They finished the So-ho-ho Supreme and tried the very odd Tangy Citrus-Pumpkin Mélange. Despite the combination of flavors, it tasted fabulous. He reread the label and shook his head. Remarkable.
By the time the pints and pizza boxes were empty, the sun had dropped to a comfortable spot on the horizon behind them. It brought shimmers of glitter to Cait’s hair and a golden luster to her skin. The tide forced an occasional water spray as it inched higher on the rocks and closer to their dangling feet, but Garrett wasn’t ready to let her go for the evening. It was all in pursuit of a larger goal, solving the financial problem for the school district, he told himself. But a part of him knew he was being a damned liar.
“So, did you always want to be a teacher?” he asked, trying to get the insight he needed into her motives, but also imagining what it might be like to dribble some So-ho-ho Supreme on her bare legs and lick it off.
“Yes. I wanted to make a difference in children’s lives. To be like Meryl Streep in Music of the Heart.”
Ugh. Sappy old chick-flick. “Moving film.”
She nodded. “How about you? Were your parents educators?”
He saw a gorgeous, dreamy smile cross her lips, and she appeared to finally be relaxing in his presence. How could he have thought her cold? Maybe she’d just been hungry.
With the ice princess act melting away, she seemed genuinely curious about him. What surprised him, though, was how much he wanted to impress her, to gain her approval. Not enough to tell her a whole lot about his family, of course, but enough to take a step in that direction.
“No, they’re in business,” he said glancing at the lake. A Fortune 500 nightmare. He took a stab at a partial truth. “We’re all into math but I didn’t want to use it to buy and sell things.”
She ran her fingers through the flaxen strands that swept against her pretty face and shoulders. Oh, man. She was killing him.
“And I really like being around kids. I get a kick out of them,” he admitted, realizing he’d probably never told anyone that. Not even his brother Jacob, whom he’d trust with his life.
“Did you ever consider teaching?” she asked.
He shook his head. “That takes a special kind of person. One with patience. But I always wanted to help kids. Support them in the things they needed.”
“Adults need support, too, though. Why choose to work with a school district and not some big-name corporation?” She watched him so intently he had to force himself not to squirm.
“I tried it and it wasn’t for me,” he said simply. He cleared his throat. “So, are you still happy with your choice of profession, Cait? Teaching, while emotionally rewarding, is hard work and it isn’t always financially lucrative.”
“But it’s where I feel I belong. I know I’ll never make millions, but if making money had been my goal I’d have chosen another field. Business of some kind, maybe. But like you said, it wasn’t for me. I still believe that.”
There. Nothing she said indicated she wanted to divest the school district of its cash. Moreover, it showed a genuine dedication to her field. He’d go over her classroom receipts and past year’s expenditures tomorrow, page by page, but he sensed she’d come up clean. Her attachment to the Hoopla must be for some other reason. What else could be important to her?
He made a goofy face, trying to short-circuit that serious look of hers. “Schools have great built-in vacation times. Another advantage. What do you like to do with yours?”
“Oh, I read, watch movies with friends, work ahead on my lesson plans, spend time with my family.” She smiled again. “And you? What do you do on your holidays?”
“Travel, listen to music, learn new things. And I love sports. I ski in winter. Play golf in summer.”
She raised an eyebrow at this. “You bought watercolor books earlier. Are you an artist as well?”
He chuckled. “Hell, no. My sister is. She does graphic design in Philadelphia. She’s coming in on a late flight tonight to check out my new place.” And to hound me about going home. “I wanted to get her something I knew she’d like.” A bribe gift.
Cait looked surprised. Almost touched. As if it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d go out of his way for his own sister. This galled him. He was a good guy, dammit. He was nice to his sister. Even when she didn’t deserve it.
“So tell me about her,” she said. “What’s she like?”
“Marianne?” There was no easy way to describe her. A bohemian mother hen? A bighearted nut? “She’s very…unique. She lives on yogurt and kiwi fruit, has more energy than a preschooler and just moved out to Pennsylvania to live with Dr. Daniel Bentley IV,” he purposely exaggerated the name, “of the Philadelphia Bentleys. He’s a museum-loving, up-and-coming cardiologist. They make a bizarre couple.”
“So,” she gave him another of her pointed looks, “would you say you and your sister are close?”
Jeez. Who was doing the investigating here? “Of course,” he shot back. “But enough about my family. What about yours?”
Cait studied Garrett in bewilderment. Conversation with him was a minefield. True, he’d answered many of her questions, and the facts she’d begun collecting about his life were piling up, but some topics were clearly off limits. The festival. His family. Specifics about what he did prior to this year.
What was his agenda? What was he hiding? The odd thing was he mostly had the appearance of honesty, which, if it were real, would be unusual in a school administrator. Or, heck, in any man.
“I have an older brother, Seth,” she said at last, feeling a splash of water on her calves and brushing it away. “He’s an electrical engineer. His wife’s a statistician who works from home. Math people. You’d like them,” she added, then instantly regretted it. She didn’t want to come across as too casual.
He cast her an unnerving grin. “They have any kids?”
She nodded. “A darling three-year-old. Very active girl.”
He laughed. “Sweet-looking, not always so sweet-tempered?”
“Exactly.” She allowed a quick chuckle before clamping her mouth shut. He was making her laugh more often than she wanted to. Making her speak too freely. Aggravating ability.
She inhaled and decided to probe a bit further into his life. “Where exactly do you live, Garrett?”
“I just got a place in New Brighton. It’s only ten miles away, so the commute isn’t bad. You go there much?”
“Often, actually. It’s my hometown. My mom and Seth still live there.”
This piece of knowledge inspired him to chat in a charming way about his impressions of the Midwest. She listened to the cadences of his speech, picking up on a hint of sophistication a person inherited rather than developed through study. It perplexed her. Maybe it was an East Coast thing.
“What about your father?” he asked later. “You didn’t mention him. Does he live somewhere else?”
“Dad died of a stroke four years ago. He was a construction worker and not big into doctors.” She paused, not sure she should tell him more but impulsively deciding to trust him with this. “My mom’s just beginning to show signs of decline now, too. High blood pressure. Arthritis. Memory loss.”
“That’s hard,” he said and gave her a look too masked to interpret. “Losing a parent you’re close to must be difficult.”
She nodded as the familiar pain coiled inside her. “Do you have any other siblings besides Marianne?”
“Yep,” he said, his eyes troubled, distant. “I’ve got a big brother. Jacob.”
“Where does he live?”
“Connecticut.”
“Is that where you’re from originally?”
“That’s where I grew up, but originally? No.” He glanced over at her with a thin smile. “I was born in faraway Melbourne.”
“Australia?” Her throat constricted as she recalled her first and last trip to that country. Fredric was Australian, the fiend.
“Florida.”
She allowed her breath to escape
, surprised by her relief. “Well, Florida’s not that far away.”
He scoffed. “Far enough.”
As they talked, Garrett let his eyes sweep the edges where the sand and water merged. He inhaled, feeling the pungent aroma of the lake enter his system and mix with his blood. Thinning it. Making it flow more rapidly. Being here with her was doing something to him, creating a moment of odd fusion. An intangible desire came over him. A longing. He wanted something he’d never had, but he didn’t know why. His family’s expectations, the superintendent’s wishes…they all faded into unimportance. But Cait—she didn’t. Somehow she was connected to all of this. To this feeling of wanting. They were in some weird dance together.
He looked at her anew, wondering who she was and what she really wanted. He speculated about what had brought them both here to this moment. Together. Aside from his maneuverings, of course, and her persistence with the festival. He had questions. But what he wanted to know was becoming too personal to ask.
Instead he made a few jokes, tried to lighten things up. She laughed like the tinkling chimes of the xylophone Marianne had played for two weeks when they were kids. Like the chortling of angels.
He laughed with her. Their hands rested dangerously close to each other on the dark gray rock. He snatched his away and began computing factorials in his head to distract himself.
“Ever travel across the country? Or overseas?” he asked her.
She stiffened and turned silent. He waited. Felt the spray of a small wave. Wiped away the droplets.
After a few seconds she said, “I was in the Sydney, Australia for a few weeks last summer with the guy I was engaged to. Fredric. It didn’t work out.”
Excellent. “That’s too bad.” The dude must’ve been an idiot. Garrett considered gliding his palm over the back of her hand. As a gesture of comfort. He talked himself out of it.
She shrugged, seeming to warn him off such clichéd conduct. “Some people,” she said with an unmistakable edge to her voice, “are unable to distinguish between truth and lies. They’ll do anything, no matter how deceitful, to get what they want.”
“I take it there’s a reason for that strong opinion?”
She gave a humorless laugh. “Oh, yeah. Fredric didn’t have a real firm grasp on honesty. He even lied about his last name. Neglected to mention it had been legally changed when he was ten. Which, you know, makes a difference on a marriage license. There are things about him I never would’ve found out if—”
“If what?”
“If I hadn’t been forced to look closer,” she murmured. “If I hadn’t insisted on answers.” Her gaze traveled from the blue of Lake Michigan to his face. She tilted her head to the side and her eyes twinkled at him. He felt an unwelcome jolt of arousal.
“What?” he said.
“You know, Garrett, if you thought I’d forgotten about your middle name and the fact that you didn’t tell it to me yet, you’d be almost right.” She half smiled. “You’ve gotten me completely off track with your errands, questions and unexpected excursions. But now I’ve got to know. What does the ‘M’ stands for?”
Her gaze never wavered, her expression triumphant. How could she shift moods so quickly? He could usually peg a woman’s type in under an hour, but she wasn’t at all typical. The women he’d dated in the past were easy to categorize: Like Clarissa Hughes, the urban intellectual sophisticate. Or Shell Oliver, the gold-digging, too-skinny Southern belle. Or Amelia Trilling, the stereotypic ditzy blonde. And there were others. Many others.
Cait might be a blonde, but she wasn’t a flake like Amelia. Maybe her Midwestern upbringing played a part, or not, but she wasn’t like any of them. She was sharp-witted yet sweet. Alluringly voluptuous rather than sticklike thin. Professional yet with a touch of playfulness. Still, if she knew his background she’d change her behavior around him in a heartbeat. Women always did.
“My middle name is…Marvin,” he said, ruining the lie by hesitating.
She pierced him with a withering glare. “It is not. I guessed Marvin earlier and you said that wasn’t it.” Her lips formed a comical pout, but there was a hint of dead seriousness underneath. “Tell me the truth.”
The hell with it, and damn the consequences. “Okay, Caitlin Livie Walsh. If you must know, it’s Macauley. Happy now?”
“Garrett Macauley Ellis,” she said, testing it out. “That’s not bad at all. In fact, there’s kind of a familiar ring to it. Like a movie star’s name, maybe.” She beamed a delighted grin at him.
Believe that if you want, sweetheart. “Or the name of a hapless character some movie star played,” he suggested, deciding to throw her a nice, fat, red herring.
“Yes, that’s it! Like Jimmy Stewart’s character, Macauley Connor, in The Philadelphia Story.” She gave him a knowing look. “Of course, he was pretending to be a friend of the bride’s brother just to get a top-secret story. He wasn’t all that honorable at first, but then…then he turned things around and started to fall for Katharine Hepburn. And he kissed her by the pool.”
She sighed and looked impassioned about it, like she’d given the love lives of a troupe of fictional 1940s film characters actual thought. He rolled his eyes, recalling the classic movie. So she was a romantic at heart. Why did women always go for those creepy romantic types? If a real-life guy swept a woman off her feet—particularly a woman he barely knew—and kissed her, the guy would get slapped or screamed at, not idolized. No doubt about it.
“You watch too many movies,” he said.
She shrugged and stared into the darkening sky.
He took a devil-may-care breath and let his fingers, which were in close proximity to hers again, accidentally brush against her. She trembled and looked up at him in surprise. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, his lips inches from her creamy skin.
Then the wave hit, drenching them both.
STEP 3:
Measure out 3/4 cup of sugar.
If you go a teeny bit over—that’s okay.
A little extra sweetness makes people happy.
~From Mr. Koolemar’s Top Secret,
Kool Kreme Ice Kreamations Recipe Book, pg. 97
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Sweetie, where did you put my coffee mug?” Cait’s mother asked in New Brighton later that night, her knobby fingers shaking slightly as she waved them through the thick gray hair.
Cait admired the beauty of her mother’s soft facial features with the usual pang of envy. They were freckle-free, unlike her own. She noted also the natural gracefulness of Georgina Walsh’s demeanor, something to which she’d always aspired.
She regarded her mother with compassion before scanning the kitchen. The hot mug was only the third item her mom had misplaced this evening. Inevitably, as sleepiness swept over the elderly woman, there would be more lost objects.
“It’s not in here,” Cait said with a sigh. “Perhaps you left it on the hall table when you got the mail?”
“No, no. Oh, I don’t know.” Mom shook her head, puckered her lips and strode out the opposite door to the living room.
Cait sighed again and followed her. “Your bedroom, maybe?”
The clouds of frustration in her mother’s eyes cleared as she spotted a blue-and-white porcelain mug perched carelessly on the edge of an end table. “Here it is!” Her expression of triumph turned to puzzlement. “But it’s empty.”
It was the wrong mug of course, but Cait wasn’t about to tell her that. “Why don’t I refill it for you, Mom.”
“Thank you, honey, but no. I’m not thirsty anymore. Oh, did I tell you? Eleanor showed me a new book of designs she bought. It has dolphins, penguins and other cute things the kids’ll love when we do the face painting at the Hoopla.”
“That’s great,” Cait said faintly, rushing out of the room before her mother could sense anything amiss. “Be right back.”
On her roundabout route to the kitchen, Cait strode through a few rooms and hallways before spotting the evasive object in t
he bathroom. She picked the bright, floral-patterned mug full of lukewarm coffee off the counter, dumped it in the sink and brought both empty cups to their final resting spot in the dishwasher. If only her mother would remember to turn it on this time, she thought, closing her eyes and squeezing back a few tears.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She should have had emotional support from a lover, a soul mate, at moments like these when her mom’s needs were overwhelming her. When things in her life didn’t go as planned. She should have been happily married right now and been “Mrs. Lloyd,” celebrating her first wedding anniversary tonight with Fredric in a cozy place of their own.
“I love you utterly, eternally,” he’d said with his adorable Aussie accent, dropping his R’s at every turn, no word was safe. “You’re so exquisite. My number one gal.”
Three days later he was gone.
In light of everything he did:
Lying to her about himself and his affections so he’d have companionship while in America.
Cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend Paige (a well-connected, impossibly tiny-waisted, size-two redhead).
Laughing about her lack of sophistication.
Caring more about money, career and social position than being her true love.
Not appreciating her…
It was impossible to mourn the real man. Just her illusion of him. Just the memory of what should have been a happily-ever-after tale, but wasn’t.
Cait thought of other men she’d known. A stray image of Garrett Ellis materialized in her mind. The way he’d tried to dry her off with a paper napkin after the wave soaked them. The way he’d befriended her in one minute then abruptly pulled away in the next. The way natural electricity jumped from his skin’s surface to hers like static shock, first when they shook hands and later when their fingers touched at the beach. The way he leaned in as though he were about to kiss her—but then didn’t.
Maybe there was a scene in some romantic comedy that was like this, but to her it was such a foreign sensation it should’ve had subtitles.
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