Page 16 of A Field of Beauty

“Isn’t he just the sweetest man alive?” Lovey whispered.

Dawson? Sweet? Super mellow, yes. Super smart. Yes. But sweet? That’s not a word Tessa would use to describe him. But maybe he was sweet. He certainly did a lot to help Tessa, even things she knew he’d rather not do, like spend hours at the farmers’ market. But there seemed to be more layers to Dawson Greene than she had noticed. She certainly didn’t expect to discover he was a regular churchgoer, much less part of the worship team. She glanced at Lovey, wondering again how serious things were between her and Dawson.

Onstage, Dawson grabbed a guitar and stood in front of a microphone, welcoming everyone, while tuning his guitar, then nodded to the drummer and started to sing in a baritone voice. That same deep rumbly voice she’d heard him sing over the babydahlia plants! People joined in, waving hands in the air, and soon it seemed the entire gym was rocking out. Tessa wasn’t familiar with most of the songs, but she tried to follow the words on a display screen.

Lovey slipped into the seat next to her and handed Tessa a flower from the little vase on the coffee table. “He cleans up mighty fine, if you want my opinion.”

Tessa’s gaze shifted to Dawson. She barely recognized him as the same man who liked to talk about compost and worms. She was astounded at the changes she’d seen in him in the last twenty-four hours. Or had she just never noticed?

She was pondering that very thing as he started a new song that Tessa did recognize. Rose used to play it at the flower shop, nearly every day. Without thinking, she lifted the chrysanthemum bloom to her nose ... and suddenly she was eighteen years old, working in the shop, arranging flowers. It was the scent—flower memories held such power! Strong emotions started rolling over her, ones she had tumped down for years. One tear started, then another and another. Soon, a flood of tears washed down her cheeks.

Lovey, seated next to her, reached over to put her arm around her and whisper, “I know, honey. I know. The Lord uses music to talk to our hearts.”

That remark set off another river of tears in Tessa. She wiggled past Lovey and hurried to the door. She went straight to Dawson’s truck, mad at herself for not driving her Vespa, but thankful the truck was so old that the lock on the door didn’t work. Sitting inside, she searched through her purse for tissues to wipe her face, because the tears wouldn’t stop coming. And right behind the tears came a flood of upsetting memories.

Tessa’s home situation had been different from Jaime’s and Claire’s. Sunrise was her family’s vacation home; Atlanta was their main home. Jaime and Claire needed to work, but Tessa didn’thave to. She wanted to. She liked work and always preferred to be busy. So during the summers of high school, she had worked part-time at Rose’s Flower Shop, and that was where she met Jaime and Claire, her besties.

Tessa’s dad worked for an international oil corporation, and after her junior year of high school, he announced to the family that he was being transferred to Saudi Arabia.

No. Way.

There was no way Tessa was going to spend her senior year of high school stuck on an expat compound in a very restrictive Arabian country.

She relentlessly pressured her parents into letting her stay in Sunrise. With an autumn birthday, she was on the older side of her classmates, turning eighteen in October. No longer a minor, she pointed out. Repeatedly. She had two older sisters—one in Chicago, one in New York, both married. If she needed help, she could go to them.

A couple had moved into a fixer-upper next door to Tessa’s home in Sunrise. The wife had a demanding job and traveled a lot, but the husband worked remotely. He was a wildly famous suspense author whose books her father voraciously read. He convinced Tessa’s dad to let her stay in Sunrise and promised that he and his wife would keep an eye on her. The neighbor said he had moved a lot as a teen and understood how hard it was.

Finally, Tessa’s dad relented. She was so grateful!

The neighbor made good on his promise. He would drop by now and then to see how Tessa was doing, fix something in the house that needed fixing, make sure her car was working. Tessa felt somewhat indifferent to the neighbor’s drop-ins. It wasn’t that she was immune to his appeal—he was a lithe, handsome man somewhere in his late thirties with a fabulously charismatic smile—but she didn’t really need someone looking after her.

In October, she grew more comfortable with the neighbor. He remembered her birthday with a funny card and a cake he’d bakedhimself. It was nice to be treated this way, and soon the age difference between them started to melt away. He was funny, easy to talk to, had a way with words, and was so much more interesting than high school guys. Boys her age were, well, idiots. The neighbor made her feel special, like the times when he would read his work-in-progress to her and ask her opinion. He took Tessa seriously. He would notice little details about her, like calling her long blond hair a lion’s mane. Living alone had been harder than she’d expected it to be. Lonelier.

Over Christmas break, Tessa went to Saudi Arabia to be with her parents and missed the neighbor far more than she’d expected. She wondered how he might phrase the sight of the ridiculous-looking camels at the camel market. Or how he’d describe the wail from the minarets as muezzins called faithful Muslims to prayers. Or what he would have to say about everything in the city shutting down—everything, even hospital services—during those calls to prayers. Five times a day!

By February, she found herself eagerly preparing for visits with the neighbor—planning her clothing, her hairstyle. He noticed everything about Tessa. They spent their time over at his house. It was a fixer-upper that wasn’t getting any fix-up. His wife was gone more than she was home, and it didn’t sound like she was the kind of woman who made a house a home. Super focused on her career, he said. Now and then, he confided to Tessa about how unhappy he was in his marriage. How lonely.

Looking back, Tessa thought Rose might have suspected something didn’t seem quite right about the neighbor. Once, after he dropped by the flower shop to say hello to Tessa, Rose made an odd remark after he left. “That’s the kind of man who forgets he’s someone’s husband.”

Looking back, Rose’s warning should’ve acted like a waving red flag.Caution, caution!Did Tessa heed it? No, ma’am. Did she ever think to confide in Rose? In her best friends? No, ma’am.

By March, Tessa was spending nearly every evening with herneighbor. They’d make dinner together, play Scrabble or cards, maybe watch a movie. One night, as the movie ended (and it was a romantic comedy), he reached over to grab the remote and his face ended up close to hers, and time stood still as he leaned in to kiss her.

And oh my goodness,whata kiss. The kind that left a girl breathless, weak in the knees, the whole kit and caboodle. Sothiswas what it felt like to be in love!

A few days later, things between them did venture on to the whole kit and caboodle.

On some level, Tessa knew this situation wasn’t exactly ... well, right. She knew her parents would be mortified. Knew that if she told Jaime and Claire, they would tell her to stop. They would say that she was being taken advantage of. They would remind her that this was another woman’s husband.

So of course she didn’t tell anyone.

Because whatever anyone might think, it wasn’t like that between Tessa and the neighbor. Their story was different. Their love was different. He’d never felt about any woman the way he felt about Tessa. He said so, again and again.

By April, nearly every waking thought Tessa had was consumed with the neighbor. She was crazy-obsessed. When he left for a few days on a business trip, she missed him so much that she overrode his rule and texted him. He didn’t text back, so she texted again, and again. And then she called him. He didn’t pick up.

When he returned to Sunrise, he came right over to her house. She’d been watching for him to return, so she opened the door eagerly, expecting a very different reaction from him.

To her surprise, he closed the door behind him and turned to her with a dark look in his eyes that she’d never seen. He wasfurious.“How dare you text me! Or call me! Are you trying to destroy me?”

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