The Wedding Planners of Butternut Creek (6 page)

She followed her brother into the dining area as Yvonne went into the kitchen to get her a plate.

Adam waved around the table. “This is Henry, Gussie’s father. That’s Janey and here’s Gussie.”

As Adam held out a chair for her, a tall young man with dark skin thundered into the house. “Hey, Pops, come outside,” he said in a voice that—along with the pounding of his huge feet—made her head hurt even more. “There’s a really great car parked in front of the house.”

“We’ll look at it later.” Adam motioned the kid to a seat. “Hannah, this is Hector.”

They all smiled at Hannah. A huge smile covered Gussie’s friendly face, her eyes shone brightly, and her dark curls bounced with vitality. Hannah could see why Adam loved Gussie, but the sight of all that energy absolutely exhausted her.

She nodded at everyone and attempted to think of something that sounded polite to respond to the welcome but nothing came to mind. “
Enchantée
,” she whispered because she’d spoken French with the international medical personnel and seemed to have left her English-speaking mind in London. Fortunately, before Hannah felt the need to say more in a foreign language, Yvonne came from the kitchen with a bowl and a glass of something.

“Sweetened or unsweetened?” Gussie’s mother asked.

What was she talking about?

“Your tea,” the woman explained. “Sweetened or unsweetened?”

Hannah had never heard that question. Tea was tea. One added sugar or sweetener if one wanted it sweet. Why would anyone ask that?

“Unsweetened,” Adam said for her. “Up north, we only have one choice. Tea, unsweetened.”

“Well, don’t that beat all,” Yvonne said. “Customs are different all over.” She placed the glass and bowl of soup in front of Hannah. “Try a few biscuits.” She handed Hannah the basket.

“They’re really good,” said the little girl with a shy smile. “I like mine with lots of butter.”

How sweet. For a moment Hannah considered smiling—until the faces of hungry children in Kenya surfaced in her mind. She swallowed hard and reminded herself of her decision not to allow those memories to haunt her. She had to learn how to live in
this
world, surrounded by healthy people who didn’t have to cover their beds with mosquito netting to stay alive, by people who lived in houses with clean water and enough food and, oddly, a choice between sweetened and unsweetened tea.

Adam watched her, attempting to hide the expression of concern she’d seen on so many faces over the last months. When had she become an object of pity? Well, obviously during the last few months when she couldn’t fight off the effects of malaria. Everyone else on the staff recovered from that disease quickly and easily. Not Hannah.

The soup looked delicious. As she reached for a spoon, the scent hit her and made her feel slightly nauseous. “I think I’ll try a biscuit,” she said, picking one from the basket. No butter. Her stomach didn’t feel ready for that, but the biscuits tasted wonderful as they were.

“Yvonne,” Janey said in a soft voice and with an expression of yearning in her dark eyes. “Could we bake brownies tonight? I really like brownies.”

“Sis, you’re shameless,” Hector lectured before turning toward Yvonne. “Don’t let her con you. She’ll say anything to get brownies.”

“How adorable.” Yvonne leaned forward and took Janey’s hand. “Of course I’ll make you brownies. Let’s do that tomorrow after church.”

“Thank you, Yvonne.” Janey grinned.

“Now, dear.” Yvonne turned to Hannah. “If the soup doesn’t look good to you, I could fix you some bouillon or a poached egg if you’d like. Maybe some toast?”

All this sweetness would raise Hannah’s blood sugar to disastrous levels if she stuck around.

Adam had learned long ago not to push his sister for information or communication, and not to expect polite conversation, because Hannah considered it pointless. She believed anything that didn’t relate to medicine or healing others to be useless chitchat. Unfortunately, he always forgot that until the next time her determination to do things her way slapped him in the face.

Sometimes he wondered where she’d come from. Like his mother, Adam was fairly laid-back. In grade school, he always received positive marks for “gets along well with others.”

Their father was forceful, but Hannah had moved far beyond merely compelling. She radiated an intensity that scared all but the most confident of people. At least, she used to.

Nor did they look alike. Adam and his parents were fairly standard and boringly Scotch-Irish with a little German ancestry tossed in, but Hannah looked as if she’d been abducted from a band of wandering gypsies. Their mother had claimed Romany ancestry, and that heredity appeared undiluted in Hannah’s dark eyes, olive skin, unruly hair, and wildly independent personality.

He also knew better than to tell her to go to bed. She’d stay up for hours or days to thwart him, but he hadn’t been her little brother for all these years without learning a few tricks. She was immovable but not unmanipulatable. He’d stumbled on the method to induce her to do what he wanted when he discovered that if she thought he didn’t care, she’d do whatever he wanted.

“How long are you staying?” he asked casually as he cleared the table.

“Don’t know,” Hannah answered after she swallowed the last of her second biscuit. “A few days? A month? A couple of hours?”

He placed the dishes in the sink and counted a few seconds before turning toward her. He leaned against the counter as if he didn’t have a concern in the world. “Do you want to choose a bedroom?”

“All of these people are staying here and you have extra bedrooms?”

“Yvonne and Henry rent a house a few blocks away. Gussie stays with them on the weekends but spends weekdays in Austin.” He gestured overhead. “Janey, Hector, and I each have bedrooms upstairs, which leaves two small, unoccupied ones on that floor.” He shrugged indifferently. “Your choice.”

Fortunately, as smart as Hannah was, she’d never figured out his ploy of feigned indifference. His supervisor in clinical pastoral education would have said she had an oppositional personality. True, but not the whole story. She barreled straight through life without regard for anyone or anything that interfered with her goal of saving the world.

“Okay.” She wiped her mouth with the napkin, tossed it on the table, and stood.

“Y’all go on,” Henry said. “Janey and I’ll bus the table.”

“Hey, people.” Bobby shoved through the front door and slammed it behind him.

Hannah cringed at the noise. She’d suffered from headaches as long as he could remember. All the pushing and stress and sheer stubbornness brought on headaches, and the trip probably hadn’t helped.

“Hannah, this is Hector’s friend, Bobby.”

She nodded at him.

“Bobby and I are going to shoot some hoops,” Hector said.

As the two young men headed outside, Adam shepherded his sister toward the back stairs, knowing that the less elegant flight would be more acceptable to Hannah than the beautifully carved and curved front steps. Besides, it was closer and he feared she couldn’t walk any extra distance. Not that he’d ever say that.

Once on the second floor, he said, “Hector and Janey share a bathroom between their rooms.” He pointed down the hall to those two doors. “I have the big bedroom because, when I got here, no one else lived here.” He pointed toward that door. “I have a bathroom that also opens to the hall.”

“I’m not taking your bedroom,” she stated.

He knew that. Without responding, Adam gestured to his left and right. “These two rooms at the back of the house are still up for grabs. They’re quiet but a little smaller. You’d have to use the half-bath upstairs or share mine.”

She shivered as if sharing a bathroom with her brother bothered her. Maybe as kids she’d had a reason, but he no longer left underwear or wet towels on the floor.

“What’s upstairs?” She turned toward the narrow door next to the stairs.

“It’s sort of a storage room or a play area.” He opened that door, turned on the lights, and led her up the steep steps.

Running both the length and the breadth of the house, the area was huge and open, with storage built in to the eaves. At one end a window seat was built in the curve of the tower. A little dust covered the floor and surfaces because he never used it, but Janey often cleaned it because she loved to sit on the window seat and daydream.

“There’s a half-bath in that corner.”

Hannah nodded. “This will do.”

“Hector and I’ll bring up a bed and dresser.”

“No, no. I’m fine. Just bring me a blanket. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“You are so full of it.” Adam shook his head. “I’m not going to allow you to sleep on the floor. Who are you attempting to be? Mother Teresa? Or one of those mystics who whip themselves and wear hair shirts?”

She glared at him, but he didn’t budge.

“You’re not going to repudiate all earthly comforts. We will bring up a bed,” he stated in the tone he used to get Chewy to do everything the dog didn’t want to. Never worked with Chewy.

“Oh, all right.”

Surprisingly, it worked with his sister.

He called Hector and Bobby inside, and they disassembled the bed in one of the unused bedrooms. Adam joined them to navigate it up the staircase to the third floor. They found Hannah asleep on the window seat, her face peaceful and her breathing regular.

“Pops, let her sleep. We can finish this later. She looks so tired, I don’t want to disturb her.”

Adam didn’t think a marching band could awaken his sister. “Let’s set it up so she’ll have a better place to sleep.”

He was right. His sister didn’t wake up even when Hector dropped one of the rails and Bobby whacked the wall with another. With the bed put together and made, he tucked a blanket around his sister and kissed her cheek, about the only time she allowed such displays of affection.

After they went downstairs, Hector looked outside. “Pops, you got the keys to that Escalade?”

“No, Hannah has them, but we can check it out even if we can’t get inside.”

Because the car doors were all locked—Hannah wasn’t used to small towns—they had to enjoy it from outside. Hector rubbed his hand along the ebony surface of the car. “It’s nice, Pops. Not a dent on it, no patches of peeling paint.”

Bobby cupped his hands to look in a window. “No holes in the upholstery. No springs coming through.”

“Bet the windows work.” Hector looked at the SUV with longing.

“Do you think the doors open and close?” Bobby asked. “And maybe it doesn’t stop in the middle of the highway and its parts don’t fall off on the road.”

“Might as well stop dreaming,” Adam said. “Guys, I could never afford a car like this. Even paying the insurance would mean we couldn’t eat again.”

“Yeah, I know, but I didn’t realize how horrible your car is until I saw this one.” Hector walked around the Escalade, caressing it.

After a few minutes, Adam went back inside and left Bobby and Hector to admire the car, a doomed and one-sided attraction.

The next afternoon, Hannah glanced around the family room. After church and a quick lunch—of which she’d eaten much more than she’d expected—the men had cleaned the kitchen, then turned on the television to watch a college basketball game. On the other side of the high counter between this room and the kitchen, Janey and Yvonne stirred up a batch of brownies.

Hannah had curled up on the large comfortable chair, pulled the burnt orange throw she’d found on the back of the sofa over her, and now read a particularly interesting article on vector-borne diseases. She hated having to wrap up, hated huddling in a blanket, but—darn it!—she was cold. Had felt a chill even in the heat of Africa when she’d been sick, so why wouldn’t she during a cooler Texas spring when she’d barely recovered? A shiver made her teeth chatter. Would she ever be warm again?

Henry watched her for a second before he stood, walked into the front parlor, and returned with a blanket. Without a word, he spread the cover over her and returned to the sofa.

How did he know he’d found the best way to handle her? Go ahead and do it, don’t ask for permission, and ignore her protests. See a need, respond with an act of kindness, but don’t mention it.

As Hector watched television, he surreptitiously glanced toward her. From the thoroughness of his scrutiny, she felt like a recently cloned species, a rare specimen to welcome but not to understand.

Hannah had gotten to a particularly interesting section in her book on an experimental treatment for African trypanosomiasis when someone knocked on the front door.

“Hey, Coach,” Hector yelled as he leaped to his feet—the young man always leaped and ran. Just watching him wore her out.

He reached the door and threw it open. “Come on in.”

A perfect specimen of a man strode into the parlor. Taller than average, he possessed beautifully developed sets of biceps brachii and pectoralis major. He radiated such good health, it seemed as if a light glowed around him, as if sunlight constantly followed him and reflected from his blond hair.

The sight dazzled her. She closed her eyes for a second before she opened them because she wanted—almost needed—to study him. Only a slit, though, because she couldn’t take much more. She drank in his splendor.

She bet he knew he was a special creation and had no desire to build his ego by allowing him to notice her scrutiny. With a tug, she pulled the blanket tighter around her and held the textbook closer to her face, making sure she could see over the top a smidge.

“Hey, everyone.” The supernatural being smiled and waved.

Then, as she knew he would because guys like him believed everyone wanted to meet them, he shifted the folders he carried to his left hand, headed toward her, and held out his strong, tanned right hand. “I’m Gabe Borden.”

She nodded without raising her eyes from the page.

“I’m Hector’s basketball coach,” he added.

“He used to play pro ball with the Rockets,” Hector added. “Now he’s my coach.”

“Oh,” she murmured because she had no idea what or who the Rockets were, but if he was Hector’s coach, it must be a basketball team someplace. If he used to play pro ball and now coached high school, he must have fallen in the world. How had he lost all his money?