worth having.”
She rubbed her cheek where his hand had touched it. “Really? So, what are your dreams, Mitch?”
It was impossible for him to answer. Because right then, he was toying with a dream that involved Jenny and forever.
He took a safe answer. “I want to play professional football.”
But she shook her head. “Come on, Mitch. That’s not a dream. That was already your reality. We’re playing a game. You have to come up with something you could never have in a million years.”
He searched his brain for an acceptable answer and ended up stalling. “I don’t know, Jenny. There aren’t a lot of things I can’t buy.”
“Something money can’t buy.”
“Happiness?”
“Sure.” She waited for him to elaborate.
This time, he tried to be honest. “I want the TCC to have a successful election that brings the membership together under a good leader.”
She rolled her eyes. “Lame.”
“You don’t want that?”
“Of course I want it. But that’s motherhood and apple pie. Who doesn’t want it? Plus, it’s not for you personally. Tell me something that’s for you.”
“I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.”
“Oh, yes, you can.” She was obviously not going to let this go. “I owned up to secretly wanting a silly, whimsical house. Spill.”
“You should build that house.”
“Quit stalling.”
But he had to stall, because he knew exactly what it was that would make him happy. Something he could dream about and never have. But he wasn’t going to tell Jenny. He refused to hurt her all over again.
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I really can’t.” Inside his head, he was asking himself what the hell he thought he was doing even flirting with the truth. He needed a lie, and he needed one quick.
“Why not?” she pressed.
“Let it go.”
“You wouldn’t let me off the hook.”
He thought about it for a moment longer. And then he gave her a different truth. “I want a miracle cure for my shoulder. I want to be back to one hundred percent.”
“You will be-”
But he shook his head. “I keep telling myself it’s getting better.” He hadn’t voiced his deep-seated fear out loud to anyone. He didn’t really know why he was doing it now. “But it’s not.”
She reached out and touched his arm, her sympathies obviously engaged. “You just have to be patient.”
“This isn’t about patience. It’s about the physical limitations on the human body.” Now that he’d stuck his toe in the pool of bald honesty, he plunged all the way under. “I see the expression on the physiotherapist’s face, the expression on my doctor’s face. They told me six months. Well, it’s been a year. And there’s been no discernable progress for the last six weeks.”
“I understand these things can plateau.”
He sent her a look that told her to stop lying.
She swallowed. “That’s your secret dream?”
“Yes.” It was the only secret dream he could tell her about. The other was a relationship between the two of them where she didn’t get hurt in the end. Impossible.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.
The genuine caring in her eyes blew him away. After all that had happened, all he’d done to her, that she could muster up this kind of compassion for him was nothing short of amazing.
“Anybody ever tell you you’re a saint?”
She coughed out a laugh. “Good grief, no. My mother used to tell me I was the devil in disguise.”
“Your mother had no right to say that.”
“She was ill.”
“She was nasty.”
Jenny gave a philosophical shrug. “She’s out of the state now, and out of my day-to-day life.”
On impulse, Mitch brushed the pad of his index finger across Jenny’s temple. “Don’t let her live on up here.”
“I’m not.”
“Build the house, Jenny. The one you love.”
“Are you going to pay for it?”
It took everything Mitch had not to say yes.
Wednesday evening, Jenny determinedly rolled up the plans for the French country house and slid them into a cardboard tube. It was all well and good for Mitch to tell her to dream. But reality was reality. She wasn’t building it.
“Jenny?” Cole called from the front room. He was home earlier than usual, and she hadn’t heard him come in.
“Back here,” she answered in response, tucking the plans to the back of a shelf on his built-in china cabinet.
Cole had been incredibly generous about letting her stay with him. She was becoming positively spoiled by the cook and the housekeeper, and she now teased him about never leaving.
He’d told her she was welcome to stay as long as she liked. He said he’d begun to think of her as the sister he’d never had. Since Jenny had always wanted siblings of her own, his words had touched her on a very deep, emotional level.
He strode into the dining room, loosening his tie, having already discarded his suit jacket somewhere along the way. “Can I ask you a huge favor?” He winked and grinned. “Sis?”
“Am I going to hate this?” she teased in return.
“I hope not. You can say no if you really hate it.”
“What if I only sort of hate it?”
“Then you should say yes and make me happy.”
“Go ahead.” She pretended to brace herself against the back of a chair. “Hit me with it.”
“Jeffrey Porter called today. From the Tigers.”
“I know who you mean.”
“He offered a fifty-thousand-dollar contribution to my hospital charity if I gave him my fourth ticket for the Longhorn Banquet.”
The fourth ticket? So, he’d be attending with them.
“He’d be my date?” Jenny asked.
“He would. Tickets have been sold out for months.”
Jenny didn’t have anything against Jeffrey. She didn’t see her and Jeffrey going anywhere on the relationship front. But fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money.
“It’s a good charity?” she asked Cole.
“They’re building a new pediatric wing.”
“He won’t think he and I are on a real date, right?”
Cole shook his head.
Jenny analyzed the request for a downside. It was a lost opportunity to date someone new. Then again, there’d be a whole lot of new people at the party.
“What do you think?” Cole put in.
“As long as you don’t think I’ll be misleading him.”