Cavanaugh

by Jody Kaye

  Eric’s thin lips flatten to a firm line. “The introduction was made. If you aren’t pleased with the company, I still expect you to act like a civilized young lady before parting ways at the end of the evening. Your behavior reflected poorly on me as well as you and it embarrassed the people with whom I do business. Furthermore, you haven’t brought home a single young man since you were in high school. While their backgrounds were questionable, you were young enough at the time for me to ignore that.” Her father said it as if a boy with a bad background was better than no boy at all, but Rose knew better. Eric was a snob.

  Rose rolled her eyes. There was nothing wrong with those boys beyond their parent’s lack of status in the community. From the point Rose started dating, she’d found a direct correlation between the amount of money that her boyfriends had, her father’s acceptance of them, and the likelihood they felt entitled to get into her pants.

  The “poor” boys—the ones who saved every penny they’d earned from a newspaper route since they were ten to buy jalopies—had a better understanding of how to read a woman than anyone she’d ever met. Those were the boys who picked bunches of daisies for Rose by the side of the road or bundled bouquets of trimmings from gardens their mothers tended with thin ribbons.

  “God forbid, Daddy, that someone like me for me.”

  “You never give anyone the chance.” Her father placed several files in his attaché case, clicking the locks closed with his thumbs.

  “What’s the point? You’ve already given them a million reasons before we ever meet.”

  “Honestly, Rose. Look upon your situation with a shred of maturity, and start acting like the adult that you are.” He straightened his suit’s lapels, snagging the briefcase from the desk and heading for the foyer.

  “I’m mature enough to raise a family, but not responsible enough to hold a position in the company that you’re planning to bring my future husband on board with?” Rose posed the question as she scampered out of the office.

  Eric took the first step going down the staircase. “We’re back to this again? I don’t have time to waste on your antics. My decisions are to secure the future. You fail to give me a reason to trust you. Especially in circumstances like what happened at the club when I have to put out fires you’ve created. There’s too much at stake.”

  “It’s not fair. You haven’t given me a chance to prove—”

  Rose swayed back on the last tread as Eric turned on his heel on the marble floor. “…To my employees that you are just as spoiled and selfish as Mr. Midgett and his son believe you are? This conversation is over. I’ve been distracted enough for one day and need to get to the office.”

  He left via the grand entry to her mausoleum without the courtesy of a goodbye.

  Upon hearing Eric’s car pull away, Rose screamed through gritted teeth and stomped the rest of the way down the staircase.

  She should be glad that there wasn’t much that Eric could do to punish her now that she was grown. His reprimands became weaker with each passing year as if he didn’t bother to care as long as she stayed out of his way. In all honesty, Rose wasn’t sure why he even bothered with these stoic little chats anymore. She wound up more upset waiting for him to approach sore subjects than he ever let on being.

  There was a distinct likelihood that he’d work late to make up for his meeting with Cavanaugh this morning. With the kitchen in disrepair, Rose may not see hide nor hair of the man for days on end. Fine by her. He was deaf to what she had to say anyway.

  Rose padded across the cool tile into the dining room, poured coffee into a squat china teacup, and chose a fluffy muffin from a covered basket. Then she took both back out to the foyer where she placed the cup on a side table and sat down on a backless velvet couch. She slouched against the wall while peeling the liner from the baked good, letting her feet swing back and forth under the stool. They grazed the marble but found no traction. Meanwhile, Rose masticated vigorously, focusing on the grand staircase that spiraled up the far wall.

  As a young child, she sat dutifully on that first step waiting for her daddy to come home from work. He’d walk in the door and she’d jump into his outstretched arms. There was such joy in the way Eric once acted toward Rose and he’d shown true affection toward her mother. Rose made a fatal mistake bringing her into the argument.

  “Guess I’ll never be like either of you,” she muttered with her mouth full. Careful not to get crumbs anywhere, Rose placed the remaining quarter of the muffin down and sipped her sugar-laden coffee. There was no damn way that she’d lower herself to be a simple housewife given her knowledge of Kingsbrier’s holdings, yet the sole person left to make proud blocked her the path to success.

  She wiggled back on the seat, cocooning herself even smaller under the vaulted ceiling of the two-story room. Rose remained quiet, pondering why she’d come home after college. There was nothing keeping her at Kingsbrier.

  “Give me twenty and I’ll be back,” Ross called over his shoulder not noticing Rose was there as he jogged by. His steel-toed boots squeaked across the marble foyer and he reached for the door handle.

  “Wait!” she called, sitting up.

  “What can I do to help you, miss?”

  “What are you doing here? You let me believe you were with the stock contractor, riding on the circuit.” She stood, straightening her long robe.

  “I did no such thing. We never spoke of my job. Only thing I brought up was having to work in the morning. Whatever you extrapolated from that is your own misconception.”

  Extrapolated? Rose blinked a few times. Few riders chose that word to use in a sentence. His vocabulary blew away any preconceived notions of who Ross Cavanaugh was, making Rose want to learn all the things she didn’t know about this man. Which was a decent amount given twelve hours ago he was no more than a cowboy.

  “But you didn’t tell me who you were.”

  “Sure I did, Rose.”

  Ross tightened his firm grip on the door latch. This was bad. He’d never thought he’d see her again let alone considered that she’d be the daughter of his next client.

  “You never said you were Ross Cavanaugh.”

  “Would you have known who I was? You didn’t even seem to recall that the house was being renovated… Something tells me, Rose, that if you did put two and two together last night, that you’d have introduced yourself to me as Miss Kingsbrier. Am I right?” Ross approached Rose with effortless confidence.

  Rose marched toward to the centermost point of the foyer meeting him half-way. She bit the inside of her cheek, looked into his green eyes and felt rather small. His assertion was unfair. Possibly true if she thought it might get him to spend a little longer with her. But what gave Ross the right to think she was high and mighty before they even shook hands?

  “If this is your company then why were you riding this weekend?” she asked, her tone bordering on belligerent.

  “Does your father play golf?”

  “Yes.” She crossed her arms but then shook her head confused as they dropped. “Wait, why, what?”

  “He has a job and he has a sport. So do I.”

  “I beg to differ. Eric plays golf for business reasons. Deals are made on the links and sealed at the nineteenth hole.” She slipped her hands into her pockets cocking her head to focus on him with one squinted eye. “Wouldn’t a pick-up game of basketball or a baseball league be a little safer?”

  Ross took two paces closer, leaning into Rose’s ear. “Sure it would, but not nearly as exciting.”

  Rose fish-mouthed again trying to find a catchy come-back. The crew foreman, in need of an extra hand, called Ross back to the kitchen. Without another word, Ross turned from Rose, leaving her scowling the same way Eric had done earlier.

  Rose stomped across the cool stone floor, down the hall behind the dining room and pushed back blue tarp curtain to follow him into the kitchen. The level of destruction that had already taken place was amazing.

  Every applia
nce was missing. The top cabinets were gone, leaving scuff marks on the unpainted wall beneath. The counters on the bottom—that, since Rose was a little girl, she’d made peanut butter with gooey honey sandwiches on— had been removed. A man in paint-splattered jeans held onto to the first set of lower cabinets, rocking them back and forth.

  Rose didn’t have time to ask who’d hauled off the pots and pans that sat behind those doors or where they’d disappeared to. They were probably stacked in boxes in the summer kitchen, whose entrance through the pantry was now hidden behind another blue tarp so that as much dust and debris as possible didn’t float into the other rooms. A rubber garbage can sat to Rose’s left filled to the brim with broken squares of dated ceramic tile. Beyond that, the casements to windows that faced the pool were being popped off. Debris littered every inch of the floor.

  “Lift on three—” Rose caught Ross’s silhouette in her peripheral vision where he’d squatted to help. “One. Two.”

  The three came with a loud crack that sent Rose stumbling backward.

  “Ow!” Rose lifted her foot. A small chunk of glass had embedded itself in the pad.

  “What were you thinking coming in here with no shoes on?” Ross shook his head.

  “My kitchen isn’t normally a disaster!” Her fingers shook as she stood on one leg reaching toward the glinting sliver.

  “Stop. I’ll get it for you. All I need is for you to fall or step on something else.”

  Rose glared at Ross, demanding he retract the insinuation that she was an idiot.

  He marched toward her, looping one arm behind her back and the other under her legs and scooping her up.

  “Put me down!” Rose grabbed onto the ends of her robe that were now flying in the air and tried to tuck the extra fabric up under her bottom to no avail. She wiggled and squirmed while Ross insisted that if she’d be still that they’d get out of the kitchen quicker.

  “Christ, woman, I’m trying to help. Are you always this stubborn? ”

  “Yes!” she announced with all the attitude she could muster.

  “It was a rhetorical question. I’d figured that out already. Now sit before you do yourself any more damage.” He placed her back down on the velvet bench and allowed Rose to adjust her nightclothes. “Nobody saw anything,” he reassured her with a wink which made Rose’s scowl harden. “Lift up your foot.” The glass wasn’t in too deep. There was enough on the outside that it was easy to pick out. “You’re going to need some antibiotic cream and a bandage. I can get those from my truck.”

  “We have some, thank you.” She said it with a little too much uppity cynicism.

  Ross backed off, standing and putting his hands on his hips. He’d been inclined to help her hobble up the steps, but now wasn’t so sure she’d let him.

  “Where’s your friend, by the way. I saw her when we arrived.”

  “Off with Rodger,” Rose replied, assuming it was true since where else would Lily Anne be.

  “Does she live here too?”

  “Only for the summer. What difference does it make?” She rubbed the sore spot, getting a slight amount of blood on her finger. She winced releasing the pressure and then put her thumb back against the sore.

  “You offered an introduction.”

  “Lil has a boyfriend. My cousin, as a matter of fact.”

  “I’m not expecting to ask the girl out on a date.”

  “Then why do you need to know her?”

  “Because she lives here—for however long. This is my current job site. I’m trying to be sociable, Rose. So that if Lil needs anything we’ve actually met before I’m taking a sliver out of her foot too.”

  “She’s the type to wear shoes.”

  “Of the two of you, somehow I’m not surprised.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m kidding.” Ross took a seat next to her. “You’re easy to get a rise out of, princess.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said offended.

  “It was the whole staircase and glass thing… Cinderella?”

  “I still don’t like it.” She was more than what surrounded her. “Why are you teasing me?”

  “It’s fun. You banter back. I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings. You seemed like the type who could take it.”

  “You don’t know me from Adam.” Their brief time together the night before didn’t count. Nor did the sidelong glances at the fair.

  His palm appeared in front of her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting to know you,” he said, eyes dancing. “Ross Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh Construction at your service. And you are?”

  “Rose.”

  “Rose? Just Rose?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, Just Rose.” With a humbleness about him, Ross stood to leave making Rose sure that she understood he wasn’t annoyed by her previous pretentious response. He’d hit a nerve and wanted to make amends. “I’m going to go get my first aid kit from the truck. You sit here and finish your breakfast. Keep up your strength up and all after being wounded.” He noted her full cup of coffee and the muffin remnants. After seeing Rose turn ghost white when she was going to remove the glass out herself the sugar would do her good.

  “I don’t want it anymore.”

  “Seems a shame to let that go to waste.” They smell real good.

  “There’s a basket full in the dining room. After you get that bandage, take some to your crew.”

  “You done miss ‘em, baby girl. That mighty fine young man was just in here.”

  Rose tossed her shoulders back. An attractive man working in her home had zero bearing on her.

  “Oh, yeah? That the way it’s going to be? Actin’ like a boy with eyes like that don’t belong on the silver screen. I’m no fool. You’re givin’ away my muffins each morning like this is a donut shop to get on his good side. Not that there seems to be a bad side. He’s pretty to look at coming and going!” Benita hooted and then regained her seriousness. “You lucky your daddy don’t find out how much they been eatin’ this week.”

  “It’s not like he’s going to dock your pay for a dozen muffins, Benita. Eric’s not even around to realize you’re helping those workers. I think you’re trying to pin it on me anyway. You’d have given them the day-olds.”

  “Stop calling your father by his first name. It’s disrespectful… And there ain’t no ‘day-old’s’ here. This ain’t no bakery,” the middle-aged housekeeper said. A sly wink curled up the corner of her naturally-colored Maybelline pink full lips.

  “So what does happen to what’s leftover? I take one muffin. Eric takes one and Lil does too. That still leaves a full basket by my math.”

  Benita fake scowled, admonishing, “You too smart for your own good.”

  Rose stayed silent, looking straight into the older woman’s kind face. Her shoulder length dark hair was pulled into a sleek ponytail at the base of her hairline. Rose noticed the telltale wrinkles around her deep-set eyes and the subtle beginnings of turkey neck made her touch her own throat. Even though this was not the woman who bore her, she was more attached to Benita than to any other member of her family.

  “I freeze ‘em and take the rest to church.” Benita shook her head, unwilling to accept attitude from a child that she raised. It didn’t matter that Rose was now twenty-two.

  “I figured it was that or the food pantry. As long as they aren’t going to waste.” She shrugged and settled herself on a stool to watch Benita putter around the summer kitchen. “Are you going to have enough for services this week? I could always help you make more.”

  “We ain’t done that in a while now, has we? It’s a little cramped in here, but we’ll make due. What kind you be wanting? It’s a sucker’s bet that we won’t lose any to that sweet tooth of yours. It’s a wonder your teeth don’t rot out of your mouth, sugah.”

  “Banana nut,” Rose requested sheepishly. “You can’t blame me for loving your baked goods, Benita. After all, you are t
he one who makes them for me. Besides, banning me from pastry would make my system all wonky. All those sweets keep me from being as miserable as everyone accuses me of.”

  “Uh-huh,” Benita commented as if it was the biggest load of malarkey that Rose had ever tried to put past her. “Like C&H is a prescription to honey a demon,” she muttered, then returned to the normal cadence of her voice. “Mark my words, baby girl, someday you’re going to be as big as a house if you don’t stop stuffing your pie hole.”

  “Marie Antoinette ate cake.”

  “Marie Antoinette got her head chopped off before she went through the change. This is modern day America. Hit forty and you’re going to look like you ate nothin’ but cake your entire life.” The woman motioned with a spatula to how her once trim backside had expanded in the past decade. “And she said ‘let them eat cake’, even I know that. Did you not finish four years of college?”

  “I studied economics, not French History.”

  Benita harrumphed, handing Rose an apron and helping her tie the back once it was over the child’s head.

  Baking in the small room meant they were down to a single oven. Benita was a stickler, refusing to place no more than a dozen in at a time at three-hundred-fifty degrees so that they cooked to perfection. It took several hours to bake and cool the replacement portion they’d donate. By the time they placed the last tin on the rack, Rose had gone to find an old box fan to bring the temperature down in the scorching room. She flopped down on the stool, dripping sweat, and snagged a manila envelope from the soapstone countertop nearby.

  “That’s the kitchen plans Mr. Cavanaugh dropped by for your daddy,” Benita mumbled. It was clear she wasn’t impressed.