It Began with a Crush (The Cherry Sisters)

by Darcy, Lilian

  Relieved, and maybe there were other things in the mix, too.

  “I think I have a plan for you,” she said. She had a very appealing voice, bright and warm but not too honey-sweet. “I’ve talked to Vanessa and Phil and their nanny, Lucy, and they like the idea of joining forces with child care and riding. But Penelope wants to meet the girls first.”

  “When?” With the strength of his relief, the word came out sounding impatient and abrupt, and he would have softened it quite a bit if he could have had a do-over.

  “Whenever you want, I think. She said she was free this afternoon, and so am I…or I can easily be. She wants me to bring the three of you. But this afternoon is probably too soon for you to—”

  “This afternoon is great!” If he could quickly finish the two cars he still had to work on, and if Dad could come sit in the office to take delivery of Mary Jane’s new parts if they showed up, and handle the payments when people came back to collect their vehicles toward the end of the day, he could do this. He could. He just needed another two hours. “What time?” he asked. “Could it be late-ish? Say three-thirty?”

  He was rushing her, pushing too hard for the sake of the girls. He could tell by her awkward laugh. “Um, sure. Let’s pencil it in for then, and I’ll call Penelope and check. How about I only call you back if it doesn’t work for her?”

  “So if you don’t call back, I’ll pick you up at, what, three-twenty?”

  “That would be work fine. And the Richardsons told me to tell you to make sure the girls wear sturdy shoes with covered toes, not sandals, or Penelope’ll have a fit, quote unquote.”

  “Shoes, not sandals, got it.”

  And the plan must have worked fine at Penelope’s end, also, because he didn’t hear back, so at just after three, Dad pulled into the garage with two ridiculously overexcited girls wearing sturdy shoes and grins from ear to ear.

  *

  Here were Joe and the girls, Mary Jane saw through the resort office window. Joe climbed out of the driver’s seat to come in search of her, and the girls leaped out, too, although they really didn’t need to. Joe seemed to be telling them to stay in the car, but they hadn’t listened.

  They were darting around, pointing at the newly landscaped pool and playground area. They were dressed in matching navy blue stretchy leggings and California-themed cotton T-shirts, one showing the Golden Gate Bridge, and the other a stylized Hollywood Boulevard, and they carried Disney-themed daypacks on their backs.

  Mary Jane had decided that the sturdy shoes rule applied to herself as well as to the girls, so she wore white athletic shoes below jeans and a pretty blue-and-white peasant-style top, while Joe had changed out of the car mechanic’s clothes he’d presumably been wearing earlier—What was it that Mary Jane found so attractive about those clothes?—and had put on sand-colored chinos and a button-down shirt in a bluish sort of pattern, with a black T-shirt partly visible underneath, at the open neckline.

  He looked good. And casually neat. And respectable in a way that suggested there was a time when he hadn’t been anything like. A little shiver of need ran through her, and she squashed it like a rotten tomato.

  Don’t. Just don’t.

  As she went out to meet them, leaving Nickie to staff the desk and the phone, she couldn’t help noticing how well the four of them matched, in their coordinating blues. She’d put some makeup and jewelry on, too, which she mostly didn’t manage to do on an ordinary working day, and she couldn’t pretend about her reasons.

  She wanted to impress Joe, and make him notice her.

  No, it was even more complicated than that.

  More complicated, but not any more admirable or acceptable. Much less so.

  She wanted to look like the kind of woman that the cool, popular girls from high school would have expected him to date. The kind he did date, in fact.

  She was ashamed of herself!

  Don’t, she told herself again.

  “Hi,” he said, with only the sketch of a smile. “We’d better get going. I’m a little late. Really sorry. It’s so hard to get everything to happen on schedule.”

  “We’ll only be there a few minutes after three-thirty.”

  “Don’t want to create a bad impression.”

  He was really keen for this pony-camp thing to work, and he was anxious about it in a way that touched her heart, no matter how hard she fought the feeling.

  Everything she found out about him spoke of how much he’d changed since high school, and it intrigued her far more than she wanted.

  Everyone changed. No great surprise there. It was a long time ago.

  But in his case she wanted to know how and when and why, and whether the changes had been reluctant or willing or hard-won. Had life smacked him down? What choices had he made, and which of them were made willingly? She hated being this curious about him, this hungry for detail, but it seemed to happen every moment she was with him, and every time she looked at his girls.

  He drove with efficient speed, following her directions away from the lake and up a forest-lined side road that led to Penelope Beresford’s open and grassy twenty-acre property, with the girls craning impatiently in the backseat for their first view of ponies.

  “When I see my pony, I’m going to go right up and hug him,” Holly announced.

  “Me, too,” said Maddie. “I’m going to go right up and climb on and ride my pony.”

  “I’m going to jump on and gallop my pony.”

  “No, you absolutely one hundred percent are not,” Joe said. “No hugging, and definitely no jumping on and riding! That’s the quickest way to make pony camp never happen.”

  The fizz level in the backseat dropped a few notches. “Why, Daddy?”

  “Because you don’t know anything about real ponies, you only know about them from books, and two led pony rides at fairs, and you have to do exactly as you’re told until you start to learn. It takes a long time to learn to ride a horse well.”

  After a moment of thick silence, he added to Mary Jane, with a quick glance in her direction, “I hope this isn’t a dumb idea.” The glance seemed to link the two of them together, as did the note of appeal in his question. “Are they too little for this? Too willful? Maybe their obsession will disappear the moment they come face-to-face with the reality of piles of poop and getting accidentally trodden on by a hoof in a metal shoe.”

  “We’ll have to let Penelope make that decision. I told her they were seven, and that they didn’t have any riding experience.”

  He gave a sigh of relief at the wheel. “So at least we’re not coming here under false pretenses.”

  “This is the entrance, here on the left.” She gestured, and he slowed, and she couldn’t help watching his arm on the wheel, bare to the elbow where he’d rolled up his sleeve. It was a gorgeous arm, tanned and hard and lightly covered in dark hair, and she wondered how it would feel if it was wrapped around her, or if she ran her palm down its length.

  How would it feel to have those arms reaching out for her as she went toward them? How would it feel to watch him hefting an axe or a hammer? What would he look like soaping himself in the shower? He could do pretty much anything with those arms and those thighs and that hard, flat torso and those strong hands, and she thought she’d like to watch it all.

  Oh, Mary Jane!

  She just couldn’t stop herself.

  Her only hope was to at least keep her awareness from showing.

  He turned off the road and pulled up at the closed gate, bordered by railed wooden fencing painted in white. Mary Jane jumped out to open it, waiting to close it again behind the vehicle after Joe had driven through.

  “You’re going to have to learn to do the gate, girls,” Joe said.

  And even this sounded exciting to them. “You always have to leave gates the way you find them,” Maddie said knowledgeably. “If they’re closed, you never, ever leave them open.”

  “And stables,” Holly added. “You have to leave them clean, e
very day.”

  “I’ve been reading them books for kids on how to take care of horses,” Joe said in another aside to Mary Jane, with another glance. “They can’t get enough of them.”

  “So they know the theory, at least!”

  “They do. Are you remembering the books, girls?”

  Holly parroted a rule. “Never walk behind a horse if he doesn’t know you’re there, or he might get startled and kick you.”

  Maddie had another one. “Hold your hand flat when you give them carrots, so they don’t accidentally crunch your fingers.”

  “We don’t have any carrots,” Joe pointed out.

  “Yes, we do! We have a million carrots! Grandad said we could. We put a whole bag of them in our backpacks.”

  “Of course you did,” he muttered, and Mary Jane had to hide a smile. She was enjoying this—and him…and his relationship with his girls—far too much, and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it.

  “And we have our swimsuits and towels, too, just in case, for later, at the beach or the pool,” Holly said. “Grandad says we might have time. He doesn’t know how long we’ll be out.”

  Maddie explained, “That’s why our backpacks are so heavy.”

  “I guess Grandad is giving me a hint that he doesn’t want you back too soon,” Joe muttered.

  Mary Jane hid another smile.

  Penelope was trotting a horse round a corral on a long rope, but turned at the sound of Joe’s car. She spoke to the big, dark, glossy, loose-limbed creature, and it obediently slowed to a supple walk, then turned toward her, came closer and came to a halt.

  The girls climbed out of the car with a sudden showing of shyness and caution, which was probably a great relief to Joe, who was watching their every move from behind his sunglasses as if he feared they might attempt a few circus tricks on the first animal they could find.

  Penelope called to a young woman working beside the large barn, who went to take over the work with the horse in the corral. At least, Mary Jane assumed it was work.

  And that it was a corral.

  She was as far outside her area of experience as were Joe and the girls. Penelope let herself out of the fenced round enclosure and came toward them.

  “Penelope, this is Joe Capelli and his girls, Holly and Maddie.” She gestured carefully, making sure she pointed at the right twin as she said each name. She was proud of herself for being able to tell them apart, which was ridiculous, really. It wasn’t exactly a marketable skill. And she knew quite well what it was about. She was showing off to Joe.

  “Hello! Isn’t this good!” Penelope said, very brisk and British.

  “We’re twins,” Maddie told her. “But my hair is a bit different on my forehead, that’s how you tell us apart.” She pushed her hair back. “See?” She was unselfconscious about it, but Mary Jane was surprised—shocked, really—at the size of the scar, even though Joe had told her it was there.

  He’d been so matter-of-fact about it, mentioning it only as a way of telling the girls apart, but it would have been dramatic and very visible if Maddie’s hair hadn’t provided a disguise. He hadn’t mentioned the cause of the injury, and this immediately added itself to the growing list of things that Mary Jane shouldn’t…really shouldn’t…must not…be so curious about.

  Maddie let the hair flop onto her forehead again, and the scar vanished behind its handy screen.

  “Yes, I can see you’re twins,” Penelope said. “Hello, Maddie. Hello, Holly. And Joe.” She held out her hand, after wiping it on the thigh of her jodhpurs. “Sorry, not very clean.”

  “I’m a car mechanic,” Joe said. “So don’t worry about it.”

  “And since you’re twins, perhaps I’m going to have to find you two matching ponies,” Penelope said.

  “But we want different ponies!” Holly protested, loud and serious. “I want a black one, and Maddie wants a gray one. We decided.”

  “Holly…” Joe began, wincing.

  Penelope was unperturbed, staying cheerful and no-nonsense in her manner. “We have a black one, but not a gray. We have some paints. Do you know what those are?”

  “Patchy,” Maddie said.

  “Yes, very pretty patchy markings. To start with, though, you’ll have to share the black pony.” She took a phone out of her pocket and sent a quick text. “I’m going to give you a lesson, taking turns on our lovely old girl, Suzie. She’s a Shetland pony. Laura, one of my working students, will find some riding boots and helmets for you. I’m just calling her in from the back field. We have plenty of different sizes, so something will fit.”

  “Right now?” both girls said. “A riding lesson?”

  “Yes. Don’t you want to get started?”

  “Yay!” They clapped their hands and jumped up and down.

  “Is this really all right?” Joe asked Penelope. “I’d expected we’d mainly be talking about what this involved, today.”

  “I just like to have a little look at them before either of us commits ourselves to anything,” Penelope said very firmly.

  “They’ve never ridden before. Well, a couple of led pony rides at fairs.”

  “That’s all right. It’ll still be good to have a look.” She smiled, and Mary Jane had the strong sense that she knew exactly what she was doing.

  It took fifteen minutes to get both girls kitted out in the right boots and helmets, stored in a big and very neatly arranged tack room attached to the main barn. Mary Jane expected to find Suzie, the Shetland pony, already saddled and waiting, but apparently she was still in her day yard and had to be caught and groomed.

  Penelope took the girls with her “to help,” asking Mary Jane and Joe to wait by the round corral where the big horse had now finished his workout and was being led away. It was strange to be standing here with him like this, looking like a couple. If anyone else had been around, that was what they would have thought—that she and Joe were two ordinary parents, of two very cute little girls. They must look as natural together as the perfect family in a commercial on TV.

  Mary Jane’s heart kicked.

  She wanted that. She’d always wanted it. Confidently, then angrily, then miserably, then desperately.

  She couldn’t possibly want it with Joe already, because she barely knew him. High school didn’t count. Knowing his father didn’t count.

  But she wanted it in the abstract, she’d wanted it for so long, and she was scared by the thought of how easy it would be to graft her painfully longed-for fantasy onto this gorgeous man and his adorable daughters.

  It would be wrong to do that. A disaster. Joe and Maddie and Holly weren’t a fantasy come to life. They were real people. Complex. Flawed.

  And so was Mary Jane.

  Very, very flawed, she felt right now.

  Joe shifted his weight, looked around, scuffed at the dirt. He was ridiculously good-looking in this setting, dark glasses resting their lower rims against his perfect cheekbones, his body strong and beautifully molded beneath the shirt, his dark hair threaded with tiny silver and golden glints in the summer sun and his naturally olive skin smooth and healthy. But he was as tense as a cat on hot bricks, and when she put aside her own issues, Mary Jane could feel his tension like a writhing snake in her own stomach.

  “What are you nervous about, Joe?” she had to ask.

  “That they’ll fail.”

  “Is this a test?”

  “Ohh, you know it is!” He shook his head and whistled. “And Penelope’s right. She can’t make a promise to us about this camp idea if they’re going to be brats.”

  “They’re not brats!”

  “They can be.” He thought for a moment. “Not brats. Just kids. Too much energy. Too much will of their own. Too young to understand, sometimes, that rules are there for a reason.”

  “You’re afraid they really will just jump on the pony before they’re told?”

  “Yeah,” he said simply. “That, or worse. Their mother had no impulse control whatsoever. If I
ever see her personality coming out in them…” He stopped.

  It was the first time he’d ever mentioned the girls’ mother, and he was saying it in the past tense. “Had” not “has.” What did that mean?

  “You get scared about genes, sometimes,” he added.

  He leaned his folded arms on the top railing of the corral, with one boot-clad foot propped on the bottom rail, and scowled at the big circle of dirt in front of him. Mary Jane was intensely conscious of every line of him, every movement he made. The shape of him seemed to change her own body. When he leaned, she shifted. When he sighed, she took in a huge breath.

  “I guess you do,” she replied, hearing how inadequate it sounded. She leaned on the rail, too, but sideways, half facing him, with one arm spread along the sun-warmed wood, unable to stop herself from looking at him. When she touched the wood, it half felt like touching his skin—silky, hot, hard.

  There was a silence, and still no sign of the girls, Penelope or the pony.

  “She’s a mess,” Joe said suddenly. “That’s why I have full custody.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Hmm. Instantly flustered, she added quickly, “I mean, that she’s a mess. Not sorry that you have—”

  “It’s okay.” He glanced at her, making her aware of how close they were standing. “I knew that’s what you meant. You were probably wondering, last night at dinner. Not exactly the classic nuclear family.”

  “I was,” she admitted.

  “You need to know some of this, I’ve realized. But I never know how to bring it up with people.”

  “Well, it’s not anyone’s business.”

  “You’re helping me with this camp thing, you do need to know. In case something comes up. Behavioral issues. They had a rough few years before they came to me, and I had to fight pretty hard for them.”

  “Fight?”

  “For their safety. To have them with me. They’re great now, mostly, but occasionally there are some signs. Nightmares, or moments when they just lose it. And when they get really excited and willful… Yeah, I do get scared.”