirt covering everything – but he didn’t have the time to do anything about it. Being Stetson’s foreman was more than a full-time job. Between that and spending time with his family, there wasn’t much leftover for niceties like a green lawn. He’d kept meaning to, but…
The screen door – which had never latched properly – creaked in the wind, slowly banging open and closed as the shifting winds pushed it around.
Carla still hadn’t said a word.
Christian was pretty sure he was going to puke.
Yanking his hand out of hers, he threw open the driver’s door, slamming it shut behind him. He’d stayed calm on the way over by holding Carla’s hand, but now that he was here and she wasn’t saying anything, just passing a quiet judgment on him, he couldn’t bear to sit next to her anymore.
Why had he agreed to her stupid idea anyway? At least if Carla had broken up with him because he’d gone back on his word, he would’ve kept his pride. She never would’ve known this was where he lived.
Now she was going to break up with him and he had no pride left.
He cursed a blue streak, really letting rip, and was just getting to his all-time favorite Spanish cuss words when Marshmallow, his Great Pyrenees, came trotting over. His tail was wagging gently as he sat in the dirt next to him, waiting for his pettings. He was a regal dog that liked to pretend that he didn’t need pettings, but that was bullshit. As soon as Christian would stop petting him, Marshmallow would instantly nudge his hand, reminding him that he wasn’t done being petted yet.
Marshmallow’s viewpoint on “enough” was a little sketch.
Christian let out a long sigh as he stroked his hand through Marshmallow’s thick fur. Carla was still hiding in the truck – he hadn’t looked back at her because he was afraid he’d lose his shit if he laid eyes on her traitorous face – but the truck behind him had been as silent as a graveyard at midnight. No squeak of the door opening. No slam of the door shutting.
Traitorous was right. Damn her soul to perdition and back. She’d forced him to open up like this, and then did just what he thought she’d do all along – finally figure out that she was too damn good for him. Why couldn’t she just have believed him when he told her that? Why did she insist on seeing proof before stomping his heart into the ground?
