Page 37 of Hard to Love
He looked between them, gave a nod then headed toward their bedroom.
Once he was out of the room, Greer turned to Delaney. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I even said congratulations about the baby.”
Delaney stared up at Greer. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”
“Of course not,” Greer protested. “You’ll make a fabulous mom. And can you imagine how Raylene will spoil—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” When Greer tried to take a step back, Delaney grabbed her hand. “You’re worried about when and who.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“That was Cal’s issue,” Delaney said. “Not mine. In some ways, the person with the second pair of boots has it way easier.”
“I never thought about it like that before. Maybe I just assumed I’d receive my boots and, bam, everything would fall into place.”
“It will.”
“But not on my timeframe.” Her dad had once told her a story about a couple—Ellen Harper and Wilson Callahan—who didn’t find their way to each other until seven yearsafter Ellen had received her prophecy boots. As of last November, the Callahans had been married thirty-five years, but the thought of being in limbo for that long made Greer’s hands and feet tingle in panic. She had been doing just fine without a man in her life, but now she was having a hard time pushing it from her mind.
“Who do you want it to be?”
“That’s not the point. It doesn’t matter who I want. It only matters who I’m meant to be with.”
“Then why don’t you let it play out the way it’s supposed to?”
“Because I don’t know if I should get involved with Alex.” The words rushed out of Greer with an honesty that contradicted all the things she’d been telling herself about starting something with the man.
“Do you want to?”
God help her, she already was. Maybe more involved than she should if he wasn’t her soul mate. “Have you taken a good look at the man?”
“Maybe,” Delaney whispered, her attention keen on the hallway where Cal had disappeared. “But only from the corner of my eye.”
“You may be in love with my brother, but you haven’t had your hormones surgically removed.”
“Fine, he looks like he’d be two handfuls of skin-sweating, dirty-talking, heart-thumping sex. But Greer, there’s more to a relationship than sex.”
“But if he’s not the one, what does it matter?”
“What if heisthe one?”
“The one what?” Cal said from behind them. Dammit, the stealthy skills his Army years had taught him could be a real pain in Greer’s backside. “Delaney needed a decent tooler, so why did you turn this into some big brouhaha?Why couldn’t you just let her give the guy a contract and then send him on his way?”
“It’s not that simple and you know it,” Greer shot back. “If he contracts for PBC, then he’ll be back from time to time. That’s inevitable. Besides, a competition is a good opportunity to stir up chatter about the artisan village. And—” she took a gulp of air and rushed out the next words, “—I decided I definitely want Alex to stay here as a resident artist, but I need to get him invested. That’s why I’m here this morning. I need your help.”
Cal pressed the heel of his palm between his eyes. “I’ve got a couple of jobs going, but I can squeeze in the barn as well. But knowing you, you want everything done on your timeframe, which means yesterday.”
“Actually, I want you to help bynotworking on the barn anymore.”
His arm fell away from his face, and oh, his expression—narrowed eyes and half-open mouth—tickled her funny bone. “What?”
“Here’s the deal,” she said. “I want to get Alex invested in Prophecy and in the village so that when I ask him to stay, he can’t possibly say no. And the best way to do that is to get him involved with the project from the ground up.” Because after his hotheaded rejection of the free barn apartment, she knew how important it was for him to pay his own way.
“So you want his help, not mine?”
Delaney snuggled against Cal’s side and wrapped an arm around his waist. “It’s not about you, Cal.”
“This is what I do for a living. I build things.”
