Picket Fence Surprise

by Kris Fletcher

  “What’s that?” He asked before thinking, his own finger hovering over the nail in question but not quite touching.

  “What’s what?”

  “You have nail polish on only one nail. I was curious.”

  For a moment, she seemed to pull in on herself, like a turtle retreating into its shell. The only sound was a soft sigh from Lulu, asleep in the patch of sunshine coming through the window.

  Heather lifted her chin. “That’s something I started with Millie, when I was away. It’s so I always had something on me that I could look at and think of her.” She curled her hand in, running over the nail in question with her thumb. “Not that I needed the reminder,” she said softly. “But Millie loved seeing it on me.”

  So why did you leave her?

  The question burned on his tongue. It made no sense. Heather was obviously head over heels for Millie, and while he knew that jobs could be hard to find, he doubted that she had needed to go to the other side of the second-largest country in the world to find something.

  But along with patience, prison had taught him the value of keeping his questions to himself.

  He settled for a light tap on the nail. “That’s a good idea. Kind of makes me wish I could do something like that for Cady. Not that we have the long separations like you had. But sometimes...”

  “Sometimes it feels like, even though you’re her parent, you’re still on the fringes of her life?”

  Yeah. Heather got it. “Like she’s the Earth,” he said softly. “And I’m a satellite.”

  She said nothing. Her dipped head, and the way she held her pinkie told him that they were in complete understanding.

  It hit him that at some point over the conversation, one or both of them had scooted their chair closer. They were now sitting at the table, the tiniest width of the corner separating them. It would be so easy to slide his leg forward and bump her knee, so very easy to let his hand move from her fingernail to her hand and then make a slow ascent up her arm. He wouldn’t even have to stretch.

  Nor would he have to channel his inner gymnast to lean across the tiny spit of laminate and kiss her. Gently at first, light and casual, slowly feeling his way into this until she decided which way they should go next.

  Except that even as the thought tiptoed through his mind, she grabbed her papers and stood up, so fast that Lulu actually opened an eye.

  If she was psychic, he was dead.

  “Well. Thanks. You’ve given me some great suggestions, and I really appreciate it, but I should probably let you get back to—whatever.” She rose from the table and moved toward the door. All business. On a mission.

  “Oh!” She stopped suddenly, three steps before the door. Thank God he’d been hanging back to watch the sway of her cheeks. Otherwise he would have landed flush against her.

  Which probably shouldn’t sound as enticing as it did.

  “This photo.” Her pink-tipped finger hovered over the glass of one of the few pictures in the room that didn’t feature Cady. “It’s...jeez. It has such a feeling to it. The way that door is covered by the vines, like it’s some dangerous secret.” Her laugh was pure self-deprecation. “It sounds so cheesy, but it’s really mesmerizing.”

  “Thanks.”

  She twisted around, eyes wide. “Did you take this?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  “Xander!” She looked from him to the photo and back again. “This is wonderful. Mysterious and enticing and forbidden...you have it all there. I don’t know how, but...wow.”

  It shouldn’t matter that she’d honed in on the precise emotions he’d tried to convey when he took the picture. He shouldn’t feel like giving the universe a giant high five that she was the first one to catch what he’d been putting out there.

  But he couldn’t stop himself from doing a tiny fist pump in the air when she turned back to the photo.

  “Where did you take this?”

  “Oh, that old place out on Becker. The one you can just see from Route 31. But only in winter when there’s no leaves.”

  “Huh. I never... Wait.” Her head snapped up. “You mean the Cline place?”

  He was pretty sure that was the name Ian had used when Xander asked about it. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Big brick place, lots of outbuildings? You have to go down Shannette Road to get to it?”

  “That’s it. You’ve been there?”

  “No.”

  If he hadn’t got a clue from the clipped tone, he would have from the way she eyeballed him like he was some kind of biology project. “You know that nobody goes there, right? Except teenagers doing things they can’t do at home.”

  Yeah, he’d got that idea from the bottles he’d spotted lying around. “I figured that might be the case.”

  “What on earth made you go there?”

  How to explain something he didn’t fully understand himself? “It looked... I don’t know. Interesting. And overgrown and everything, so, lots of good shots.”

  “Until you crash through a rotting floor and break your camera. Not to mention your head.”

  “I take Lulu with me.”

  She shifted her attention to the snoozing dog. “Oh yeah. I see how she’d be a real help.”

  “Well, she’s better than Lassie. She only helped when Timmy fell down a well. Anything else and the kid was out of luck.”

  A smothered snicker was his reward. He suspected she would have gone full-out guffaw if she hadn’t felt obliged to lecture him.

  Sure enough, her next sentence continued the warnings.

  “Seriously, Xander. You really shouldn’t go there. Not alone, at least.”

  “I’m careful.”

  “Really.”

  She didn’t have to say it. He could see the question in her mind, as clear as if he had developed abilities he didn’t believe in: As careful as you were when you broke the law?

  Or maybe that was just his brain filling in the words his mother would say if she knew about his explorations.

  “Well,” she said, turning back to the photo, “I guess I can’t be too hard on you, seeing as I like this so much. But don’t go again, okay?”

  “Would you worry?”

  Not a good question. He knew it. But damn it, a man needed some kind of clue.

  “Of course. You’re my friend. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” She reached for the door and tossed a grin over her shoulder. “Especially when I might need you to give my résumé another tweak.”

  “I feel so used.”

  “You should.”

  He should also feel a lot less excited at the prospect.

  But he knew that wasn’t happening.

  * * *

  SHE WAS ALMOST home free.

  Heather waited at the door to the garage while Xander went in to get the bike. Almost done. Just a couple more minutes and she would be riding old Johnny back to her place, her legs settling into the familiar tempo and the river breeze in her hair.

  Except her pulse had fallen into a totally different rhythm. And no breeze could cool the low-level heat that had built inside her throughout her time at Xander’s table.

  She had hoped—prayed—that heading outside, away from the potent blend of privacy and proximity, would slap some sense into her. But then she had seen the photo, whispering to her about hidden treasures begging to be uncovered. And then he had brushed past her on the way into the garage, and all the little hairs on her arm had stood up.

  And now she couldn’t see anything but him.

  The way his T-shirt hugged the muscles in his arms and chest when he picked up the bike with ease. The little bit of skin she could see when the shirt pulled away from his jeans, revealing what she was pretty sure was a tattoo. Either that or Cady had attacked him
with Magic Markers.

  But that was as far as she was going to explore. He was pushing the bike toward her. At any moment, he would emerge from the garage, and she would ride off into the sunshine alone.

  Except when he glanced her way, he stopped walking.

  And when she met his gaze, she stopped breathing.

  For one crazy moment, she couldn’t move. Except—no. She could.

  The wrong way.

  Her stupid foot had inched her forward. Into the garage. Into the shadows. Away from the world.

  Closer to Xander.

  She had taken one full step before it registered. She took another while her body was catching up to her brain.

  Then she took a deep breath and slammed into a wall of common sense.

  “Here. I can get it.” She walked briskly toward the bike, took up residence on the opposite side from him and gripped the handlebars.

  Except he didn’t let go.

  And damn, she could feel every breath he took, all through her.

  “Heather...”

  She had to get out. Now.

  “Thanks for all your help,” she said, and pushed the bike out the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HEATHER’S FAVORITE COUNSELOR once told her that sooner or later, everybody screwed up. The real test of character was in what they did next.

  Which was why Heather spent the following week staying far, far away from anyplace where she might possibly run into Xander.

  Because a woman who was trying to convince her ex to even up the custody arrangement—a woman who wanted to make sure her child had a solid, stable life—probably shouldn’t find herself remembering the sound of a man’s laughter long after it had burst out of him. Even if—especially if—that woman hadn’t laughed with a man in a long, long time.

  So a week after she submitted the résumé, when she received a request for an interview, she tamped down the urge to call him with the news. Email would be fine. And a couple of hours later when a call came in from his number, she deliberately let it go to voice mail.

  The best thing she could do—for herself, for Millie, for Xander, too—would be to keep him on the fringes of her life.

  To keep him as a satellite.

  What she really needed to do was make a plan. She had raced home from work as fast as traffic would allow, made herself a grilled cheese sandwich and settled in at her kitchen table with her laptop and a notebook. Step one was to review the materials that had accompanied the email.

  The selection process will go as follows:

  Qualified applicants will have one month to prepare a sample plan for a community celebration.

  Approximately one week after submitting the sample, applicants will be expected to discuss their vision for the Comeback Cove Tourism Department in an interview.

  Second round interviews will take place approximately two weeks after the completion of the first round.

  Assuming a qualified candidate has been found, the position is expected to commence in September.

  Followed, of course, by the standard disclaimer that submissions would become the property of the town and the strong recommendation that it not be based on any actual events currently held in Comeback Cove.

  Translation: “We want to see your work, but we don’t want you to sue us if we end up using something along these lines.”

  She could live with that. It covered the town’s behind, and it gave her freedom to design an event she would love to see being commemorated—a celebration of the rumrunners who had spurred the town’s growth during Prohibition. There was something about a town growing out of illegal activity that appealed to her. It was like the whole town was the ultimate second chance story, and Heather was definitely about second chances. Especially one that also included a pair of ill-fated local lovers and the legend of a treasure they had left behind. Because who didn’t love a Romeo and Juliet fairy tale?

  For a moment, right after she got the email, she had briefly considered immediately approaching Hank about custody, but she made herself hold off. Much as she wanted to follow through on her promise to Millie now, logic told her to get her ducks in order first.

  Step by step. One piece at a time. That was how she had clawed her way back to this point, and that was how she would continue.

  She opened a new, blank notebook and grinned. Eventually she would have to do all the support tasks associated with preparing such a campaign, market research and demographics and comparisons to events in neighboring towns. But for tonight, she had given herself free rein to daydream. To brainstorm. To simply create.

  It was playtime.

  Half an hour later she was lost in the process, scribbling notes as fast as she could, barely able to keep up with the firing in her brain. God, this felt good. The fatigue of work long forgotten, she moved from the table to the sofa, her feet tucked behind her as she drew pictures in the margins. There was an image lodged in her brain. She couldn’t identify it, but the image flitted in and out of her awareness, whispering that it was the perfect representation of what she wanted to create.

  “Hidden things.” She bit down on the end of her pen. “Buried things. Undiscovered things. Secret—”

  Her phone rang. She grabbed it from the coffee table, glanced at the display and went cold.

  “Travis?”

  “Hey, little sister!” Travis’s voice was booming and hearty, bearing none of the tenseness that had dominated their last conversation. She let out her breath—not completely, because with Travis, it was always better to hold a little in reserve—and propped her feet on the table.

  “Long time no hear,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Not much. I figured it’d been a while since I called. Had to make sure you were still alive.”

  The fact that he was the one more likely to risk losing life or freedom seemed to be lost on him.

  “Everything’s good here. Except the other day, Millie brought home a review sheet for science that I could barely understand, and this is just grade four. I’m already getting the heebie-jeebies at the thought of high-school homework.”

  “Same old Heather. Still overthinking everything and expecting the worst.”

  Right. Because the worst had never, ever happened with Travis.

  She could picture him stretched out in some kitchen chair, his arm hooked over the back as he stared out a window at whatever vista he might be seeing these days.

  She wasn’t going to ask. Ignorance was the closest she could ever come to bliss.

  “Go ahead and laugh at me, but do you know anything about—what was it—amplitude?”

  “Not a bit,” he answered cheerfully. “But here’s what I do know. In the time you spend freaking out, Millie will have her own review sheet planned out, color coded and footnoted. That kid has enough brains for you, me and the rest of the family.”

  Considering that the rest of the family was the father—fathers?—they had never known, and the mother who they would rather not know, Heather thought his praise could have been pitched a little higher.

  Nevertheless, it was good to hear from him. It was even better that he was calling from his own phone instead of the prisoner pay phone like last time. “What are you...” She stopped. No. She didn’t want to ask what he was doing these days.

  “Millie’s in Girl Guides.”

  “She selling lots of cookies?”

  “Oh please. There was a North family thing before Easter, and she sold enough boxes there to fund the troop for six months. Did I tell you she’s a big sister now? Hank and his wife, Brynn, had a little boy a couple of months ago.”

  “Hank? Seriously? I thought he was too old for that kind of nonsense.”

  “He’s only a year older than me, doofus. S
o that means he’s two years younger than you.”

  “Yeah, but I know I’m too old for that kind of nonsense.”

  She laughed, but there was a layer of wistfulness that she couldn’t quite hold back. Travis would have been a great dad. At least, he’d been an awesome big brother, and she was pretty sure that was a decent indicator.

  “Well, congratulate him for me. So what have they got you working on at your fancy-pants job, there, Heather?”

  She filled him in on some of the big picture stuff—a new account here, a new employee there—and told a few stories about some of her coworkers. He laughed in all the right places and gave her a few excellent comeback lines to use should the occasion ever arise. All the while, she fidgeted with her notebook and wished she could tell him about the things that really mattered.

  Experience had taught her it would be a waste of time.

  Travis would try to empathize, but their lives were too different. How was someone supposed to understand how it felt to negotiate shared custody when his life was spent negotiating plea bargains?

  He told her a few safe stories, asked if she’d heard from any of their cousins. He didn’t bother asking about their mother. Neither of them had done that for years. Probably because they were afraid that the other would actually have heard from her, and then they would be back on the “contact her–stay the hell away from her” hamster wheel.

  “Listen,” he said after a few minutes, “I should get going. I’ve got a sweet job working as a bouncer at a friend’s bar, and it’s almost time to report for duty.”

  A bouncer. Well—at least it was legal.

  Probably.

  “Sure.” And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she blurted out, “Trav...you’re okay, aren’t you?”

  “Right as rain, sunshine.”

  Yeah. Like she hadn’t heard that line too many times to count.

  “But listen, Heather—how about you? Are you okay? With, you know, Hank and his new kid and everything?”

  Oh God. Everything that had happened in their lives and he was still the big brother who tried to stand between her and the world. Still the big brother who understood, better than she had, why their mother’s latest boyfriend had been so interested in fourteen-year-old Heather. Still the same big brother who had walked in on that boyfriend pressing Heather into a corner and ordering her to be quiet.