by Cheri Allan
He looked at her now, his eyes registering some emotion she didn’t want to acknowledge. “It we’re nothing serious, then there’s nothing to figure out, is there?”
She sat back without answering and waited for the show, wishing she could go back in time, kiss him and not worry about anything else. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t not kiss this man when he was intent on kissing her any more than she could not be pregnant with another man’s child.
It was better they put some distance between them. Whether Jim knew it or not.
A wistful ache squeezed her heart. “I like you, you know.”
He pressed his lips together, and she wished she could kiss away the twinge of regret she saw there. “I like you, too, Kate.”
“I’m not trying to be difficult.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Neither am I.”
“I don’t mean to be a tease. I’ve never been that kind of person, but I need to figure some things out before we go any further.” He let a raised eyebrow talk for him. “Fine. I know. They’ve gone plenty far. Farther than I ever intended—and I don’t regret it, but I’m not looking for a relationship right now. I can’t get into a relationship right now.” She tried to ignore how good he felt beside her, how much her fingers ached to brush the hair at his temple and make all the awkwardness between them fade away. “Friends?”
He looked at her, wordlessly, as the fireworks began to burst overhead. She held her breath as he leaned in and pressed a single kiss to her hair, then pulled back. “Let’s watch the show,” he said.
Kate nodded and swallowed over the tightness in her throat.
Lying back, she watched the vibrant display, listened as the boom! boom! of the fireworks echoed down the river, and wished she were three again like Liam whose problems could be solved by a simple pair of earmuffs.
After a while, Jim leaned toward her. “Can I ask you a personal question?” His lips brushed her hair as he spoke, his breath warm on her nape. She shivered. In a good way.
“Sure,” she said, though she wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
“How come your toenails are always so glitzed up, but you never paint your fingernails?”
Kate looked down at her hands in the dark. She knew what they’d look like: short, practical, plain. “Randy didn’t like my taste in nail polish. He said the colors were unsophisticated.” She shrugged. “People don’t usually see my toes.”
“Huh,” was all he said.
She looked at the sky. Boom. Boom.
“Kind of an idiot, wasn’t he?”
She turned then, startled, and stared at Jim’s profile. He was watching the show overhead. He didn’t look like he expected her to be angry. Didn’t look like he expected any reply at all. It was as if he’d stated some irrefutable, unremarkable fact that didn’t bear comment.
She turned and looked at the sky, too, letting the colors wash over her. “No,” she finally said, even though she was sure he couldn’t hear her over the fireworks. “I was.”
July 13
Blessing in disguise. I’ve always wondered about that phrase. I mean, truly, who wants a blessing to disguise itself? What if you don’t recognize it and somehow miss it—or throw it away? Seems to me, blessings should shout from the rooftops all their considerable charms so we can take full advantage of them. Miracles, too. Just saying...
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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BEING PREGNANT HAD ITS ADVANTAGES. No need to stock up on tampons. No wild PMS-y mood swings. No need for romance-killing protection while having erotic fling with sexy neighbor...
Kate fought back tears and smoothed the quilt over her bed. How could she have been so stupid? Good question. About so many things. But second-guessing her judgment didn’t change the fact that here she was, more than two months after the blessed event/scene of the crime, and still no visit from Aunt Flo.
She was so royally screwed.
She’d have to schedule a prenatal exam. But September, when she was back in Connecticut, was soon enough for that. She knew enough to take her vitamins and eat right in the meantime.
“Why did you have to be so damn fertile?” she demanded of the square box sitting on her dresser. She’d moved it from the mantel after Nana had threatened to fertilize her roses with it. “Huh? Couldn’t your drinking have pickled that, too?”
Randy’s ashes didn’t answer; they just sat in all their neatly-contained finality.
In total opposition to her life.
As if mocking her sense of internal chaos, the phone rang at the same moment someone knocked at the front door. Kate briskly swiped at the tears on her face and peered out the window. What? She picked her phone off the dresser. “Hello?”
“Kate! Thank God you’re there.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“I need advice. Would you say you’d tend toward Eastern or Western medicine as a rule?”
“I don’t know. Depends. Ma, there’s someone at the door...”
“If they conflicted, that is. Your father, as you might expect, is siding with the doctor, but you know how I feel about those chemicals they call modern medicines. Ahmed says that if we purge our aura that might help dissolve the crystals.”
“What crystals? Who’s Ahmed? Are we talking about your dog again?”
“Uric acid. My yoga instructor. And no, I am not talking about Sandy.”
“Then what are we talking about?”
“Your father’s gout.”
“Dad has gout? Since when?” Kate hurried down the stairs toward the front door. “Actually, Ma, don’t answer that. I can’t talk right now. Someone’s at the door.”
Kate pulled the door open, covering her phone with her hand. “Can I help you?”
Jeff Dayton stood on her porch and nodded briefly. “I’m Jeff Dayton from the Sugar Falls Police Department...”
Kate’s heart thudded with dread in her chest as she stared at the shiny, dangerous things strapped to his person. “Yes. Yes, I know. Is something wrong?” Was it Nana?
“...it’s incredibly painful, dear, he’s been hobbling around the house and complaining for days...” her mother droned on in her ear.
“Ma! Not now!” Kate hissed.
“No. No. This is a personal call.” Jeff winced slightly and avoided her gaze. “The thing is, I need to get some pictures taken for this fundraising calendar Gifts for the Greater Good is putting together. Jim told me you’d helped him out, had a photography degree or something, and I wondered...”
“You’d think he’d been kicked in the family jewels or something the way he’s been carrying on. Of course it is swollen to three times its normal size...”
Kate nearly dropped her phone. “You want me to take your picture?”
Jeff nodded.
“Oh, I don’t think you want to see it, honey. Truly. It is not pretty,” said her mother.
“Uh...” said Kate.
“Yeah. I know,” Jeff said. “We don’t know each other, but I thought maybe that’d make it easier. One of the guys down at the station took the last one, but the calendar organizer didn’t think it was appropriate. Jim said you were really good.”
“He did?”
“A natural.”
Kate worried her lip. Is that all he said? How close were these guys? “I don’t know...”
“I’d pay you for your time.” She chewed her lip. Money was always good, but… “Hey, I understand. It was a long shot. I just thought... I’m sorry to bother you.”
He turned to step off the porch. Oh, crud. It was Ruth’s calendar. How hard could it be to take a few lousy pictures of the guy? It was for a good cause. Kate stepped toward him. “How much? I mean... wait.” He faced her again. He was actually pretty attractive now that she looked. Not that she was looking. “I suppose... I suppose I could try. I make no promises, though. I’m no professional. I only studied art…”
He smiled then. A genuinely gorgeous smile. “Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll catch up with you la
ter to set up a time?”
After exchanging phone numbers and waving goodbye, Kate tuned back in to her mother. Obviously she’d missed a little something.
“... so we’re coming for a visit. A long weekend, actually. Rosaria won’t watch Sandy longer than that, and you know how she hates the Doggy Inn.”
Visit? Kate sucked in a panicked breath and looked around. Nope, she was not in her bedroom. At least then she might have convinced herself she was having a nightmare—and not a conversation with the woman who’d brought her into the world.
“I’m worried about you,” her mother continued. “You haven’t said boo to anyone down here since you left for that godforsaken place.”
“Sugar Falls has a name, Ma. It’s part of the United States even, so it’s really not so much a backwater as you seem to think.”
“You know what I mean. New Hampshire is a fine place to visit, but it’s not a place a person lives. I don’t know what possessed your grandmother to move there.”
“She grew up here. It’s home to her.”
“Anyway, we’ll be there a week from Thursday,” her mother blithely continued, not bothering to wait for an actual invitation. “Your father insists on beating the rush hour traffic through Hartford—the early bird gets the worm, as they say. We should arrive mid-afternoon the twenty-third.”
“You’re staying here?” Kate croaked into the phone.
“No, heavens no. A hotel. I understand the cottage you’re staying at is more rustic than your father or I would like.”
Kate heaved a sigh of relief even as she glanced around the room. Soft blue bead-board walls, white trim, and weathered wood floors surrounded her in comfort and reassuring simplicity. “Rustic? Who said it was rustic?”
“I heard Ruth Pearson was having her grandson do a number of repairs on it, now that she’s moved in with his parents. I just assumed...”
“He updated some fixtures in the bathroom. Nothing major.”
“Yes, well, we’ll find a hotel just the same. I know you wouldn’t want us to crowd you.”
Right. And that was why they were driving nearly five hours to rural New Hampshire? So they wouldn’t crowd her?
“See if you can find a nice restaurant, would you? We’d love to take you out for your birthday while we’re there.”
“My birthday isn’t until next month.”
“True, but we won’t be able to make it back up there in August. We still haven’t celebrated Liam’s birthday, either. Dinner together will kill two birds with one stone.”
“I already threw him a party.”
“He’s three. I’m sure he hardly remembers.”
Kate’s jaw began to ache from the strain of not grinding her teeth. “Right. Well, we’ll see you next Thursday. Should I make reservations for that Friday night?”
“That would be lovely. I hate to make you go through all this trouble for your own birthday, but we really don’t know where would be appropriate.”
“No problem. Really. See you next week.”
As she disconnected, Kate blew out a breath and shook her head. Lovely. Simply lovely. Here she’d purposefully gone to a place a half day’s travel from her family to get away from them, and they were coming to visit?
True, she was near Nana, but Nana had had the good sense to retire to New Hampshire instead of Florida or New Mexico like so many of her parent’s friends. Nana clearly knew a good thing when she saw it—and this place felt so much more honest, vibrant, to her than anywhere else Kate had ever been.
She stepped over the threshold and stood on the front porch. There were no sandy beaches or waving palms. No giant cacti, rugged rock formations or sunsets that engulfed the horizon in picture-postcard beauty.
What she saw was much simpler. Quieter. Trees hugged the shoreline, the surrounding hills intermittently broken by a roof, or small, irregular lawn. The water, a deep shadowy green at the shore, moved in shimmering, blinding ripples further out. Native stone dotted the lake’s edge and formed walls, fireplaces, and the occasional garden border.
As far as she was concerned, it was more than a place to visit. If you were lucky, it was a place you could call home.
Kate listened as the wind chimes sang softly in the breeze.
But her home was in Connecticut.
Wasn’t it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
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JIM TOLD HIMSELF HE WASN’T mooning around Kate. Sure, they’d had sex once upon a time, but that didn’t go away just because they called themselves “friends” now. This infatuation he had for her wasn’t going away by avoiding her, either. Not that he’d done that particularly well.
Jim stopped to admire the flower beds on his way in, neatly ordered and brought back to life through Kate’s tending. To the right was the little rock garden wall he’d helped her rebuild last Sunday. He’d been thinking about the fireworks the night before when he’d seen her struggling to move the heavy stones. It only seemed polite to offer his back and pry-bar for a couple hours. Liam had pretended the empty spaces between the stones were caves for his matchbox cars until Kate had planted them with fresh little pink and purple blooms.
Oh, hell. They were neighbors. Would be for the whole summer. Bringing her dinner on Monday Madness two-for-one pizza night was just being neighborly. Like taking Liam fishing the last few days had been neighborly. And going with them to see the concert on the town common yesterday afternoon with Grams and his folks...
At the sudden scream from inside, Jim dropped the pizzas on the porch swing and burst through Kate’s front door.
“Liam, stay where you are! Don’t come in—” Kate’s voice came from upstairs until another screech cut off her distant warning. Jim took the stairs two at a time.
“Kill it, Mommy! Kill it!” Liam yelled as Jim skidded to a stop outside the bedroom.
“Jim!” Kate gasped. “Don’t block my exit!”
“Wh—?” But he didn’t have time to finish the thought, as Kate screeched again and squirted a can of something at a buzzing noise near the window.
“Here let me—” he said, attempting to relieve her of the can of insecticide.
“No! I’ve got it!” She inched toward the window. “They’ve built a nest in the eave, I think,” she panted, eyes wide as she warily pulled back the curtain. “There was one in here yesterday and I vacuumed it up. Today there’s—” she shuddered and her eyes grew huge as a black and yellow insect buzzed across the ceiling toward him.
She turned as one with the can of insecticide and Jim reacted as anyone would—faced with a phobic woman armed with poison—he swung his arm to knock the can from her hands before she could do him any harm. It was only dumb luck he angered the stinging insect in the process.
“Sh—!” Jim cut himself short as he slapped dead the cause of his sudden pain. The can clattered to the floor, Kate squealed again and Liam stared at the whole spectacle from the doorway in avid, wide-eyed excitement.
“Ohmigod! Did you get stung? You got stung! Where’s the bug spray? I’ll get it.” Kate was already re-arming herself as Jim shook off the surprise of getting stung—on the upper lip, no less.
“It’s dead, Kate. I killed it. Save the spray, and I’ll take care of the nest after dark.”
“You’d do that?”
“Yeah. Though if you’ve got any ice, I wouldn’t mind. My lip is going numb.”
“Oh, no. Is that where it got you? I can’t believe all the bees around here.”
“Technically that was a hornet.”
He would have shrugged off her concern except she was even now touching his face with the lightest brush of her fingertips. They were soft and tender and took his mind off being nearly blinded with bug killer and taking a hit in the process. “Here,” he said, pointing to his upper lip.
“Mommy, kiss it! Her make it better!” Liam suggested helpfully.
“True. You could kiss it and make it better,” He teased.
Kate s
tared at his lips. “I, ah...”
“I wouldn’t refuse.”
“I, um...”
“Mommy, he hurt!” cried Liam.
“It’s okay, Bud. I think your mommy’s not sure it will help.”
“It will!”
“It really does hurt.” Like a son-of-a-bitch, but he wasn’t going to make a big deal of it. She looked miserable.
Which was about how he felt.
“Mom!” Liam all but yelled.
If he weren’t in so much discomfort, he would have found Liam’s concern for his welfare amusing.
Giving in to Liam’s insistence, Kate leaned toward Jim, her apology in her eyes, and brushed her lips over his.
“That’s not where it hurts,” he whispered against her lips.
He had to fight a laugh as her eyes shot open. “It’s not?”
“Uh-uh. You have to go deeper to reach the hurt spot.” He had no idea what made him tease her this way. But with her lips so close, her eyes so blue... he knew how good she’d taste. What harm was in a kiss?
She bit her lip. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You wouldn’t.” Then he realized, too late, she wasn’t talking about the hornet sting anymore.
“I already have,” she whispered miserably as she pulled away.
“Don’t.” He grabbed her elbow before she could retreat entirely. “I’m a big boy, Kate. I don’t need you to protect me.” His lips tilted. “I think I can handle a kiss. Bug spray in the eye, that’s another story.”
Her lips curved, the tension sighing out of her body. Her skin was warm under his fingers. Soft. He fought the urge to rub his thumb over it. He couldn’t think of a reason to keep holding her arm, so he reluctantly let it go and went to inspect the scene of the crime. Two black and yellow hornets lay on the floor in pools of insecticide. Poor devils.
“I don’t like bees,” she said.
“Hornets, actually,” he mumbled, trying to see... oh, yeah, just outside the window. He could take it out after dark. He stepped back and turned toward Kate again. “And I’m not feeling too warm and fuzzy toward them either.” At least that’s what he tried to say. It came out more like I’m naw feewing too wam an futhy towar them eitha.