by Joss Wood
She’d finally decided, at the age of twenty-eight, that this was her time. She was back in Mercy and it was a time to start fresh, to try something different, to find out who she was and what she wanted from life. She was going to put her time and energy and money into finding out what made her happy and not into stupid men who just gave her grief.
Taking pity on Sawyer, who was looking all flustered and worried—so un-Sawyer like!—she patted his chest and smiled. “I’m not going to start anything with him. I’m taking a break from men, remember? Didn’t I tell you all that when I came home?”
“You’ve said that before.”
Yeah, but this time she meant it. Time would prove it to them. “Honey, I already have a crazy dog who drives me insane. Why would I want a man to complicate my life?”
Sawyer let out a long, relieved sigh. “Okay. Good.”
“Sex, though,” Flick mused, just to wind him up. “I could do with some great sex.”
Unlike her brother Jack, who would be birthing kittens at this point at the mere mention of her getting down and dirty, Sawyer just smiled lazily. “I can highly recommend it. I’ll even buy you a vibrator; what color do you prefer?”
Flick wrinkled her nose at him. She should know better than to mess with Sawyer, because he always had a sharp answer.
“By the way, how is the First Lady of Mercy?”
Flick was grateful for the change of subject, though she didn’t want to think about why Sawyer jumped from the subject of sex toys to her aunt Gina. “She’s fine. At least, as fine as one can be after a crash as bad as that one was.”
“And I suppose she has everyone in the ward running around, desperate to do her bidding?”
Flick frowned at the tart note in Sawyer’s voice. “Why don’t you like her? I mean, I know that she can be managing and demanding, and that she’s incredibly bossy, but she has a really good heart. She does an enormous amount for our town and the community.”
Sawyer lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “I don’t dislike her, Flick. Quite the opposite really. I admire the fact that she kept her shit together despite so many tragedies. You learned that from her.”
Flick supposed so. Gina had taught her how to pick up her heart and move on after enduring two deaths in a year. She’d accepted her baby brother’s death—he’d been so sick for so long—but her mother’s passing still turned her stomach into a mess of emotions. Andy’s death was expected, her mother’s was not. Such a tragedy, the town had murmured. Nobody but her—and Pippa because Flick had told her about her suspicions—realized that when Andy passed on, so did their mom’s reason for living. The fact that she had a daughter who still needed her hadn’t been enough of a reason to keep living. It wasn’t suicide, Pippa argued, but Flick knew that her mom had willed herself to die, so she did. Same difference, really.
“But Gina has layers, lots of layers,” Sawyer said. “She’s not always what she seems to be. Or maybe she is more than we see.”
“And you know this how?” Flick asked.
Sawyer shrugged again. “Gut instinct.”
In light of Gina’s strange request about the storage locker—which she had to execute as soon as possible—maybe Sawyer was onto something. What was she hiding? And why did it have to be such a state secret?
Sawyer’s mouth smiled but his eyes remained serious. Dammit, her friend had seen too much, done too much—none of which he spoke about—and his experiences in war had left him jaded and mistrusting. He’d always been such an open, sunny soul, and still acted like he was, but now she could see the shadows in his eyes.
“Anyway, we visit her most nights. Want to come with us?” Flick asked. “You can drive us in your new, shiny, expensive SUV. Or I can drive and you can ride shotgun.”
“Fat chance.” Sawyer dropped a kiss on her temple. “Send the First Lady my love. And leave Kai alone.”
Chapter Three
KevTheFirefighter: Saw Flick attempting to run today. She bakes a mean blue velvet cupcake but let’s just hope that she never has to run from a burning building or for her life. Could get ugly . . .
***
Flick hated exercise, but the two red velvet cupcakes she routinely had for breakfast went straight to her hips and thighs, so every couple of days she dragged on a pair of athletic shorts, a T-shirt, and her sneakers and hit the road for a run. Since she was up most mornings at four to get the bread, pastries, and muffins into the ovens for the breakfast crowd who rocked up on their doorstep at seven for their sugar and caffeine hit, she occasionally took a couple of hours after lunch to go for a jog. Or a half-jog. Okay, a walk.
Walking was still exercise, so she dragged Rufus along because she figured that, like a naughty toddler, the more energy she got him to expend under her supervision, the less mischief he would get up to when she wasn’t there to keep a beady eye on him. Wrapping Ru’s leash around her fist, she glanced down into his laughing face and she had to grin.
He was a rogue, a chewer of shoes, an assaulter of the girl dogs in the neighborhood, and a digger-upper of flowerbeds, always newly planted. None of these traits endeared Flick to her new neighbors and she’d had several uncomfortable conversations with regard to his behavior. He hogged the bed and drank out of the toilet bowl and thought the sun rose and set with her. Then again, she did rescue him after he’d been knocked down by a hit-and-run driver on a lonely, isolated stretch of road three hours south of Mercy three months ago. “Can you try and not jerk my arm off today, Ru?” Flick asked as they ran away from Grandma’s house—her and Pip’s house now—towards the series of biking and running trails in the forest to the west side of town. In the mornings and evenings the trails were packed with health nuts getting sweaty, but since she tended to walk more than run, and because people tended to freak when they encountered a dog the size of a Shetland pony, she preferred the empty trails in the early afternoon.
As she walked, Flick’s mind drifted to Aunt Gina. In the space of four days her life had been flipped upside down and inside out and she needed to find a way to maneuver through the minefield that her darling aunt—and she was using darling in its most sarcastic form—had dropped her into. Before her visit to the hospital her mind had been preoccupied with the memories of meeting Sexy But Dangerous but now all she could think about was the nightmare on Willow Street.
Her mind was chocka-block, to-the-rafters full of what she’d seen at Gina’s house. Which was an adequate description of exactly what the third-floor bedrooms of Gina’s house had looked like—chocka-block, to-the-rafters full.
Of crap.
Maybe that was unfair, Flick admitted. But the reality was that her aunt, the classy, immaculately stylish doyenne of Mercy, was a compulsive hoarder. In fairness, it wasn’t like the rooms and, she presumed, the lockers, were full of old brochures, empty takeout containers, and dead cats. They were full to bursting, sure, but her aunt had managed to bring class to her compulsive buying. There were mini mountains of clothing, most of which still had price tags attached to it, and piles of multicolored shoes. Another room contained what she knew the antique trade referred to as “smalls”—knickknacks and oddities, old toys, dolls, what she presumed was costume jewelry. The third room contained furniture. Lots of furniture. God knew what the storage lockers contained . . . art, books, Egyptian mummies?
Flick didn’t have a problem with her aunt purchasing anything she wanted to but the sheer volume was overwhelming and scary. She had more shoes than thirty fashionistas could wear in one lifetime, more winter coats than there were cold days in Siberia, and enough stock to provide the inventory for an antique shop.
She now understood why Gina wanted to keep it a secret. It wasn’t trash but it was still obsessive. Compulsive.
Crazy.
Pippa, with her orderly and rational mindset, her minimalist lifestyle, and her conservative personality, was going to have a million
fits. And when Pip’s accountant’s brain started to tally up the amount of money that was locked away in those rooms—not forgetting the three—three!—storage lockers . . . well, that brain just might explode.
Speaking of money . . . Flick pulled her phone from her pocket and scrolled through her contacts. Her not-so-darling-at-the-moment aunt answered on the first ring.
“I really don’t feel up to another lecture from you, Felicity,” Gina said in lieu of a greeting.
“Not going to give you one,” Flick responded. “I just wanted to ask you a question . . .”
Gina’s silence indicated consent so Flick continued. “Why did you tell me?” she asked.
“Pippa found that receipt.”
“Yeah, she did. So you’re hoping that I am going to come up with a solution you can present to Pippa, and your boys, to lessen the shock?”
“You’re very good at seeing the bigger picture,” Gina said. “While my children have been touched by tragedy, you’ve been slapped by it and you realize that my little . . .issue isn’t the worst thing in the world. They’ll be shocked and hurt and confused, and a plan will help them deal with that.”
A plan that she would have to conceive and put into action. Flick pulled a face.
“Why, Gina? Help me understand this.”
“I have—had, before the accident—a plan. I’m not out of my mind.”
Of that there was doubt.
“Maybe, one day, I’ll explain. Right now, I’m tired and I want to sleep.” With that, she ended the call.
Flick looked at her phone and thought, maybe a little uncharitably, that perhaps Gina was developing a habit of using pain and tiredness to avoid having conversations she didn’t want to have.
Flick realized that she was approaching the fire station so, as per usual, she picked up her pace and was jogging steadily as she ran past the bay. If she was really, really lucky, her firemen cousin and their friends, most of whom she’d grown up with, would be inside eating lunch. For their sake, she hoped that Cousin Jason wasn’t cooking, because the man could burn water.
A piercing whistle pierced the silence. “Looking good, Flick!”
“But we all know that when you turn the corner you collapse onto the grass to get your breath back!” Jason yelled. He was the middle of Gina’s three children, with Rogan a few years older and Pippa two years younger.
Dammit! Flick stopped, resisted the impulse to put her hands on her knees, and looked across the road to where he and a few of his colleagues were standing. Jason held a bottle of water in his hand and wiggled it in offering. Oh hell, yes, she needed water.
God, Jason would, as her old stoner boyfriend used to say, wig out when he heard that his mother was a) nutty and b) living in a fire hazard.
She crossed the road, greeted her friends, and took the bottle Jason offered, downing half of the contents in one gulp. When she’d had enough, she lowered the bottle and looked at her friends.
“So what’s the hot topic of conversation today, guys?” Flick asked, because everyone in Mercy knew that their firemen were the biggest gossips in town. Hmm, how many of them were actively commenting on Mercy OnLine? A bunch, she was sure.
Kevin, always garrulous and one of Jason’s best friends, answered her. “We were just ragging Jason about his latest barnacle.”
“Barnacle?” Flick asked, not understanding.
“Jace’s latest squeeze, who is super attached. She called just ten minutes ago and if you hang around for another ten we can guarantee that she’ll call back again,” Kevin explained.
Flick didn’t bother asking her name, since, like most of the Sturgiss men, Jason flipped over women with the speed of a spinning top. Jason’s phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket and held up the display so that they could see that it was someone named Mandy calling. He shook his head, visibly annoyed as the call went to voicemail. “That was exactly five minutes since the last call.”
“Jason’s got a stalker.” Kevin singsonged the words.
“I wish I could say that it was the first one,” Jason grumbled. “What is wrong with your species, Flick? I mean, we’ve only dated a couple of times and she’s asking me what I would like her to cook for me tonight. I don’t want her to cook; I don’t even want to see her tonight! She wants to pack my lunches and keeps offering to do my laundry.” Jason looked bewildered. “I thought that we were just going to hook up casually, but she’s reading so much more into this than I am.”
Flick dropped her eyes from his face and stared down at her battered running shoes. How many times before had she done that with men she’d dated? Once, twice, ten times?
“At least you’re getting sex, dude,” Kevin commented.
“I guess but—shit! I just think that if I don’t stop this I’m going to end up in front of the preacher and not know how the hell I got there!”
Flick hoped that her cousin and friends would attribute her red face to her lack of fitness and not her embarrassment. Because Jason could be talking about her, about the way she conducted her love life. She’d meet a guy, find him attractive, and then she’d have a brief affair or a one-night stand and tell herself that was all it was . . . that she could walk away, that it would go away.
Except that she never did.
On the pretext of staying friends or some other stupid-ass excuse she told herself, she’d keep in contact with her latest lover and then she’d start feeding him, or doing his laundry, or running chores for him—usually all three—and, invariably, her no-strings flings turned into relationships. But, unlike Jason’s Mandy, the men she chose were always on the damaged side of the bell graph, men who needed to be “fixed” in one way or another. She seemed to be drawn to the brokenhearted, the insecure, the self-absorbed, and, frequently, the lazy men of the world.
It was no surprise that her relationships always ended, sometimes with a whimper, sometimes with a bang. And sometimes, as it had recently happened, it ended when she caught her boyfriend with their next-door neighbor. Apparently she had some limits. Her loser boyfriends could siphon her bank account dry and emotionally drain her, but being cheated on was something she wouldn’t accept.The fact that he was cheating on her with someone at least twenty-five years older than her, who was wrinkled and chubby, just took her humiliation to record heights.
“Why can’t you lot get your head around the concept that sex is sex and that it usually has nothing to do with love?” Jason demanded.
Flick threw up her hands. How the hell should she know? She was an expert in wearing rose-colored glasses when it came to relationships. Good thing she’d stopped all that nonsense now. As she closed in on thirty, she wanted to get to the point of being fully confident in the idea that she was fine on her own, doing her thing. Actually walking the walk and not just talking the talk.
She could do that—she would do that—but unfortunately, she missed sex. Dear God she missed sex. She longed for the feel of a warm masculine body to lie against at night, missed the connection that lovemaking brought, even if it was only a physical one. And, damn, she missed orgasms. She missed those a lot.
Withdrawal symptoms, she told herself; being with a man was a habit and she was still going cold turkey. Jason’s phone rang again and they all groaned. Rufus barked and plopped his butt onto her foot, crushing her toes. “Ow, dammit, Rufus! Off!”
“That dog is so in love with you, Flick,” Kevin commented. He snapped his fingers, all traces of teasing leaving his face. “Oh, that reminds me. We’ve got an injured kitten running around. If I catch it will you take it?”
Flick wanted to say no, she really did, but she knew, everyone knew, that she was a soft touch. The thought that Pippa might kill her if she took home a kitten crossed her mind. But she couldn’t say no, she never said no. If it was young and dumb and injured then it was in her nature to scoop it up and nurture it back to health. An
imals and men.
“Sure, bring it around when you have the chance.” Flick handed the empty water bottle back to Jace. “Thanks for the water. I’m going to get back to my run.”
The men started laughing again, so she rolled her eyes as she pulled Rufus across the road.
“You do know that running, by definition, means that you should move faster than an ant?”Jace shouted when she reached the other side.
Haha, so funny. Not.
***
The sun was high in the sky and perspiration was running down Flick’s temples by the time she crested the first hill. She hadn’t even made it a mile and she was huffing and puffing and the muscles in her right arm were burning from trying to keep a hundred-and-thirty-pound dog from haring off after rabbits.
Trying to control Rufus was like trying to control a baby rhino on smack, Flick thought as she slowed down to a walk, pushing her fingers into the stitch in her side.
He was more than a handful. She had to do something about him, and soon. Getting rid of him wouldn’t ever be an option, and he didn’t respond to her training methods. Mostly because he knew that she was a soft touch. Yes, have a cookie, sleep on my bed, chew my new sneakers.
She had one, just one, option, and it wasn’t an easy decision to make. But neutering Rufus would make her life so much easier.
Flick thought that she owed it to Rufus to discuss the procedure with him first though. She needed to rest anyway, so decided that there was no time like the present. Pulling him over to a log, she sat down and placed her hands on either side of his face. “We need to talk about getting you fixed, sunshine.”
He cocked his head at her, waiting for her to explain. “That means chopping off your balls.” Flick was certain that his eyes rolled back in his head in fear.
“Aaarrrrroooooooo!” Rufus howled and Flick winced.
“It doesn’t mean that you’ll be less of a man,” she hastened to assure him.
“Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooo.” Rufus plopped his butt down and dropped his head onto her knee.
