How Sweet It is

by Sophie Gunn

  Lizzie let a tear fall, but just one. Then she wiped her eyes and pulled herself together. She could do this.

  Tay paced the night streets of the good town of Galton, New York, unable to sleep. Dune trotted behind him. White kept to the shadows, disappearing for blocks, then suddenly reappearing, a pair of glowing eyes in the bushes.

  Tay had righted a knocked-over trash can set out on the curb for the trashmen the next morning. Dune good-naturedly tried to herd the guilty raccoon into their little band of wanderers, another friend along for a moonlit walk.

  Luckily, the raccoon had other plans.

  Tay had roused a drunken student from a privet hedge and pointed him in the general direction of campus.

  He walked on aimlessly.

  Or did he?

  He knew the waitress’s address from the envelope: 47 Pine Tree Road. When he saw a street sign from afar that might read Pine Tree Road, his heart beat a little faster.

  Peach Tree Street had made him grit his teeth.

  Pine Tower Lane nearly made him scream into the empty night.

  And then he saw it.

  Pine Tree Road. His mouth went dry.

  Now what?

  He told himself again that he hadn’t been looking for her street. Yes, he had been checking every street sign with his breath held. But that was only because his insomnia-addled brain needed something to focus on or it would spin into outer space.

  Or worse, into the deep, inner recesses of itself.

  Okay, he’d been searching for it.

  He hadn’t wanted anything at all since the accident. He’d been heading away from everything for a year. To head toward something, even just a darkened street in a strange town, took him by surprise. Dune seemed to sense his discomfort and trotted closer to his heels. White just blinked at him from the shadows as if she knew.

  Damn cat.

  Even though he thought better of it, he’d gone down the soundless, darkened, tree-lined street to check out her house, swearing to himself that he was only curious to see if she really needed help.

  Lizzie’s house had been dark except for two rooms, both shrouded behind closed blinds.

  The place was a mess. The fence was halfway to collapse; the gutters hung loose. Even in the dark, he could see that the porch needed repair and painting.

  Fixing this house could be a long, involved job. Keep him busy for ages.

  As hard as he tried not to, he couldn’t resist. He’d unscrewed the bulb, then silently tweaked the wiring on her path light, happy when the dusty bulb lit up.

  Happy.

  He wanted more of happy.

  It was a simple fix, less than a minute, not long enough to make a dent in the endless night in front of him.

  And the happiness didn’t last long enough to make a dent in the endless blackness inside him.

  He didn’t have the tools to fix the gate that was hanging loose.

  So he and his crew walked on.

  Finally, after what seemed like days, the first rays of light started to form on the horizon. Finally, he could go back to the gorges and look again for the duffel bag that had seemingly disappeared, evaporated. Maybe, his sleepless brain thought, it had never existed at all.

  No, it had existed. It still existed—but where?

  He hadn’t expected that finding the duffel bag would be so hard. But the gorges were deep, some of them inaccessible, some of them already closed for the winter with gates, temporary fences, and warning signs. Not that those barriers stopped Tay, but still, they slowed his progress.

  Plus, there were so many gorges surrounding the campus, each one crisscrossed with bridges and overlooks, just perfect to toss a duffel bag over the side and watch it wash away in the fall currents.

  But he couldn’t just leave two hundred thousand dollars at the bottom of some cliff.

  Hell, maybe he could. Lord knows, he didn’t want the money back.

  Maybe it had been swept to the lake already, or sunk to the bottom of a deep pool.

  But maybe it was caught on a rock, or washed up on a pebbly shore. The streams that raged through the gorges around campus weren’t that deep. There were endless rocks and crags to catch and trap a bag, turns for it to get pushed into, branches for it to dangle from.

  If Candy changed her mind and wanted the money, he’d be the one who ended up stuck, caught, dangling, helpless. He hated to think about that. Refused to think about it.

  And what if someone else found it? Leaving that much money lying around in a duffel with no rational explanation of where it came from was like leaving a loaded gun, a bomb ready to explode into someone’s life.

  Tay knew better than most how disrupting a random event like that could be. You could spend the rest of your life trying to recover from something like that. He had enough responsibility on his shoulders already without having to deal with busting into another stranger’s life and blowing it wide open with another irresponsible act.

  No, he had to find that money. For Candy or for whoever might find it before him.

  Looking for the money gave him purpose, something to do to fill his empty days.

  It was his nights he was starting to worry about.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Lizzie couldn’t sleep. It had been a week since she’d made her decision to help Paige, and her heart was already breaking from the strain. Maybe this was a terrible idea. After all, what if Ethan wasn’t a good person? What if he was downright awful?

  But what if he wasn’t? What if he was exactly what Paige hoped?

  Her mind hopped back and forth between the two equally dangerous possibilities.

  This afternoon, she’d set up a date for Friday night with a man named Scott who was a yoga student of Nina’s, and she was already dreading it down to her toes. The last thing she needed now was a man to complicate her already complicated life.

  She lay in bed until six in the morning, when she couldn’t stand tossing and turning another moment. Paige would be up for school in another half hour, anyway. Might as well get a jump on the coffee.

  Lizzie got out of bed, looked out her window.

  It was still dark outside, the first pink rays of light just emerging on the horizon. Another day at the diner, work and worry and—

  —and there was a person on his knees at her front gate.

  She leaned forward to look closer.

  A man.

  A jolt of fear shook her.

  Lizzie threw on her purple fuzzy robe over her faded Mickey Mouse T-shirt and flannel candy-cane pajama bottoms and snuck as silently as she could down the stairs, having no idea why she was sneaking. She knelt on the bay window seat in the dining room and peered out.

  What was that guy doing?

  Maybe he had dropped something. His cell phone? Maybe he had lost a contact. Was he hurt? Maybe he had been on his way down their path to rob them and his gun had rolled under the gate…

  Was he praying?

  He shifted, and she could see his profile in the early morning light. He wasn’t exactly handsome. More like solid, weathered, maybe even worn. Despite the September chill, he was dressed in a light, faded T-shirt that might as well have read Real Men Don’t Get Cold. The sole of his right workboot, resting partly upright on its toe, had cracked clear through.

  The man reached into a box that Lizzie hadn’t noticed before. Her nose was now touching the glass so she could see better. A radio? A lunchbox? What was that?

  A toolbox.

  Her skin went cold.

  He brought out a screwdriver. Lizzie tried to hide her alarm. Her throat tightened. No. It couldn’t be. Wishes coming true… a handyman at her gate…

  Lizzie let the lace curtain fall back into place.

  The Enemy Club.

  They were the only ones who had heard her wish who would even consider acting on it.

  One of them had obviously sent this guy.

  Jill? Georgia? Nina?

  Whoever the culprit, it was not
okay.

  No, wait—it was okay. It was her wish come true.

  No. She jumped up, paced the room, confused by her conflicting emotions.

  Sure, she wanted to fix the house for Paige, but she didn’t want charity. The Enemy Club had an unspoken agreement that allowed them to be friends: They didn’t agree with each other’s wildly different life choices, but they respected them. That was the deal that none of them had ever violated. If they started sending free handymen, then what was next? Wardrobe consultants? Job-training specialists? Psychologists? Dieticians? Soon, they’d be like any other group of regular old friends, each of them just like the other, like that book club that came into the diner Thursday afternoons. They all looked the same, talked the same, ate the same Cobb salads—and looked deadly bored with one another.

  The Enemy Club had grown through the years to love and respect one another too much. They knew better than to try to change one another’s lives.

  Lizzie’s blood was starting to heat. She went back to the window, hoping he was gone, but he was still there. She dropped the curtain and sat back, feeling betrayed and honored all at once.

  It was so kind of them to do this, and yet, sending a charity handyman was a violation of their creed. Ten-yard penalty. Change of possession. Potential disqualification. Game over. This was an action that demanded a reaction. Lizzie might have wished for a free handyman, but she wasn’t going to be anyone’s charity case, even if this man’s mysterious appearance at her gate was supposed to be a joke (if it was Jill) or a well-meant but wrongheaded favor (if it was Georgia) or an overgenerous, awkward attempt at friendship (if it was Nina).

  So now what?

  She could call the cops.

  Or go outside and calmly ask the man to leave.

  Or stay inside just long enough so that the annoying hinge on the gate was fixed, then go out and confront him.

  She listened for sounds of Paige being awake, but there was only silence.

  Best to just get it over with.

  She took a deep breath and headed for the door.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The man didn’t look up.

  Lizzie strode down the front walk, letting the screen door slam behind her to announce her approach.

  He still didn’t look up.

  She avoided the holes in the walk where bricks had once been. Where did bricks go when they left her walk? To a better-maintained, happier walk down the road? She stopped in front of the man, hands on her hips. Even though she was five-foot-eight, she could tell by the expanse of blue-jean-clad folded leg that this man was much taller.

  She cleared her throat.

  No response.

  A small dog rose from the shadows, startling her. It had a tennis ball in its mouth, which it dropped at her feet. The dog looked at her expectantly.

  “Don’t mind Dune,” the man said. He unscrewed the last screw and caught the hinge adeptly as it dropped free. Then, slowly, no hurry, all the time in the world, he stood, looked at her, really looked, no rush. She could knit a sweater before this guy spoke, if she knew how to knit, which she didn’t, but she could learn before—

  “Tay Giovanni.” He offered his hand. “Short for Dante.”

  She’d seen him before.

  But where?

  His gold-tinged green eyes had the look of a practiced lady-killer who knew it. A long, deep scar ran from the outside corner of his left eye, down his well-stubbled cheek, to the corner of his mouth, as if someone had started to make an X, then changed his mind. He was handsome, in a rough-and-tumble way Lizzie usually liked. A lot. But something about him gave her pause.

  It was his eyes. They had a stillness to them that was eerie, as if he could go through a thousand emotions, but those eyes would hold steady through anything.

  A chill raced up her spine.

  His dog nudged its nose into her hand, and she couldn’t help but scratch his head. It was hard to look tough when you were scratching a dog, but she tried. “You’d better watch your dog. My pit bulls are trained to kill. All seven of them.”

  He looked at the house dubiously, then went back to his work on the broken hinge. “No worries. Almost done. Then you can set them loose. Dune will herd them. He’s a sheltie, it’s his nature.”

  I’m independent, it’s my nature. “Did Georgia put you up to this? Georgia Phillips? Thirtyish? Short? Lots of tweed?” she asked. Georgia was a psychiatrist so she made the most money, so she was the most likely to have sent this man.

  Tay stopped working long enough to envelop Lizzie with his calm stare. He bathed her in it. Looked her up and down thoroughly. Finally he said, “No one puts me up to anything.”

  “Okay, if it wasn’t Georgia, did Jill send you? Blonde? Expensive clothes? Beautiful?”

  “I told you, no one sends me anywhere.” His voice was rough and low with a slight New York edge. He looked entirely straightforward, a man who told it like it was.

  When he was good and ready.

  And he obviously wasn’t ready.

  The dog lay down, the ball at his feet.

  Lizzie hoped her tongue wasn’t lolling out like the dog’s. The man was exceptionally handsome, the way dark-skinned Italians with green eyes and longish, thick black hair could be. But she was going to ignore that, because this was not okay.

  Dante Giovanni knelt by a green metal toolbox that was as scuffed as he was. After a bit of shuffling around, he said, “Amazing house—1920s?”

  “Thank you. It’s 1918. But compliments will get you nowhere.”

  “Original slate?” He motioned to the roof.

  “From the local quarry,” she said, trying hard to hold to her resolve. He had to go before Paige woke up. Lizzie didn’t want Paige to see her chase him away. Or to see her struggling not to ogle him. What shoulders on this man.

  “Shoulders?” he asked.

  “Shoulders?” she repeated, shocked and alarmed to blushing.

  He scratched his cheek. “Shutters. Your shutters. They look original.”

  Right. Shutters. “Antique. Listen, you really have to go,” she said.

  “Early 1900s I’m guessing,” he said.

  “Nineteen-oh-four,” she said, trying not to let her guard down. “Got them at a local salvage place. Well, my father did, anyway. When he was still around to do that sort of thing.” Great. Tell the strange man that you’re orphaned and no one will miss you after he chops you to bits. Nice work. She glanced back to the house, but still no sign of Paige rousing. The dog stared at her, so she tossed his ball into the yard. He bounded after it, then was back in an instant, panting for more. It was impossible not to scratch his head. It was a cute dog, like a mini Lassie, but black and white instead of orange.

  Tay shuffled some more in the toolbox. He compared screws as if they were pieces to a puzzle. “You served me coffee last week. At the Last Chance diner on Buckman Street.” He said it as if that explained anything. Just another fact. Just the way it was. Like his deep, still eyes. Fact. Broad, rounded shoulders. Fact. Nicely tanned hands. Fact.

  “I must have served a hundred coffees last week. A thousand.” All at once, she remembered him—the man Mr. Zinelli had been yapping at. “Wait—dry toast. Black coffee.”

  “You’ve got a good memory,” he said.

  “I never forget an order. I knew I recognized you. Are you feeling better?”

  “Me?” He fell back a little, narrowed his eyes.

  “You didn’t touch the toast and hardly touched the coffee. Or maybe it wasn’t good enough? The coffee’s not gourmet, like the place across the street. You don’t look like you’re from around here. Next time, try the Brewhaha,” Lizzie said, aware that she was rambling, but not sure exactly how to handle this beautiful man who really had to leave.

  “Wouldn’t know about the coffee.” He seemed to have overcome his surprise that she recognized him, because he was back to his work. He pulled a fresh screw out of the box, went back to the gate, knelt, and began to
reattach the hinge. “From the looks of your clientele, I’d assume it gets the job done.”

  Lizzie watched him, mystified. “So I served you crappy coffee and you thought that was a reason to show up on my property and touch my latch?” Why did that sound salacious? She tried to think pure thoughts, but none came.

  Tay Giovanni was that kind of man.

  She threw the dog the ball again, feeling acutely aware of not being that kind of woman. Her goofy flannel plaid pajamas stuck out from under her threadbare robe. Her slippers were a Christmas present from Paige when she had been eleven. The left one had an ancient Florida-shaped cranberry-juice stain that wouldn’t come out no matter how many times she scrubbed it. She hoped he couldn’t see it in the early morning light.

  He tested the gate latch, dropping it in and out of its slot with soft, rhythmic clicks. Tested the hinge. It swung level and free.

  “Mr. Giovanni—”

  “Ms. Carpenter?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  He ignored her question. “I heard you tell your friends at the diner that you wished a man would show up once a week, fix things that needed fixing, then disappear.”

  “I didn’t wish,” she began, then stumbled, then started again. “I did. But I didn’t mean—and they’re not exactly my friends.”

  “Right, your enemies.”

  “Mr. Zinelli told you,” she said.

  “Yep. He explained the whole thing. Anyway, it sounded like a real wish to me.”

  Lizzie could hear her own breathing. “Did you fix the light?”

  “I have trouble sleeping.”

  So do I. She had to be careful around this too-observant, slow-moving, slow-talking man.

  “It just needed some wires jiggled. Took a minute.”

  She didn’t know what to say so she said, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They stood on the path, looking at each other. Lizzie felt as if she was being pulled in two. On the one hand, he was everything she had wished for. On the other, he was possibly a serial killer. What kind of man shows up out of nowhere to lend a hand?