Carolina Moon

“But sometimes, with some people, there’s only yes or no. Don’t take this on.” He drew her back, and his eyes were troubled. “Don’t ask me to, Victoria.” The sound he made wasn’t so much a sigh as a rush of air. “Don’t ask me to bargain our happiness against her approval. I’ve never had her approval to begin with.”
    It was so strange to realize it, and all at once. He’d grown up in a castle and had been just as starved for kind words as she. “It hurts you. I’m sorry I didn’t see that it hurts you.”
    “Old wounds.” He ran his hands down her arms, laced fingers again. “They don’t bleed like they used to.”
    But they would seep and trickle from time to time, she thought, as they began to walk again. No one had ever used a belt on him, or fists. There were other ways to pummel a child.
    Even here, in all this beauty, so far removed from the barren and stifling rooms of her childhood. Beautiful, yes, Tory thought, as they walked under an arbor buried in morning glories, but lonely. That was just another word for barren.
    There should be someone sitting on the bench or clipping the gerberas for a basket. A child stretched belly-down over the path studying a lizard or toad.
    The painting needed life, and sound and movement.
    “I want children.”
    Cade stopped in his tracks. “Excuse me?”
    Where had that come from, and why had it popped out of her mind as if it had always been there? “I want children,” she repeated. “I’m tired of empty yards and quiet gardens and tidy rooms. If we live here, I want noise and crumbs on the floor and dishes in the sink. I couldn’t survive in all those perfect, untouched rooms, and that’s something you can’t ask me to do. I don’t want this house without life inside it.”
    The words rushed out of her mouth, and the panic riding in them made him smile. He remembered a young boy who’d wanted to build a fort. Scrap wood and tar paper.
    “This is such an interesting coincidence. I was thinking two children, with an option for three.”
    “Okay.” She blew out a breath. “All right. I should’ve known you’d already figured it out.”
    “I am a farmer. We plan. Then we hope fate cooperates.” He bent to pluck a sprig of rosemary from the kitchen garden. “For remembrance,” he said, as he gave it to her. “While you’re waiting for me, remember we have a life to plan, as messy and noisy as we like.”
    She went inside with him, and there was Lilah, as she was so often, working at the sink. The air smelled of coffee and biscuits and the sweet rose scent Lilah sprayed on every morning.
    “You come in late for breakfast,” she said. “Lucky for you I’m in a good mood.” She’d been watching them the last few minutes with a lightness of heart. They looked right together. She’d been waiting to see her boy look right with someone.
    “Well, sit down, coffee’s fresh enough. I made up some flapjack batter nobody’s bothered to eat.”
    “Is my mother upstairs?”
    “She is, and the judge is cooling his heels in the front parlor.” Lilah was already getting down mugs. “Don’t have much to say to me today. Been on the phone considerable, and got her door shut. That sister of yours, she don’t even bother coming home last night.”
    Cade’s stomach clutched. “Faith’s not home?”
    “Nothing to worry on. She’s with Doc Wade. Breezed out of here yesterday saying that’s where she’d be and I’d see her when I see her. Seems nobody sleeps in their own bed around here these days but me. Too damn hot for all these carryings-on. Sit down and eat.”
    “I need to speak to my mother. Feed her,” he ordered, pointing at Tory.
    “I’m not a puppy,” Tory muttered as he strode away. “Don’t go to any trouble, Lilah.”
    “Sit down, and take that martyr look off your face. It’s his place to settle things with his mama, and not yours to fuss your head over it.” She got out the griddle to heat. “And you’ll eat what I put in front of you.”
    “I’m beginning to think he takes after you.”
    “Why shouldn’t he? I did most of the raising of him. I’m not speaking against Miss Margaret. Some women aren’t built to be mothers, is all. Don’t make them less, just makes them what they are.”
    She got a bowl out of the refrigerator, peeled back the cover. “I was sorry to hear about your mother.”
    “Thank you.”
    Lilah stood a moment, bowl in the crook of her arm, her eyes dark and warm on