“I don’t think we have that,” Molly said. “We have hard cider.”
“Hard cider goes more with the ambiance,” Bale said with a wink.
“Okay,” Summer said. “I’ll have a hard cider.”
“We also have hard lemonade and hard punch,” Molly offered. “If you’re interested.”
“I’ll stick with the cider,” Summer said, wondering how much farther her drink order could get from Prosecco.
“And I’ll have the usual.”
“I’ll also bring a bowl of water for Shortie,” Molly said. She beamed at him, and nodded sweetly at Summer. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.”
“Take your time,” Bale called after her.
He’s reading my mind.
Summer was distracted. Bale never looked confused, so she was aware she was holding her own in the small-talk department, but she was obsessed with knowing what Bale’s “usual” was. Was he a hard drinking whiskey man? Maybe he was an abstainer? Wine drinker (he did know his Prosecco)? Beer?
Molly came back with Summer’s cider, Shortie’s water, and Bale’s stout.
Summer couldn’t help herself; she grinned like an idiot. She knew that stout was just a type of beer, but it had a touch of the mysterious about it. You could lose your keys in a glass of stout. Stout was perfect.
“Okay, Bale,” Molly said. “Shawn will be your waiter today. See you around. Nice to meet you, Summer.”
Molly returned to the front desk. Summer’s eyes followed her. Maybe she wasn’t flirting with Bale. Maybe she was just friendly by nature. Her heart lifted. She looked over at Bale who had disappeared momentarily under the table to give Shortie the bowl of water. He smiled at her when he sat up. Maybe he was just friendly by nature.
Her heart sank.
Chapter 7
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” Summer sputtered.
She wasn’t much of a drinker and after she’d had another hard cider, she’d told Bale all about her grandmother’s phone call and her own derailed plans.
“Would it be easier if you weren’t saddled with a tiny house?” Bale asked. “I can always take it back.”
“Oh, no, that’s not it at all,” Summer said, reaching over and patting his hand. “The caboose is the only thing that makes the whole thing acceptable. I mean, I can still have at least a semblance of the life I want to live.”
“Just on your grandmother’s property,” Bale said, signaling for the check.
“It sounds horrible, doesn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Bale said. “As a matter of fact, the whole point of having a house on wheels is you can literally roll with the punches. You can check out the situation with your grandmother and when the time is right, you can hit the road.”
“I wish I didn’t have to leave tomorrow,” Summer said.
She waited, but Bale said nothing. Shawn, their waiter, arrived with the check. Bale and Summer both reached for it. Bale got there first. He put the leather check holder on the table and covered it with his hand.
“I’ve got this,” he said.
“You really don’t have to do that,” Summer said.
Try as she might, a spark of hope that paying for dinner meant more than a thank-you-for-buying-one-of-my-houses. He put a credit card in the holder and handed it to Shawn.
“I’d love to see more of this area,” she continued. “It really is beautiful here.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Bale said, signing the check and handing it back to the waiter. “Thanks, Shawn.”
Summer tried to dissect Bale’s conversation. Did he mean he’d like for her to come back?
“Dinner is over and all we’ve done is talk about me,” Summer said, remembering having read an online article about how to keep the conversation going. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“Not much to tell,” Bale said. “I was married once.”
Summer held on to the word “was” as if it were a lifeline.
“Amicable divorce,” he continued. “But we don’t keep in touch.”
Summer tried to hide her glee.
“I’m probably too invested in getting this tiny house thing off the ground to focus on any kind of personal life,” he said. “As much as I’d like to.”
Summer realized his eyes had taken on a more serious look. Her breath caught. Shawn appeared at Summer’s shoulder, breaking the spell.
Damn you, Shawn!
“Anything else I can do for you guys?” Shawn asked.
“Nope,” Bale said. “We’re good to go.”
Summer tugged gently on Shortie’s leash and the little dog appeared from under the table. The three of them started to leave the restaurant, but half the people in it seemed to know Bale and stopped him to chat.
“We’re going outside,” Summer said. “Shortie has been cooped up long enough…if you know what I mean.”
“Sure,” Bale said. “I’ll see you outside in a minute.”
That was not the answer she’d been hoping for. She took Shortie up the block and smiled as he “read the newspaper,” a phrase she’d never forget. She found herself standing in front of the thrift shop, staring at the purple sweater.
“I give up,” Bale said, coming up behind her and startling her. “Do you want to wear that as a sweater or a bag?”
“Both,” she said.
“You know something, Summer,” Bale said. It was dark on the street and she couldn’t make out his features. “You’re going to be just fine.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see the sweater as a sweater,” he said. “And you see a life for it afterwards. Just like you—one life going to Washington, but a life afterwards.”
There was more to this man than met the eye.
Summer took in a deep breath. If she were Bale, this would be a good time to lean in and kiss her.
But she was not Bale.
And he did not kiss her.
Summer tossed all night, waking every few hours to see Shortie’s little back eyes glistening and staring at her in confusion. She awoke at dawn to find he’d jumped off the bed and was curled up in her open suitcase, sound asleep.
At least one of them got a good night’s sleep.
Summer took a shower and pulled on her driving outfit—jeans, work boots, and a T-shirt. Since it was painfully obvious Bale was not interested in her, she’d initially decided against makeup and earrings. But a quick look in the mirror brought her up short. She dug through her purse, pulled out her makeup bag and grabbed the lip gloss and mascara.
“No sense looking like a bad sport,” she said to Shortie, grabbing the silver hoop earrings she’d worn the night before. She held them up, then rejected them firmly. She found a tiny pair of silver studs and put them on instead. Bale might not notice, but earrings made her feel alluring. She stared at her reflection for a minute, then took the studs out, replacing them with the hoops. If earrings gave her confidence, she needed all the earrings she could get.
As Summer stowed her bag in the truck, Shortie, tail wagging furiously, put his paws on the running board and readied for a boost into the back seat of the truck cab. She knew she was being ridiculous, but she was smug that Shortie knew where he was supposed to ride and seemed happy about it.
Take that, Bale Barrett.
With Shortie safely strapped in, she drove to Bale’s Tiny Dreams without consulting her GPS. She’d only spent a few hours in Cobb, but it was an easy town to navigate. Last night, she was hoping there would be a reason to extend her stay, but since that appeared to be an illusion, she was anxious to get going. She could probably get her house hitched to her truck, stop for the purple sweater and be on her way by midmorning.
She pulled into Bale’s property. The red caboose had been pulled to the front of the lot
. It looked as ready to hit the road as she was. She looked around for Bale, but the place appeared deserted.
She swung the truck around, so the ball was lined up with the coupler on the house. She got out of the truck and lowered the coupler to the hitch ball. She tightened the hand wheel on the coupler and studied it. It appeared nice and snug, just like her grandfather had taught her. She crossed the safety chains and locked the carabiners. She checked to see if there was enough slack to turn from side to side, then pulled the chains. Perfect! She connected the wiring harness from the trailer to the truck. Again, the slack was perfect for tight turns. She opened the driver door, started the truck, turned on the lights and set the right turn indicator going. She turned to go back and check the trailer lights.
Bale was behind the trailer. “Lights are good! “ He called. “Right turn indicator is good!” He smiled. “You know your way around a trailer hitch!”
She couldn’t help herself. She beamed.
“It’s been awhile, but I guess you never forget,” she said.
“Let me just take a quick look and you can be on your way,” Bale said.
As Bale inspected the trailer connection, Summer studied Bale. As much as she hated to admit it, Bale seemed much more interested in the receiver hitch than he did in her. Even if he were interested in her, what would be the point? He was in Kentucky, riding the wave of the tiny house movement. She was on her way to Washington—and then to parts unknown.
She wondered if she should get out of the truck to say goodbye. Bale settled that question before she could worry about it. He came back to the window and knocked lightly on the door.
“Alright, you,” he said casually. “Looks like you are good to go. Mind if I say goodbye to Shortie?”
“Be my guest,” Summer said, trying not to sound disappointed with their farewell scene. Romeo and Juliet, they were not.
As much as they tried, her earrings were not helping.
Summer busied herself with her iPhone and resolutely did not look in the rearview mirror as Bale opened the back door and gave Shortie a quick pat.
“So, listen Summer,” Bale said, leaning in the window again. “I don’t know how long you’re going to be in Cat’s Paw, but there’s a tiny house road show going on in Seattle later this month. I’ll be heading up there. If you’re still in the area, I’d love to see you.”
“That sounds great,” Summer said, trying to keep her voice modulated. She didn’t want it to sound as great as she thought it actually was.
“Good,” he said, smiling and backing away from the truck. “I’ll be interested to see how the caboose is doing.”
She tried to keep her happy face frozen in place as she waved and drove off.
As she drove to the thrift store, she tried not to cry.
The last thing you need right now is the emotional roller coaster of Bale Barrett, she thought.
By the time she got to the thrift store, she’d firmly pushed Bale to the back of her mind. If there was one thing she learned from her disastrous romance with Keefe Devlin, it was how to push a man from your thoughts.
She realized she couldn’t park the truck with the tiny house on the street; there was no room. She circled the block slowly and parked in the very corner of a supermarket parking lot. She unstrapped Shortie and put on his leash. They marched quickly toward the shop. Summer looked at her phone: it was 10 a.m. Maybe the store wasn’t even open. If it wasn’t, she’d wait. She’d lost out on the gem trove that was in Philadelphia, she’d be damned if she’d give up this gem in Cobb!
She looked up from her phone just as they arrived at the store. She stared at the window. A woman was struggling to put a hideous green blouse on the mannequin that just hours ago wore the purple sweater of her dreams. Summer tried not to panic. Maybe they rotated the clothes ever day! She tapped on the window. The woman looked up.
“I’d like to buy the purple sweater that was here yesterday,” she said.
“Sold it,” the woman said, returning to her work.
Summer pulled smoothly on Shortie’s leash and led him back to the truck. She felt dizzy. She wanted to clamber in the tiny house, climb into the loft, and hide. If the universe was trying to tell her something, it was not being subtle. But she couldn’t hide. The best thing she could do for herself was get out of this town. She picked up Shortie and prepared to belt him in when she saw a brown bag tucked into the far corner of the car seat.
She put Shortie on the bench seat of the truck and pulled the package loose. She stared at it. What was it and where did it come from?
She opened the bag and her breath caught. It was the purple sweater. Bale must have put it in the car when he said goodbye to Shortie. She shook the bag.
A slip of paper fell onto the seat. She picked it up. It read: You’ll never go wrong with imagination and a tiny house. See you around, Bale.
Had she read everything wrong? Was he interested? Summer wanted to go back to the tiny house lot. Such an elaborate gesture required an elaborate thank-you, didn’t it? She quickly situated Shortie and jumped in the front of the cab. She started the engine, but quickly realized she could only go forward, not backward. It would be impossible to get back to Bale’s without an awful lot of risky maneuvers. She looked in the rearview mirror. Bale’s Tiny Dreams was only a few blocks. She could walk!
Summer put her head on the steering wheel. Heading to Washington had stirred up so many memories. She thought back to her romance with Keefe. She obviously had read him wrong. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She put the truck in drive and headed west. It seemed to Summer that the universe certainly had its own sense of humor.
Chapter 8
Once on the road, Summer had no time to think about Bale. Driving Big Red with the tiny house behind her took all her concentration. She’d done her research and had found tiny-house-friendly RV parks across the country. She was surprised to find there were far more unfriendly parks, which wanted nothing to do with the Tinies.
When she was trying to plan her trip, she followed the advice of several tiny house bloggers, who suggested calling the various parks to ask questions, rather than just filling out a reservation sheet online. To the statement, “I’m going through your town soon and would like to reserve a space for my tiny house for one night,” many of the managers of the parks would just hang up on her. One talkative gentleman said he liked the tiny houses he’d seen on television, but his private RV park didn’t accept them.
“I don’t take up any more room than an RV,” Summer said.
“I know that,” he said. “But this is an RV park and we only take RVs.”
“Why is that?” Summer tried to sound pleasant.
“Because that’s what we’ve always done. Besides, I don’t think the mix would look good,” he said, and hung up.
Summer Googled images of his RV park. My caboose would be the finest-looking thing to ever grace his land, she thought.
But the tiny house community was always helpful with advice and pep talks. They recommended she get a composting toilet and a generator, to make herself as RV-park compliant as possible. Once she found a few friendly parks, she’d be able to walk the walk and talk the talk, only her rig would be way cuter than any RV.
By the time she headed to Kentucky from Connecticut, she’d carefully mapped out her route. The trip to Washington was going to take six days. All her research suggested that four or five hours a day would be the most she’d be able to handle on her own. She’d become adept at Google Maps and plotted all her stops. It did cross her mind that the tiny house life was supposed to be offering her a new sense of freedom, but she’d never had to plan so carefully in her life.
Five hours from Cobb, Kentucky, got her within striking distance of St. Louis, Missouri. She pulled Big Red off Highway 64 and drove carefully down Old Lincoln Trail. She located the RV park she’d
secured and pulled up to the front gate. Summer scanned the rows of assorted RVs. Some had awnings, some had pullouts, some were streamlined; she saw nothing that resembled any kind of tiny house or gypsy wagon, let alone a caboose.
A middle-aged woman appeared from an Airstream and walked toward her.
Summer was surprised to see concern knitting the woman’s brow. In just one day, Summer had gotten used to being treated like a minor celebrity every time she pulled over to eat, get gas, or walk Shortie. It appeared all of America was happy to see a tiny house roll by, except this woman. She was wearing a shirt with TRIXIE embroidered over her left breast pocket, jeans, and dusty boots as leathery as her face. Summer hopped out of the truck, sensing there might be trouble ahead. Shortie stuck his nose in the air, misinterpreting the stop as a signal that freedom would soon be his. When it was clear he wasn’t going anywhere, he begrudgingly settled back in his car seat.
“I saw on the books that a tiny house was coming in today,” Trixie said, still looking at the caboose instead of Summer. “But I wasn’t expecting a train!”
“It’s not a real train,” Summer said, fearing Trixie had something against that particular form of transportation.
“I can see that,” Trixie said.
“Is there a problem?” Summer asked. “I have my paperwork on my phone.”
“I don’t have a problem,” Trixie said, finally looking at Summer. “But you do. I don’t see how you’re going to get this thing in here.”
Summer saw that Trixie had a point. She had no idea how she was going to navigate the narrow gravel pathways that threaded their way through the community of recreational vehicles.
“Where you coming from?” Trixie asked.
“Cobb, Kentucky.”
“Don’t know it.”
“Outside of Lexington.”
“Where you headed?”
“Cat’s Paw, Washington.”
“Don’t know it.”
“It’s north of Seattle.”
“So, I’m guessing this is your first day on a very long road trip.”
Tiny House on the Hill Page 6