Pining For You: Jasper Falls

by Lydia Michaels

  When he said her name, the word seemed to whisper right up her spine in the form of a chill. “My pleasure.”

  His eyes held hers for an additional second and she felt the strangest sensation in her stomach, but it disappeared the moment his tone returned to business. “I’ll, of course, need your background checks and all the normal payroll stuff. We can go over everything tomorrow. Be at my home before eight.”

  She nodded, her attention pulling back to the familiar mayor’s mansion at the end of Main Street, just before the church. “Okay.”

  The woman finally retreated and he paused, holding the weight of the door. “And I guess I should ask your first name, Ms. Marcelli.”

  “It’s Skylar.”

  His hard jaw softened as relief touched his face and he smiled. The slight curve of those full lips transformed his already beautiful face into downright breathtaking. “Nice to meet you, Skylar. I’m Rhett Buchanan.”

  The chill she’d felt chased away by something warm. “I know.”

  He wasn’t even speaking, yet he somehow dripped charm. She wondered how much of his personality had been polished for a life of politics and how much was actually authentic. Overall, he seemed like a nice man.

  Her grandfather would not be happy about this.

  3

  “Who was that?” Erin handed him a cup of coffee and took his coat.

  Addison raced over to inform him that her balloon had popped when she closed it in the bathroom door. “Can we get another one, Daddy?”

  “Sure.” He took the file of copies from Erin and headed into his office. “That was Addison’s new nanny.”

  “She’s a McCullough.”

  He sat behind his desk, where a list of messages waited. “Actually, she’s a Marcelli.”

  “But she’s related to the McCulloughs. You can see it in her blue eyes.”

  He hadn’t noticed the color of her eyes, because he’d been too distracted by the beauty mark on her cheek and the way her dark hair caught in the wind. She smelled like Christmas cookies, soft hints of cinnamon mixed with sweet vanilla.

  “I didn’t get into her genealogy. Do you have an issue with the McCulloughs?”

  “No. I used to date one.” His personal assistant shrugged. “They’re fine, if you don’t mind a little crazy.”

  The word crazy got his attention. “What are you saying?”

  She swept a hand under her blonde hair, curling it around the back of her neck and dragging it down the front of her blouse. “They’re just a little…off. They all live up on that mountain off the grid. They’re sort of…lawless.”

  “Well, if she wants to work for me, she’ll follow the laws. I already told her I require a background check.”

  His stomach dropped. Had he made a mistake? She seemed like a decent woman—kind, patient with Addy, in possession of the proper credentials. He was running out of options, and a run-of-the-mill babysitter wasn’t going to cut it.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her.” She handed him a printout of the day’s agenda. “Don’t forget the foreman’s name is Ron. Last time you accidentally called him Don. And the other rep is named Brian. He’s the one with the wife who needed help filing for an LLC.”

  “Right. What was the LLC for?”

  “Jewelry, I think. But I could be wrong. Maybe a gift shop. It’s opening after the New Year.”

  “Got it.” He should have never had that fourth cup of coffee. “Don.”

  “Ron!” She shook her head. “You need a day off.”

  He laughed. “Tell that to the town.”

  “Fix your tie…” Before he could lift a finger, her hands were on him. She fussed with the knot, and all he could smell was the candied scent of her lip gloss.

  His mind flashed to Skylar Marcelli’s lips. They were natural, no sticky gloss, no color. Just soft little pillows cushioning that sweet little mouth—

  “There.” Erin patted his chest.

  Disturbed by the trajectory of his thoughts, he cleared his throat. “Thank you.” He needed to get laid.

  The secretary, Jan, appeared at the doorway. “Rhett, your ten o’clock is here.”

  “Send them back.”

  Erin left and Rhett stood to greet the union reps. After shaking hands, they took their seats. He warmed up with some small talk. “How’s your wife’s store coming along, Brian?”

  “Great. She’s real excited for the grand opening. We hope you’ll be able to stop by.”

  “I look forward to it. It’s good to see another small business come to Jasper Falls.”

  The meeting commenced, and Rhett listened carefully for ways he could help the union in an effort to secure their vote in the upcoming year. He loved being a politician, but experience taught him there was always a trade-off. Sometimes he wished he could run on his beliefs alone, but that wasn’t how the world worked, at least not the American government.

  He scratched their backs and they scratched his. And while everyone noticed the changes taking place in their little town since he’d revealed the revitalization project, not everyone was pleased with the modifications. But there were always critics.

  Some bitched about the constant construction. Others complained that the tourists made too much noise. And several were opposed to simple modernizing in the form of necessary traffic lights were there were none before.

  Change was never easy, but the small town folks of Jasper Falls sometimes seemed offended by even the mere hint of it—even when the result meant simpler, happier, more financially stable outcomes for everyone.

  With the addition of new commercial establishments came tourists. And with the right budgeting came additional money for infrastructure. Better roads meant less flats, easier winters, and safer drives. But God forbid the town shut down a main stretch of road for a day to make the modifications.

  Their small economy was booming with the start of new restaurants and shops, but every time the coffers opened, the residents of Jasper Falls shared their opinions about where the money should be spent.

  Opinions were as common as assholes. Everyone had one. And being mayor meant Rhett got an up close and personal whiff of each one. Some were harmless, but others really stunk.

  He couldn’t renovate the park without justifying why they were not repainting the curbs. If one street got new landscaping, he needed to replenish all of the public gardens.

  Some days, dealing with the unending complaints from the townsfolk was worse than fielding the one hundred how come questions he got from his four-year-old daughter. Speaking of…

  He hadn’t emerged from his office since his meeting ended. The sky had darkened and the phones had stopped ringing hours ago. He closed out his emails and straightened his desk then went to find Addy.

  Her tiny, sleeping body curled up on an upholstered chair in the waiting area, a tartan scarf draped over her arms like a blanket. Jan’s desk was tidy and her chair empty. All traces of constituents gone.

  He turned to find Erin holding a freshly rinsed coffee pot. “You’re still here?”

  She drifted past him, returning the kettle to its home and readied the grounds for the next morning. Her stocking feet were bare against the carpet. “You work late, I work late.”

  His concern returned to his daughter. “Did she eat dinner?”

  “Jan made her a cup of noodles.”

  A sense of failure crowded him. His daughter deserved better then dehydrated noodles cooked in an office microwave.

  Brushing a tangle of curls back from her face, he whispered, “Addison. It’s time to go home, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes opened, and she bestowed a smile he didn’t deserve. “Daddy.” Wreathing her arms around him, he scooped her off the chair.

  His body came to attention as the soft, wool scarf brushed against his face and he breathed in the delicious scent of cinnamon and vanilla. The subtle hint of perfume held a womanly appeal, completely contradictory to his daughter’s youthful scent, and his mind jerked to images of
Skylar Marcelli.

  Addison hooked her legs around his hip and he rubbed the wool between his forefinger and thumb. “Where did you get this?” He already knew, but he needed confirmation.

  “Skylar gave it to me.”

  “Do you like Ms. Marcelli?”

  He wasn’t sure why using her surname felt safer than her first. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he was out of nannies and needed this arrangement to work. No room for missteps.

  Addison crunched her face. “Who’s that?”

  “The woman you met today. That’s her name.”

  “Nuh-uh. It’s Skylar.”

  “Marcelli’s her last name.” They were getting off track. “Did you like her?”

  She nodded. “She rescued my b’loon.”

  “Would you like to see her again?” She wouldn’t have a choice, but he was curious.

  “Okay. I can give her back her scarf.”

  “First we’ll have it cleaned.”

  They waited as Erin gathered her coat and belongings, then locked up the office. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She glanced back, her gaze lingering on Addison as she sighed. “Goodnight, Rhett.”

  “See you tomorrow, Erin.”

  Rhett had all intentions of adding the scarf to his dry cleaning that evening, but somehow the soft accessory skipped the pile of wrinkled shirts and jackets. He refolded the material and breathed in Skylar Marcelli’s recognizable fragrance, shutting his eyes and wondering why he found the fading scent so comforting.

  It reminded him of department stores around the holidays or bakeries on Sunday mornings. There was something nostalgic but borrowed in the scent, something he knew didn’t belong in his memories, but captured a sense of longing he’d suppressed years ago. Maybe it smelled like a teacher.

  Setting the folded scarf aside, he let his curiosity move to more pressing concerns. By the end of each week, he always felt like his world was on the verge of collapse. And since losing his last nanny, things had only gotten more hectic. Hiring Skylar Marcelli seemed like a good call.

  Despite not knowing her, he couldn’t escape the gut instinct that she would be good for his daughter and that meant she would be good for their situation. He loved being a father. Addison was his entire world. The challenge rested in not just being her parent, but figuring out how to be a good parent, a role-model and dependable source of security, something he didn’t have while growing up.

  He needed another term as mayor to continue all the changes he envisioned. If he got reelected, he stood a chance of building a community perfect for his daughter, a place where she would be safe and always know a sense of home.

  Growing up in a situation with pronounced limits, he developed an obsession with knocking down barriers. If someone said something was impossible, he proved them wrong.

  The biggest obstacle of his past had always been his background. People saw a boy dressed in hand-me-down rags with unkempt hair and assumed privilege would always be lacking in his life.

  Maybe it was, because nothing had ever come easily to him. Every luxury he claimed as a man came from hard work, sleepless nights, and cut-throat determination. He proved that sometimes success comes from grit as much as it arrived from privilege. But goddamn, he was tired.

  He’d always pushed himself to the brink of collapse, always thinking he had nothing left to give. Then Addison was born.

  Having a daughter meant acting out of love not resentment. Being a father required him to tap into something pure he wasn’t sure he possessed. It couldn’t be genetic because his mother wasn’t the loving sort, and his dad left before he ever had the chance to meet him.

  Most days Rhett faked parental confidence, but eventually, as his daughter grew and revealed this incredible little person with thoughts and opinions and an astounding ability to love, he discovered that caring for his child, loving her, putting her first, and assuring she never wanted for anything, well, that was the easiest job he’d ever had. Challenging, sure. Exhausting to the point of lunacy, especially when she was an insomniac infant. But taking care of her was also so easy.

  And it made him wonder, if being kind and patient for his flesh and blood came so naturally to him, why had his own parents struggled with the task? Perhaps it was him.

  No matter how hard he’d pushed himself, Addison brought him purpose and he pressed himself twice as hard to secure her a safe and happy life. He still struggled to decide stupid things like scented or unscented fabric softener and he felt like a true criminal whenever he accidentally got shampoo in her eyes, but most days he was able to guess the best choices. And every day she smiled up at him as if he himself had hung the moon and stars.

  No one had ever looked at him that way before. Parenting was supposed to be selfless, but he selfishly did it for her adoration. Even on the days he screwed up and left her sleeping on an office chair with nothing but wax noodles and peanut butter and jelly in her belly, she still made him feel like he was doing the best job in the world.

  He wanted to give her a better world. He started small, as the mayor of a little, hole-in-the-wall town, but aspired for bigger things. Perhaps he’d run for state representative, and move into bigger branches of government, earn higher pay, and fund the best education money could buy for his brilliant daughter.

  But larger government jobs couldn’t be run strictly from his small town, and he’d have to travel. Addison would be older by then, but still young. Childcare was a necessity, and he struggled to determine if his ambitions were purely for her benefit or if the sacrifice she paid for his success might somehow cost them in the end.

  Being a father created an endless tug of war between providing financial stability and a paternal presence. While men and women successfully acted as single parents all the time, playing the role of both mom and dad, he couldn’t help wishing Addison had both presences in her life. Hiring governesses seemed the closest substitute for the element of female nurturing he didn’t have a clue how to provide.

  Jasper Falls had been a backwoods town five years ago. Hell, the town hadn’t even had its own name. It had been numbered as merely a district in Center County, Pennsylvania.

  When he moved to Center County, he saw potential. Everything about this place screamed dusty, small-town charm. It was just hidden under the stench of buck-lure and diesel fuel.

  It was after midnight when he finally made it to the kitchen and constructed a sandwich. He wasted no time on condiments or lettuce, too distracted by his open laptop on the counter. The office had just launched the new website design for the upcoming campaign, and he wanted to review it carefully before anyone else.

  Sitting at the table, hair still damp from a shower and bare feet pressed to the cold floor, he slouched in his lounge pants and skimmed the site.

  Women were his key demographic. He appealed to any fanciful natures and sold an image of old world, country charm. His analytics told him they were also the residents that spent the most time reading his website, so they really amped up the storybook appeal.

  The male residents grumbled about unwanted changes but ultimately listened to their wives, but Rhett still had to work to appease everyone. Gaming laws and fishing tournaments could go a long way on winning their favor, so he also had to play those roles as well.

  Once they rebranded District 23 into the enchanting town of Jasper Falls, citizens began to trust his vision and believe that such a fantasy might actually have a shot of becoming a reality. But the locals never let him forget they were the sort who put great credence in a man’s word, didn’t take kindly to strangers coming in and changing too much, and that this was a place that believed Sundays were for God, football, and homemade cobbler.

  Staring dispassionately at his sandwich as the cold meat flopped lifelessly over the plain, white bread, he tried to imagine it was warm, country cobbler. He tossed the half-eaten sandwich onto the napkin and returned to his work.

  Did Skylar bake? She smelled like cookies. Had she
ever made cobbler? Why was he thinking about her at one in the morning?

  Shaking his head, he pondered Erin’s earlier comment about the McCulloughs being crazy. The older generation founded the lumberyard, which employed almost eighty percent of Jasper Falls. They didn’t strike him as foolish. It struck him as smart. But he supposed big mountains came with big secrets, and anything could happen that far off the grid.

  The screen switched to Facebook and he typed in the last name. Hundreds of McCulloughs populated the search engine. Then he deleted the name and replaced it with Marcelli.

  Three women he recognized as Vincenzo’s daughters appeared and then he saw Skylar, smiling against a field of sunflowers. It seemed criminal for any woman to be that pretty. She probably had some punk boyfriend who didn’t have a clue how out of his league she was.

  Since she would be taking care of his daughter, he took a few minutes to search her profile. Somehow he ended up on her Instagram.

  Damn, she had a great smile. Dark brown hair and deep olive skin and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, swirled with radiant shocks of gold and evergreen. He couldn’t find her age, but guessed she was in her early twenties.

  Hoped—because if she wasn’t, that made him the filthiest letch around.

  “You’re such a creeper,” he mumbled, scrolling further down the grid of her pictures.

  It was research. His own personal background check. She was his new employee, and it seemed logical to get a feel for the woman who would be spending her days with his daughter. He was doing this for Addison.

  He rolled his eyes, trying not to slip on his own bullshit.

  There was nothing startling about her social media. Compared to some, hers seemed rather tame.

  He paused and smiled when he spotted a cute picture of her in a wool cap, holding a cup of coffee from the café in two hands covered in copper gloves.

  Her caption read, “Dear gourd! Orange you happy it’s fall, ya’ll? If you don’t like autumn puns, you better leaf now, because I’m about to get as cliché as pun-king pie under a harvest moon sky!”