Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set

by Amber Leigh Williams

  Dingo put his guitar back on the stand in the corner. “No worries. It’s been great seeing you again.”

  The fact that Dingo wasn’t trying to stop him, and wasn’t looking him in the eye was telling. Was Finn on the verge of losing his friendship too, the way he’d become estranged from his parents? “Say goodbye to Marla for me.”

  Dingo glanced out the open garage door at the long shadows stretching across the driveway. “You’re not heading out for Los Angeles now, are you?”

  “Not tonight,” Finn agreed. “Tomorrow.”

  “Are you staying with us again tonight?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll get a room at a hotel. I’ll be in touch, let you know what Tom comes up with.” Finn gave him a man hug and Dingo slapped him on the back. But there was a new coolness, a distance that hadn’t been there in the past. It was as if Finn’s problem had imposed limitations on their friendship.

  How could he have let anxiety rule his life for so long, all the while telling himself he was happy and fulfilled? Worse than not having the solo career he’d dreamed of as a teenager was letting down the people he cared about. About time he called himself on it. He wasn’t satisfied with his professional life, not by a long shot, and now his problem was affecting his friendships.

  Instead of looking for a motel he pointed the Mustang toward South Hill. Suddenly he needed to see Carly, needed some reassurance that there was at least one person among his old friends that he hadn’t let down.

  Before he went up the steps to the front door he took a moment to text his mother.

  Can we meet for coffee?

  Ball was in her court.

  * * *

  “YOU HAD ME WORRIED, RUFUS.” Kneeling beside the bathtub, Carly poured warm water over the dog. Rose-scented bubble bath frothed around his ears and his red fur was plastered darkly to his body. “Anything could have happened. You could have been hit by a car, or dognapped, or lost forever in the woods.”

  Rufus responded by licking her arm.

  “To tell you the truth, I feel kind of lost, too,” she said, sluicing more water over him. “Irene’s passing left a huge hole in my life. You’re lucky Finn happened to be in the right place at the right time or who knows what might have become of you. We’re both lucky Finn’s in Fairhaven right now. I need a friend. So you be nice to him, okay?” Rufus tried to lick her face. “What’s that you say? You’re my friend, too? Of course you are. Just as I’m yours.”

  She meant it, too. Last week she’d been too numb and too preoccupied to see Rufus as anything but a nuisance. Finding him bedraggled and starving, she’d realized he was also suffering. If anything, it was worse for the dog. He couldn’t understand why Irene had gone away, or that she was never coming back.

  Carly drained the water and rubbed him down with a towel before hauling him over the edge of the tub and onto the mat. He did an all-over body shake, sending water droplets flying. She dried him off some more and then got out her hair dryer. “Hold still. I’m going to blow it dry.”

  As she used the dog brush and the hair dryer to make his coat glossy and smooth, her thoughts drifted back to Finn. He’d looked right at home with Tyler sleeping on his shoulder and seemed comfortable and natural around the boy. From what she recalled, Finn and his brother had a lot of younger cousins. She’d gone to his house once to deliver a package of sheet music from Irene and happened on an extended family gathering with Finn leading the children in a game of softball.

  It was such a shame that while he’d achieved success as a songwriter, he seemed content to let his other musical talents go to waste. He clearly had problems he wasn’t dealing with. As a former counselor trained in psychology, she knew that attitude led to dead ends. She would happily try to work through whatever was blocking him, even though she didn’t need any more problems in her life, but unless she was super tactful he would push away any offer of help.

  Carly flicked off the hair dryer. “All done, Rufus, my boy. You may go, but don’t forget, you’re under house arrest until the gate is fixed.”

  Rufus trotted out of the bathroom. A moment later she heard him settle with a soft thump on the floor outside Irene’s door. His low whine just about broke her heart. Poor Rufus. How would he cope if she left him, too?

  Carly scooped up the wet towels and put them in the hamper. Then she cleaned the bathtub and wiped down the wet floor. Time to tackle the next item on her to-do list—write thank-you notes to those who’d donated to the animal shelter in Irene’s name in lieu of flowers, as requested.

  Carrying a box of note cards she went downstairs to curl up on the cushioned seat built into the bay window in the living room. The table would have been easier to write at but the window seat had been her favorite spot in the house to read when she was a child. It was peaceful, and today it was an anchor to the past, making her feel close to Irene.

  While she worked on the notes, her phone chirped, announcing the arrival of a text message. Leanne. Whoops. She’d forgotten all about the business cards and the issue of serif or sans serif. Honestly, she did not care one way or the other but for some reason it was important to Leanne that Carly have an informed opinion. Serif or sans serif, that was the question.

  While she pondered, the phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” Frankie said. “Thought I’d better mention that garbage cans go out tonight. Pickup is early so it’s not a good idea to leave it till morning.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. Oh, by the way, we found Rufus. He was down at the beach.” She chatted for a few more minutes and then Frankie had to go fix dinner for her family.

  Carly gathered up her notes, pocketed her phone without sending a message to Leanne and went to the kitchen. If she was putting out the garbage it made sense to clean out the fridge.

  With a black garbage bag in hand she turned her ruthless setting to high. Miso paste, out. Dregs of a bottle of oyster sauce, out. Ancient chocolate sauce, out. Rotting lettuce and withered carrots… Irene would have put them in the compost. But who was going to spread compost on the vegetable garden? For that matter, who was going to plant a garden?

  Still Carly hesitated. Irene had always been environmentally conscious and didn’t like to be wasteful. Muttering under her breath, she put the wilting produce into a bucket to be carried out to the compost bin later. Whoever bought the house might use it. If not, at least the worms wouldn’t starve.

  She went back to the fridge. Half-empty bottle of ketchup, out. Sourdough starter. Her hand hovered over the jar. Brenda was right, she should throw it out. But this jar contained a culture that Irene had lovingly nurtured over many years. If Carly wanted to feel close to her aunt, there was no better way than to make bread. And wouldn’t it be amazing to set a loaf of fresh, homemade bread on the dinner table?

  Abandoning the fridge for now, Carly got out her laptop and Googled how to make sourdough bread. Good grief. There were thousands of recipes, hundreds of online clips and whole forums devoted to the art and science of sourdough. She scrolled through pages of description and photos.

  When she thought she had the gist of the process, she gathered ingredients and implements together and began to mix the dough. According to what she’d read, she should have fed the starter a couple of times to activate it before attempting to make bread, but she decided to go ahead anyway.

  An hour later, flour blanketed the kitchen counter like fresh snowfall. It dusted Carly’s navy top and Rufus’s russet fur was sprinkled with white as he licked the fine powder off the floor. The wet, sticky blob at the bottom of the mixing bowl didn’t look anything like the spongy dough in the video clip. She wished she’d watched Irene more closely when she made bread but Carly had been interested only in the finished product.

  Face it, Irene would be horrified if she could see Carly making a mess of her beautiful starter. Instead of feeling spiritually close to her aunt she was cr
oss and tired and felt like a failure. Really, what was the point of keeping the starter going? The closest she got to home baking was eating frozen cookie dough from the roll. And yet, she wasn’t ready to admit defeat.

  The doorbell rang. She grabbed a tea towel and tried to rub the gooey dough off her fingers on her way to the front door.

  “Hey.” Finn handed her a bouquet of spring flowers—daffodils, tulips and freesia.

  “Thank you. What are these for?” She buried her nose in their fresh, delicate scent and felt her spirits lift. When was the last time a man had brought her flowers when it wasn’t her birthday?

  “Just because they looked pretty.” His wry gaze took in her white-speckled appearance. “I was going to say, pretty like you, but you look like you’ve been through the mill. A flour mill, that is.”

  “I’m making sourdough bread.” Even his gently sardonic tone couldn’t spoil her pleasure in receiving flowers. “Come on in.” She headed back to the kitchen.

  Rufus trotted up to Finn and licked his hand. “Hey, boy. What happened? He looks as if he has a severe case of dandruff.”

  “I know, and I just got him clean.” Carly found a glass vase and filled it with water from the tap. “But he seems no worse for having spent a night on the lam.” She unwrapped the flowers and arranged them in the vase. “Tea?”

  “Have you got a beer?” Finn asked.

  She pulled a cold one out of the fridge and handed it to him. “How was band practice?”

  His eyes closed as he took a long pull on the bottle, draining half in one go. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The band is great.”

  “But…?” Something was wrong.

  “They need a lead singer,” he said casually. “The guys can’t understand why I couldn’t fill in even for one day.”

  “Awkward.” Carly noted the drawn lines around his eyes and mouth. He was more upset about it than he was letting on. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Instead of answering, he wandered to the counter. “Is this the offending dough?”

  “Yes, look.” She tried to pick up the blob. It stuck to the counter and stretched between her fingers in long sticky strands. “You see what I’m dealing with here?”

  “Give it time,” he said. “Irene used to leave it overnight and bake it the next day.”

  “Shoot. I’d hoped to have bread for dinner along with the soup I haven’t yet made.” Carly glanced at the wall clock. “I’ve got to feed Taylor something.”

  “After I fix the gate, I’ll give you a hand in the kitchen,” Finn said.

  “You don’t have to do that—” she began.

  “We were closest to Irene,” Finn cut her off. “We’re in this together, for however long it takes. I’ll fix the gate and repair whatever else is broken.”

  “But—”

  “Stop.” Finn pointed his beer bottle at her. “Don’t argue every time I try to help.”

  “All right, but if you’re helping out of guilt or a sense of obligation, it’s not necessary,” she said. “I could have fixed the gate if I wasn’t wrestling sourdough.”

  “You were brought up in an apartment with a resident handyman,” Finn said. “Not a lot of opportunity to learn how to do home repairs.”

  “I’ve got YouTube,” Carly said. “I can do anything I put my mind to.”

  “I know you can, Wonder Woman, but you don’t have to. I’ve got your back.” Finn drained his beer and set the bottle on the counter. “I’ll get busy on the gate. Are Irene’s tools still downstairs?”

  “I presume so,” Carly said.

  Finn went into the laundry room and turned the old-fashioned iron key in the basement door lock. The door creaked open and he descended the wooden steps.

  Carly lifted the sticky dough into a plastic container and left it to rise on the kitchen counter. As she scrubbed the residue off her fingers she thought about Finn and his visit to the band. He must have felt humiliated not being able to play. It would do him no good bottling things up. He should talk this out. Maybe he’d come here for that very reason and she’d prattled on about sourdough.

  She went to the top of the stairs and peered down into the unfinished basement. “Finn?”

  No answer. A bare fifty-watt bulb hung over the staircase and in the dim light, she started down, holding on to the rail. Crap, there were a lot of spiderwebs down here. At the bottom of the stairs she skirted the boiler and followed the glow of a flickering fluorescent strip. Finn stood at a workbench, picking through a jumble of tools. Above the bench was a cobweb-encrusted window that let in a kind of half-light. If he heard her approach, he made no sign.

  Carly cleared her throat. “So, do the guys in the band know why you won’t sing with them?”

  “Dingo knows.” Finn studied the blade of a screwdriver and added it to a toolbox. “He probably won’t say anything.”

  “Failing to perform at that concert must have been really traumatic,” she said. “All those people expecting something amazing and then you were too rattled to play. I wouldn’t blame you for developing anxiety.”

  Still with his back to her, he said, “I don’t talk about it, remember?”

  Too blunt. She knew better than to leap straight into things. “You used to love performing,” she said, trying another tack. “I remember that time Irene held a recital here at the house. It was mainly other pupils and their parents but even at age fifteen you were quite the showman. I can’t believe you don’t miss it.”

  “I’m doing exactly what I want to do,” Finn said, sorting screws into a jar.

  “I’m sure you do like writing songs but can you honestly say you don’t wish you’d given performing a real shot?” Carly asked. “You used to work so hard at your music. It feels to me, and admittedly I don’t know what your life is like now, but it feels as if you’ve, well…”

  “As if I’ve what?” he said sharply. “Given up? Gotten lazy?”

  She winced. “Not exactly. But why haven’t you tried to overcome whatever is holding you back? It’s been twelve years.” She paused and added gently, “Isn’t it time to move on?”

  “I have moved on, hence the songwriting and studio sessions.” He shrugged. “I put a few video clips of my music up on YouTube. I get a respectable number of hits but it’s a competitive field out there.”

  “That’s why you have to perform live,” she said. “It’s the way to get noticed.”

  He added the jar of screws into the toolbox along with a pair of pliers. “Performing isn’t that important to me.”

  She didn’t believe that. And they were going around in circles. She hated that when they needed each other the most, there was suddenly a distance between them. “You don’t have to admit it to me but you should at least be honest with yourself.”

  His jaw tightened. “Speaking of being honest… You used to love helping people figure out their problems. Is finding CEOs their next seven-figure job really the kind of work you want to do?”

  “It’s…rewarding.” Maybe not in the way counseling used to be but… “CEOs are people, too, you know.” That was weak but they had been talking about him. “I’m good at what I do.”

  “Being good at a job and enjoying it are two different things,” he said.

  “What exactly are you getting at?”

  “When I knew you, you were everyone’s friend,” Finn said. “You tried to help the strugglers, the losers and the lost.”

  His words pushed a button she didn’t even know she possessed and she lost her cool. “If I was so good at helping people, why didn’t you come to me when you were hurting after that concert?”

  His nostrils flared. “Are you saying I’m a loser?”

  “You didn’t even call to explain why you stood me up for the party.”

  Wow, she hadn’t meant to bring that up, certain
ly not in that hurt, angry tone of voice. Talk about not moving on.

  Finn faced her and stepped in close. “Seems to me you’ve sold out.”

  “How dare you talk to me about selling out?” she shot back. “You had all the advantages and training a person could want. What did you do but throw it all away!”

  “Why are you here, messing about with sourdough instead of back in Manhattan polishing your name plate?”

  “I have to be here. Irene left the house to me. I am going to sell it. Ergo, I need to get it ready and on the market. Honestly, a child could see that.”

  “Is that so?” Finn said. “Couldn’t you simply lock the house up, get the neighbors to keep an eye on it and come back in a couple of months when it’s convenient?”

  “There’s a little matter of the mortgage,” she snapped. “I can’t afford to pay it and my New York rent. As it is, I’m probably going to have to cover both for a few months.”

  Finn’s eyebrows rose skeptically. “I think you’re scared you’ve made a mistake in your career choice but you need to prove something to yourself so you’re pushing yourself hard and it’s too late to back out.”

  Carly was too angry for a moment to speak. Sure she had doubts, didn’t everyone? “You talk to me about being scared? You’re fixing gates instead of getting back to your wonderful life in Los Angeles as songwriter to the stars. What about your star? You can’t even sing in a garage band.”

  “Dingo’s band isn’t any old garage band. They would have a recording contract by now if they didn’t have to work day jobs and had more time to devote to music.” Finn gathered his tools and started back toward the stairs.

  “You’re evading the issue,” she called after him. “Why won’t you sing with them? Do you think you’re not good enough?”

  He stopped suddenly and turned, dark eyes blazing. “I’m more than good enough.”

  She knew it. She just hadn’t been sure till now that he did. “Then why won’t you?”