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“And then you’ll marry me.”
“And then I’ll marry you.”
She hadn’t told Evie that they were going to get married. Kyle had never officially proposed or given her a ring, and two weeks after that conversation, he abruptly broke up with her, telling Laney that a year apart was too much to ask. She had been devastated, and when it came time to apply to medical schools the following year, she only chose universities out of the province.
“Hey, where’d you go?” Evie waved a hand in front of Laney’s face.
She blinked hard and shook her head. “Sorry, I’m more tired than I thought.”
Her sister raised an eyebrow, but sat back in her chair and didn’t say anything else until their mother brought in a plate of chewy ginger molasses cookies. “Mom, I was thinking that I should take the boys into the city tomorrow to do a bit of last-minute shopping, do you want to come along?”
Claire looked at Laney and hesitated.
“Go with them, Mom. I’ll catch up on some sleep. I have a bit of work to do too, I’ll get that out of the way and then we’ll have an entire week without any distractions.”
Claire nodded and took a cookie. She might want to meddle, but for whatever reason she was giving that a pass tonight and Laney decided not to tempt fate. She gave her mom a tight squeeze, stole a cookie and plodded off to bed.
Chapter 4
Kyle stepped into line behind Mrs. Wilkins and piled his groceries on the conveyor belt. He hadn’t slept well. Next stop was Bun in the Oven for coffee.
“Hello, Kyle. School’s out now?”
“Mrs. Wilkins. Yes, the kids are off until after New Year’s.” He edged forward in line and nodded at Karen, who gave him a wink. “Hey.”
“Hey to you too.” His friend gave him an amused look. “Did you hear that Laney’s in town for the holidays?”
He rocked back on his heels. He didn’t want to talk about Laney. He wouldn’t mind talking to her, but he didn’t want to contribute to idle chatter.
“Is that why you’re buying fruits and vegetables?” Mrs. Wilkins ever so helpfully offered.
Kyle looked down at his purchases. Strawberries, croissants, lettuce, balsamic vinegar, a baguette, olives, whipping cream and a bag of two-bite brownies. He furrowed his brow. “I eat vegetables.”
Karen pointed out that he usually bought apples and cucumbers, and she didn’t remember him ever buying fancy vinegar. Kyle decided he might go straight home and make himself coffee there instead of risking further appraisal by the amateur detectives of Wardham.
“Just ring it up.”
“Touchy, touchy,” Karen said. “So I can’t ask you about dropping off the tractor?”
“Jesus Chr—”
“Kyle Nixon!” Mrs. Wilson had moved toward the door with her groceries tucked into a basket on wheels, but she whirled around with surprising speed and wagged her index finger.
“Watch your language, young man, or I’ll report you to the principal.”
Kyle couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes ma’am, my apologies.”
Karen gave him a wry smile, but returned to scanning and bagging. Saved by the wrath of a senior citizen.
As he drove away from the store in his pickup truck, he considered his grocery choices. He honestly had just wandered the store, thinking with his stomach, but maybe a small part of him hoped that at some point over the next few days, he might get to cook Laney a meal. He wanted a chance to apologize to her. For years, he’d believed she’d left him and never looked back, and now he knew better.
After moving to the old school house the previous summer, Kyle had started running into Claire with regular frequency. At Ted’s annual Labour Day picnic, he made the mistake of referring to her as the mother of the woman who broke his heart, and that opened the mama bear floodgates. Kyle had stood in Ted’s yard while tiny Claire Calhoun, with her perfect silver blonde bob and disarmingly pleasant smile, poked her index finger into his solar plexus and told him that better be the only time he’d ever said that awful lie. When he turned red and scuffed his foot on the ground, she reached up, took firm hold of his chin and stared him in the eye with a fierceness he would never forget. “Kyle Nixon, you better make sure that everyone in this town thinks the best of my daughter. You hear me? I like you, but I won’t hesitate to tell the parents at your school that you used to sneak into my house in the middle of the night.”
It had taken everything in him to nod instead of smirk. Kyle doubted that anyone would care that he’d slept with his college girlfriend a million years ago, but there was a kernel of truth in what Claire said. He was only a year older, but he had been the more experienced between them. He was Laney’s first. She’d wanted him to be her only, and he had promised her the moon to get in her pants.
He hadn’t lied about loving her, wanting to marry her, being together forever, but in the end, that hadn’t been enough. He’d thought it was just a break, but when she didn’t come home the next summer, and then went east for medical school, he knew the split was permanent, and as time passed, he forgot that he was the one responsible. It took him a long time to move on. He dated casually for a few years, pretending to enjoy his bachelorhood. Actually, he had enjoyed sowing his wild oats, and he made some good friends, but every summer he was reminded of that too-short season when he finally had Laney before he lost her again. Every fall he’d slowly get back into the routine, only to spend Christmas hoping to run into her, wondering if she was at the farm. For five years his life was stuck in a holding pattern. When he heard she was moving from Halifax to Calgary, he crawled into a bottle of Jack Daniels, and almost went home with a blonde whose eyes weren’t quite the same shade of ice blue, but close enough to pretend. When he called her Laney and got slapped for the mistake, something snapped into place. That wasn’t who he was or what he wanted.
Another five years went by before he saw Laney at her father’s funeral, and his world tipped upside down again.
