Читать книгу Picket Fence Surprise - Kris Fletcher - Страница 12
ОглавлениеIT WAS, HEATHER THOUGHT, one of the most enjoyable meals she’d had in a long time.
That probably wasn’t a good thing.
Millie and Cady dominated the so-called conversation, with songs and silliness that had her and Xander snickering behind their hands. Millie made her pizza crust fly through the air. Cady, perched on Xander’s lap, picked up the grapes that Daddy had halved so carefully and tossed them across the table like she was skipping a rock across the water. Xander started laughing, lost control of his slice and sent a glob of cheese onto Cady’s head, which made Millie cackle so hard that milk came out of her nose.
In short, it was barely a step down from chaos. But that wasn’t what kept Heather from laughing quite as heartily as the rest of the diners.
It was all too easy. Too relaxed. And that scared the crap out of her.
Parenting Truth Number 316: The line between delight and disaster is very, very skinny.
She felt on edge. Like something was pushing at her from beneath her skin, poking over and over in search of an opening. After all these years, she could finally name it. Her old buddy anxiety had decided to pay a visit.
In the first years of Millie’s life, when Heather had still been in residence, she and anxiety—and his big brother, fear—were pretty well constant companions. She’d existed in a constant state of nervousness. The really fun part had been that her anxiousness had come in two flavors: certainty that she would do something wrong and hurt Millie, and certainty that if anyone knew how lost she was at caring for her child, they would take Millie away from her.
Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
She had learned how to manage her fear in the years after it drove her away from Millie. She had taken so many classes in child development and parenting, spent so much time in counseling and workshops, that she could have earned a second degree in Motherhood. It had taken years, but she was finally the parent she wanted to be, instead of trying to imitate Carol Brady while tamping down memories of her own mother’s lessons in neglect. She would never completely master the uneasiness, but she knew that it would never again build into the blind panic that had made her run.
Tonight, though, the pitchforks of anxiety were definitely poking. It wasn’t until the meal was almost over that she figured out the jabs had nothing to do with Millie.
They were because of Xander.
And hearing another adult voice—a deep one, the kind that commanded attention by virtue of its difference—at her table.
And seeing the way he listened to Millie, carefully and attentively, especially when the topic turned to how astronauts sleep in space.
And how it felt to look across the heads of two giggling girls and see her own mix of exasperation and wonder reflected in someone else’s eyes. Especially when the touch of that someone’s hand around her wrist had sent her pulse soaring and skidding.
Soaring and skidding had their place, but not for her. Not now. Not when Millie was counting on her.
She just wished to hell that having Xander at the table didn’t feel so good.
* * *
HEATHER WAS SO focused on breathing through the pitchforks that when Xander said something to her—her, not one of the kids—she had to blink and give herself a mental wake-up call.
“Sorry. I was still figuring out the logistics of space stuff. What was that?”
He pulled Cady’s hand off his face. “Ow. I said, we got distracted and I never got to see what you have planned for your presentation.”
“That’s right. Mills, can you get my notebook for me? The one on the table in the living room? And bring my laptop, too.”
“Sure, Mom. Can Cady come, too?”
“For the whole minute it will take you to go there and back?” Heather laughed. “If it’s okay with her dad.”
“Sure.” Xander gave Cady’s hands and face a fast wipe and set her on the floor. She waddled beside Millie, singing something about ducks and rain.
“They’re cute together,” Xander said. “Millie’s really patient with Cady.”
Jab jab jab.
“She’s had lots of practice with her new baby brother.”
The corner of his mouth edged upward. “You know, I missed Cady’s first year, but even I’m pretty sure that someone who’s—what, four months?—can’t be sitting around slapping stickers on his sister already.”
She was saved from needing to reply to her own inanity by the return of the girls.
“Here you go, Mom.” Millie handed over the laptop. Cady, who had been entrusted with the notebook, offered it up with a heart-melting shy smile.
“Thank you, sweetie.” Heather touched one finger to Cady’s cheek, reliving for the briefest moment the memory of Millie’s peach-fuzz cheek, Millie’s toddler smile. “You did a great job.”
She raised her head and caught Xander watching. God help her, it seemed he approved.
Stab stab stab.
“Didn’t I do a good job, too, Mom?”
Thank Heaven for mood breakers. “Of course you did, my goofy girl.” Heather grabbed Millie by the shoulders and bestowed a loud kiss on her forehead. “Now do me another favor and bring in that package of cookies, will you please?”
“The peanut butter ones? Yeah!”
“So here’s what I have in mind.” She grabbed the notebook quickly, before Xander could say or do anything that would fire up her jitters. Or anything else, come to think of it. “I’m going with an undiscovered treasures theme. You know. To capitalize on the story of Charlie and Daisy.”
He raised his hand. “Excuse me, teacher, but may I ask a question?”
“You may.”
“I’ve seen those names on places around town, but I’ve never figured out the back story. Can I get an explanation?”
“Oh, sorry. I assumed...okay. Back in Prohibition days, a lot of locals took advantage of the river and the islands to get contraband booze to all those thirsty Americans on the other side. One of them, Charlie Hebert, managed to meet up and fall in love with the daughter of one of the rich Yanks.”
“That would be Daisy?”
“Yes indeed. Young lovers being what they are, Daisy ended up, uh, in a family way.” Heather nodded toward Millie, running in to set the cookies on the table before grabbing one for herself and another to jam into Cady’s outstretched hand. “There was no way Papa Big Bucks would let his princess marry a rum-running Canuck, so Daisy and Charlie arranged to escape. But they knew they would need help getting away. Lucky for them, Charlie had an ace in the hole.”
“The treasure!” Millie called from the sofa, where she and Cady knelt in front of the window.
“Exactly.” Heather registered what she’d seen and turned back. “Mills, are you guys planning to draw on the windows?”
“Yes, Mom. But I double-triple checked. These are the safe markers.”
“Okay. Carry on.”
“Draw on the windows?” Xander’s hand hovered in midair, as if he’d been reaching for a cookie only to be frozen by fear.
“Don’t worry. They’re special markers. They wash right off.”
“Every time I think I have this parenting thing down...”
“Trust me, Xander. It’s a never-ending learning curve.” Heather grabbed a cookie. “Anyway, as you can imagine, the American authorities weren’t too fond of Charlie and his buddies. But at some point during his exploration of the area, Charlie found something.”
“A treasure?”
“So they say.”
“What was it?”
“Nobody—” Heather began, but Millie jumped off the sofa to join them.
“See, nobody knows for sure. But he found something, and he gave a piece of it to the police, and said, if you help me get away with Daisy, I’ll tell you where you can find the rest of it.” She sighed. “Except he got shot.” She formed her thumb and forefinger into a handgun. “Boom. Dead, just like that.”
“Boom!” Cady echoed, with a clap of her hands.
“Dead, eh?” Xander seemed suitably impressed. “Who shot him?”
Millie shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“No one was ever certain,” Heather said. “There was a shoot-out on the river. It was the middle of the night, and he pushed Daisy down in the boat, so she could hear but not see.” Heather spared a thought for poor terrified Daisy and what she must have gone through. “In any case, Daisy managed to get them here, to Comeback Cove, but he was already dead.”
“Let me guess.” Xander brushed crumbs from Cady’s shirt. “He died before he could reveal the location of the treasure.”
“Right,” Millie said. “He didn’t even get to tell Daisy. So it’s still out there.”
“Well, that seems unlikely.” Heather broke off a piece of cookie. “Those islands have been combed over and mapped and explored a lot since then. If something was there, it would have turned up by now.”
“It’s out there, Mom. I know it is.”
Xander raised an eyebrow. “Someone didn’t inherit your skeptical streak.”
Hadn’t had it drummed out of her by life and experience, more likely. And thank God for that.
Heather leaned down and grabbed a marker from Cady’s hand before it connected with Xander’s leg. “There’s a lot of legends and rumors around town, and every once in a while it will make the news or get featured in some article, and the loonies will descend. But mostly, people file it in the urban legend category.”
“After all this time, I can see why,” Xander said. “So what happened to Daisy?”
“She was taken in by Charlie’s family. Charlie Junior arrived a few months later. Her granddaughter still lives here. She runs Daisy’s Place—that bed-and-breakfast on Trillium Street.”
“I know that place.” He pointed to the laptop. “Okay. I like the idea. So show me what you’ve got.”
Heather pulled up a file. He scooted closer.
Purely so he could see better, she told herself.
“Here you go,” she said. “But I can’t make the margins and pictures line up the way I want. It should look like this.” She flipped through the notebook until she found her drawing. “I found tutorials on Google and YouTube, but I still can’t get it to come out right.”
“Let me see. You’re designing a trifold, right? Your layout looks clean. The balance is a bit off, but the rhythm is good. What are you putting in these spaces?” He pointed to empty boxes she had drawn in. “Photos? Treasure maps?”
“Yes. A treasure map on the front. How did you guess?”
“Logical conclusion.”
Of course. And that was good, she told herself. Better than thinking that they might be on the same wavelength.
“And those will be photos.” She pointed to the empty boxes. “Spots around town, of course, but one or two that aren’t as obvious. You know. Ones that convey that feeling of something hidden.”
“Yeah. Well, the good news is, this isn’t a difficult fix. You need to do a manual setup, I think, instead of one of the built-in templates. And you need to put in more breaks. But it shouldn’t be too hard to do.”
“It never is, until I actually have to do it.” She frowned at the laptop. “It’s so clear in my head. I hate to mess it up. And yeah, I know, a bit more practice and I should be able to do it myself, but I don’t have time to—”
Oh.
Parenting Truth Number 7: Sometimes, the answer is right in front of you.
“You did such a great job with the résumé. Could I hire you to work some computer magic for me? Make this as good as it is in my head?”
His grin was ridiculously boyish. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“You will? That’s wonderful.” She pointed at him. “But I am absolutely paying you this time.”
“Heather, it will take me half an hour, tops. It’s not worth payment.”
“Forget it. I’m not letting you have the files unless I can pay.”
He sighed and took another cookie. “Compromise. I tell you what half an hour of my time is worth, and you make a donation in that amount to the food bank.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Except it still struck her as taking advantage of him.
“Donation to the food bank and dinner. With real food this time.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to grab them by the echo and shove them back inside. What the hell was she thinking? She was too aware of Xander as it was, and if there was anything less seductive than pizza and store-bought cookies consumed to the tune of little voices singing “Old MacDonald,” she didn’t want to imagine it. But to have him come back? Without any kids to act as a buffer?
Travis always told her she was her own worst enemy. She hated to know he’d called that one correctly.
“Dinner, huh?”
Well, great. He liked the idea.
“I don’t think I could turn that down. But I tell you what—I’ll make the changes here, with you, so you can follow along. That way you’ll know what to do next time.”
Her pulse slowed a little. That sounded very businesslike. Efficient. Certainly not like he was dying to be alone with her.
Good. As it should be. A friend helping a friend, and she was an idiot to be panicking, and anyway, it only took two to tango, and a laptop would definitely count as a third party. She was totally in the clear.
“I know you need to get moving on this,” Xander said. “I’m busy the next few nights, but how about Tuesday?”
She ran through her schedule in her head. She had Millie until after dinner tomorrow, working late and then meeting Hank on Monday, Millie Wednesday... “Sure. Tuesday works.”
“Sounds great.” Xander picked up the notebook. “I can’t wait to see what we can do. With the brochure, I mean.”
Of course that was what he meant.
Note to self: do not, under any circumstances, serve wine with this dinner.
* * *
MONDAY NIGHT, HEATHER slid into the booth at Comeback Cove’s one and only Tim Hortons and set her favorite iced cappuccino in front of her. Across the table, Hank nodded over the rim of his mug.
“Hi,” she said. “Sorry I’m late. There was an accident on the 416 that slowed things.”
“Not a problem. Millie’s at craft night at the church for—” he checked his phone “—another three-quarters of an hour. We shouldn’t need that long. Besides, Brynn is still on her super-nutrition kick, so I’m enjoying every moment of this.” He gestured to his maple-dipped doughnut. Heather’s empty stomach rumbled.
“How is Noah?”
“Happy as a clam.”
“Is he eating solid foods yet?”
“Nope, and if he’s smart, he’ll wait until Brynn has moved on from the kale and quinoa special.”
Hank could complain all he wanted. The softness around his eyes told Heather that kale and quinoa were a small price to pay for the joy he’d found in Marriage 2.0.
She hadn’t been kidding when she told Travis she was happy for Hank. Everyone had a different path to bliss, and if his involved someone who made him goofy and besotted, then more power to him. But for herself? No, thank you. She’d tried it once and made a royal hash of it. Her focus now was on work—wherever that might be—and being the best mother she could to Millie. And that was enough.
A young woman in very high heels walked slowly past, paused and seemed to be scanning the shop. After a moment, she sat down two booths behind Hank, leaving a trail of some spicy perfume in her wake.
Whoa.
Hank’s nose wrinkled, and he pulled out his phone again. “So what does your month look like?”
With that, they set about what had become a new routine: comparing schedules, their own and Millie’s, making any necessary tweaks to ensure at least one of them would be at every concert, Guide outing or whatever other event parents could attend.
It was a routine that Heather could never have foreseen. Truth to tell, she had a sneaking suspicion that Brynn had been the one to suggest it after Heather moved back to the area. But Hank was the one who had agreed to go along with it, and she was grateful. Millie had as seamless a transition as was possible between their homes. Heather couldn’t speak for Hank, but for herself, she was amazed at how well they had learned to work together for their daughter’s benefit.
