The Perfect Match

by Kimberly Cates

  “I volunteered for this one.”

  Rowena’s chin almost hit the floor. “You chose to work the weekend of the fair?”

  “Oh, man!” Mac wailed, whacking her little hand down on the arm of the wheelchair. “That’s bad, Daddy. Real bad!”

  Cash tugged at his collar as if his tie had suddenly grown too tight. “Listen. I talked to Hope’s mom and dad. They’re going to take you to the fair with them. You girls love spending time with Hope and her family, right, Charlie?” He turned to his oldest daughter. “Hope’s your best friend.”

  Charlie toed a crack in the asphalt. “Sort of.”

  Uh-oh, Rowena thought, warning bells ringing in her head. A “sort of” best friend meant trouble in elementary school. “Something wrong between you and Hope, honey?” Rowena probed gently.

  “Hope says Charlie doesn’t play very good anymore,” Mac informed anyone in about a ten-yard radius.

  “Mac!” Charlie protested, giving her sister a poke. Mac squawked but Charlie was already glancing around the playground, obviously fearful that a classmate might have overheard. Rowena saw a few people glancing their way. Her heart sank.

  If even Mac knew what Hope had said, other children around school must, too. Her friend’s words must have hurt Charlie. Badly.

  Charlie doesn’t play very good anymore…

  No, Rowena thought. The problem was that Charlie didn’t play at all.

  “I thought you’d be excited about going to the fair with your friend,” Cash insisted. “Mrs. Stone even said you girls could have a slumber party the night before.”

  “Do you have to work Friday night, too?” Charlie asked, her bottom lip quivering just a little. “It’s not on the calendar, Daddy.”

  “No, cupcake. I don’t have to work Friday night. But wouldn’t you like to stay at Hope’s?”

  “You’re supposed to be off,” Charlie surprised Rowena by asserting. “Friday and Saturday and Sunday.” Charlie folded her arms tight against her middle.

  Cash looked even more uncomfortable. He hunkered down so he could meet Charlie’s eyes. “The work I have to do the day of the fair is really important, Charlie. Try to understand.”

  “Understanding’s hard when you have to do it all the time,” Charlie mumbled.

  “What?” Cash asked.

  “I said…Mommy won’t be there. We’d be broken anyway.”

  “Broken?” Cash repeated, confused.

  “That’s what our kind of home is. If there’s only a mommy or a daddy but not both it’s broken.”

  “Charlie—” Cash’s tone grew tight. Rowena could see Charlie stiffen. She laid a hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

  “Listen, Charlie. How about you take your sister over by that tree over there? Your daddy and I need to talk for a minute. Grownup stuff.”

  “Okay.” Charlie did as she was told, her brief mutiny over. Her quick surrender bothered Rowena.

  She turned toward Cash, making sure sharp kiddo eyes couldn’t read her lips or hear what she was saying. “Overtime? You can’t do this to them, Cash. Charlie and Mac will already be without their mother at this big family shindig. It’s hardly fair for their father to blow them off, too.”

  Rowena could hear the iron bars crashing down all around him, cutting her off, shutting him down. It shouldn’t have surprised her. It happened any time a subject veered too close to mothers in general and Lisa in particular.

  “I’m not going to discuss this with you,” he said in that deputy deadpan tone she hated, as if she were some perp he needed to talk down from a ledge.

  “Didn’t you hear Charlie?” Rowena insisted, her temper boiling. “She counted out the days on the calendar, Cash. Three times. That’s how much it mattered to her to make sure you would be off.”

  “My job that day is important.”

  “So are your little girls! But you’re ditching them to work voluntary overtime? I never would have believed it of you.”

  His cool cracked. “Believe it,” he snarled. “Mac’s medical bills aren’t free, you know!”

  That little comment shut Rowena down for a moment. How did a single father—a deputy in a small county like this one—afford the astronomical medical bills Mac’s condition would generate?

  And yet, even knowing that grim reality, Rowena was surprised by how gut-deep disappointed she felt. Disappointed in him as a man, as a father. Not that she had any right to be. It wasn’t as if they had a personal relationship. She was just the temporary babysitter, after all. A necessary evil who made Cash edgy on the best of days. But this time he was the one who’d tripped one of her major hot buttons for a change.

  Rowena couldn’t count how many times she and her sisters had been shunted off to an au pair while the doctors Brown busied themselves with volunteer work or community leadership instead of spending time with their daughters.

  Rowena stalked away a few paces, then turned back to confront him, not giving a damn about the other adults on the playground eyeing them with blatant curiosity. “You know what, Cash?” she said, still careful that the girls at least couldn’t hear her. “One of the things I admired most about you was the way you put your girls’ welfare first, even when it meant denying your own needs. Even the most elemental, primitive instincts like the ones I see simmering in your eyes whenever you look at me.”

  “Damn it, Rowena—”

  “Don’t deny it. I know you feel it, too. This…this thing…between us you want to pretend away.”

  She chafed her arms remembering how many times in the past month her skin had felt on fire, ignited by nothing more than the hot lick of Cash’s gaze fixed on her across his kitchen table in the morning. She’d felt mesmerized by the passion he repressed in himself so ruthlessly. Been tempted to cross the boundary he’d drawn between them, prove that it couldn’t be as powerful as her imagination had made it—that heart-searing arousal that had jolted her to the core that first morning when he kissed her.

  The feeling that between one heartbeat and the next her entire world could change. But he wouldn’t accept that anymore than he seemed willing to face the truth that his girls would need him badly come fair day, a day on which their mother’s absence would already highlight the deep, dark void in their lives.

  “That ‘thing’ between you and I is just lust, Rowena, pure and simple,” Cash sneered. “I don’t have time for sex.”

  “Fine. If you want to make your personal life as joyless as possible, that’s your decision. A stupid decision, but yours to make nonetheless. But those girls—those girls—damned well better be more important than your work.”

  His eyes turned flinty, the eyes of a man who could pull the trigger if he needed to. “Mac and Charlie are the most important things in the world to me.”

  “Then prove it. Do whatever you have to do to make this weekend perfect for them. A day they get to spend with their father! The girls aren’t going to want you around forever, you know. You’ve got just so much time to make memories at places like this Harvest Fair, and then they’re gone. Your children are gone, Cash. And all you’ll have left is your empty gray house and your police radio and your gun to hold on to.”

  Rowena spun around and stalked off toward the girls. Anger pulsed through her. Anger and shame. What had she been thinking? Blowing up at him about the way he made her feel? The way her body wanted him, even though he’d never let her in. Into his life, into his heart, into the wounded places that still left him bleeding. Like the creatures she’d rescued, holed up somewhere, alone with their pain.

  Cash wasn’t an animal, she reminded herself. Not one of her injured strays. He was a man. And a father.

  She only hoped she’d managed to say something in the last few minutes to remind him of both.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE DAY OF THE HARVEST FAIR dawned crisp as a Granny Smith picked fresh from Webster’s Apple Grove. Even the weather seemed to taunt Rowena, because she would be one of the few Whitewater residents who woul
d spend the day inside rather than discovering exactly what all the fuss about the festival was about.

  She stuck another can of Salmon Delight cat food on the metal shelf labeled “Shakespeare’s Favorite”—in hopes of piquing the curiosity of customers who might be interested in adopting the world’s haughtiest cat. The feline in question watched Destroyer like an enemy spy from his perch atop a kitty condo made out of real tree branches and carpet-covered platforms.

  Beyond the pet shop window, the entire town of Whitewater was decked out in pumpkin, wheat and red colored buntings, the streets that were usually bustling with weekend traffic deserted now.

  It wasn’t that Rowena hadn’t been warned by Mac that everybody in Whitewater went to the Harvest Fair. Even the puppy dogs. But at least one human and one morose-looking mutt would be missing out on the fun today.

  Poor Clancy—Destroyer, or whatever his name was at the moment—had been dropped off on her doorstep at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. Cash had handed the leash over with a sarcastic sneer, repeating—almost verbatim—the doomsayer litany he’d used to con her into watching Destroyer the day before. With Destroyer in the hands of a trained professional for the day, maybe Cash wouldn’t have to pay a fortune in damages when the furry menace chewed the legs off a merry-go-round horse or raided the corn dog stand.

  Cash was so darn funny Rowena forgot to laugh.

  It wasn’t like her to feel so…sour and cranky. But today she couldn’t help it and it was all Cash Lawless’s fault. He’d been immoveable as the bluffs above the river when it came to working fair weekend. And nothing, not Rowena’s arguments, Mac’s whining or Charlie’s big, sad eyes had budged him. If anything, they’d made him dig in deeper, until even Rowena had to admit it was hopeless to keep hammering at the man. But she’d felt so let down by him, as if…

  “I know. I’m being ridiculous,” she told the Newfoundland, who looked even more droopy than she felt. “It’s not as if Cash and Mac and Charlie belong to me.”

  The dog stared at the pet shop door, and she could almost hear him grumble, Maybe they don’t belong to you, lady, but they do belong to me. His worried expression almost made Rowena laugh.

  “All right, already. They’re your kids now,” she soothed, rubbing behind his silky ears. “But even I have to admit it would be just a little too much to expect the Stones to handle two extra kids, a wheelchair and a dog the size of Manhattan. Your girls will be back to get you tonight, buddy.”

  He turned his gaze up to hers, deep creases above his eyes, as if to say “by that time anything could have happened to them.” He whined, then took hold of Rowena’s forearm with his mouth the way he would to drag her to safety in a water rescue. But this time he tugged her toward the door.

  “Everybody in the world is not at the Harvest Fair,” she argued aloud. “Just everybody in town—except us.”

  And exactly why was that? Rowena frowned. From the first time she’d read about the celebration in the pamphlet Aunt Maeve had given her about the town, she’d been eager to experience it. A large part of the flavor of this place she’d decided to call home. Truth to tell, the image of all that Halloween enthusiasm had made her feel she could belong here, where such whimsy and warmth held sway.

  She’d even thought about putting together some kind of concession where she’d do a doggy biscuit hunt to raise money for the local animal shelter. But the time she’d spent away from Open Arms was beginning to tell. A quiet Saturday to sort and shelve and catch up on the jillion and one things that had been swallowed up by taking care of Charlie and Mac should have been more important to her than having fun.

  It wasn’t as if she’d be missed. Few people in town would notice the crazy lady from the pet shop wasn’t wandering through the booths, although some of her success stories might. Mac’s teacher was now the proud owner of Pickles, a ten-month-old Newfoundland puppy Rowena had found for her. Sparky the beagle and Billy were attached at the hip now and five other new Whitewater pet owners were singing Rowena’s praises. But Rowena still had that feeling she’d had so often as a kid. As if no one saw her—the screw-up between her over-achieving sisters.

  You’re my little dandelion between two roses, her father once teased, ruffling Rowena’s yellow hair. Everyone else in the family had laughed when she’d told him dandelions were her favorite flowers. They’d thought she was either too naive or too thick to understand what he’d meant, but even then she’d known the truth.

  She didn’t fit. She wasn’t right. Rowena Brown, the family ugly duckling who’d never turn into a swan.

  She tried not to let the memory hurt her again. She’d promised she never would. Once she moved here, once she settled in, she’d finally feel…what? Like a dandelion nicely settled in a yard where no one ever put down weed killer?

  She grimaced. Who would have guessed she’d feel as adrift here as she’d been everywhere else in her life? She’d hoped for so much more when she’d taken the drastic step of moving here. Believed she’d finally find that piece she was missing, the one that made her feel so restless, so flawed. As if she wasn’t finished yet.

  Destroyer—would she ever get used to that name?—pawed at the crack of sunlight at the bottom of the shop door.

  “I know, I know,” she muttered to the dog. “There’s a great big party out there and we’re missing it.”

  Destroyer gave her a look that seemed to say “You’re the one with opposable thumbs. So turn the damned doorknob already.”

  “Cash said you couldn’t go. No way. No how. And that’s a direct quote.” But maybe Cash didn’t get a vote today. He’d blown the fair off. It wasn’t as if he’d be around to complain. And even if he did, he could just deal. If the girls couldn’t share the fair with their father, they should at least be able to enjoy it with their dog.

  Rowena’s lips firmed. She looked from Destroyer to the cat to the half-stocked shelf in indecision. Then she picked up a can of cat food and popped open the top. She perched the can on the top level of the kitty condo where Shakespeare was looking suddenly alert.

  “Maybe you two are right,” she told the animals. “I sure won’t find whatever it is I’m looking for if I stay shut up in this shop shelving cat food. If I want to be part of this town, I’m going to have to make an effort to see more of it than Cash Lawless’s bedroom.” She stopped with a squeak of surprise. “I mean, living room. Kitchen. House in general.”

  She was trying to throw the dog off the scent, hide where her imagination had been spending far too much time of late. But since Destroyer was neutered, she doubted he’d understand her dilemma.

  “What say we close the place up and go see what this whole Harvest Fair deal is about, puppy? Eat a few funnel cakes, chomp a corn dog or two. See how Charlie is doing without her daddy around. Bet she’ll be thrilled to see you!”

  Rowena scrawled “Gone to Harvest Fair” on a piece of cardboard and propped it in the front window. Leaving her purse tucked safely under her desk, she pocketed a little money, then locked up and headed out the back door with Destroyer on a leash. She glimpsed Miss Marigold watering a patch of fading geraniums and wondered how long it would take for each of six concrete tabletops to dry. She’d been setting them permanently in one mosaic at a time.

  “There isn’t a soul in the shops today,” Rowena called to her. “Aren’t you going to the fair?”

  The woman took one look at Destroyer and fled. Apparently the truce Vinny had struck between Miss Marigold and the pet shop in general didn’t extend to Destroyer in particular. Rowena sighed and headed on foot toward the park a mile away.

  The brisk walk was glorious, a cool wind ruffling her hair and the handkerchief hem of her gauzy aqua blouse.

  She could hear the excited buzz of the fair blocks away, the tinny clamor of carnival-style music, the distant racket of a crowd. The whole atmosphere felt charged with delight. Rowena might have felt happy, too, if it weren’t for Charlie’s eyes haunting her. Charlie’s secret sadn
ess.

  Hope says Charlie doesn’t play very good anymore. Mac’s words echoed in Rowena’s memory. It was a clear insight and a painful one.

  But today would be different, Rowena resolved, reaching down to adjust Destroyer’s collar. Charlie would have fun at the Harvest Fair. Rowena was going to do her best to find the child and make absolutely sure of it, if Hope Stone and her family weren’t up to the task.

  Rowena rounded a cluster of houses and saw the spacious town square, fenced in for the weekend and frilled out in all its finery. The wide expanse of grass had been transformed into a patchwork of tents and traveling carnival rides. One of the neon lights on the small ferris wheel blinked on and off. A merry-go-round chugged in a circle to calliope music. A pair of kids with pumpkins and scary monsters painted on their cheeks rushed past her, but Destroyer barely noticed them, his obedience training beginning to fray around the edges as he neared the park.