by Rachel Hauck
“Okay, ‘L’ like the letter, good to know.”
“You’re welcome to shower, but you’re going to have to find another place to sleep.” Elle shoved the dishwasher closed with her foot while reaching to close the bottom cupboard.
“I understand this is an awkward situation, Elle, but Tracey-Love has had a devastating year, the last of which was our trip down. I’m not leaving her alone in a strange place only to have her wake up with me beyond crying distance. I’ll sleep in the room with her. The floor suits me just fine.”
Elle draped the wet dish towel over the stove’s handle. “How would you feel if your wife or daughter let a stranger spend the night? Even a seemingly nice guy like yourself?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not leaving her.” Heath hesitated, then turned for the hall. “Thanks for your hospitality. I’ll find a hotel.”
Elle breathed in, checking her emotions with her thoughts before trailing after him. “Wait, Heath, don’t wake her.”
He gazed down at her, the hall light filtering through the ends of his winter-blond hair. “Look, I’m exhausted. I don’t want to debate this. I’ll find a place tonight until I can work this out with Marsha.”
“I called Marsha. She already confirmed your lease starts now.” Elle pointed up and to the left. “I have a studio over my garage. It used to be a guesthouse. I’ll sleep up there. You take my room. I suppose we can make do for a few weeks until my wedding.”
His hands slipped to his side. “Now I feel guilty. I can find a hotel for the night.”
“And then what? We still have tomorrow and the day after and the day after. You’ve paid fair and square. It’s not your fault we’re in this mess.”
“Yours either.” His low laugh brought the situation into true light. “Give me Marsha Downey’s address. I can go knock on her door, see if she has a spare room for the next month.”
Elle motioned to her room. “I’ll get my stuff together.”
Heath looked dubious. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
In her bathroom, Elle packed up her toiletries. Heath’s surprise arrival had jerked her out of her mental swirl.
When she came out from the bedroom, he was waiting on the couch, barely awake. “I left you a couple of good towels and put clean sheets on the bed. Tomorrow, I’ll clear out more clothes.”
He rose. “I feel like a heel, putting you out.”
“Heath, you’ve actually done me a huge favor. Given me perspective. Sleep well. Hope your girl feels better in the morning.”
Elle jogged across the backyard, autodialing Jeremiah. Better let him know what’s up in case he called the house phone. But his voicemail answered and last week’s reality washed over Elle again as she clicked her phone closed and entered the stale, hot studio.
SIX
With the TV on but muted, Heath tapped his fingers over the keys of his laptop, his legs stretched to the coffee table. An overexposed brunette belted out a song on American Idol. The contest was down to the wire. Final twelve.
He rarely watched TV, but Ava had TiVoed Idol and he’d adopted her habit. Somehow watching people go for their dreams as he curled up on the couch with his wife hooked him.
Muted TV was fun TV. Effervescent Paula encouraged the singer by rocking back and forth, circling her hands as she spoke. The camera moved to Simon. Uh-oh. His expression told Heath the truth about the contestant.
Ava had wanted to be a singer or actress growing up, but when she went to college and joined the newspaper staff, a new ambition coursed through her veins. “I wanted to star with Brad Pitt and kiss him like crazy. Then I discovered Tom Brokaw.”
Her still-familiar laugh echoed up from the overgrown valleys of his heart. He didn’t bother to swish away the water in his eyes.
The opposite of Ava, Heath had never aspired to Hollywood-like fame. He wanted to live in the city, became a prosperous lawyer, bank his large annual bonus, take vacations and maybe drive a Maserati. And, of course, he also wanted to marry the gorgeous girl in his three-hundred-level poly-sci class.
Shoving the hot laptop off his leg, Heath slouched against the couch. How did all his aspiration now seem meaningless, if not cliché? Money purchased items like loneliness and heartache and packaged them in fancy cars and oversized bonuses.
What would he do differently?
Say no to Ava’s broadcast career? Network News had really been starting to promote her, give her the spotlight.
Tell her no, she couldn’t travel to dangerous, war-torn places? As if he could stop her.
Say no to the romantic, sexy evening when Ava had suggested they break their no-children policy “just to see” if they could make a baby? Nine months later, the blue-eyed cherub named Tracey-Love came whimpering into Heath’s world and rained on the barren places of his heart.
What would he do differently so he wouldn’t be sitting here now, alone and widowed, in a dimly lit lowcountry cottage owned by a baseball-bat-wielding strawberry blonde?
Nothing.
An image of Elle Garvey sashayed across his mind’s eye, her hair falling over her shoulder, framing the sides of her slender face. Fiery green eyes watched him. Wonder who’d snagged her? Lucky man. Or so he thought. Hard to judge rightly based on their brief encounter. But he’d been right about Ava the first time he laid eyes on her as she walked across Yale’s campus.
“D-daddy?”
Heath cocked his ear toward the small voice coming down the hall. “In here.”
A rosy-faced Tracey-Love with large, sleepy eyes padded across the hardwood to him, crawling onto the couch, her thumb resting in her mouth.
“Does your tummy hurt?” Heath slipped his feet to the floor and hunched forward to see her face. Since moving into the cottage, he’d avoided fast food as much as possible.
“No,” she muffled through her thumb, already drifting off.
Heath smoothed her hair, tight with tangles. He needed to work on keeping it combed, pinned back, or ponytailed, something. But it was so coarse and thick, downright exasperating.
TL’s thumb slipped from her mouth as her breathing grew easy and even. Heath gently nudged his forefinger through her cupped little hand, thinking how soft and small it was. Not just her hand, but Tracey-Love.
The committee of “everyone” had told him to be firm with her, force her to sleep in her own bed, keep a strict routine. But she cried and begged to stay up with him, all at once afraid of the city’s night sounds and every shifting shadow.
So sue him, he loved his daughter and didn’t think chaining her to her bed, half terrified, at the age of four, constituted tough love. Time would heal her wounds and abate her fears.
Shoot, he didn’t like sleeping in his bed either, and the city’s night sounds terrified him too.
Six nights out of seven, Heath woke up in the wee hours of the morning stretched out on the couch with Tracey-Love sleeping on his chest.
Raising a daughter alone was never a part of the plan. Lord, if You knew, why didn’t You give me a son?
Heath upped the TV volume a little. The contestant up now was his favorite, if he could claim a favorite. Looking back down at TL, the blue reflection of the TV screen covering her hair, he couldn’t imagine one day she’d be grown, leaving him for her own adventures. Another man, even.
A month ago, he’d carefully Googled “girl stuff ” like puberty, periods, and the potential number of hours he could expect a preteen to spend on the phone. One of the women’s health sites listed stats that almost gave him a coronary. Menstruation may start as young as ten. Heath had clicked out of the Internet, stumbled to the kitchen, and wolfed down a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
Ten? That was less than six years from now. Ten?
And she may show signs of breasts as early as eight.
He’d dumped another glob of Hershey’s chocolate into the carton. Ava, I can’t do this alone.
Heath and his brother had a completely testosterone upbringing.
Raised by their father after their mother abandoned the family for a string of deadbeat husbands she thought would take her on an adventure, he knew next to nothing about women until he fell in love with Ava their sophomore year at Yale.
His education had consisted of Dad’s advice—“Never trust a dame”—and locker-room fables.
Many of his best friends were women, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask any of them, “So, when did you get your period?” Or “How old were you when you started getting breasts?” Or “Do I worry about the little breasts or wait until Tracey-Love is, you know, endowed?”
Recalling his train of thought made him queasy all over again. He tipped his head against the sofa and raised his hands over his head. “Jesus, I know You and I are working out things between us since You took Ava, so I’m expecting You to help me out here on raising our daughter.”
His cell phone rang and Heath stretch toward the coffee table, trying to answer before the ringing woke Tracey-Love.
“Yeah?” he answered with a rough whisper. “McCord.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Tracey-Love is sleeping.”
“Still not in her own bed?”
Heath frowned. Like Nate Collins was a model father. He’s not even a father. “This isn’t why you called, is it? To check up on my parenting skills?” As his agent and friend, Heath valued his counsel, except on how to raise his girl.
“Okay, just thought I’d chitchat before launching into business. How’s your house?”
“Great, by a creek, nice side-screen porch, back deck, deep water dock. The owner is still here . . . some kind of moving mix-up. But she decided to live in her studio over the garage.”
“And how’s the book coming?”
“I just got here, Nate. Just started writing.” Heath checked the laptop’s screen. Yeah, just as he thought, no words had magically appeared. “But I’m mulling over some good ideas.”
“Any chance those ideas are forming a bestseller? Heath, buddy, I’ve been talking you up all over New York, reminding editors of your legal work as well as your last novel they almost bought. Got a few salivating for the next John Grisham. You’ve got to give me something.”
“Only John Grisham can produce the next John Grisham. However, you might have the next Heath McCord.”
“My keen literary sense tells me the iron is hot, let’s strike. A few chapters will whet the proper appetites. The publishing industry is hungry for something new and fresh. Do you have a rough draft?”
“What constitutes a rough draft?” Half a page of ideas? If NewYork wanted something fresh and new, count him out. He felt old and definitely dull.
Nate moaned. “You’re giving me heart palpitations.”
“You started this by talking me up too soon. I thought you were a good agent.”
“I’m a great agent. Heath, if you’re stuck—and please don’t tell me you are—go with stories from your career. You’ve tried some pretty hefty cases. Or go with something political—intrigue in Washington. Shoot, you were married to one of the most—”
“I know who I was married to, Nate.”
“Can I have something soon? Don’t want the editors to think I was just leading them on.”
“A few weeks.” Months. He meant to say months.
“You’re killing me,” Nate said, but the tension in his voice ebbed. “So, are you and Tracey-Love settling into the slow southern life?”
Heath gazed down at the tiny person curled next to him. She kept his heart beating. “We’re getting by, getting by.”
Elle struggled. Since returning home, her communication with Jeremiah had been on the run—on his way to a meeting, returning from a meeting, too exhausted to talk long. However, the plans to buy the house were progressing.
She spent several mornings Googling the Dallas art scene, calling gallery owners, making connections, cheered by the robust community. Once she and Jeremiah were married and settled, she’d prove to him she had time to work at a gallery. Then open one of her own.
This morning he’d texted her. “Look for something in the mail from me. Call you later.”
Elle replied with a smiley face, encouraged that in the midst of transition, love would prevail. Mama was right, nothing to worry over.
Fixing a breakfast of instant coffee (never again) and a Pop-Tart (also never again), Elle rehearsed how she would address the issue of communication with Jeremiah when he called. They needed to figure out an effective way of dealing with their differences. Pastor O’Neal might be able to help when they met with him before the wedding.
But for now, she needed to clean out this studio and throw away stuff she didn’t need, want, or plan to box for the movers to Dallas.
Little-girl screams drifted up from the yard below. Elle stepped over to check out the action. Rio appeared to be teaching Tracey-Love how to burp a naked baby.
Yesterday, Elle had spotted Tracey-Love playing in the yard alone and decided to introduce her to Rio. In the course of an evening, they’d become best friends.
Heath didn’t seem to have many toys for Tracey-Love—had they left New York in a hurry?—so Elle dug through the boxes in the garage until she produced Rio’s doll and baby stroller.
The grateful gaze in Heath’s eyes lingered with her. Curious about his story, Elle didn’t figure she’d earned the right to pry into his business and ask why Tracey-Love didn’t have a mama.
“I left a lot of her toys in New York,” he’d confessed as he stood with her in the yard.
Elle held up her fingers. “Two words, Heath: Wal-Mart. Cheap.
Buy your daughter some toys.”
“That’s three words.”
“Wal-Mart is hyphenated.”
“And I call myself the writer.”
“Writer? Didn’t Marsha tell me you’re a lawyer? Hey, Rio, baby, don’t be so bossy.”
“Yes, I’m a writer dressed as a lawyer. I work for a boutique Manhattan law firm, focus on criminal law, but I took a break, thought I’d write a little.”
“What’s your book about?”
“I have no idea. Got any good ideas?”
Smiling, Elle stepped away from the window. Back to work. What is the gunk in this drawer? She pulled out the work table drawer and dumped its contents down the mouth of a trash bag.
At the sound of a big growl, Elle looked out the window again. A bearlike Heath popped out from behind a tree and sent the girls scrambling and screaming to the deck, Rio’s dark head bobbing up while Tracey-Love’s blonde one bobbed down.
TL’s grin could brighten the darkest sea. And Heath would be Rio’s hero by the end of the day if he wasn’t already.
“Do it again,” Rio shouted to him.
“Okay, close your eyes.” Heath rose up from his hands and knees. Something caught his attention. Elle pressed her face into the screen to see.
The FedEx man. “Hey, Chuck,” Elle hollered.
The man squinted toward her voice. “What are you doing up there, Elle? Playing Rapunzel?”
“Except for the long hair and Prince Charming, yes.”
“Got something for you. From Texas.”
Elle rocketed toward the door, barely avoiding a face plant as her toe caught the edge of a wooden crate. She flew down the studio stairs, meeting Chuck where he stood.
“It’s from Jeremiah.”
“Trying to get a few brownie points, huh?” Chuck flipped Elle his box cutter. “Want to open it?”
She hesitated. What if it was personal? “Okay, but no peeking over my shoulder until I say it’s safe.” Elle took the box cutter. Kneeling in Heath and Chuck’s shade, with a sliver of sun falling across the box, she sliced the tape and peered inside.
“Well, what’d he send?” Chuck’s barrel frame blocked her light, but he kept his promise not to peek.
Heath waited on the other side of Chuck.
A bundle of CDs tied with the same ribbon she’d used when she gave him the recordings as a gift. T
he neckties she’d give him for Christmas. The pictures she’d had framed for his apartment in Dallas. The shells they’d gathered during their first walk on the beach. Movie stubs. The napkin she’d given him after blotting her lipstick because he said, “It smells like you.”
Among the items, she found no note of explanation. Her skin prickled with heat. Why would Jeremiah do this?
Chuck cleared his throat. “Well, best get going. See you, Elle.”
“See you.” She couldn’t look around at him. Had he seen the contents of the box? If so, did he understand?
Chuck and Heath’s voices faded as they walked toward the FedEx truck. In the next minute, the engine fired up, reverse whining as Chuck backed out the drive.
Elle stood, cradling the box in her arms, trembling. Is he breaking up with me? The thought made her queasy.
Heath called the girls. “How about ice cream?”
Yelling their agreement, they darted across the yard. Elle heard the doors open, then close.
I don’t get it? Why . . . Her thoughts raced over the last few days. They’d agreed on a house, putting in for the loan. Jeremiah asked for her financials, which Daddy, her accountant, was gathering.
Heath’s shadow fell over hers. “I have the feeling Chuck didn’t bring something pleasant.”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry. Can I help in any way?”
“No, but thank you.”
“I’m taking Rio with me.” Heath waited, then backed away. “Be back soon.”
It was hard to speak. Elle felt like any breath, any word or movement would be the thread that unraveled her. She felt numb and on fire at the same time.
Hearing Heath pull away, she started for the studio steps, her emotions beginning to boil. She burst inside, threw the box to the table, and yanked her cell phone from the top of her bag.
Jeremiah Franklin better answer this call.
SEVEN
On the loft floor of what used to be GG Gallery, Elle sat with her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around her calves. The men working on Angela Dooley’s remodel had stood aside when Elle barged in like a wounded animal and bounded up to the second level.
