Caleb squeezed her knee. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got carried away. This is your thing, and I’ll stay out of it.”
“I don’t want you to stay out of it,” she replied. “I want just to enjoy the fact that a painting I bought for three hundred dollars just sold for fifty times that. Can we focus on the victory for right now and think about all the minute details later?”
“Yes, ma’am.” A goofy grin split his face. “You have my support and my advice whenever you want it,” Caleb said, pride clear in his voice. “But as part of this team, I should have a hand in taste-testing the new menu, right? Whenever that comes around,” he hastened to add.
Ignoring the warning bells ringing in her mind, Snow kept her eyes on the highway ahead and said, “That probably won’t come up until after the first of the year. You plan to still be around then?”
Taking her chin between two fingers, Caleb turned her face until their eyes met. With a serious expression, he said, “The only way I wouldn’t be around is if you decide we should move. You thinking about moving?”
The relief was so strong that tears threatened at the back of her eyes. Happy tears.
“What about your parents and Baton Rouge?”
He returned his focus to the road. “There’s always phone calls and holiday visits.”
Christmas with the McGraws sounded as pleasant as having her appendix removed through her big toe. Snow would much rather see her own family during the holidays, and if her mother-in-law followed through on her threat, that’s exactly where Snow would be. Headed to Birmingham by herself.
At some point in the last two weeks, hope had taken root in Snow’s heart. Could there be a chance that Caleb learning the truth might not mean the end of them? Could he forgive her?
More importantly, was Snow willing to risk it?
“You’re awfully quiet over there,” Caleb said.
Snow took his hand, choosing to stay in the moment. “Just happy,” she said.
And tried to believe it.
Caleb spent the rest of the drive home thinking about this new development. Though Ardent Springs had been growing on him, he hadn’t actually made the decision that this was where he wanted to live. Not that he had any intention of leaving Snow, but he’d never pictured himself living in a small town either.
He had no family here. No history. They didn’t even have a real home. The apartment behind Hattie’s house was cozy enough, but not anywhere he’d want to live long term. Caleb was living like an interloper in Snow’s frilly little cottage as it was.
But living arrangements were easy enough to change. If he insisted they move back to Baton Rouge, everything they’d accomplished in the last two weeks would be for naught. And Caleb had to admit, being this far from his parents wasn’t such a bad thing. Other than his mother’s constant phone calls, which he’d been ignoring more and more, there was a certain freedom in being completely on his own.
Even when he’d lived in Nashville, trips home had been frequent. His ego fought against the admission, but Caleb had to face the truth. He’d never truly cut the cord that tied him to his overbearing and demanding parents. This was his opportunity to do that. To be his own man, not Jackson and Vivien McGraw’s trophy offspring.
In Ardent Springs, he could simply be Caleb—salesman, husband, and contributing member of a community that valued his input. To the residents of this small town, he was no different from and no better than they were. A new experience he found oddly refreshing and rewarding.
So the only real problem was the little apartment, and that could be fixed with the right agent. Luckily, one of Caleb’s soon-to-be-inherited clients was the best realtor in Ardent Springs. And that would be his first call come Monday morning.
He had to admit, all the pieces of creating his and Snow’s happily ever after were falling amazingly into place. As if all they had had to do was land in this little town and start all over again. He’d have preferred not to have endured the eighteen-month hiatus to get to this point, but Caleb wasn’t one to complain about a good thing.
However they reached this point, he was just happy they’d gotten there.
Chapter 21
“I think the counter color should be blue,” Carrie said, “to match the logo.”
Carrie was referring to the Lulu’s Home Bakery logo that Snow had created back in the summer. The word Lulu’s stood out in bold blue letters on a brown oval background.
“The whole thing can’t be blue,” Lorelei commented. “It would be too masculine and stand out like a turd in the punch bowl around all the girlie stuff in the store.”