Now And Always (Crown Creek)

by Theresa Leigh

  As they’d laughed and joked and praised my very few decent shots while minimizing all the bad ones (“Nah, this table is scuffed to hell and back again, Bailey,” Maddox said at one point right after I’d scratched the eight ball. He pulled it out of the pocket and put it right back on the table. “Try that shot again.”), I’d actually started to relax. And to my horror, I’d started to enjoy myself.

  And that's when I realized I'd done Claire wrong.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Claire

  Beau, Rachel, Finn, and Sky lived in a secluded house set way back in the woods. They called it “the cabin” which was kind of insulting, considering 1) it was a goddamn mansion and 2) I was the one who had found the listing for them, so they should really show it more respect.

  The “cabin” wasn’t as cavernous-feeling as it had been when my brothers had first moved in. Finn and Sky still occupied the upstairs bedroom, but Beau and Rachel had moved their bed to the basement to make room for the cabin’s newest occupants, Rebecca and Seth.

  I pulled my Jeep up to the front of the house. I would honk the horn to announce my presence, but I didn’t want to wake the baby.

  I felt irrationally proud for having remembered that babies sometimes nap.

  Instead I walked around the side of the house and climbed the wooden stairs to the deck that wrapped around it. I planted myself outside the sliding glass doors and waited.

  The shuffling shapes inside of the house made me giggle in anticipation. My brothers moved around, unaware of my presence until—

  “Jesus CHRIST ON CRANBERRY TOAST!” Finn yelled, jumping back with his hand clutched to his chest.

  “You are the most oblivious people in the world,” I chided as I let myself in.

  “How long have you been lurking out there like an ax murderer?” He bent and put his hands on his knees. “Sky, get me a paper bag to breathe into. I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  “Oh, settle down.” I patted him on the shoulder. “Consider that payback for the years of torture you inflicted on me. In fact, you’re getting off easy.”

  “What did you do to Claire?” Sky demanded, planting her hands on her hips in mock horror.

  “I don’t know, I don’t remember anything prior to getting the shit scared out of me just now.” Finn straightened up and deliberately checked the back of his jeans.

  Sky wrinkled her nose. “Gross,” she sighed before turning to me. “Hi, Claire, by the way.”

  “Hello, Sky! So lovely to see you!” We playacted an overly formal and dignified greeting, making Finn curse and grumble.

  Then Sky shoved her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. “I know I said I was coming today, but I’m gonna be a punk.” She screwed the side of her mouth up in a grimace. “My actual sister called this morning.”

  “Grace?” I hardly knew anything about the mysterious Knight sister, and it drove me nuts. “What did she want?”

  “To hang out?” Sky squeaked, spreading her hand incredulously. “Just the two of us?”

  “Whoa.”

  “I know. I’m baffled. But you know, I kind of—”

  “Have to go,” I finished. “I get it. Will you promise to tell me everything?”

  “Of course.” She kissed me on the cheek and then dropped her voice. “It’ll be good I'm not there, I think. They need this.”

  “They” were Rachel and Rebecca, who were coming down the stairs at this very moment. Rachel’s hair was cut into a sleek, short bob, but Rebecca still wore the long swinging braid of a Chosen woman. Outwardly, they looked very different, but they shared the same gestures and mannerisms and the same bright laugh. I loved that they had each other again.

  “I still want to make the cake,” Rebecca said after she’d greeted me. “I’m only letting you take us to this bakery today to be nice.”

  “Well, good,” I laughed, giving her and Rachel hugs in return. “Keep being nice to me, I’m a fan.” I pulled my keys out of my purse. “You ready?”

  Rachel nodded eagerly, but Rebecca pressed her lips together and turned back to the master bedroom. “I just want to say goodbye one more time,” she said softly.

  “She isn’t showing it,” Rachel murmured as her sister scooted into the bedroom, “but she is freaking out about leaving Seth.”

  We listened to her coos of farewell for a moment. But when Rebecca’s voice started breaking, Finn shook his head and gently opened the door. “Hey Beck, don’t be afraid, okay? Uncle Finn has this under control.” He stepped into the room.

  Then my brother emerged holding tiny, red-faced Seth nestled high on his chest. Finn looked up from the tiny baby and met my eyes with a triumphant grin. "Uncle Finn," he said softly.

  I was not going to start crying now. No way.

  “Bless you, baby boy,” Rebecca murmured, kissing her son one more time and pressing her palm to the top of his downy head. “You be good.”

  Her eyes were still misty as we walked out to the Jeep. I suddenly had a brilliant idea to distract her. “Rebecca, how about you drive?” I asked, dangling the keys tantalizingly.

  “Me?” She pressed her hand to her heart.

  “You need the practice,” Rachel added swiftly. She shot me a grateful look.

  She did need the practice. Mainly on how to apply the gas pedal.

  We drove to Reckless Falls at a pace not much faster than if we’d just walked. Rebecca drove the whole way in dead silence, keeping a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. Rachel kept silent, too, her hands folded in her lap, occasionally murmuring encouraging words or little bits of praise. So I followed her lead and kept my own mouth shut, even though I was desperate to make a wisecrack about how my Jeep had never gone this slowly in its life. Or wonder aloud if we’d started rolling backwards yet.

  The usual hourlong journey—which I regularly made in under forty minutes—took us an hour and thirty-eight excruciating minutes. By the time we rolled into a parking space in front of Honey Bee’s Bakery, we were desperately late for our appointment. I resisted the urge to leap from the slowly rolling vehicle and sprint to the door just to get the feeling of speed back again. Instead I patted Rebecca’s shoulder as she carefully shifted into park.

  “I did it!” she crowed in a rush of excitement.

  “You did! And you did such a good job too!” Rachel cooed.

  “I felt perfectly safe.” I agreed, hoping I she couldn't tell I was gritting my teeth. “You’re a natural.” I smiled at the sisters. “Let’s go eat some cake to celebrate.”

  Bee smiled warmly when we walked in, seemingly unbothered by having to keep her shop open past closing time to accommodate us

  “Congratulations!” she said to Rachel, who beamed in tongue-tied pleasure. “This must be such an exciting time for you!” She guided us to a table in the corner of her shop. She’d dressed it up with a charming lace tablecloth and set a vase of fresh flowers in the middle. “I have three cakes I want you to try today, flavor wise. Once you settle on that, we can look through the album of decorating styles and you can tell me your favorite. Does that sound good?”

  The sisters looked at each other with wide, almost hesitant eyes, and I was reminded once again of their severe upbringing. The idea of getting to indulge in not one, but three types of cake, then deciding for themselves how the finished product would look had them almost mute with confusion at the start.

  But Bee’s warm, welcoming vibe, as well as the magic of baked goods, loosened them right up. By the third slice, they were chattering happily, with Rebecca dead set on the marble cake with buttercream frosting. “It tastes like heaven,” she reprimanded her sister. “How could this even be a question?”

  “Marble wedding cake though? Aren’t they usually all white?” Rachel looked to me like I was the voice of wisdom.

  “It’s your wedding,” I reminded her. When that didn’t seem to help, I turned to Bee with an upward tilt of my chin. “People have marble wedding cakes all the time, right?” I prompted
.

  “All the time,” Bee confirmed. “It’s the most popular cake I make.”

  “Because it tastes like heaven,” Rebecca pouted. “You never listen to me.”

  “I’m listening right now!” Rachel rolled her eyes.

  “The marble cake with buttercream it is,” I butted in, heading off a sisterly spat the only way I knew how. “Can we see the album now?”

  Just like I’d hoped, the old-fashioned picture album packed with glossy photos of decadently layered wedding cakes was enough to shock them into awed silence. They leafed through the pages with their cheeks pressed together. As I looked at them, my fingers strayed to my belly. Whoever this little person was, I couldn’t imagine them moving through the world on their own. There was nothing like the bond between siblings.

  “Should I?” Rachel pressed her finger to a photograph and turned to Rebecca. “That one?”

  I leaned in. She’d chosen a classic three-tiered white cake. A spray of red frosted roses tumbled down one side like they were cascading down a trellis. Or a pergola. I pushed that thought from my head. “It goes with your Valentine’s theme perfectly,” I encouraged her.

  But Rachel was only interested in Rebecca’s approval. Her sister pressed a pensive finger to her chin as she flipped back and forth between two pages. The way her intelligent eyes darted quickly, taking in every detail, made me wonder if she had some artistic talent lying dormant under the surface of her restricted upbringing. What could she do if she was let loose in an art class?

  “Yes,” Rebecca said after a long silence. “It’s perfect.”

  I whooped. “Yes!” making Rachel startle and then laugh. Her sister’s laugh mingled with hers, with the same little hiccup of joy at the end. It was like happiness in stereo, and it transported me right to the counter where I slapped down my debit card.

  Rachel’s laugh cut off immediately. “Claire,” she warned. “What are you doing?”

  “Putting down the deposit.” I shoved the card at Bee. “Quick,” I hissed to the baker. “Before she stops me.”

  My future sister-in-law stood up from the table and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re impossible,” she sighed at me.

  “I know. Baby sister privilege.” Bee ran my card and I took it back, holding it aloft in triumph. “I honestly can’t help it,” I sighed in mock innocence.

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yes, you can. But fine. Thank you. And Beau and I will pay you back.”

  “Just you try,” I snorted.

  Rachel still scowled at me as we headed back to the Jeep. I headed resignedly to the back seat, but Rebecca stopped me. “Could you drive?” she asked, biting back a yawn. “I’m feeling pretty worn out.”

  “Of course.” I took my post behind the wheel, excited with the prospect of getting home sometime before the next Ice Age.

  Rebecca was right. As we wound up the mountain roads that led out of the bowl-shaped valley that cupped Reckless Falls, she yawned again and again. And by the time we were back on Highway Twelve, she was fast asleep.

  She jerked awake the minute I started bumping up the gravel drive to Finn and Beau’s house. “Oh!” she gasped, rubbing her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rachel twisted around. “Morning,” she teased.

  Rebecca looked outside the windows in alarm and then scowled. “It’s not really morning, right?”

  “No.” Rachel laughed. “You just slept the whole way home from the cake tasting.”

  “Oh.” She rubbed her eyes again. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to stay awake these days.”

  Rachel winced. “Seth doesn’t seem to know that nighttime is for sleeping yet, does he?”

  “You can hear it?” Rebecca looked mortified.

  “I can hear that you’re taking good care of him.”

  As I glanced in the rearview mirror, I took in Rebecca’s tired face. I hadn’t known her before she’d had Seth. All I’d seen so far was a quiet, withdrawn woman who was always disappearing to tend to her son. But today I’d seen the side of her that I knew, without a doubt, was the real Rebecca. Smart and opinionated, with a keen eye. “You need to get out more,” I blurted without thinking. When both sisters looked at me, I shrugged. “You’ve got this brand-new life, but you barely get to live it because you have a baby on your hip.”

  Rebecca looked down. “That’s what being a mother is all about, I guess.”

  “Bullshit.” When I saw their stricken faces, I waved my hand. “Sorry for swearing, but I don’t like that at all. The idea that a mother should give up her life.” I put my hand on my belly. “And hell, maybe I’ll rethink that idea when this one shows up, but right now, I’m thinking you need some time away from the baby. New Year’s Eve is coming up in two days. You and Rachel should go to the Crown and ring in the new year.” I snapped my fingers. “I’ll watch him for you.”

  “Really?” Rebecca gasped.

  I rubbed a circle over my belly. It was getting rounder every day. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I need the practice.”

  Chapter Forty

  Ethan

  I was elbow deep in orders when my office phone rang. “Holy shit!” I yelled.

  My office phone was just the landline in my shop. After missing two orders because I couldn’t hear my cellphone ring over the clatter of the table saw, I’d bought the loudest, jangliest old-fashioned telephone I could find and set up call forwarding on it. Now, whenever people called my cell, my office phone screamed like a nuclear siren, making me swear in surprise every single time.

  I brushed the sawdust from my hands and picked up the phone. “E’s Custom Woodworking.”

  “Ethan? Is that you?”

  “This is Ethan.” I picked a splinter out of my palm. “How can I help you?”

  A pause. Then a yelp. “Did I call the wrong number by mistake? Are you at work?”

  “I’m sorry, who is this?”

  “This is Kelly?” She said it like she wasn’t sure if I’d know who that was.

  And she was right. I didn’t. “Hi, Kelly,” I said, frantically clicking through my open invoices. Was I late with an order or something? Why hadn’t she sent an email instead? “What can I do for you?”

  “Oh my gosh, you’re so polite,” she gushed. There was something familiar about her voice now. “I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.”

  I straightened up in alarm.

  “The restaurant just called about our reservation. They were wondering if they could move it to eight instead of nine. I know that's early. Is that okay?”

  Reservation. A girl. A date? My brain was like a kid brother lagging behind, little legs moving as fast as they could, yelling for everyone to wait up.

  “Kelly.” It slid into place. Claire’s assistant. The one who she’d tried to fix me up with before…before…. “Right, sure. Of course.” I laughed self-deprecatingly as the back of my neck flamed. “Sorry about that, I’ve been running the table saw all day and my ears were ringing something fierce.”

  “Oh gosh, that’s okay!” she shouted, for the benefit of my ringing ears, I supposed. Sweet girl. “So you don’t mind meeting up a little earlier? It won’t screw with the rest of your New Year’s plans?”

  Up until now I didn’t think I had New Year’s plans, but of course I wasn’t going to tell her that. “It’s perfect. Can you, uh, can you give me the address of the restaurant so I can put it into my GPS?” I fumbled, hoping she wouldn’t notice I couldn’t remember where she’d wanted to meet up. “So I can time it. I don’t want to be late.” I said a silent prayer she hadn’t chose a place around the corner from me.

  Luckily, she hadn’t. She rattled off the address of a place in Reckless Falls. We made pleasant noises at each other before I begged off, claiming to be swamped with orders. I hung up the phone.

  Then swore again.

  I had no memory of agreeing to meet her for New Year’s. The days before Claire and me, when we…they all seemed like they’d happened to a different person. So
meone young and impossibly naive.

  And damned stupid.

  I pulled into the parking lot and threw my truck into park, then sat there for a moment, trying to figure out why my brain didn’t seem to be functioning anymore.

  Whoops and shouts spilled out from the rowdy, cantina-style restaurant that Kelly had chosen. Neon signs advertising Mexican beers blinked in the windows, and on the outdoor porch, revelers wearing fake sombreros guzzled pitchers of luridly colored frozen margaritas.

  My hand went to my necktie. She’d said reservations, so I’d dutifully dressed up. I yanked my tie from my collar and tossed it onto the seat, then untucked my shirt. In my button-down and khakis, I still looked like someone’s golf-playing Dad compared to the dudebros in graphic tees around me, but it would have to do.

  “Hi, are you meeting someone?” the harried-looking hostess chirped. She had a slightly manic gleam in her eye.

  “Yes, my name is Ethan. I’m here for Kelly?” I replied.

  Behind the hostess, a woman hopped up from her chair, knocking into the table in the process. “Whoops!” the girl cried, steadying the tabletop and blotting at the spilled water with a wad of napkins. “Ethan! Yes! Hi!”

  “Kelly?” I took some napkins and helped her mop up the spills. “I’m sorry, am I late? Were you waiting long?” I took out my phone to check the time. It was exactly 6:28 p.m.

  “No, no, I was at work and came right here.” She finally finished cleaning her spill and extended her hand. I set my phone down on the tabletop and accepted it. It was a little damp, but I took it anyway, debating if I should kiss it or not. Was that overkill? I smiled instead. “Hello. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  “You too.” She blinked up at me. “Wow,” she blurted. “You’re really tall.”

  “You’re…not?” I grinned so she’d know I was teasing. She giggled immediately, a blush creeping onto her cheeks. She reddened further as I moved around to hold her chair as she sat back down again. “And polite too,” she gushed.