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Greg Burton and his wife Liz came up from Hamden. Greg owned a consulting firm in New Haven and Liz owned a catering business. Since Liz couldn’t help but cook when she was with a big crowd, she had soup simmering and dough rising for loaves of homemade bread within an hour of her arrival.
The last of the group was Trent Lang and his fiancée Deidre. They had recently relocated to Boston, where they both worked in finance.
Jill had become friends with the group in the short time she’d known them. Even though she was a bit of an outsider since they’d all known each other for so much longer, they were all warm and welcoming people and she felt relaxed with them.
Jack and Kelly brought Rev up when they arrived Saturday. Jill loved to see how happy Rev was wrestling with Zoe, running in the snow, and letting everyone spoil him with tummy rubs and ear scratches. He got a few too many table scraps and treats over the weekend but it made her happy to see him so content.
It also tugged at her heart to see how happy Rev and Andrew were to see one another. Andrew seemed to have adopted Rev in his heart and the dog didn’t object to that at all.
The only niggling seeds of doubt came at the end of the weekend when Cade pulled out the plans he was working on to build each of the partners their own cabins. As Jill listened to him outline the plan for the property, she began to feel uncomfortable with the idea that this special place of Andrew’s – a place he shared with such close friends – would now be tied up in their penalty clause. She didn’t think she could stomach the idea of taking anything so close to his heart and using it to tie him to her forever.
Andrew met Jill’s eyes across the room and, as always, seemed to read her mind. Crossing the room, he wrapped his arms around her and looked into her eyes.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he whispered softly.
She frowned as she tried to find words to explain. “It just seems wrong. I can’t take this from you. We can’t put this in the penalty clause.”
Andrew looked over his shoulder at the others in the room and then pulled Jill down the hall and into their bedroom and shut the door.
Andrew looked at Jill and tried to read the emotions on her face. She looked agitated. Sad. Guilty. There were too many emotions playing over her beautiful features.
“What do you mean? Everything goes in the clause.” He stood in front of Jill with his arms crossed as if immovable.
She shook her head. “No, Andrew. This place is too special to you. It’s for you and your friends. I don’t want it in the clause.”
She looked like she was close to tears and he struggled to reassure her. He knew the truth. He knew that he loved her. That his love was the reason he would never leave, not some clause in a contract, not the material things he had picked up along the way in life. The material things meant nothing next to her.
But he couldn’t risk losing Jill by telling her how he felt. If he said the words and she got spooked and ran, he might not get her back.
With his hands on her upper arms, he gave a firm squeeze. “No, Jill. It’s all or nothing. Everything goes in the clause. I’m not worried about losing it. Don’t you see? I’m never leaving. I’ll never walk away. That’s the point. You can believe in that with all your heart.”
“But––” she began.
“No. No buts, Jill. That clause will never come into play. I’m here forever.”
She nodded and let him kiss her, wrap her in his arms. But Andrew wasn’t sure she truly believed him. If he could ensure that everything went into the clause, maybe she would begin to believe. Maybe someday she would relax again.
He even, stupidly, let himself hope that maybe she could begin to fall in love with him someday. That someday she might feel the way he did and not run from that emotion. Not leave him the minute she realized the depths of her feelings.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jill kept an eye on Rev as she refilled the bird feeders in her front yard. As usual, the dog was racing around the yard without a care in the world. If she hoped to spot any birds later today, she’d need to keep him in the house long enough for the birds to come out of hiding.
She almost dropped the bag of birdseed a minute later when she heard Rev’s deep barking. His happy barks were higher pitched, but once in a blue moon, Rev found something that needed to be warned off and then his deep, growling bark came out with threatening force. Like now.
Jill looked up at the unusual sight of Rev standing at the front of the yard. His whole body was launched, hackles up, teeth bared as he barked at someone in a car.
“Rev, come!” Jill called out as she started jogging toward him. The yard was deep, the house set back from the road, and that made it hard for her to make out the person in the car.A woman?The car started and drove off, leaving the dog barking behind it.
As the car pulled away, Rev circled back to Jill, but he didn’t calm down. He stood with one back foot on her foot like he could protect her by pinning her in place, body still coiled and ready as he watched the spot where the car had been.
“What was that all about, big guy?” Jill crouched and stroked his chest. His whole body was still tense.
Andrew came up behind her.
“What was that about? I heard him from up in the bedroom.” He’d been sleeping in while Jill and Rev filled the bird feeders.
“I don’t know. He gets protective on very rare occasions but never anything like that. He’s a Labradoodle, for heaven’s sake, not a guard dog. I don’t know what brought that on.” She gazed up at Andrew, confused.
