2 Days 'Til Sundae (2 'Til Series Book 1)

by Heather Muzik

  Catherine waited what seemed like forever before anyone passed on the street, and even then it wasn’t the car she was waiting for. She finally decided that either they had gone the other way on the road, or she had misread what she saw and they weren’t actually leaving—that, or they were having a prolonged make-out fest at the car because they were madly in love and hated to be separated. She felt foolish. Waiting around to tail her competition was not healthy. She started to pull back out onto the road just as the car in question finally rounded the corner. She stopped short, waiting for it to pass. Now she had no choice but to follow it, considering it was going her way.

  She tailed the car through all the twists and turns to Main Street, noting that the driver seemed entirely comfortable handling the roads, like she had driven them many times. In town, Catherine watched the car turn left. She needed to go right, back to the cabin to pack for a flight this afternoon that she had suddenly decided to take. Her mind couldn’t control her hands though, and instead she followed the car to the new section of town and into a gas station, where she watched the driver get out and pump gas—a seasoned pro at that too. The mystery date had a hat on—I never wear hats, but it isn’t my fault that my head is too big. The woman had on a long skirt that hid her shape but for the fact that she was thin. Her skin was pale and her face looked tight and drawn, like an emaciated model—entirely unlike Catherine’s own robust face and curvy body. This woman was in all ways her opposite.

  So that’s the problem—she was fun to spar with but not his type.

  When the woman got back in the car and pulled away from the pump, Catherine followed, circling around town along roads she hadn’t been on before. She had to wonder if the chick from Iowa was onto her and trying her darnedest to lose the tail. But eventually the car peeled off onto the highway and Catherine had to fight not to get on behind it. The woman could be out for a drive or to run an errand, or she could be going all the way back to Iowa right now like the license plate stated. Catherine would be nuts to go on another chase right now—she didn’t have any vacation time left and had absolutely no provisions on hand at all. Besides, what was she going to do? Follow the chick all the way home to see where she lived? Joel Trager could date who he wanted, and if he was a cheater, he was that chick’s problem. At least Catherine had only lost a week on him and his games. Besides, she had New York to get back to.

  Caramellie might be in that car….

  But she wasn’t going to go there. She’d reached the end of brashness and boldness and obsessive behavior. She wasn’t going to force some woman off the road and search her car in a citizen’s arrest just to commandeer the toy. And she wasn’t going to follow her for possibly hours, waiting for her to reach her destination, just so she could try this whole thing from the beginning again. It was over. Perhaps when she got back home she would consider medication for compulsive behavior, but for the moment she felt cured.

  -40-

  “Where have you two been?” Catherine grumbled from the loveseat, the question rhetorical, for she saw the grocery bags. Not that she really cared where her fair-weather friends had gone off to while they were supposed to be on the clock taking care of her—yoo-hoo! the one with the head injury. She just wanted them to feel bad about leaving, or at the very least about getting caught.

  They had obviously taken their own sweet time shopping, definitely over the allotted hour between wakeups. She was even able to get lost several times on her own way back and still beat them. After leaving Joel Trager’s lady-friend to live her own life, the GPS had been no help in turning Catherine toward the cabin since she didn’t happen to know the address for her current residence. She could only enter Nekoyah as her destination and Glenda kept reminding her that she was in Nekoyah. Now that she was back, she just wanted to leave—for good.

  “We were letting you sleep,” Tara pointed out.

  “After he specifically told you not to. He said to wake me up every hour.”

  “Sue us,” Tara said, shrugging.

  “I could have—”

  “You’re fine, see? You’re sitting there talking, watching TV.”

  Georgia held her plastic bags high in a peace offering before setting them on the bed. “I figured we’re going to be here another day, right? So—wait, why does it look like a tornado hit in here?” She motioned at the room.

  “I was packing,” Catherine said curtly.

  “Shouldn’t it look better then?” Tara asked.

  “I was packing my stuff. You guys can do your own.” She had purposely kicked aside anything that belonged to the others in her mad that they had abandoned her in her time of need, and that they had left her in the care of Fynn in the first place so that she ended up getting hurt even worse.

  “What do you mean, packing?” Georgia demanded.

  But Catherine wasn’t answering, she was too busy stewing.

  “So what happened last night?” Tara asked with a wink and a nod. “We left you the room for a reason.”

  “You’re an ass.” Catherine shot her a look to kill that obviously only grazed her because she kept talking anyway.

  “Aw come on, you and Fynn, alone, and nothing happened? No ultimate fighting… or knock-down-drag-out sex?”

  “I have a head wound—a concussion. Get out of the gutter.”

  “But such close quarters with that specimen of—”

  “Shut up!” Catherine growled.

  “Hey!” Georgia yelled, shocking them both. “What the fuck happened?” she enunciated slowly.

  Catherine suddenly broke down; her lips trembled and her voice turned whiny and weak. “I don’t even know what happened, really. I was pretty out of it. But I went to see him this morning to thank him for what he’d done… and I just can’t figure him out. Joel Trager’s a tease.”

  “So he’s Joel Trager again?” Tara asked.

  “What do you mean he’s a tease?” Georgia prodded.

  “He plays around like he’s into me… and when I woke up half naked I figured maybe… but he didn’t—we didn’t actually do anything.”

  “Ooh,” Tara winced.

  “I don’t know why I even give a shit…. He says that I kissed him and that he let me—let me. What the hell is that? He should have been the one kissing me! Why wouldn’t he take advantage of the situation? Any red-blooded male would try to get himself some of this in that circumstance, right? They’re supposed to at least consider it.”

  “Maybe he’s gay,” Tara offered.

  “Maybe he’s a gentleman,” Georgia trumped.

  “I’m not saying that I wanted him to attack me. But I was obviously putting out signals—even if I might not have been fully in my right mind—and he passed! PASSED! He told me he wouldn’t have even done it if I asked.”

  “Is that really what he said?” Georgia’s tone was doubtful.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Catherine admitted evasively. It might not have been what he’d said, but she was certain it was exactly what he meant. He wasn’t into her. She didn’t do it for him. Too much woman for him considering what his willowy date had looked like.

  “Maybe he’s just being careful, what with Cara and all,” Georgia said softly, as if afraid to anger the beast before her.

  “What do you know about Cara?” Catherine demanded, startled.

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He introduced me to her this morning—his date’s daughter,” she said viciously.

  “She was his date, Cat.” Georgia leveled the words carefully but forcefully.

  “So he’s a pervert? A pedophile?” Catherine was spun out and refused to be brought down easily.

  “Let her speak,” Tara said coldly.

  Catherine looked from one friend to the other, questioning their allegiance and feeling cornered. They had chosen sides against her. She should have left for the airport without them.

  “Cat, Joel Trager—Fynn—has an old friend. A woman. She has cancer—it’s terminal,” Georgia sa
id, her voice sorrowful.

  Catherine’s heart suddenly shot up into her throat, picturing the woman at the gas pump; judging her too thin and pale appearance, and the fact that she wore a hat—not even a stylish one, but a wide-brimmed straw gardening number—

  “Cara is her daughter. He’s in the process of preparing to become that little girl’s guardian.” Georgia’s face held a tortured expression, eyes filled with tears that hadn’t yet fallen; heartache for a mother who was about to lose her life and her daughter to the greedy hands of her illness. “That’s why he set up that room and bought the little dollhouse and took her to the festival last night. He’s going to be a father to a girl who is about to become an orphan. Maybe next month, or next year—whenever he’s needed. She has no other family, so he promised to be there for her—for both of them.”

  Fynn hadn’t offered any explanation. He just introduced the little girl and then pulled her back out of view again. So Catherine had read the signs the way she wanted to read them…. Why wouldn’t he have said something last night… or at the door this morning? Why would he let me leave without telling me? She thought back to the story that the lady at the antique store had given her about Joel Trager. Suddenly, with all the facts, it was plausible—even truthful. It was definitely something that could have been misconstrued. She had reamed him up and down to his face and even more behind his back; over and over in her mind she had blasted him for it. Why should he trust me with that?

  “We talked to Drew,” Georgia continued, fighting to keep her voice clear. “She said that she saw you on Monday and thought of it as an opportunity to remind her brother that he still had a life to live. She didn’t want to see him bring Cara into his home and then forget that he still deserved to find a woman, have a wife, and make a family. That doing so would be for Cara too.”

  Catherine felt tears stinging her nose and her vision started to blur.

  “She swears that sending you to him wasn’t a setup. It’s just that Nekoyah doesn’t have much of a singles scene, so she took a chance that maybe something would spark between you, and if it didn’t, maybe it would at least knock him out of complacency….”

  “Last night, on the other hand, was a total setup,” Tara said, breaking through the shell of sorrow.

  “I got beaned by a baseball!” Catherine protested.

  “That was divine intervention or random luck. I’m talking about the rest of it.”

  “So now there are three of you colluding against me and him?”

  “You guys won’t get your heads out of your asses otherwise,” Tara pointed out. “You’re so busy bickering you don’t even realize that you are totally into each other.”

  “That’s a bunch of hogwash. Besides, I tried. He isn’t into girls or something,” she said dismissively.

  “You are such a pain in my ass,” Georgia said.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. You’re like this with every single guy. Wake up! If you like him, let yourself like him. And let him know you like him. It works wonders,” Georgia coached.

  “But I—”

  “And sometimes the guy won’t like you back. So friggin’ what. Then you move on.” She waved off the heartbreak. “You keep moving on before you get turned down. How are you going to find someone like that?”

  “I have had plenty of boyfriends,” Catherine humphed.

  “Yeah, there’ve been a few over the years.”

  “A few?”

  “A few,” Georgia reiterated. “And those ones have it even harder.”

  “They do not!”

  “Really? You don’t think that dumping guys for merely mentioning key words like marriage or ring or church or—oh my God—cake in casual conversation within the first month is a blockade to a relationship?”

  “They’re going too fast.”

  “You know, sweetie, sometimes they’re just telling you that they go to church, or that they would really like to have cake for dessert.”

  “I’m not that bad!”

  “Almost that bad.” Georgia wasn’t budging.

  “I think you’re that bad,” Tara said, adding her two cents.

  “Well this guy has several strikes against him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Turning me down is a huge strike.”

  “That is still debatable. We would need to see the tape,” Tara countered.

  Catherine snickered in spite of herself. “Okay, how about the ready-made family? Or the fact that he lives in Minnesota? Or the fact that he seems to hate everything about me?”

  -41-

  Friends—who needs ‘em? How she felt about Joel Trager was her own business. Sure he had a sweet gushy sob story, but that didn’t change the fact that he was bristly and difficult and totally aggravating. And since when did Tara and Georgia ever agree on her love life anyway? She had news for her so-called friends: she wasn’t interested in another setup, especially not with a man who turned her into a basket case with his mere presence and ate away at her thoughts when he was out of sight.

  Aaargh! This place was making her stir crazy, even though the cabin was hardly smaller than the apartment she called home in New York. Now she even welcomed the space her tiny car offered because at least she could move in it. Hopefully by the time she got back Tara and Georgia would be packed and ready to leave. Hell, she should be leaving without them—it’s not like she had needed them to get her here. But camp counselor Georgia Love had all the plane tickets filed in her mom purse where they would be safest, she assured them.

  Catherine pulled into an open space in front of the scene of her first Nekoyan embarrassment. The diner. It was barely ten o’clock in the morning and she just needed some damn pie. A big honking slice of dessert heaven to take the edge off her decidedly crap-ass life.

  She no longer cared about a little doll in her sundae house. Her old toy had a good home with a little girl who was going to need it. A little girl who reminded her a lot of Josey, actually. So she was free to leave now, and if she had only figured it out three hours earlier—she looked at her watch, doing the mental calisthenics (carry the two and add—no subtract one) to calculate her time versus New York time—she would be taxiing the runway at this exact moment. But at least they would still be able to make the last direct flight out this afternoon—after she had her pie.

  Getting out of the car, she ensnared herself in her seatbelt, accidentally reaching through it for her purse. She was most of the way out when it yanked her down. Like the little car had suddenly become carnivorous, it swallowed her whole—back into the driver’s seat. She scanned the sidewalk to see who might have captured her little embarrassing moment, and there was Joel Trager, coming right at her.

  “Of course,” she grumbled to herself, looking down quickly like something in her lap was suddenly enthralling.

  “Catherine!” he called out, reaching the car in three loping steps.

  She pulled the door shut, pretending she hadn’t heard him, and started the engine. This time it followed her wishes to a tee, purring softly. She purposely kept her eyes trained away from him. She didn’t want to see him or talk to him. If he had really wanted to talk to her—tell her what was going on—he’d had ample opportunity. He obviously didn’t want to share his circumstances or anything about his life. He had allowed her to assume all kinds of things about him, not caring what she thought.

  “Wait!” He tapped on the window.

  She ventured a peek, trying to seem surprised.

  “Can I talk to you?” He enunciated the words carefully, his breath hot against the glass.

  “Huh?” She screwed her face up like understanding through the barrier was impossible.

  He pantomimed rolling the window down.

  She opened the window against her better judgment, but only far enough to be minimally polite.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “I really have to get going,” she said impatiently.

  “I just saw you pull in thou
gh.”

  “Oh… yeah… I just remembered something I have to do. We’re leaving for the airport and I needed to pick something up.”

  “Oh.” His face was guarded, hesitant. “You don’t even have a moment for a cup of coffee? A piece of pie? …. How about a sundae?”

  Her face contorted into defeat. “Is that a slam?”

  “No, it’s a delicious dairy dessert.”

  “You know what I mean. A sundae? Seriously? After everything?”

  “What?” he asked, genuinely bewildered.

  “You already won, Joel Trager from Nekoyah. The big bad bitch from New York is leaving and letting you keep your damn toy. I’m leaving you be. No more bothering you, and no more humiliating myself.”

  “But I kind of liked that last bit.”

  “Of course you did, Joel, because you got to have all the fun while I looked like the fool…. Well I, for one, have had enough.”

  “I was going to tell you that you can have the dollhouse…. Caramellie is it?”

  “Seriously?” she demanded viciously.

  “What? What did I do now?”

  “Why would I want it now? In spite of what you might think, I’m not a totally heartless jerk who would take a toy from a child.”

  He looked like he’d been slapped. “But it’s yours,” he eked out. “Like you said, she’ll have plenty of other toys.”

  “She obviously likes it. And I understand why.” Catherine’s voice started to crack. “Just keep it—let her keep it.”

  “No matter how I try, I just don’t get you.”

  “What’s to get? And what does it matter?”