Love Finds You in Holiday, Florida

by Sandra D. Bricker

“Poetic,” Richard commented, and Cassie grinned.

  “The Crock-Pot is the greatest invention of our time,” Georgette informed them as she reached for Richard’s bowl. “There’s no messing it up, no matter what it is. You just toss it into the pot, leave for the whole day, and come home to a hot and hearty meal. It’s amazing, really. Do you have a Crock-Pot, Cassie?”

  “I think I do. I don’t really use it much—”

  “Oh, you should. You must. I have a cookbook….”

  Georgette toddled into the kitchen and rummaged around.

  “Georgette has a cookbook for everything,” Richard said on half a whisper. “For my birthday, I got Putt-Putt Meals. Meals that make themselves while the chef is on the golf course.”

  Cassie snickered but reeled it back just as Georgette returned to the table.

  “Here it is,” she said, displaying a book for them as she read from the cover. “From Artichokes to Zucchini. One hundred healthy Crock-Pot meals for vegetarians and carnivores alike.”

  Cassie’s eyebrows arched over widened eyes, and she nodded in slow motion. “Carnivores. That’s…really…interesting.”

  “Here, you can borrow it,” Georgette insisted, handing her the book.

  “Well, actually, my Crock-Pot is at my house in Boston. I don’t think I’ll be—”

  “Then you take it home with you when you go. You can always mail it back to me. Oooh, or better yet, we could make a trip down to Bealls first thing tomorrow and get you one for use right here in Holiday!”

  “Oh, Georgette, that’s so nice of you, but—”

  “Supper’s on, George,” the woman called out to her husband, who was already asleep in the living room recliner. Turning back to Richard and Cassie, she said, “You two dig in. I’ll go wake the old coot.”

  Cassie tried to serve up a bite from her bowl, but the egg noodles slipped right through the tines of her fork.

  “I’m thinking a spoon,” Richard suggested, waving his own utensil at her.

  He demonstrated, digging down into the bowl and bringing a heaping bite to his lips, his spoon overflowing. A noodle dangled over the side, so he stuck out his tongue beneath it and then clumsily dropped the contents into his open mouth.

  “Oh, good,” she said on a nod, and Cassie dipped her own spoon into the bowl with better results.

  Once she had an overflowing bite at the ready, she glanced at Richard. His blue eyes were narrowed in response to that first taste he’d taken, and actually…they’d gone a bit gray. His nose and mouth were crumpled, and he shook his head at her emphatically.

  “No?”

  “Uh-uh. No.”

  While Georgette clomped toward the table, she created a quick tunnel through the succotash with the back of her spoon and pasted a smile on her face as she looked up.

  “How is it? Delish, right?” Georgette asked them, slipping into the chair across from Richard.

  “Mmm.” Cassie nodded.

  Georgette filled George’s bowl and placed it before him as he joined them at the table.

  “What is it?” he asked, staring down into his dinner. “Looks like slop.”

  “I told you. Hearty beef succotash over a bed of noodles.” Cassie imagined that’s just the way they’d described it in the Hearty Crock-Pot Meals for You and Your Old Coot cookbook.

  George looked up at Cassie and squinted. “The wife loves her Crock-Pot. She tell ya about the joys of Crock-Pot cooking yet?”

  Cassie nodded.

  “Yeah. The greatest invention of our time—she tell ya that?”

  “Oh, hush up and eat your supper,” Georgette reprimanded him. “There’s rainbow sherbet for dessert.”

  “Mm, none for me,” Richard said after wiping his mouth with a napkin and then draping his nearly full bowl with it. “Thank you so much for the wonderful dinner, but I’ve got to be heading home.” Looking at Cassie, he added, “Thank you for the ride over here.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she exclaimed, jumping up to her feet. “I’ll give you a lift before I head home myself.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind walking, but if you’re sure…”

  “Of course.”

  “Neither of you wants rainbow sherbet?” Georgette asked them, as if they’d lost their ever-lovin’ minds.

  “Oughta serve sherbet first,” George said, pushing the concoction around in the bowl in front of him. “Coats the stomach.”

  “Hush.”

  “Thank you for dinner,” Cassie said, giving Georgette a hug. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”

  The woman’s eyes darted toward the full bowl in front of Cassie, and she frowned.

  “I had a really late lunch,” she lied.

  “Sorry about the dock,” George interjected between surprisingly enthusiastic spoonfuls of succotash. “I’ll get somebody out there in the morning to pull up the pontoon.”

  How about someone to repair my dock? she thought, knowing full well that he had no intention of going that far.

  “Ready?” Richard asked her.

  “Ready.”

  Georgette walked them out the door and down the driveway, bidding them good night the whole way. She stood there, with the streetlight turning her bright orange hair into a sort of neon sign and her arm becoming somewhat spastic, as she waved good-bye.

  Cassie stopped at the corner and asked, “Which way? And hurry, before she realizes I left the cookbook behind and takes off after us.”

  “Left. Unless you’re still as hungry as I am. Then take a right, and we can make a run for sustenance.”

  Cassie yanked the wheel to the right and hit the gas. “That sounds fantastic. Have you ever eaten at A Pizza Holiday? I was in the middle of ordering from them when my dock jumped out into the canal and hit George’s boat.”

  “Ha!”

  “I have such a taste for their pizza. I’ve been thinking about it for days.”

  “Sounds fine. I can’t remember the last time I had pizza.”

  Just a few minutes later, they pulled into the empty parking lot and noticed that the tiny restaurant was dark. A sign on the door announced that they closed at 9 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

  “It’s after nine o’clock?” Cassie asked.

  Richard tapped his watch. “It’s not even seven thirty.”

  They both stared straight ahead in silence for several seconds before Cassie said, “How about Benny’s?”

  “Really?” he asked with a bit of a scowl before shrugging. “All right. I’ll try that.”

  “You’ve never eaten there before?”

  “I don’t really experiment much with the local cuisine. I like to prepare my own food whenever I can. That way I know what’s in it.”

  Cassie resisted the urge to inquire further but turned the car toward Benny’s Coffee Shoppe. Once inside, she started to get the idea that Richard Dillon wasn’t exaggerating about his aversion to the local restaurants—or to other people preparing his food. She watched, fascinated, as he ran a napkin around the rim of his water glass and then used it to wipe down his flatware.

  “So,” he said, breathing on the butter knife in his hand and then polishing it with his napkin, “what’s your story? How long have you lived here in Holiday?”

  For a moment she remained silent, enrapt as he set down the knife and continued his mission to rid the world of water spots, this time focusing on his fork.

  “Um, I don’t really live here. When my husband was alive, we bought a winter home in Holiday. We spent a few weeks a year down here until he passed away. Now I’m just back to get it ready for the real estate market.”

  “It’s not exactly a seller’s market these days,” he observed, as he pressed a second napkin meticulously flat against the edge of the table and then placed it on his lap.

  “I’m in no real hurry,” she replied. “The place needs some work, so I’ll concentrate on that while I’m here. Afterward, I guess it will sell when it sells.”

  �
�You mentioned earlier that you’re from Boston.”

  “Yep. Born and raised.”

  “What a great town!” he exclaimed. “I know the place pretty well.”

  “Really! Did you grow up in the area?”

  “I suppose I did, but not in the sense you mean.” She could see that he was teasing, but Cassie didn’t quite get the joke. “I actually went to school—”

  “Are you ready to order?” the waitress asked, plucking the pencil from behind her ear and tapping the eraser on the edge of the table.

  “Club sandwich,” Cassie replied. “Light on the mayo. Fries. And iced tea, no lemon.”

  “And for you?” the woman asked Richard.

  “Egg white omelet,” he answered. “Spinach, mushrooms, onion. What kind of cheese do you have?”

  “American and cheddar.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Cheddar, I guess.”

  “Toast?”

  “Rye.”

  “We’ve got white or wheat.”

  Richard frowned. “Wheat.”

  “To drink?”

  “Coffee?” he asked hopefully.

  “Of course.”

  “Decaf.”

  “Decaf it is.” She stuck the pencil back over her ear and sauntered away.

  The left side of Cassie’s mouth twitched, but she forced the smile back into hiding as Richard glanced at her.

  “What about you?” she managed. “What brought you to Holiday?”

  “Early retirement,” he answered. “My wife and I planned for it from the time we were first married. Everything we did was about where we would retire and how early we could do it. We’d hoped for the wine country in northern California for a while, but we could cut off eight years if we came to Florida instead. The cost of living in California has really skyrocketed, over the last decade in particular.”

  “So your wife moved here with you?”

  “No.”

  She waited for an explanation. Just about the time she decided she wasn’t going to get one, Richard clicked his tongue and sighed.

  “Half of the house was packed up for our move down here, and the Realtor had a buyer for the place in Philadelphia. But just three days after I retired from the firm, Caroline passed away.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “She’d dropped her purse when we were leaving my retirement party. When she bent down to get it, she smacked her head on the corner of the car door. She said she was fine, and we never connected the dots when she had a headache the next day.”

  Cassie’s heart lurched. How horrible!

  “Two days later, she was gone.”

  What did a person say at a moment like this? Cassie’s mind was blank.

  “All those plans we made. For almost thirty years, we saved and planned and scheduled for one specific day. But before the day could even arrive…”

  He didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t need to. Cassie understood everything he wasn’t able to say.

  “I am so sorry,” she told him with sincerity.

  “We were just a breath away from having everything we’d planned for. It rocks your faith, you know?” he said.

  “I do know.” Better than I could tell you. “I lost my husband suddenly, too,” she admitted. “One morning you just wake up and look around you and realize, I’m fifty-five years old, and I am completely alone. I never thought I’d be alone at this age.”

  The silence that crept up on them was broken as the waitress plunked their plates on the table between them. As she filled Richard’s coffee cup, he asked for more creamer, and it came out as a raspy whisper that he had to repeat so that she could hear him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “More cream, please?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Richard waved good-bye to Cassie and slipped his key into the lock on the front door. Once inside, he dropped his keychain into the large ceramic bowl on the buffet, paused to sprinkle some food into the tropical fish tank, and then sat down at the upright piano in the corner of the living room. He began to play somewhat mindlessly, and it turned into Chopin without any forethought at all.

  Cassie Constantine dogged his thoughts with her smooth brown hair, apple-cheeked smile, and very northern porcelain skin. She’d revealed her age with the same unabashed confidence with which she’d ordered a club sandwich and fries after 7 p.m. Not that she probably had to worry much about calories on her small frame. But didn’t all women worry about calories?

  Richard stopped playing and pulled at both knobs to unfold the varnished keyboard cover before heading in for a shower. He’d hoped his thoughts of Cassie would stay behind in the living room, but they followed him like a boisterous puppy nipping at his heels.

  The woman was a dichotomy of straight-laced and…and what?

  Carefree, he decided.

  She was so different from the other women he’d met since moving to Florida. Most of them were over sixty and somewhat leathered by the southern sun. One of them had shown particular interest in him, but despite his propensity for judging a book by its contents rather than its cover, he just couldn’t seem to get past the fact that she had the undeniable and somewhat repulsive face of a barn owl.

  God, forgive me. But Maureen Heaton is not easy to look at.

  Cassie Constantine, on the other hand, was a deep breath of crisp air. She was very Bostonian in her appearance and refined demeanor, seeming to watch him with the discriminating eye of a teacher sizing up an unruly student, and yet there was something disarming about her, too.

  Richard couldn’t decide whether she was really interesting or just a little bit off-putting, but he was leaning toward the latter. He hadn’t noticed, at first, the way she scrutinized him when he cleaned up his silverware, not until he laid his napkin across his lap and caught her trying to conceal a smile that was ever so slightly flavored with superiority. Just the very fact that she’d chosen a place like Benny’s for a meal should have told him right up front that she wasn’t someone he wanted to spend much time with anyway.

  So why was he still sitting there thinking about her?

  Perhaps it was because she’d come off so genuine and concerned when he’d talked about losing Caroline. Richard didn’t even know why he’d felt compelled to tell her all that, but her response was thoughtful and empathetic, and she hadn’t made him feel the least bit self-conscious about getting choked up the way he had.

  Not until now, anyway.

  His throat tightened as he replayed it in his mind. He’d never been comfortable with revealing vulnerability, particularly to someone he didn’t know well. He wondered what Cassie’s perception of him had been tonight. In fact, he couldn’t seem to stop speculating about that, and he rewound portions of their conversation again and again throughout the night. Thoughts of Cassie lingered in a tangled knot in his chest until he finally drifted off to sleep sometime after 3 a.m., and the weight of it was still there when he opened his eyes again at sunrise.

  I’m either going to marry her, he thought as he propelled himself across the surface of the pool with lap after lap, or I’m going to have to take measures to keep her as far away from my life as possible.

  Since he had no intention of marrying Cassie Constantine—or anyone else for that matter—Richard’s choice was simple.

  Until after breakfast, anyway.

  When he phoned the Hootzes and learned that they were on their way to Cassie’s house to meet the salvage crew, Richard jumped into his car and sped over to join them.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning,” Cassie said after he rounded her house and walked across the lawn toward them.

  “I thought George might need some backup,” he said. He smacked the older man on the shoulder with a smile. “How are they doing with bringing up the pontoon?”

  George grumbled something indiscernible and then slipped away from Richard’s greeting and stalked closer to the edge of the dock to watch the action.<
br />
  “I don’t know why we’re bothering to bring the thing up,” Georgette piped up. “It’s not like it’s going to be in any condition to use again.”

  “Well, we can’t just leave it there under the water with the end of my dock,” Cassie offered. “That can’t be the thing to do.” Then she looked to Richard with a hopeful expression. “Right?”

  “Well…I guess—uh—” He was coming up with nothing, so he just shrugged and followed George to the end of the dock.

  The salvage men were tossing around terms like “ballast weight” and “flotation bags,” but Richard didn’t understand them. He just stood next to George, trying to look as if he did. He wondered if Cassie had figured out that he didn’t have a nautical bone in his entire body, which caused him to stick out in Central Florida like a thumb that had been tapped by a weighty anvil.

  Ask me about golf, he thought. You want to excavate a ball from a sand trap? I’m your guy. Have a craving for useless golf trivia? Just say the word. Who holds the record for the most Ryder Cup appearances? Nick Faldo. Who has the most PGA tour wins? Sam Snead! Second to Sam? Jack Nicklaus.

  “How about you, Richard?”

  “What? Beg your pardon?”

  “Lemonade,” Cassie said. “Would you like some?”

  She looked really attractive with her hair piled up on top of her head like that. Richard noticed the loose wisps as the breeze caught them and brushed them against her china-doll face. Her bare shoulders were stained pink from the sun, and when she turned her head, he noticed that the straps of her sundress were going to leave a line if she stood outside much longer. Hadn’t anyone educated this woman on the necessity of sunscreen?

  “To drink?” she enunciated. “Thir–sty? Some lem–o–nade? Yes? No?”

  Richard almost gasped, but he caught it before his cool was entirely blown. At least he hoped he had. “No. I mean, yeah, that would be great.”

  “I’ll help you,” Georgette chimed in, and she toddled off behind Cassie and followed her to the house.

  The dog awaited their arrival from behind the glass door, wagging her plumed tail with such vigor that she looked as if she might fall over.

  Richard clamped his eyes shut and cringed as the two women burst into laughter on the other side of the sliding door.