Magnolia Bay Memories
Page 16
“Okay, I guess.” Heather felt too rushed to think straight, but Reva was hurrying them both out the door. “Is there anything else I need to know before—”
“Nope, nope,” Reva interrupted. “Time to fly! Folks are waiting for me to start the tour.”
She ran toward the barn. “Thanks, Heather,” she yelled, giving a backward wave. “Have fun in New Orleans.”
Chapter 10
Adrian had just hit Send on a What’s the holdup? text to Reva when he saw Heather running through the gate, her shoulder-length blond hair flying. He couldn’t help but notice that her breasts were bouncing quite nicely under the modestly cut white cotton blouse she wore over denim jeans. He tried not to think about that.
He turned down the volume on the stereo, then leaned across the truck’s seat to open the passenger door. He would’ve gotten out and gone around to open the door for her properly. But by the time he did that, she’d have clambered in by herself, looked at him like he was crazy, and asked why he was standing outside the truck when they were already in a hurry.
She hopped in, all rosy cheeks and smiling green eyes. “Hey.” Out of breath from running, her voice sounded even sexier than usual. If he got through this day without kissing her, it would be a miracle. She slammed the door and buckled her seat belt. “I got nominated to pick up that dog. I hope you don’t mind I’ll be tagging along.”
“Not at all.” It did mean he’d be doing more than loading up, turning around, and going straight back to the shelter. Reva had given him her credit card (which of course he wouldn’t use) with instructions to take Heather somewhere nice for lunch. “I’ll be glad for the company.”
He had already called the manufacturing company to explain that he’d been tasked with several errands besides picking up the generators. The lady on the phone was kind enough to say that he could unhook the trailer and leave it in their lot, then take the truck into the city. Driving in downtown New Orleans—let alone the French Quarter, where he planned to take Heather for lunch—wasn’t something you could do pulling a flatbed trailer. Driving this big-ass pickup through those narrow streets would be bad enough.
While he eased the truck and trailer onto the blacktop, Heather brushed a hand across the flip-up console between the two front seats. “Quinn’s new truck is fancy.”
Quinn’s old truck had given up the ghost about the time he donated his estate to the City of Magnolia Bay for use as a badly needed animal shelter. The girls were still campaigning to paint the old truck bright red and park it out front. They had some harebrained plan to fill the truck bed with dirt and plant flowers in it. The old truck was now sitting on flat tires at the back of the property while Quinn and Abby duked it out.
Heather breathed in deeply, then released the breath on a sigh and relaxed into her seat. “It still smells like new leather too.”
Adrian snorted. “That smell was probably sprayed on.”
She looked at him sideways, and he could hear her thoughts as surely as if she’d said them out loud. Why did he have to be such a killjoy?
When even the sound of her breathing turned him on, he had to do something to combat the impulse to pull this truck over right now, flip that console up out of the way, unbuckle her seat belt, and…
Heather’s phone dinged with an incoming text. She glanced at it and sat up straighter. “Can’t believe I almost forgot. We need to stop by the elementary school.” She glanced around at the landscape beyond the truck’s windows. “I’m sorry.” She chewed on her pinkie fingernail and sent him an apologetic look. “You should have turned left back there.”
He took his foot off the gas. “And turning this rig around right here is impossible, so…?”
She nodded to herself. “Keep going straight. We’ll have to double back around in a bit.”
“Okay, fine.” Not fine. They hadn’t traveled three minutes, and already the complications were piling up. His list of errands had been expanded even before Heather’s mission to pick up a three-legged dog had been tacked on to the agenda. They also had to pick up a load of hurricane-proof roll-down shutters, and now this. He’d told Reva that they could make it back by 3:00, but that was before she began adding to their tasks.
Adrian felt a bit like Indiana Jones embarking on an impossible adventure, but Reva had assured him that everything would work out perfectly if he just had faith. That sort of shit seemed to work for her—and, in fact, it also seemed to work for everyone around her—so he bit his tongue. He clutched the steering wheel and gave Heather an easygoing smile he didn’t quite feel. “Just tell me where to turn.”
By the time they’d stopped by the elementary school so she could just run inside quickly and be back in a minute, it was almost ten.
They hit the open highway a half hour later, and Adrian had high hopes that they’d still make it to The Palace on Canal Street in time for a late lunch. He hadn’t had more than cereal and coffee for breakfast, and his mouth was already watering for the restaurant’s famous crab cheesecake appetizer.
Then they hit stop-and-go traffic on I-10.
And the stop-and-go traffic turned into straight-up-stopped traffic. Adrian gave up and put the truck into Park because the whole interstate had ground to a complete halt. Cars and trucks lined up behind them, and folks started getting out of their cars and talking on their cell phones. Heather chewed on her pinkie fingernail and looked over at him, her green eyes wide with worry. “I have to be back at three.”
“No, you don’t.” He reached across the console and squeezed her hand. “That’s why we went to all the trouble of stopping by the elementary school. Reva will handle everything if we don’t make it back in time.”
With her left hand clasped in his, she continued to chew on the pinkie fingernail of her right hand. “I wonder what happened up ahead.” Her posture conveyed an anxiety all out of proportion for the situation as she sat forward to look out the windshield, craning her neck in an effort to see any clues that might be visible along the line of standstill traffic ahead of them.
“I don’t know, but it’s pretty clear there’s nothing we can do about it, so why worry?” He squeezed her hand again. “We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
An ambulance blasted past, driving along the breakdown lane with lights flashing. Another ambulance followed close behind.
She looked at the line of traffic forming behind them. “Maybe we should just go back.”
“Honey…” The endearment slipped out, but she didn’t notice. “We can’t go back. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t back this rig down the highway to the last exit any more than I could successfully turn it around. Besides, either of those moves would be against the law. All we can do is wait.”
She nodded, her forehead furrowed. “I’m sorry. I know that. I’m just…worried.”
“What are you worried about?” Since the truck was in Park and the interstate had become a long, narrow parking lot, Adrian felt fine about undoing his seat belt and turning fully toward Heather, who blushed and looked away.
She shrugged. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. It’s just, I wouldn’t want my kids to worry that something might have happened—or might happen—to me. I’ve been very careful to always be on time to get them after school.”
“Okay.”
She was chewing on her fingernail again, so he grabbed that hand and held it too. “Let’s talk this out. What could we do that would make you feel better about the possibility that you might be late to get your kids?”
She shook her head and looked down, almost as if she was fighting tears. This seemed to be about so much more than simply running late and having her kids go home with a trusted friend.
“Would it help if you talked to Reva?” He knew they were good friends and that Reva, being a widow too, would understand what Heather was going through.
“I can’t bother her right now.
She’s hosting a tour group.”
“What about calling your kids? Maybe if you talked to them, you might find that they’re happy to go home with Reva.” He forced a light chuckle. “Bayside Barn is pretty much a kids’ paradise.”
“It’s not so much that they won’t like going there. What bothers me is the thought that they’ll be upset if I’m not there as expected.”
“So why not call the school and ask the twins’ teachers to let you talk to them about it? If they know ahead of time that they may be going to Reva’s, they won’t be upset.”
“But they would be worried if they got called to the school office.”
He gave her a come on now look. “Even Erin?”
She looked up at him, a glimmer of relief lighting her green eyes. “Erin does have a cell phone, even though she has to keep it in her backpack during class.”
“Great.” He grinned, eliciting a small smile from her. Releasing her hands, he took her phone off the charge port in the console and handed it to her. “Text Erin and ask her to call you when she gets a break. That way, she’ll have advance warning, and you’ll know that she’s prepared for whatever happens.”
As Heather sent the text, the traffic ahead of them started inching forward. He put the truck in gear and eased forward as well. “And now we’re moving. All is not lost.”
When she hit Send, he glanced over at her. Her body language and facial expressions were so easy to read. She had relaxed a bit, but not enough. “Maybe now you should call the elementary school and tell them—”
Her phone chirped, and her face brightened when she looked at the screen. “It’s Erin.” With the phone held to her ear, she sent Adrian a smile and a quick thumbs-up. “Hey, Erin. Thanks for calling me.”
Adrian turned the music up, just a little. Not enough to distract Heather from her call, but enough to give her at least the feeling that she had a measure of privacy. When she ended the call, he turned it down a bit. “And?”
“She’s fine with the idea. In fact, she’s excited. Told me I should get you to keep me in New Orleans all day.”
He wouldn’t mind doing that. He’d take her to a hole-in-the-wall wine bar he knew about that had live jazz every evening. “Oh, really?”
“Apparently, Quinn’s son, Sean, is working at Bayside Barn after school today and staying for dinner afterward.”
“So…?”
She gave him a sideways glance that said she was deciding whether she could trust him. “Well, you can’t tell anyone, but Erin has a tiny secret crush on Sean.”
“Oh, yeah?” News to him, but then again… “Sean is a good-looking kid.”
“Yes, and he has always been kind to Erin and the twins. Erin has been a little starstruck ever since the first time she saw him at the shelter.”
“Even though he’s…what? Two years older than her?”
“Are you kidding?” Heather laughed. “Especially because he’s two years older than her.” She laughed again, her eyes sparkling. “If he were her age—I don’t care how cute he is—she wouldn’t give him the time of day. And she’s not hard to look at either.”
“Almost as pretty as her mother,” Adrian couldn’t help saying. He shot a quick glance her way, but no more than that. Traffic had loosened up a bit, and cars were beginning to change lanes and pick up speed. Even though it meant he had to go slower than just about everyone else on the road, Adrian kept to the right. The truck and trailer together were too long to allow much jockeying for position, and he had to be wary of cars cutting in front of him. “I guess they’ve cleared the accident.”
“Looks like it.” She sighed and sat back, her good humor restored. “I guess I don’t have to worry about being late after all.”
“What?” He raised his eyebrows at her. “And disappoint Erin after getting her hopes up? This could be her big chance to snag a boyfriend who’s already in high school. You’re gonna deny her that opportunity?”
Heather snorted at his teasing. “Erin isn’t looking to snag anybody. She just wants to bask in the glow of his dazzling smile and sweet personality. She would die if she thought he knew she even looks at him.” Heather pointed a finger. “And don’t you dare let on that I told you anything.”
“I don’t know about that…” He knew it was wrong, but the opportunity to tease her got the better of him. He trailed a finger down her forearm where it rested on the console. “I might have to hold it over you. See what kinds of concessions I can blackmail out of you.”
She slapped his hand away and crossed her arms. “You don’t want to see me in mama-bear mode.” But her tone was teasing, her expression a fake scowl that she couldn’t hold on to for more than a second.
“I’ll remember that.” He put his hand back on the steering wheel, his eyes back on the road. “But I still think you should consider planning to be late instead of worrying that it might happen. You could call the school, let the twins know what to expect, and tell Reva we’ll be back to pick them up before their bedtime. I’ll take you out to lunch in the French Quarter, and then we’ll go to a wine bar I know of on Frenchmen Street that has live music every night.”
He kept his attention—most of it, at least—on his driving and let that thought settle in.
“But I’m not dressed for all that.”
He glanced over at her. “You look a damn sight better than all those tourists who’ve been bumming around the Quarter all day, sweating in the Louisiana heat.”
“We’ll have a dog with us.” She flung that excuse out like she thought it had some merit.
“Also not a deal breaker. It’s N’awlins, baby. Everybody and their brother has a dog, and they’re welcome just about everywhere. We can go somewhere that has a patio, and they’ll even bring the dog a bowl of ice water. Or a beer, if he’d prefer.”
She shook her head. “We don’t even know this dog. He might be scared. He might be—”
“Fine, fine. I give up.” She did have a point about not knowing the dog. But he wasn’t really going to give up. The idea of showing Heather something about his world had taken hold, and he wasn’t ready to let it go. He would, however, give the subject a rest for now and come at it from another angle later. “Let’s talk about something else.”
***
Heather readjusted the AC vents. The sun was straight overhead now instead of beaming through the back window, so the interior of the truck was cooler than she liked. “What do you want to talk about?”
“You cold?” Adrian looked over at her, and she could have sworn he glanced down at her breasts to determine exactly how cold she might be. But if it happened at all, it was only for a second. He met her eyes, his expression entirely innocent. “You want me to make it warmer in here?”
She crossed her arms. “Yes, please.”
He bumped the digital temperature up a notch or two. “So, I did want to talk to you about something.”
“Yeah?”
He sounded a little nervous—a word she would never have attributed to Adrian, the most confident, smooth-talking man she’d ever met. “What?”
“I want to apologize for giving you such a hard time about Charlie’s stall and the barn in general.”
“Oh, you don’t have to apologize.” The place had been terrible beyond her worst nightmares. She twisted her fingers in her lap. “It was horrible, and I’m so ashamed that I didn’t check behind Erin to make sure she was doing the work. I mean…” She made a huff of chagrin. “The irony hasn’t escaped me that I’m about to take a full-time job with a good-paying salary and my primary responsibility will be to make sure the shelter animals are properly cared for. And yet I didn’t take care of my own horse.”
“It wasn’t like you were starving him.”
“Animal neglect doesn’t have to be terrible to be bad.” She shook her head. “You only said what I needed to hear.”
She shrugged. “Like I said, you were only telling the truth. His stall was dirty, his buckets and bins were dirty…” She looked down at her fingernails.
“Here’s the thing, though.” He reached over and touched her hand, an invitation. She turned her palm up, and he took her hand in his. “Yeah, you could’ve done better. I bet you could’ve done better if you’d paid a dozen farm hands to do the work every day, right? Why didn’t you do that, huh?”
She chuckled and looked sideways at his teasing smile. “Because I’m not rich?”
He smirked. “Oh, you mean, you don’t keep Charlie in a fancy, high-dollar racehorse barn with a rubber-coated concrete floor and central air-conditioning because you can’t afford to? And here I thought you were just being mean.”
“I could have at least made sure Charlie got the same level of care as the animals at Bayside Barn.” The big red barn at Reva’s place was kept clean but not immaculate; the stalls were picked clean daily, the shavings replaced weekly. The shelves got wiped down and the barn got swept every week.
Heather knew all this because she’d had to document the information for the shelter’s animal care plan, since any farm animals that were brought into the shelter would be housed at Bayside Barn until the shelter had its own barn. “Erin and I have been doing that, by the way. Erin feeds Charlie first thing every morning and lets him out into the field, and I scoop the poop in his stall before I get ready for work and take the kids to school.”
Heather’s come-to-Jesus meeting with Erin had resulted in a reallocation of duties; Erin had taken over laundry duty to allow Heather the time to do part of the daily work in the barn. As part of Erin’s punishment, her allowance had been docked while her total amount of chores had been increased. Weekends with friends were gone too: Instead, Erin and Heather spent Saturday afternoons working together to clean Charlie’s stall completely and sweep the barn.