The old lead pipes in the town house knocked and shuddered when she turned on the spigot, and normally the hot-water heater took a full fifteen minutes to heat up, and would run out before she’d finished crying—or rinsing her hair. But today she was taking a cool bath.
Somehow, this time, when she stepped onto the bath mat, she felt a little better. Maybe Sylvia Bradley was mistaken. Any landlord would be an improvement over the Bradleys. Maybe the new owner would finally fix up the building and allow her to stay. And if not? This was not the only house in the historic district. Nearly every block had at least one “for lease” sign in a front window. She’d call her real-estate agent and start looking. At least, she thought, she had the Trapnell wedding coming up. She’d have to postpone paying off her debt to the Colonel. She’d just have to make him understand. He was her father—he’d have to understand.
* * *
The one good thing about sleeping on the shop floor was that she was up early every morning. By eight o’clock, she’d already finished making the four bridesmaids’ bouquets for Saturday’s wedding. She’d pulled incoming orders off their internet server, and written up the phone orders so that Bert could get started on them when he got in at nine. She frowned, remembering the earlier confrontation with her assistant. He’d better get in at nine.
At 8:45, she was wheeling the vintage garden cart out to the sidewalk when she saw Jack’s big black truck come down the block. She felt a little tug in her chest. It was pathetic and needy, but yes, she’d wondered if and when he’d call again.
He parked across the street and jumped out of the truck. He was dressed for work, blue jeans, clean white T-shirt, work boots. She found herself studying him, measuring him against Leo, Leo in his expensive sport coats and silk ties and spit-polished shoes. Leo with his salesman’s smoothness. No. Make that slickness.
Jack Finnerty wasn’t polished and he wasn’t smooth, and his jeans were faded and ragged at the knee, and he looked so good right now she got a little weak in the knees as he crossed the street, bounded onto the curb, and grabbed her around the waist for a kiss.
“Some welcoming committee,” he said, when he let her go.
“What are you doing in town?” Cara asked, smiling up at him. “I thought you were working out at Cabin Creek all week.”
“Ryan’s over there now, waiting on a lumber delivery,” he said. “We found some old-growth heart pine that came out of a closed-up textile mill in Greenville, South Carolina, for the new floor for the barn.” He hesitated, then frowned.
“You’re not gonna like what I’ve got to tell you.”
She sighed. “I guess you’ve heard. Probably Torie told Ryan and Ryan told you, right? Well, it’s true. Somehow, I managed to lose Lillian Fanning’s heirloom silver epergne. She’s called the police, and now it’s a whole big thing.”
“Epergne? No, I don’t know anything about that,” Jack said, running a hand through his hair. “But hell, that’s bad enough. Lillian’s not saying you stole it, right?”
“Not me. No. She’s convinced Bert is a thief.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “She probably misplaced it herself. It’ll turn up.”
“I hope you’re right,” Cara said. “Because the thing is worth like a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”
His eyes widened. “Holy crap.”
“I know. So, what is it you have to tell me that I’m not gonna like? You’re married? Carrying an STD? Come on, Jack, just spit it out and get it over with.”
He picked a bloom from a potted gardenia on the garden cart and handed it to her. A consolation prize? “I’m here because your new landlord wants an estimate of what it’s gonna cost to renovate your building.”
“Well, at least you’re not married, and you haven’t given me a venereal disease,” Cara said, making a weak joke.
“Did you have any idea your landlady was selling the place?” he asked.
“None. Sylvia finally returned my calls yesterday, and while I was in the middle of chewing her out about the air-conditioning, she dropped the bomb. Said it didn’t matter because she’d sold the building. Without even telling me! And then she basically told me I should start packing, because the new landlord has plans that don’t include me.”
Jack nodded sympathetically. “It sucks. Big-time.”
She grabbed the front of his T-shirt. “So who hired you? Who bought the building? Sylvia wouldn’t even give me the satisfaction of telling me. I guess maybe she’s afraid I’ll call the guy and tell him everything that’s wrong with the building before the sale closes.”
“He hasn’t hired us yet. But I get the feeling the guy already knows what all’s wrong with the building. He’s been in it a couple times, from what he told me.”
“What?” Cara’s fists clenched and unclenched. “She let somebody in the building when I wasn’t home? She didn’t even have the decency to call me? Who is it?”
“You know a guy named Cullen Kane? Another florist in town? He’s the guy.”
* * *
Cara’s jaw dropped. She was well and truly flummoxed. “No. That can’t be. Not him. Anybody but him.”
“You know him?”
She nodded dumbly. “I think he wants to put me out of business. And this is step one in his Kill Cara Kryzik campaign.”
They went inside the shop and he sat at the worktable while she recounted how she’d unwittingly managed to become Cullen Kane’s business rival.
“It’s not like I went after Brooke Trapnell to get her to hire me. But she did, and this wedding is too big a deal for me to pass up. It’s the biggest budget I’ve ever worked with, and I’ll make enough money from it to finally pay back my dad—maybe even get a decent delivery van.”
Jack still wasn’t convinced. “You really think Cullen Kane bought this building out of revenge? That’s pretty far-fetched, Cara.”
“I know,” she admitted. “I’m really not normally this paranoid. But you didn’t see the look on his face when I ran into him at the wholesale house. It’s like I’ve taken his favorite toy and he’ll do anything to get it back.”
Jack drummed his fingertips on the table. “Okay. If that’s his game, I don’t have to work for him. I’m pretty sure he’s getting bids from other contractors. I’ll tell him I’ve got too much work on my plate right now. Which is actually kind of true.”
“Thanks.” Cara gave his hand a grateful squeeze.
“I’m not the only contractor in town though,” he reminded her. “It won’t be hard to find somebody who will give him an estimate, and do the work, when it comes right down to it.”
“I know.” She sighed. “Just out of curiosity, what did Kane say when he called you?”
“He told me his name, that he was in the process of buying a building on Jones Street. That it had retail space on the ground floor—currently occupied by a florist shop.”
“Currently,” Cara said bitterly. “But not for long.”
“He said there was an apartment on the second floor, and that the top floor was currently not occupied.”
“That’s true,” Cara said. “What else did he say? Did he tell you his plans for the building?”
“Not really. He said it looked like the previous owners had been pretty slack on maintenance. He’d seen the water stains on your apartment ceiling, so he wanted the roof and chimneys checked, and was concerned about the air-conditioning unit after seeing how hot it was on the second floor. I think he must have been up there in the past week, now that I think about it.”
“Oh my God.” Cara shuddered. “It gives me the creeps, knowing he was sneaking around, looking at my stuff, checking everything out, and I had no idea he was even here.”
“Yeah. It sucks your landlady didn’t even have the decency to let you know she’d let him in to check it out,” Jack said.
“Did you tell him you know me?” Cara asked.
“I didn’t see any reason to tell him, especially since I figured you’d be pretty u
pset about all this anyway.”
“‘Upset’ is putting it mildly.”
“Have you ever been up to the top floor?” Jack asked.
“No. There’s stairway access through a door at the end of my hallway, but that door was locked when I rented the place. I just figured the Bradleys were too cheap to get it redone. And I was glad to have the building all to myself.”
“Did you say the Bradleys were your landlords? Do you mean Bernice and Sylvia Bradley?”
“They’re the ones. So, you know them?”
“They live a couple streets over from my parents. Couple of old tightwads,” Jack said. He held up a key. “I got the impression Cullen Kane plans to open up the third floor and get it redone. We could take a look—if you’re curious.”
“I am curious. But I’ve got too much work to get done this morning. I’m already behind schedule—and we’re not even officially open.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Bert’s got five minutes to get here, and if he’s late again today, I might have to start looking for a new assistant as well as a new address.”
Jack stood up. “I’ll leave you to it then. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll run upstairs and take a look at that third floor.”
“Suit yourself,” Cara said.
He went down the hallway toward the stairs, then thought better of it.
“Hey. Whose wedding are you doing tomorrow? Not Lindsay Crawford and Will Becket by any chance?”
“No way,” Cara said. “What? Are you the best man?”
He grinned. “Nah. Just an old friend from high school.”
“Does that mean I’ll see you there tomorrow night?”
“I wasn’t gonna go,” Jack said. “Ryan and I are working tomorrow. But now that you mention it … maybe I’ll change my plans. Especially if you’re gonna wear that pink dress of yours.”
“Oh geez. That’s right. You’ve seen me in that same dress now what? Three times? How embarrassing.”
“I love that dress,” Jack said enthusiastically, remembering how it swished about her knees when she danced, and the view of her cleavage. “You were wearing that dress the night we met.”
“And I was wearing a dirty T-shirt and grubby shorts earlier that day when you stole my dog,” she reminded him.
“Wear the pink dress, okay?” He waggled his eyebrows in that comic way of his. “For me.”
36
At the stroke of nine, Bert walked in the back door. He held only one coffee cup in his hand, which he emphatically set down on the worktable before beginning to leaf through the day’s phone orders.
“Hello,” Cara said pointedly.
“Hey.” He got up and went to the walk-in cooler, plucked an armful of roses, carnations, and ferns from the buckets, and slammed the cooler door. In another moment, he was whacking away at the flowers, stripping leaves, snipping stems in a flurry of barely contained violence.
She debated asking Bert why he was pissed—because his body language told her he was. And then she decided she didn’t care why he was pissed. Some days it was better not to poke the bear. Was that an expression her father used, or was it one of her grandmother’s?
After another fifteen minutes of silent sulking, Bert abruptly slammed down his clippers.
“That police detective? Did you know she showed up at my apartment? That bitch Lillian Fanning told her I stole that epergne!”
“I knew Detective Peeples wanted to talk to you,” Cara said quietly.
“Yeah. She basically called me a thief. What the hell would I want with that hideous piece of crap?”
“Just calm down, okay?” Cara was startled to realize she sounded just like her father. “It turns out that hideous piece-of-crap epergne is worth about a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. And I told the detective you’re not a thief.”
Bert’s eyes narrowed. “You also told her I was a drunk.”
“She asked me what I knew about your background and how I came to hire you. I wasn’t going to lie about it, Bert. So yes, I told her you’d been in rehab. I also told her you’ve been sober for two years and that I trust you completely.”
“Except that you don’t. Do you?”
Before she could ponder that question, the shop phone rang. Bert snatched up the receiver, listened for a moment, then handed her the phone, his face an expressionless mask.
“It’s the Colonel.”
Bert was really, really pissed at her.
“Hi Dad,” Cara said cautiously. “I was just getting ready to call you. Did you get the check?”
“I got it,” the Colonel said. “But it’s not what I was expecting. Only half of what you owe?”
She crossed her eyes and glanced over at Bert, whose job it was to make her laugh during ordeals like this. Nothing. He stared studiously down at a handful of pink carnations as if they were the most fascinating things he’d ever seen.
“I know, Dad. But it’s the best I can do right now.” She took a deep breath. How to make her father understand the financial pressures she was under, without making it sound like she was broke and desperate—especially when she actually was broke and desperate?
“I have a huge wedding coming up July sixth, and in a couple weeks I’ll get paid the balance of my fees, and then I’ll try to send you the rest.”
“Not good enough, young lady,” her father said.
“Dad. If you’d just listen…”
He wouldn’t, of course.
“I’m just glad your mother’s not alive to see what’s become of you,” the Colonel said. “She’d be so disappointed.”
Cara blinked. The Colonel invoked her late mother’ name rarely, if at all. This was unfair, a sneak attack. What did her mother have to do with her failures at business?
As a child, Cara sensed there was something different about Barbara Kryzik. Her mother loved books and reading, and painting. Maybe that’s where Cara had gotten her artistic talents.
Wherever the military sent them, Barbara Kryzik always managed to find an art studio, where she could work on her paintings, mostly dreamy abstract pastels, and a group of bored officers’ wives who liked to play cards and day drink. Somehow, it had managed to escape Cara’s notice that her mother had quietly become a lush.
In her freshman year of college, second semester, a neighbor had called Cara’s dorm room, to register concern that Barbara seemed to have lost an alarming amount of weight. Cara had skipped class and driven home to see for herself. She’d been horrified at her mother’s appearance. Her mother had always prided herself on her svelte figure, but now Barbara was gaunt, a withered human coat hanger. Her skin was pale and waxy, her once-lustrous dark hair so thinned that Cara could see patches of scalp.
She’d somehow managed to bundle her mother into the front seat of her car and driven her directly to the emergency room.
The young resident in the emergency room had run a battery of tests on Barbara, and then called Cara aside for a chat.
He was very young, that doctor, young enough and cute enough so that, to her enduring shame, the first thing that crossed Cara’s mind was not what he would tell her about her mother, but whether or not he was married—or looking.
“Your mom tells me your dad is stationed overseas?” he’d said. The doctor had blue-green eyes. So light, they reminded her of the water at Panama City Beach, where she’d spent spring break just a few weeks earlier.
“Yes. Turkey right now. Air Force.”
“When was the last time he saw your mother?”
Cara had to stop and think. “Maybe a year. A little more? Look. Is it cancer? Do I need to call him and get him home?”
“It’s not cancer, and it’s not life-threatening. Unless she ignores my advice and keeps on drinking.”
Cara still remembered that sensation—that she’d been kicked in the stomach.
“Drinking?” she’d said stupidly. “My mom doesn’t drink. I mean, not that much. Maybe some wine at dinner.”
“Ar
e you sure?” His voice was so gentle, almost a whisper. “Aren’t you away at college?”
“Yes, but…”
“She’s drunk right now,” the doctor had said. “It’s a good thing you drove, because her blood alcohol is sky high. Her liver function, everything, points to acute alcoholism. The weight loss—that’s a side effect. She’s malnourished. And dehydrated. We’re giving her fluids, and we’ll keep her overnight.”
Cara was mesmerized by those sea-green eyes. “And then what?” she heard herself ask.
“That’s up to you and your father,” the doctor said. “But if it were my mom, I’d want her to go to rehab. Because if she doesn’t stop drinking, she really will kill herself.”
The colonel had come home from Turkey, and Barbara had cried and apologized and begged for forgiveness, and willingly gone to a very expensive private facility in Florida that her father insisted on calling “the hospital.” He’d somehow managed a transfer, and gone right back to work at the base an hour from “the hospital.”
Her mother had emerged from rehab proclaiming herself a new woman. And then she’d died six months later from liver failure.
Sometimes Cara wondered if, had her mother lived, she and the Colonel would have stayed married. She wondered whether her father’s attitude toward his only child would have somehow softened. Sometimes, and these were the times she was most ashamed of, she wondered what life would have been like if her father had died and her mother were the survivor.
She’d returned to college after her mother’s funeral, and at a roommate’s insistence, had seen a therapist for grief counseling.
When Cara mentioned her father’s career in the military, the therapist had frowned. “If you’re looking for your father to fill the hole your mother’s death has left in your life, you’re going to be disappointed. To say that all career military men are distant and forbidding is a cliché, but from what you’ve told me about your father, in this case, the cliché fits.”
Save the Date Page 24