Miss. Easygoing. Sunshine.
She sensed her eyes grow a bit stormy just looking at him. Thunder grumbled in the distance.
To some degree, that’s what really irked her in all this. Easygoing was a part of her identity, yet this man riled her up. The whole Leake family crammed inside her parents’ house over Christmas, and what did she do while her stepsiblings grumbled about having to share a bedroom with their toddlers? Snagged a blanket and said, “No big deal, guys. I’ll just hunker down on the rug.” Whenever Stephen forced the cast to stay late just to nail down one scene? “Sure. No prob, Boss,” was Bree’s response while everyone else onstage moaned.
One day her tenth-grade teacher said the dictionary definition of easygoing was simply this: “Bree Leake.”
Miss Easygoing.
And here this man waltzed in, pulling out her very identity from beneath her as though she didn’t deserve it.
But really, no matter how relaxed a girl was, there came a time when enough was enough. That moment came two mornings ago, at 9:36 a.m., when he reached down a hand to help her up from Russell’s latest tackle. She’d wiped the saliva slime out of her eyes and she saw it: those big brown eyes batting back tears of mirth.
That was the moment she snapped.
And now? Now her number-one goal was to get him to fix the fence line while providing him with the least useful information possible.
Bree adjusted the inflated pillow beneath her tailbone. “Well, here is what I do know: Mr. Richardson is fairly bald. And short,” Bree said.
Chip paused in his shoveling. “Short.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“How short?”
“Oh, shorter than the average man. But definitely taller than some others.” She paused at his frown. “Think . . . LeBron James.”
His brow rose.
“Minus a foot or two.”
He set his foot on the shovel. “A foot. Or two. Right. Where’s he go around here to eat?”
“Why—are you planning to stalk him?”
He grinned. “I’ve got a business approximately four weeks old, and I’m working out of an empty bedroom. So, yeah, maybe. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Bree started to lean forward, then winced and straightened. “And how exactly is that going to work? You’re just going to slip your business card in his wineglass?”
“I was thinking butter plate, but something like that.”
“Oh good. And I suppose your girlfriend will do the distracting. With her looks she’ll make the perfect accomplice.”
There was more of an edge in her tone than she’d meant to convey. Bree shut her mouth. Chip opened his but then shut it again.
“So . . . back to Mr. Richardson,” he said.
Bree’s shoulders eased.
She paused for a moment, then lifted her finger as though stumbling across something of vital importance. “I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve never seen him eating chicken. Or steak.”
She also hadn’t ever seen him eat anything, but she wasn’t about to get tangled in technicalities.
His brow furrowed. “What, like, he’s a vegetarian?”
It was sad, really. You could practically see the wheels inside his head churning, flipping through his mental yellow pages for vegetarian restaurants in town.
She pointed at the ground. “Are you digging?”
He raised a brow. “Are you answering?”
“Yes,” she replied promptly, and he flung more dirt. “He is definitely a vegetarian . . . unless I’m incorrect . . . which is a tiny, infinitesimal possibility.”
“Right.” He dug farther down the line, then paused, eyeing her. “So he’s a vegetarian, unless he’s not.”
Bree nodded fervently. “Exactly. You got it.”
He waited a moment.
Then two.
Then he pushed the shovel into the sodden ground.
Resting one boot on the blade, he wiped his perfectly clear, sweatless forehead. “Well I’m beat.” He clapped his hands together. “Sun’s going down. I’d say this is enough for today.”
“Wait. What?”
He turned around and whistled. “Russ! Who wants to go for a walk?”
Russell jumped up.
Bree’s eyes widened. “No, no. You don’t need to—”
Chip reached down for the dog’s collar. “Now let’s just get this nasty collar off you, buddy. Can’t be going on a walk when it’s trying to zap you.” He gave Russell’s side a hearty rub. “How about we try for some of that free-range walking we talked about, too, huh? You don’t need an old leash holding you back.”
“You keep the leash,” Bree said. “Leashes are good.”
Chip arched his head back to flash her a smile. “You know, Evie is the one who enlightened me about leashes being a form of animal cruelty. Limiting them in their natural habitat—”
“We live in a cul-de-sac, Chip. In a suburb—”
“Denying his primal right to yield to his desire to roam the land—”
“I am his desire. He desires nothing but me.”
Chip winked. “That must feel good. Doesn’t it?”
Bree stiffened.
He wouldn’t do it.
She was sitting on a plastic doughnut. Surely he wouldn’t do it.
Darn him, his hand actually started to slip the shock collar over Russell’s head.
Bree put up a finger. “Now hold on just a minute. Let’s not be so hasty,” she said, pushing herself up. She jutted her chin toward her front porch, then back to the impatient dog. She’d never make it in time. “I can think of loads more to say about Mr. Richardson while you work.”
Chip raised his brow, but the collar kept sliding across the dog’s fur. “I don’t know. It’s been a long day for both of us. You’re tired . . . I’m tired . . .”
“No, really! Loads of stuff.” Russell pawed the grass while Bree bent to snatch up her cushion. “Like . . .” She tried to think. “Like . . . like how he always wears a fedora.”
He lowered his brow. “C’mon, Bree. We both know that’s not news.”
“And he goes everywhere with his wife.”
Russell yelped, then turned his neck as though to yank off the collar himself.
“And . . .” She racked her brain. “And . . .”
And then something surprising happened. Mr. Richardson’s face came to mind along with the last words she heard him speak before she retreated from the gala weeks ago.
Huh.
Well. Well. Well.
A smile crept up her lips.
Bingo.
“Actually,” she said, her voice rising, “as it just so happens, I do know something about the bid. Something important.”
Suddenly Russell knocking her over and officially breaking her tailbone no longer mattered so much. Now, armed with truly valuable information, she felt confident enough to shift her weight to one hip as she crossed her arms without a care in the world.
Chip must’ve known it too, because he started tugging the collar back down, the wry grin on his face melting at her victorious smirk.
His teasing tone dropped. “What do you know?”
The dog started nudging his knees.
“Oh, you know. Things.” Bree turned on her heel.
She walked through the yard and opened the screen door.
“What do you know?” he called after her.
The thrill of knowing she had something, something, over that man was worth a dozen dog knockdowns.
“Bree. Please.”
She halted. There was something about the way her name came from his lips. It triggered an odd eruption of emotions so tangled she could hardly unravel them. Irritation, defiance, the complete and utter joy of winning, of course, but almost . . . No, she must’ve misunderstood herself. There was no possible way she had felt . . . a flutter.
She turned with her hand on the handle. Frowned.
And yet there it was again, as she met his brown eyes. The wrinkle acro
ss his typically smooth, carefree forehead. The tautness of his shirt against his chest as he inhaled and then paused, holding his breath for her answer.
She could win right now. Walk inside and slam that door shut behind her. Win.
Maybe in her older years she would think back on this moment and fondly recall the irrepressible joy as she shut the door and watched his face fall. She would laugh to herself, alone in a rocking chair, while she imagined him somewhere small and seedy, driven mad after years of wondering just what secret she refused to share. A lonely, bitter old man in his own rocking chair somewhere—
She shook her head.
She was really losing it.
“You get this fence moved by midnight, and I’ll tell you.”
He started to reply and she threw up a hand to stop him.
“Midnight. Not one millisecond past.”
And just to prove to herself she still had some guts in her, she slammed the screen door behind her.
She pushed the front door shut and immediately began pacing the length of the eight-by-eleven-foot rug.
Lifting her gaze to the window, she saw Chip shoveling down the median, pulling up the narrow line of soil. His arms worked swiftly now, muscles working with such seamless rhythm the action seemed second nature. As though he’d been shoveling, and hammering, and wearing that slim-fitting, holey long-sleeve shirt all his life.
He looked up and met her eyes through the window.
There it was again. That flutter.
She practically jumped into the kitchen.
Caffeine.
It was definitely time for caffeine.
Bree walked into the small square kitchen overlooking the Appalachian Mountains. Like everything else in the house, it was dated, black-and-white tiles peeking out from the spaces teal area rugs didn’t cover. She reached above the stove for her coffee mug sitting on the open cabinetry and set it beside the sugar jar. She set the percolator in the sink and turned on the tap. Water flowed, though for the first time in days she barely registered the relief she had felt at seeing it rush—ice cold or otherwise—so steadily.
She glanced around the kitchen, at all the articles that were not hers. She’d come to this house with a duffel bag. It’d taken her six months to buy a coffee mug.
Nobody at home had said it, but she knew they thought she wouldn’t make it a month beyond Nana’s passing before turning tail and heading home. They didn’t think she had it in her to stay away from Gatlinburg. They also didn’t think she had it in her to stick with her job. Why would they? She had never worked long at any one place before. Now, it seemed, the choice to leave the Barter was taken before she had the chance to run.
Bree rubbed her toe against the thick mat in front of the sink still filled with yesterday’s dishes. The dishwasher had gone last Thursday, because Bree didn’t get a say, because she didn’t technically own it, because Evie had oh so conveniently bought it herself after Nana died.
The window of the kitchen door seemed to flash at her, a siren luring her to peek through. Just to see, for a moment, what that bizarre reaction was when she’d looked at him. Just to see if it would happen again.
Because of course, that was all it was. An experiment.
Against the unruly, rude-through-his-charm neighbor. Who had a girlfriend.
She took another step, the fibers soft against her bare feet.
Another.
She reached the window and ever so casually glanced out.
His hedges were directly opposite.
She inched her gaze left.
And the cars.
Left farther.
And the dumb dog.
Left farther.
And there he was, shoveling, half the median overturned. Him and his perfectly unkempt-yet-kempt hair, and that holey shirt of his.
As if sensing her, he started to look up, and she turned on her heel.
The percolator light turned on, and she poured the steaming coffee in her mug. The clock on the stove said it was 7:02 p.m. The sun’s last beams filtered through the window, and she watched it melt into the blue hue of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She frowned as the pink clouds started to dim.
Abingdon was still new to her. She had less than a bicycle to her name and was as valuable as a mannequin onstage—and even that was being ripped away. Her housemate was becoming an off-the-grid junkie, a maniacal dog wanted to kill her, and a taunting, handsome-yet-maddening neighbor lived twenty feet away. She should leave now.
She could.
She could leave the house to Evie and get out now.
Her fingers slid across the laminate counter as she watched the sky.
Even now, though, she could hear Nana’s words in her ear. Feel the press of her hugs, the smell of oatmeal-raisin cookies wafting from the old stove right where she stood the first time Nana met her as an eleven-year-old stepgranddaughter. She could smell the incoming rain swirling from those clouds hanging over the Blue Ridge Mountains. See them both slipping on rain boots to splash in the puddles that came. Her eyes drifted to the umbrella stand where the old, frayed polka-dot umbrella of her childhood still stood beside Nana’s tattered one.
She didn’t want to get rid of it.
She never would get rid of it.
Nana’s love still lived in this home. Though Bree had merged with her stepfather’s family at the ripe age of eleven, and Nana had a dozen full-blooded grandkids, Bree had never felt like anything besides Nana’s own granddaughter. Bree had taken to her more than any of the others. Partly because they were so similar. Partly because, unlike the other grandkids, she never took Nana for granted. And partly, she suspected, because Nana had known what it was like to merge with the unconditional love of another family.
Some kids went to camp in the summer. But Bree? Here was where she went. Even through her teen years, this was where she always went.
How could she ever let this place, these memories, go?
Her throat stung, and she swallowed a sip of coffee to force it away. She gave the old laminate a final tap.
Okay then. New plan.
She just had to figure out a new job. Yes, a new job. If she wanted to stay in Abingdon, in this wonderful old house, then that was exactly what she needed.
Bree walked back into the living room with purpose, armed with her laptop. She looked around and suspected their furnishings were disappearing a little at a time, as Evie had taken to quipping, “If it’s made of plastic, it’s not fantastic,” and “Empty the home, fill the heart,” from her latest book, Minimalist Life for Dummies. She toted things to their overflowing trash can daily; neighbors were starting to rummage at night like raccoons. Evie seemed to be missing a vital point in the minimalist lifestyle, though, because as each frying pan and dining room chair headed out the door, the UPS man brought packages of books and essential oils and beekeeping starter kits and other “minimalist essentials” now piling up in corners.
Bree moved to the couch (which she had dragged back from the street, twice) and set her laptop on her knees. She opened her browser and double-clicked on a familiar desktop document.
The List.
She had created The List three years ago, two months after her thirtieth birthday, when Cassie and her mother banded together to convince Bree to visit a career counselor.
She’d learned a lot in those three sessions. One of the lessons was to write everything down. Master the résumé, keep track of the job history, and see what sort of pattern unfolded.
Tonight she would take a fresh look at the document, pull together a direction, and go. She just needed inspiration.
If losing her job wasn’t inspiration, she didn’t know what was.
She skimmed down the list. First there was the apprentice job at Fanny’s Floral on March 12. Had she known about her lily allergy, honestly, she’d definitely, probably, still be there today. But when the opportunity came to try the corporate life—wearing the pencil skirts, drinking from Starbucks cups at staff meetings—
she switched to the paper company mid-April. It wasn’t long before she realized there was a difference between the corporate life in the movies and the corporate life in Gatlinburg, at Nationwide Paper, at a desk smaller than the ones from high school. Worse, the pencil skirts made her claustrophobic. Girls had to be out of their minds to voluntarily lock themselves into thigh corsets and make themselves completely vulnerable in the event of a bear attack. In Gatlinburg, you really had to think about these things.
On impulse she glanced toward the window, but all she saw was the dusky light reflecting off of her car. And the dog, of course, staring.
She scooted a foot to the right.
After the paper company she started taking the advice of the career counselor and wrote down what she’d learned she wanted or didn’t want from each experience. So, having learned the corporate life wasn’t for her, she jumped to the other side of the line. Hence the arcade supervisor job at Dollywood that started in May. And the lifeguard job at Dollywood’s Splash Country through the summer. And the valet attendant, cabin inspector, pool server, and brief spell as a wax-candle store manager. Those stints carried her up to Christmas, when she took a hiatus from Dollywood life to experience the magic of childhood as a seasonal elf for Big Buck’s Pros. Unfortunately, it only took two ten-hour shifts in jingly slippers to realize the attractive guy who’d hired her was probably not a real elf who was going to fall in love with her and take her to the North Pole on holidays. She never saw him again.
She felt that neck-tingling sense that somebody was watching her and lifted her head. The dog, positioned to see straight through the center of her window, panted and licked up some straying drool.
Chip was in her field of vision, too, this time. He nudged the dog to move and dug into the earth. Her gaze lingered as he shoveled three loads of dirt.
She cleared her throat.
Flicked her eyes back to the computer, read a few more lines, and looked up again. No more Chip. Dog still staring.
The Cul-de-Sac War Page 8