Now he glanced down at the three sets of building plans. “Which way are you leaning?” he asked in an effort to keep the conversation going.

“You sure you don’t need me to-”

“Don’t worry about it.” He waved away her question. “Tell me about your house plans.”

“I haven’t decided yet.” She reflexively glanced down at the three drawings on the table.

Mitch swiveled the pages to face him, finding the contrast among the three designs fascinating. It was as if completely different people had picked them out.

The first was an ultramodern contemporary, plenty of glass and sharp angles, long rooms, with sleek storage systems and display cases for art. The second was attractive, but practical. Two stories, it had three bedrooms on the top floor, a nice-sized ensuite in the master bedroom and a small balcony off the bedroom that would overlook the lake. The kitchen and dining room were L-shaped, while the living room boasted a big stone fireplace. With the exception of the skylight in the entry hall, there wasn’t a lot to distinguish it from thousands of other practical houses in thousands of other residential neighborhoods around the state.

It was the third set of plans that had Mitch pondering. It was all arches and detail, softness and whimsy. It seemed to have a French provincial influence, and the demo pictures showed deep carpets, scrollwork on the wood and etching on the glass. The ceilings were high, with open beams, many of the walls were on forty-five degree angles, keeping the rooms from sitting square, while little wrought-iron balconies and bay windows gave the interior a wealth of nooks and crannies and the exterior complex detail.

He lifted one of the large sheets of blue line paper. “Did Emily pick this one?”

“Emily picked the contemporary. That one’s really a token plan. You know, included so we can have three distinct choices.”

“Did you pick it?”

“I did,” she acknowledged.

Now Mitch was even more curious. This plan was very unlike Jenny. Well, unlike the Jenny he thought he’d known for the past year.

“Why?” he asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, out of all the thousands of house plans in all the world, why choose this one as a top three pick?”

There was a definite note of defensiveness in Jenny’s tone as she responded. “I wanted to look at something completely different.”

“I like it,” he said.

“I find it impractical.” She pointed to the living room, the dining room and one of the bedrooms. “How could you possibly arrange furniture in there?”

“I guess you’d turn it on an angle. Or have something custom designed.” He pointed to an alcove in the kitchen. “You could put a half-octagonal breakfast nook in there. Or a window seat and a planter. There are a thousand things-”

“I don’t know why I even added it to the list.” Her lips compressed into a line, and she folded her hands primly in her lap.

He covered her hands with his own. “I’m not your mother, Jenny.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” She pulled herself free.

“It means, you’re allowed to like something, just because you like it. You don’t need an excuse, and it doesn’t always need to be functional, practical and utilitarian.”

“I’m not about to build an impractical house.”

“I would,” said Mitch, meaning it. He’d build whatever house struck his fancy. And he’d build it in the blink of an eye if Jenny wanted it.

He gave his head a shake, chasing away that ridiculous thought. Jenny’s taste was irrelevant when it came to his house.

“Those bay windows all add cost,” she told him. “They’ll be a pain to clean, and I can’t afford custom furniture.”

“You’ll have the insurance settlement to spend.”

She gave him a sharp glance. “You know what I mean.”

“What if you had an unlimited budget?”

“I don’t.”

“Play along with me for a second. If you had an unlimited budget?”

She mulishly set her jaw.

But he waited her out.

“Fine,” she capitulated, pointing to the French country plans. “If I had an unlimited budget, I’d add a big deck out back overlooking the lake, and a turret up front.” She moved her finger. “Right there. With a round room on the top floor that had window seating all round. I’d buy dozens of pillows and curtains with ruffles, in a floral pattern that looked like a country garden. It would have deep, cushy seats, and a thick green carpet.”

“Green?”

“Like grass. And everything would be soft.”

He took in her rosy cheeks, the pout of her mouth, the moss green of her eyes and the way her dark lashes slowly stroked with each blink. “Soft is nice.”

“This is ridiculous. I don’t know how you talked me into daydreaming.” She shook her head, moving back, appearing to physically distance herself from the whimsical house plans.

He continued to study her expression. As usual, his desire for her battled its way to the surface. But it was tempered this time, tempered by something warm, something soft and protective. His voice went husky. “It’s not ridiculous to have dreams.”

She twisted her head to look at him. “A person should stay away from dreams that have no hope of coming true.”

On impulse, he smoothed a stray lock of her hair back, tucking it behind one ear. “Those are the only kind worth having.”

She rubbed her cheek where his hand had touched it. “Really? So, what are your dreams, Mitch?”

It was impossible for him to answer. Because right then, he was toying with a dream that involved Jenny and forever.

He took a safe answer. “I want to play professional football.”

But she shook her head. “Come on, Mitch. That’s not a dream. That was already your reality. We’re playing a game. You have to come up with something you could never have in a million years.”

He searched his brain for an acceptable answer and ended up stalling. “I don’t know, Jenny. There aren’t a lot of things I can’t buy.”

“Something money can’t buy.”

“Happiness?”

“Sure.” She waited for him to elaborate.

This time, he tried to be honest. “I want the TCC to have a successful election that brings the membership together under a good leader.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lame.”

“You don’t want that?”

“Of course I want it. But that’s motherhood and apple pie. Who doesn’t want it? Plus, it’s not for you personally. Tell me something that’s for you.”

“I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.”

“Oh, yes, you can.” She was obviously not going to let this go. “I owned up to secretly wanting a silly, whimsical house. Spill.”

“You should build that house.”

“Quit stalling.”

But he had to stall, because he knew exactly what it was that would make him happy. Something he could dream about and never have. But he wasn’t going to tell Jenny. He refused to hurt her all over again.

He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I really can’t.” Inside his head, he was asking himself what the hell he thought he was doing even flirting with the truth. He needed a lie, and he needed one quick.

“Why not?” she pressed.

“Let it go.”

“You wouldn’t let me off the hook.”

He thought about it for a moment longer. And then he gave her a different truth. “I want a miracle cure for my shoulder. I want to be back to one hundred percent.”

“You will be-”

But he shook his head. “I keep telling myself it’s getting better.” He hadn’t voiced his deep-seated fear out loud to anyone. He didn’t really know why he was doing it now. “But it’s not.”

She reached out and touched his arm, her sympathies obviously engaged. “You just have to be patient.”

“This isn’t about patience. It’s about the physical limitations on the human body.” Now that he’d stuck his toe in the pool of bald honesty, he plunged all the way under. “I see the expression on the physiotherapist’s face, the expression on my doctor’s face. They told me six months. Well, it’s been a year. And there’s been no discernable progress for the last six weeks.”

“I understand these things can plateau.”

He sent her a look that told her to stop lying.

She swallowed. “That’s your secret dream?”

“Yes.” It was the only secret dream he could tell her about. The other was a relationship between the two of them where she didn’t get hurt in the end. Impossible.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

The genuine caring in her eyes blew him away. After all that had happened, all he’d done to her, that she could muster up this kind of compassion for him was nothing short of amazing.

“Anybody ever tell you you’re a saint?”

She coughed out a laugh. “Good grief, no. My mother used to tell me I was the devil in disguise.”

“Your mother had no right to say that.”

“She was ill.”

“She was nasty.”

Jenny gave a philosophical shrug. “She’s out of the state now, and out of my day-to-day life.”

On impulse, Mitch brushed the pad of his index finger across Jenny’s temple. “Don’t let her live on up here.”

“I’m not.”

“Build the house, Jenny. The one you love.”

“Are you going to pay for it?”

It took everything Mitch had not to say yes.


Wednesday evening, Jenny determinedly rolled up the plans for the French country house and slid them into a cardboard tube. It was all well and good for Mitch to tell her to dream. But reality was reality. She wasn’t building it.

“Jenny?” Cole called from the front room. He was home earlier than usual, and she hadn’t heard him come in.

“Back here,” she answered in response, tucking the plans to the back of a shelf on his built-in china cabinet.

Cole had been incredibly generous about letting her stay with him. She was becoming positively spoiled by the cook and the housekeeper, and she now teased him about never leaving.