by Cara Colter
“Just making sure.”
She raised a comically puffy eyebrow at him. “You don’t need my pity. I don’t need your help. I’m chaperoned. I can’t possibly get into any more trouble. The neighborhood kids are out looking for my dog and are retrieving my purse, so you can go.”
It was like coming through a smoky building fraught with danger, and finally catching sight of the red exit sign.
“Do you want me to pick you up in a couple of hours?”
David contemplated the words that had just come out of his mouth, astounded. He wasn’t even planning on being here in a couple of hours. A quick check on his mother, a consult with her care aides and gone.
The urgency to get back to his world felt intense.
Especially now that he’d had this run-in with Kayla.
But in a moment of madness he had promised to look after her dog, and bike and purse. He had tangled their lives together for a little while longer. But escape was just postponed, not canceled.
And apparently, she was just as eager not to tangle their lives as he was.
“I’ve got the neighborhood kids on the case of my dog. I mean it would be nice if you checked, but no, don’t feel obligated. And no, definitely don’t come back. I’ll just walk home. It’s not far.”
She had been riding her bike on Sugar Maple. Did she live close to there?
“Where are you staying?”
She gave him a puzzled look. “I thought your mom would have told you.”
“Told me what?” he said cautiously.
His mother, these days, told him lots of things. That someone was sneaking into the house stealing her eyeglasses. And wine decanters. That she’d had the nicest conversation with his father, who had been dead for seventeen years.
That was part of the reason he was here.
One of the live-in care aides had called him late last night and said, in the careful undertone of one who might be listened to, You should come. It may not be safe for her to be at home anymore.
He had known it was coming, and yet been shocked by it all the same. Wasn’t he back in his hometown hoping it was an overreaction? That if he just hired more staff he would not have to take his mother from the only home she had known for the past forty years?
It seemed to David, of all the losses that this town had handed him, this was the biggest one of all.
He was losing his mother. But he was not confiding that in Kayla, with her all-too-ready sympathy!
“You thought my mother would tell me where you lived?”
“David, I’m her next-door neighbor.”
His mouth fell open and he forced it shut. That was a rather large oversight on his mother’s part.
“The house was too much for Kevin’s folks,” Kayla said.
He’d known that. The house had been empty the last few times he had visited; he had noticed the Jaffreys were no longer there the next time he’d returned to Blossom Valley after Kevin’s funeral. It probably wasn’t the house that was too much, but the memories it contained.
David had his fair share of those, too. He’d felt a sense of loss, to go with his growing string of losses that he felt when he came home, at seeing the house empty. He had practically grown up in that house next door to his, he and Kevin passing in and out of each other’s kitchens since they were toddlers.
Both of them had been only children, and maybe that was why they had become brothers to each other as much as friends.
There was no part of David’s childhood that did not have Kevin in it. He was part of the fabric of every Christmas and birthday. They had learned to ride two-wheelers and strapped on their first skates together. They had shared the first day of school. They had chosen David’s puppy together, and the dog that had been on their heels all the days of their youth had really belonged to both of them.
They had built the tree fort in Kevin’s backyard, and swam across the bay together every single summer.
When David’s dad had died, Mr. Jaffrey had acted like a father to both of them.
No, maybe not a father. More like a friend. Had that been part of the problem with Kevin? A problem David had successfully ignored for years?
No rules. No firm hand. No guidelines. An only child, totally indulged, who had, despite his fun-loving charm, become increasingly self-centered.
The Jaffreys’ empty house had looked more forlorn with each visit: paint needing freshening up, shingles curling, porch sagging, yard overgrown.
That house had once been so full of love and laughter and hopes and dreams. The state it was in now made it seem like the final few words in the closing chapter of a book with a sad ending.
David wondered if maybe the reason he had stayed so angry at Kevin was because if he ever let go of that, the sadness would swallow him whole.
“The Jaffreys got a condo on the water,” Kayla continued. “The house would have gone to Kevin, eventually. They wanted me to have it.”
He let that sink in. Kayla was his mother’s next-door neighbor. She was living in the house he and Kevin had chased through in those glorious, carefree days of their youth.
He didn’t want to ask her anything. He didn’t want to know.
And yet he annoyed himself by asking anyway, “Doesn’t that house need quite a lot of work?”
He hoped she would hear his lack of enthusiasm. And he thought he caught a momentary glimpse of the fact she was overwhelmed by the house in something faintly worried in her eyes. But she covered it quickly.
“Yes!” she said, her enthusiasm striking him as faintly forced. “It needs everything.”
Naturally, she would never walk away from that particular gift horse. She was needed.
He couldn’t stop himself. “Do you ever give up on hopeless causes?”
CHAPTER FIVE
KAYLA LOOKED BRIEFLY WOUNDED and then she just looked mad. David liked her angry look quite a bit better than the wounded one. The wounded expression made her look vulnerable and made him feel protective of her, even though he had caused it in the first place!
“Are you talking about the house?” she asked dangerously.
He answered safely, “Yes,” though he was aware, as was she, that he could have been talking about Kevin.
“Do you ever get tired of being a wet blanket?”
“I prefer to think of it as being the voice of reason.”
“I don’t care to hear it.”
David didn’t care what Kayla cared to hear. She obviously was in for some hard truths today, whether she liked it or not. Maybe somebody did have to protect her. From herself! And apparently, no one had stepped up to the plate to do that so far.
“That house,” he said, his tone cool and reasonable, “is doing a long, slow slide into complete ruin.”
“It isn’t,” she said, as though he hadn’t been reasonable at all. “And it isn’t a hopeless cause!”
There. He’d said his piece. Despite the fact that he dealt in investments, including real estate, all the time, his expertise had been rejected.
He could leave with a clear conscience. He had tried to warn her away from a house that was a little more—a lot more—of a project than any thinking person would take on, let alone a single woman.
“I’ve already ordered all new windows,” she said stubbornly. “And the floors are scheduled for refinishing.”
A money pit, he thought to himself. He ordered himself to shut up, so was astounded when, out loud, he said drily, “Kayla to the rescue.”
She frowned at him.
Stop! David yelled at himself. But he didn’t stop. “I bet the dog is a rescue, too, isn’t it?”
He had his answer when she flushed. He realized Kevin wasn’t the only one he was angry with.
“There was quite a
large insurance settlement,” she said, her voice stiff with pride. “Can you think of a better use for it than restoring Kevin’s childhood home?”
“Actually, yes.”
She was in his field of expertise now. This is what he did, and he did it extremely well. He counseled people on how to invest their money. Blaze Enterprises was considered one of the most successful investment firms in Canada.
“A falling-down house in Blossom Valley would probably rate dead last on my list of potential places to put money.”
“Are you always so crushingly practical?”
“Yes.”
“Humph. Well, I’m going to buy a business here, too,” she said stubbornly, her swollen brows drawing together as she read his lack of elaboration for what it was: a complete lack of enthusiasm.
“Really?” he said, not even trying to hide the cynical note from his voice.
“Really,” she shot back. Predictably, his cynicism was only making her dig in even deeper. “I’m looking at an ice cream parlor.”
“An ice cream parlor? Hmm, that just edged the house out of the position of dead last on my list of potential investments,” he said drily.
“More-moo is for sale,” she said, as though she hadn’t heard him. “On Main Street.”
As if the location would change his mind.
He told himself he didn’t care how she spent her money. Didn’t care if she blew the whole wad.
But somehow he did. Given free rein, Kayla would rescue the world until there was not a single crumb left for herself.
There was no doubt in his mind that More-moo was one more rescue for her, one more thing destined for failure and therefore irresistible. It was time for him to walk away. And yet he thought if he did not try to dissuade her he might not be able to sleep at night.
Sleep was important.
“Nobody sells a business at the top of its game,” he cautioned her.
“The owners are retiring.”
“Uh-huh.”
She looked even more stubborn, her attempts to furrow her brow thwarted somewhat by how swollen it was.
It was none of his business. Let her throw her money around until she had none left.
But of course, that was the problem with having tasted her lips all those years ago. And it was the problem with having chased with her through endless summers on the lake. It was the problem with having studied with her for exams, and walked to school with her on crisp fall days, and sat beside her at the movies, their buttered fingers accidentally touching over popcorn.
It was the problem with having surrendered the first girl he had ever cared about to his best friend, only to watch catastrophe unfold.
There was a feeling that he had dropped the ball, maybe when it mattered most. He couldn’t set back the clock. But maybe he could manage not to drop the ball this time.
Whether he wanted to or not, David had a certain emotional attachment to her—whether he wanted to or not, he cared what happened to her.
At least he could set Kayla straight on the ice cream parlor.
“There is no way,” he said with elaborate patience, “to make money at a business where you only have good numbers for eight weeks of the year. You’ve seen this town in the winter. And spring, and fall, for that matter. You could shoot off a cannon on Main Street and not hit anyone.”
“The demographics are changing,” she said, as if she hoped he would be impressed by her use of the word demographics. “People are living here all year round. It’s become quite a retirement choice.”
“It’s still a business that will only ever have eight good weeks every year. And even those eight weeks are weather dependent. Nobody eats ice cream in the rain.”
“We did,” she said softly.
“Huh?”
“We did. We ate ice cream in the rain.”
David frowned. And then he remembered a sudden thunderstorm on a hot afternoon. Maybe they had been sixteen? Certainly it had been the summer before the kaleidoscope, before he had kissed her, before Kevin had laid claim, before the drowning.
A group of them had been riding their bikes down Main Street and had been caught out by the suddenness of the storm.
It had felt thrilling riding through the slashing rain and flashing lightning, until they had taken cover under the awning of the ice cream store as the skies turned black and the thunder rolled around them.
How could he possibly remember that Kayla’s T-shirt had been soaked through and had become transparent, showing the details of a surprisingly sexy bra, and that Cedric Parson had been sneaking peeks?
So David had taken his own shirt off and pulled it over Kayla’s head, making her still wetter, but not transparently so. He could even remember the feeling: standing under that awning on Main Street, bare chested, David had felt manly and protective instead of faintly ridiculous and cold.
How could he possibly remember that he’d had black ice cream, licorice flavored? And that her tongue had darted out of her mouth and mischievously licked a drip from his cone? And that he had deliberately placed his lips where her tongue had been?
How could he possibly remember that he had felt like the electricity in the air had sizzled deep inside him, and that ice cream had never since tasted as good as it had that electric afternoon?
David shook off the memory and the seductive power it had to make him think maybe people would eat ice cream in the rain.
“Generally speaking, people are not going to go for ice cream if the weather is bad,” he said practically. “One season of bad weather, you’d be finished. A few days of bad weather would probably put an ice cream parlor close to the edge.”
“Well, I like the idea of owning an ice cream parlor,” Kayla said firmly. “I like it a lot.”
He took in her eyes peering at him stubbornly from under her comically swollen forehead, and knew this wasn’t the time.
“Your ambition in life is to be up to your elbows, digging through vats of frozen-solid ice cream until your hands cramp?”
“That sounds like I’m selling a lot of ice cream,” she purred with satisfaction.
“Humph.”
“My ambition,” she told him, something faintly dangerous in her tone, “is to make people happy. What makes anyone happier than ice cream on a hot day?”
Or during a thunderstorm, his own mind filled in, unbidden.
He said, “Humph,” again, more emphatically than the last time.
“It’s a simple pleasure,” she said stubbornly. “The world needs more of those. Way more.”
He had a feeling if he wanted to convince Kayla, he had better back his argument with hard, cold facts: graphs and projections and five years’ worth of More-moo’s financial statements. What would it hurt to have one of his assistants do a bit of research?
“I would like to bring in specialty ice creams. Did you know, in the Middle East, rose petal ice cream is a big hit?”
He felt she had already given her ice cream parlor dreams way more thought than they deserved.
David was pretty sure he felt the beginnings of a headache throbbing along the line of his forehead and into his temples.
“I bet people would drive here from Toronto for rose petal ice cream,” she said dreamily.
David stared at her. She couldn’t possibly believe that! Why did he feel as if he needed to personally dissuade her from unrealistic dreams?
Because he had failed to do so when it had really mattered.
Don’t marry him, Kayla.
Tears streaming down her face. “I have to.”
He could only guess what that fateful decision had put her through. He was going to guess that being married to Kevin had been no bed of roses. Or rose petals, either.
And yet here she was, still dreaming. Wa
s there a certain kind of courage in that?
He hated coming home.
“I’ll go see how the kids are doing with finding the dog,” David said gruffly.
He could clearly see she wanted to refuse this offer—a warning she wasn’t exactly going to embrace his unsolicited advice about the ice cream parlor with open arms—but her concern for the little beast won out.
“You have a cell?” he asked her.
“In pieces on the road, probably,” she said wryly.
“I’ll call here to the clinic, then, when I find out about the dog. Is he a certain breed?”
“Why?”
“If the kids haven’t found him, or I don’t find him hiding under a shrub near where you got stung, I’ll find a picture on the internet and have my assistant, Jane, make a poster. She can email it to me, and I’ll have it printed here.”
Under her comical brows, Kayla was transparent. She was both annoyed by his ability to take charge and his organizational skills, and relieved by them, too. No doubt it would be the same reaction when he presented her with the total lack of viability for operating an ice cream parlor in Blossom Valley.
“He’s a toy Brussels Griffon,” she said, hopeful that he would find the dog, yet reluctant to enlist his aid and hating that she was relying on him. But Kayla was as emotional as he was analytical, her every situation driven by her heart instead of her head.
He put it into his phone. A picture of the world’s ugliest dog materialized, big eyes, wiry hair popping out in all the wrong places. The hair springing from the dog’s ears and above his eyes reminded him of an old man, badly in need of an eyebrow and ear trim.
“Is it just me, or does this dog bear a resemblance to Einstein?” he muttered, showing her the picture.
“Hence the name,” she said, and he smiled reluctantly. Damned if the dog didn’t bear a striking resemblance to the high school teacher, Mr. Bastigal, who had emulated his science hero right down to the crazy gray hair and walrus mustache.
When she nodded that the dog on the screen resembled hers, he slipped the phone into his pocket and vowed to himself he would find it. He ran a multimillion-dollar empire. Trouble-shooting was his specialty. One small dog was no match for him. It looked like Einstein. That didn’t mean it was smart.
