by Lila Kane
“It’s a family recipe,” she said, eyes dipping to his legs. “Oh, who do we have here?”
Cole stepped back and nearly tripped when Morgan’s arms tightened around him. “This is my daughter, Morgan.”
He didn’t miss the way Natalie’s eyes flicked to his ring finger, then back up before she gave him another wide smile. She shifted her shoulders, pushing her breasts out just slightly.
“Isn’t she a doll?” Natalie asked.
Morgan squeezed tighter. He reached back to touch her shoulder. “Do you want to say hi to our neighbor?”
She shook her head.
“She’s shy,” Cole told Natalie.
“I understand. New place, new people.”
She wound a lock of hair around her finger and he searched his mind for an excuse to end the conversation. He hadn’t been with anyone since Deirdre. No time. But he could tell a flirt when he saw one. Natalie’s hair looked just so, her makeup fresh—just like Deirdre’s before she’d gone out at night. She wore a skirt a little too short for her age, which he’d put at maybe five years older than himself.
“We’re just getting ready to make dinner,” Cole said.
“Yeah? Whatcha having?”
Shit. That was supposed to be her cue to leave. Were all people in small towns slow to pick up on social cues or just the ones in his neighborhood?
“Uh…tuna casserole.”
Natalie blinked. “Mrs. Chutney’s been by, huh? Her tuna casserole’s been known to send people to the hospital.”
Morgan’s hands switched to his other leg. “Dead fish,” she mumbled.
“What’s that, sweetie?” Natalie asked, leaning down to get a better view of Morgan.
Or to give him a better view of her chest. Her shirt was criminal. He jerked his eyes away and forced a smile.
“We’ll steer clear of the casserole then. Thanks for—”
“You could always have the cake,” Natalie said, straightening again. She grinned. “I could come in and cut it up for you.”
“No. I mean, we still have to find the plates. There are boxes everywhere—”
“Oh, that’s no problem. I could run back home and grab some if that’s easier.” She backed up a step, ready to dash right off.
“That’s nice of you, but Morgan’s still getting used to being here. I don’t want to overwhelm her tonight. Thanks for the cake,” he said, grabbing the door and starting to close it.
“You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Will do.”
He shut the door. Morgan emerged from behind him, looking up with her wide eyes. “Cake for dinner?”
“Not cake for dinner,” he said, carrying it to the kitchen. Though cake for dinner was tempting. All they’d need were forks. And it was better than heading back into town. “We’ll find something…”
“Not fish.” Morgan dragged the stool to the counter. “Not fish or I’ll throw up all over the—”
“Not fish,” Cole agreed. The last thing he needed was vomit all over the kitchen floor.
But he eyed the dish. Better than going out again. Better than cereal.
The doorbell rang. “Shit,” he whispered.
Morgan snickered. “I’m going to tell.”
Cole rubbed her head. “Who you going to tell? Just don’t repeat that. Run to the front and check it out.”
Morgan dashed off to the front window while he lifted the cover on the casserole. He sniffed, leaned back, and then sniffed again.
“It’s a lady!” Morgan called.
“Same one as before?”
“No. Another one.”
“Young or old?”
“Like you, Daddy! Old!”
He chuckled, dropping the lid of the casserole back over the dish. Old. Yeah, he felt it right now.
This was the last visit for tonight, he decided. After this, he was locking the door and ignoring the bell. Who cared it if wasn’t neighborly? He couldn’t handle neighborly anymore. Not until his stomach was full and he’d had a shower, followed by a full night of rest.
And a beer. God, he’d kill for a beer right now.
Cole opened the door again, eyes going straight to long, long legs in a pair of mint colored shorts before he forced them up to a young face, at least a few years younger than him. He pushed the screen open to greet her.
“Please tell me I’m not too late,” she said.
Words jumbled in his mouth. She wasn’t even wearing makeup, cheeks pale and dusted with a few light freckles, lips drawn together in worry. But that didn’t stop him from staring at her mouth a moment longer than necessary.
“Too late for what?”
Morgan clutched his leg from behind.
“Tuna casserole,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I wanted to make sure I got this to you first,” she said, holding up a casserole dish.
Another one? Did she want to come in too? Damn, he’d thought this one looked normal at least.
“I’m sorry.” She brushed chocolate-colored hair behind her ear. “I’m Tori. I live right next door.”
“My ball,” Morgan whispered.
Tori smiled but held his gaze. “I tried to hurry home from work. Mrs. Chutney’s a sweetheart, but her tuna casserole is…” She leaned in, and he swore he smelled blueberries. “Let’s just say, Dr. Westbrook gets a lot of house calls because of it. Please tell me you haven’t eaten it yet.”
“No.” Cole’s shoulders relaxed. She’d just come to warn him. That was normal enough. “Not yet.”
“Good. I thought I was going to be too late. Our shipment came in at the last minute, and—” She stepped back and laughed. “Okay, let me start over. Hi. I’m your neighbor, Tori.”
He took the hand she offered, small and slender, but her grip was strong. “Cole,” he said. He reached back and touched Morgan’s head. “This is my daughter. Morgan.”
“Nice to meet you, Morgan,” Tori said. “Uh…Mrs. Chutney has a lot of cats.”
Morgan eased her head around his leg just slightly, so Cole went along with it.
“Cats?” he asked.
Tori nodded, her hair falling over her cheek again. “Cat lady. And sometimes when she doesn’t have time to go to the store or gets distracted…she uses the cat food instead of…”
Cole’s stomach twisted. “Instead of the tuna? Are you serious?”
Tori’s eyes went apologetic. “Like I said, Mrs. Chutney’s a sweetheart, but we all know to stay clear of her cooking. She brings tuna casserole to pretty much everything, so it’s easy to know which dish is hers.” She held up her own offering. “Maybe this’ll make up for it? It’s lasagna.”
His mouth watered. Morgan peeked her head out a little further.
“Do you like lasagna, Morgan?” Tori asked.
Morgan tucked her hands tighter around his leg. “Yes,” she mumbled.
“We both love lasagna,” Cole said, “and you really saved us with this.”
“Just bake it at 350 for about thirty minutes and you’ll be all set.”
“Thanks.”
She nodded. “Well, I hope you’re settling in. Like I said, I’m just next door if you need anything.”
“My ball,” Morgan said.
Tori ducked her head, leaning down to Morgan. “Did you say something about a ball?”
“She lost it in your backyard,” Cole explained.
Tori grinned. “I see. Would you like to come get it?”
Morgan nodded, but wouldn’t let go of Cole’s leg.
“Let me just…” He gestured to the kitchen. “I’ll set this down and we’ll come over.”
Cole walked the lasagna to the kitchen with Morgan on his heels.
“She’s pretty, Daddy,” Morgan said.
“She is.”
Beautiful, he decided. Not in a classic way. Her bottom lip was a little heavy, eyes wide like Morgan’s, and a small nose. But damn…
“Daddy?”
He snapped himsel
f out of his thoughts and took her hand. Maybe being neighborly wasn’t going to be all that bad after all.
Chapter 3
Tori ordered herself not to stare even though her neighbor was a lot more attractive in person than in her dreams. But it wasn’t just that. No, it was his eyes. Those same green pools of mystery with a hint of yellow flecks around the irises.
They were exactly the same as her dream. Held hers in exactly the same way.
Fighting back a chill, she led them to the gate on the side of the house. Morgan trailed behind her dad, but Tori considered it progress that she’d at least spoken to her about the ball.
New towns could be scary, Tori knew. Just as old ones could be. There were as many things to fear about not knowing people as there were about people knowing too much about you. Garden Creek knew far too much about the Birch’s and chose daily to embellish whatever details suited them.
But Cole and Morgan were new, and had no clue about her history here, about her mother, or about the dreams that had told her they were coming.
“You can go back anytime you need to get your ball.” She pressed the latch at the gate and then grabbed the side of the wooden planks before the whole thing fell. “Sorry, the hinge is broken. I can just leave it open a little.”
She’d meant to fix it, but there was always something else that needed to be done. She wrestled with the gate a moment before Cole stepped in and grabbed it smoothly, inching it open the rest of the way.
“Sorry,” she said. “I keep meaning to fix it.”
“I can do it for you.” Cole’s eyes squinted against the glare of the sun as he pocketed his hands, the muscles in his forearms standing out. “It’s the least I can do for the warning about the casserole.”
She laughed. “Payment for advice. I like it.”
“Payment for saving us a trip to the doctor. I’d say we’re even.”
Tori gestured to the backyard. “Morgan?”
The little girl flashed a timid smile before racing into the backyard. Tori and Cole followed her inside. The gate might have needed some attention, but the rest of the yard was her sanctuary and she treated it as such. On warm days, she’d do her morning stretches and yoga out on the lawn. The emerald blades were thick and had just been mowed over the weekend.
“Flowers!” Morgan said, scooping up her ball as she ran to the garden.
“It’s a hobby.”
Cole glanced at her. “You do all this yourself?”
“With my own two hands. Vegetables on the left. I used some of the tomatoes in your lasagna. I’ll have pumpkins there in the fall, too, Morgan,” she called.
Cole’s eyes squinted with a smile. “She’s always wanted a garden. We didn’t have any outdoor space at our old apartment.”
“You’ve got more than enough now. I bet Morgan would love to get out there and plant something.”
“I don’t have much of a Green Thumb.”
“I’d be happy to show her,” Tori said, the words slipping out before she could help it.
That’s what they did around here. They helped each other. And Morgan was a cutie. But Cole…he made her stomach tighten for more than one reason.
Morgan turned, squeezing her ball in her arms. “I want roses.”
Tori smiled at her. She could do roses. She could do a lot more than roses, but it wasn’t her place. She didn’t know their history. All she knew was that dreaming more than once about the same thing meant something.
But in this case, she wasn’t sure what.
Tori felt a tickle in her throat. She put a hand to her neck, absently rubbing at the skin there. Morgan walked back to her dad and the tickling turned into an ache. She cleared her throat.
“Like I said,” Tori began, then coughed. “Sorry, my…”
Morgan’s eyes met hers, and the future danced in them. Tori saw a clear picture of Morgan in bed, her father hovering at her side with a thermometer while she complained of a sore throat.
“Tori?”
She blinked. Cole’s hand gripped her arm.
“You okay?” he asked.
Shit. She hadn’t meant to have a vision right then. Right in front of her new neighbor, the only person in town who had no idea of her history. Who probably thought she was normal.
“Just a minute,” she said, turning to the house. “There was one more thing I was supposed to give you with the lasagna.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, just let herself in the back door, and then leaned against the counter for a moment. She rubbed her throat.
Morgan was going to come down with something, poor thing.
Just like Tori did with the customers at the tea shop, she went through her mental inventory. Peppermint and licorice root should do the trick. She opened the pantry and drew down a metal box with a few samples of everything. She took out what she needed, then added peppermint to the mix before putting the tea in a container and adding an infuser ball for the loose leaves.
Then she snagged the bottle of wine she’d meant to pair with the lasagna but hadn’t grabbed because she’d remembered tuna/cat casserole and didn’t want to waste any time.
When she returned to the backyard, Morgan had her head bowed over the tea roses, breathing in deep.
“They smell pretty, Daddy.” She noticed Tori and walked back to Cole’s side.
Cole glanced over, then shook his head with a smile. “You people sure do like to make new neighbors feel welcome.”
Tori laughed, her throat already feeling better, and her mood improved as well. Neighborly. That’s all. She was being neighborly, and that’s how he was taking it. Good. Neither of them needed complicated.
“This was supposed to go with the lasagna,” Tori said, passing over the wine.
“I owe you even more now.” He scanned the label briefly.
“And this is for Morgan.” She opened the box. “It’s loose leaf tea. We carry it at the shop. The chamomile to help her sleep just in case she’s too wound up.” She glanced up with a smile. “Or for you if the wine doesn’t do the trick.”
He grinned. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t. And this?” He touched the other satchel of tea.
She shrugged. “Just in case she’s feeling a little under the weather. Sore throat and all that.”
They both looked at Morgan, who squeezed her ball and smiled. She wasn’t hiding behind her dad now, and she looked the picture of health.
But Tori knew better.
“Say ‘thank you’,” Cole told Morgan.
“Thank you,” she whispered. But when she lifted her head, there was a smile in her eyes. “I like your flowers.”
“You’re welcome to come visit them again. They like the company.”
Morgan’s eyes moved the garden, amazement in them. The garden was a little bit of magic to Tori as well, a place to lose her troubles and create something beautiful. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
Definitely a place she’d bring her own child if she ever had one. No, if she ever could have one.
“Thanks for the lasagna and everything.” Cole walked to the gate with Morgan in tow. “We’re going to have to get used to this. The hospitality of a small town.”
Tori grinned at him. “It’s a trade-off. You get the hospitality, and you also get the gossip.”
“And cat food casserole, apparently.”
He waved with the bottle of wine still in hand, and Tori watched as they walked back to their house before she went inside again.
She rubbed her throat absently. The effects lingered sometimes, which wasn’t always the most pleasant. Last year, Mr. Toby had come in for orange spice tea and left with her strong recommendation to head straight to Dr. Westbrook and tell him about the pain he was starting to have in his chest.
Not everyone listened to her, though. In fact, there were still people in town who wouldn’t even come into the tea shop because of the supposed voodoo her and Grams practiced from time to time.
Tori sighed. You couldn’t
win them all.
Sure enough, Morgan woke with a sore throat. She walked into Cole’s room twenty minutes before the alarm forced him awake and tugged on his covers.
“Daddy.”
He rolled over, almost falling off the cot after being lost in a dream of flowers and tuna casserole. Tori was in the dream, in her mint green shorts and yellow sneakers, her chocolate hair like a layer of silk over her shoulders. Her legs were bronzed from the sun, eyes wide with a come-hither look that made his throat dry…
“Daddy.”
Cole jerked awake, gaze coming to focus on his daughter. Tori’s eyes, her legs, all of her still flashed behind his eyes and he shifted on the cot, pulling the covers up to cover himself. “Uh…what is it? Why are you up?”
“My throat hurts,” she said.
He noticed a definite hoarseness. He reached out automatically to touch her forehead, something that would have shocked his mother. She had told him once she never thought she’d see a domesticated Cole, only the carefree, laidback, and sometimes irresponsible man he’d grown into.
Having Morgan changed him. He thought it might change Deirdre one day, too, but she clearly wasn’t the parenting type. Domestication changed his late nights to early mornings, his weekends drinking to playing dress up, and his pizza habit to…less of a pizza habit.
Maybe only once or twice a week instead of every day.
Progress was progress.
“You don’t feel too warm,” Cole said, pushing aside the covers. “Anything else hurt? Your tummy?”
Morgan blinked sleepy eyes, her lips curving. “No, I didn’t eat the cat food casserole, remember?”
He did. He remembered throwing it in a trash bag last night and making a note to pick up a heavy-duty garbage can this week at the store. He also remembered the lasagna and thinking it was better than his grandmothers, which was saying something.
“Your head?” Cole asked.
“It feels really…big,” Morgan decided, rolling it on her shoulders.
Cole chuckled and picked her up, carrying her in her nightgown to the kitchen where he’d set the tin Tori gave him. If Morgan was joking, she couldn’t feel that bad. Maybe enough to save them a trip to the doctor.
“Let’s try some of this tea,” he suggested, setting her on the counter.