Текст книги "Long Shot"

Автор книги: Hanna Martine

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“Let you? They’re not paying you?”

“No. I took vacation.”

Dumbfounded, Leith cocked his head and planted his hands on his hips. The girl had worked at least two jobs every summer she’d been here. She’d checked her bank balance nearly every day. All she’d ever talked about was being someone, being a success. Work, work, work. What else didn’t he know about her? What else had he gotten wrong?

“So why are you doing this?” he asked, voice soft. “Really. This doesn’t . . . seem like you.”

Her facial features tensed. “You can’t say that.”

He had to look away because the urge to want to know her was building and building, and he wasn’t sure if he should let it. “You’re absolutely right.”

She cleared her throat but said nothing.

“So.” He stepped closer, even though there was scant space left for him to erase. A little cloud of dust rose between them where he’d scuffed the dirt with his boot. She had to tilt her head back to look at him, and he tried not to remember that this was exactly how she’d looked with her back against the Stone Pub wall the night of their first kiss. “Is this who you are now? Is this what you do? Save small town festivals?”

“No.” She licked her lips, and the way she stared into his eyes had him feeling eighteen all over again. “Just this one.”

Chapter

5

“Leith MacDougall, what a surprise!” Evidently Sue McCurdy did know how to smile, and it was when the town’s celebrity was in touching distance. Today’s Syracuse T-shirt was navy blue, and the age-inappropriate hairstyle was pigtails sticking out from just behind her ears. The mayor stood in the open door of Town Hall, beaming right over Jen’s head at the big man at her back. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Leith moved to Jen’s side, crowding her on the small front stoop, their arms touching briefly. “Just dropping off Jen,” he said.

Sue blinked at Leith, then shifted a confused glance to Jen, as though seeing her for the first time. Jen understood. Leith somehow managed to consume the atmosphere and draw eyes wherever he went. If he were a true celebrity, his pockets would be full of women’s underwear. Dimly, Jen wondered if he’d ever found the pair of hers they’d lost in the dark woods one night a long time ago.

Jen wished Leith would leave. Not because she wanted to be rid of him, but because she needed to exhale. From the second he’d turned his giant truck into the fairgrounds and the sun had hit that quiet spot in the center of the field where he’d told her he loved her, she’d been holding her breath. There was a great pain in her chest because of it.

Appropriately, the picnic blanket that night had been red plaid, not his family tartan or anything, but appropriately Scottish looking. The evening had started sad, with the two of them knowing she was leaving, and ended in catastrophe.

Only a few minutes earlier, as she’d stood outside the barn, she’d been relieved Leith couldn’t see her face, because she was sure there was no color in it. She’d wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. That stupid spot on the grass had beat like a diseased heart: loud, erratic, deadly. She’d turned back around, and the sight of him—older, bigger, longer hair—had nearly brought up ten-year-old tears from where she’d shoved them deep inside.

He was so nonchalant, so frustratingly cool. Maybe he’d buried his memories of that night the way she’d buried her tears. Nothing ever fazed him, Aimee had said, but how could even he not be affected by the fact that they were standing in almost the exact place they’d said good-bye?

Maybe he’d finally forgiven her. Maybe he hated her and was doing a damn fine job of covering it up.

That second thought made her want to throw up.

“Thought I’d come say hi, too,” Leith said to Sue, “and to let you know Chris’ll be taking over your yard when I’m gone.”

“Are you helping Jen?” Sue asked Leith, her eyes brightening. “Because that would be just fantastic.”

The smile he gave Sue was pure gold. “Wish I could, Mayor Sue.”

The mayor leaned forward conspiratorially. “But you’re going to throw, right? Your last hurrah before you leave us for good?” Leith was laughing in a genial, polite way until Sue added in a syrupy voice, “It’s what your father would have wanted; I’m sure of it.”

Maybe Sue didn’t notice, but Jen did—that little hiccup in Leith’s laugh, the slight narrowing of his eyes. Then those were gone, leaving Jen to wonder if she’d actually seen them.

“I’m sure he would have,” Leith slowly replied, “but I just haven’t been training like I should. Out of practice, you know. Besides, I’ll be gone by then. The Carriages—you remember them? Rory and Hal, the Hemmertex president? Anyway, Rory called me out to Stamford to redesign their entire property. I’ll be going back and forth until I find permanent digs down there.”

Now it was Jen’s turn to blink. Not that he owed her any information of the sort, and not that they’d really talked about anything other than the Highland Games in the past, oh, hour or so since they’d reconnected, but she was still shocked to hear it. Leith MacDougall was really up and leaving Gleann. It wasn’t just talk.

Sue stood back, a girly pout pushing her bottom lip forward, and sighed.

“So,” Leith said to Jen after an awkward pause. “You good here? Or you want me to stick around in town and take you back when you’re done?”

Jen shook her head. It was only a fifteen-minute walk back to Maple, nothing by New York City standards, but that wasn’t why she said no. “I want to go see Aimee when I’m through here. Thanks, though.”

“’Kay.” He touched Sue’s arm in good-bye, but didn’t reach for Jen. Just gave her a weird, tight-lipped grin, eyebrows raised, and then bounded back down the steps.

She didn’t exhale until his rumbling truck made a U-turn and headed up toward Maple. He didn’t once look back.

“So what can I do for you?” Sue’s arms folded under those boobs, and she glared down at Jen with a look she knew all too well. Like Jen was seventeen again and she’d given the mayor’s three Yorkies the wrong food at the wrong time of day.

Guess what? She wasn’t seventeen anymore, and she wasn’t doing this for Sue. Above everything, Jen was a professional. “I have a bunch of questions for you before I give my recommendations to the city council. Do you have time?”

Sue flattened her back to the wall to allow Jen to pass, but Jen still inadvertently brushed against that chest.

“He’s leaving, you know,” Sue said as she turned into her office at the front of Town Hall. “It would be kind of stupid to start something with him again. I remember how you two were back in the day.”

Jen froze in the doorway of the cramped office, flabbergasted and unable to speak for several moments. Sue flicked annoyed eyes at the windows, as if Jen didn’t already know she was talking about Leith.

“Thanks for the advice, Sue, but nothing is starting up between us again.” Jen sat in the lone chair opposite the mayor’s saccharine statue of three Yorkie puppies. Tugging her laptop out of her purse, she muttered under her breath, “Glad you noticed, too. That’s not creepy at all.”

* * *

Dusk fell fast over Gleann, and then suddenly it was full-on night, someone somewhere having flipped a switch to send the world into black. Jen had forgotten that about this area, how there weren’t miles of lights in all directions eating up the darkness. She’d forgotten that she liked it.

Jen let herself in the front door of the Thistle. The interior was shadowy dim except for a pale glow filtering through the giant sheets of plastic marking off the stripped-to-the-studs front room. The soft light came from the kitchen, but the B&B was so quiet, Jen assumed Ainsley and Aimee must be in their apartment above the garage and had just forgotten to turn off the lights. Then she heard Aimee’s low voice drift out from the kitchen.

“Aim?” Jen called quietly as she tiptoed down the hallway. For all she knew, Owen could be back there with her sister, putting on a show for the deer in the backyard.

No man’s voice followed Aimee’s, just silence. Still, Jen peeked carefully around the corner, one eye scrunched shut, for fear of what she might see. But Aimee was merely sitting at the country table, head in one hand, the other pressing the phone to her ear. She was nodding and saying “Uh-huh, uh-huh. I’ll ask Jen.”

“Hey,” Jen whispered, and knocked lightly on the door frame to catch Aimee’s attention.

Aimee startled, her head snapping up. Her face turned chalk white. Her wide, terrified eyes belonged to someone who’d been caught with a bloody knife. She pulled the phone away from her mouth and stared at it like it was the murder weapon and she hadn’t realized the horror of what she’d just done.

Jen had no idea what was going on, but her stomach dropped.

She eased into the kitchen, whose light suddenly didn’t feel so soft, and pressed both hands into the back of the chair opposite her sister. “Everything okay?” she mouthed.

She could hear a garbled woman’s voice inside the phone, but no distinct words.

Aimee licked her lips and said into the receiver, “I have to go. Talk to you later.”

She hung up, her hand shaking.

“What’s going on?” Jen nodded at the phone. “What are you going to ask me?”

The back screen door opened and Ainsley pounded into the kitchen in her tiger-striped pajamas. The garage wasn’t attached to the Thistle and you had to cross the backyard to get from the apartment to the inn. “Okay, Mom, it’s nine. My turn to talk. Oh, hey, Aunt Jen.”

“Hey, Sleepy McGee.”

Aimee rose from her chair and was turning toward her daughter when Ainsley saw the silent phone on the table. “You already hung up? Crap. I wanted to tell Grandma about Bryan’s slingshot.”

“Watch your language,” Aimee said in a dull voice that lacked authority.

“Grandma?” Jen squeaked. No way. Couldn’t be . . . “Not Mom. You weren’t talking to Mom. Were you?”

Aimee brushed her dark bangs off her forehead and took forever to answer. At least she looked Jen in the eye when she did so. “Yes,” her sister said, with a forced strength cut by a clearing of her throat. “Yes, I was.”

Jen still wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. She looked to Ainsley for a second opinion, but the girl seemed as confused as Jen felt.

“What’s going on?” Ainsley asked, her big blue eyes darting between her mom and her aunt.

“Ainsley, could you go back to your room?” Aimee asked quietly.

“Can I take your phone? Call her back?”

“No.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Ainsley left, but not before Jen saw the disappointment smeared over that young face. What on earth was going on?

“Ainsley wanted to know her grandma,” Aimee said before Jen could ask. “And I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.”

Oh, Jesus. “Seriously?” Jen fell into a chair. “How long has this been going on?”

“A few years now. After we left you in New York. It started slow, a phone call every couple of months, just so they could connect, you know?”

“And now?”

“And now”—Aimee pulled out the chair she’d vacated and sat, lifting pained eyes to Jen—“It’s a weekly thing. Mom and Ainsley . . . they talk a lot.”

Jen just stared, the explanation difficult to process. Did Aimee even remember all the shit Mom had put them through? Didn’t they have the same memories, the same hurt, even if they didn’t have the same father?

“You know Ainsley,” Aimee said with an artificial laugh. “She can talk to anyone, be friends with anyone. But she wanted a grandparent, and Mom was the only one I could give her.”

In a terrible way, Jen understood. Whatever Mom had inflicted upon her and Aimee growing up, the woman was half a country away. And Ainsley wasn’t Aimee or Jen.

“It sounded like you talk to her, too,” Jen said, and Aimee nodded. Jen ground fingers into her temples. “So does she know what you’re doing with Owen?”

Aimee sat up straighter. “That’s none of your business, Jen. Owen is mine and I know what I’m doing.”

“Are you forgetting what Frank did to Mom? All those women around town, flaunting themselves in front of her? All those scenes? Do you remember bailing her out of jail for attacking that one who came to the house? Owen isn’t divorced. I heard he’s still living with his wife. You don’t think this sounds horribly familiar?”

Aimee thrust out a hand. “Stop. There is nothing to be ‘fixed’ with Owen and me. You don’t know the whole story and, honestly, it’s none of your business. Stay out of it.”

Jen wondered if Aimee kept any vodka in the freezer.

“She’s different now.” Aimee laid her hands flat on the table. “She really is.”

Jen highly doubted that. The woman had just gotten worse every year her girls had aged. “You were talking about me. She knows I’m here?”

Aimee swallowed. “Yes. She wanted to talk to you.”

Jen froze, her body welded to the chair. “She said that? In those words?”

“Well . . . no.”

A strangled laugh escaped Jen’s throat. “Of course not. Was she drunk?”

Aimee’s cheeks flushed. It was clear she wanted to say something, then gave a little shake of her head. Heavy silence weighted down the air between them. The kitchen was fogged with tension. Aunt Bev’s grandfather clock chimed the incorrect time out in the hall.

“It’s been ten years, Jen. You have no idea what she’ll say now—”

“I don’t have to know! She slurred enough the day I left for Austin. That I was ungrateful. That I was abandoning her. That I thought I was all high and mighty, but that I really wasn’t worth anything. Those are the kinds of words that stick.”

Aimee nodded sadly at the table. “I see.”

It was then Jen finally noticed the smell of cookies and the timer on the stovetop counting down the final seconds of baking. Just another normal evening for Aimee. A normal, weekly evening. The buzzer went off and Aimee rose to pull out the tray of chocolate chip.

“What did she want you to ask me? I heard you, before I came in.”

Aimee shoved a spatula under each cookie and slid them one by one onto a cooling rack before answering, her back still to Jen, “She wanted to know if you were planning on sending a check this month.”

So now Aimee knew. Jen fought against the urge to scream in frustration. To kick a chair halfway across the room. To stomp out of the house. “See? She hasn’t changed at all.”

“Jen.” Aimee finally turned around, hands braced behind her on the counter edge. “That’s not the point. You’ve been sending her money?”

Jen shook her head, but not in denial.

“If you’re so worried she’s still drunk all the time, if you hate her that much . . . why?”

Salty, stinging tears filled Jen’s eyes. The day had finally caught up with her—first facing Leith and his indifference, then clawing her way uphill with Sue, now this.

She calmly rose. “If you’re going to play the ‘that’s none of your business’ card, then here’s me, playing mine.”

Chapter

6

Leith had his bare feet kicked up on the rickety coffee table with the angel inlays and the chipped legs, TV muted and tuned to the Red Sox game he wasn’t even watching. Ten o’clock at night and Jen still wasn’t back. He knew this because he’d positioned the pink velour recliner to perfectly view her driveway and side door.

The security light over 738’s porch flicked on as Jen appeared, walking slowly, head bent, that damned purse dragging one shoulder down. She carried a brown takeout bag from the Stone in the opposite hand.

He sank deeper into the recliner and nudged back a corner of the lace curtain. It could have been the harsh glare of the motion-sensor light, but there was a pale haggardness to her face. If he didn’t know that she always managed to hold herself together no matter the situation, he might have named it sadness.

No, never that on her. A trick of the light then. But it made him think of earlier that day, when he’d doubted how well he actually knew her.

She must have spent a long time with Aimee to have come back so late. He wondered if it was difficult for her, to have been called back to Gleann to work, only to spend so little time with her sister. But then, the two of them had never been all that close. Aimee had run with the partying crowd every summer, with Jen often having to rescue her from shit situations or drive her home after she’d drank too much. Jen and Leith’s jokes on the townspeople had been harmless, but Aimee’s antics—vandalism, a pot bust—rarely left people smiling, least of all Jen.

Being closer to Jen, Leith had always held Aimee at arm’s length. Then one summer, while Jen had been off at college, Aimee had reappeared in Gleann holding a baby. Bev Haverhurst took her in without question. Aimee mellowed, grew up. Gleann was a good mother that way; if anything, Leith knew that. Then Bev died, leaving the Thistle to her older niece.

Outside, Jen reached the side door. Showtime.

Leith sat back, hand over his grinning mouth. Maybe Jen refused to acknowledge their romantic past, but he would love for her to remember their friendship, how fun it used to be.

She struggled to take out her keys while balancing everything else, then finally managed to wiggle the key into the testy lock. Then she saw it. The takeout bag slid to the ground as she plucked the folded piece of paper taped to the door.

He shouldn’t be laughing. Really, he shouldn’t be. Except that it was too damn funny. Even when she pressed the piece of paper to her chest and crept around the front of 738 to peer over at the empty blue house she thought belonged to Mr. Lindsay, he was laughing.

The Jen he knew was getting ready to march over to that house and pound on the door, intending to shove the note in the old man’s face and tell him to back off. Then the jig would be up, Leith would head outside to meet her and reveal himself, and they’d have a good laugh. So when she turned to look over at Mildred’s house instead, he flattened himself against the back of the recliner, out of sight.

Seconds later, someone rattled his back metal screen door. What the—

He pushed to his feet, checked to make sure his fly was up, that he didn’t reek. He stood in front of the foggy antique mirror hanging crookedly in the narrow hallway and ran a hand through his hair.

For the life of him, he couldn’t fully wipe the grin off his face. So when he opened the back door, one foot propped on the single step leading up into the kitchen, he was sure he looked like the proverbial cat who ate the canary.

Jen sighed when she saw him. Actually sighed.

Hello, canary.

“Holy crap, Leith. Look what that pervert left me now!”

She shoved the note in his face, and even though he didn’t have to read it to know what it said, he scanned his own chicken scratch anyway.

“Ms. Haverhurst,” he read, unable to hide his smirk, “Would you mind not hanging your clothing and unmentionables around the house in plain view of anyone walking along the sidewalk?”

Leith laughed as he lowered the paper, but Jen’s arms were clamped over her chest as though she were naked and he were Mr. Lindsay. Which he was, technically . . . and which she wasn’t, unfortunately.

“I’m a little freaked out,” she said. “You tell me. Should I be? Should I move? What’s this guy like?”

Leg still hiked up on the step, one arm braced on the railing, he asked, “So why’s your underwear hanging around the house?”

“Because I don’t trust that old dryer not to fry it! And that shouldn’t matter. Is he peeking in my windows?”

“Well, they’re actually his windows.”

She pressed fingers to her mouth. The law of fluorescent lightbulbs said her skin and eyes shouldn’t look so beautiful under their glare, but she’d never been one to follow those kinds of rules.

“Do you think he’s actually gone inside the house? Do you think he’s actually, you know, touched my stuff?” Her whole body did this exaggerated shiver as her hands dropped. “Why are you laughing? This isn’t funny at all.”

But he couldn’t stop. He just laughed and laughed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Relax, Jen.”

“Don’t tell me to relax—”

“I wrote those notes.”

“Don’t tell me—wait. You?”

His foot dropped off the step and he leaned a hip against the basement railing. “Yep.”

Body frozen in a midrant pose, only her eyes shifted back and forth. “You. You’re Mr. Lindsay?”

He recognized the start of Jen’s anger. The gathering of her lips, the careful swipe of her tongue between them as she ordered her words.

“Before you start”—he held up a hand—“I freaked out when you called me out of the blue the other day. I had no idea you’d come back here. I heard your voice on the phone, you thought I was Mr. Lindsay, I ran with it.” Her shoulders dropped, her giant purse sliding with a jerk to the crook of her elbow. His other hand came up, warding off the verbal blow he could feel coming. He was shoring up his house, nailing boards to the windows in preparation for the hurricane. “I’m sorry. I thought it would buy me some time to deal with you suddenly reappearing. Thought it’d be funny for a bit; you know, since we used to play all those tricks on people together back in the day. Didn’t know you’d get so bothered.”

“A strange man leaving notes on my door. You didn’t think it would bother me.”

He ran a hand around the back of his neck and looked at the linoleum floor with the decades-old line of wear leading from the door to the stairs. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry.” Chin down, he looked up at her.

She broke. Her smile was the sun lasering through the swirling clouds, dissipating the storm.

“Jesus Christ, Leith!” She breathed like she’d just sprinted across the fairgrounds. The takeout bag dropped to the floor. But she was smiling. And laughing. “There’s no one out here! The thought of some creepy old guy looking through my window?”

Hand to his chest, he said, “I’m sorry. I really am.” He let himself have another chuckle, but this one not at her expense. “Want me to walk you back to your place? You know, in case any old men are lurking about?”

“Well, no. There’s underwear strung all around.”

“Like I said, want me to walk you back to your place?”

He hadn’t meant to flirt. Really. It caught both of them by surprise, their smiles fading, the laughter petering out. In the crappy foyer light, their gazes caught and held. The house felt too small, her proximity too close and yet not nearly close enough.

“I, uh . . .” she began, then cleared her throat as her eyes drifted away, over his shoulder. The moment her expression changed, from awkward—but also eager?—attraction, to one of bewilderment, he knew she’d spotted Mildred’s kitchen. He shifted his body to try to block her view, but it was useless.

“Okay, I may have underwear hanging from a clothesline across the living room,” Jen said, “but at least I don’t have shelves of Precious Moments and painted wooden hearts on my kitchen wall.”

Dropping her purse to the linoleum, she pushed past him and jumped up the one step into the kitchen. He sighed, waiting for it.

“Leith.” She stood in the center of the pink braided rug and turned in a circle, amusement plastered all over her face as she took in the elderly horror. He deserved her laughter. “I never pegged you as a pink kitchen sort of guy.”

He had to run with it, though he was loathing where her next line of questioning was heading. “Isn’t it more of a mauve?”

She guffawed. “Did you just move in or something?”

“Or something.” He shut the back door and joined her in the small kitchen.

“Is this your grandma’s house?”

“No.” Strangely, he felt a little defensive, and reached out to straighten a faded and burned pot holder hanging from a hook above the stovetop. “It was Mildred’s.”

“Who’s Mildred?”

“Mildred Lindsay.”

Jen nodded slowly. “Ah, okay. I get it. I think.”

“Her husband died, oh, I don’t know, thirty years ago? She lived alone here, but Horace Lindsay’s name was still on three houses—this one, yours, and the empty one on the other side.”

She laughed low and graced him with a smile that said she’d forgiven him.

“May I?” She gestured down the darkened hall toward the front room. He shrugged. None of the stuff inside was his, and she wasn’t laughing at the house anymore.

Leith followed Jen deeper into Mildred’s home. She turned into the formal living room that looked out over the street. Leith leaned in the doorway, watching as she turned on a lamp with a fringed shade. The room was filled with knickknacks—porcelain figurines and blown glass vases in pale colors and framed Victorian prints—that meant absolutely nothing to him, and which he’d been viewing as a hindrance these past few months. But Jen spent time looking at each one, giving them a fragile, sad, forgotten meaning he’d been purposely avoiding.

She turned from a glass-enclosed bookcase near the window. “So why are you here?”

The lamplight hit her in a way that turned her dress into a translucent suggestion. She was still wearing that pale gray one from this morning, the one that seemed to wrap around the best parts of her body. Thanks to the fuzzy light from behind, he could see her shape: the subtle dent of her waist, the round curve of her hips, the slope of her inner thighs.

Though he’d seen her last night wearing a lot less, there was something terribly intimate about her appearance now—especially in the way she regarded him, head tilted, eyes gone soft.

He cleared his throat and angled his body to stare at a crack in the well-worn hardwood floor. “Mildred left all her stuff to me. The three houses. Everything inside. A bit of money.”

Jen trailed her fingers over a secretary desk. “Why to you?”

He shrugged.

“Did you know her well?”

“No. Not really.”

“But you must have made an impression.”

“I said I don’t really know why.”

“No, you didn’t. You just shrugged.” Her expression turned sly, teasing. “Did you buy her groceries or something?”

“No.”

“Date her granddaughter?”

“No grandkids.”

Jen came forward, moving out of the tormenting lamplight, thank God. He was momentarily blindsided by the memory of how she’d looked the night of their first kiss. Her face turned up to him, him towering over her, she’d looked delicate and beautiful and trusting. And also scared.

Much as she seemed just now.

Jen, true to character, somehow covered all that up with a hand on her hip and a playful squint. “So you must have cut her lawn.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling like he was ten. “Yeah, I did.”

She swallowed a smile and went to the window, leaning over to pull aside the curtain. That smooth, clingy, gray fabric settled into the crack of her ass, and he had to look away again.

“Wow,” she said, examining the plainest, smallest front yard on the block, “you must have done a spectacular job.”

“I also talked to her. I think I might have been the only person who did.”

She swiveled to him, green eyes giant, dark hair swishing around her shoulders. “Oh my God, she had a crush on you!”

There was the Jen he remembered, the Jen he’d once loved. The one who knew how to be fun and giggly and teasing when she stopped moving or working for a minute or two. That, more than anything, made him turn around and head back into the kitchen. There was beer in the fridge somewhere.

“You’re nuts,” he said, opening the door and hearing the satisfying clink of brown bottles along the side shelf.

Jen followed him. Of course she followed. She was laughing now and her voice hit all sorts of wonderful high notes. “I bet she watched you out that big picture window and just . . . pined.”

Thinking about Mildred spying on him while sitting in that rocking chair was plain weird, but he knew that’s exactly what she’d done. He’d caught her once. Maybe twice.

“She watched youuuuu,” Jen sang, “and she thought”—here’s where she adopted a really bad old lady’s voice—“‘That man is so fine. Maybe if I leave him everything I own he’ll sleep with me in the afterlife.’”

He snatched two beers from the fridge door and swiveled around, finger pointing around the neck of the bottle. “That’s disgusting.”

Jen showed no signs of stopping laughing. A wave of emotion hit him as they fell back into their old camaraderie as though time had never happened, and he hid it by taking a half-bottle swig of beer.

She kept going. “And when you took your shirt off—”

“Hey, I don’t ever take off my shirt when I work.”

She stopped, scrunched up her face. “Really? I bet you’d get double the work in half the time. Seriously.”

“I’m not in high school. I’m a business person.”

God, he loved her smile. All diamonds and joy. But it faded a bit as she said, “I know you are.”

Another gulp of lager. He held out the unopened bottle. “You want this one?”

She eyed the brown bottle, her eyes shifting back up to him. He had no idea what she was thinking, taking such a long time to answer. It was a beer, not a shot of Jäger.

“No, thanks. I’m presenting to the city council tomorrow afternoon.”

If he didn’t know better, he’d say she looked nervous. “Good. More for me. I need it.”

She fingered the edge of the tiny breakfast table, and for a moment he was scared it was an indication she was getting ready to head out, to walk away again. Even though she was just next door, it felt painfully far. Too soon to separate after what had broken and been reformed during this strange little conversation.

She didn’t leave. Instead she scanned the kitchen again, but this time in no joking manner. “You didn’t really answer me before. Why are you here in Mildred’s house?” There was a soft, filtered tone to her voice. “And don’t say because you inherited it.”

He scratched at the back of his neck then cracked it. “Okay.”

“I mean, you had to have lived somewhere before here. Did you have a house?”

He finished the beer, setting a new personal record. “Nah. Never owned a place of my own in Gleann, believe it or not. Been holding out for when I find the perfect house so I can do it up right. I want to work on it, create it, from the inside out.” He glanced out the dark kitchen window to the town he couldn’t see. “I guess I know all the houses in the valley and none of them are mine.”

“Huh.” A little smile tugged at one edge of her mouth. “So where did you live before here? And why’d you move out?”

He leaned his ass against the counter and cracked open the second beer. “Because I knew I had to get out of here months ago and things happened real fast. Right around the time Mildred died, Chris Weir, the last guy I have on my payroll, needed to get out of his place because things had gone south with his roommates. He’s trying to get out from a bad crowd. Anyway, I sublet my duplex to him, and moved in here because it was the smallest of the three houses and I knew I wouldn’t be here long. I packed all my shit and divided it between the three garages until I can settle elsewhere.” The second beer tasted even better than the first. “It’s a good transition, I think, to getting out of here. Living here now will make it easier when I won’t have a Gleann address.”