by Susan Fox
“It’s hard keeping secrets in Caribou Crossing. And there’s no reason to. Is there?”
She shook her head. “Not for me. You’re the one who’s had all the women in town speculating about your dating life.”
“And now I’m actually seeing someone. So why not be open about it? I don’t like deceiving people.”
“Me neither. But will your family be okay with you dating some drifter who’s working at the Wild Rose?”
He frowned. “They’ve met you and like you. As for working here, they’ll assume that I’ll be professional.”
He was right. His staff and the townspeople would likely think the same, because they knew him well. “Then great, let’s do it.”
“Good. But what do we do? Do we have to make some big announcement?”
Humor twitched her lips. She reached over to clasp his hand, threading her fingers through his. “This’ll do it. No one in your family’s slow on the uptake.”
He squeezed her hand. “Good point.”
Her hand felt like it belonged in his. Her lips yearned to touch his. But her coffee break was almost over, not to mention that anyone might knock on the door and pop in. She freed her hand gently and stood. “I need to get back to work.”
“I’ll have a word with Mitch.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“You know folks will have questions.”
She winked. “No one says we have to answer them.”
Chapter Fifteen
For Friday dinner, Dave had been happy to go along with Cassidy’s request for what she called “the elegant simplicity” of barbecued hamburgers. They ate on his private rooftop patio, sprawled on lounge chairs, each with a chilled bottle of Caribou Crossing ale.
Both hungry, they wolfed down the food without saying much. She put down her empty plate and patted her stomach. “Mmm, there’s nothing like a classic burger.”
He wiped his fingers on a paper towel and reached over to take her hand. “Beer, a burger, and a pretty woman. Can’t beat that on a Friday night.”
She toasted him with her beer bottle. “A man of simple tastes.”
“Classic,” he corrected her. “So how was your day?”
Her brow wrinkled. “My brother JJ called. He’s getting married again.”
“Oh yeah? You mentioned he’d been married once, and it didn’t last.”
“No longer than a nanosecond.”
Remembering that her parents had married each other three times, he asked, “He’s not marrying the same woman, is he?”
She snorted. “God no. He’s not that dumb. But still, I asked him what he’s thinking.”
“And?”
“JJ says it was so nice when we were a real family, he wants that again. That’s why he rushed into marriage before. But this time he says he’s really sure this is the right woman.”
“Have you met her?”
“Yeah. They’re in Victoria, and I went over for a couple days when I was working in Vancouver. Mags seems nice, but . . .”
“You don’t think she’s right for JJ?”
She sipped some beer. “It’s not that. It’s the marriage thing. Why can’t people be satisfied with a happy here and now?”
“You haven’t been in love.”
“Nope. Thank heavens.”
“When you’re in love, you get . . .” He drank some beer as he searched for the right word. “Greedy, I guess. It’s not that you want to own the other person, but you want everything.”
She eyed him curiously. “What d’you mean?”
“Everything you can have together. All the sharing, trust, love. You don’t just want a wonderful ‘here and now,’ you want a future.” His mouth had run ahead of his brain and a painful stab in his heart shut him up. A future. That was what he and Anita had been denied.
Cassidy squeezed his hand and said quietly, a little sadly, “But there are no guarantees of that future actually coming true.”
“No, there aren’t.”
“So it’s better not to fall in love and make plans, or you risk getting your heart broken.”
Was she right? He freed his hand, stood, and headed down to the kitchen with his empty plate and beer bottle, reflecting. He had never felt so gloriously alive as he had with Anita before she’d been diagnosed. Had that been worth the pain that followed? Was anything worth that kind of pain? Yet, to never have experienced that kind of love . . . He was almost sorry for Cassidy. Her parents had really done a number on her, to make her shun the notion of love.
“Want to take a couple more beers back to the roof?” Her words broke into his thoughts and he realized she’d followed him into the kitchen.
“Sure.” He took the bottles from the fridge and they went back up the stairs. Curious to learn more about the family that had influenced her philosophy of life, he said, “When your parents first got married, were things good?”
“Yeah. Really good.” She plunked into her chair. “Until they weren’t anymore.”
He sat sideways on his lounge chair, feet on the patio deck, so he could see her face. “You said they first split up when you were seven? What went wrong?”
“All I saw at the time was lots more fighting. Later, I heard the story from both sides. She thought he was too charming with his female clients. He said she got bitchy when she wasn’t always the center of his world. She said he hated it when she didn’t fawn over him the way his female clients did.”
“Your parents were young. Immature?”
“I guess. Finally they had this horrible blowup.” She swallowed some beer. “Luis had this wealthy female client who was moving to the south of France. He went with her.”
“Rough on you and your brother. You stayed with your mom?”
“Yeah. She dated a lot. JJ and I missed Luis. He sent postcards with pretty scenes, cute animals, little notes. But his lady friend and his life in France meant more to him than we did.”
Dave winced. If you had kids, they should be the most important thing in your life.
“The person who gave us a sense of security, who put us first, was Gramps.”
“He sounds like a good guy.”
She nodded fervently. “The best. He babysat us, and we stayed with him whenever Justine went off with a boyfriend. He was a successful businessman, but he always had time for us. He let us know how much he loved us.” She paused. “Dave, you need to talk to Robin.”
“Huh?” Where had that come from?
“About us dating. She can’t just find out when we turn up tomorrow night.”
He hadn’t thought of that, but she was right. “I’ll have a private chat with her before then. I think she’ll be happy. She likes you.”
“I like her. That’s a good kid you’ve got, Dave Cousins.” Her lips curved. “As if you don’t know it.”
“I do. Go on with your story.”
“Okay, well, Justine finally got semiserious about one of her guys. He was offered a good job in Toronto and we moved there with him. I really missed Gramps. Then she split with the guy, and Luis and his south-of-France lover broke up. There was all this drama about how Justine and Luis had never really loved anyone else. We ended up back in Victoria, with them getting married again. I was ten, JJ was eight.”
He leaned forward to rest his hand on her bare leg. “How did you feel about it?”
She worried her bottom lip. “Tentatively happy. At times it seemed great, but I wasn’t sure I could trust in it. I was older, I knew my parents better. And I could see Gramps was skeptical. He took Luis back into the realty business, but things between them were strained. I think Gramps was afraid Luis was going to take off with another female client.”
“And?” He finished his beer and put the bottle down.
She shook her head. “This time it was Justine. Eventually she got restless. She was in her thirties, the mom of a teenage daughter and son. I think she felt kind of, uh, drudgy. Not the exciting, passionate woman she liked to think of herself a
s. And then Gramps died.” She rubbed her hands across her face, then left them there.
He stroked her leg gently. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” She lowered her hands, but didn’t look at him when she went on. “It was a stupid accident. He hit black ice on the Malahat, driving up to show a property in January. We were shattered. We all loved him so much. Luis was scrambling to hold the business together, not paying much attention to Justine.” She shook her head and said sarcastically, “So of course, she did the mature thing.”
“That was when she went to Europe with a man?”
“Yup.”
“Leaving you and JJ with your father.”
“Yeah. Luis worked hard, played hard. I tried to keep the house together and make sure JJ did his homework and didn’t get in trouble. I loved Luis and JJ, but they were both a bit of a pain. And I missed Justine and Gramps. I envied my mother, off in Europe having fun. I was sixteen and I’d have dropped out of school except Gramps would have hated that. So I hung in. The moment I graduated, I went to Greece, where Justine and her guy were living.”
She glanced down, rotating her beer bottle in her hands. “JJ was going into eleventh grade. I figured he was old enough to look after himself, with some help from Luis.”
He heard a touch of guilt. “He was your parents’ responsibility, not yours.”
Finally, she looked at Dave, and he saw that guilt, along with pain, in her eyes. “That’s what I told myself. But he’d had his gramps die and his mom run off. His dad was there but not exactly there. Then I took off.” She worried her bottom lip again. “You never run out on people.”
No, he didn’t. At pretty much the same age, he’d taken on responsibility for a pregnant girl and an unborn child who wasn’t his. Still, he’d had a far different upbringing from Cassidy’s. He’d had parents who taught him about commitment and stability. He squeezed her leg. “You were what, eighteen?”
“Not quite.”
“Cut yourself a break.”
She shot him a grateful look. “Thanks.”
They went downstairs and tidied up the kitchen, then drifted into the living room and sat on the couch. “What do you feel like?” he asked. “If your leg’s okay, we could take Merlin for a walk and get an ice cream cone at The Soda Jerk.” The soda fountain sold a bunch of flavors of ice cream, gelato, and sorbetto.
“Ice cream’s good, but how about sharing this instead?” She reached into her bag and pulled out a hand-rolled cylinder.
The sick lurch in his stomach told him what it was. All the same, he found himself asking, “Is that a joint?” Near the end, Anita had used medical marijuana. He was glad it had helped her, but the pungent earthy scent would always, for him, be associated with her dying.
“Well, duh. And I’m told it’s primo stuff.”
“Where did you get that? No, don’t tell me.” If it was from one of his staff, he didn’t want to know. No doubt some of them used marijuana, but it was still an illegal drug.
“Got a match?”
“No! Damn it, no, Cassidy. We’re not smoking that.”
Cassidy rolled her expressive eyes. “Oh, come on. It’s legal in a lot of places and soon will be here too.”
“I don’t care.”
“People use it for medical reasons, like to cope with pain and nausea.”
How well he knew. “Are you in pain?” He knew his harsh tone was an overreaction, but he couldn’t temper it. “Are you nauseous?” His own stomach roiled with memories.
“I can’t believe you’re such a Puritan. But fine, whatever.” She tucked it back into her purse. “I don’t smoke weed often myself. I just thought it’d be fun to share.”
His lurching pulse steadied and he took a deep breath, then another. And now he found the right words. “Anita used it when she was sick.”
Her eyes widened with comprehension. “Oh jeez, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He managed a ragged attempt at a smile. “The truth is, I was never big on recreational drugs anyhow. So, yeah, I’m a bit of a Puritan.”
“You’re so responsible. Were you ever just footloose and fancy free?”
He thought back. “My folks taught us to be responsible. I cut loose a few times. Broke curfew and snuck in late; hung out at the lake drinking too much beer. I wasn’t exactly a rabble-rouser but . . .” He shrugged.
“You weren’t always Mr. Straightlaced? That’s reassuring. Was it parenthood that changed you?”
“When you’re responsible for another human being, you grow up fast and take things pretty seriously.”
“Unless you’re my parents.”
He grimaced. “Sorry about that.”
She curled into her corner of the couch, feet tucked under her, facing him. “You and Jess were young when you had Robin.”
“Fresh out of high school.” He put his feet up on the coffee table, angling his body so he could look at her.
“I’d have thought you were the kind of guy who’d have headed off to college and waited a while to get married.”
That was what he’d intended, and what his parents had wanted for him. “Pregnancy has a way of changing the best-laid plans.” He remembered the day Jessie had come to him, distraught, and told him that Evan had knocked her up before leaving town to attend Cornell. She said she planned to have the baby but she didn’t want to tell Evan about it. Evan had always, since he was a kid, wanted to get out of Caribou Crossing. She was pretty sure that if he knew she was pregnant he’d feel obligated to marry her and it would ruin both their lives. Dave had never seen spunky Jessie Bly look so whipped.
When he had reflected on her dilemma, the solution was obvious. He and Jessie liked each other a lot and could build a happy family. So he’d proposed, and persuaded her to accept.
“You had unprotected sex?” Cassidy asked. “You don’t strike me as that kind of guy, even back when you were cutting loose.”
He wasn’t stupid. Nor were Jessie and Evan. “The condom broke.”
“Ah. That’ll do it. Did you guys consider abortion?”
“Never. The very thought that Robin might not exist . . .”
She nodded. “The world would be worse off, that’s for sure.”
And his world would be unthinkable.
“Is it hard, now that Jess has remarried and you have to share Robin with Evan?”
Dave swallowed. Cassidy did have a knack of nailing the tough issues, at least in other people’s lives. “Yeah, it’s hard.” Harder than she could imagine, because Evan now knew the truth. He’d been a good guy about it, agreeing to maintain the pretense that Dave was Robin’s biological father. Yet in some indefinable way it changed things.
Dave had loved Jessie. Even if it wasn’t that earthshaking, once-in-a-lifetime feeling he’d had for Anita, he’d loved her as his best friend, his wife, the mother of their daughter. Now, she was Evan’s life mate. Dave had loved Anita with every fiber of his being, and she was gone. Robin was the most important person in his life, and now he shared fatherhood with Evan.
Too many losses. This was what happened when you let yourself love people. Maybe Cassidy was right. It was safest to avoid love.
“Ice cream.” Her decisive voice broke into his thoughts. “Let’s walk the dog, see the sights of Caribou Crossing, and stop at The Soda Jerk on the way back. But not cones. A carton of . . . hmm, I think Sinful Chocolate.” She uncurled her body and rose.
“A carton? You’re that hungry?”
She held out her hands to him and he let her tug him to his feet. “No, but licking ice cream out of a cone is boring.” She planted a teasing kiss on his lips. “I’d rather lick it off you.”
Late Saturday afternoon, Dave drove his Jeep out of the Wild Rose parking lot with Cassidy in the passenger seat. They’d discussed riding horses over to Bly Ranch, but she didn’t want to wear jeans to an anniversary party. And considering how she looked now, Dave sure wasn’t complaining.
When Robin was little, money had
been tight. He and Jessie had made more than one purchase at the predecessor to Days of Your. But he’d never before met a woman who treated a thrift store as her regular clothes-shopping spot. On Cassidy, the results always looked good, but especially today. It was the first time he’d seen her in a dress. It had an abstract pattern in shades of blue, little straps that left her shoulders mostly bare and showed off her wild goose tattoo, and a top that hugged her breasts and waist.
He had CXNG, the local country radio station playing, as usual. Cassidy hummed along to Stompin’ Tom Connors’s “Sudbury Saturday Night,” one leg crossed over the other and her foot swinging in time with the beat. Her bare legs looked hot and so did her feet, in sandals woven of multicolored strips of leather. Her toenails were painted turquoise.
“You told Robin that we’re dating?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Her reaction went pretty much like this. ‘Well, duh.’ Followed by ‘I like Cassidy. She’s cool.’”
“Good. I hope everyone else is as happy about it.”
“Well,” he teased, “you are cool.” He sure enjoyed her company. In bed and out. Thinking how much he’d miss Cassidy when she left, he asked, “You given any thought to how long you’re planning to stay in Caribou Crossing?”
“Planning? Like that word’s in my vocabulary?”
“I couldn’t live like that.”
“Don’t know unless you give it a try.” On the radio, Taylor Swift lamented that she knew some guy was trouble when he walked in. After a moment, Cassidy said, “But yeah, when you have a kid, that has to change things. Or at least it should.”
Realizing she was thinking of her parents, he said firmly, “Yeah, it should.”
“Well, anyhow . . . No, I haven’t really thought about how long I’ll stay. The only thing I know for sure is that I’ll be in Victoria just before Christmas for JJ’s wedding.” She wrinkled her nose. “Winter’s the worst season to be in Victoria. Unless you happen to like gray skies and drizzle.”
“No thanks. I like winter here. Crisp weather, snow. It’s fun to ride in the snow or go cross-country skiing. You’d love it.”
She shot him a sideways glance. “Trying to talk me into staying?”