Carolina Heart

by Virginia Kantra

  “That’s great,” Max said. “You obviously impressed him.”

  She blinked. “You think?”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised,” Max said, echoing her words to him, and was rewarded when she laughed.

  “It would be like a receptionist job, answering phones, making appointments. But he’d pay. And he said I’d have a chance to observe him.”

  Max nodded. “Job shadowing.”

  “Yeah.” Cynthie smiled her lopsided smile, revealing her dimple. “Not that I have time to pick up a second job.”

  Max frowned. He didn’t like to see her dismiss an opportunity so easily. “What are the hours?”

  “He said he could be flexible. He mostly wants somebody in the office when his regular staff takes lunch. Twelve to one-thirty, Monday through Friday.”

  Max set down his sandwich, his appetite suddenly gone. “You could do that. You don’t have classes then.”

  You have lunch with me.

  “I don’t know.” She crumpled her napkin. “I probably wouldn’t be any good. I don’t have any experience.”

  He didn’t want to lose her company. But he couldn’t sit here and listen to her denigrate herself. “You’re a quick learner. Look at how well you’re doing in class. Anyway, the whole point of the job is that you’d get experience. Training.”

  She collected her trash and his, stuffing it in her lunch bag to throw away. “I have to think about it. My schedule’s crazy enough already.”

  “The job pays, you said. If you took it, you could cut back your hours at the restaurant. Maybe take a night off now and then to be home with your girls and do your homework.”

  Her busy hands stilled. Her gaze fixed on his face, her eyes wide and shining.

  Max shifted, uncomfortable. “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For making me feel like I can do this.”

  Heat crept up his neck to his ears. He didn’t deserve her thanks. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Except wonder, selfishly, how he was going to get through his days without her.

  She shook her head, smiling. “Maybe it comes naturally for you. Maybe teachers have to be encouraging or something. But all my life, nobody’s ever looked at me the way you do. Made me believe in myself the way you do. It’s like I see this future for myself that nobody else sees. Except my friend Meg. And now you.”

  She was killing him here.

  “Glad to help,” he said gruffly. “Anytime.”

  She stood with him to bus their table. “You’re a nice guy, Max Lewis,” she said softly.

  She stepped in, standing on tiptoe to brush her lips across his.

  Shock held him still. Her lips were so soft. Her breath was so warm. Her body was round and lush against his and he forgot where they were and what he was doing and kissed her back hard, sliding his hand up into her hair, taking her mouth with his.

  He heard a rushing in his ears like the sound of the sea. He was drowning in her, so warm, so close, trembling in his arms, kissing him back, making him dizzy. His blood roared.

  A sound intruded, hard, percussive.

  Someone clapping, Max thought dimly. Some wise-ass student applauding them.

  He raised his head. “I have to see you again.”

  Cynthie licked her lips, her eyes dark and unfocused, so beautiful he almost lunged for her again. “When?”

  “We could go out. Friday night. Dinner.”

  “I . . .” Her pulse beat in her throat. He wanted to kiss her there, in the fragrant hollow below her jaw. He wanted to lick her skin. “I have to be home with the girls.”

  “Then let me come over.”

  She took a step back, folding her arms across her breasts. “You can’t. I can’t.” There was a shaky note in her voice almost like panic. “I don’t do that now. I won’t risk them getting attached to some random guy I’m dating.”

  The words stung. Some random guy . . . She meant him. After five weeks, that’s all he was. Whatever she said about his belief in her, she still didn’t trust in him.

  “Are you sure it’s the girls you’re worried about?” he asked slowly.

  Color flooded her face. She didn’t answer him directly. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you.”

  “Right.”

  “We can still . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Have coffee,” he suggested.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “You know what I want.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  Because, he realized with blinding clarity, all her life guys had been wanting things from her. Her smiles. Her attention. Sex.

  And, yeah, he wanted those things from her, too. But that didn’t automatically make him an asshole. There were other reasons a guy could want her, more reasons than she could imagine or was ready to hear. He loved her optimism and her grit. He admired her cheerful determination to make the best of things.

  And he needed her to want him, too.

  “I want to spend time with you,” he said firmly. “When’s your first class on Monday?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “We meet at eight-thirty, that gives us half an hour for coffee,” he said.

  Her smile bloomed. “I guess it does.” She met his gaze hopefully. “Friends?”

  His heart squeezed like a fist. She asked for so little. He wanted to give her so much.

  All my life, nobody’s ever looked at me the way you do. Made me believe in myself the way you do . . . Except my friend Meg. And now you.

  Cynthie needed friends. She needed him, even if it was only for this.

  “Friends,” he promised.

  FIVE

  “STUPID TURTLE,” CYNTHIE muttered, staring at the ditch where the turtle had disappeared after she’d rescued it.

  Except the turtle was smarter than Cynthie.

  If she hadn’t stopped to save it from crossing the road, she’d be home by now. Not stalled by the side of the highway with darkness coming on.

  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

  She tried Meg’s number again without success, and then, with a little sigh, called her mother.

  “If you’d just stay home,” Mama said, “instead of running around like some eighteen-year-old college girl—”

  Cynthie gripped the unresponsive steering wheel. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be there as quick as I can. It’s probably just the battery. Somebody will stop and give me a jump.”

  She tried not to imagine a truckful of drunk, rowdy yahoos pulling up behind her on this deserted stretch of road.

  At least the girls weren’t in the car with her.

  “Do you need me to come get you?” Wanda asked.

  Cynthie’s muscles relaxed. That was the thing about Mama. She might fuss, but she always came through in a pinch.

  “Thanks, Mama, but I’m forty minutes away. I need you to wait for Hannah. Jane’s bringing her home after soccer.”

  “Madison can watch her.”

  “For a little while. But I don’t know yet when I’ll be home. Maddie’s not old enough to babysit yet.”

  “You were younger than that when I left you.”

  That’s how I know she’s not old enough, Cynthie thought. “Times are different now,” she said. “Please, Mama.”

  And Mama, being Mama, agreed.

  Cynthie thanked her and ended the call and tried the ignition again. Click, and then nothing.

  She resisted the urge to bang her head on the steering wheel. The whole evening was turning into some kind of horrible math problem: If x = the probability of a helpful stranger happening by with jumper cables, and y = the groceries in the trunk, how long will it take for the milk to spoil?

  Another call to Meg went straight throu
gh to voice mail. Jane was already helping Cynthie out by taking Hannah to soccer practice.

  Cynthie bit her lip, doing more mental calculations. She barely had money for a new battery. No way could she afford ninety dollars for a tow.

  She needed a jump. Or a friend who didn’t live forty minutes away. Or a man she could count on. Not that she’d had a lot of those in her life.

  Until—maybe—recently.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she reached for her phone again.

  * * *

  HEADLIGHTS swung in a blinding arc across the highway. Cynthie shielded her eyes as the vehicle U-turned to face her car, pulling onto the grassy verge ahead.

  Max.

  She got out to meet him, her heart skipping, her flat black shoes sinking in the sandy soil.

  He looked very tall walking toward her along the shoulder. The light splintered behind him, casting long shadows. She felt a jump in her belly like nerves.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you. But I really appreciate this,” she said when he was close enough to hear. “I stopped at the grocery store after class tonight, it’s a lot cheaper than the one on the island, and—” She was babbling.

  “No bother.” His face emerged in the fading light, all lean planes and sharp angles. His gaze sought hers, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “What are friends for?”

  The thing that was wound tight inside her all the time suddenly relaxed like the broken coil of a watch. She stared at him, speechless.

  His eyes narrowed. “You okay?”

  She nodded. Now that he was here, she was safe. Everything was fine. But a slight quiver remained in the pit of her stomach like the premonition of danger.

  Help.

  He nodded toward the car. “What happened?”

  She’d already explained on the phone. “My car died.”

  “While you were driving?”

  “Uh, no. I had to stop, and then the engine wouldn’t start again.”

  He glanced at the empty road, the quiet ditch. “You stopped. Here?”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “Okay, see, there was this turtle crossing the road . . .”

  “You stopped for a turtle,” he repeated in that expressionless voice men used when they thought you were an idiot.

  “Look, I know it was dumb.”

  “Probably a box turtle.”

  “Whatever. It was going to be a flat turtle if I didn’t stop.”

  “Turtle conservation,” he said. “I like it. Good for you.”

  She hunched her shoulders, embarrassed by his praise. Grateful he wasn’t yelling at her for her stupidity. “Good for the turtle, anyway.”

  He smiled and strolled toward her car, propping open the hood. “Let’s see what you’ve got here.”

  She peered past his shoulder at the tangle of dirty pipes and wires. “I think it’s the battery.” She hoped. She didn’t know how she was going to pay for anything else.

  “No cracks. That’s good. When was the last time you replaced it?”

  She shrugged. “Three years?”

  “Uh-huh. Your connections are corroded.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He pointed. His sleeves were rolled halfway to his elbows, revealing corded muscle and fine dark hair. “See that white stuff around the terminals?”

  “Um . . . Yes?”

  He grinned and turned his head. His eyes were warm and amused, his face close enough to kiss. He smelled amazing, like salty ocean and musky male. If she leaned forward just a tiny bit, she could bury her nose in his shirt.

  Tension arced between them, sparking a jolt in her tummy strong enough to power a hundred batteries.

  Her lips parted.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll get the jumper cables.”

  She blinked, watching him walk away. It had been two weeks since she told him she wanted to be friends, two weeks of hastily gulped coffee and snatches of conversation, exchanging status updates that had gradually become more intimate, like Facebook posts. What are you up to? What’s on your mind? How are you feeling today?

  Just friends. Most of the time, she could make herself believe it.

  But not at night, when loneliness lay beside her like a restive bed partner, when she woke aching and empty in the long stretch between two and four A.M., when the memory of his smile drifted with her into sleep and was the first thing she looked forward to in her day.

  And not now.

  She watched him pull jumper cables from his trunk and pop his hood with the unself-conscious assurance of a guy who didn’t need to read instructions. She was used to doing things for herself and her girls. But there was a certain shameful relief in letting him take care of things, in letting him take over.

  She took a deep breath of evening air, filling her lungs with the scents of salt marsh and exhaust.

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket—wow, you didn’t see a lot of younger guys with those—to wipe the posts before connecting a clamp to her battery. His hands on the tools were blunt-tipped and tanned, broad across the palm and callused. Not what she’d imagined a professor’s hands to look like at all. She imagined the feel of them on her skin and swallowed.

  To distract herself, she said, “I thought you would drive one of those hybrid thingies. Like a Prius or something.”

  He shot her a smile as he fixed clamps to his own battery, red and then black. “Not much room to haul things in a Prius.”

  She glanced at his car, a Volvo SUV, sleek and muscular, safe and unassuming, more than she could ever afford. There was no place in her life for a car like that.

  Or for a man like Max, no matter how grateful she was.

  He connected the final clamp to a protruding bolt under the hood of her rusting minivan.

  “My old car was a Thunderbird,” she said out of nowhere. Like she had something to prove.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Sexy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not very reliable, though.”

  She sighed. “No.”

  “Okay, we’re all hooked up. I’m going to start my engine, let it run for a few minutes. Then, when I give you the signal, I want you to try to start yours.”

  “I know how hookups work,” she said dryly.

  He laughed.

  In the car, Cynthie waited, watched. When he gave the thumbs-up, she held her breath and turned the key. The engine coughed and caught. The van shuddered to life.

  She rolled down her window and grinned as Max approached. “Success!”

  “For now. I’ll follow you home.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Yeah, I do. In case you stall out again.”

  She wanted to argue. He’d gone to enough trouble already. She couldn’t ask him to drive almost an hour and a half round-trip when they weren’t even sleeping together.

  But the truth was, her girls were waiting for her. She couldn’t risk stalling again. So she thanked him and watched his SUV pull out behind her.

  His headlights shone in her rearview mirror, a steady, reassuring presence all along the dark roads toward home.

  * * *

  AS he drove, Max kept an eye out for someplace open in the off-season, somewhere he could grab dinner on the way back. The Fish House. Wasn’t that where Cynthie said she worked?

  Her rear lights blinked, signaling a turn. He followed her van as she turned away from the harbor down an increasingly dark and narrow road that ended under the trees. PARADISE SHOALS, the weathered sign read.

  Max looked around. Definitely not paradise. And no shoals, either, only a haphazard cluster of trailer homes up on cinder blocks, out of sight of the water, out of mind for the people who summered in the overblown beachfront McMansions slowly eroding the dunes.

  People like Max’s parents.


  Cynthie parked the van under a listing metal carport beside one of the trailers. Weeds sprouted through holes in the wooden lattice. But he spotted a pot of yellow chrysanthemums decorating the sagging porch and striped curtains in the rusting slatted windows.

  A second car sat in the driveway. Max angled the Volvo to avoid it, pulling in under a narrow stand of pines.

  Cynthie got out of the van.

  Probably expecting him to flash his lights and drive away.

  “I can stick around,” he said. “If you need a ride to work.”

  He was going that way anyway, right? He wasn’t really desperate enough that he’d grasp any excuse to spend more time in her company.

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m not working tonight. I did what you said and cut back my hours at the restaurant. Do you—”

  The front door banged. “There you are.” The woman on the porch was an older version of Cynthie. Or a drawing of Cynthie that had been submerged under water for years, her brightness blurred and faded, her outlines softened by age. Only the woman’s hair, an improbable yellow, glowed in the light spilling from the trailer. “Girls are getting hungry. I put your casserole in the oven.”

  “Thanks, Mama. You want to stay for dinner?”

  “No, honey, I want to go home, put on my shows, put up my feet, and have a cigarette.” Her gaze fixed on Max. “Who’s this?”

  “Max Lewis. I’m a friend of Cynthie’s.”

  Her eyes were sharp, her handshake soft. “I’m Wanda. Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. You make good chicken salad.”

  She dimpled. “Well, aren’t you sweet.”

  “Max gave me a jump,” Cynthie explained.

  “Did he?” Wanda surveyed him, up and down. “You can jump me anytime.”

  Max felt his ears heat. “Er . . . Thank you.”

  Cynthie rolled her eyes. “Bye, Mama,” she said pointedly.

  “Bye, baby girl.” Wanda hitched her purse over one shoulder and descended the rickety trailer steps. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”