Read 15 Tales of Love for Free Online Page A

state park and sat looking at the waterfront, talking about nothing particular, watching the sun setting. Rose Ellen felt him relaxing a little, and her hopes rose.
    “I guess it’s time to go.” He took her hand, held it a moment and squeezed her fingers, then reached for his crutches. “If I had two free arms . . .”
    She offered her hand to help him up off the park bench.
    “I have two.” She put both arms around him, pressing lightly against him. “I do enjoy your company, Timmy.” She couldn’t quite say ‘I love you.’ Not yet.
    She raised her face to meet his eyes. He leaned forward awkwardly and kissed her. “I need two arms to hold you.”
    She put her arms around his neck. “You’ll have them back soon.”
    “I hope.”
    Timmy called her in the middle of the next week. “My cast comes off on Friday,” he said, and she could hear his cautious elation. “If everything is like it’s supposed to be, I’ll go back into rehab.” He paused a moment but she could find nothing else to say. “And I’ll be walking properly in a few weeks, they tell me.”
    “Wonderful.” She tried to put her genuine pleasure for him in her voice and to quiet her own uncertainty. What will happen to me when he’s healed? When he’s back in his own world?
    “So,” he said, “if all’s well, would you come celebrate with me? Getting out of the cast?”
    “Of course.”
    “I’ll call you after, after I see the doctors.”
    “I’ll be waiting with my fingers crossed.”
    However, removing the cast left Timmy feeling ill and weak. “The shock, I guess. My leg isn’t what it used to be,” he said when he called Rose Ellen. “It looks awful, skinny and pasty white with those purple scars. But let’s celebrate anyway.” He hesitated. “But I guess you’ll have to come here to my folks’ house.”
    She liked his parents and had formed an easy, casual relationship with them. “No problem. Shall I bring the champagne?”
    It was another week of exhausting exercise in rehab before Timmy was out again. He still had weeks of exercise to go and still used one crutch, but he could drive for short distances. They met for dinner in a small café they had found.
    “I’m going back to work next week,” he said. “There are things I can do, as long as I keep both feet on the ground.”
    “I hope you don’t overdo.”
    “My uncle won’t let me do that. You’d think I was a teenager, the way they act sometimes.”
    “It’s just that we care for you.”
    He reached across the table and picked up her hand. “I more than care for you, Rosie.”
    She met his eyes without answering. Everything she wanted was written there, a future, maybe even the rose-covered cottage.
    “I have a job I can do, on my own, sort of as a favor for my uncle, to get back into the swing of things at my own pace.” He hesitated a moment. “I was thinking about that little house you said you wanted, the little rose-covered Kincaid one.” He met her eyes and smiled. “There’s a little house. It’s not Kincaid, a long ways from it, but it could be mine, if I want it. It used to belong to my grandfather and my uncle’s had it for years. It’s empty and he’d like to get rid of it, but not really . . . I mean, keep it in the family.” he stopped again. “So would you go with me to see it? Give me some pointers maybe on how to fix it, do some landscaping? It never had any.”
    She wondered if he had something more in mind, but she didn’t ask. She didn’t dare; so many of her hopes had come to nothing but more pain.
    The little house was on a back road with no visible neighbors. It had once been a hunter’s cabin, many years ago when the area was woodland. It originally had two small rooms with a sleeping loft above and a stone fireplace at one end. Its shingles were weather-beaten gray–a few were missing–and the open porch sagged at one end. The front yard was overgrown with weeds and birch and pine trees had encroached