“I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “The swing’s become a sort of shrine to your parents, hasn’t it? I should have asked before I sat down.”
Of course, Kitty hadn’t been able to read his thoughts. Landon finally pulled himself away from the porch railing and strolled over to her. “It isn’t a shrine. It’s not like that. It’s just…” Commitment issues.
She turned and evaluated the cushions again, her cheeks flushed. “The easiest thing to do would be to drape a blanket over the swing. It would both hide and protect the cushions, and you could use it on cold nights to keep warm.” He knew she was switching the subject to save him from the uncomfortable topic of losing his parents. She was thoughtful that way and sweet.
Landon’s brothers told him he didn’t have to keep putting his personal life on hold for them. They had a point. And as Jaxon said, sometimes a woman was worth the disappointment later.
Kitty stepped away from the swing. “If you want, I could find a blanket for you—something soft that would fit your style.”
He took her hand, threading his fingers through hers. “Don’t worry. I think I can find something I like—something soft that fits my style.”
Perhaps he said the words with too much meaning. She peered at him through lowered lashes. “I thought you didn’t know what sort of thing you liked?”
He sat on the swing and pulled her next to him. Still holding her hand, he set the swing gently rocking. “I may have changed my mind about that.”
Now he just needed to change her mind about staying in Arizona. She belonged here. This was where her family was from. For the next half hour, they sat talking and watched the sun edge toward the horizon, painting the sky pink as it went.
Landon ran his thumb over the back of Kitty’s hand. “There isn’t a landscape as wide, open, and beautiful as the patch of ground the two of us live on. You realize that, don’t you?”
“The sunsets are pretty,” she allowed, “but the land is so sparse and brown. Seattle has green everywhere. Trees willingly grow there.” She gestured to a sissoo near the porch. “You don’t have to haul them in from somewhere else and trap them in the soil.”
“Trap them?” he repeated. “You mean because they have roots?”
“If they didn’t, you’d see them all hitchhiking up the 82 to Washington.”
And that, he supposed, was how she felt about living in Arizona, trapped and wanting to cut herself from her roots. She’d leave as soon as she could. This relationship was not going to help his commitment issues. “If you’re partial to trees, you can have as many here as you care to water. Citrus and pecan orchards grow just fine.”
She swung her feet slowly back and forth. “Pine trees are my favorite. They can’t grow here.”
“Sure, they can. You must have seen some pines in Bisbee or Tucson.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You mean the ones that look like they’re trying to be oaks, but they’ve got pine needles instead of leaves? Those don’t count.”
“People shape them that way. They’re still pines.”
She grunted to show her opinion of those misguided trees. “Washington has ranches, doesn’t it? Your cows would be really happy there. They could eat all the grass they wanted instead of that spindly stuff they find around here. And you wouldn’t have to worry about water so much because it falls from the sky, like, all the time.”
For a moment he considered the idea, starting over in another state just to be close to her. But Jaxon and Preston needed his help to run the ranch. He shook his head. “I’m a lot like that sissoo. My roots are here.”
She didn’t speak, and he didn’t like the feel of that silence. It was too heavy, the hush of someone pulling away. Her fingers were laced through his, lying motionless in his hand. He gave them an encouraging squeeze. “We can come to some sort of compromise.”
“If we meet in the middle, that would put us, where—the top part of Nevada?”
“You could be an interior designer here, couldn’t you? You’d find lots of clients in Tucson.”
“Ah.” Her voice turned the subject light again. “I could live among the land of the misshapen pines.”
He squeezed her hand again, half-heartedly this time. “Misshapen pines deserve love too. They’re sort of like pigeons.”
She laughed and changed the subject to trimming the trees that edged her backyard.
So she wasn’t even going to entertain the idea of staying. He gave her his advice on trimming, all the while chiding himself for sitting with her on his parents’ porch swing. She didn’t want to stay in Arizona, and now he would think of this conversation every time he used the porch swing. Turned out, commitment issues had a plus side. They kept you from getting hurt. He ought to rely on them again.
But the next day he found himself driving to a nursery in Bisbee. He bought an Afghan pine and planted it in her lawn so she would be able to see it from her bedroom window. It was small, barely as tall as him, but it was shaped like a pine tree, and it had potential to be large and beautiful. That was the important thing.
The kiss she gave him when she saw it made him decide to never give her bouquets of flowers. He would buy her pine trees instead.
Chapter Fourteen