Mr. Maybe

by M. Kate Quinn

  “And, honey, you’ve been such a good sport about your grandmother’s wedding gown. I’m hoping you’ve let go of the disappointment. It was just a dress.”

  “It was more than that, Mom.”

  Mom put a hand on top of Kit’s and gave it a squeeze. “It marked one moment in your grandmother’s life. You know that photo I found in a box in my mother’s attic, the one with Gram on the steps?”

  “Yes. You told me the dress was pink.” She was tempted to make a face but didn’t. Instead, she complimented what stood out to her in the picture. “It had a snazzy rhinestone belt buckle, right?”

  “Yes, it did. Gram looked so happy in that snapshot, didn’t she?”

  Kit nodded her head but didn’t know what that had to do with Co-Co being the recipient of the wedding gown.

  “Happiness is on the inside no matter what’s on the outside.”

  When Kit went back to the party, guests were still lingering, some by a dessert table set up on Dee Dee’s sideboard, some hanging by the bar. Shane stood with Brian, each of them nibbling on a cookie from the selections. Her insides did a tumble. As if reading her presence, Shane turned his head in her direction. The message in his green eyes flashed as though with intentional sequence—SOS.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shane took another bite of the peanut butter cookie. How had he gotten roped into talking with this guy? One more word about the scuba lessons and the quest for becoming an instructor and he might toss his cookie.

  “Enough about me.” Brian took a bite of the brownie he had been nibbling like a rabbit. He closed his eyes and uttered a soft moan. “These things are addicting. So besides putting out fires, what do you do? What’s your passion, Shane?”

  “I have a lot of interests. Music is up there. I play guitar.”

  Brian nodded, unimpressed. “How’s it going living on the river with Kit?”

  “Great. She’s got a sweet place.”

  “Yeah, guess you got pretty lucky, huh?”

  He didn’t like the tone of Brian’s words, dripping with skepticism so profusely the guy might need a bib.

  “Very lucky.”

  “Has she tried to convince you yet to get a pet?”

  Shane swallowed hard. “Sure.”

  “I’m allergic so there was no way I was going to sleep over if she got one.”

  “I have no problem with dogs.”

  Brian tilted his head. “Cats. Kit loves cats.”

  “Right. That’s what I meant.”

  “I’m sure you know all about Blue.”

  Blue? What did that mean? He was having brain freeze, as if he’d eaten too much ice cream too fast. Obviously, there was something significant about the color. Where was Kit anyway? He looked around for her, but she had disappeared somewhere with her mother a little while ago and hadn’t returned.

  “So?” Brian prompted with a quirked brow. “Did she?”

  “We tend to have that in common, too. We, uh, both like blue.”

  “Blue was her gray cat that died before she moved into the house.”

  “Oh.”

  “How do you not know that? She was obsessed with that hairball.”

  Shane turned his head and thanked all the saints that Kit had come back to the living room. He met her gaze, willing her to come to the rescue. She picked up on his cue and closed the space between them with quick steps.

  “What are you two chatting about?” She’d pinned on a bright smile, but Shane knew it as a facsimile.

  It didn’t matter. He was just glad she was there.

  ****

  “Kit, how have you not told Shane about Blue? How long did you guys go out before you decided to move in together, anyway?”

  Her mouth hurt from smiling, and she let it fall. Her face flooded with heated resentment. “Two months,” she blurted, which came out the same exact time Shane offered, “Six weeks.”

  Brian was about to say something but stopped when Aunt Dee Dee sidled up beside them. She clapped her hands like a teacher wanting her pupils’ attention. “Guests are beginning to leave, Brian. Come. Let’s say our goodbyes. Your fiancée is by the door, waiting.”

  When Brian walked away with Dee Dee, Kit turned to Shane. Their eyes locked. They didn’t need words. They both knew they’d dodged a bullet.

  ****

  Co-Co and Brian stood by the front door, as if they were in a practice run of the wedding’s receiving line, alongside Aunt Dee Dee and Cousin Paul, who would be walking the bride down the aisle as a kind of surrogate for Co-Co’s father who’d passed away ten years ago.

  Aunt Dee Dee pulled Kit into an embrace. “Thank you for coming.” Her eyes were misted over.

  Kit thought she detected a quiver in her aunt’s artfully glossed mouth. Was this in an acknowledgment of what the lovely couple’s circumstance had cost her?

  She was tempted to respond with an “I wouldn’t have missed it,” but she was fresh out of fibs for today. Instead, she said, “You did a wonderful job, Auntie.” The comment seemed to please her, and Kit couldn’t decipher if the smile was in gratitude or relief. She worked her way toward the door, first with giving Co-Co a quick hug. “I’ll see you for your next fitting in a few days.”

  “As soon as I lose the ten pounds this party put on me.” She giggled at the absurdity of her words, and Kit was not about to tell the girl what she wanted to hear. Besides, she didn’t have to.

  “Koala-Bear, you hardly ate a thing,” Brian chimed in. He squeezed her small waist. “I can ring one hand around you like a belt.”

  Koala-Bear? Kit swallowed the urge to laugh, but it was as if she’d swallowed a feather, and she started to giggle. She’d read somewhere that koala bears were cute, but in actuality they were pretty darn nasty. That sat well with her, the parallel satisfying and enough to quell her urge to laugh out loud.

  When she stepped over to Brian to say goodbye, she saw from the corner of her eye that Aunt Dee Dee had Shane in her clutches, fawning over him. She cast him an I-owe-you look when their eyes met.

  Kit gave Brian a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “Good party.” He had that wrinkle on his forehead he tended to get when he was contemplating or suffering from indigestion. He pulled her closer again, and for a breathless moment she thought he was going to kiss her on the mouth.

  “Kit.” His whisper was hot on her face.

  She focused on an angry, red zit that had sprouted on his neck. She’d forgotten how he diligently fought the effects of oily skin.

  “How well do you know this guy?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Call it intuition, but I’ve got this feeling about him. I mean, I hope you haven’t rushed into anything on a, you know, rebound or anything. I’d hate to think that’s what this is.”

  Ire lit up inside her like a stick of dynamite with a fuse burning down rapidly and on the brink of explosion as each second being in his proximity ticked by. She took a step away. “Not your problem to worry about, Brian.”

  “Still care about you, that’s all.”

  Throughout the ordeal that unfolded after The Incident, she’d been playing nice in this imbalanced sandbox. She’d managed to keep her cool, show her teeth when she smiled, but right now she wanted to punch Brian in his sanctimonious face.

  Thankfully, Shane came up to her and slung an arm around her shoulder. “Ready, babe?”

  “Extremely.”

  ****

  Shane sat in his truck with Kit beside him as he drove back to her cottage on the river. Although it wasn’t yet nine o’clock, the sky was black, and the inside of the truck glowed with the green lighting from the dashboard.

  “Well, all in all, we did pretty well,” she offered.

  He flashed her a quick look. “Brian is suspicious.”

  She uttered a soft “I know.”

  “Let’s just hope he doesn’t share his suspicions with the rest of the family.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Other than that, thoug
h, I think we were a success. Right?”

  “We sure fooled my mother.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. That was why she dragged me away from the party to give me a talking to. Think witness stand in a court scene on TV.”

  His mouth curved into a smile. “Uh-oh. What did she say?”

  “Well, let’s see. She told me she can tell we are good together and warned me not to blow it by not giving in to my feelings.”

  She may have meant for her mother’s interrogation to lighten the mood, but they both fell into an uncomfortable quiet. The cab of his truck closed in on him, stealing his air.

  He kept his eyes on the road, gripped his hands hard on the wheel, and did his best to dispel the feelings that roiled in his gut. He wanted to turn his head again and look at Kit as she sat in the seat beside him. But he did not. He was, however, acutely aware of her. The honeysuckle scent that was either perfume or her shampoo teased his nose. He heard her breathing and the squeak of the leather seat under her when she moved. He couldn’t take it. He reached over and turned on the radio.

  A country tune came on. He couldn’t remember the group that sang it, but he did know the song was about a guy in love. He switched it off. Talk. That was what they needed to fill in the space. He’d keep it casual and keep his mind from going to a place it had no right to travel.

  “So…” He searched for words. “Your family seems nice.” When she didn’t immediately respond, he turned to look at her, and in the dimness of the truck all he could see were her eyes, big and dark, shiny. He turned back to the road.

  “They sure liked you,” she said finally.

  “Did they?” He cast a teasing smile. This was good. Keeping it light. Friendly.

  “Everyone said you were, uh, nice.”

  He let that sink in for a moment. Again, they were in an awkward silence. The silence fed the thoughts in his head, the stupid ones and the ones he could not cast away.

  He exhaled a long breath. “And so that was Brian.”

  “Other than the third degree, what’d you think?”

  He made a noise with his lips. “He’s a putz.”

  Kit laughed and maneuvered her body a quarter turn to face him. “That’s Hop’s word.”

  “I know. The old guy’s rubbing off on me. You seemed really surprised to hear about Brian and Co-Co taking dance lessons. Did that upset you?” From his peripheral vision he could see her fingers slide through the cascade of her long dark hair.

  “Not upset. Surprised. Brian, or I should say the Brian I knew, would never in a million years take dancing lessons.”

  “No, huh?”

  “Never.”

  “Did you hear that the whole bridal party is taking the lessons, too? And your aunt as well?”

  “No,” she said. “Where did you hear that?”

  “I heard your aunt telling your mother. She even asked her if she’d like to take part. Watch out—they might hit us up for dance lessons, too.”

  He meant it as a joke, so her groan was a surprise. He pulled the truck into their driveway and slowly coasted down the gravel hill. He put the vehicle into park and unclipped his seatbelt. “Okay, so that hit a nerve.”

  Kit turned to him. “Add this to your list of what you need to know about me—I’m the world’s worst, I mean worst, dancer. Just another reason to dread this wedding now that I know everyone there will have taken lessons.”

  “Maybe you’re not as bad as you think.”

  “No, believe me, I am.” She looked away from him, focused her eyes outside the windshield. “Brian once told me I was too uptight, said I was rigid. Sometimes I think he was right. Maybe that’s why I can’t dance. It requires some form of abandon, I guess. I’m just no good at that.”

  Shane didn’t know what to say about that. He wanted to tell her she wasn’t as rigid as she thought she was, not based on the way she demonstrated love for her mother and even good old Hop next door. The way she laughed at Hop’s corny jokes, the way she savored a perfect bite of pizza, a bit of buttered roll. And it was far from rigid being the bigger person around her cousin and that putz. He wanted to tell her that. But he wouldn’t. Shouldn’t.

  “Tell me about Blue.”

  She leaned her elbow on the back of her seat, propped her head with her hand. “He was my cat. If we’d taken the time to go over those picture frames on the mantel, I’d have remembered to tell you about him. He was something special.”

  “How long did you have him?”

  “Eight years. I got him as a rescue. He was part Siberian, which is a long-haired, big-bodied breed. He had this big fluffy tail that looked like a plume. Smartest cat ever.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He played fetch with drinking straws.”

  “Really?”

  “If I was in the bathroom getting ready for work in the morning, he’d shove a straw under the door for me to throw for him. So I’d open the door, toss the straw as far away as I could, and he’d go bounding after it. No easy task getting out of the house with Blue around.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Renal failure.”

  “You miss him.”

  “Down to my bones.”

  A hush fell over them, and they sat in the silence. Finally, Shane spoke.

  “Let’s go in.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The house was dark and still when they entered, and Kit darted across the wooden floor to flip on the kitchen light. In the golden hue Shane watched her with a new understanding. She felt it, too. He could tell. Something had switched in them tonight the same way the house had gone from dark to light with the touch of one finger.

  “I, uh, think I’m going to place a FaceTime call to Dana,” he said. Maybe he’d get lucky, and she’d be available. He’d decided, and he didn’t know when he had actually formed the thought, that he was going to pin Dana down about their relationship. It wasn’t just about the man’s watch he had spied on her nightstand or her never being available. He had questions for her that went beyond those things. Was she happy? Was this relationship what they wanted it to be? He had those questions for himself as well. He also needed to tell her more about his living arrangement. Now that feelings were creeping in on the situation, telling Dana could not wait.

  ****

  The call connected, and Dana’s image appeared on the screen. She wore a white terry robe and her hair was up on her head in a sloppy bunch. Sans makeup, she was still pretty, and he’d never seen the need for her to apply such a ritual to her face each day. Yet she was in the beauty business, so maybe it was more of a need on her part.

  “Hey, stranger,” Shane said.

  “Hi, Shane.” Her smile did not meet her blue eyes. “How’s it going?”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk,” he began.

  “About?”

  “Well, first off I wanted to tell you the story about my temporary-living situation.”

  “The apartment on the green with no balcony and no view. You told me.”

  “No, that’s not until September. I needed to find housing from now until then. Remember? I told you.”

  She twisted her mouth. “Yes, of course. Okay. You’ve rented a room in Sycamore River until the apartment’s ready. Sorry, my mind’s all over the place these days. So how is it working out?”

  Since it seemed as if she’d only half listened when he told her the first time, he reminded her how his coming to rent Kit’s loft came to be. He told her how he had paid for the three months in advance. That set something off in her.

  She moved her chair closer to her screen and pulled her lips in on themselves. “How much did you give her?”

  “Two thousand dollars.”

  “Are you serious, Shane?”

  She chastised him again about his impulsivity. She reiterated how she had tried telling him that joining the Sycamore River Fire Department and moving to the quiet community were rash decisions.

  “You act first and think
later all the time, Shane.”

  Granted, he hadn’t really discussed becoming a paid fireman with her, but he’d known how she’d react. And he’d been right. She went into her rationale again about wanting him to finish his degree.

  “You only have a year left.” Her tone was incredulous. “You could do most of that online these days.”

  “But then what, Dana? Get some office job and push paper around all day? It just isn’t me. How can you not know that by now?”

  Now it seemed silly he’d thought she would turn her feelings around once she came home and saw how happy he was to be a full-time fireman. Doubt grew stronger with each day. She was finding her Milan trip so successful and was all revved up about new possibilities. How would she ever be happy in a little town like this after getting an offer to live and work in Italy? Tonight reality stood in front of him like a roommate.

  “Dana, when you get back, I think we need to have a conversation.”

  Her mouth twisted to the side. She unfastened her hair, and it cascaded down around her shoulders. She gave her head a shake. “No time like the present, Shane.” She leaned in closer to the screen, her eyes imploring. “Say what you have to say.”

  He paused but shook his head. “Not now.”

  A blinking of light flashed under the closed door behind her. From past FaceTime sessions, he knew the door went to her bathroom.

  “A light just went on in your bathroom.”

  “What?” She jerked herself around.

  “Is someone in there?”

  She faced the screen again. Her mouth opened, then closed again. “Shane, I…”

  “Look, Dana, be honest with me. I don’t know who’s in there or why. Right now, frankly, I don’t really care. But shouldn’t we just admit we’re heading in different directions?”

  She touched a finger to her lips. “Frankly, you don’t care? Is that what you just said?”

  He blew out a long breath. “You don’t need to repeat my words back to me. If there’s something going on with some other guy, I wish you’d have been straight with me about it. That’s all.”

  She tilted her head and studied him. “You don’t seem too bothered by the idea.” Her gaze softened. “Living here in Milan, an offer to change companies, it’s all so much. I think I’m conflicted.”