“Brooke, don’t cry,” he said and brushed a tear off the other one. The touch of his hand made me shiver. “It’s just a car, we’ll get it sorted out.”
“I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I can’t afford this right now,” I sniffled.
“Listen, I’m going to lend you a car for now and I’ll have this one towed to my mechanic. He’ll figure out what needs to be done and I’ll make sure it gets fixed. You can repay me by letting me hang around Lucy’s soccer games, okay?”
I sniffled and smiled, “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I had such a good time with you yesterday. I want to be your friend, and friends do nice things for each other. Let me help you.”
“I guess,” I told him. “I don’t think I can drive something like your truck though.”
“I’ve got a minivan,” he said with a grin.
“A minivan? That doesn’t seem like something you’d drive.”
“I usually let the housekeeper drive it, but since the last one quit I haven’t had any need for it.”
“What is it with you and people quitting?” I asked.
He looked at me, thought for a moment and sighed. “You know how I was when you met me. I’m an asshole sometimes and I just can’t help it.”
“Have you ever thought about just not being an asshole?” I asked.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to work,” he chuckled. “I will admit that since I’ve met you, it feels like I’m not an asshole more than I am an asshole and for that my staff is grateful.”
“Glad I could be of service,” I laughed.
He had me wait by my car and bounded up his steps to somewhere through the house and in the back I assumed. I wondered what his property looked like and how many cars he had stashed in his garage.
Within a few moments he came around the corner in a new bright cherry red minivan, grinning like a madman.
“This is it,” he announced as he hopped out. “Is it okay?”
“Are you kidding me?” I exclaimed. “This is amazing!”
“I never thought I’d see somebody so excited to drive something like this. You’d think I was handing you the keys to my Ferrari.”
“You have a Ferrari too?” I asked with wide eyes. Now that was more like something I’d see Caleb driving.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “I barely get a chance to drive it around here though, the roads are so bloody rough. I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought it.”
“Are you absolutely certain about this?” I asked as he held out the keys.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I want you to be happy and I want your life to be easy. If I can do something to make that happen, then please let me.”
I took Lucy’s booster seat from the back of my car and transferred it to the van and smiled to myself at my good luck.
It seemed like things might be going my way for once, not only was Caleb single, but he was generous.
I took keys from his hand and said, “I really do need to get back.” I gave him my car keys and stood on my tippy toes to kiss his cheek. I noticed that he flinched when I did and I frowned to myself but didn’t let him see it. He was such a strange and complicated man, I didn’t know if I’d ever figure him out.
“Take care, and I’ll see you soon,” he told me as I got in the van and started it up. The engine purred and there were only a few hundred miles on the odometer. I waved at Caleb, did another U turn on his street and drove back to work.
It wasn’t until I was alone in the van that I let myself try to work through the twisting maze of emotions that Caleb Harder brought up inside of me.
I felt like every time I finally caught a glimpse of the end, somebody shook it up on me and I started right back at the beginning.
There was this overwhelming sense that finishing the maze would be worth it though, to have the heart of a man like him would mean everything good in the world for me.
I decided I’d just keep trying.
* * *
“Can we keep it?” Lucy shrieked when I picked her up from Mrs. Rigsby’s that night.
“I’m afraid Caleb just lent it to us until our car is all better,” I told her and helped her strap into the back seat.
“It’s soooooo pretty, Mom! And red, my favorite color!”
“It is nice,” I agreed. “Maybe one day we can buy one for ourselves.”
“If you married Caleb we could keep this one,” Lucy said out of the blue. “And then you could make me a little brother or little sister. We would have so much room in here, maybe even both!”
I flushed red and felt hot at her words. Had she picked up on how Caleb made me feel?
“Caleb and I are just friends,” I told her, “We’re just lucky to have a friend like him.”
I heard her make a little noise of disagreement and shook my head. I’d have to be much more careful with Caleb around Lucy.
It was bad enough that I’d taken her away from her awful father, I didn’t want to confuse her by spending too much time with a man who wanted nothing more from me than what we currently had.
But that stubborn little streak inside of me was thrusting out her jaw and accepting the challenge of making Caleb admit that he cared for me as much as I did for him.
Only time would tell.
Chapter 14
“You’ve got it!” Caleb yelled as Lucy rushed the other team’s goal again.
It was yet another Sunday soccer game, the third one Caleb had joined us on and the third one he’d brought treats and treated me as though he liked me more than just friends.
We’d been hanging out here and there, doing our best to keep it casual.
We weren’t doing so well at times, but overall I thought we were kind of succeeding at this friends thing.
I was still driving the pretty red minivan. My car had been irreparable, or so Caleb claimed, but he told me to drive the van as long as I wanted.
It’s what friends did for each other.
Or so he claimed too. I’d like to know if he had any other friends he did this for.
Somehow I doubted it, but with both of us obviously running from something in our own ways, it had developed into something that satisfied each of our needs.
Except the sexual ones.
God sometimes I wanted to jump on Caleb and strip him naked, he was so utterly stunning it was hard to resist him.
But he was good at maintaining that distance between us. The couple times we’d touched, like when he’d put his arm around me to thank me one lunchtime, we’d both felt the electric heat that had coursed through us.
It was undeniable, and yet somehow we were both living in denial.
Lucy scored another goal and we both jumped up screaming for her. Addy sat in silent judgment next to me, I knew she thought I was nuts for putting up with Caleb’s arm’s length treatment of me. And I only knew because she told me all the freaking time.
We broke apart and looked at each other awkwardly before we sat down.
I glanced at Addy and she rolled her eyes. “Seriously,” she said under her breath. “Y’all just need to bone each other and get it over with.”
“We’re just friends,” I scowled and looked at Caleb, hoping he hadn’t heard anything. He hadn’t, he was on his way down the bleachers towards the washroom. I briefly considered following him in there and kissing him, but of course I didn’t.
“You could get that tattooed over every inch of your damn body and nobody would bloody well believe it,” Addy said, arching her brow.
“Who peed in your cornflakes this morning?” I asked her.
She exhaled a loud breath and said, “It’s Gary. He’s getting to that month anniversary itch and I can see it coming. I think he’s going to dump me.”
“That’s okay though, you said yesterday that he was driving you nuts.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to be dumped,” she said. “I do like him, even though he lives an hour away.”
“I’m sure it wil
l sort itself out,” I told her and looked back at the game.
“I’m not taking that advice from you,” she laughed. A moment later, almost distractedly, she added, “Maybe after the anniversary has passed he’ll open up to you.”
“Anniversary?” I asked, snapping my head back to her.
“You know,” she said drawing it out as if I was dense and then her eyes opened wide. “You don’t know?”
“No, tell me,” I hissed under my breath. He was coming back and I didn’t want him to hear me talking about him like that.
“It’s…something you need to ask him about,” she said and looked away. “I don’t feel like it’s my place to tell you.”
“You’re the biggest gossip I know,” I told her.
“Hey look, Lucy’s going to score another one,” she said brightly.
I knew what she was doing of course, me being the queen of the awkward subject change, but I knew I’d have to accept it.
And I knew I’d have to ask Caleb about it one of these days.
We cheered as Lucy did indeed score another goal for her team and high fived each other, our eyes locking for a brief hot moment.
His flicked away first, but I saw a shard of pain in them before they sunk to the field where Lucy was celebrating.
Damn Caleb Harder, the most frustrating and attractive man I’d ever known.
* * *
I didn’t have a chance to ask Caleb anything after the soccer game. He took Lucy and I out for pizza, which seemed perfectly acceptable to her picky palate when it was Caleb suggesting it.
They got along like gangbusters though, and it warmed my heart to see her looking up from my phone more often than not to make jokes with him or to listen to his stories about growing up in Harder’s Mill.
“So how did you decide to move here?” he asked me after we’d devoured the entire meat lover’s extra large with a serving of breadsticks.
I laughed and put my arm around Lucy. She was busy with my phone but I knew she’d remember this.
“Well, things happened in my life that forced me to move,” I said quickly, hoping she’d let me gloss over the frantic escape we’d made from Rolland’s house. “Lucy and I were driving for days without a plan in place. We were having the best time though, just wandering here and there across the country.”
“And somehow you came south?”
“Yup, we decided we wanted to go to Florida.”
“You’re an awfully long ways from Florida.”
“We are, but the car died on us,” I smiled. “We picked Harder’s Mill because we ended up having to leave the car with Smith’s Garage for over a week. By the time we got it back we both decided that we’d like to live here. I enrolled Lucy in school, found an apartment and then found the job at Virginia’s.”
“Lucky you,” he said, sitting back in his chair and observing the two of us. His eyes settled on me and he gave me a sensuous look that melted my insides and made my pulse thread through my body like a rapid-fire machine gun. “And lucky me.”
I looked down at my soda and picked out a piece of ice. I put it in my mouth to concentrate on slowing my breathing and cooling down.
When I looked up, Caleb was still watching me with that predatory look, like he was about to pounce on me and consume me whole.
“Lucky all of us,” I said and clapped my hands together to break the spell. “Shall we get the bill? Lucy has school in the morning.”
“Certainly,” Caleb replied and snapped out of it. He motioned to the waitress, dropped a few twenties on the tray she brought, and we left.
We parted ways at our vehicles, and I watched him drive his truck ahead of me, going straight when I turned off for home.
It felt wrong to not follow him. It felt like I should be with him in his house, like the three of us should make it a home.
But he was just a friend.
I had to remember that or I was going to be destroyed.
* * *
The week passed quickly, I had taken lunch to Caleb a couple days but he hadn’t ordered the last three. I didn’t know why, but I’d heard he might be out of town or doing things with his dad. The town was small enough that rumors flew no matter if people knew the facts or not.
Friday came around and Lucy was asked to spend the night at her friend Sarah’s place on Saturday.
I wasn’t totally convinced, but it was a birthday party and Addy’s daughter would be there too. I knew the family was okay, but it still made me feel a little unsettled to leave her with people. The Girl Guide’s camp out had felt different for some reason.
“Sarah has an iPad,” Lucy said on our way to pick out a present. “Maybe we could get her something for that?”
“I don’t really know what we could get for an iPad,” I said. We pulled up to the one department store in our little town. “Does she like Barbies?”
Lucy rolled her eyes dramatically and said, “Nobody like Barbies anymore, mom.”
We walked into the store and headed right for the toy section. There wasn’t a lot but Lucy had to pick up and inspect almost everything they had. It hurt me a little that we’d had to leave her things back home when we’d fled.
I picked up a fluffy plush fox and had a pang of grief thinking of the one we’d left behind. It had been the one thing I’d purchased on my own, saving nickels and dimes until I picked it up one day while getting groceries.
Rolland had been so angry about it; he’d accused me of cheating on him and earning the money on my back. He’d almost destroyed it that night until I’d distracted him with something sexy and gotten his mind off his anger.
I remembered how Lucy had curled up with her plush fox every night for about a year until one day it was gone.
I never did ask Rolland about it, I knew if I did I would be in big trouble. By then I’d realized I had to learn to let things go. Lucy had learned too, and had been too scared to ask what had happened to her little fox.
I stroked the fur of the fox and watched Lucy holding two different toys looking from one to the next.
I set the fox down and realized it was time to let it go again, to move on from that old life and embrace this new one that we were building here.
“What have you got?” I asked her and walked to where she was in deep contemplation over them.
“I don’t know if she would like this one or that one,” she said slowly. She was holding an art set and a pink Disney princess doll.
“How about the art supplies?” I asked. “We could go pick out some paper and more pens.”
“Okay,” Lucy said, “I don’t even know if she likes princesses anymore. The art stuff is a better bet.”
“Sounds good,” I said and wandered through the store with her as we picked out the rest of the present, the gift bag and card.
I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to panic when we got the total, but I did discreetly put my chocolate bar back when I saw how much it was.
I knew my kid-free night would be spent at home; there was no way I had any extra money to spend on myself.
Sometimes being a single mom was damn tough.
Lucy’s happiness when we got home was more than worth it though. She carefully wrote her name on the card and packaged the present slowly until it was totally perfect.
She was adorable, and even though being a single mom was rough, it was worth it at moments like that. Time spent with Lucy when she was giggling and fooling around, telling silly jokes and completely free made my whole decision to leave Rolland the right one.
I’d do anything for my daughter, even if it meant giving up a chocolate bar and a night out…even if it meant keeping Caleb Harder as a friend and not risking my heart and hers on his words of warning.
She was worth it and I was worth it…
But part of me couldn’t help but think that Caleb was worth it too.
Chapter 15
“She’ll be fine,” Addy said as we stood in the foyer of Sarah’s house on Saturday night.
“She won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“Maybe that’s the hard part,” I said with tears stinging the back of my lids. It hurt that she could run off so easily and leave me standing in the doorway without so much as a good bye.
“It just means you’re a good mom,” Addy told me and squeezed my hand. “Now let’s go have dinner, it’s on me.”
I looked back one more time but Lucy was busy in the center of a small group of girls in the living room. They were taking turns dancing to the music of some new boy band that I’d never heard of. It struck me how quickly her tastes in music were outpacing my own and soon she’d leave me in the dust.
“If you don’t stop pouting I’m going to hook you up on some online dating site,” Addy told me and tugged at my arm.
“Fine,” I said, “it’s all new to me is all. I’m not used to having much freedom, you know?”
“I had a lifetime of freedom before I had the kids,” Addy laughed, “I hate to say it, but I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you supposed to go out with Gary tonight?” I asked as we approached our cars, mine not looking so shabby anymore. Well, Caleb’s.
“Later. Until then let’s have some girl time.”
“Where are we going?”
“How about we hit Murphy’s?” she asked. “I’m meeting Gary there later, and it’s half price appetizer night.”
“Perfect,” I agreed and walked towards the van.
“Is he letting you keep it?” she called as I clicked the automatic start button and the van came to life.
“I think I’m taking the US Army approach to this right now,” I smiled.
“How do you mean?” she replied with her brows up in question.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” I grinned and got in. I heard her laughter even after I closed the door.
Murphy’s was packed for a small town, but it was Saturday night and the options were limited.
We found a booth near the back where we could gossip and gorge on fatty pub food and not have snoopy regulars watching and listening to our every move.
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