Jack pressed his thumb to his lip and thought for a moment.
Please, Harley prayed. I need this house.
Slipping a monogrammed gold pen from inside his sport coat, Jack jotted down a figure, creased the note shut, and handed it to his cousin. “Whatever happens, happens.”
Ryan unfolded Harley’s note and smoothed it open, exposing her dollar amount for all to see.
Her face burned. Too late, she realized that what was an exorbitant figure in terms of her modest bank account was a joke when it came to wine country real estate. Even with the amount she’d tacked onto her original offer, the number was obviously far below the property’s market value. She nibbled the side of her thumb, imagining the laugh Jack and Ryan would share at her expense after she left. Newberry was a small town, but Jack was one of its biggest fish. How had she ever let herself believe she could compete? Her merchandise was still in the production phase, and already she’d let a little success go to her head. It was on the tip of her tongue to say, Never mind, don’t even open Jack’s note.
Too late. With agonizing slowness, Ryan was already unfolding Jack’s offer.
She counted the seconds until she could slink out of Newberry and never show her face again. Surely another suitable house would turn up in the Seattle area. It had to.
Ryan frowned down at Jack’s offer, as if perplexed. Then he placed it on the table side by side next to Harley’s.
There had to be some mistake. Jack had underbid her. Her eyes sought his, but they remained focused on the papers he was returning to his folder. Rising and tucking it beneath his arm, he said, “Congratulations, Har. I wish you all the best. Now, I have other things to do today.” He reached across the table to give her hand a curt shake, and then he was out the door.
Chills shot through Harley. Somehow, she had won. The Victorian was hers.
Chapter Eight
“Jack,” Harley called, jogging after him as he strode through the parking lot of the law office toward a faded red truck that had seen better days. “What happened back there?”
He glanced backward without breaking his gait. “You got the house, fair and square.”
She caught his sleeve, forcing him to turn around. “You practically gave it to me. So why did you even bother coming to the meeting?”
“I didn’t know Ryan was going to pit us against each other.” He shrugged. “Win a few, lose a few.”
“You’re taking this very calmly. What about the land? It’s perfect for growing grapes. Even I know that.”
“There are growers who would kill for it. But it’s better that you have it. It just feels right.” He paused. “Besides, I owed you.”
Now, he thought, they were even.
* * *
Jack’s hands were sweaty on the steering wheel of the old Ford V-10. The tissue-paper flowers made by the student council during countless study halls that covered the windshield made it almost impossible to see out.
“I can’t see a thing through that peephole they left me,” he complained to the band director, who was about to shut him inside the truck for the duration of Newberry High’s annual Homecoming Parade, the fall’s premier event.
“Did you go to the lav?” asked Mr. Desatento. “Because once it starts, you can’t stop, no matter what.”
Jack nodded solemnly.
“Remember, keep it in second gear,” Mr. Desatento said. “That way you’ll be less likely to jolt someone overboard.” Someone being a member of the homecoming court, riding in the pickup’s bed. No pressure.
Despite the balmy fall weather and the fact that it was ten a.m., it was dark as Hades inside the cab, and just as hot.
“The air conditioning doesn’t work,” said Jack, punching futilely at the controls.
“Beggars can’t be choosers. When’s the last time you heard of a Maserati being donated to the booster club?”
“Seriously, Mr. D, how am I supposed to see where I’m going?”
“It’s two miles. What can happen in the space of two miles when you’re going four miles per hour?”
Jack had had his license for a grand total of a month, and unlike many of his newly legal friends, so far, he hadn’t hit a thing. So far. And it was a good thing, because his mother didn’t have the patience for slipups, especially public ones. Now he was about to blind-drive a three-thousand-pound vehicle with passengers, standing up and waving. And Mr. D was supposed to be the responsible one.
“What happens if I miss a turn?”
“I picked you out of the entire student council because I thought you could handle it. But if you can’t . . .”
Jack had been raised to believe there was nothing worse than shirking responsibility. “I can handle it.”
“Good, because—” The teacher’s head turned to look at something out of Jack’s limited range of vision. “Harley! I need you.”
“What, Mr. Desatento?”
At the sound of Harley’s voice, Jack struggled between elation and panic. The two of them had spent their early years playing pirates. Jack’s parents weren’t like Harley’s, who gave her free rein to roam. He was restricted to the vineyards and the meadow. But Harley kept coming back. Their raft was a fallen tree, their swords the long, pointed leaves torn from her mother’s irises, with her permission. He thought life would always be like that—epic and free and amazing.
But all that ended abruptly the day his father died. Jack had put his childhood behind him and gone to work learning how the vineyards and winery operated.
He still hung out with Harley once in a while. But now he had grown-up responsibilities. Mother had gone from taking care of the house to spending her days learning the business so one day it would be there for him. He could hardly let her go it alone.
His life was neatly laid out for him. One day he would take over the family business and settle down with a compatible woman. A woman with a good head for business, who would be a sensible mother to his children, not the artsy-fartsy daughter of hippies.
“You designed this thing—” The art department had built the float, but everyone knew Harley had come up with the cool jungle design, in keeping with the tiger mascot. “—and now the driver can’t see out the window,” continued Mr. Desantento. “I need you to be Jack’s eyes.” He turned back to Jack. “Get out and let Harley in. There’s a bigger hole over on the passenger side of the windshield. She can look out of that and help you steer.”
“Naw,” said Jack. “It’s okay, Mr. D. I got this.”
“You still have that truck.”
Jack’s face got a puzzled look, as if Harley had remarked that he still had the same arms and legs. “She’s been in a garage all this time I’ve been Down Under. She’s a part of me. Still runs like a charm. No sense getting rid of ’er.”
She bit back a smile. They’d made more than a few memories in the back of that truck.
He kept walking, but she wasn’t finished. She followed him, talking to his back. “You have no idea what this means to me.”
When he nodded mutely without turning around, it was almost enough to make her change her mind about thinking him polite.
She stopped then and called to his back. “I truly am sorry about Emily. I know she’s been gone awhile now. But on the off chance I ever saw you again, I planned on telling you that.”
She would never forget reading about Emily’s death in the local news, only five years after she and Jack were married.
Last night, a late-model Volvo slammed into a bridge abutment on a narrow New Zealand road . . .
The deceased was Emily Redmond, daughter of Dawson and Cordelia Redmond, formerly of this county and now of Riverside, California. Emily leaves behind twin daughters, Frances and Frederica, her husband, Jack Friestatt, and a sister, Cait, now of Portland.
Impossible. Harley pictured Emily the way she’d known her. Aside from being born into an important family, Emily was remarkable for her ordinariness. She was pretty without being beautiful. Earned Bs in
school, not As. Friendly, but not vivacious.
Jack halted and turned around slowly, a muscle twitching in his jaw, as if he had a lifetime of things to say but didn’t have the faintest idea where to start.
She almost liked it better when he was cold and hard. When his vulnerability showed, she was too tempted to throw herself at him and forgive him for everything. “Well,” she said, walking backward toward her own car, parked on the street. “See you. Er, on second thought, I guess I won’t. Be seeing you, that is.” She waved her fingers. “Bye.”
He hesitated. “You have a time when you have to be back at work?”
“I’m my own boss. I decide when I work. Nobody tells me what to do.”
“Nobody ever did.” He snorted softly. “What the hell. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
Half of her couldn’t wait to get away from him. After all this time, he still made her palms sweaty and her mouth dry. Too late, she wished she had simply let him go instead of running after him. But questions rooted deep in their shared past, questions that had robbed her of uncounted nights’ sleep, sprang to her mind. She shrugged. “I guess I could use some caffeine.”
Chapter Nine
It was a short walk to the coffee shop just around the corner.
“There’s one.” Jack pointed with his chin toward an empty table at the back of the cafe.
Weaving between the tightly wedged tables, Harley lost count of all the people who said hello to him.
“You look exactly the same,” said Harley when they had finally squeezed into their chairs across from each other. Which was a lie. He’d gotten even better looking.
“So do you.”
“No, I don’t.” It wasn’t fair. Being a working artist meant hours sitting in a chair. She had packed on ten pounds in as many years. Then again, if experience had taught her anything, it was that life itself wasn’t fair.
“So. You tired of Seattle?” He made a self-disparaging face. “Stupid question. You must be, or you wouldn’t be moving back here.”
That was the other thing about Jack. Even though he was born wine country royalty, he had this humble, self-effacing side.
“I liked Seattle. Except that lately, when those hackers in their power hoodies strode past me on the city sidewalks with their cell phones glued to their ears, I wondered if I would ever truly be one of them, no matter how successful I became.”
He laughed.
She stiffened. “What’s so funny?” Was it so farfetched to think she could be successful?
“Power hoodies.”
She relaxed again, as the server arrived already holding a coffee pot and poured them each a cup.
Jack glanced around. “All these people, pretending not to stare. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”
“I was thinking it was my outfit. It’s the only spot of neon in a sea of earth tones.”
“That’s not it. Today might be the first time in decades they’ve seen me with a woman that wasn’t my mother or my wife. To top it off, that woman happens to be none other than Harley Miller-Jones.”
“The Great Newberry Parade Disaster,” drawled Harley, remembering along with him.
“Do what I say!” Mr. Desatento glanced down at his watch. A lock of hair slid out of his thin ponytail. “The parade’s about to start. Don’t argue with me. I’m assigning Harley to help you.”
Jack looked at Harley and swallowed. Even with her hair recently dyed a very non-traditional purple, she still held some magical power over him.
After he’d snuck out of the house for Harley and wrecked his minibike, and been caught kissing her in the same month, Mother had strictly forbidden him to be anywhere near her. She’d even threatened to send him away to military school, triggering nightmares of marching in lockstep in a uniform. Now Mr. D was talking about wedging Harley and him together inside the tight space of the float?
“But I was going to walk along outside in case there’s a decoration malfunction,” said Harley.
“Decoration malfunction? You’re worried about a flower falling off. I hate to tell you this, snowflake, but when you forgot to leave room to see out, that right there’s a major design defect. Do you two want to be the ones to tell the parents of the homecoming court that they might as well go home? Good luck with that.”
Mr. Desatento had a point. Making homecoming court was a bigger deal to the parents than to the kids themselves. Fathers dug wrinkled suit jackets out from the backs of their closets. Mothers had carnations pinned onto their breasts for their picture to be taken with their children, down on the field before the game.
One of the candidates for king was Jimmy Polanski. But Harley didn’t know what Jack knew, which was that Jimmy was the son of the president of Newberry Bank—the bank that held their mortgage. Dad’s death, Mother’s learning curve, and some bouts of crippling cold weather had resulted in some late payments. Mrs. Polanski had the power to take everything from them. They had to stay on her good side.
The passenger-side door was already duct-taped shut. Mr. D held the driver’s side door open as far as he dared to allow Jack to squeeze out so that Harley could get in. “Careful!”
In climbed Harley, dressed for the weather in a skimpy tank top and short shorts.
Once Jack and Harley were crammed in next to each other, their teacher talked to them through the crack in the window. “I’ll be walking backward next to the float, spotting you. I’ll stick out my left arm to indicate a right turn and my right for a left. Got that? And remember, do not exceed four miles per hour. All I need is Sylvie Collins screaming bloody murder should she get the slightest bump.”
Sylvie had acted in all the school plays. She was never happy unless the spotlight was shining on her . . . no matter how much turmoil it caused.
“But how am I supposed to tell how fast I’m going? The speedometer’s broken!”
“Four miles an hour. Do the best you can. And if you see me cross my forearms, stop.”
“I can’t even see the road, let alone you walking next to me.”
“Keep your ears open. I’ll yell the instructions to you.”
“I feel like we should have rehearsed this.”
“And rehearse the band and teach my classes and do report cards on time? Plus, this year I’ve been blessed with three freshmen whose names are all ‘Heaven’ spelled backward, and each one pronounces it differently. Nevee’ah, Nevi’ah, and Nev’eah . . . by the time I get them all straight, they’ll have graduated. I don’t get paid enough for this as it is.”
“I don’t suppose you’re holding back and you have some sort of remote-control emergency stop button.”
Mr. Desatento tsked and rolled his eyes. “What do you think this is, Friestatt? The Rose Bowl?” With that, he slammed the door, making Harley jump.
Parades were designed to be fun, lighthearted events. But Jack, typically, had done his homework. There had been a surprising number of scary incidents. Any number of things could go wrong. People had gotten wedged between floats or parts of them, fallen beneath the wheels, and even been electrocuted when floats ran into overhead power lines.
Jack blinked in the semidarkness. “He’s only doing the teacher gig until he can get his hobby winery up and running.”
“Same as Mr. Langhorne and Ms. Chang. Come to think of it, they only lasted, what, a couple of years? What is it with everyone and his brother starting a winery?”
“They all want a piece of the action.”
Harley looked around at the drab interior. “Turns out, floats aren’t nearly as festive on the inside.”
“I’ll just be glad if they don’t have to pry us out of here with the jaws of life after I crash into the bank on the corner.”
Harley giggled as she fanned herself. “I thought guys loved stuff like this.”
He felt for the gearshift, his hand accidentally brushing against her thigh. “Yeah, I love driving in the dark in a potentially lethal death trap while innocent people are dancing out there
in the bed.” He was student council president. If something happened, what would people say?
From somewhere in front of them came the sound of the band playing the Newberry High alma mater.
“Ten seconds!” came the teacher’s muffled voice.
Jack shifted into drive. “Can you see anything?”
Harley craned her neck. “The band’s still marching in place. There. Now. They’re moving forward.”
“Here goes nothing.” Sweat beading on his forehead, he frowned in concentration and, with a jolt, shifted into drive.
The truck crept forward at a snail’s pace.
Beside him, Harley burst out laughing.
“What?”
“Kind of anticlimactic, that’s all. I mean, after all that hoopla with Mr. Desatento.”
“Laugh. Go ahead. It’s not your ass in a sling if I wreck this thing.”
“Why are you so worried? I mean, aside from someone getting hurt. Seems like your whole identity is wrapped up in this sucky little high school parade.”
“Because it is! I can just hear my mother if I mess up. Everything’s such a big production with her. She’ll say I humiliated her in front of the whole town.”
Harley made a sympathetic face. “Stinks to be you.”
Harley didn’t see him through the filter of his family. She wasn’t envious of him, like the kids who didn’t even know him who invited him to their parties, or resentful of his being born a Friestatt, like the anonymous jerk who vandalized his locker with spray paint. She saw through the bullcrap to who he was inside, just a regular person.
“Watch for the bank on the corner and give me plenty of time to make the turn. That’s going to be the hairiest part.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
At the throwback to her childhood nickname for him, their eyes met in the dimness. Memories of their pirate days in the vineyards danced between them. A lot had happened since then. Slowly but surely, the forces of fate and family were pulling them apart.
Right All Along Page 5
