Curiosity had gotten the better of him.
“What?”
He sneaked a look at the book she’d been poring over. It was a picture of a two-story farmhouse, clearly cut from a magazine and pasted into place. “Last night when you were freaking out you said you wanted to pay off your land and plant dogwoods and sweet peas. Where?”
She blinked and a furrow emerged between her brows. “Oh. It’s uh…” She smiled, a bit self-consciously, and tucked her hand behind her neck. “It’s just a little piece of property close enough to my parents to make them happy, but far enough to keep me sane.”
He chuckled. “Sounds like a good plan. They’re in Ponder Hill, right?”
She looked surprised that he remembered, her green eyes widening prettily. Pathetic how he’d filed every little nugget of information about her away in his mind, unwilling to forget a single detail. Furthermore, though he didn’t live in Ponder Hill proper, he still held the same address.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m about ten miles from them, out in the country.”
“Really?” He was, too. A strange tingling had started low in his back.
“How much land?” he asked casually.
“Twenty acres out on Hardscrabble Road,” she told him, her lips twisting with wry humor. “It wasn’t the picturesque address I’d imagined, but the property is beautiful. Lots of hardwoods and a nice building spot.”
He felt a smile slide slowly across his lips. “Met your neighbors yet?”
Unbeknownst to her, she was sitting across the table from one. He’d wondered who’d bought that property, but had never gone to the trouble to find out. He had plenty of room on his own twenty-acre farm and had built so far back into the plot that his house wasn’t visible from the road.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t see the point until I actually moved out there.”
To tell her or not to tell her, that was the question. For whatever reason…he decided not to. He’d let that be a little surprise.
“When do you break ground?”
“I promised myself that I wouldn’t start the house until the land was paid for—I wanted to completely own that little part of the earth first, you know?” She shook her head, looked away as though confessing something she regretted. “It probably doesn’t make sense, but—”
“No, it makes perfect sense.” He smiled. “And the bank typically likes that plan as well.”
She grinned and peered up at him from lowered lashes. “True.” She sighed. “Anyway, looks like I’ll be breaking ground after the first of the year.”
His knee bumped hers beneath the table and that lone contact made him react. “Miserable time to get started. The weather’s terrible.”
“I want to be in by spring,” she said. “I want to start planting.”
He inspected a single charm attached to his bracelet. He’d cast it himself. It was a tree, complete with roots. He knew exactly where she was coming from on this. His father had been a perpetual renter, had never owned anything more than the cars that took them from place to place. He inclined his head knowingly. “Ah, yes. The dogwoods and sweet peas.”
She nodded primly. “And lots of other stuff, too. But those are my favorites. I’m looking forward the most to watching them grow.”
“Any particular significance?”
She seemed to mull that over. “The dogwoods I just love. Hearty little trees, delicate flowers. They’re beautiful.” Her gaze turned inward and she lifted a shoulder. “My grandmother always had sweet peas. She’d set little bouquets of them in every room, put them in Mason jars. They were simple but pretty, and I love the scent.”
Good enough reason, Bryant thought. He’d never gotten to know his grandparents. His father’s parents had died before he was born, and his mother’s parents… Well, he didn’t have any idea where they were or if they even knew about him. He’d often toyed with the idea of trying to track them down—not his mother, because she definitely knew about him and hadn’t wanted him. But with his grandparents there was always the possibility that they hadn’t known. Maybe that would be his Christmas present to himself this year, Bryant thought. Maybe he’d try to fill in a few blanks on his family tree.
He was never more aware of being alone than this time of year. When other people talked about Christmas presents, baked ham and Aunt Rose’s terrible fruit cake, he got an uncomfortable knot in his belly because he never had anything to add. Take now, for instance. Trick, the sound guy, was currently in a bidding war with someone on eBay for some sort of fake hamster that ran on batteries, and Mason Carpenter, lead guitarist, was wrapping presents for his girls. Chuck Murray, a fellow security agent, had been bemoaning the hectic Christmas schedule and how he’d like a simple holiday at home without playing musical houses.