“Hey, you.” He flicked some water at her.
“Hey, yourself.” She let the curtain drop back into place and walked into the living room. Cute place, if small, and distinctly a bachelor pad. A few fitness magazines, a laptop, an Xbox, and a huge flat-screen television hanging across from a well-worn recliner. She refilled her coffee and pulled open the refrigerator to see a jug of unsweetened iced tea and two containers of leftovers.
He came up behind her a few minutes later and slipped his arms around her waist. “Sure I can’t interest you in some breakfast downstairs? Ma makes a mean French toast.”
She flinched at the thought. Delicious sex with a bodybuilder? Yes, please. Domestic conversation with his mother the morning after? She already felt herself losing control around him, sliding down a slippery slope that involved emotions she hadn’t felt in a long time. She set down her mug. “I think I’ll take a raincheck.”
One corner of his mouth curled. “Don’t worry. I was kidding.”
He’s not rushing into anything, she reminded herself as she found her other boot by the door. Good. Because the last thing she needed was to get attached to anyone or anything in Pine Point. Been there, done that. She’d left this town a shattered shell of a person eleven years ago. She had no intention of it happening again.
* * * * *
“I’ll call you later,” Mike said as he dropped her off at her apartment a half hour later. Sienna nodded and blew him a kiss. Upstairs, she showered and debated taking a nap, but her stomach growled and argued otherwise. She pulled on an old pair of jeans and her favorite UNC sweatshirt, grabbed a fresh yellow notepad, and headed downstairs to Zeb’s instead.
“Hi, there,” said the middle-aged waitress at the counter. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.” She looked around. “Josie’s not working?”
“Nah. Never on Sundays.” The woman poured a cup of coffee and pushed it across the counter. It sloshed over onto the saucer, and she sighed and handed Sienna a stack of napkins. “Sorry.”
Sienna looked around. Two gray-haired men she didn’t recognize sat at the opposite end of the counter. A mother and two toddlers with wild hair and Kool-Aid stains on their faces sat in a booth by the window. Other than that, the place was empty.
“I’ll have the breakfast special,” she said with a glance at the handwritten sheet inside the menu.
The waitress nodded and tromped off to the kitchen. Sienna bent over her notepad. She already had a nice collection of observations on the town, complete with a couple of affairs and sordid marriage secrets. Her gaze moved over the counter to the cash register and the stack of blank order slips beside it.
Diner waitress writes love poetry, she’d written last week. What was Josie’s story? Unrequited love? Jilted at the altar? Sheer boredom? The waitress returned and plopped salt and pepper shakers in front of Sienna.
“Ah, Carol?” she asked, with a look at the woman’s name tag.
“Yeah?”
“How long have you worked here?”
“’Bout two years. Used to work over at the Ponderosa, but that shithead of a boss cut my hours in half after I messed up my knee, so I left there.” She shoved a stray lock of graying hair behind one ear. “Why?”
“I wondered how well you knew Josie.”
Carol shrugged. “’Bout as well as anyone, I guess. She grew up here, course. I didn’t.” She said it with a certain amount of pride, as if Pine Point and Zeb’s Diner were beneath her, and she was just biding her time until an offer to wait tables at the Waldorf Astoria came along.
“Oh, no?”
“Nope. I’m from jus’ the other side of Albany. Small town called Troy. It’s pretty famous. Got a girls’ college there and everything.”
“So how’d you end up here?”
Carol narrowed her gaze. “Got a lotta questions for a Sunday morning, don’t you?”
Sienna resisted the urge to ask if her questions would be better taken on a Monday afternoon or Friday night. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
Carol brightened again. “What d’ya want to know about Josie?”
Sienna put her notepad aside and tried to sound casual. “Just wondered what she does in her spare time. Seems like she’s here all the time.”
Carol whistled. “She is. But let’s see now… I think she mostly goes to a quilt club over in Silver Valley. She’s a damn good quilter.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh, sure. She usually wins first prize at the holiday fair each year. D’ya know, last year over fifty people entered the contest. Josie won, of course.”
“Of course.” Sienna smiled. So the diner waitress was not only a secret poetess, but an award-winning quilter as well. Ah, the things my research is turning up. She sighed and drank her coffee.
Carol delivered Sienna’s order a few minutes later and then drifted back to the kitchen, where Sienna could hear her discussing her bad knee with one of the cooks. Sienna scanned Main Street as she ate. A few cars drove in both directions, but she didn’t see a single pedestrian until she’d almost finished her meal. Ella Ericksen emerged from the apartment stairs, dressed, as always, like she was heading for a New York City fashion show. Today, she wore her bright-blue ski jacket, black jeans, and stiletto boots. A white hat with a pom pom matched fuzzy white gloves with smaller pom poms, and she carried a bulky paper bag in one hand.
“I don’t know how those sisters ended up so different,” Carol said from over Sienna’s shoulder, echoing her own thoughts. “They’re like night and day.”
“They sure are.” Sienna watched as Ella got into her SUV and drove out of town. She wondered if Becca was still sleeping after last night’s fundraiser. Maybe she was soaking her feet after hours of wearing high heels. Ella probably sleeps in them, she thought with a grin. She paid the bill and walked back outside.
Down the street, St. Mary’s Church had just finished its service, and bells rang as people poured from the front door and hurried to their cars. Sienna had thought about going to a service or two to help her research, but something about that seemed a little seedy. Now she stood on the sidewalk and watched families and couples and a few singles drive away. Wonder who goes every single week? Wonder who goes only when they have something to atone for? Her mother had prayed nightly in front of the porcelain Virgin Mary statue in their living room, but Sienna had never stepped foot in a church. Until the funeral anyway. Her mother had worked most Sundays, picking up extra shifts whenever she could.
Tears pricked her eyes as she walked along the sidewalk, but she told herself it was the wind and nothing else. The temperature had climbed overnight, and without a sharp bite in the air, being outside was almost pleasant. Sienna decided to walk off her breakfast. She pulled up her hood and headed north, out of town. Might as well check on those stray cats, she thought as she neared Park Place Run. Mike had said Becca didn’t know about them, but someone did. Sienna slowed at Art’s Mini-Mart on the block between her apartment and Park Place Run. On impulse, she ducked inside and bought three cans of cat food.
She turned the corner onto Park Place Run, a virtual ghost town on a Sunday morning. Closed signs hung in every window. Even Marc’s Grille stated that it opened at five, for dinner only. She took a long inhale, savoring the air. One thing Pine Point had over Chapel Hill was the fresh evergreen scent that filled your lungs. No pollution here.
Halfway down the block, Sienna stopped. Looked as though she wasn’t the only person bringing food to Park Place Run’s resident strays this morning. She squinted into the morning sun. A few cars occupied private parking spots, designated for the second- and third-floor luxury apartments. An SUV sat in front of Divine Designs, the salon at the very end of the block.
An SUV Sienna knew well.
Her mouth dropped as Ella Ericksen climbed from the vehicle. She unrolled the paper bag she’
d been carrying earlier, took out two cans of food, and spooned the contents into the bowls in front of the makeshift shelters. Then she returned to the SUV for blankets, got down on her hands and knees, and replaced the old ones in the plastic tubs. She sat back on her heels, pushed her hat back on her head, and whistled. To Sienna’s utter amazement, three cats appeared from the bushes. They skittered by Ella, giving her a long look before gulping in the food. Apparently satisfied, Ella got up, tossed the dirty blankets into the back seat of her SUV, and drove away.
Sienna ducked into a doorway as she passed, hoping she hadn’t been spied, but Ella looked straight ahead.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said under her breath. It might not be research-worthy, but finding out Ella Ericksen had a soft spot for animals was a pretty nice secret to discover on a Sunday morning. Sienna pursed her lips. Funny, but for the first time, it occurred to her that not all secrets might be bad. Maybe the different sides to a person, the secrets and the scars and all the past stories, could add up to something more complex than she could ever judge from the start.
Chapter Twenty-Three
All week long, the sun shined. Six more people signed up for gym memberships, and Pine Point got four inches of snow Wednesday night. That brief storm turned into a few hundred dollars in Mike’s pocket after he spent a few hours plowing and pulling drivers out of snow banks. Friday morning, he caught himself whistling as he cleaned the blender and checked the protein powder supplies.
“Man, she’s that good?” Hans asked with a grin.
Mike knew the kid probably meant in bed, but he nodded without saying anything. It wasn’t just the way she turned him on. Having Sienna in Pine Point was like having the sun come out after weeks of cold and gray. Seeing her name on his phone when she texted or called made him feel like a teenager again, all thumbs as he fumbled to respond. They hadn’t slept together since last weekend, between his long hours and her schoolwork and research, and they’d had dinner together only once at the diner. But they talked every night, and she came into the gym almost every afternoon.
Mike’s chin twitched as he took a sidelong look at his office. He didn’t spend much time in there, but she’d given him one hell of a blow job up against the desk yesterday evening, and he couldn’t even glance that way today without getting hard. A stack of plastic cups slipped from his hands and tumbled across the ground.
“I got ’em,” Hans said.
“Thanks.” Mike rubbed the back of his neck and tried to keep his focus on the business. He spent the rest of the morning talking to the local cable station about a low-budget ad, training two clients, and counting the hours until he could leave. At ten minutes of two, he headed out the door. “Back by four,” he called over his shoulder. Hans nodded, eyes on his phone as usual.
“Mr. Mike!” Caleb met him at the door of Room Eighteen. “Miss Cruz, you were right. Mr. Mike came for read-along time today.”
Sienna smiled from across the room. She wore a plain blue button-down shirt with the tails out over blue and black print leggings. Chunky black ankle boots on her feet, and her hair up in a messy bun. Mike’s fingers twitched. How he’d like to pull out whatever pins held it in place and let her hair fall around her face. Then he’d take her right on the desk. Or maybe the rocking chair. Or maybe both.
He wiped a hand over his face as one of the twins tugged at his hand. “You come over here.” Obedient, he followed the boy to the rocking chair and sat.
“What am I reading today?”
The other twin carried over three books and dropped them in Mike’s lap. “Here. We picked these out for you.”
“Three?”
“They’re short,” Sienna said with a laugh. She sank into the chair at her desk and propped her chin on one hand.
Not short enough, he wanted to answer. Shit. He hoped they didn’t have any tricky words in them. A sweat broke out across his forehead. They’re just kids, he reminded himself. They won’t know if you screw up or skip a page. But he’d never loved reading as a kid. He’d never even liked it. The irony of his reading to a group of kids in the hopes of impressing their teacher wasn’t lost on him. Mike opened the cover of the first book.
“Sally Goes to the Store,” he began. Well, that sounded easy enough. As long as Sally wasn’t shopping for avocados or paprikash, he could make it through this one. He took his time, trying to make sure he held the book so the kids could see the pictures. About halfway through the story, Sally tried to sneak a carton of ice cream into her mother’s shopping cart. The boys burst out laughing. Mike looked up, surprised.
“Look what she’s doing!” crowed one of the twins. He kicked his feet and laughed again. His brother joined in. Silas clapped and laughed louder than both of them. Even Caleb smiled. Only Dawn remained silent in her beanbag on the other side of the room.
With a smile, Mike finished the story. The kids clapped, and before he knew it, one of the twins was leaning on his leg and pushing another book into his hands. “Read this one next.”
“Billy, please be polite.” Sienna said from her desk. “I don’t think Mr. Mike wants you sitting on his lap.”
“It’s okay,” Mike said. Sometime in the last twenty minutes, his anxiety had dissolved. Even the presence of sticky fingers and curious eyes didn’t unnerve him as it once had. “So this one next, buddy?”
The boy nodded.
Before Mike had realized it, he’d finished all three books, and almost forty minutes had passed. Sienna stood. “Let’s give Mr. Mike a big round of applause for reading to us today.”
They smacked their hands together, and Silas whooped as he jumped up and down with glee.
“My gosh, that’s more of a reception than I usually get,” Sienna said to him.
Mike stood in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do or say. He’d never gotten a reception like that in his life. Amazing that a group of quirky eight-year-olds could make him feel better about himself than most people he’d known as an adult.
Sienna clapped her hands. “Fifteen minutes until we get ready for dismissal. That means Billy, Bailey, Caleb, and Dawn, you have bathroom time, and then please put your backpacks out so I can check what you’re taking home.” She put her hand on Silas’s shoulder. “And you, my handsome man, need to finish coloring the last sheet in your packet.” She directed him to the table. “Silas is our lover of all things having to do with baseball,” she explained.
“Really?” Mike looked at the paper in front of the boy. Baseballs, gloves, bats, and containers of popcorn and peanuts covered the page. Silas caught his tongue between his teeth as he drew lines to match the pairs. “You know what?” Mike asked. Silas looked up. “I love baseball too.”
A huge grin broke out on Silas’s face.
“Maybe I could bring in a glove once the weather gets nice,” Mike went on. “Throw around some balls.” His face flushed. Everything he said around Sienna seemed to have a sexual connotation.
She lifted a brow and smiled. “I’d like that. I’m sure they would too. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some balls either.”
* * * * *
Sienna resisted the urge to grab Mike and give him a smokin’ kiss in front of everyone as the buses pulled away. As it was, the heat between them drove her half-crazy, and she had to keep back a few feet or her hands would do things without consulting her brain. She waved goodbye and watched him walk to his truck. In three hours, she was meeting him for dinner. She could wait that long to jump his perfect body. She hoped.
She walked down to the library and picked out some new books for her students, looking for titles related to baseball. The boys would love playing catch with Mike. Billy, Bailey, and Silas already adored him, and Caleb was warming up in his own way. Dawn—well, Sienna hoped Dawn would come around. At least she didn’t hide in the closet when Mike came by.
Sienna headed back through the lobby
, empty except for Eva Hadley sitting at the visitors’ desk. “Hey, Eva.”
“Hey, Sienna.”
“Have a good weekend.”
“You too.” She gave Sienna a curious look. “So, you and Mike?” she asked.
Sienna stopped walking. “Me and Mike what?”
“You’re…” She flipped her manicured fingers in the air. “You’re, like, together now?”
“We’re spending some time together,” Sienna said. She had no idea what together meant in Eva’s world, and she wasn’t about to analyze it in her own. “He’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, he is. Too bad he was married before.”
Sienna’s face flamed. “What?” He wasn’t. I would have known. He would have mentioned it. Everything inside her dropped, and she wasn’t sure which feeling hurt worse, the embarrassment that Eva had told her or the disappointment that Mike hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her himself.
“Oh, yeah. You knew that, right?” Eva made a tsking sound. “I always try to keep my distance from divorced guys. You never know what went wrong the first time around.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Hey, Ma?” Mike called from the driveway. Loretta bustled around the open garage, moving boxes from one shelf to another. He walked inside. “What are you doing?”
“Putting away the Christmas decorations.” She turned and pointed. “Can you see on that top shelf? Are my Easter things up there?”
He strained to read the writing on a cardboard box. “I think so.”
Loretta dragged over a step stool, but as she climbed up the first two steps, he took her around the waist and stopped her. “Ma. I’ll get the boxes.”
“I am perfectly capable of getting them myself.”
Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 Page 14
