Cabin Fever

by Marilyn Pappano

  Suddenly the pizza didn’t taste so good, but Nolie finished the piece anyway and took a bite from another. It was what she did, all right? Comfort herself with food. It was stupid and unhealthy and had helped her right into a size sixteen, but the middle of a crisis of insecurity wasn’t the best time to change.

  “So . . . how well do you know him?” Lorraine was looking at her in a speculative way that made Nolie feel extremely exposed . . . and heavy . . . and scruffy.

  “Not as well as you do.” She hoped her expression was bland, but feared she was scowling again.

  Lorraine’s expression, on the other hand, was perfectly bland. “That sounded rather . . . hostile. Any particular reason?”

  “I’m not hostile,” Nolie muttered with a mouthful of pizza.

  “Okay. Rather than hostile, how about jealous?”

  “I’m not jealous.”

  “Because if you are, you have no reason to be. Chase and I are friends. We used to be more—he was my boss— but that ended over three years ago. I like him, respect him, and care about him a great deal, but not romantically. We’re just friends.”

  Nolie gazed at the pizza, her need for food finally following her appetite’s lead and disappearing. She wanted to believe Lorraine, but should she? Could she? Besides, just friends could mean different things to different people. Some friends slept together. Some got married. And not being romantically involved didn’t automatically rule out being sexually involved.

  “I slept on Chase’s couch last night,” Lorraine patiently went on, “only because the motel didn’t have any vacancies. We’ve never had sex, never gone out on a date, never kissed, and never wanted to.” She shrugged. “Just friends.”

  Maybe she was being honest, though Nolie couldn’t imagine being as close to Chase as Lorraine apparently was and wanting nothing from him but friendship. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when she’d started wanting more, but it seemed like forever.

  She wiped her hands on a napkin, walked to the trash can in the corner to throw it away, then slowly turned back and aimed for evasion. “I don’t know why you think any of this matters to me.”

  Lorraine snorted. “So you wouldn’t mind at all if I’d spent last night in Chase’s bed instead of on his sofa?”

  “What business would it be of mine?”

  Again Lorraine subjected her to an intense study, then abruptly gave a careless shrug. “Sure. Whatever you say. I guess I just read both of you wrong.”

  She wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t— Oh, hell. “What do you mean?”

  Lorraine’s smile was triumphant, but somehow it didn’t seem as smug as it should. “Obviously he likes you.”

  The hopes she hadn’t even been aware of rising dashed down again. “He’s lonely and bored.”

  “Maybe. Probably. But if he didn’t like you, he would rather be lonely and bored than spend time with you.”

  With a shrug, Nolie slid back onto her stool and rested her elbows on the counter.

  “Besides, he said you were, and this is a direct quote, ‘a very nice woman.’ ”

  Oh, that was great. First he introduced her not as a friend or neighbor but as the woman who owned his cabin, and then he called her a very nice woman? He had a lot of nerve. That had probably been his way of letting Lorraine know he had zero interest in Nolie. He was just passing time with her until he left or the people in town discovered he was back or something forced him out of his solitude.

  “You don’t look pleased.”

  “You ever hear the phrase, ‘damn with faint praise’?” Nolie asked dryly. “Jeez, isn’t it every woman’s dream to be told she’s ‘very nice’?”

  “Oh, no, it’s a compliment, really. I’m a very nice woman, too, so I know. You see, Chase’s ex-wife was a whiny bitch who betrayed, manipulated, and two-timed him. She wounded his pride, cleaned him out financially, and broke his heart. What he needs now more than anything is a nice woman, one exactly the opposite of Fiona.” She smiled brightly. “One like you.”

  “Why not one like you?”

  “Because I’m pretty sure that kissing Chase would be like kissing my brother, if I had one.” Lorraine made a dismissive gesture, as if the thought of getting romantically involved with him had truly never crossed her mind. She seemed so sincere, in fact, that Nolie was on the verge of believing her, whether it seemed reasonable or not.

  But she wasn’t on the verge of believing that the same thought hadn’t crossed Chase’s mind.

  “Look, Lorraine—”

  “Please call me Raine. Only my mother calls me Lorraine, and only when I’m in trouble.”

  Knowing that it wasn’t Chase’s pet name for her relieved Nolie more than she wanted to admit. “Okay, Raine, whatever I feel, whatever you think he feels, the bottom line is, I’m not his type.”

  The noise coming from the other woman was crude and unrefined, but got her point across perfectly. “I don’t believe in types. You’re nothing like Fiona, but he’s attracted to you. I bet he’s nothing like your husband, but you’re still attracted to him.”

  That was true. Chase had graduated from college and law school while Jeff had barely squeaked through high school. The only future he’d ever wanted was on the farm, and the lessons he needed there weren’t taught in the classroom. Chase had been an outstanding lawyer, with an outstanding income to match, while Jeff had worked long, hard hours for very little reward. Chase was handsome, wicked, with a hint of danger about him, while Jeff had been average in looks and as harmless, straightforward, and uncomplicated as a man could be. And yet she’d loved Jeff with all her heart and, with very little encouragement, she suspected she could care as much about Chase.

  She half-wished Raine would stop offering encouragement.

  In an effort to turn the subject away from herself, she asked, “If you have such an appetite for matchmaking, why haven’t you made your own match?”

  Raine’s smile faded, and a look of such sorrow came across her face. Nolie wanted to call back the words, to apologize, or to hurriedly change the subject again, but in the end she quietly said, “Feel free to tell me it’s none of my business. I won’t take offense.”

  Before Raine had decided what to say, a customer came in to buy two fifty-pound bags of feed for his horses. Nolie rang up the sale and accepted his check, then offered to carry one of the bags to his truck. Like all her other male customers, he refused her help and went the added step of practically bristling at the suggestion he should let a woman do his heavy work for him.

  “Chauvinism is alive and well,” Raine commented once he’d hefted the second bag over his shoulder, then left with a wave.

  “I grew up with men who considered it their responsibility to look out for the women in their lives, who were taught to open doors, hold chairs, and do the heavy lifting. I kind of like it.” Then Nolie grinned. “At the same time, I lived my whole life on a farm, so I know I can do whatever’s necessary myself if I have to.”

  Sliding from the stool, Raine roamed to one end of the counter. She paused a moment to study the quilt project Nolie kept there for slow times, read the copy on a stand-up display of irrigation nozzles, then gazed out the window at the woods and the highway that wound through them like a silver ribbon on its way out of the valley. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, emotionless. “I told Chase I decided to come here when my vacation plans fell through. No place else to go, nothing else to do.”

  Quietly Nolie slid the remaining pizza into the box with Chase’s vegetarian pie, then threw the crusts, crumbs, and greasy napkins away. That done, she circled the counter, but stopped a half-dozen feet from Raine.

  “Truth is, more than my vacation fell through. My fiancé has been working in Raleigh for the past three months. He’s a computer whiz with a big consulting firm— a good Italian boy whom my family loves almost as much as they love me. When he first got to North Carolina, he invited me down this month for a couple of weeks, to visit and finalize t
he wedding plans, but . . .”

  There should be some law against stories with a “but,” Nolie thought. So very little that was good ever followed a “but.”

  Raine turned back, wearing an unsteady smile. “When I got there, he realized he’d forgotten to tell me he had met someone else and that planning our wedding would be a bit of a problem, because, well, gee, he’d already planned his wedding with her. It happens in two weeks.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You know, I hadn’t heard much from him since he went down there, but he’s lousy at writing letters and too cheap for long-distance calls. His E-mails seemed a little abrupt and less affectionate, but some people don’t communicate as well via E-mail as they do in person.” She shrugged again. “Anyway, I flew back to Boston, but I couldn’t face my family just yet, so I picked up my car and came here. So, you see, I definitely don’t have anything going with Chase besides friendship, because I’m never getting involved with another man as long as I live . . . or until I get really desperate.”

  “I really am sorry.”

  Raine nodded, then gazed around, looking at last at the pizza box. “Oh, God, I can’t believe I ate all that pizza. The night the jerk dumped me, I checked into a motel, then went shopping at the strip center across the street. I had ice cream, M&Ms, Oreos, and enough takeout from the Chinese restaurant there to feed three ravenous football players. All I could think was that I’d outgrow the wedding dress hanging in my closet or die trying. Looks like I’m still trying.”

  On the one hand, Nolie was comforted to know that Raine found the same solace in food that she did. On the other, the fact that Raine controlled her eating so much more successfully than Nolie reminded her of the diet she’d blown that morning and made her feel like a failure all over again.

  After a few deep breaths, Raine came to the counter and reached for the pizza box. All the hurt and sadness were gone from her expression, leaving her looking warm, friendly, and without a care in the world. “Can we have dinner tonight? You, me, your daughter, and Chase? As you know, he won’t go to a restaurant in town, so it would have to be a home-cooked meal, and as you also know, he doesn’t have much in the way of furniture, so it would probably have to be at your house. Don’t you like that?” she asked with a laugh. “A near stranger inviting herself and a friend to dinner at your home? But I’ll provide the food, help with the cooking, and do the cleanup.”

  “Sure. I’ll take care of the food, but I’ll gladly let you clean up. How about seven?” Nolie agreed, not because she wanted to have dinner with Chase. Not because she’d missed him or anything like that. Because she was a neighborly person and cooking for four wasn’t much more work than cooking for two. And because—a sly voice whispered in her mind—she wanted to see Chase and Raine together, to see for herself whether there was anything between them. She was this close to believing Raine had no interest in him, but she couldn’t feel entirely comfortable until she knew he had no interest in her. Before she risked any more of herself than she already had, she wanted promises. Guarantees.

  A sure thing.

  That wasn’t so much to ask, was it?

  THOUGH HE WAS ACCUSTOMED TO WORKING ALL kinds of hours, Cole Jackson felt an unusual sense of relief when he walked into the house late Saturday afternoon. He left his briefcase on the hall table, loosened his tie, then shrugged out of his jacket on the way to the kitchen, where he got a beer and a slice of pizza left over from last night’s dinner.

  “How’d it go?”

  Looking over his shoulder, he saw Ryan leaning against the door frame. The kid wore jeans that were two inches too short and a T-shirt that was stretched to the max, and his brown hair looked as if he’d combed it with a mixer. “Didn’t I just buy those clothes two months ago?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I’m growing.”

  “Yeah, well, stop it. Keeping you in clothes that fit is gonna break me.”

  “So . . . how did it go? The meeting with the doctors?”

  Cole grinned. “We have four new investors.”

  “Which brings the total to? . . .”

  “About $180,000.”

  Ryan gave a whoop, then came closer, pulling the beer from Cole’s hand. He had the bottle lifted to his mouth when Cole swiped it back. “Sorry. You miss the minimum drinking age by nine years.”

  “So what? I’ve had beer before.”

  “Not in Bethlehem. You drink here, and they’ll throw me in jail.”

  “It’s not as if you haven’t been there before,” the boy scoffed.

  “Youthful indiscretions,” Cole said, then sternly added, “and I don’t plan to go there again. What are you doing home? I thought you were going to play baseball at the park with those kids you met the other day.”

  “We played. I’ve been back since two o’clock.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Why do you always assume I’m causin’ problems?” Ryan shoved his hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “We played ball for a couple hours, then they was all goin’ to a party for some girl they know. I wasn’t invited ’cause, hey, I never met her, so I came home. No big deal.” He grabbed a piece of pizza from the box, crammed half of it in his mouth, and stalked out of the room.

  No big deal. Cole knew better. His old man had kept them on the move a lot, and he’d always been the new kid in town, the one who didn’t have any friends or get invited to any parties. If he made the mistake of actually finding a friend, before long his dad always moved them on, and he had to start all over again. He’d learned by the time he was Ryan’s age that it was better to always be the outsider than to keep leaving people he cared for behind.

  Ryan had learned that lesson pretty well, too. But, damn it, what could Cole do? His line of work required him to relocate frequently. He couldn’t turn Ryan over to his mother, since no one knew where the hell she’d gone after abandoning him at a St. Louis bus station. This time he’d tried leaving him with his dad in Philadelphia, so the kid could finish the school year, but that had lasted only six days—five, if you didn’t count the day he’d spent on the bus to Bethlehem.

  Of course, he could look for a new line of work. Too bad this was the only thing he knew how to do.

  Wearily, Cole climbed the back stairs to the second floor, then went down the broad hall to his room, situated at the front of the house. He changed into pleated and pressed khaki shorts and a knit shirt, wishing for a moment he could dig out his favorite pair of faded, ripped cutoffs, then went to the window to look out.

  He ignored the back view of the courthouse and the wedge of the square and instead looked straight across the street. On eye level was Leanne Wilson’s bedroom. If he lowered his gaze to ground level, he could see inside her shop, to the sofa and love seat where she often sat when the shop wasn’t busy. As luck would have it, where she was sitting right now.

  Impulse sent him to the nightstand, where an old-fashioned rotary phone sat atop a Bethlehem phone book. It took longer to dial the shop’s number than it did to look it up in the slim volume. He stretched the phone cord back to the window and watched as Leanne picked up the cordless phone from the cushion beside her on the first ring.

  “Small Wonders. This is Leanne.”

  “I can see that.”

  She straightened, looked around, then peered in his direction. Rising from the sofa, she walked to the plate-glass window and raised one hand in a wave. “I thought you worked all the time.”

  “Sometimes it seems that way. You’re not one to talk, though. You’re in the store six days a week yourself.”

  “But I have a child to support.”

  “So do I.” He thought of Ryan sulking downstairs and felt a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t doing a better job at taking care of him. “You have plans tonight?”

  “Yeah. An easy dinner—probably frozen—followed by a whole evening of doing nothing. No cleaning, no dealing with customers, no paperwork.”

  “I know an easier dinner, and it’ll ta
ste better, too. Why don’t you and your son come over and eat with Ryan and me? I’ll do all the cooking—steaks, baked potatoes, whatever. All you’ll have to do is sit and watch and eat.”

  A smile curved her lips. “You know how to cook?”

  “I’ve been doing it since I was ten.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “Didn’t have one.” At least, not much of one. Her name was Eloise, and she’d been in and out—mostly out—of their lives for as long as he could remember. She and his father were like oil and water, or gasoline and fire. They couldn’t get along together but couldn’t stay apart. In their times together they’d had six sons, who’d pretty much raised one another in their times apart. “Why don’t you and Danny come over around six-thirty?”

  “Sounds great. We’ll see you then.” She disconnected, waved, then turned away from the window.

  Whistling softly, Cole ran down the elaborately carved main staircase and, on his way to the kitchen, stopped at the living room, where Ryan was sprawled on the couch, watching a ninja movie. “Hey, kid, I need you to go to the grocery store.”

  With a sigh, Ryan followed Cole into the kitchen where he was making a shopping list. “For what?”

  “We’re having company for dinner. I need you to pick up some stuff.”

  “Who?”

  “Leanne and her son.”

  Ryan leaned against the island. “You looking to get her into your investments or your bed?”

  “Everyone’s a prospective client.”

  “And every pretty woman is a prospective one-night stand, too.”

  Cole gave him a wounded look. “Not every pretty woman, and rarely just for one night. Besides, haven’t we had this conversation before? The one where I remind you that my sex life is none of your business?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose it’ll be my job to entertain her kid.”

  “I suppose so.” Cole handed him the shopping list, then pulled two fifties from his wallet. “Pay for everything this time, would you? And bring me some change.”

  “Jeez, I shoplifted one thing, and you never let me forget it.”