“He said to tell Coop that his team lost and that you owe him ten bucks.” Chase was over by the work table with both hands behind his back, examining the area.
Tucker ran halfway up the stairs to meet Coop, who was coming down. “I’m supposed to tell you that everyone is waiting on you and my mom.” Tucker looked like he wanted to get into something. Anything.
“I guess we have to be going, Jenni.” Coop walked over to his coat and put it on. “You have a very nice shop.” Coop’s eyes were dancing with secrets.
“Mr. Brown?”
“Yes, Corey?”
“I’m supposed to tell you that your dad wants pie. Pumpkin pie.”
Coop laughed with her son. “Did he now.” Coop ruffled Corey’s red hair. “Then I guess we’d better get moving. He can get cranky if not fed.”
“You guys go ahead. I have to get some samples.” She found an unsealed box of Bayberry soap and picked up a couple bars. She started looking for the body cream to go along with it for Lucy. “Tell your grandmother to start serving her pie. I’ll be right there.” Somewhere in the mountain of boxes were opened cases of Snowflake for Faith and Naughty and Nice for Hope. The girls deserved a little something for having ten years scared off their lives by Fred the iguana licking their legs.
“We’ll wait, won’t we guys?” Coop looked at her sons. “A gentleman always waits for a lady.”
Tucker looked ready to argue.
“Of course, if you want to, you can head back to the house without us.” Coop stared at Tucker.
“Naw, I’ll wait.” Tucker stepped farther into the shop. “Can I go see the back room?”
“No, you know that room is strictly off-limits, especially after the last time you visited.” She glared at her son. “Right?”
Tucker scuffed the toe of his untied boot against the wooden floor. “Right.” He sighed.
“Do I want to know what happened last time?” Coop looked intrigued.
“No, Doc Sydney says thinking about it just causes undue stress.” She found the Bayberry body cream and added two jars to her growing pile.
Tucker plopped his butt onto the last step. “I said I was sorry.”
“Mom, can I go back? Sam’s waiting for me.” Chase had his hand on the doorknob and was ready to bolt.
“Sure, just be careful not to trip in the dark.” There was a low-wattage light outside the shop door, and one could see the lights from the back family room, but the path through the overgrown brush wasn’t lit. “Take Corey with you.”
“I want to wait for Mr. Brown.” Corey was glued to Coop’s side.
“Okay, Chase you can go, but be careful.”
Chase shot through the door like an arrow. She gathered up a couple of the cranberry hand wash and three jars of the brown sugar body polish before finding the Snowflake case of soap. She added it all to the pile.
“Can I help you with something?” Coop was eyeing the growing mountain of jars and soap.
“Grab me three of those smaller boxes over there.” She pointed to the right. “Thanks.”
She finished grabbing what she needed and carried it all over to the table. “This should do them nicely.” She started to divide up the goodies. “Tucker, why don’t you carry this box back and give it to Faith with an apology for scaring her like that.” She handed her son a box.
Tucker took the box. “It wasn’t my fault she didn’t like Fred.”
“I told you that Fred is one of those pets that are an acquired taste. He’s like brussels sprouts; not everyone is going to like him.” She pulled on her jacket but didn’t bother to zip it. The last thing she needed was her winter coat. Coop had started her furnace just fine. She went to pick up the other two boxes, but Coop beat her to it.
Tucker dashed out the door with Corey right on his heels. “Slow down, Tucker. That box has glass jars in it.” She could hear them banging against each other as her son ran. If he made it to the house with one thing in that box intact, it would be a miracle. She had only herself to blame if she had to make another trip out to the shop tonight. She knew better than to give Tucker glass.
“Did you just compare Fred to a vegetable?”
“I had to think of something Tucker could relate to, and he relates to brussels sprouts. The boy hates them.” She glanced around the shop one last time before turning off the lights and locking the door behind them.
They were halfway down the path when she heard the sliding door to the family room slam shut behind the boys. “One of these days they are going to pull that door right off its tracks.” She said the first thing to pop into her mind to cover up the awkwardness she was feeling at being alone with Coop. What was she supposed to say to a man who had just kissed her senseless?
“You won’t get an argument out of me on that one.” Coop was quiet for a moment before asking, “What are you doing Saturday night?”
Her feet halted on the dirt path. “Saturday night?” Her mind drew a blank. Saturday night was just like any other night, except the boys got to stay up half an hour longer because it wasn’t a school night. After the boys were tucked into their beds she usually went into the office and did paperwork. “Why?” Why would Coop care if she was printing out shipping labels or ordering in more supplies?
If she wasn’t mistaken, Coop rolled his eyes. In the shadowy darkness it was hard to tell. “I thought if you weren’t busy we could go out to dinner or something. Maybe see a movie in Franklin.”
“As in a date?” She couldn’t believe it—Coop was asking her out. She hadn’t been asked out on a date since college, and her last date had been with Ken.
That invitation from the comb-overed character named Wendell, or something like that, the first week she moved to town didn’t count. The man was a complete idiot. Five minutes after she had turned him down, he had been hitting on Dorothy. Whatever Dorothy had said to him had made him go pale, and neither one of them had been bugged by the president of the chamber of commerce since.
Would she even remember what to do on a date?
“Yes, Jenni, as in a date.” Coop sounded unsure of himself. “I never asked a woman out that has kids. Do you need more time to find a babysitter or something?”
“Coop, that’s not what threw me. I can find a babysitter.” She had no idea what Dorothy would say to her dating again. It had been two years since Ken had passed away; surely Dorothy knew that one day she would start dating again. “It’s just that I haven’t been on a date since college.”
“You haven’t dated since you lost your husband?” Coop sounded amazed, if not in downright shock. “It’s been—what—two years?”
“Over two, but yes.” What did it really matter how long it had been? The question was, how was she going to tell the boys she was going out without them?
“Yes, what? Yes, you’ll go to dinner with me, or yes, you haven’t dated in over two years.”
“Yes to both.”
Coop smiled. “Really?”
“Really.” Her smile matched his. She wasn’t naive enough to think anything would come of a simple dinner date and heated kisses. She wasn’t looking for a future with Coop, or any other man. She had three boys to raise and a business that was just starting to take off. But she was human, and, as Coop’s nuclear kisses had just demonstrated, a woman. She wanted as many of those kisses he was willing to share before he came to his senses.
Dorothy knew Cooper Armstrong would be trouble from the first day he and Jenni had met. The man couldn’t keep his eyes off her daughter-in-law and he always was around when the boys were causing trouble. Boys would be boys, and men would be men.
Jenni was going out with Coop tonight on a date. A real date, and she had only herself to blame for this turn of events. After all, she had been the one to invite Coop and his parents for Thanksgiving dinner. She had been so thankful when Coop had found Corey safe and sound that she would have knitted him a stocking and invited him to spend Christmas with them—if she knew how to knit.
> Now Coop had taken the holiday meal as an open invitation to date Jenni. She didn’t know what exactly had happened out in the shop the other night, but she could guess. She wasn’t born yesterday.
She could hear Jenni arguing with the boys in her bedroom while she got ready. The boys didn’t understand why they couldn’t go along for dinner. Tucker had even promised to behave himself. Dorothy had heard the uncertainty in Jenni’s voice, but her daughter-in-law had held firm. That alone told her how much Jenni wanted to go on this date. Jenni wasn’t known to be a tower of strength when the boys ganged up on her like that. They usually got what they wanted.
To top that one off, Jenni hadn’t even bothered to ask her to babysit. Jenni was not only going to pay Felicity and Sam to watch the boys, but she also was giving Sam money to run into Sullivan to pick up pizza for everyone. In other words, Jenni didn’t need her.
“Mom?” Felicity walked into her bedroom unannounced.
“Yes?” She continued to put away the laundry in her dresser. She had spent the morning in town food shopping, and the afternoon in the basement catching up on her and Felicity’s laundry.
“Have you seen my new jeans?” Felicity pulled open the closet door and started to search through the slacks hanging there.
“In the last four months I’ve bought you at least five new pairs of jeans. Which pair?” Like she would be able to tell the difference. Denim was denim and her daughter probably had over a dozen pairs of jeans thrown around her room upstairs in the attic. “They aren’t in there. That much I do know.”
“How do you know?” Felicity pushed aside a bunch of blouses and continued to search.
“Because I only own three pairs of jeans, unlike some people in this room. I’m wearing one pair, and the other two pairs are hanging right there in front of your nose.” She cringed as her daughter shoved aside three silk blouses she had picked up from the cleaners just yesterday. “Be careful, Felicity. I prefer my blouses without wrinkles.” Her daughter was constantly losing and misplacing things.
“Are you sure you did all the laundry today?” Felicity closed the closet door and frowned at the neatly folded basket of towels.
“Would you care to rephrase that question?” She closed the last drawer with a little bit more force than necessary. “You’re seventeen, Felicity. You’re old enough to start doing your own laundry if you don’t like the way I do it.”
Maybe she had been babying her daughter a little too much. Here she had thought she was helping Felicity out with her laundry. Between school and working part time for Jenni, Felicity had very little time to relax. She had done Kenny’s laundry until he went away to college, and then when he did manage to come home to visit, he always brought what seemed like a semester’s worth of dirty laundry home with him. “Mom, you know I didn’t mean it that way.” Felicity rolled her eyes. “It’s just that Sam is going to be here any minute and I need to change.”
“What’s wrong with the jeans you have on?” The pair looked perfectly fine to her. They were better than fine; they didn’t have any holes in them. It had taken Felicity four months to talk her into buying a brand-new pair of jeans with holes already in them. Today’s fashions were ridiculous and depressingly dark.
“I wore these Tuesday to school.” Felicity looked appalled.
“And they were washed on Thursday.” She shook her head as she carried the basket of towels into the bathroom. “They’re clean.”
“I worked five hours today in them. They smell like soap and have glitter all over them.” Felicity followed her into the bathroom and brushed her thigh. “See?”
When they had first moved into the house, Jenni and she had gotten into their first fight. Jenni had insisted that Dorothy take the master bedroom with its adjoining bath. The house was Jenni’s, so she believed Jenni deserved it. While she had been busy with the movers in the kitchen, Jenni had directed the placement of the bedroom furniture. Jenni had won that argument by default. Dorothy wasn’t strong enough to move the furniture and switch Jenni’s and her bedroom sets.
Felicity and she now shared this one bathroom, while Jenni and the boys had the main, out-of-date bath, off the hallway. Most of the time the turtle spent his day in the bottom of her tub because Corey swore that Buster hated pink. The color made the turtle sick, and the main bath of the house was a putrid shade of 1960s pink, down to the commode, sink, and floor and ceiling tiles. At least her and Felicity’s bath was white, ancient, chipped white. The walls were papered in a current 1970s style of crushed-velvet paisley. Retro was alive and well in the Wright house, and she hated it.
Pink sparkles now glittered on the white throw rugs she was using in the hopeless cause of toning down the room. “Don’t do that, Felicity. They get everywhere.”
“Yeah, like on my jeans.” Felicity studied her face in the mirror and moaned in dismay. “I’m getting another zit.”
She stood beside her daughter, who was at least three inches taller, and marveled at the woman she was becoming. It was scaring her to death. In two years Felicity would be away at college. Felicity wasn’t anything like her brother, Ken. With her daughter she wasn’t sure if she would come home for visits, dirty laundry or not. “You are not. Stop poking at it.”
“See? You said it; you see it too.” Felicity moved closer to the mirror above the sink.
“I see a freckle. In fact I see a whole face of freckles. You got them from your father’s side of the family.” The red hair ran on both sides, but George had been blessed with the Irish freckles. “Your father used to rock you in the chair and claim all those freckles were from where the angels kissed you.”
“Dad was Irish; he was full of baloney.” Felicity grinned at herself.
“Hey”—she lightly smacked her daughter on the arm—“watch it, sister. I’m Irish too.”
“Mom, so am I.” Felicity glanced over at the tub, where Buster was playing in the half-inch of water at the one end. “I forgot to tell you about tonight and Sam.”
“Speaking of Sam”—maybe now was the time to have the heart-to-heart with her daughter—“you’re a beautiful girl, Felicity. Do you really want to be spending all your time with one guy? Sam’s a really nice boy, don’t get me wrong.” She could see the anger building in her daughter’s face. “What I’m saying is that you barely know anyone else at school. Maybe you should be, I don’t know—what do you young kids call it nowadays?—playing the field.”
“It’s called being a ‘sleaze-ut,’ Mom. Is that what you want me to be?”
“Of course not.” She didn’t need to be seventeen again to figure out that a “sleaze-ut” was a sleazy slut. “What I’m trying to say is that maybe you and Sam shouldn’t be so serious. You barely know each other.” All she had been hearing from Felicity for the past three months was Sam, Sam, and more Sam. Her daughter’s world was starting to revolve around one guy, and she was way too young to be acting so serious. “You have your whole world ahead of you.”
“What’s that got to do with Sam?” Felicity crossed her arms. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing is wrong with him, hon. He seems like a very nice and polite boy.” It was time for her to do some backpedaling. “Your nephews love him, and his family seems really nice.”
“Great, glad you like his family.” Felicity was being sarcastic. “Because what I forgot to tell you is that not only is Sam coming tonight, so are his father and sisters. Sam said something about his father having one or two parts he wanted to put on the furnace in the basement, so they decided to make a night of it.”
“Here?” Eli Fischer was coming here tonight. The house was a disaster, and so was the kitchen. She had baked a chocolate cake this afternoon while doing the laundry, but she hadn’t had a chance to frost it yet. Tonight she had been planning on giving the kitchen a good scrubbing while Sam and Felicity occupied the boys.
She didn’t even want to think about what she was wearing. She wasn’t fit for company.
Before
she could think of what to do first, there was a pounding on the front door that vibrated the whole house. One of these days they had to get the doorbell fixed before the walls came tumbling down. The boys heard the pounding, sprinted from Jenni’s room, and started running down the stairs, shouting, screaming, and, knowing her grandsons, probably pushing each other. It was a miracle no one had broken their neck yet, the way the boys raced up and down those steps.
“I’ll get it!” shouted Tucker.
“No, me!” answered Corey.
“Boys, no pushing!” Jenni came out into the hallway to yell down the stairs.
She and Felicity joined Jenni at the top of the stairs as Chase made it to the front door first and flung it open.
The Fischer family tumbled into the house with pizza boxes, bags of chips, bottles of soda, and what looked like a month’s worth of DVDs. Eli stood at the bottom of the stairs, glanced up at them, and grinned. “I declare it movie night!” He held up an economy-size box of microwavable popcorn, boxes of Milk Duds, and a bottle of wine.
Chase, Tucker, and Corey all stood there with their mouths hanging open, probably thinking that Christmas had come early to Mistletoe Bay.
Jenni snapped her seat belt and watched as Coop walked around the front of her SUV and then got into the driver’s seat. The man was not only gorgeous, but attentive and a perfect date as well. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this relaxed over a meal.
What Cooper Armstrong did to a suit should be illegal. The man oozed sex appeal. All through dinner she kept getting whiffs of his aftershave and it was driving her nuts.
Coop started the car and turned on the heat. “Give it a minute to warm up.” Coop’s gaze was on her legs.
She nervously shifted her legs as the scent of his aftershave filled her car. Coop had taken one look at her shoes and declared his pickup truck unacceptable. She had handed him the keys to her SUV without an argument. “It’s okay, Coop. I knew it was cold out when I got dressed.” She had debated long and hard what to wear tonight. Since she didn’t have time to go shopping, she was left with only a couple suitable choices. The knee-length red silky dress worn because she had shoes to match. Bojangles had chewed the heel off her good navy dress shoes and the ears off her bunny slippers.
Mistletoe Bay Page 16
