His Best Friend's Wife

by Lee McKenzie

  “Annie?” CJ’s question dragged her back to the here and now.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re a million miles away. What’s up?”

  Should she tell them? She would never hear the end of it if she did. If she didn’t, they would keep after her until she spilled the details of Paul’s kiss. Luckily, Rose’s late arrival saved her from making the confession.

  “Sorry.” Rose coughed against the back of her hand. “My stupid car broke down. Again.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” CJ asked.

  Rose shrugged. “I don’t know. It won’t start.”

  Emily polished off her muffin and wiped her fingers on a napkin. “Maybe it’s the battery.”

  “Could be.”

  Annie poured a cup of coffee and slid it toward Rose. “If your car won’t start, then how did you get here?”

  “That guy Fred who runs the barbershop let me borrow his.”

  Emily bristled. “I could have given you a ride.”

  Rose shrugged again. “He didn’t mind. Said he wouldn’t be using it today so I might as well take it.”

  Emily and Fred had been best friends since first grade, and Annie knew it irked her to no end that Fred had developed a crush on the newest and youngest member of the Finnegan sisterhood. Not that Rose appeared to notice. She had an insular quality that was both endearing and off-putting. Annie wasn’t convinced that Rose was taking advantage of Fred so much as Fred was throwing himself under the bus for her.

  “More coffee?” Annie asked, reaching for the pot in an attempt to redirect the conversation.

  CJ nudged her cup forward. “Love some. Now, getting back to all the baking you did this morning. You should have one of these muffins, by the way.” She passed the basket of lemon-cranberry muffins to Rose. “They’re delicious. So are the frosted ones.”

  Rose selected one from the basket and set it on a plate. “That’s a lot of muffins.”

  “She’s been baking all morning,” Emily said. “We all know what that means.”

  Rose looked from one sister to the next. “I don’t.”

  Here we go again, Annie thought.

  “Well...” CJ paused for dramatic effect. “If Annie is worried or upset, she bakes.”

  “She also bakes when she’s happy and excited about something,” Emily said.

  “True. But muffins usually mean worried or upset.”

  “Good point. Happy baking usually yields apple strudel or blueberry pie.”

  Rose followed the volley of their conversation like a cat watching a ping-pong ball.

  “Enough, you two. Who knew my kitchen productivity was a barometer for my emotions?”

  Emily and CJ grinned. “We did,” they said in unison.

  “And since it’s a two-kinds-of-muffins morning, something’s got you going.” Emily sipped her decaf and smiled smugly.

  “Let’s hear it,” CJ said.

  Annie hesitated.

  Emily set down her cup. “You might as well spill. You know we’re not letting up until you do.”

  “See what I have to put up with?” Annie said to Rose.

  Rose responded with her usual shrug.

  Annie took a fortifying gulp of coffee. “Paul kissed me.” She regretted the admission the instant the words were out.

  Emily looked stunned. “He...what?”

  CJ clapped her hands together. “When?”

  “Who’s Paul?” Rose asked.

  “He’s an old friend of Eric’s.” CJ knocked the Cheshire cat out of the running for the world’s widest grin.

  “And Jack’s,” Emily added.

  Annie wished she hadn’t said anything. “He dropped by for coffee this morning—”

  “Way to go, Paul! He didn’t waste any time.” CJ had gone from grinning to downright giddy.

  Emily was still dumbfounded. “He came for coffee and he kissed you? Like, kissed you kissed you?”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Annie said.

  “Oh, I think you do.”

  Annie felt herself blush.

  CJ pounced. “Ah ha. What did I tell you after we left the clinic yesterday? He’s interested.”

  “He is not interested.”

  “Seriously?” Emily said. “He has always had a thing for you.”

  “Still not sure who this Paul guy is, or why this kiss is such a big deal.” Rose’s voice had taken on the slightly sullen tone she reserved for times when she was desperate to fit in, but felt as though she was left to sit on the sidelines.

  “Dr. Paul Woodward,” Emily said.

  “Junior,” CJ added. “His father—Dr. Geoff Woodward—used to work at the clinic but he had to retire.” She triple-tapped her temple with her forefinger. “Cuh-raz-ee.”

  “CJ! The poor man has Alzheimer’s.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Lighten up. Anyway, he’s retired and his son—Dr. Paul Woodward—has come home to take over the clinic.”

  “Oh.” Rose covered her mouth with the back of her hand, coughed and cleared her throat. “I see.”

  “That’s still a nasty-sounding cough,” Annie said. “You should get it checked out.”

  “I did. I saw Dr. Woodward at the clinic yesterday. It’s just a cold. I’m practically over it.” Rose glanced at her but her gaze darted away as soon as Annie made eye contact. “So, tell me more about our Annie and this Dr. Paul.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Annie grabbed the coffeepot and refilled everyone’s cups but Emily’s. “Would you like me to make more decaf?”

  “No thanks. I want more details about the kiss.”

  “It was not a big deal.”

  “You spent all morning baking enough muffins to feed half the town.”

  Annie sighed. No sense denying defeat when it was staring her in the face. “All right, all right. It was mostly...no, not mostly, totally—it was a totally innocent kiss.”

  She glanced at her sisters’ eager faces.

  CJ opened her mouth to say something. No doubt something inappropriate.

  Annie held up her hand, palm out, cautioning CJ to keep it to herself.

  “Yesterday, I invited him to come out here for coffee. Today, he dropped by. We had coffee, we talked, it was...nice. Really nice. Then he had to leave so I walked him to the door. He always gives me a kiss on the forehead.”

  CJ set her empty cup on her plate. “Oh, that’s right. He does.”

  Emily’s head bobbed. “He always has done that, now that you mention it.”

  Rose looked disinterested.

  “We were saying goodbye and I knew that’s what he was going to do because he’s always done it, but...”

  “But?” Three voices, in unison, breathlessly demanded details.

  She knew what they were thinking. They were thinking Paul had made a move on her. As if he would.

  “I didn’t keep my head down. I looked up at him and he ended up kissing me...” She raised her fingertips to her lips.

  Rose looked bored. “An accidental kiss. What’s the big deal?”

  Emily and CJ exchanged a look.

  “Oh, that was no accident,” Emily said.

  CJ clapped her hands again. “You wanted him to kiss you.”

  “I did not.” But if Annie didn’t believe that, how could she expect her sisters to buy it?

  “You are such a liar,” CJ said.

  Emily high-fived CJ. “Wait’ll I tell Jack!”

  “He probably already knows,” Rose said.

  They all stared at her. “Why would you say that?” Annie asked.

  “Because Jack and the doctor were having coffee at the restaurant when I left to come here.”

  Oh, for heaven’
s sake. Would Paul tell Jack that he kissed her? She knew without a doubt the answer was yes. Her sisters knew and it wouldn’t be long until they shared the news with her father. Pretty soon the whole town would be talking.

  “It was just a kiss. A casual kiss between friends, and it won’t happen again.” A thought that was surprisingly disappointing. “Now I need everyone out of my kitchen so I can start on lunch.”

  “It’ll happen again,” CJ quipped over her shoulder as she headed up the stairs to her room in the attic. “I’d put money on it.”

  This time Annie was happy to let her little sister have the last word, and found herself hoping she was right.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANNIE WAS FIGHTING off a headache as she cleared away the Sunday morning breakfast dishes. “Please don’t tell me I’m catching Rose’s cold,” she said to the mountains of suds in the kitchen sink. “I don’t have time to be sick.”

  A week had passed since the ill-fated kiss and she hadn’t seen Paul, although they had exchanged a handful of polite text messages.

  She still had a dozen things to do before it was time to make Sunday dinner, and one of those was to write an illustrated chickens and eggs article for Emily’s blog. The idea had been weighing on her since Emily had presented her with the camera, but she had agreed to do it and now she needed to get it done.

  “It’s just chickens and eggs,” she reminded herself. “A maximum of two hundred and fifty words plus a handful of photographs.” Provided she remembered Emily’s instructions for using the camera. She looped the strap of the dreaded device around her neck and carried her ancient but still serviceable wicker egg basket to the chicken coop, let herself into the pen and secured the chicken-wire gate behind her.

  All five of her motley clutch of laying hens were in the yard, preening in the early morning sunshine, carving the ground—still damp with morning dew—with chicken scratching in their quest for grubs. Annie felt a ridiculous rush of affection for these girls of hers. She set the basket on the ground and fumbled with the camera until it emitted a faint whirring sound and the lens emerged from the case.

  In one corner of the enclosure, Ginger had settled herself into a shallow well she had carved into the dirt and was alternately sending up a shower of earth and wiggling on one side, working soil particles into her feathers. Annie snapped several pictures of the dust bath in progress, then switched modes so she could review them.

  “Huh,” she said to herself. “Not half-bad.” One photo in particular actually seemed to capture Ginger’s ecstasy as she writhed in the dirt.

  Next Annie turned her attention to Salt and Pepper as they squabbled over an earthworm. After several attempts she was especially pleased to see she had managed to snap one photo of the two hens having a tug-of-war with the plump worm one of them had unearthed.

  Fluff had settled herself partway up the ramp that led to the raised coop and was preening her wing feathers. Fry, the Rhode Island Red who had been the most recent addition to the flock and who had immediately established herself at the top of the pecking order, was strutting around the perimeter of the pen as though she owned the place. Annie snapped a series of photos of both hens.

  Feeling reasonably satisfied with the pictures she’d taken, Annie picked up her basket, let herself out of the pen and went around to the back of the coop. She swung open the access door to the nesting boxes and snapped a few more photos of eggs nestled in straw. All five of her girls had produced an egg for her, and she took one last photo of them grouped in the bottom of her basket. All in a day’s work for her and for her girls.

  * * *

  PAUL HAD WANTED to drop by Annie’s before now, but somehow a week had passed and he hadn’t worked up the courage. They’d exchanged several rounds of text messages and he had hoped she would suggest he pay another visit to the farm, but she hadn’t. He hadn’t been able to put her or the kiss out of his mind, and he suspected the same might be true for her. He just wished he knew if she felt the same way he did, or if she was only experiencing regret. He knew the longer he put it off, the more awkward seeing her again would be. So he found himself driving along River Road on Sunday morning and before he knew it, he was parked in the roundabout in front the farmhouse.

  He knocked lightly on the door, chiding himself for feeling so nervous. Annie was a good friend. The kiss had been an accident, albeit a pleasant one. He just had to make sure it didn’t happen again. Besides, he’d found a great book about dinosaurs, which was now tucked under one arm, that he wanted to give to Isaac. He was rehearsing what he would say to Annie when the front door opened and he was greeted instead by her father.

  “Paul Woodward, as I live and breathe. Come in, come in. Good to see you.”

  “Good to see you, sir.”

  Thomas Finnegan backed his wheelchair away from the door and Paul stepped inside.

  “Did you come out to see Annie?”

  “I did. And Isaac,” he said, hoping it didn’t sound like an afterthought. “I found a book he might like.”

  Thomas examined the cover. “Dinosaurs, eh? That’ll tickle his fancy, all right.”

  Paul followed the man into the kitchen. The scents of pumpkin and allspice hung in the air, and he suspected the muffins on a glass-domed plate at one end of the kitchen island were responsible for that. With any luck, he’d get to sample one before he left.

  “Isaac’s down at the stable with his aunt but Annie’s just out back.” Thomas wheeled himself into place at the kitchen table, where a coffee cup sat next to a newspaper. “She said she was going to the chicken coop to collect the eggs. Been out there a while, though. Must be something besides the eggs keeping her busy.”

  Paul set the book on the kitchen island. “I’ll leave this here, then, and run out to say hello.”

  With a nod and a knowing smile, Thomas picked up his cup and turned his attention to the newspaper.

  Paul stepped through the open French doors onto the veranda and stopped. Across the yard, Annie sat on a white-painted bench. Wearing jeans and a dark blue-and-white plaid shirt, a broad-brimmed straw hat framing her beautiful face, a wicker basket resting beside her on the bench and the chicken coop forming the perfect backdrop, she looked every inch the country woman. A throwback to a time when life was more laid-back, natural, simple. The only modern influence in this vignette was the digital camera in her hands, and she was studying it intently. He was tempted to use his phone to take a picture of her, then thought better of it.

  He walked down a few steps to the lawn, strolled toward her and was rewarded with a wide, easy smile when she glanced up and saw him.

  “I didn’t know you were a photographer.” He lowered himself onto the bench, keeping a safe distance between them.

  “More like the furthest thing possible. Emily asked me to write a weekly column for her blog and I agreed. It’s called Ask Annie, and all I have to do is answer a question she gives me. It sounded simple, and she has so much going on. She’s working on a book right now and planning her wedding, and with the baby on the way, I said I’d be happy to help any way I can. Then she gave me this.” She held up the camera for inspection. “I have no idea how it works. All I can do is turn it on and snap a picture.”

  “Can I take a look?” Paul reached for the camera. She happily relinquished it, and he managed to take it without getting his fingers tangled with hers. He quickly scrolled through the pictures she’d taken and with each shot, he turned his head to compare the photos with her subjects. “Annie, these are good. Really good.”

  He could tell she didn’t believe him.

  “I mean it. This one, for example.” He leaned a little closer and angled the camera so they could both see the monitor.

  “Oh, that’s Ginger giving herself a dust bath.”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s humorous and filled w
ith...” He wanted to say love, but could anyone really love a chicken?

  “Affection?” Annie asked.

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “That’s good, then, because I’m really very fond of these girls.”

  And apparently he was wrong. Love might be overstating it, but apparently some people felt fond affection for a dusty chicken.

  The next photo featured a bizarre-looking bundle of white fluff that vaguely resembled the shape of a chicken.

  “That’s Fluff,” Annie said. “She’s a timid little thing, which puts her at the bottom of the pecking order, but she’s very good-natured about it.”

  “She’s aptly named.” He studied each of the photos and listened to Annie’s vivid descriptions of the two leghorns she called Salt and Pepper, and the Rhode Island Red whose name was Fry. Isaac named them, she explained, and at the time Fry arrived on the scene, her son had chosen the name because fried chicken was his favorite food.

  “We only eat their eggs,” Annie quickly explained. “Fry is not going to end up being dinner.”

  Paul laughed. “I’d say you’ve just written your first blog post.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Absolutely. These pictures are perfectly suited to everything you just told me. You just have to write it down.”

  “Emily wants me to say something about eggs, too.”

  “Maybe that can be next week’s article.”

  A smile lit up Annie’s face and for a second or two, he thought she might hug him. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. Instead she took the camera from him, stood and picked up the basket of eggs. “Let’s go inside. I have freshly baked muffins, and I can put on a pot of coffee.”

  He wasn’t going to say no to that, or to her incredible baked goods.

  “Are you working at the clinic today?” she asked.

  “Not today. How’s Isaac doing after that fall he had last week?”

  “He’s fine, just like you said he’d be. Good thing, too, because school started this week. And he’s still practicing for the junior rodeo. He and CJ are down at the stable now.”

  Paul followed her up the steps to the veranda. “Is he happy to be back at school?”