Page 120 of Rumor Has It

AKA shut up and drive.

Isaiah didn’t ask Vespa to find a female replacement. She innately knew that was what he needed. And while I can handle having another woman around—Sam and Vespa aren’t the only females—I couldn’t deal with the possibility of opening my kitchen to feed someone at our table and have them betray us.

For that, I’m grateful to her.

Isaiah follows me closely, putting a hand at the small of my back as I walk by the banquette. Our sharp inhales, seeing the living area spotless, make it feel like we’ve been holding our breaths. Now that we’re past the anticipation of not seeing Aria’s things, the hurt is different. It’s a dull ache, similar to what I’ve endured when Mom or Gracyn or anyone else congratulated us on our engagement, and Isaiah and I were able to forget our sadness for a little while. The pain is there in the background. However, it doesn’t shred us the way Steve’s initial texts about how Aria was faring picked the fresh scabs open.

We walk past the bunks and into our room, where Monty has tossed our overnight bags on the bed for us to unpack.

I scoot to the restroom. When I come out, Isaiah is scanning the pictures on the wall.

“C’mere.” He gestures for me to hurry with a roll of his arm.

I slide my back to his front and he wraps me in a cocoon, resting his chin on my head.

Sex has been infrequent and quiet when we have it. Our bodies say what our hearts can’t express. Although we crave the comfort of the other’s touch and it’s rare if we’ve been farther away from each other than a closed bathroom door.

At first glance, I’m upset at Vespa for rearranging our personal photos while we were gone. She replaced many of my favorites of Isaiah, Aria, and I with backstage shots of just Isaiah and me. Except, there’s a new, framed and matted, eight by ten from the day before Aria’s birthday. The baby smiles brightly, a finger in her mouth and her top pearly teeth showing. On either side of her cherubic face, Isaiah and I kiss her cheeks. Looking at the photograph, the deep black bags Isaiah wore under his eyes aren’t apparent, nor is the ruddiness of my blotchy face. The love we have for this little girl obliterates the devastation over our loss.

“Rhiannon was right. That was the perfect shot,” he says, not without a sense of longing.

“We’ll have our turn,” I repeat.

I’ve never wanted to have a baby more than I do now. But I don’t want to get pregnant to replace the baby we cared for. I know in my heart I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t stick to my guns and wait for us to get married. As old-fashioned as it is, I’m allowed to carry that dream.

A few hours later, Isaiah goes into the venue for the sound check. Alone, I sit down at the little desk in the kitchen and open my laptop.

Isaiah and I had a virtual session with his therapist the day after our engagement. We want our marriage to work, and we understand communication is key. Aside from the emotions we’re currently dealing with, we’re also under significant pressure most couples seldom experience. It’s unlikely to die down over the summer and we won’t have a “normal” life until the tour ends this fall.

The counselor asked if I had begun formulating a plan for the free time I was about to have. The cookbook came up as we discussed the request for interviews Will assigned the junior partner at his firm to manage. I mentioned what Gracyn said about how my family kept the banquet hall chef position from me.

“Sometimes well-meaning people, who have the best interests in mind, wind up inadvertently hurting the person they intended to protect more by telling a lie of omission,” the therapist said.

Not knowing the full story about why the trustees moved my position to the B&B affected me. It made me think small was safe. It stopped me from spreading my wings and dreaming that I was not only capable of more, but deserved more.

I think Kylie did the same thing to Isaiah. She’d been attempting to change the direction of her life, getting clean and taking responsibility for her daughter. She didn’t tell the man she counted on that she was pregnant to spare Isaiah the initial humiliation. But she hadn’t factored in having a medical emergency or that Isaiah was the stand-up friend who always gave more than he received…And that the one thing he felt deprived of was the one thing she’d never concede to him.

A family.

Another thing that came out of the counseling session? I found out Isaiah and Colton talk a lot. Like a lot, a lot. At Christmastime, Isaiah saw how close Joe and my daddy were and decided the only way to prove to my father how serious he was about me was to emulate that rapport.

Isaiah asked my daddy for my hand before he went ring shopping. And Isaiah admitted Colton’s lack of reservation at both the proposal and his request to purchase the land next to Gatlin and Bellamy’s house had him going overboard. He bought the jewelry I wore to the awards show at the same time as my engagement ring.

It made me reflect on how my dad suffered through my worst cooking experiments because he had confidence in me. He believed I took flight from the ranch when, and why, I did because it was the right thing for me to do. So why did I keep brushing off Isaiah’s faith in me?

Why was I stopping myself from thinking bigger when someone else had no compunction over stealing my work and passing it off as theirs?

I can write a cookbook. Heck, I’m young. I can write as many cookbooks as I want.

I click on the folder of scanned recipes and start copying the ones I love the most over to a subfolder called “volume 1”.

?????

“Knock ‘em dead, Miss C.” Monty walks alongside Isaiah and me wearing his “take me seriously, I’m a bodyguard” suit and tie that he dons for special occasions.

“You got this, chou,” Isaiah beams as we come to a halt.

He rubs his hands over the fabric covering my arms, sending a chill of excitement throughout my body.

---