Loving the Lawman

He indicated the wall clock with a jut of his chin. “Play-off game today at four. I’ve got a date with my recliner.”

“Of course.” She smiled, and didn’t think of how nice it would be to spend the late afternoon watching football with him while the current storm blustered outside. She wouldn’t think about the coziness of a shared afghan or steaming hot coffee and a big bowl of chips.

She’d sew.

That was what she’d come here to do after all. To build a business with her grandmother’s help, to work toward summer with one eye on the clock and one foot on the sewing machine treadle. She had goals. Timelines. Objectives. Nothing could get in the way of that. But seeing Seth move into the shop area to continue his work made part of her wish she’d been invited to watch the late-day game with him.

Would she have said yes?

Probably not, although she’d like to.

But she would have enjoyed knowing she’d been welcome.

Chapter Four

“Oh!”

“Easy now.” Seth gripped Gianna’s arm to keep her from falling, fairly certain that if she went down on the icy walk, he and Carmen would most likely follow. “Keep hold of Carmen, there.”

“I’ve got her.” Gianna huffed a breath up to get a stray lock of hair out of her face, one arm clutching her grandmother, the other held tight in Seth’s grip. He used his free hand to tuck the errant curl back behind her ear, and if his hand lingered there a few seconds too long, well...

He smiled down at her because her expression said she got what he was doing and didn’t mind it near as much as she made out, even if she meant to offer total resistance to his charm. “Better?”

He released her arm and indicated the hair by switching his gaze. “It seems to have a mind of its own.”

“I should cut it,” she grumbled as she tested the footing beneath them. “I had no idea this was black ice.”

“Don’t cut it, it’s gorgeous. And this side of the street is notorious for black ice this time of year because the sun hits it just long enough in the late afternoon to melt things and leave the surface slick. Then it takes its own sweet time to melt the following morning.”

“Seth, thank you.” Carmen aimed a bright smile up at him. “We could have fallen.”

“My pleasure.” He fell into step beside them and touched his hand to Gianna’s elbow a couple of times, ready to grab hold if she faltered again. She didn’t, and that made it tough to figure out a reason to hold her in the short minutes before church services began. “Would you ladies like to sit with me?”

“We’d love it!” declared Carmen. Her decisive nature sounded a great deal like his late Grandmother Campbell. Tough, strong, caring, the kind of woman who did what was needed, whatever it took.

“But we can’t.” Gianna refused his offer with a slight frown at her grandmother.

“There’s no harm in sitting with a neighbor to share the Lord.” Carmen met Gianna’s grimace with a wise smile that only made the younger woman’s frown deepen. “Seth, do you sit on the right or the left generally?”

“The right, but I’m becoming a creature of habit too much of the time.” He pointed to the church and then stepped back. “You pick. No one in their thirties should be this predictable already. It’s wrong on multiple levels.”

“Gianna said that exact thing before we moved here,” Carmen agreed. “How about this? Right in the middle. And I did like Reverend Smith’s sermon last week about allowing children to grow. Stretch. Reach.”

“Taking chances worries parents,” Gianna reminded her.

“Taking chances once you’ve hit thirty shouldn’t worry anyone,” Carmen retorted. “God gives us one life, one vessel. Our job is to live it well and take care of ourselves.”

“I can’t find fault with that,” Seth told her. He allowed the ladies to enter the pew, and wasn’t sure how Carmen maneuvered it, but he found himself sitting on the aisle next to Gianna, with Carmen tucked to her right.

Candlelight flickered across the front of the historic church. The Christmas decorations had been removed. Part of Seth liked the uncluttered look of the sanctuary and altar, but another part lamented one more holiday gone. A Christmas past.

A light tap on the shoulder pulled his attention. His parents slipped into the pew behind him, followed by his brother Luke, Luke’s fiancée, Rainey, and three five-year-olds. His mother tempted Dorrie to her side with a book about Noah’s Ark. Aiden snugged himself between his father and his future stepmother, still looking a little peaked from the virus he’d had that week. Sonya spotted Seth and crept around the edge of the pew. “May I sit with you, Uncle Seth?”

Her endearing entreaty made his heart stretch open. So did his arms. She climbed onto his lap and slanted an uncertain smile toward Gianna and her grandmother. She blinked twice, slow and sweet, then snuggled into his chest as the music began.

Gianna smiled back at her. Carmen did likewise, her broader face crinkled in joy. The joy of a child, a gift from God. Holding Sonya made his heart ache more and his soul ache less, his very own personal enigma.

Seth lifted her as he stood, holding her close to his side, not caring that she was five years old and perfectly capable of standing, sitting and kneeling as the service required. It felt right to hold her, to show her the correct passages and tilt the hymnbook just so, as if she could read the words with him. She couldn’t, but she liked pretending, and that was okay by Seth.

* * *

Joy and sorrow, seamed together. Gianna read Seth’s expression as he held the little girl, and she wondered what created the mix of emotion. Would he tell her if she asked?

Maybe. Maybe not.

And yet she longed to know. Longed to soothe, to comfort. And when a miniature quarrel broke out between the two little kids behind her, this little girl burrowed farther into Seth’s shoulder.

Endearing.

Her head filled with what-ifs. Thoughts of boys and girls, babies and children, cradles and car seats vied for mental attention. And when a baby started crying at the back of the church during the kind reverend’s sermon, the comforting sounds of the mother’s murmur made her wonder if she truly had what it took to be a mother.

Her phone vibrated on the short walk home after the service. She pulled it out, recognized her former mother-in-law’s number and was tempted to let it go to voice mail, but she couldn’t. She stepped to where a parking lot met the freshly plowed sidewalk and said hello.

“Gianna, how are you? How is your grandmother? Is everything well, everything all right?” Marie Costanza spoke in rapid-fire sentences 90 percent of the time. The other 10 percent was spent sleeping.

Gianna drew a breath and offered reassurance. “We’re good, Marie. In fact, we’ve just finished church and we’re heading home so it’s not a good time to talk. The walkway is icy, and I need to hold on to Grandma. How is Fort Myers?”

“Cold! Wicked cold. I wonder what I’m thinking spending all this money to come down here and it’s cold, no matter! What about there? Is it bad? Snow? Ice? Cold? Too cold?”

Gianna had learned that when Marie fired too many questions, the best line of defense was to attack the middle ground. “To be expected, right? It’s winter, this is Western New York. One plus one equals cold around here. But I hope it warms up there for you. And you’ve got friends around, right?”

“Friends, yes, friends are good, but they are not the same as famiglia. Not the same as being around my brother, my sisters—although all they do is yak, yak, yak! And you, my Gianna. Whenever I think of my Michael, on those nights when I miss him so much I cry, I think of you and how happy you were together. That wedding, so beautiful. Never have I seen a happier bride, and why not?”

Her words claimed Gianna’s heart because she’d been absolutely blissful back then. So much change, so much gone, a bend in the road she’d never expected. And now another.

“And you made Michael happy, you made his life good.” Marie put heightened emphasis on the word good. “This is what a mother wants for her son, what we pray for, night and day. A woman who will stand beside him and love him all the days of her life, no matter what. I thank the good Lord that he had that with you, Gianna. If only...” Her voice trailed off.

Gianna understood “if only.” If only she hadn’t miscarried twice. If only Michael hadn’t made a convenience store run to buy ice cream for his pregnant wife. If only he’d been home asleep, in bed, like most people were at eleven o’clock at night.

But no, he’d taken her request to heart and drove five miles to get her a quart of her favorite flavor, mint chocolate chip.

He’d lost his life trying to keep her happy, and it had taken a long time before the heavy guilt of that eased. And she hadn’t eaten ice cream since. “I know.”

“Ach, I should not speak of sadness, I know. I know. I just wanted to see how you are, how your grandmother is doing. You will open your store soon, I think?”

“Six weeks, give or take.”

“So long? Why?”