by Ev Bishop
“Hey, it’s me. Brian.”
The door opened and Katelyn appeared, disheveled but smiling. She wiped her soapy hands on the thighs of her wide-legged denim trousers and pushed away a strand of hair that had fallen from her messy bun. “What’s up?”
“I, well, silly thing really.” Brian held up his fruit offering and wondered why he was such a stuttering fool around her. “These are perfectly ripe right now, but they’ll be past their prime soon, and I can’t eat them all myself. Do Sawyer and Lacey like nectarines?”
Lacey, draped in a huge white shirt with streaks of yellow and red paint on it, appeared like a friendly ghost from behind her mom’s hip. “We love them!”
“Okay, go wash your hands then,” Katelyn said, then squinted up at Brian, amusement crinkling her eyes. “Did you really just use overripe fruit as an excuse to drop by and see us?”
Absolutely, Brian thought—and the weighty truth of the realization shocked him and made his stomach jump. “Um, well, yeah, actually.” He grinned. “So what’s the verdict? Totally lame?”
Katelyn shook her head, still smiling, and extended her palm. He dropped a nectarine into it, and she took a big bite. Juice trickled down her wrist. She licked it off. His feeling of bewildered shock—and something else—grew as he watched her.
“Not lame at all,” she said with a wide-eyed earnestness that made him feel . . . weird. “Sweet. But also, just so you know, you’re welcome anytime you want, no reason necessary. Bearing snacks is just a bonus.”
“A big bonus,” Lacey piped in, apparently finished washing up, though she didn’t look much cleaner.
Katelyn opened the door wider and Brian walked into colorful chaos.
Every visible surface in the small kitchen and dining room, including the floor, was covered in newspaper. Sawyer, looking like he might be the skinniest little boy in the world, though maybe that was just a kid of a certain age thing, sported superhero underpants and nothing else. His bony ribs, like Lacey’s shirt, were streaked with color.
“I’m starting Jo’s curtains and bedding soon, plus I’ll be bringing other work home,” Katelyn started to explain, and Lacey continued, “so we have to get all our painting in now. Even with paper down, Mom doesn’t let us finger paint when she has customers’ fabric in the house.”
Customers’ fabric in the house. One day Brian would get used to this child’s adult way of phrasing or mimicking everything. And note to self, he added in his head, don’t say or do anything around her that you don’t want to get back to pretty much everyone in the world.
“Right. No paint. No how. No way,” Sawyer added sternly.
Katelyn blushed. “I don’t have a lot of secrets with them around, do I?”
“Secrets are highly overrated.”
“Mom would agree with that, right, Mom?”
Katelyn’s cheeks flamed brighter.
“What is it you do exactly?” Brian asked. “I mean, I know you got your job back at Got The Notion, doing alterations and sales and stuff, but why do you have fabric for customers?”
“Because,” Lacey announced with breathless pride, “our mom can sew anything!”
Katelyn laughed. “Not exactly a high demand skill in our off the rack, want everything as cheap as possible world, but yeah, what Lacey said. And it is a good thing in prom and prime wedding season. I knew Jayda would have hours for me, but I hadn’t dreamed she still needed a seamstress for custom dresses. Turns out she hadn’t found anyone to replace me yet.”
“Mom’s indie spent Sybil.”
Brian looked at Katelyn for help.
“She means indispensable, but she’s just parroting as usual, and Jayda was just being nice.”
Brian scanned the room again. At least eleven shiny white pieces of paper were strewn around the room in various degrees of paint smeared completion. Maybe he should introduce Katelyn’s kids to his mother. She’d approve.
“It might not have been the brightest plan to tackle painting in tandem with unpacking,” Katelyn said, “but, well, it’s a fun rainy day activity.”
It did look fun. And then, yes, Brian spotted three boxes in front of the couch.
“All our worldly possessions,” Katelyn said, following his gaze. “Well, plus the massive suitcases that you helped us with that night—and my ridiculous fabric totes and serger and sewing machine that you witnessed in the dining hall.”
That night. Less than a month ago. It felt like a momentous occasion. He shook it off. “What? You’re serious? That’s it?”
Katelyn laughed. “Yeah, we travel light these days. I used to have a ton of stuff, but I’ve been trying to stay easily transplantable. And if I had to I could’ve left my sewing stuff in storage indefinitely, or even let it go altogether and started fresh.”
Brian removed a small Batman running shoe from one of the tall bar stools by the kitchen island and sat down. “Not me. I’m like a gnome. I want all my stuff around me, and lots of it.”
Katelyn rested a hand on his shoulder. The gentle gesture made him feel like misting up or something. He looked away abruptly.
“Having your home burn, losing everything . . . that has to be brutally hard. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. There’s insurance.”
“It’s not the same though, is it? The new stuff won’t have the attached memories.”
“I guess.”
Katelyn bit her lip. “I like homemaking, too—kinda messily, like a nest, actually, full of crafts and sewing and projects—but I’d live out of a packsack, so long as I could have my kids safely with me, with enough money to feed them and keep a roof over our heads.”
Brian needed to lighten the mood, so he looked around exaggeratedly. “A messy nest, hey? Looks like you’re succeeding.”
“Ha ha, funny man.” Katelyn moved away from him to help Sawyer open a container of green paint. Why on earth did he miss her touch already? “But I’m serious. I stressed about what I’d do for furniture and how I’d manage to keep toys, kitchen stuff and personal mementos when I first knew I had to leave Steve—but then a good friend of mine, in the most casual of comments, made me realize I was being nuts.”
Brian pulled a spare sheet of untouched paper from across the counter so it sat in front of him. “How so?”
“She moved a lot with her kids, like every few years, for work, and I wondered how that was for them. I’m a really traditional person, and used to be even more so. I was married to the idea of the nuclear home, the mom, the dad, the picket fence and the family home that the kids could come back to with their kids.” Katelyn sighed and studied her hands, maybe seeing the ring that was no longer there. “It was my dream and I still think it’s a good one, just I married the wrong person for it.”
An arm’s length away, Lacey seemed absorbed in the purple swirls she was making with two fingers, but she was obviously tuned into everything that was going on—to the point that she’d even observed that Brian had set himself up to paint. She handed him yellow and red tubes without him having to say a word.
“But when I asked my friend if the kids minded, if they didn’t miss having a home to come back to, she looked surprised and said, ‘No, wherever I am, wherever we are together, that’s home. I’m their home.’”
Brian had to smile. Katelyn did indeed . . . seem like home.
“It’s the truth. No matter how we get caught up in TV or magazine ad versions of what a home looks like, decorating wise or yard wise or number of rooms wise, or how much I like doing all that stuff, what really makes a home home is the people or pets you fill it with.” Katelyn darted a look at him, then lowered her eyes and laughed self-consciously. “Whoa, sorry. Self-help lecture ended. I think I needed to remind myself of that. Really, home’s probably something a bit different for everyone.”
Brian nodded. “Maybe.” He was suddenly lightheaded and hollow-stomached, like he’d been hitting gin and tonic early or something. “But I like your version of it.”
> She noticed the rectangle of paper in front of him and the red paint he held. “Are you going to paint?”
“I was thinking of it.”
Sawyer’s head flew up and he grinned. Lacey looked excited too. “I’m no Picasso,” Brian warned. “I won’t be winning any great painting prizes or anything.”
“Mom says that in art, and maybe in life, there is no mistake, no ‘win’ and no fail. There’s only make.”
Brian’s eyebrows shot up. “Your mom has already taught you that? How old are you guys?”
“Seven,” Lacey said archly, as if she was plenty old thank you very much.
Sawyer held up four fingers, then returned to his work.
“Okay, okay, my little savants. Stop showing off. And I didn’t make up that saying, the artist Sister Mary Corita Kent did. It just came up when we were talking one day.”
Brian squirted a huge blob of red paint smack in the center of his page. “Well, I’m impressed, and you know what? You should meet my mother.”
“I’d love to meet your mother!” Katelyn said without a second’s hesitation. Their eyes met and a current passed between them, shocking—and shaking—them both. At least he wasn’t the only one feeling this weird vibration between them today.
“Okay,” Katelyn practically stuttered. “How about you create your masterpiece, and I’ll . . . go unpack some more. Do you mind?”
“Not a bit.”
He listened to Katelyn’s soft puttering overhead while he painted—keeping it all red, much to the amusement of the kids—taking small breaks to snack and/or to admire their fifty or so (hardly exaggerating!) works of art. When the reminder he’d set on his phone buzzed, he was startled. Where had the time gone? He needed to go back to the main house for dinner with Jo and Callum.
Katelyn was nowhere to be seen. “Hey,” he called. “I’ve gotta run.”
She bounced down the winding staircase, holding a picture frame. “Already? Too bad.”
“It was really fun.”
Her head bobbed in agreement. “It was—and thank you. Having you here was a huge help. The kids had a blast, and I think I’m all done.”
She placed the frame down on the end table by the loveseat as if to emphasize her words.
Brian glanced down, expecting a photo of her and the kids or something, but it wasn’t actually a picture. Instead it was a quote written across a stormy sky. “Bravery is not the absence of fear. It is doing what you need to do or what is right despite any fear.”
She caught him looking and misread his expression.
“See?” she exclaimed. “Now you know why I needed the kids to paint. I need some real art in the house, not just inspirational goop.”
He shook his head. “I was thinking that I liked it.”
When she didn’t respond to that, he added, “Still on for movies tonight?”
Katelyn chewed her bottom lip and looked pensive, but then her expression brightened, like she’d forcibly pushed off whatever was worrying her. “Absolutely,” she said. “Yeah. Sure.”
He noticed that she shook her head, like she was disagreeing with her own words while she spoke. What’s that about? he wondered, but didn’t get a chance to ask because Lacey and Sawyer had launched themselves off their chairs to say their own good-byes.
While he’d been indoors with Katelyn and the kids, the earlier drizzle had turned to a downpour. He held his jacket over his head and jogged across the yard. He was almost at Callum and Jo’s door when he realized he’d left his paint-doodle behind. Great, just great.
Chapter 15
Katelyn stood by the coffee maker, willing it to hurry, and stretched her head from side to side, trying to ease the crick that had formed during her restless night. It wasn’t the first uneasy sleep she’d had since coming to River’s Sigh, but this time it wasn’t Steve who’d kept her tossing and turning with nagging unnamed worries. It was Brian.
“Mom, mom,” Lacey said insistently, appearing beside her.
Sawyer tugged on Katelyn’s nightie to add weight to his sister’s plea.
“Can we watch cartoons with our breakfast?”
“Sure. Go ahead.” It would be a nice distraction for them—and might hide how distracted she was.
“Please,” Lacey wheedled, then her mouth dropped open. “Wait. We can?”
Katelyn laughed. “Well, do you want to or not?”
“Yeah!” Sawyer whisper-yelled, and he and Lacey sprinted to the couch.
Lacey turned on the TV and the Pokémon theme song filled the room. Katelyn brought them cheese cubes, fruit and homemade oatmeal bars, thinking that even if they did accidentally spill, everything would vacuum up easily. Then, trying not to sigh with audible relief, she settled herself, coffee in hand, at the little table in the kitchen and resumed staring at the cause of her jumbled emotions and concern: Brian’s painting—if you could call it that. He’d painted each of their names, his, Katelyn’s, and both kids’, then added curlicue hearts and flowers and the big question, “What are we doing, K?” followed by another heart.
She had no idea if he’d left it behind intentionally or not. But the problem wasn’t that he’d left it. Or even what it was. It was that it mimicked exactly what she had been wondering—and had been too scared to face directly.
She’d known from the first minute they met again by chance in the airport that she found Brian physically attractive. But she was off men, at least until her kids were grown, and maybe permanently. She’d been so sure that if they spent time together, she’d see all the ways he was wrong for her and even the physical attraction would wane. At best, they’d be friends. And at worst? There was no worst. If they didn’t work as friends, it would almost be easier.
She hadn’t even considered another possibility: that rather than ripping out stitches of lust, getting to know Brian a bit would only knit a desire to know him even better, would make her like and appreciate the actual man he was, not just his pretty face.
The awareness that she genuinely liked him had been scary enough, but she’d been confident—even while they ran together, even while they kept finding time to steal a conversation whenever and wherever their paths happened to cross, even while she was more and more eager for every hour they spent watching movies and chatting—that she could keep her silly crush under control.
Her first inkling that she was out of her depths had hit her before he’d even left after painting with the kids. When he’d asked if they were “still on” for movies later, all she’d wanted to do was beg him to stay right through, to eat dinner with them, to be part of the kids’ bedtime stories and going to sleep rituals. The idea that she felt all was right in her world when Brian was there beside her, and that Lacey and Sawyer were benefiting from his calm, easy presence made her queasy. Literally. She’d ended up texting him and begging off their movie plans, claiming she wasn’t up to it. Which was true, just not for the reasons she wanted it to be.
And now this. Now she couldn’t pretend that the electricity that zipped between them was all in her head.
She traced one of the red curlicues Brian had decorated his paper with. If her feelings weren’t one-sided, if he felt even remotely the same way she did, there was nothing safe about her infatuation, nothing harmless about her fantasies. She, they, had stumbled into a danger zone.
Now their attraction was something to be dealt with, figured out, put to sleep. And that was too bad. Really too bad. In another world, in a different place and time . . . if Greenridge could be anything except part of her past, a place she had to escape for the health and welfare of her little family, she would’ve loved to explore a possible future with Brian Archer—
She stood abruptly and downed the remains of her coffee in a final gulp. She could obsess to death about Brian later. When they met next, they’d have a quick conversation, sensibly agree that feelings were just feelings, nothing that couldn’t be exorcised by rational facts—the key one being that nothing more could develop between the
m—and then they could continue on with their easy friendship. For now, he was out of sight and she needed to put him out of mind. It was time to get ready for her day and to get the kids ready for theirs. Specifically, she had to pack their overnight bags for their weekend with Steve. With that thought, bam, all silly notions of possible romance fled. She needed the complications of another man in her life like she needed a frontal lobotomy.
Chapter 16
The combination of warm rain and fits and spurts of sun had turned the gray world green overnight, and despite a tedious call to his insurance broker to go over claim details, the fact he was due to see his mother tomorrow, and that this was his last weekend of freedom before starting work Monday, Brian was oddly cheerful. And he, curse it, knew why full well.
It had been forever since he and Katelyn had hung out alone, aside from running together almost every morning, that is. The finger painting with the kids day hardly counted, plus she’d canceled their last movie night. She’d logged a twelve-hour workday on Friday, eight in the shop, four or five sewing in her cabin. And who knew how long she’d worked today—but now it didn’t matter. They had a whole evening in front of them, with plans to eat dinner together and binge on Netflix.
He rapped a silly pattern of knocks on the door and Katelyn opened right away, obviously fresh from the shower. A veil of citrus scented steam surrounded her, and her hair was held up in a towel. Her face was flushed with the heat, and she was in flannel pajama shorts and a soft-with-age university sweatshirt. Brian’s temperature spiked and his heart beat amped up. The thing he liked best about Katelyn—no, correction, just one of the many, many things he liked about her—was her casual, down to earth ways. Maybe it was because she had zero interest in him, but she always seemed to be who she really was with him. He’d dated girls that, throughout their whole relationship, he’d never seen without perfectly applied makeup and immaculately done hair. And the women he’d been more serious with always donned lingerie or silky robes for any sleepovers. But then again, as he’d just reminded himself, he and Katelyn weren’t a couple like that. If they were, maybe she’d feel pressured to be more overtly sexy. Maybe those other women preferred to sleep in big shirts too. He’d never thought to ask.