by Maisey Yates
“Can I help you?” a waitress called to her from behind the counter.
There was a glass display case beneath the countertop, laden with the very same pies and cakes the fishermen in the corner were indulging in. There were also doughnuts, giant cinnamon rolls and cupcakes that Sadie was thinking needed to go with her coffee right now.
“I’d like a cupcake. And to talk to whoever does the baked goods.”
The woman blinked and something about her expression sent a flash of memory through Sadie. “That’s me.”
“Oh, well, great.”
“What kind of cupcake?”
“Your favorite. I’m not picky.”
“I like the chocolate peanut butter.”
“Sounds perfect.” Sadie watched as the other woman bent to get the cupcake from the bottom of the display case.
Familiarity nagged at Sadie, but she still couldn’t quite place her. Obviously she had to be someone she’d known here. Someone from school?
When the waitress rose back up, the motion stiff, a grimace on her face, it hit her. “Alison?” Sadie asked. “Sadie! Sadie Miller. From school. And other things that weren’t school-related.”
The other woman’s eyes widened for a moment and something sad passed through them before there was recognition and then, finally, a small smile. “Oh...oh, Sadie. I didn’t recognize you.”
“Well, I wear less black eyeliner these days. Clearly, so do you.”
She laughed nervously. “Yeah. A bit.”
“So, what have you been up to?” Sadie asked, dimly realizing that there was something uniquely wonderful in seeing faces from your past.
“Nothing much, really. Working here. Baking. I got married.”
“Congratulations.”
“Yeah,” she said, forcing another smile that looked distinctly sad.
Alison had been part of her tight-knit crew. They’d caused a bit of trouble together—the barn incident being one of them—and mainly spent time in the woods near the Garrett ranch or on the beach, because for them it had been better than being at home.
They were the misfits of Copper Ridge, and even if no one else had fully realized it, they had. They knew they were different. They knew they were wrong. Broken families, poverty. Abuse.
There was only one elementary school, one junior high and a high school that sat squarely between Copper Ridge and Tolowa, making the most out of the shared student population. That meant they’d spent a lot of years circling each other like wary strays, slowly forming a group. A bond that had been, at the time, thicker and stronger than the bond with their families.
Alison, Damian, Matthew, Kelly, Sarah, Josh and Brooke. A few other people rotated in and out, but that was the core.
And she’d left them behind. She’d never contacted them.
In that moment, she felt ashamed.
“Not married,” Sadie said, holding up her bare left hand for emphasis. “I’ve been...moving a lot. Being a crisis counselor. And now a proprietress at a bed-and-breakfast. So...I still don’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“Sounds nice to me. You escaped,” Alison said.
That was how she’d felt at the time. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“I’m back. This place has that way about it. It even called me back eventually, and I like moving on a lot more than looking back. Historically speaking.”
There was a disconnect happening. Something so fundamentally defeated in Alison’s eyes, something so familiar, that it hurt Sadie to look at it. And she couldn’t nail down what it was or why. Maybe just fatigue from a long shift.
“Do you ever... Do you talk to anyone else from school?” Sadie asked.
Alison looked down. “Not really. Matt’s still here. He fishes. Brooke owns a shop up the road, but we don’t... I don’t have a lot of time. Everyone else moved like you. Josh went on and made all kinds of money... I’m just still here.”
“Oh.” She made a mental note to track Brooke down later.
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Sadie said, filling in the silence, which she was professionally good at. “I heard that you had the best baked goods in town. And the thing is I’m organizing a community Independence Day barbecue on the Garrett ranch, which is, not incidentally, where my B and B is. And I wanted to have a dessert booth. Possibly a pie eating contest. So I wanted to talk to you about what you have, what is possible production-wise and if the owner of the diner might be interested in donating a certain number of pies for the contest in exchange for advertising space.”
“These are the best pies!” one of the men shouted from the corner. “Alison makes the best everything.” There was a round of agreement from the other men at the table and that pulled another smile out of Alison.
Getting a smile out of her, Sadie was coming to realize, was as difficult as pulling Toby out from the back of the lazy Susan cupboard when he was annoyed about the vacuum cleaner.
“There, that’s all the validation I need,” Sadie said. “So if you’re up to it, I’d really like to involve you. And if the diner owner isn’t super into it, I’m happy to purchase pies directly from you. Or maybe you’d be interested in manning the dessert booth? You could sell pie by the slice. It’ll be a great bit of advertising for you. And hey, since I think you’re probably a million times better than me at baking, pies might be a great thing for me to have in the B and B anyway.”
Sadie wished she could stop the tumble of words now, because Alison looked wary, and it hit a warning button deep inside Sadie. But the ideas were rolling off her tongue now without her permission. Possibly because of that internal warning signal.
For a therapist she was awfully useless in out-of-office people situations.
“I’ll have to check with Jared. If he can spare me for that much time,” Alison said.
“The diner owner?”
“My husband,” she said, blinking rapidly. “He may not want me getting so involved in something like that. It’s already hard with how much I do here.”
“Right. Well, I mean, only if you want to. Don’t feel an obligation to me or anything.”
“I do want to,” she said.
“Then I’m sure your husband will be happy for you. It’ll be good for you and all.”
Alison didn’t look so sure and that right there sent Sadie’s instincts from warning bells to the desire to maim the guy in the testicular region.
“Right. Yeah. Just the cupcake?” she asked.
“A marionberry pie, too, actually. I’ll have it after dinner.”
Alison bent and pulled a pie out and put it in a white box before ringing both items up.
“Great,” Sadie said. “And now I know where to get my goody fix, and where to see an old friend. So all in all, this was a productive day.” Sadie reached into her purse and pulled out a crumpled receipt from the coffee stand she’d gone to earlier, and wrote her cell phone number across the back. “Call me. If you ever need anything, or want to hang out, or have questions about the barbecue.”
“Sure,” Alison said, taking the receipt. “I will.”
Sadie had the feeling the other woman was lying. And again, she couldn’t quite place why. But everything seemed wrong. Well, the statement about the husband not wanting her to be gone too much seemed off to Sadie, but then, Sadie knew there might be other factors. Even though her gut response was that it sounded awfully controlling.
“Thanks for the goodies. If I slip into a sugar coma, don’t be too surprised.” Sadie waved and walked out the door, back down the sidewalk toward where she’d parked her car.
She was happy about the pie, but uneasy about everything else.
And this was the problem with coming home. There were so many emotions tied up in things. She didn’t like it. Before leaving Copper Ridge she’d had a whole lifetime of heavy. Of bad feelings and worry and outright terrifying crap, and she just didn’t like to feel things that were even close to that anymore. It wasn’t healthy to dwell, after all.
But Copper Ridge made her dwell, dammit.
And just like that, the magic of returning home was gone.
* * *
IT WAS DECK DAY. And Sadie had a bevy of shirtless construction workers off the back of her house, putting down posts and cement blocks in preparation for the building of the massive deck she’d designed for the B and B.
She had big plans for it. Tables. A barbecue. No, a barbecue wouldn’t strictly be breakfast, but she could fix other meals.
Her one serious question, though, was whether or not a group of construction workers was a bevy.
Perhaps they were more an assemblage. Or a herd. A pack. That sounded nice and manly. Very sexy. She sipped on her lemonade and watched them from her living room window, privately pleased that she was perving on them rather than the other way around.
“Yeah, baby,” she said, tilting her glass back and catching an ice cube between her teeth. “Show me what your mama gave you.”
She was determined to get some visual enjoyment out of these guys. It was a way better idea than thinking about Eli and how much she would rather see him shirtless and sweaty.
There was a knock at the front door and she jumped, splashing lemonade onto her hand. She shook her head, walking to the door. She supposed it served her right. Getting caught being a dirty peeping Tom. She still didn’t feel guilty, though.
She tugged the door open and saw Kate standing there, schooling her expression into something almost comically casual. “There are a lot of work trucks out here.”
“There are indeed,” Sadie said. “Because I’m having a deck built. And the guys are doing it without shirts on if you want to come in and watch.”
“That was what I was hoping,” Kate said, her cheeks flushing pink.
“Never apologize for being a connoisseur of the male form, Kate. And never blush about it.”
Kate blushed deeper and followed Sadie into the living room.
“Dear Lord,” she said, and Sadie had the feeling that only the barest hint of decorum was keeping her from pressing her face to the glass like a frustrated window-shopper.
She recalled what Eli had said about feeling protective of Kate, or rather, being content to deny she had a sexuality altogether, and she wondered if Kate ever got to do anything more than window-shop.
“Not bad at all,” Sadie said. “Makes me feel like a lady of leisure. Sipping cool beverages and ogling the slick sweaty men. And I’m not sorry about it.”
“My female intuition told me that this might be happening over here.”
“The force is strong with you. Would you also like a cool beverage? Lady of leisure status could be yours, too.”
Kate smiled. “Sure. That sounds great.”
Sadie went into the kitchen, humming as she did, and took a glass out of the cabinet before pouring some lemonade from the pitcher on the counter.
She returned a moment later and handed it to Kate. “Get your leisure on.”
Kate took a sip and let out a long sigh, her eyes glued to the activities outside. “It’s too bad this isn’t a transferable skill.”
“Not so much a big market for ogling while indulging in cold drinks, no.”
“My goal is to make money doing things with horseflesh. Not manflesh.”
“Doing what?”
“I barrel race. I’m looking to turn pro, but I haven’t quite earned enough points to get my card. I didn’t get to compete as much this year because I needed to work more hours at the Farm and Garden. Focus on saving. I won a decent-sized pot a while back, but not much since and I need money if I’m going to travel with the rodeo.”
“That’s incredible. You really barrel race? Like...you ride horses around barrels and wear sequined jackets and things?”
“I’m light on the sequins, but yeah.”
“And you’re good enough to go pro.”
Kate took another sip of lemonade and smiled broadly. “I think I am. And my winning streak concurs. But it’s just getting everything to line up. And feeling like Eli won’t implode when I leave.”
“Ah. Eli.”
“He’s a nervous hen.”
“I can definitely see that,” she said, thinking of him and his do-gooder complex.
I’m a good man but I’m not a nice man.
Oh, no, she didn’t need to replay that scene.
Because it made her shivery in...places. Which was silly because that should be off-putting. She liked nice men. She did not like scoundrels. Or men in uniform with hella-bad attitudes and control-freak tendencies.
She could not be controlled or contained. She was the mothereffing wind.
“And he needs me more than he thinks,” Kate said.
Sadie had a feeling that was a lot more insightful than Eli would think it was. “Sure,” Sadie said slowly. “But you can’t live your life for other people, Kate.” She knew she was playing therapist again. But she was licensed, so it wasn’t really playing. She was unsolicited, but she was a professional at least. “It only builds resentment, and in the end it destroys more bonds than honesty will. If you want to go, then you should be free to go.”
“You make it sound really simple.”
“It is,” Sadie said. “It’s what I do.” She realized dimly that insinuating anyone should do what she had done was edging into bad-advice territory, so she attempted a redirect. “But it isn’t as though you’ll stay gone. It’s just that you may need a bit more independence.”
“And more shirtless men in my life that I don’t share genetic material with,” Kate said. “We’re country, but not that country.”
Sadie laughed. “Uh, I don’t suppose you are.”
“But yeah. I need to get away. Small town. Same places. Same jobs. Same guys. Take those guys, for example. I either went to high school with them, and they showed no interest in me. Or they went to high school with my brothers and wouldn’t dare touch me.”
Sadie figured it was better not to mention she hadn’t had that problem with guys in high school. But then, she hadn’t given off the salt-of-the-earth vibe Kate did. And she also didn’t have two giant older brothers.
There was also the fact she doubted Kate had the knack for finding trouble that Sadie did. Which was probably for the best since Sadie had managed to find serious, life-threatening trouble thanks to the smaller trouble she’d found.
Not that anyone in Kate’s family would ever hurt her. She could say that for Eli and Connor. She knew they would never hurt women, or anyone who didn’t really deserve it.
And she was thinking about unpleasant things again. Ugh.
This place had a way about it. Good and bad. And both a little more intense than she’d been prepared for.
Though, if she was totally honest, she was never really prepared for intensity.
“That is a problem,” Sadie said, keeping an eye on the guys. “Which ones did you go to school with? I feel like they’re probably off-limits to me.”
“Are you really going to...talk to them?” Kate asked, sounding awed.
She should. She should offer them cold beverages while wearing a bikini top. And get numbers. But she wasn’t going to.
And she had a horrible feeling it was stupid Eli’s fault.
Why she was still thinking about him in those terms was a mystery to her because he’d made it very clear he didn’t want to find her hot. Even though he obviously did find her hot. And he’d turned down her very clumsy, ill-advised, sort-of offer of casual sex, too.
In that moment, if he’d agreed, she really would have hopped into the nearest bush with him and ridden him until she was saddle sore.
Had she ever wanted a man this much?
She didn’t think she had, and that made her feel relieved he’d put a stop to it. Well, maybe not relieved. She felt twitchy and annoyed, and super horny.
She scowled and looked more determinedly out the window, trying to decide which guy had the nicest butt, and from there trying to decide if she would enjoy smacking it.
She could not decide. And she did not want to smack any of the denim-clad asses, truth be told.
She was broken, and it was Eli Garrett’s fault.
There was a knock on the front door, which was still slightly open since she’d let Kate in. “Come in,” she shouted.
The door opened and she heard footsteps on the hardwood in the entry, and then in walked the man himself. The new owner of her libido. Who had rendered her mainly useless when it came to ogling. It was all very upsetting.
“Hello, Eli,” she said. “Is this your version of avoiding me?”
“Why were you avoiding her?” Kate asked.
“I’m not,” Eli said, lying neatly for a man with an honor complex. “I came looking for you.”
“How did you know I was here?” Kate asked.
“Your truck is in your driveway, but you weren’t, and your horse was in his paddock. You weren’t with Connor, so I thought I would see if you were here, and lo...” He looked past them both and out the window. “Are you kidding me?”
“We’re learning how to build a deck,” Sadie said, arching a brow and swilling her lemonade, the ice clinking against the glass. “By observation.”
Eli looked at Kate.
“The human mind is an amazing thing,” she said, on the verge of giggles.
“Just watching all the nailing and screwing,” Sadie said. “It’s so sweaty.” She took the glass and pressed it to her cheek, giving Eli a very meaningful look.
He swallowed visibly and shifted. Well, he’d obviously taken that innuendo on board. Good. He deserved to suffer. He deserved to suffer as she was suffering. He deserved to watch beach volleyball and get no joy from the bouncing. Which was mean-spirited, she knew. But she didn’t care.
“I was looking for Kate,” he said, his words very pointed as he turned back to his sister. “Carl Ames came by and was looking for someone who could possibly board a horse for his daughter. I said we had the space, but the thing is they might need someone to ride him on days they can’t make it out. And I didn’t want to volunteer you without asking. Of course, you would get the boarding money.”