by Karis Walsh
Paige shook her head. “They were too busy taking care of a little present they got after a sophomore dance.” She pointed at herself.
“Oh.” Kassidy stared into the distance without seeming to see anything, as if she was looking at a memory instead. She met Paige’s gaze again, with a sort of sad smile. “What was your favorite, of all those sports and committees?”
Paige struggled for a moment, wanting to grab Dante’s leash and get in the car. Or close the distance between them and kiss Kassidy until she forgot what she had just asked. Her question was treading in an area Paige didn’t even like to think about, let alone share with other people, but Kassidy had put her faith in Paige today. She had stepped out of her comfortable, isolated world because of Paige’s advice. The least Paige could do was to expose a part of herself as well.
“None of them,” she said. She could have stopped there, with the enigmatic, but true answer, but she didn’t. “I had fun in some, others were a bore, but nothing really felt like mine. I always hoped I’d discover a great passion, like you have with your lavender and your home, or even a strong preference for a hobby or business idea. But I guess I’m destined to facilitate other people’s dreams, not to have any of my own.”
Kassidy smiled, with a shake of her head. “Don’t give up too easily, Paige,” she said. She handed back Dante’s leash and stroked her fingers along Paige’s cheek, almost too quickly and softly to be noticeable, although Paige’s skin felt permanently marked by her touch.
Kassidy stepped back, and Paige emphasized the distance between them by a shift in voice and topic. “I still have more to discuss with you about our business plan,” she said, relieved when she sounded more like a professional adult than a confused teenager. “I have to go back to Portland tomorrow night, but we could get together in the morning or afternoon, if you want.”
“What about tonight?” Kassidy asked. “I can make us some dinner and we can go over your notes while we eat.”
Say no. Make up an excuse. “Sure,” Paige said, ignoring the clamoring voices in her head. “I’ll stop by the inn and get my notebook, and we’ll meet you back at the farm.”
Paige got in the car and fiddled with her keys before driving away. She was feeling close to Kassidy after today, and it wasn’t a good idea to be around her at night, when Paige had been feeling vulnerable. So close to the bed Paige had been daydreaming about far too much today.
“It’s just a business dinner,” she told Dante as she put the keys in the ignition and started the car. “Besides, it will be a good time to make more suggestions about the farm, following up after today’s positive experiences.” It also would help that Kassidy was worn-out after her hours in the booth. She might be less resistant to Paige’s suggestions.
“Suggestions about the farm,” Paige said. “Nothing else.”
Dante flopped on the back seat, tongue lolling and ears sticking out to the sides, looking completely unconvinced by Paige’s justifications.
“Fine,” she said, glaring at him in her rearview mirror. “I just want to spend more time with her. Are you happy now?”
Dante’s doggy grin let her know he was.
Chapter Thirteen
Kassidy was searching through her fridge for some reasonably fresh ingredients for dinner when the headlights from Paige’s car slashed across her window, momentarily illuminating the back wall of the kitchen. Kassidy wanted to head outside and meet Paige, but she made herself wait, continuing her exploration of the vegetable crisper’s contents instead.
She shouldn’t feel this excited to see Paige. Well, if she was going to be critical, she also shouldn’t have invited her over for dinner tonight. The fair had been emotionally refreshing and draining at various times, and Kassidy’s defenses were low. She would have been better off meeting with Paige tomorrow when she was rested and in control again. God only knew what she’d agree to tonight when her carefully positioned barriers were chipped and shaken.
Kassidy tossed a wilted bunch of kale in her composting bin. What was she even worried about? That she’d agree to turn her farm into a site for a traveling circus, or that she’d sleep with Paige? She’d obviously prefer the latter, but she wasn’t weak enough to allow either to happen. As much as she was tempted every time Paige showed any indication of wanting her, she wasn’t about to jeopardize their working relationship. Her libido was going to have to take a back seat right now, along with her pride, because she was going to give common sense control of the steering.
Paige had been right about this festival. The booth had been a success, and Kassidy had made some great new contacts with tourists and with some local business owners she hadn’t met before. She had gone to the fair on her own for the past few years, but she had always been a spectator, keeping to herself and chatting only with her close friends. Without Paige’s prompting, Kassidy would never have made the effort to give her farm such a noticeable presence.
So Kassidy would keep her clothes on and listen to what Paige suggested. She’d say no to anything crazy, like the three-ring circus, but she’d follow Paige’s advice when it seemed to be logical and not too drastic.
She didn’t have to keep business and pleasure completely separate, though. She could give in to her desire to know more about Paige. To hear more about her overwhelming list of school achievements and to try to understand why she seemed so sad about not particularly loving any of them. Curiosity wasn’t a crime. It was a poor substitution for sex, but a friendship was all Kassidy would allow herself to have while they worked together. Once they were done, Paige would be back in Portland, and Kassidy would be facing the most challenging tourist season of her life. Mayhem and distance would keep her safe from Paige’s charms.
And until then, Kassidy could let a little friendship worm its way into their relationship. She slit open a package of steaks she had bought two days before and gave them a sniff. Yes, still good. She was thinking about side dishes when she realized she had been mentally dissecting her relationship with Paige for quite a while, but the woman herself had yet to make an appearance.
Kassidy put the steaks back in the fridge in case Kipper came to investigate the counters and went out her back door. When she came around the side of her house, she saw Paige poking around in the garden shed, with the doors wide open and the lights on. Dante stopped rummaging through some discarded cardboard boxes and trotted over to greet her.
“Oh, hi,” Paige said when she saw Kassidy in the doorway. “I got sidetracked.”
“I can see that,” Kassidy said. Most of the shed’s front wall was made up of double Dutch doors, revealing almost the entirety of the interior when they were open. She stepped inside. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I had thought of making it into a guest room for my family, but I suppose you’re devising evil plans to turn it into a shop for tourists.”
“Maybe,” Paige said with a shrug, turning away from Kassidy and peering inside the tiny bathroom.
Her evasive posture wasn’t reassuring to Kassidy. She was reluctant enough to open a store here on the property. What could Paige possibly have in mind that she knew Kassidy would hate even more?
“I’d noticed it here but didn’t really think much about it until you were telling me about the Wilsons and your bathroom.” Paige came back into the center of the space. “What is it, about twelve by twelve? And these doors, can you open the top half of them like windows and leave the bottoms closed?”
“Yes. I’ll show you.” Kassidy started to unhook one side of the Dutch doors when another set of headlights beamed across Paige’s car. She was imagining the gate she would buy for her driveway, complete with concertina wire, to replace the flimsy cone barricade, when the car moved into the light enough for her to recognize it.
Shit. Apparently a family reunion had been planned without her knowledge. She looked at Paige, wondering briefly if she could get her to leave somehow. She couldn’t come up with a polite way to say Get out, so she’d have to settle for trusting th
e twins not to talk about any of their personal family business—namely her dad—in front of company.
“It seems you’re about to meet my brother and sister,” she said.
Paige gestured over to where Dante was bounding around Kyle’s legs. “Looks like it’s just your brother.”
Kassidy shook her head with a deep sigh. “They’re a matched set. If one is here, the other isn’t far behind.”
“Hey, K,” Kyle said, wading past Dante and coming over to give her a kiss on the cheek. He smiled at Paige. “Is this your dog? He’s awesome.”
“Kyle, this is Paige. And you’ve met Dante. Paige, this is my brother, here on a surprise visit from Corvallis. With no advance notice.”
He cheerfully ignored her comments and hopped onto the plywood floor of the shed to shake hands with Paige.
“So, what are the two of you doing out here in the dark?”
His voice sounded casual, but Kassidy noticed the way he moved between her and Paige, as if he was prepared to protect her. Kassidy was afraid to look at Paige because she felt on the verge of laughter and figured Paige was, too. But when she looked her way, Paige was watching the two of them with one of her more serious expressions. Kassidy had noticed those looks appearing now and again, and she was hoping to piece together the pattern behind Paige’s rare descents into melancholy if given the chance.
Kassidy turned back to her brother, who seemed to be waiting for an answer. She wanted to avoid the topic of her father, which made it difficult to explain anything she and Paige did together. Or anything she imagined doing with Paige—that was definitely not a subject to discuss tonight. “Oh, I was just showing Paige where I store extra rakes. She was wondering.”
“I was,” Paige said, with the return of a familiar quirk of her lips. “I can’t decide where to keep mine, and Kassidy was showing me her system.”
“Which is to toss them on the floor of a cluttered shed?” Kyle asked.
“Yes. Brilliant. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
Kyle kept smiling, as though the conversation made perfect sense to him. “Well, Kayla’s here.”
Paige looked at Kassidy with a confused expression on her face. “The other twin,” Kassidy explained. She waved her hand toward the driveway a few seconds before the next set of car lights appeared. She would make sure her new gate was electrified.
Like most experiences with the twins, Kayla’s entrance practically mirrored Kyle’s, from Dante’s greeting to Kayla’s determined smile and to the inevitable question about why they were all standing outside by the shed.
Kassidy eventually managed to close the doors on the brilliantly arranged rake display and usher everyone into the house. The twins sat together on the sofa, and Dante and Kipper clustered around Kayla, like all animals tended to do.
“Do you live in Corvallis, too?” Paige asked Kayla.
“We’re not conjoined,” Kayla snapped.
“Kayla!” Although Kassidy usually acted like just another sibling, she had raised these two since infancy. She wasn’t above scolding them when one—or usually both—of them acted like an ass.
The result was satisfyingly abrupt. “I’m sorry,” Kayla said immediately. “People assume we live the same lives just because we’re twins.”
“Kyle is a teacher in Corvallis, and Kayla is a vet in Albany,” Kassidy said.
Paige laughed. Kassidy sighed. Of course, she did. She was Paige.
“Wow, so you live in cities ten whole minutes apart. You’re really bucking the twin stereotype.”
“We’re going to make dinner. You two stay out here.” Kassidy grabbed Paige’s sleeve and pulled her into the kitchen.
“What? You have to admit that was funny.” Paige leaned against the counter, grinning.
“You’re right. She’s always talked like she’s the independent one, but for most of her childhood, she’d cry if I didn’t buy them matching outfits.” Kassidy pulled the package of steak out again. The two pieces had been plenty for her and Paige, but now she had double the company. She grabbed some tomatoes, onions, and peppers plus a package of fresh tortillas and dumped everything on the counter. “Start chopping, please.”
“I won’t tease them if it makes you uncomfortable,” Paige said, accepting the knife from Kassidy and slicing a tomato in half. “I don’t know why you seem tense, though. They’re related to you, so they’re clearly nice people. I didn’t have siblings, even though I really wanted a huge family, so it’s fun for me to watch brothers and sisters interact.”
“Yeah. Fun.” Except Paige wasn’t aware of the subtext involved tonight. “They’re protective of me sometimes, especially where my…” Kassidy hesitated, not wanting to bring up her dad. If she kept the conversation off the farm and Paige’s job here, then maybe they’d make it through the evening in a civil way. “Especially where my business is concerned. Let’s just talk about other things, like Dante’s big show today. And I can ask about their patients and students. They’ll both talk about those subjects all night.”
“Deal,” Paige said as she massacred a red pepper.
Kassidy put a skillet on the stove to heat and cut the steak into narrow strips. She glanced at Paige as she worked, finally able to relax a little about the evening ahead. Paige would stay off the topic of work. The twins would be polite and grill her after Paige left. Nothing Kassidy couldn’t handle.
She seasoned the meat and let her thoughts linger on Paige’s comment about wanting a big family. She was starting to get a better picture of Paige’s childhood, and she guessed that even one brother or sister would have eased Paige’s sense of responsibility for living out each one of her parents’ failed dreams. Giving her a chance to follow her own desires for a change, exploring her own interests instead of repeating theirs. Kassidy’s twins must represent an abundance of riches to Paige.
Paige was obviously following her own train of thought about Kassidy’s life, because she brought up the comment Kassidy had accidentally let slip.
“You said Kayla wanted you to buy them matching outfits. Weren’t you just a kid then, too? You can’t be much more than five years older than they are.”
“Six.” Kassidy dropped the steak into the hot pan, and the scent of the chili peppers and herbs she had used was released with the sizzling oil. “My dad left soon after they were born, and my mom had some issues with postpartum depression. I took over some of the responsibility of caring for them.”
If Kassidy had substituted a severe case of for some issues with, and changed some responsibility to almost all, then the statement would have been closer to fact, but this version was the more acceptable public one. Paige looked at her for a silent moment before returning to her chopping job, and Kassidy had a feeling that her imagined words had been heard rather than the spoken ones.
Paige was someone who looked beneath the surface for meaning, not someone who took what she saw at face value. Kassidy hadn’t meant to confide too much information, and she waited for a feeling of panic, a need to flee, to come to her, but it didn’t. She felt oddly safe knowing Paige understood something about her, and that very sense of security frightened her more than anything. She had felt safe with Audrey, too. And with her mom and dad, before they vanished emotionally, leaving her with only shells of parents.
“I need cilantro,” she said, scraping the cooked steak onto a serving plate. “I’ll just run to the greenhouse and cut some.”
Paige nodded, keeping her attention focused on the knife in her hand and trying not to accidentally cut herself when she was almost shaking in anger. Even if she imagined Kassidy’s experience in its mildest form, it was infuriating. She had been a child of six. She shouldn’t have had to step in as both mother and father to newborns, not even for a brief time. And Paige had a feeling the reality was even more extreme than Kassidy let on. She wanted to go back to Kenneth’s office and yell at him some more. And take back her apology for her initial outburst, too. If he had been the only emoti
onally functioning parent, he should have stayed. Or taken the kids with him. Not left Kassidy on her own.
She heard the swinging door open behind her, and she quickly got control of her expression. She didn’t want Kassidy to see her anger and mistake it for pity.
“Did you forget some…Aaugh!”
Paige turned to find the twins standing close behind her, wearing identical scowls and both standing with the same posture, arms crossed over their chests. Like the twins in every horror movie ever.
“So, you’re Dad’s minion,” Kayla said.
“Well, I prefer business consultant, but as they say, tomato, tomahto.” Paige realized she was holding the knife out in front of her and she lowered it to her side. She didn’t put it down, but she lowered it.
“What’s your game?” Kyle asked. “Talk Kassidy into some poor investments so she has to sell the farm? Sabotage her business with a bunch of suggestions that cost her a fortune?”
“Or are you trying to convince her that Dad’s a great guy? Get her to give him control of the farm?”
Paige set the knife on the counter and crossed her arms, mirroring their positions. “First of all, Kassidy is not an idiot. She’s an excellent business manager, and even if I tried to get her to make stupid choices, she’d never fall for it.” Paige took a deep breath, looking past the creepy twin act and seeing the same protective drive she had been feeling toward Kassidy since the moment Kenneth had suggested she come here.
“Second, you’re right, in a way. Kenneth implied that he hired me because I was supposed to talk Kassidy into selling. Pretend to be helping but tell her I didn’t see any way to save the business.”
She held up her hand before they could attack. “I told Kassidy about his true agenda. I also told her—and your dad—that I was going to ignore him and do everything I could to help her keep the farm.”
“You told him? I didn’t know that.”
Paige turned and saw Kassidy standing by the back door with a handful of green leaves.