What the Heart Wants (What the Heart Wants, #1)(26)

Laurel shook her head. “No. I take after my father. He was tall and had brown hair, but Mama was fair and rather short, more your height.”

Lolly’s eyes widened and she sucked in a deep breath.

Laurel could have kicked herself. Her description had given Lolly wings to another flight of fantasy, and there was no way to take it back. But it didn’t matter. All she wanted was to keep the peace for what little time they had left. Jase would be here soon and Lolly would leave with him, and she’d probably never see either of them ever again.

*



Jase spotted a familiar intersection, signaled, and turned south, flipping down his sun visor against the relentless sunshine coming in from the right. Almost there. He’d know the way to Laurel’s house blindfolded.

The scent of newly budded roses wafted across the car, and he glanced over at the sheaf of blush pink that Maxie was holding for him. A gentleman brought flowers to a lady, especially if the lady had invited him for dinner, and he was determined to make a good impression on Laurel. Attitude, behavior, and self-control were the keys to success, he reminded himself. Reverend Ed had taught him that.

They’d been in the pastor’s small study off the front room, and Jase had just vented his anger at the world. “I hate my father and I hate Bosque Bend and I hate myself!” he’d said, banging his hand on Reverend Ed’s desk for emphasis.

He hated Marguerite too, but he wasn’t going to say it.

The good man hadn’t even blinked. Instead, his austere features reflected concern and sympathy. He’d laid a comforting hand on Jase’s shoulder.

“You’re angry, and you have a right to be, Jason—the world has dealt badly with you.” He’d stopped for a second, as if searching for the right words. “But be careful. Remember that you want to take a positive viewpoint, be honorable, and not let yourself be led astray. Hate will get you nowhere. In fact, it gives that person a certain…certain power over you. You need to free yourself of the past in order to plan for the future.” Then Reverend Ed had taken an old-fashioned fountain pen from his pocket and reached for a legal pad. “Now, let’s figure out some immediate goals for you.”

The future, not the past—wise advice from a wise man, advice Jase tried to live by. And not only had Reverend Ed pointed him toward a better life, but he’d also stuck by him when news of the mess with Marguerite broke. He’d even tried to persuade Charles Bridges, the district attorney, to file charges against Marguerite for statutory rape.

As if that would fly in Bosque Bend. Bert Nyquist, who had the ear of Dale Fassbinder, a school board trustee, was insisting that Jase had assaulted Marguerite. The school board’s reaction was to hush everything up by putting Marguerite on leave and running him out of town.

Nevertheless, he owed Laurel’s father a lot.

He glanced across at his aunt. And he owed Maxie a lot too. Not many teenage guys get saddled with newborns, and the idea of fatherhood, of being responsible for a tiny, squalling, demanding scrap of humanity, had been scary. He could never have handled the situation without Maxie.

And tonight, resplendent in a blue linen skirt and matching short jacket, she was determined to do him proud. As soon as she’d heard the plans for the evening, she’d insisted he drive her to Mister Jacques’s Fashion Boutique to pick up an outfit equal to the occasion. Born and bred in Bosque Bend, she regarded an invitation to dine at Kinkaid House as a command performance.

“I remember when Laurel’s mother, Dovie Kinkaid, was married,” she murmured, shifting the roses in her lap and releasing another wave of fragrance. “It was the talk of the town. She was in her midthirties, Lorena and Dabney’s only remaining child, and everyone thought she was going to end up an old maid until Edward Harlow came on the scene. At first all of us were scandalized. After all, she was an heiress and five years older than he was, but, in the end, it didn’t matter. They were in love, and she had more than enough money for both of them. Besides, he was such a good man.”

Jase nodded in agreement.

“Dovie was forty when Laurel was born—top crop. You know, the last harvest before the winter freeze sets in.” Maxie adjusted the roses again. “She was older than the other mothers, of course—quite reserved and terribly old-fashioned, but a really nice lady.”

“I never met her.” It had always been Laurel who answered the door, Laurel who walked him down the hall and sat with him in the big front room, visiting with him until Reverend Ed came to fetch him. At first Laurel did most of the taking, and all he could do was mumble back, because he didn’t know what to say to someone like her, who smelled like sweet honey and smiled like she was glad to see him.

He remembered how her eyes had glowed with excitement as she talked about a trip to Disney World she’d taken that summer, and, the whole time, he was seeing her as a fantasy fairy princess in spangles and stardust. But if Laurel was a princess, then he was a frog, a big lunkhead from the wrong side of the tracks. She was the perfect daughter of a perfect family, while he was the byproduct of a loudmouthed bully and a woman Growler had knocked up in passing and married at the point of her father’s shotgun. And not all the roses in the world could make up for that.

Setting his jaw, he pulled into the gravel driveway beside the house. At least he had good timing. It was exactly ten minutes after six, allowably late—much better, one of his former lady friends had assured him, than being exactly on time.