Liv shook her head. She couldn’t believe what Aunt Joyce was saying. Number one, the woman didn’t give compliments that freely, and two, she definitely didn’t give compliments about other folks’ baked goods. Maybe Liv really did have baking talent, or maybe she was still loopy over her encounter with Clayton earlier. “You really think my pieces were that good?” Liv asked.
“Now, you know me,” Aunt Joyce said with a certain amount of annoyance. “I don’t mince words and I don’t hand out compliments lightly. If I said it, I meant it. So expect to be extra busy tomorrow. You’ll be making a lot more of those little pockets come the morning since I want to officially add them to the menu.”
Liv let out a long sigh, but she still grinned. “Well then, I think I better head on up, grab my shower, and skip the TV tonight. Sounds like I’m going to need all the strength that I can muster.”
* * *
Liv had just showered and changed into a T-shirt and some casual sleep shorts when a rustling and a flicker of light outside her window caught her attention. She ignored it for a few moments, but then the shift of light happened again, causing her to look up from where she was sitting on her bed, about to flip through classifieds on her laptop. There’s no way he was actually signaling her; that’d be stupid after their encounter this afternoon, but for some reason she felt the need to go to the window to look.
She got there and, not quite opening her curtains, but just peeking through the side opening, she glanced over to where she knew his window would be. It was dark. With a yawn, Liv turned to go back toward her bed. But then, just as she was starting to walk away, something caught her eye at the window just over from Clayton’s.
There was a curtain open, and a small foot in a white sneaker and blue jeans was coming out of the window, as easy as pie heading down the ivy-covered trellis on the side of the house. It was Hope Morris and the eleven-year-old was, for some reason, sneaking out of her house at nine-thirty p.m. Liv moved the curtains aside and leaned forward to see where the child was going.
She watched as Hope quietly and expertly jumped down from the trellis, looked left, and then looked right. For a moment Liv thought she might be headed toward the road, but then she saw Hope turn left and head toward the lake. She felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach as she wondered what to do. Her first thought was to immediately call Clayton, but then she thought of what she’d heard about the girl being teased and having trouble at school, and her heart began to ache. This must be so hard for her. She seemed like such a sweet girl at the barbecue, and Clayton clearly loved her. There had to be something to her doing this. Liv quickly looked around, and her eyes zeroed in on the napkin with the cherry smudge on the end and Clayton’s number scrawled in the middle. She grabbed it, then snagged her phone, and pulled on her sneakers and headed for the stairs.
On the way out, she yelled to Drea and Aunt Joyce, who were in the den. “I’ll be right back. I’m just gonna grab a little air outside for a second.”
“Grab some air?” Aunt Joyce yelled. “I thought you were going to bed, and what about your ankle?”
“My ankle is perfectly fine. I may be clumsy, but I bounce back. Besides, I’m feeling restless right now. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She could hear Drea mumbling something about her weird sister as the door slammed behind her.
She slipped out, went toward the side of the house, and headed the way she saw Hope go. The girl couldn’t have gotten too far. There were only so many trails along the lake; it was either left or right, so Liv had a fifty-fifty chance. She sucked in a breath, said a silent prayer, and decided to go left. The trail was a little more secluded there, and she remembered when she was younger there were a couple of spots that she liked to go to in order to find a little peace and quiet when she used to come for the summer and family got to be a bit too much. But still it was late and dark. Liv told herself that if she didn’t find Hope within the next five to ten minutes she’d go ahead and call Clayton and let him know what she’d seen. She could not keep a parent in the dark about their child longer than that. Her conscience wouldn’t let her do it.
Liv walked fast, her eyes quickly scanning the area for any signs of Hope. She stayed on the well-worn path, as it was late at night and so long since she’d been out there that she didn’t trust herself to veer too far from the trail. Liv had been walking for only a couple moments when she caught sight of Hope’s white sneakers peeking out from behind a tree. For a moment, her heart caught; she thought the girl might be in danger, but then she saw her toes make a tapping motion and her head came into view. Liv let out a relieved breath. Hope was just leaning against a tree looking out on the lake as she listened to music.
But then a lump formed and socked her in the middle of her chest when she noticed the girl’s free-flowing tears as they coursed down her cheeks. Ugh. Liv suddenly felt all sorts of intrusive and, for a moment, she wanted to turn and go back to her aunt’s home, but she knew she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t leave Hope out here crying and alone, and why was she out here crying anyway? Not wanting to scare her, since she probably couldn’t hear her with earphones on, Liv stepped back a few paces and made a big show of coming around so that she was in Hope’s field of vision. She waved her arms and kicked her knees up as if she was somehow jogging, which was the strangest thing because why would she be jogging with no socks on and in her sleep shorts, but she hoped that young Hope wouldn’t look too closely at her attire and somehow give her a pass.
She watched Hope quickly wipe at her face, trying to cover up the fact that she’d been crying, and look up at Liv, pulling her earbuds away from her ears. She somehow looked older tonight than she had at the barbecue, as if whatever was worrying her had the power to age her with its weight. She cleared her throat as Liv waved and pretended to pull up short. “Hey, what are you doing out here?” Liv asked as nonchalantly as she could.
Hope stared at her for a moment, bewildered, and then she shrugged. “I was just listening to some music and thinking. I like to come out here sometimes.”
Liv nodded as if that was cool and perfectly normal, but she looked around and then glanced back at Hope. “Well, it’s kind of late to be sitting out here alone, don’t you think?”
Hope looked at her, her eyes full of skepticism, and gave her a quick up-and-down. “Well, it’s also kind of late to be jogging, but you’re doing it.” She frowned then. “And I thought your foot was bothering you from your ant thing the other day.”
Liv laughed nervously. “Well, you got me there,” she said as she looked down, then gave her foot an exaggerated twirl. “But I’m okay, as you can see. How about you? Tell me, does your father or grandmother know you’re out here?”
Hope pushed from the table and brushed off the back of her jeans while shrugging. “Yeah, sure they do. They’ve got no problem with it.”
Liv stared at Hope long and hard, trying her best to give her the same stare that her mother gave her so many times before. “You sure about that?” she asked.
Hope sighed and looked at the ground. “Okay, fine, maybe they don’t know I’m out here. But I just needed—” Hope paused, obviously searching for the words that would cover her, and then she looked back up at Liv, her eyes full of what looked like mistrust. “I don’t know, whatever. I’m going back home.”
Suddenly Liv felt like an inadequate mess. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to be the one to rat out this girl, but she also knew she couldn’t let this go without telling Clayton what she had seen. “Hope, wait, please,” she said.
Hope turned around, her impatience and frustration clearly evident. “Why? Wait for what? You’re of course going to tell my father, and he’ll of course be disappointed in me. Like he always is disappointed. He’s never happy anymore.”
What did she mean by that? The one time Liv had seen Clayton light up was when he was talking about his daughter. “I’m sure that’s not true. Your father loves you very much. And I know I’ve be
en here only a short time and may not know him like you do, but he seems pretty happy to me, especially so and proud too when he’s talking about you.”
Liv couldn’t help but notice the girl’s eye roll, even if it was hampered by the moonlight.
She looked around, suddenly feeling suspicious. “Wait. Were you out here waiting for somebody?”
Once again Hope let out a frustrated sigh. “No! Of course not. It’s not like that. I really did just want some time to myself. Some time without people asking me questions like you are right now. I just needed to breathe and think things over, not have anybody judging me. But of course, as usual, here I am with somebody judging me.”
Liv looked at her and tried her best to soften her gaze. “I’m not judging you at all. It’s perfectly normal to need time to yourself. Heck, that’s why I am out here too,” she lied. “We all need a little space sometimes. I understand it can be hard to feel like all eyes are on you. But trust me, everybody feels like that sometimes, and since everybody’s feeling like that, more often than not, the everybodies are thinking about themselves and not looking at the other person.”
Hope stared at her, and Liv could tell she was contemplating what she just said. Part of Liv felt as if she was overstepping, intruding into the girl’s personal life, but then she knew being out alone, especially for one so young, just wasn’t safe. But still, something churned in her belly. Liv wasn’t sure. She was torn about what to say to Clayton. She didn’t really know what to do in this situation.
Just then a mosquito came up and nipped the right side of her arm. She slapped at it hard and then looked back at Hope, catching a smirk that looked so much like her father’s. “Listen, how about this, I understand you don’t want your father or your grandmother to know that you are out here, but it’s really not all that safe by yourself, especially with them not knowing. Let’s say, I won’t tell your dad.” She saw Hope’s eyes brighten at this, as if she felt she’d had her, but then Liv added the rest of her conditions. “If you head back with me now and walk through the front door letting them know that you went out on your own to walk by the lake.”
Liv watched Hope’s expression collapse. “I can’t tell them that. They don’t know that I snuck out without telling them.”
“Well, don’t you think it’s better coming from you than coming from me?”
Hope gave a small groan, and Liv saw her weighing the pros and cons over in her mind. “I guess it’s better coming from me,” Hope finally said.
Liv put her arms around the girl’s shoulder. “Your father is not going to like hearing that you were out. But trust me, he’ll respect you for telling the truth, and then I’m sure it will all blow over. You’re his daughter, he’ll love you through anything. It’s a law. It was written the moment you were born and he got his first glimpse of those beautiful brown eyes of yours.” Hope gave Liv a soft smile, almost causing her heart to split in two before they proceeded to walk back toward the houses together.
Chapter 15
“See there, I knew your little blackberry pockets would be a hit. The lunch rush is not even over and we’re already about sold out. And folks are raving over your Berry Good Swirl Pie too. I think you should definitely enter both in the Founders’ Day contest. Maybe with you entering, I’ll finally have some competition. Even if we are on the same team. It will be fun. We’ll just see who takes home the top prize. Shoot. I don’t mind as long as the ribbons all stay in the family.”
Liv glanced over at Aunt Joyce. The woman looked positively giddy talking about the upcoming Founders’ Day baking contest. Her skin was glowing, and her smile took up most of her wide face as she packed up the near end of the blackberry pockets for a couple of guys who’d come over from the hardware store.
Liv smiled back. She was happy to see Aunt Joyce so happy and thrilled herself over the praise for her work. It felt good getting this response. Though she had been confident in her work when she was back home in New York, she honestly didn’t expect for it to go over this well here. But entering the bake-off against some of these seasoned southern cooks? The thought gave her a twinge of fear. “Thanks, Aunt Joyce, but really, I don’t know about entering any contest. That’s a tall order, and besides, family against family? Don’t you think that might be getting us in a sticky situation?”
Aunt Joyce just waved a hand at that as the hardware guys left. “Of course not. We can handle it. There are no rules against it. It’s families cooking together all the time. And we need to be a little more creative anyways. That darned Delia Morris thought she was so slick adding in a minis category last year. I think because she was just tired of me winning in pies and cobblers so she thought she could slip her pecan twirls in. Now, I’ll admit, they are tasty, but they can’t hold a candle to these blackberry pockets of yours.”
Liv nodded. Great. So now she wanted her going head-to-head with Clayton’s mom. The woman didn’t like her all that much when she was a kid. Beating her in a town bake-off was sure to keep their relationship frosty. Oh well, why should she care? It’s not like she’d have anything to do with Delia or Clayton Morris once she headed back home.
It had been days and she hadn’t seen or heard from Clayton. She knew she should be happy with that. She was the one who sent out the strong back-away signals. And she was the one who had stood him up at lunch letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that she didn’t want or need any sort of apology or any rekindling of their friendship. But still she found herself glancing up each time a tall male figure walked by the shop’s window. And worse, she’d found herself longing to see his smile, that twinkle in his dark eyes, or hear his deep rich voice once again.
Thinking of it all frustrated her to no end. Maybe she should just text him, she thought. Inadvertently, after her encounter with Hope she did have the perfect excuse to check in with him.
Part of her thought she would see him after that encounter, have a reason for him to walk over and say something to her, possibly give her an update, but no, he didn’t, and she had to admit that worried her a bit. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard from him at all, and she knew that Hope was doing okay, at least on the surface she was. After she’d walked her home that night, there’d been no more, to her knowledge, bouts of her sneaking out through the window. Liv saw no more fluttering besides the normal catches of the breeze at Hope’s window. And she also saw, not that she was looking all that hard, no more activity at Clayton’s window either.
That night, she’d gone back up to her room after sitting with Aunt Joyce and Drea for a few moments while they finished the television show. She told Aunt Joyce about seeing Hope down by the lake and the fact that she’d walked her home. Aunt Joyce let her know how worried she was for the young girl, whose mother hadn’t been in town for a visit in the past year that they’d been in Sugar Lake, and the thought of that saddened Liv. No wonder Hope felt a bit lost, and she had every right to in the predicament that she was in. But Liv also had to wonder what could possibly have gone wrong in Clayton’s relationship with his ex that would cause the woman to not only leave their marriage, but walk away from her vulnerable young daughter? Liv was relieved when Aunt Joyce’s cell phone pinged that night with a message from Clayton, thanking Liv for sending Hope home. He told Aunt Joyce that Hope was fine and that there was nothing to worry about. Liv had watched expectantly as her aunt texted Clayton back with astonishing speed, and when she pressed her for more information, her only response was a way too smug, “Ask him yourself.” A moment later, Liv heard her own cell pinged with what she knew was Aunt Joyce forwarding Clayton’s text. It was amazing how savvy this older generation could be with technology when there was a point to be proven.
Like a coward, Liv never reached out. She told herself it was enough that she already knew Hope was fine.
The bakeshop’s door opened, pulling Liv’s mind to the day’s work at hand, and she was surprised when her gaze met Clayton’s. He nodded at her, turning back to hold the door, and gave a greet
ing to Mrs. Comfrey, who was just exiting as he was coming in. He greeted Aunt Joyce, who was seated on a stool by the register, and Drea, who was clearing the front table. She nodded and gave him a half smile before walking toward the back with the dishes she had just cleared, and she gave Liv a knowing side glance.
Clayton came forward, walking straight toward Liv, and for some reason she found it even harder to find her voice. “Hey there.” She hoped that was normal, though she never was one to pull off a hey there in her life.
“Hey there to you, too,” Clayton said. “So.” He looked around and then down at the display case as if searching for something before his eyes came back up to meet Liv’s. “I hear the town’s all abuzz about these new blackberry pockets you all are selling. I had to come and find out about them for myself.”
“Well, it took you long enough!” Aunt Joyce said from where she was sitting by the register. “Any longer and you’d have missed out.”
Liv couldn’t help the glare she aimed Aunt Joyce’s way or wonder if there was any sort of double meaning to her words. But Clayton was standing in front of her, so she put her direction there. “My aunt is right, you did almost miss out; luckily we have two left. Can I get them for you?”
He grinned, that little half smile lighting up his face and sending small shards of pleasure radiating throughout Liv’s body in a way she didn’t know how much she actually craved.
“Well, it looks like I made it just in time. Yes, please,” he said.
Liv couldn’t help the narrowing of her eyes. Why did he have to speak? And why did everything he say always remind her of feelings she would rather forget? She put the two pastries in a bag and handed them to him, careful this time to not make any contact with his hand. Clayton took the bag with a nod. “Thanks,” he said. He glanced at her, a bit of uneasiness in his eyes. “Listen, I probably should have come over here earlier, but I was a little busy and we had a couple of emergency calls, and then I had so much paperwork, and well . . .” He stopped rambling and looked her in the eye. “It doesn’t matter. I should have come over here earlier,” he said.
As Good as the First Time Page 19
