Читать книгу Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door: Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door - Kate Welsh - Страница 13

Cassidy heard Joshua call her name just as she passed the spot where he’d pulled his truck up to the gas pump. She needed to take time to do some of that thinking Joshua was so convinced she should do, so she planned to walk back to the parsonage through town. She stopped and reluctantly looked back. She’d agreed to try it his way for a few days even though she thought he was way off base, so what more did he want from her?

“I thought we’d eat dinner at the café,” he said, as if he’d heard her silent question.

To Cassidy, dinner suddenly sounded like a gigantic commitment. She knew she was being ridiculous but there it was. “Dinner?”

“Henry and I usually walk down and eat at the café on the nights Ma handles the dinner shift. It keeps her from having to cook again at home. She was only there when you arrived last night because the regular girl came in later than usual.”

Either she agreed to spend even more time with Joshua, or she’d force Irma to cook a special meal for her later. Wasn’t it bad enough that she’d unwisely spent time with him at the Swenson house? This man, this…country preacher-carpenter was a menace! He’d seen through the lies she’d nearly convinced herself were true to the truths she hadn’t wanted to face. And apparently that wasn’t enough for him.

The fact that he was handsome, obviously intelligent, kind and sensitive didn’t help matters at all. He was quite frankly, except for his inappropriate tax bracket, the man of her dreams. Why couldn’t he be a corporate executive home to visit his parents rather than a man with no past, no formal education, and, therefore, in her grandfather’s eyes, a man with no future?

“So, is dinner at the café okay with you?” Josh asked again, dragging Cassidy out of the fog of her confused thoughts. Well, there was no help for it. Her answer was a given.

“Of course,” she snapped, completely exasperated by her suddenly out-of-control emotions and life. “I wouldn’t want to cause Irma extra work.”

Something akin to hurt flashed in Joshua’s beautiful brown eyes. “Do you want a ride down or would you rather go on alone?” he asked in an unmistakably brusque manner.

Cassidy felt about as small as an ant at that moment. He’d been nothing but kind and friendly to her. He’d pried into her personal life, true. But considering his calling as a minister, she truly believed he had only the best of intentions. And now that she’d pushed him away, she realized that it was the last thing she really wanted. She could use a friend just now, and it may as well be Josh. What, after all, could happen between them in the few days she’d be in town?

She hugged her thrift-store jacket to herself. “It’s chilly but still looks like it should be a nice evening. We probably won’t see many more like it for a while. Why don’t you walk down to the café with me? We can come back for the truck later.”

An eyebrow arched over one of his dark, expressive eyes. “I got the impression that I’d been royally dismissed.”

Cassidy shook her head. “No. Pushed away momentarily. And I’m sorry. I’m not used to sharing my personal feelings. Nor letting anyone close enough for me to want to share them. It just spooked me for a minute there. I was feeling hemmed in, but it wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”

Joshua nodded his acceptance of her apology. “The walk sounds like a good idea,” he agreed, and they set off toward Irma’s Café.

They’d walked in silence for a minute or two when Joshua stopped. “Bear. I’d better wake him up and bring him along. Last time I left him alone in the truck, we found him cowering and shaking with his paws over his eyes. He’s been afraid of the dark ever since.”

Cassidy couldn’t help the spurt of laughter that erupted as they turned back toward the truck. “He’s afraid of the dark? Is that why Irma has all those night-lights all over the house?”

His mouth kicked up on one side. “Pitiful, huh?”

“You could get that dog on TV with that late-night talk show host who likes stupid pets.”

Josh laughed. “No. That’s stupid pet tricks. Bear’s just a stupid pet. But he’s lovable and loyal. And when I found him, I really needed something of my own.”

Cassidy didn’t know whether to reveal what Irma had told her about him or not, but lying to him even by omission seemed inherently wrong. “Irma told me how you came to live with them and about your memory. I hope you don’t mind. We started talking and…”

“It’s okay. It’s the way my life is. Everyone in town knows. I’ve come to grips with most of it, and the rest will come with time and the Lord’s grace.”

“You have an incredible attitude.”

“Not really. I’ve just been incredibly lucky. I don’t have a clue what my real parents were like, but I can’t imagine them being better people than Irma and Henry.”

“I imagine you’re right. They are wonderful people.”

“I think the three of us being together is God’s plan. Since Henry turned eighty, he’s slowed down. So has Ma,” he said as his beautiful mouth formed a teasing grin, “though I’d never let her hear me say that. They were there for me when I needed them. Ma taught me so much. She spent an untold number of hours teaching me how to talk, read, do math. Then Henry not only helped me forge a new life, but showed me the path to an eternity in heaven by teaching me about Jesus Christ and His saving grace. In the beginning, I relied on them pretty heavily, and now they lean on me. God’s been incredibly good to us by bringing us together.”

“You know, Joshua, you are the most incredible person I’ve ever met. Would you answer a burning question for me? How did you get your name?”

“Henry hated that they called me ‘John Doe’ at the hospital, so one day he balanced his Bible on the spine and helped me hold it between my hands. He told me we were going to let the Lord choose a name for me. Then he pulled my hands off the book and it fell open to Joshua. He closed it and did it again, and it fell open at Daniel. So I became Joshua Daniels. I even have a Social Security card and driver’s license under that name.”

“So your last name is Daniels. I thought you were their real son and that Daniel was your middle name. I guess your Lord was good to you. Think of the name you could have wound up with by using that method.”

They’d reached the truck where Bear was sleeping like a baby. “Bear!” Josh called out, and shook the truck bed. “Come on, boy. Wake up!”

Bear lay still as a rock.

“He’s kind of a deep sleeper,” Joshua explained, then clapped his hands loudly over the side of the truck bed near the dog.

The furry mound produced a paw that landed over a floppy ear. Other than that, he showed no movement except a sigh and deepened breathing.

“Maybe you should reach in and shake him,” she suggested.

Josh tried her suggestion, but to no avail. “I guess it’s time to pull out the big guns. Come on, Bear. Let’s go have dinner at Ma’s.”

A furry head popped up, followed quickly by the rest of the dog as he careened recklessly over the side of the truck, nearly knocking Joshua over. Bear was gone like a flash, running and barking down the road toward Irma’s Café.

“Will she feed him?” Cassidy asked.

“Sure. She’s crazy about him. But she may not feed me. I’m in for it when we get down there. He’ll go charging into the place and start begging for handouts. Bear’s just nuts for Ma’s cooking.”

“I imagine everyone in town is.”

“Yeah,” Josh conceded, then chuckled, “but they have lots better table manners.”

Two days later, winter had really begun to make her approach known. Fending for herself in Irma’s kitchen by subsisting on leftovers eaten in the privacy of her room, Cassidy had avoided Joshua like the plague. The quick dinner with him had been wonderful but, as she’d feared, dangerous. He was too compelling. Too comfortable with who he was. His grin was too charming. She just couldn’t concentrate around him.

So she’d hidden away, determined to think through her problems. And now Cassidy was tired of thinking. Especially because all it did was make her more unhappy since she’d come to a monumental conclusion.

She was miserable.

Not just miserable because she’d been passed over for a promotion. But miserable with her job at Jamison itself. And with her whole life.

She worked constantly and didn’t have the time to spend any of the substantial salary that she earned with all those hours she put in doing something she hated. And worst of all, Cassidy didn’t have a clue what she could do about it. Despite what she’d said to her grandfather and despite what she’d thought in the days that had followed their showdown in the office, she was all the old man had in this world. She couldn’t just desert him and destroy his dream of handing down his company to his descendants.

She’d call him. She’d talk to him. She’d at least let him know she was safe.

Before she could change her mind, Cassidy lifted the phone extension and dialed his office at Jamison Steel.

“Winston Jamison’s office. Rose Carmichael speaking.”

“Is he there?” she asked the woman who was as close to a mother as she’d had in twenty years.

“Oh, Cassidy, I’m so glad you called. He’s here. I’m just not sure we shouldn’t let him suffer a bit longer.”

“I don’t want him to suffer. At least, not any more,” she added wryly.

“Then you’re too generous. But then, we know that already, don’t we.”

Cassidy ran a hand agitatedly through her short hair. “I don’t want him to worry, Rose.”

“Suppose we compromise? I’ll tell him you called and that you’re fine but that you weren’t ready to talk to him. Once he knows that you’re okay, he’ll be fine. How’s that?”

“He’s not frantic, is he? Won’t he want to know where I am?”

“I wouldn’t call it frantic exactly, and I’ll tell him you called from Tahiti if he asks.”

Remembering that one of his prized assistants recently ran off to Tahiti with his Human Resources vice president made Cassidy chuckle. “You are bad.”

Now Rose chuckled. “And how do you think I’ve controlled the beast all these years? Cassidy,” she said, her tone suddenly sober. “I want you to promise me that you’ll kick back and think seriously about what you want out of life. Forget what your grandfather got you into here at Jamison. He’s a big boy and can take care of himself. Put anything to do with Philly out of your mind, rest and think. Please promise me.”

“I promise,” Cassidy found herself saying.

“Good. Keep in touch. ‘Bye now, sweetheart.”

Cassidy dropped the receiver into the cradle and stared at it. Now where did that leave her? Thinking some more? Considering crazy ideas of where her life had gone wrong?

The thud of an ax in the backyard seemed to mock her. She was a grown woman and she’d been reduced—No! She’d reduced herself to cowering in a room for fear of becoming attached to a wonderful man because her grandfather wouldn’t approve of him. How much, she wondered for the first time since that fateful day when her grandfather had taken charge of her life, did she owe the man who’d raised her? Surely not the rest of her life?

Joshua heard the back door close with its typical wooden slap. It was time to take the screen out and put the glass in for winter. In his mind, he ran a quick list of the winterizing he’d done so far and what he had yet to accomplish. He’d put up the storm windows in mid-October, but Ma liked to be able to let the heat out of the kitchen, so he’d waited for real winter weather to do the door. And Ma couldn’t deny that it was cold today.

Glancing at the pile of wood for the woodstove that he’d stacked up, he mentally checked that off as almost finished. That left getting the shovels out and ready, as well as mounting the plow blade on the truck, but it was early days for that yet.

He swung the ax again, and the log split from top to bottom. A frigid blast of air ruffled his hair, and he smiled. He loved winter, he thought as he took aim at another log. Summer heat sometimes depressed him, but winter revitalized him. He was determined not to speculate on why that was.

“Oh, I hate winter,” Cassidy grumbled at his back.

Startled, Joshua missed the log and buried the head of the ax six inches into the dirt. He pulled the ax out of the ground and spun to face her. “So the recluse has come out of her den. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to sneak up on a man who’s swinging an ax?”

“I didn’t think I was sneaking. That screen door slammed shut loud enough to wake the dead. And if that didn’t, Bear’s rather exuberant greeting would have.”

Josh glanced at his traitor of a dog, who at that moment sat next to Cassidy, a huge bone sticking out the sides of his mouth and his eyes glowing with puppy-love as he stared up at her.

“Cassie, you’ve created a monster. Now he’s going to follow you everywhere whining and hoping for more treats.” Josh was shocked by the stricken look on her now-pale face. He dropped the ax and went to her. “What’s wrong?” he asked as he reached out to grip her upper arms, afraid she might drop at his feet.

She blinked as if she’d just realized where she was. “Cassie,” she said, her voice shaken and low. “No one calls me Cassie. Not since Cassie went on vacation and came home Cassidy.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately, though he still had no idea what he’d done or what her cryptic comment meant. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It was just…I guess a blast from the past is the only way to describe it.”

Josh sat back against the hip-high stump of a long-dead tree that he’d been whittling away at for the past several weeks. He took his baseball cap off and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt, all the while considering her. “I understand how that can be,” he said carefully. “I never know why it happens. But you do. Do you want to talk about why hearing a nickname turned you three shades of pale?”

“When I was a young child, my parents called me Cassie. We went to Colorado for a skiing holiday when I was six. They loved to ski and so did I. They taught me before I could ride a two-wheeler. One minute we were singing by the fire in our rented cabin, and the next there came this roar that I’ll never forget. I can still see my father jump up and run to the big window that faced the mountain. My mother was right on his heels. He turned back and opened his mouth to say something. But he never got it out. I remember that the windows were black as the night, and in a split second they turned white, then burst inward behind him. The next thing I knew I was being swept away into a world that was cold and white—then everything went black.”

“Avalanche?” Josh guessed, horrified for the child she’d been.

Cassidy nodded, biting her lip, her eyes full of tears. “I woke up a few times before the rescuers found me. I remember crying for my parents. Being cold. Then even the cold faded. I woke in the hospital with my grandfather sitting by my bedside. ‘Cassidy,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to be very brave. Your parents are dead. We’re all the family each other has now. We have to stick together so we can carry on the Jamison name.’ Until that moment, I was just Cassie. After this, I was Cassidy Jamison, heir to Jamison Steel. And you know what? I don’t mind you calling me Cassie at all because I think I need to be her again.”

“That’s an awfully large burden to put on a child,” Joshua commented, then realized that he was holding her again, albeit loosely by her forearms. He let go quickly and stepped back, saying a quick prayer for strength. He was supposed to counsel her, not hug her. He was supposed to care about her, not come to care for her. It was a probably a fine balance, but he was sure there was an almost physical line—and one he could not cross. He didn’t have the right.

He cleared his throat. “So while you’ve been playing hermit up there in Ma’s prize guest room, you’ve been thinking,” he quipped, hoping to sound at ease. “That’s good. But dwelling on your problems too much is as bad as pretending they don’t exist. I have an idea. I visit an older woman who lives up the mountain. She’s a shut-in. Would you like to go along for a change of scenery? The view of the valley from her back porch is spectacular.”

Josh held his breath, waiting, hoping she’d agree. He could see that she needed a break. Maybe if she saw how difficult someone else’s life was, she’d forget to dwell on her own unsettled circumstances. And maybe exposure to a woman like Maude would fan the flames of the hunger for spiritual things that she’d given him a glimpse of that night outside Earl’s.

“Are you sure she wouldn’t mind a stranger showing up out of the blue?”

“Maude loves company. She just can’t get in to town much anymore.” Josh decided to take her question as an indication that she wanted to tag along. “You’ll see. She’ll love another person to talk to. Especially a woman.” He picked his watch up off a nearby log and checked the time. “I just need a little time to get washed up. Give me five minutes, and I’ll meet you at the truck.”

Josh left his ax where it was and rushed off before she could change her mind. He tried to put the anticipation that bubbled through him down to the thrill of victory, but he was very much afraid what he felt was excitement over the opportunity just to spend time with her.

Cassidy had already climbed inside the pickup by the time Josh returned. While they traveled, he told her several stories about Maude Herman that were steeped in local color, hoping to prevent the kind of intimacy he’d felt the last time he invited her to ride with him. He failed miserably.

When they arrived, Cassidy jumped out of the cab before he could get his door open, just as she had at Earl’s after they’d look over the Swenson house. But this time she looked ill at ease when he met her at the tailgate. Did she feel the same attraction to him that he felt for her?

No. That wasn’t possible. After all, what had he to offer compared to all the professional men she knew? And that was another reason he’d told Henry he didn’t want to come to care for her. He had absolutely nothing to offer her. It must be that she was still uncertain of Maude’s welcome, he told himself, though he thought uncertainty seemed very un-Cassidy-like.

“You’re sure about this?” she asked, her gray-blue eyes endearingly shy.

“Maude will love having you. Come on.” He took her arm and fought to ignore the electricity he felt flow from her.

“What exactly do you do when you visit her? And why is she a shut-in?” she asked, still a tentative note in her voice.

“I usually read to her and talk to her. She’s crippled with arthritis, has a bad heart that’s kept her from having joint replacements done, and is nearly blind. I also see to occasional repairs. In fact, she has a plumbing problem Ma promised I’d fix when she called on Maude yesterday. You two can get to know each other while I work.”

Josh directed Cassidy up the steps and across the porch. He knocked on the front door and heard Maude call from somewhere in the house, “Come on in.”

Josh opened the door and stopped halfway through to make sure Cassidy followed him. He was glad he had. She stood there with a shocked look on her face. “What?” he asked.

“She doesn’t have her door locked.”

“So?”

“It isn’t safe. Didn’t you say she lives up here all alone?”

“This isn’t the city. No one locks their doors out here.” He looked down at the knob in his hand. “I doubt this old lock even has a key anymore.”

“Well, what are you standing there jawin’ about, Joshua Daniels? Get on in here and stop lettin’ out all my heat!” Maude yelled from the parlor.

“I’m coming, Miss Maude. I even brought you a surprise.” He looked back at Cassie and grinned. “Now you’ve got to come in or she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

Cassidy considered him seriously, her stormy-sky eyes narrowed in thought. He fought the urge to squirm. Then her lips tipped up in a wry smile.

“Your life seems to be ruled by women you act as if you’re afraid of,” she said, “but the truth is you just plain adore them.”

“She’s got your number,” Maude shouted. “You comin’ in or not, girl!”

“I’m coming, Miss Maude,” Cassie said, chuckling as she sauntered on by him like royalty consorting with the peasants. She turned her head and looked over her shoulder at him from the doorway of the parlor. Now her smile and eyes taunted him. “Are you coming, Joshua?”

Josh chuckled ruefully when Maude let out a raucous cackle. He just might regret the day he’d tried to take Cassidy Jamison under his wing because she was capable of turning his life on its quiet ear. In fact, he very much feared she already had.