Love Starts with Elle(70)
In the heavy gray light barely passing through the hospital hut’s dirty windows, Chet read his name, written by her beautiful hand.
Dear Chet,
Darling, I’m shaking as I write this to you, hoping this letter finds you well. It’s been weeks since a letter from you arrived.
Chet heard her rebuke and smiled. The letter in his trunk totaled ten pages now, scarred with eraser gum and smudges of lead, but his emotions didn’t spill onto the page as easily as Kelly’s. Already her voice and heart lifted from the page and settled over his soul.
While patrolling the Alaskan coast, he’d written dozens of eloquent letters to the woman he loved, only to have them evaporate the moment he pressed his pencil to the rough paper.
Please write me soon so I can hear your voice and that you still love me. Darling, you’re going to have to love me. We’re having a baby. I’m about four months now. Mama saw my growing waist so she came to my room last night. She was upset and disappointed. I knew she would be. I’m sorry for what we did, but I’m not sorry about our baby. Can I feel both so strongly?
But now we have to figure out a way to tell Daddy. I reckon he’ll be mad, but so what? I’m a grown woman. I suppose we got things turned around, and it’ll be an awful embarrassment to the congregation, but what’s done is done.
But, darling, a baby. You and me. I hope she looks like you.
All is swell here, otherwise. Christie and Hal are still fighting like the cat and dog they are. Rose is missing Ted Bell pretty bad, but he writes. (Can’t you do the same, darling?)
My job at the paper keeps me busy and from going insane worrying over you. Old senior editor Cray Harris actually gave me an assignment the other day. I declare, he might as well have had his leg sawed off without anesthesia, giving a story to a woman. You know I’m a down-home girl who wants to raise a family and keep house, Chet, but that man makes me want to shout, “Suffragette!”
Guess I’d better close this so I can hand it to Mr. McKenney when he comes by for the mail. I love you, darling, very much.
Your girl,
Kelly
That was it. Heath closed his document. If he read one more word, he’d fire his laptop against the wall. Enough editing, rewriting. It’d taken him days to write that scene. How had his first two novels come so easily? Because they stunk, that’s why. He wanted this one to work.
Just send it. Let Nate decide.
Heath launched his e-mail, attached the proposal, scribbled a semicoherent note, and clicked Send before he chickened out.
Beyond the windows, the South Carolina wind and sun beckoned him. He had a few hours before picking up Tracey-Love . . .
Peeling off his shirt, he changed into his old shorts, exchanged his flip-flops for work boots, and grabbed his gear for carving.
Outside, steam rose from the rain-soaked ground, and the heat revived him. Heath revved the chainsaw and settled into carving, the vibration shocking his sleepy, stagnant writer’s blood.
When he stepped back to survey his work, he lifted his goggles, hooked his ear guards around his neck, and wiped away sweat with his sleeve. The look of the angel rising from the wood satisfied him.
A pointy finger tapped his shoulder. He turned.
“Elle.”
“Hey.” She shoved her hair from her face, motioning to the carving. “It’s going to be beautiful.” Stepping around him, she smoothed her hand over the angel’s head, then jerked it away.
“Watch out for splinters.”
“Now you tell me.” Elle picked the small wood sliver from her palm. “How’s the book?”
“Sent a formal proposal to my agent this morning.” Had she come here for small talk? Heath raised his guard, watching her. He didn’t want to be, but he was mad at her. For leaving him hanging the night they were supposed to go to Luther’s, for being beautiful in every way and getting under his skin. Mad at himself for letting her in without caution.
“He asked me to marry him,” she said.
Saved him asking the question. “Is that what you want?” Heath bent forward to blow sawdust from the angel’s roughhewn toes.
“I don’t know. A lot has changed. He’s at FSU now, the assistant athletic director.”
“Well, there you go. You won’t have to be a PW and live up to all the churchy expectations. I hear FSU has a great art department.”
“I didn’t say yes.” She peeled a jagged piece of wood away from the angel’s body.
“Elle, I swear—” He shook the chainsaw at her, then tossed it to the ground. A wet clump of grass stuck to the chain. “Where’s the girl with the banging bracelets and the growing confidence? The one who lives in the tower, sees angel feathers, and drives a clueless single father to the ER? The one who put her fears and past behind her, who dared to dream again?”
Emotion swelled in her green eyes. “She’s standing right here.”
He picked up a sheet of heavy sandpaper. “I don’t get women like you.”
“Oh, really? I don’t get men like you.”
“What’s to get? I’m easy, simple, straightforward.” Sand, sand, sand. He worked the angel so hard his muscles ached under his skin.