Lisa Dale - It Happened One Night

I CANT DO THIS ANYMORE, HE SAID.

He leaned so close the frosty white of his breath met her face. I cant stand one more minute of my life thinking that any day now some other man will scoop you up and have the life with you that I want. I want to wake up with you in the morning. I want to hand you your bathrobe when you get out of the shower. I want to find your favorite place to be kissed and I want to exploit it. Whether we sleep together or not, we can never go back to being just friends.

She wrapped her arms around herself as he came to stand in front of her once again. She wanted the same things he wanted. But desire wasnt the problemthey had enough of that. The problem was everything else between them that desire put at stake.

Im asking you to forget this. Im begging you. Dont do this right now.

And Im telling you I cant forget. I need to know what we are, he said, the words caught between clenched teeth.

But why do we have to name it?

Because. Im in love with you. Ive always been in love with you. And Im done living a lie.

MORE PRAISE FOR SIMPLE WISHES

FOUR STARS! Simplicity delves deep in this tale Dales modern characters and complex situations read well, and the conflicts between characters highlight the fact that some heartbreaks last longer than a lifetime.

Romantic Times BOOKreviews Magazine

Refreshing touches the heart.

RoundtableReviews.com

An impressive debut believable characters poignant conflicts a characterrich and involving story.

BookLoons.com

A powerful and driven story.

RomRevToday.com

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2009 by Lisa Dale

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: November 2009

ISBN: 9780446559478

Contents

Copyright

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Epilogue: April

Notes and Acknowledgments

THE DISH

For Pop and Gram, with love and thanks

Prologue

Lana Biel had always believed that the most significant experiences of life would most likely occur somewhere equally significantlike mountaintops, cathedrals, or under majestic skies. But instead, her whole future hung in the balance herea place that until now had no significance whatsoeverthe tiny cinderblock bathroom of the Wildflower Barn.

Are you okay in there? Eli asked through the door.

She stared with desperate focus at her Birkenstocks. She counted the number of forgetmenots painted on the mirrors edge, and she thought of all the countless women who had done this before her. In ancient times, shed learned, a woman who suspected she was pregnant would have urinated on fistfuls of barley or wheat, and then she would have watched to see if the seeds grew faster than normal. Lana had once found this idea to be beautifulthat pregnancy and plants could be so entwined. But it was hard to get in touch with her inner earth mother when her pregnancy test was a sterile plastic stick and directions ten pages long.

She leaned her forehead on the wall. Has it been three minutes?

Four.

Im afraid to look.

Either way, Eli said. Well get through it.

I cant drag you into this, she said so softly she thought he wouldnt hear.

Im right here with you. I want to be. I wouldnt let you go through this alone. She touched the center of the door, glad he was just on the other side. The test was little more than a formality at this point. And yet, she still clung to some small but entirely unfounded hope that the result would be negative. Her future hinged on nothing but the presence or absence of a pretty pink line. A big red STOP sign would have been more apt.

Lana. She heard Elis voice through the door. Come on. Its time. She sighed and wiggled her toes, stalling. She thought: A million women have donethis beforethis worrying. A trillion women. Some woman just like her was probably doing it right now. But did every woman feel like she was the first? And entirely alone?

Her friend Charlotte once told her that in the Middle Ages an anxious woman could learn if she was pregnant by paying a prophet to squint into a bowl of her pee. In the last century, a womans doctor would inject a rabbit with her urines hormones, then check the animals ovaries for change. Today Lana had squatted over a small stick.

Why is it always about the pee? she thought.

Ages of nervous women alone in bathrooms, stalling the inevitable.

The moment had come; she raised her head and looked.

Two Months Earlier

May

Dandelion: Taking its name from the French dent de lion (tooth of the lion), the dandelion is a survivor that can withstand even the worst treatment from fickle springtime weather. Folklore says that if a maiden attempted to blow the seeds off the dandelion, the number of seeds that remained foretold the number of children she would have.

May 9

Lana stood in the low field that sloped gently behind the Wildflower Barn, her face turned up toward the incredible, stormmangled sky. There was work to be done in the barna new shipment of seeds to catalog, price, and displaybut Lana couldnt bear the thought of staying cooped up inside. The first thunderstorm of the spring had swept across the outskirts of Burlington, and it left in its wake a sky that was wholly spectacularthick purple clouds torn apart and edged in gold.

When she heard Karins footsteps treading softly behind her, she smiled to herself, glad for her sisters company. There might be a rainbow, she said, twirling the white head of a dandelion in her fingers.

I hope youre not planning on blowing those seeds near my newly tilled field, Karin said.

Lana let her arm drop to her side. Of course not. The flower slipped from her fingers to the ground.

You left these in the stockroom. She handed Lana a thin stack of glossy colorful brochures. Lana recognized thema tender white orchid, a misty cloud forest, a gauzy waterfall, and a smiling guide. Last week shed been daydreaming over the photographs on a slow day at work, and she must have left them where Karin could see.

She should have been more careful.

For their entire lives, she and her sister had been a team. Despite their differences, hardship had forced them to move together like a single unit, soldiers who fought backtoback. But when Lana was just a firstyear student in college ten years ago, shed realized that living in their mothers hometown near Burlington, Vermont, had been Karins dreamnot hers. Before Lana settled down for good, she wanted to travel. To have an adventure. Costa Rica had always held a mysterious allure.

The problem was, she loved her sister far too much to leave anytime soon. She and Karin were each others only family. Karin was rooted in Vermont, her heels dug in. And so Lana had made a promise to herself: Once Karin had a family of her own,