by Julia London
“I told you to stay on the porch, Ruby,” she said wearily, as if she’d said it a thousand times if she’d said it once.
“I had to see if my wings could fly,” Ruby said and bent over to pick up a marker from the floor of the porch. She skipped to an easel and a whiteboard, where someone had drawn a very colorful collection of blobs, some with arms and legs.
“I am so sorry,” Mrs. Coconuts said to Dax. “It’s been a long week, and I’m just so tired.”
What was that smell? It smelled like wine. Dax looked to his left, spotted a mason jar on the railing that looked as if it contained apple juice. Christ, it wasn’t even six o’clock.
She followed his gaze, then squared her shoulders like she was getting ready to give him a one-two knockout punch. “It’s my day off.”
“Apparently.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Not all of us live like a monk,” she said.
Oooh, touché. So she had heard everything Janet had said.
“Ruby!” she said, keeping her gaze on Dax. “Say you’re sorry for bothering Mr. Bishop again so he can go home.”
“Sorry!” Ruby said. She was standing in front of the whiteboard with her legs braced apart, as if she were about to attack it. Dax noticed her cowboy boots were on the wrong feet. “Mommy, we could give him a cupcake so he won’t be mad,” she suggested.
“Nope. Won’t work,” he said gruffly.
“We could give him two cupcakes.”
“No,” Mrs. Coconuts said. “If one isn’t good enough, two is just a waste of good cupcakes. Ruby, you will stay on this side of the fence so Mr. Bishop doesn’t get mad,” she said, folding her arms across her body.
Sounded good to Dax. He glanced at the kid; she had stilled in what she was doing, apparently studying that whiteboard. Or maybe considering what her mother had said, but given Dax’s experience with her thus far, he doubted that very much. She was holding the marker loosely between her fingers and began to flutter them, as if she were trying to dislodge the marker.
“Ruby? Are you listening to me?”
“She is not listening to you,” Dax observed.
“Yes, she is,” Mrs. Coconuts said smartly.
As if she meant to prove she was not, Ruby dropped the marker. But her hand stayed up, her fingers moving as if she were playing an invisible piano.
“Ruby Ellen!”
Ruby glanced at her hand then, noticed the marker was missing, and looked around for it, squatting down to retrieve it.
“Jesus,” Mrs. Coconuts muttered.
“Told you she wasn’t listening,” Dax mumbled.
Mrs. Coconuts jerked her gaze to him. Her eyes were the exact color of teak, his favorite wood. “Excuse me?” she snapped as she pushed a big swath of her dark hair back from her face.
“I’m leaving,” he said and whistled low to take Otto’s attention from a loose pile of toys. Otto dutifully trotted off the porch. Dax had every intention of trotting off the porch, too, but he was having a hard time looking away from Mrs. Coconuts’s eyes now. “Have a good evening.” He wanted to say something about her having a pretty good start on one but thought the better of it. She didn’t look like she was in a laughing mood.
Dax made himself step off that porch.
“So sorry!” she called after him.
Dax didn’t think she sounded the least bit sorry, and in fact, she sounded very unsorry. He muttered something under his breath about sorry being about as useful as a wooden nickel.
Chapter Four
Her neighbor might not be a pervert or a nerdy ax murderer, but Kyra was beginning to suspect he was a Number One Ass.
Okay, yes, no one knew better than Kyra that Ruby could be a pest, and the kid had gone across the fence again in spite of being told more than once she was not to do it. But she was six, and that man was very judgmental, and Kyra did not like judgmental people. She’d had her fill of them, thank you, since the moment she’d gotten herself knocked up and endured all the side eyes as her belly grew.
She was tired of whispered speculation about the sort of person she was. Today was her day off, for God’s sake, and she was entitled to a drink if she wanted one, but she hadn’t actually had anything to drink! She’d brought the wine out here and set it on the railing, then had made the mistake of lying down in the hammock. The breeze was soft and cool, the leaves of the maple trees were rustling, and the perpetual exhaustion that seemed to surround her every day had crept over her before she could take more than a sip.
She would have been just fine, would have grabbed her forty winks and been back at mother duty, if Ruby had stayed on the damn porch. Ruby was generally pretty good about it, but she just had to have those butterfly wings from the dollar store, and she just had to see if they would fly, and really, who could blame her? What was the point of butterfly wings if they didn’t fly?
Kyra looked at her daughter now. She was drawing something that resembled the rock that Patrick the starfish lived under next to the pineapple under the sea. The theme song from SpongeBob SquarePants wormed into Kyra’s head and stuck there, adding to her disgruntlement.
She glanced back across the fence at the cottage next door. Just her luck to get a troglodyte for a neighbor.
When they’d first moved in, Ruby kept showing up at Mrs. McCauley’s house, the big Victorian that sat on the hill just above the cottages. The porch swing had beckoned Ruby, but Mrs. McCauley had understood—she was a grandmother. She didn’t freak out when a kid wasn’t perfect and didn’t do what she was supposed to do. She served Ruby homemade lemonade and sat on the porch swing with her, just talking, until Kyra found her. Mrs. McCauley got that Kyra shoved about thirty hours into every day and was dealing with a babysitter she could afford instead of the good one she wanted.
But then Ruby had discovered that damn mutt living at Number Two, and Kyra did mean the dog. Why didn’t the dog’s troglodyte owner understand that any animal with a wagging tail, a crooked ear, and a cocked head was like crack cocaine to a little kid? They couldn’t stay away.
“Ruby,” she said gruffly and swiped up her wine. She paused to drink. “What do I have to do to make you stay on this porch when I tell you to?”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” Ruby said.
“I don’t think you are,” Kyra said evenly. “Because if you were sorry, you’d stop disobeying me and stop going over that fence.”
“I went around,” Ruby pointed out.
“Under, over, around,” Kyra said impatiently. “Don’t do it. I know you like the dog, but the dog belongs to Mr. Bishop, and he doesn’t want you over there.”
Ruby’s chin began to quiver. “I was just testing my wings.”
“I know,” Kyra said with a sigh. She wished she could explain to Ruby that there were people in this world who were just assholes, and there was nothing you could do about it. “You can test your wings in our yard, on our porch.”
Ruby lowered her head, chastised.
Now Kyra felt like a heel. This was the part of parenting she hated—the correcting, the discipline, the whole scene about being responsible and making sure her daughter grew up to be a fabulous adult. It was hard to bust the chops of a six-year-old, and even though she’d intended to study tonight . . . Ruby looked as if she could use a friend. Kyra glanced through the screen door to the clock hanging on the kitchen wall. “Come on,” she said, and with a sigh of defeat, she held out her hand to her daughter.
Ruby eyed her hand suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because I feel like playing Candy Land.”
Rudy gasped. Her big blue eyes rounded with surprise. “Yay!” she shouted, throwing her arms in the air, and clomped as fast as she could in boots on the wrong feet to the screen door, throwing it open and letting it bang behind her.
Kyra couldn’t even guess how many rounds of Candy Land they’d played before she’d convinced Ruby it was time for hot dogs—another nutritional fail for her daughter, but come on, they both loved them—and toddled her of
f to bed a half hour past her bedtime. Kyra spent the rest of the evening picking up the cottage and washing dishes. When she got her real estate license, she was going to get a dishwasher. And a washing machine. And a dryer.
Yep, she had some really big dreams.
This dream of becoming a real estate agent, however—a relatively new dream—was beginning to take firmer root in her head. Kyra had spent so many years making it from one day to the next, trying to hold down a job and care for a daughter, that she hadn’t allowed herself to think too far ahead. Or to dwell on the missed opportunities. She had concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, on constantly searching for a better job with better hours so she could spend as much time with Ruby as possible.
Trace had been right about East Beach—the tips were great. The living was far less expensive than the city. She’d found this great little cottage that she could actually afford, bigger than anything she and Ruby had ever lived in before. She had finally saved enough money for the deposit and first month’s rent, and at the beginning of the month, she and Ruby had moved out of the extended-stay hotel.
But that wasn’t enough. For a while now Kyra had been seriously considering what was next for her and Ruby. As good as things were going, she knew that with the first cold snap the summer people would take their bulging wallets and go home.
She’d been mulling over what else she might do, how she might earn a decent enough living so that she could perhaps one day move into a real house, but nothing she thought of had seemed particularly viable, given her limited resources and need to be around for Ruby. But then one day, she happened to overhear a conversation between two women at the bistro. One of them mentioned she’d just sold her lake house for $1.2 million.
One point two million dollars.
Expensive lake houses surrounded Lake Haven, and it seemed like every other day a new one was for sale or had just sold. Kyra had never thought of real estate as a career until that moment, but once the idea was planted, she’d started looking into it. She found out what the requirements were to buy and sell real estate. She had to take so many hours of coursework and pass a test, but it looked doable.
She’d caught up with a woman who frequented the bistro and who sold real estate around Black Springs. “It’s great!” the woman said when Kyra asked her how she liked her work. “Are you thinking of getting into the business?”
“I’m considering it,” Kyra said.
“I love it. You can literally work your own hours . . . well, there’s a lot of weekend work, because that’s when people are out looking for houses, but during the week you can work whenever you like.”
Weekend work aside, the idea of flexible hours that would work around Ruby’s schedule sounded ideal to Kyra. She next called a company that offered the required coursework and licensing. “If you’re smart and you’re willing to hustle, you can make a very good living at real estate,” the woman had said. “You sound like a real go-getter to me. I think you’d do great.”
Kyra had realized that was a full-on sales spin the woman had just given her, but she knew how to hustle. She thought she might be pretty good at it, and she at last decided to go for it. What did she have to lose? Nothing. But she had so much to gain. So she’d borrowed five hundred dollars from her dad for the online course.
Now her only problem was finding the time to get through the course and take the exam. Speaking of which, Kyra glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to ten. She groaned, but she opened her workbook and began to study.
Chapter Five
Ruby was still asleep when Mrs. Miller arrived the next morning. The woman was not the best babysitter in the world by a long stretch, but at least she was punctual. She walked into the cottage with her black handbag over her shoulder, a lunch box in one hand, a big plaid thermos in the other.
“Good morning,” Kyra said.
“Morning,” Mrs. Miller said and stalked past Kyra on her way to the kitchen. She put her lunch box down on the countertop, opened it, and removed a sandwich and some fruit, which she shoved into the fridge. She turned back to zip up her lunch box and eyed Kyra. “What are you standing there for? Don’t you need to go to work?”
“I do. I wanted to ask if you could keep a close eye on Ruby today.”
Mrs. Miller’s head came up, her expression unhappy. “I always keep an eye on her.”
Well, no, she didn’t, but Kyra didn’t want to argue. “It’s just that she’s been sneaking over to the neighbor’s cottage and he’s not happy about that.” She winced apologetically, and she hated herself for pretending she was imposing on the woman she paid to watch her daughter.
“That sounds like his problem, if you ask me,” Mrs. Miller said with a shrug. She turned away from Kyra, opened a drawer, and took out a spoon. She then opened the cabinet door directly above the drawer, took down the sugar canister, and proceeded to spoon sugar into her thermos as if the conversation was over. And as if she’d bought the sugar. What was that, four spoonfuls?
“Ruby likes to swim,” Kyra suggested.
Mrs. Miller snorted. “What kid doesn’t?” She looked up and locked eyes with Kyra as she stirred her coffee. “You know I raised three boys. This ain’t my first rodeo.”
“No,” Kyra agreed.
Mrs. Miller didn’t say more but continued to slowly stir her coffee, holding Kyra’s gaze, her expression clearly conveying that she would not be trudging down to the beach with a six-year-old in tow. They were facing each other like they were two gunslingers standing in front of the O.K. Corral, and Kyra knew she was not a fast shot. She debated insisting that Mrs. Miller do something with Ruby, but she kept coming back around to the fact that she had someone coming to her house to babysit for thirty bucks a day, and she really needed to go to work, and if she drew her gun first, Mrs. Miller might leave her in a bind.
“Anything else?” Mrs. Miller asked, drawing her gun first. “I don’t want to miss Good Morning America.”
Kyra folded. She smiled and shrugged. “Nope, that’s it. Have a good day.”
She retreated like the coward she was. She picked up her book bag, her perpetually full laundry basket, and her backpack on the way out the door.
The Laundromat didn’t open until eight, and her shift didn’t start until ten. Kyra decided to swing by the Green Bean coffee shop to take her mind off her babysitter woes and knock out some of her required reading for about an hour.
She had a plain coffee—she couldn’t afford the fancy coffees that smelled so good as they went wafting by in the hands of others—and finished up one of the workbook assignments. She was pleased with her progress—until she happened to glance at the clock. “Oh shit,” she murmured. It was a quarter past eight. She gathered up her things in her arms, not even bothering to shove her books into the book bag, and hurried out to her car.
Naturally, her car would choose this morning to decline to start right away. It had been acting up lately, and Kyra didn’t want to think about what was wrong with it or how much it might cost to fix. She was able to coax the engine to life after a few false starts, then sped off to the Laundromat.
As Laundromats went, the Spin and Swim Washeteria was a small one. There were five washers and three dryers, and Kyra was dismayed to see four of the washers in use this morning. An old man in a heavy coat was sitting in one of two orange plastic chairs, reading a newspaper. How could one man take up four washers? She had her work clothes and the soiled clothes of a little girl who changed no less than four times a day.
Kyra didn’t have time to wait; she’d have to use the college kid approach to laundry and shove everything into the remaining washer.
She loaded it up, set it on a short cycle, wincing a little as she thought of the two work shirts that needed some serious attention. Satisfied when the water began to fill the tub, she looked around. There was no other place to sit except beside the man in the heavy coat, so Kyra retreated outside. She figured she had forty-five minutes until the wash wa
s done, and as the morning was beautiful, crisp and clear with a cobalt sky overhead, she decided to take the path down to the lake.
She retrieved her workbook from her car and found a bench, where she sat and finished her reading assignment. She was feeling pretty good about things; this was the most work she’d done on the real estate business in two weeks. At this rate she might be able to get her real estate license before the end of the year.
She kept an eye on the time, and after forty-three minutes, she walked back up the hill to the Laundromat. The old man was still there, but he was now methodically folding clothes from a heap in one of the rolling clothes bins. Kyra grabbed her basket, dumped her wash into it, then moved to the dryers. Two of them were in use. One of them was sitting idle. She opened the door of that one—but discovered it was full of clothes.
She looked at the old man. “Excuse me? Are these yours?”
“Nope,” he said without looking up from his folding.
Then whose clothes were they? This was the sort of thing that drove Kyra nuts—people who had no respect for other people’s time. People who would dump their laundry at the only Laundromat in town, and a tiny one at that, then go off for a round of golf or whatever. Didn’t the idea that someone else might need the dryer ever cross their minds? Wasn’t it an unwritten rule of public Laundromats that if you left your wash unattended, the next person up had a right to move it?
Yes. Yes it was.
Kyra grabbed one of the rolling baskets and began to dump the clothes into it.
She didn’t hear anyone else enter the facility over the sound of the dryers. She didn’t notice anyone else until she felt someone almost at her back and jumped, whirling around—and came face-to-face with the stormy blue eyes of her neighbor, Mr. Bishop. “What are you doing here?” she demanded as she pressed a hand over her racing heart. “Why are you always sneaking up on me?”
“Sneaking up on you?” he echoed incredulously. “I didn’t sneak up on you, I walked in like any normal person and went directly to my dryer, inside of which I find your head.”