“Mark Bammer turned me down for a loan.” Lucy leaned her head back on the chair. “I can’t believe it. He says that if I want a loan to build a drive-through, or even an outside serving counter, I need a business plan.”
“So write a business plan.”
“I stink at math, at numbers . . . at business in general. I make donuts. I sell them to people. I smile and ask about their grandchildren or their dogs. I don’t write business plans. I’ve never had to.” Lucy drew up her legs and rolled up her pant legs.
“You can learn. There’s so much information on the Internet—”
“That’s your world, not mine. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“What if you hired an accountant?”
“Money. It’s a word I know you’re unconcerned about, but I can’t pay an accountant in donuts.” She reached over and grabbed the nail polish.
“Ha.” In fact, Issy tried very hard not to think about money. The settlement from the trucking company felt like blood money, and she hated the fact that it paid her father’s bills, even if he needed it. She wanted to provide for him. “I don’t know. You do make great donuts.”
Lucy gave her a narrowed-eye look as she propped her foot on the table and began to paint her toenails. “I’ll go to my grave with the words She made great donuts written on my tombstone.”
Issy pulled the glazed raised out of the bag and bit into it. “What’s so bad about that? Mine will read, She helped others fall in love but never had a date.”
For a second they stared at each other; then Lucy smiled. “The good news is, Bam left a message on my machine at work this afternoon. He says he has someone who can help me. Without the donut payment. I’m meeting him for coffee at the Blue Moose tonight.”
“Hence the fresh coat of polish.”
“He’s probably a retiree from the Cities, looking to fill his time. But I’ll take any help I can get. You can’t imagine what it felt like to sit across Bam’s desk and hear him say, ‘No, I won’t loan you the money.’”
“He always had a thing for you. Couldn’t believe you shot him down sophomore year, then went out with Seb a year later.”
“He does have a hard time with no.” She didn’t look at Issy as she finished her toenails. She finally capped the polish. “Anyway, I came to take you to the grocery store.”
“I feel like I’m an old lady.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. Issy threw a pillow at her.
“Hey, who’s grilling?” Lucy asked, waving her hands over her toes.
Indeed, the redolence of hamburgers smoking on a grill drew Issy from the sofa. She turned to look out the window. “Now he’s grilling. He actually moved the grill off the porch, put it in the middle of the yard. He’s sitting there in a lawn chair throwing a football to Duncan.”
And she had to notice that he handled the ball well, balancing it with one hand, pitching it underhanded high into the air as the dog crouched, then bounded after it, crazy as it zagged around the yard. Duncan picked it up in his massive jowls, returned it to—
“He was at the library earlier this week. I found out his name.”
“What did you do? Steal his library card?”
Issy made a face.
“You are pitiful.”
“Knight. Can you believe that? Caleb Knight. And that’s not all—he’s the new football coach.”
“You’re kidding me. The new coach? See, the perfect romance might be right next door.” Lucy winked.
“Are you here all week? Because you’re downright hilarious.” Issy turned back to the window.
Caleb held out the ball, faking the throw, the dog jerking with anticipation.
Lucy came over to join her at the window. Watched him for a long time. “Too bad about rule number three, huh?”
Issy glanced at her. “Maybe football players aren’t all alike.”
Lucy settled onto the arm of the sofa. “You come up with that yourself? Because you’re simply profound.”
Issy sighed. “I’m just saying, maybe I could modify rule number three. Maybe I don’t date some football players. The stars-in-their-eyes kind. Maybe I date football players who didn’t win state championships.”
“Losing football players.” Lucy raised an eyebrow. “I see where you’re going with this. Maybe only the ones who had to sit the bench for half the season.”
“Most of the season. Four games, minimum.” Issy smiled. “Okay, fine. Dumb rule. We’ll scratch it. But seriously, for a coach, the guy is a mess. He needs a shave, and how about wearing a shirt that isn’t ripped? And ditch the hat. Can you imagine how it smells?”
Lucy made the appropriate face.
Issy glanced at him again. He’d pushed himself out of the chair, now lifted the lid to the grill, flipping the burgers. “It’s probably the only thing he knows how to cook. Charbroiled meat.”
In a different world, a different life, she might have gone next door, asked him over for dinner. How many times did her father have the entire team over for burgers on a Thursday night before the Friday game?
Issy sat back on the sofa and grabbed a pillow. “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just . . . I don’t know, order up the perfect man? Give your specifications to God and wait for Him to wrap him up and deposit him on your doorstep?”
“Or next door?” A smile played on Lucy’s lips.
Funny. “Don’t you have an old man to meet?”
“Number nine.” As Lucy stood, she slipped her feet into her flip-flops. “He has to be able to cook.”
“Something else besides burgers!”
“You are hopeless.”
“Not hopeless . . . just . . . well, better safe than brokenhearted, right?”
Lucy’s smile dimmed. “Right. Yes. C’mon. It’s time to face your fears.”
8
This was not the Lucy he remembered, the one who made him stand on a picnic table and recite Rochester’s impassioned speech when he asked Jane to marry him.
Nor the Lucy who wouldn’t even look at him in the hallways at school. Wouldn’t let him chase her down to apologize.
Had he done that? Apologized?
No, this wasn’t pretty, shy Lucy. Nor wounded Lucy. This Lucy wore a decade of determination in her eyes when she’d walked into the Blue Moose, spotted him sitting in the back booth, and come over to say, “Are you the one Bam sent to help me?”
For a long, panicked moment, all breath left him. Just sucked right out of him, along with his heart, and all he could do was nod. Like he still might be seventeen years old and assigned to work with her on their English project.
Then she sighed and offered what looked like a sincere smile.
The band of pain around his chest loosened. “Hey, Lucy. Uh, how are you?” He stood, extended his hand. She held hers out too, and it fit so perfectly in his, he held it too long.
Lucy slid into the booth. “Hi, Seb.”
He might have been the one who betrayed her, but as he looked at her, at her sweet smile, everything he’d tried to deny burst open inside him. He wasn’t in the least over her. Not at all. And the years of dodging and trying his charm on other girls came crashing on him as he sat back in his seat, his body still a little stiff from practice today. Oh, God, I’m sorry for what I stole from her.
“So,” she said, slipping her bag off her shoulder, “are you here for a while?”
“Yeah, I’m . . . actually, I’m moving home. I’m going to be working at the school. And hopefully coaching the football team.”
“You’re really going to be coaching football?”
“Why not?”
She seemed to consider this. “How’s it going?”
“Good, I think. We’re having a scrimmage next Friday. A sort of tryout for the coaching position. I have some of the old team helping me with practice.”
“I’ll bet they’re loving that.” She studied him again for a moment, then, “How’s your shoulder?”
This he hadn’t expected. “Better. I did som
e throwing today, though, so I’ll ice it.”
“It was a brutal hit to watch. I’m sorry.” She looked at the tabletop as she said it, so perhaps she didn’t see his mouth open, just slightly.
Lucy had seen his career-ending game with Iowa State? He took a breath, fighting the joy that buzzed through him. “It was brutal to experience. And they never were able to fully repair the tear. Even had surgery.”
“I know. It made the paper.” She did find his eyes then, as if it might be more acceptable to read about his trials in the local paper than search for his games on the cable channels on a Saturday afternoon. Yes, that would take some amount of commitment.
That brought a smile, and suddenly he felt very much like the seventeen-year-old boy dating the prettiest girl in the school. “So Bam mentioned a business plan? Why? Aren’t you running the donut shop?”
“Yes, but—” she leaned over the table as if including him in a secret—“the Java Cup has started serving donuts.”
“Wow. That’s . . .”
“I sold, on average, six hundred fewer donuts a day last weekend.”
“Six hundred.” He refrained from adding, That many?
Apparently six hundred less donuts put a hole in her business.
“Stop smirking.”
She always could read his mind, and even now, she bore the hint of a smile. “This is a big deal, Seb. I’m already losing money this season, and I finally figured out why. It’s not that I don’t make great donuts—”
“You make awesome donuts.” This he said with a straight face.
“I know, but that’s the problem. I’m too popular. But I can’t keep up. I . . . need to expand. Jerry says I need a drive-through window.”
“A drive-through?”
“Or a walk-up. Something outside that can take the overflow.”
“A hole in the donut shop.” He really couldn’t stop grinning.
“You’re cute, but yes. Only problem is, that costs money. And I don’t have it.”
“So you need a business loan.”
She nodded. “I think I can get Gary Starr and his crew to make me a . . . donut window before Labor Day, but not if I can’t pay them.” She drew in a breath, her face solemn. “Will you help me, Seb?”
It was how she said it, without a trace of their past in her voice, with so much hope, he wanted to leap to his feet, shout, Yes!
“I . . .”
But see, he’d never actually written a business plan or even owned a business. He’d been hoping—in the part of him that knew his own failures—that she wouldn’t show, that he wouldn’t be forced to make a fool of himself, that he might slink away, his lie unrevealed.
But he’d returned for second chances, hadn’t he? And most of all, he knew what it felt like to work your entire life for something only to have it slip out of your hands, your fault or not.
How hard could it be? “I’d love to help you.”
She sat back, and the smile on her face could reach right down and light the dark places inside him. “Really?”
“Yeah. Of course. I . . .” He so didn’t want to say, I owe you and suddenly rush their past at them, but he did owe her. He amended his words, softening the truth for both of them. “Well, you probably helped me pass my English class, so it’s the least I can do.”
“You would have passed without me, Rochester.” Lucy slid out of the booth, grabbed her messenger bag. “I gotta get home. It’s past my bedtime, you know. Someone has to get up and make the donuts. Thanks, Seb.”
She held out her hand again. Somehow he took it. Somehow he smiled. Somehow he let her walk away without running after her.
Maybe he could be a hero again.
* * *
Seb Brewster had returned, and if Lucy guessed the expression on his face correctly, he was every bit as shaken to see her.
She crossed the street, headed up the hill toward her house. The air held a soggy breath, the trees shivering. In the distance, thunder grumbled.
It seemed that Seb had grown up, no longer the shy boy who could barely read—only she knew about his dyslexia, how he struggled. How she’d helped him sound out nearly every word of their dramatic reading from their English assignment until he knew it by heart, could recite it with passion.
She smiled at the memory of him standing on the picnic table down by the harbor, thundering out his words over the roar of the waves.
“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. . . .”
She might have dreamed herself into his arms a little then. Might have let herself be Jane, poor and obscure, plain and little, yet loved. Probably his drama had conspired to make her believe he loved her. Made her say yes that summer night with the stars sprinkled like dust overhead.
She never should have believed soft words like forever and love on his lips.
Lucy, I’m so crazy about you. . . .
Sure he was. So crazy that right after the homecoming game he’d gone out to celebrate and ended up fogging his car windows down by the beach. The same beach across from World’s Best Donuts.
Too bad she’d spotted his car on the way to work in the wee hours of the morning. Too bad she’d been too curious.
It took her years to expunge the picture of Seb and Bree from her head. And worse, she had never really been able to scour away the one of herself in his arms. Which probably accounted for why, when Lucy walked into the café tonight and saw him sitting in the booth, wearing a white shirt and tie, his black curly hair cut short, it all rushed back to her—the feeling of being his girl, being in his arms, the hope of Happily Ever After.
Issy’s light still glowed—her show would be about half-done. In her neighbor’s house, the light also burned.
Wait . . . didn’t Issy say her neighbor was the new football coach?
She didn’t know much about football—just what she learned hanging around Coach Presley, which she’d tried to do whenever Seb happened to be around—but she knew this: Seb Brewster could lead any team to victory.
She’d never figured out, however, why he hadn’t made it back onto the Cyclones after his injury. He’d dropped out of school, and out of the conversations around Deep Haven, and she’d lost him. He’d simply disappeared into the annals of Husky football.
But now . . . Coach Brewster. Yes, she liked that.
The neighborhood seemed more ominous now than in the early morning. Thunder rippled, closer. She picked up her pace.
Will you help me, Seb? She’d pulled everything out of her with those words. Pushed out every ounce of desperation and hope and saw herself, at that moment, small. And plain.
Broken. Until . . .
His eyes. They filled with a look she recognized—or thought she did. The look he’d given her the day the teacher assigned them to work together. And in that moment, she knew.
He hadn’t forgotten her, not at all.
She reached her street, turned left. Overhead the stars blinked at her, perhaps as surprised as she was at the way she wanted to skip, even find a song.
Please, God, don’t let him destroy my life again. She’d learned her lesson—she wouldn’t betray her virtues again. But the way her heart had stirred to life since he returned to town, he had the potential to do great damage.
She simply couldn’t give him her heart; that was all. She was smarter, not naive little Lucy anymore. She could handle working with Seb Brewster without losing herself, right?
* * *
Caleb had never been the kind of guy to find his fun online. Not with weights to lift and game tapes to watch and weekend drills that turned him into an all-state running back. And growing up on a farm in southern Minnesota, he never lacked for something to do.
Never in his life would he have dreamed that he might spend his evening calling a talk show ho
tline. About love.
Good thing Dan didn’t know. Who would have thought that his first friend in Deep Haven would be the town preacher? And a fairly decent football coach too, the way he drilled the guys and even helped the wide receivers lay out their routes.
He had a good team; Caleb could feel it in his bones. As long as they stuck to the basics, resisted the urge to be fancy, and simply kept their heads about them, they had a chance at winning.
If he could get through to Jared Ryan, of course. Although he’d figured out at least one source of the kid’s lousy attitude today, when he’d nearly gotten into a fistfight with Bryant. The other team had drawn Ryan’s buddy, wide receiver Chase Samson, and from what he’d heard, the two made magic on the field.
Caleb hoped his words, after Dan had gotten between the two players, sank into Ryan. A great quarterback leads the team, finds their talents, and makes them better. Figure out how to help Bryant, and you’ll turn him into the player you want him to be.
Ryan barely looked at him, and when he did, Caleb saw distrust.
Apparently he’d have to prove himself to Ryan before the kid would listen to him. Oh, to take him down in a tackle or, better yet, throw a deep pass right into Bryant’s skinny arms. Caleb had been a fairly decent quarterback before he’d settled into the running back position. But his leg had burned all the way through his body—he couldn’t drop back into the pocket for a pass to save his life.
Sometimes his limitations could eat clear through him.
Navigating to the My Foolish Heart web page, he clicked on the radio player. He couldn’t deny the urge to report in, to tell her that yes, he’d done his homework.
Perhaps it was the teacher inside.
The voice of Miss Foolish Heart came over the line. “Tonight we’re discussing beauty. Can you love a man or woman you find unattractive? Consider Jane Eyre and Rochester. Neither of them could be called beautiful; in fact Rochester is actually called an ugly man. Yet Jane falls for him, even after he becomes blind and scarred. Why? Cupid, you’re on the line.”
“Rochester fell in love with Jane because of her intellect and because she connected with him. She understood him. That made her beautiful.”
My Foolish Heart Page 12