“So you’re back, then? About time, too. What do you call this? Fifteen months and not so much as a single visit. Or a post card.” Lissa had a coil of wire in her hand along with a pair of cutters to fix the perpetually broken fencing on the sheep pen, and some of her frizzy blond curls had, as usual, escaped the messy bun she’d scraped them into. Softening the words with a distracted smile, she moved to the fence and picked up one of a pair of fallen pickets and held it in place while waving away the cunning old black-faced ewe that was leading her contingent of sheep in yet another dash for freedom.
The familiarity of it all, the escaping sheep, the messy curls of Lissa’s hair, the lightly teasing note in Lissa’s voice brought a lump welling in Cait’s throat.
Maybe the invisible line wasn’t as impassable as she’d feared.
“He never told me,” she said, “or I’d have been home like a shot.”
“Aye, Brice told me yesterday. He’s been telling everyone. Mind, we’ve all known your father’s a daft old devil, but we’d never have thought this of him. Looking back, I’m ashamed of myself for not doing more for him.”
“What do you mean?” Cait asked.
“Been making a proper hermit of himself, hasn’t he? Whole time since you’ve been gone. Scarcely leaves the cottage and won’t answer the door when someone stops by with a pudding or a bit of stew. That only got worse when he broke his leg. Weren’t for Brice, we’d have had to ring you ages ago.”
You should have rung me anyway. Someone could have rung me, Cait thought, but “Thank you for trying to help,” was all she said.
Lissa rubbed at her sleeve, dislodging the dusting of snow that had fallen from the larch tree at the edge of the road. “Should have tried harder,” she said, looping wire around the fencepost. “But you know how folks can be. Some—and I won’t say who—were putting it about that you’d gotten above yourself with your grand London job, but I never believed it. The way things used to be between you and your father before Robbie died, it made more sense to think the two of you had fallen out again.” She smiled a bit too brightly. “But there. It’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? You’re home, and I’ve no doubt you’ll soon see things right.”
Cait wished she had Lissa’s confidence as they said their goodbyes. Leaving Lissa to fix the fence before the sheep could make a more determined sprint for liberty, she proceeded downhill at a cautious pace. The sharp curve after the turn-off to Brice’s cottage and the garage where he’d worked since long before his father died had always iced over early and melted late. She slowed even more as she approached it.
Good thing, too. Brice’s barreled toward her coming up from town, and he took the shoulder so that they scraped by each other in the curve with a whisker’s width of air between them. He had the nerve to grin and wave, and Cait watched the glossy Land Rover out of sight in her rearview mirror until she shook her head and told herself sternly to pay attention to the road instead.
Still, she couldn’t help wondering where he’d been. There was only one reason he would be up this early and heading home, and it struck Cait like a kick to the stomach that she wasn’t sure she could bear it if she had to watch someone else standing beside him at the tree lighting, see him kissing someone else beneath the traditional ball of mistletoe they’d be bringing down to the village. Tonight, she realized belatedly. The lighting was tonight, and she couldn’t decide whether it would be better to go and face everyone, start the process of redeeming herself all over again straight away, or take the coward’s route and hide at home.
It would all depend on her father, though, wouldn’t it? She could hardly leave him on his own when she’d only just gotten back.
Mindful that she might need to work even harder to gain acceptance if she wasn’t at the tree lighting, she was even more careful to stop and greet everyone she met on the road. Near the old oak tree that had been split by lightening the night before her sixteenth birthday, she chatted briefly with Angus Greer and his heavily-pregnant Kirsty outside their cottage. Kirsty had worked at the Tea Room for years, and they were on the MacGregor side of things anyway, so they were friendly. Brice’s second cousin Rory, though, who she ran into a moment later, fell straight back into flirting with her as if she’d never been gone, as if she’d never left Brice practically at the altar. Only old Mrs. Ewing refused to so much as acknowledge her, standing in her front window holding Samson, the little Wheaten terrier who had only half as much propensity to bite as his owner. Cait told herself Mrs. Ewing had always been a right old witch anyway and it didn’t matter, but she was still feeling the chill of the encounter as she got out of the car in front of Grewer’s Sweets and Groceries a few moments later.
Expecting the usual off-white rows of display shelves crammed with tinned beans and laundry soap, she stopped inside the doorway and blinked in surprise at the wooden screens painted with views of the glen at its most beautiful that now divided the rest of the shop from row of charmingly mismatched cafe-style tables draped in a variety of tartan plaids. Moving past those, she saw that the old refrigerated case that had previously displayed Rhona’s daily offering of baked goods had gained a twin. And where the variety of pies and cakes and scones had always been uninspired, there was now an eye-popping selection of exquisitely-decorated miniature Scottish tarts as well as French-style mille-feuilles, tartes tatin, and macarons. Atop the display case, a three-tier serving stand positioned beside a cute polka-dotted teapot held a sampling of delicate sandwiches and a selection of pastries with a hand-lettered sign:
Cream Teas Offered
1:00-5:00 PM
from £10.50
Cait’s rage meter rose instantly from low to sizzling.
Rhona Grewer had wasted no time at all taking advantage of the Tea Room closing.
As if what Rhona had done before hadn’t been enough already.
The bells on the door behind Cait had scarcely stopped jingling when Rhona herself swept in through the curtain of beads that concealed the stock room. As brassy blond and tarted up as ever, she wore zebra-striped stiletto heels and another of her tight pencil skirts, but her slithery satin blouse was partially covered by a pink and brown polka-dotted apron that matched the teapot on the display case. Her smile widened into a crocodile’s grin as she caught sight of Cait.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re back, are you? I’d heard you preferred to stay in London.”
“You heard? Or you’ve been telling people so?” Cait countered.
Rhona shrugged rather viciously. “I can’t help what people might overhear, now can I? Did you come in to shop or were you looking for Brice? If so, you’ve only just missed him.”
Cait willed her face to show no emotion. “I stopped in for food, actually. You do still sell groceries, I assume?”
“If you’re referring to the fact I’m serving teas,” Rhona said, blushing, “that’s business, plain and simple. Your father closed the Tea Room, and someone needs to offer the tourists a place to grab a bite. Not everyone can afford to eat at the hotel. But it’s worked beautifully for me, I have to say.” She straightened the sign on the counter and turned the teapot a fraction of an inch clockwise as if that somehow made a difference. “Brando gives me a lovely discount on the pastries, and all I have to do is make the sandwiches, which is far less work than when I was doing all the baking on my own. Shame your father didn’t think of that. He might have found a way to keep the Tea Room open, but you can’t blame me for that. I’d have been mad to pass up the opportunity when I saw it.”
“I can’t think when you last passed up an opportunity to stir up trouble,” Cait responded mildly.
Clearly, she was going to need to have a chat with Brando.
Not that she meant to take away his business. If he was offering Rhona a wholesale discount, it might mean that the hotel and his bakery down in Callander were struggling, too. Asking him not to sell to Rhona would put him in a tough position, so Cait would need to think of an alternative.
Overall, she had a lot of thinking to do.
Turning from Rhona with a muffled sigh, she snatched up a basket from a stack strategically positioned beside one of the pastry cases where everyone buying groceries would be forced to get an eyeful of tempting sweets. That was another problem with Rhona—in addition to being a conniving witch fully capable of flirting at Olympic level, she was too bloody clever by half.
Well, two could play at that. Cait had no intention of letting Rhona steal the Tea Room’s customers. Rhona’d already stolen more than Cait could ever forgive, and the Tea Room held too many important memories, not only for Cait but for everyone in the glen. That couldn’t be replaced by six tables in the front window of a glorified mini-market.
The Tea Room’s legacy had to be preserved, and thanks to Rhona, Cait would have to find a way to not only reopen quickly, but also to bring the customers in.
Mistakes
“Everything tells me that
I am about to
make a wrong decision,
but making mistakes
is just part of life.”
Paolo Coelho
Eleven Minutes
After banging through the kitchen door with her arms laden, Cait opened the refrigerator to put the groceries away and discovered that someone stocked it up already. A fresh quart of milk that hadn’t been there earlier stood on the rack along with a packet of chicken breasts, a head of lettuce, tomatoes, and a bottle of orange juice. And on the table, someone had filled a vase with a bouquet of pine and holly sprigs and placed it beside a plate of disturbingly familiar-looking pastries.
There was no sign of a note.
Cait emptied the two reusable shopping bags of groceries, picked up Mrs. Bogan, and absently scratched the cat behind the ears as she headed into the sitting room in search of her father. He wasn’t there, but when she went upstairs and listened at his door, she thought she heard him moving around. She gave a cautious knock.
“What?” he barked. “I’m sleeping.”
Nothing wrong with the old man’s hearing, then.
“You’re not sleeping or you wouldn’t be talking,” she said.
“Who can sleep with you banging around?”
She tested the knob and poked her head in the door when she found it wasn’t locked. “I only just got back from the shop,” she said, “but someone had come by and left groceries in the kitchen. Any idea who that might have been?”
“That Brice. He’s got the key.” Her father sat on the edge of the lonely mattress with his pale, scrawny legs splayed out in front of him while he struggled to pull trousers on over his pajama bottoms.
Cait pretended not to notice either the state of him or the emptiness of the room. She merely raised an eyebrow. “You gave Brice the key to the house?”
Her father’s cheeks turned red. Ducking his head, he reached for the cane that lay on the floor nearby. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because you never had a kind word to say to him in all the time he and I went out together. I can’t help thinking it’s suspicious you’re finding him useful now that we’ve broken up.”
“I never said he was useful. Only less useless than the rest around here.” Donald used the cane to lever himself upright, and it shook only marginally less than his legs and spindly arms.
Cait had to keep herself from rushing across the floor to help him. He wouldn’t have thanked her for it. The back of her eyes felt heavy and hot with tears, and she had to swallow them down, clearing her throat before she spoke again.
“I don’t begin to understand you,” she said, then she shook her head. “I’ll go make some tea for you. You’re going to eat something now if I have to push it down you, you stubborn old bull.”
“Listen to how you’re talking to your father, now.” Donald’s face went even redder. “You can just get out of this house if this is how you’re going to be. I forgot what a mule-headed brat you always were.”
Cait’s hands flew to her hips. “And who do you think I got that from? I’m going nowhere, Dad, I’ll tell you that much. Neither are you if I have anything to say about it.”
He leaned his large frame heavily on the cane. “Good thing you haven’t, then,” he said, “because I’m dying. Now get out so I can finish dressing.”
Cait stared at him squint-eyed, her mouth so full of words she couldn’t say a single one. Finally, she whipped around and stalked back downstairs to the kitchen where she slammed the kettle on the stove and banged the lid of the teapot on the counter hard enough to break a chip off of it.
What was she going to do? How was she supposed to convince him that he had to fight?
He was hurting, and she couldn’t begin to reach that kind of pain.
The fact that she was hurting herself made her want to run to Brice and have him hold her, have him listen. Old habits, old loves, old hurts, died hard.
Thinking on that made it easier to understand how hopeless, how alone, her father must feel without her mother. As often as Cait had wondered how her mother could possibly put up with his demands, his petty tyranny, his need to give his opinion on everything and everyone while always insisting that he was always right, she had never doubted the love between them.
Now when she reflected on it, love was purely an amazing thing. The simple knowledge that the most difficult people to love could be loved as much, as hard, as deeply, as anyone else, was nothing less than a miracle.
She made her father’s breakfast for the second time that morning and, once she’d seen him settled on the sofa in front of the telly, she drove back to the Tea Room to check the cellar. Surely there had to be leftover paint there in a forgotten corner—something other than the stark, empty white that Brice had been using. She felt desperate to burn off some energy, and temper, and she always thought best when her hands were busy.
But as she drove into the car park, she discovered that Brice’s Land Rover was already there. She stopped her own car beside it, turned off the ignition, tried to talk herself into the courage to go inside while the cold slowly seeped in around her and her breath fogged the windows.
The Brice that had filled a vase with pine and holly was a Brice she didn’t know. And wherever he’d spent the night, he’d bought food at the shop and driven it up to the house first thing, thinking to save her a trip. He had always been many things, many lovely things, but that particular kind of thoughtfulness had never been among them.
He’d told her he was changing. Maybe he’d been right.
She eased herself out of the car and paused beside it, holding the top of the driver’s door, trying to decide what she would say to him. A part of her—the stormy, unruly part she’d been working to keep tightly leashed—craved the emotional release of a good fight, the kind she and Brice had always done so well. The kind that ended in making up and laughter. They’d been good at that, too, but that wasn’t an option now.
“Thank you for taking care of my father,” she said simply, honestly, when she found him inside sanding a plank he’d put up across two sawhorses in the leftmost of the cozy seating areas that served as quiet reading nooks.
He straightened and stood holding the electric sander in one hand, the sleeves of his sweater pushed up on wiry forearms, and his stubborn jaw softened as she finished speaking.
“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice softer, too.
With a small shiver, Cait remembered that voice, that very one, whispering in her ear. Whispering that he loved her. Needed her. Whispering that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
The memories squeezed her heart and wrung it dry, leaving regret rattling like autumn leaves inside her chest. Regret was bitter and smelt of loss, and she was sick of loss, of all the cold, empty emotions. It was something bright and sweet and heady that she needed. Hope. Comfort. Courage.
She strode across the room and placed her hands flat against Brice’s cheeks, pulling his mouth down to hers, meeting him on her toes.
He fr
oze in place a moment. Then the electric sander thudded on the floor and his arms came around her, moved up her back, pulled her close, closer, and closer still. He lifted her until her legs wrapped around him of their own accord, and he sat her on the top of the board that he’d been sanding and kissed her while the fire that had always been between them, the fire that she had tried to convince herself had died, flashed back into blue-hot flame and proved that it had been banked instead of snuffed.
Who had she been fooling? Of all the people in the world, Brice had the capacity to hurt her more than anyone precisely because she loved him more than she’d ever thought it was possible to love another human being. Because he was a part of her.
She kissed him, answered his kisses, while the sun shone like a gem on the snow outside the window, and as much as she had loved her work in London, she suspected she hadn’t felt this alive since the moment she had left the glen. Since the moment when she’d last kissed Brice.
Breaking away, she drew back. “You broke my heart,” she whispered. “You’re probably going to break it again.”
“You’re a fine one to talk,” he said. “Do you know how I felt when I found your note? When you returned your ring and wouldn’t take my calls?”
“You had Rhona,” Cait said, sounding as bitter as she felt.
“I never had anyone except you, Cait. Not since my mother left. I had you and Brando, and you’re all I’ve ever needed or wanted. I had a drink with Rhona—a few drinks, aye. But that was all. I didn’t stop to think—”
“You never do. You don’t consider. You leap. Headlong. Och, you mean well—we all know that. You’re not malicious. You’re a good man, Brice, but your thoughtlessness hurts the people around you. You don’t stop to realize that just one moment of being impulsive, taking people up on what they offer, not saying stop soon enough, that one moment is all it takes.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” He drew back, stood looking at the wall above her head. The muscles tightened in his cheeks. “You’re not the only one who got hurt. I had to live without you once you’d gone. I had to stay here after you left, while Davy Grigg took bets from everyone in the entire glen about what exactly I’d done to send you flying out of here like that. It never occurred to a single one of them that you were the one who needed to leave.”
Magic of Winter Page 7
