Читать книгу Willowleaf Lane - RaeAnne Thayne - Страница 12
ОглавлениеCHAPTER FIVE
SPENCE WALKED BACK down the steps of Charlotte Caine’s house, off balance by the tangle of emotions.
Charlotte Caine.
He still couldn’t get over it. Whoever would have guessed she could have such a lithe, curvy body now? He was still having a hard time reconciling the girl he had known to the sexy armful he had carried to her house.
She had always had pretty-colored hair, he remembered, blond shot through with gold and red streaks. When she was a girl, though, she had worn it long, her bangs hanging in her eyes and around those big thick-framed glasses.
He supposed he had changed, too. What did she see when she looked at him now? He was no longer that cocky kid blessed with uncommon ability who thought the world was his to conquer.
Life had a funny way of knocking guys who needed it back down to size.
How had the years treated Charlotte, beyond the physical changes? Her store seemed to be doing well. Did she have someone special in her life? Had she been married? Engaged? He hadn’t noticed a ring on her finger but he had certainly learned a little piece of jewelry didn’t always mean anything.
So far, he knew she had come home to Hope’s Crossing with a business degree but their few moments of conversation while she had been in his arms hadn’t exactly unlocked her life story for him.
He pulled out his key and let himself into the rental.
After one night here, he hadn’t made up his mind yet whether he liked the place or not. The house was meticulously and expensively decorated, but compared to the glimpse into Charlotte’s charming little cottage he’d caught when she had opened the door—plump pillows, bright textiles, bookshelves overflowing—the furnishings here seemed cold, almost sterile.
He wasn’t sure if he would be here long enough to redecorate. He and Pey had only packed a few suitcases between them for the drive. The rest of their belongings still filled their Portland house. He hadn’t decided yet how much to haul down here.
He would have to see how things went first with the job before he made a decision about that.
He heard noises coming from the kitchen and headed in that direction. When he walked in, he found Pey seated at the breakfast bar, a huge bowl of cereal in front of her, looking at something on her phone.
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” he asked, then cursed the stiff politeness in his tone. This was his daughter. He shouldn’t sound like he was on a business trip, bumping into an associate in the hotel’s free buffet line.
She shrugged, a spoonful of cereal almost to her mouth. “Okay, I guess. I need a fan or something. It was too quiet.”
“We can probably find you something. Was the bed comfortable?”
“I don’t know. I guess. It was a bed. I slept.”
She took another bite of cereal and he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a water bottle and a yogurt, grateful he had taken a moment to order groceries the night before. It took him a few tries to find the silverware drawer for a spoon before he leaned back against the counter adjacent to her.
“We can change anything you don’t like in your room.”
“Can you transport it back to Portland?”
He bit down his frustration at her continual refrain. This was why he walked on eggshells around her, because she was prickly and moody all the damn time.
“Nope. Can’t do that. How’s your cereal?”
“Fine.” She poured a little Cinnamon Toast Crunch into her milk. Where did she put all the food she ate sometimes? he had to wonder. She was skinny as can be, like her mother had been.
Once he had found that attractive. He must have. Hadn’t he been enamored with Jade at first and thought her the most perfect creature on earth?
Of course, he had been only nineteen and in his rookie year with the Pioneers, starry-eyed and heady with the success that had come far more quickly than a dirt-poor kid who had spent his life watching over a drunk of a mother could either comprehend or cope with.
When a gorgeous supermodel like Jade Howell, three years older and infinitely exciting, wanted to date him, what teenage boy would have refused?
Not him, even though he was pretty sure now she had been more drawn to all those new zeros in his portfolio from his record-breaking contract than she had been to a naive nineteen-year-old kid.
At the time he had been too caught up in the high life of instant fame—fast cars, magazine covers, avid fans—to see that she was a troubled, damaged soul constantly in need of reassurance. Or maybe subconsciously, he had seen it and had in some twisted way thought that, if he could make things work with Jade, in some way he might be able to scab over all those open sores from his childhood.
A therapist would probably tell him he had a pretty severe case of knight-in-shining-armor complex from all those years he had tried to look out for his mother. Even so, after six months, he had grown tired of Jade’s moods and her petty piques and probably would have ended things if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with Peyton.
He didn’t like thinking about Jade or the way their hasty marriage had disintegrated before Peyton was even in preschool. Though his wife had certainly loved the creature comforts his income provided, she had hated everything about his career—the traveling, the fame, the fans—and had constantly accused him of cheating.
He took a spoonful of yogurt. It had been a miserable marriage. If not for his daughter, he would have walked away but Jade had threatened to tie him up in court so he would never see Peyton again. He had known she wouldn’t have been able to win but the energy in fighting her would only have hurt their daughter.
As poor a father as he had been, he had been raised the only child of a bitter, lost, addicted soul, and he couldn’t condemn his child to that same fate.
Eventually, he and Jade had worked out an arrangement of sorts. They lived virtually separate lives in the same house, joined only by their shared love for their daughter. Jade did her thing, he did his and they tried to stay out of each other’s way—until she made that impossible by dragging him into the complicated mess her life had become.
Jade had been all sharp edges and angles. Charlotte Caine, on the other hand, had those soft curves that a man wanted to spend days, weeks, months exploring....
“So why were you carrying the fudge lady?” Peyton asked.
He flushed, remembering that surge of unexpected heat when she was in his arms. “You saw that, did you?”
She pointed to the window over the sink, which he realized provided a fine view out into the street.
“I guess I startled her this morning when I said hello as she was jogging past. She lost her balance and ended up twisting her ankle.”
“Oh, way to go, Dad.”
At her caustic tone, he jumped immediately to the defensive. “Yeah. It was totally on purpose. I like to lie in wait, then jump out of the bushes when unsuspecting joggers appear. Makes a fun ending to my own workout.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
He would like to wring the neck of whatever idiot invented that word that was wielded so freely by his daughter.
“It was totally accidental, I promise. I was just being friendly when I saw her go past. I figured she would have seen me. Turns out, she lives up the street in that little white cottage with the blue shutters and the ivy.”
“And you had to carry her home.”
“Didn’t have to, no. But I didn’t want her putting weight on her ankle.”
Peyton raised a skeptical eyebrow, always looking for the worst in him, and he waited for the dreaded w-word. To his surprise, she must have decided to demur.
“You knew her when you lived here before, didn’t you?” she asked instead, in almost a civil tone. Charlotte must have made quite an impression with her kindness. Peyton had seemed genuinely touched at her welcome gift.
“Yes,” he answered, weighing how much to tell her. He had been fairly closemouthed about his life here in Hope’s Crossing, figuring his childhood wasn’t exactly much to brag about. She hadn’t showed much interest but when she did ask, he evaded and dissembled.
He had spent most of his adult life trying to forget his beginnings here. Off the top of his head, he couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with Pey about those hardscrabble times, the weekends when he would eat ramen noodles for three meals each day because that’s all they had in the house and about all he knew how to fix.
Another reason he had loved the café, because Dermot would always make sure he went home with something in his stomach and usually a doggie bag of food he could heat the next day.
That was one of his worries about being home, actually. Peyton already thought the worst of him. What would she think once she discovered how much everybody likely hated him here?
On the other hand, he wouldn’t exactly win any popularity contests in Portland, especially since the Pioneers had struggled the past few years without him. He knew things had been rough for Peyton at school, enduring taunts and ridicule about her drug-dealing asshole of a father, but at least she also had a core of loyal friends there.
He wondered again if he was doing the right thing, dragging her away from what little she had left. He had to cling to the idea that, if he could make things work here in Hope’s Crossing, he might be able to open other options for them both in the future.
“Charlotte’s family was always kind to me,” he finally said, which was a bit of an understatement. “I was good friends with her older brothers. My mom was a waitress and I washed dishes at her dad’s diner in town. The Center of Hope Café.”
“You washed dishes? Seriously?”
“Yeah. And I swept the floor at the hardware store after school. And delivered papers at 5:00 a.m. every day from the time I was twelve.”
He had figured out early that if he and his mother were going to be able to afford to keep the utilities turned on in the house she had inherited from her mother, one of them was going to have to work to make it happen.
“Newspaper delivery boy. Really?”
He had no regrets, at least about the paper delivery job. As miserable as it might have been riding his secondhand bike around the hilly streets of Hope’s Crossing, especially on bitter January mornings, he gave that job a lot of the credit for his throwing arm that Sports Illustrated once called supersonic.
“Yeah. Really. It taught me a lot, that job. Maybe you ought to think about picking up a route.”
She snorted. “Right.”
Her phone bleeped with a text and that apparently was the end of their conversation. She turned her attention to the device and started thumbing a message, probably about her idiot of a father.
“After I shower, I need you to get dressed and grab your laptop or whatever other gadgetry you want to take.” He tried for a firm paternal tone. “I’m heading into the recreation center today. Until I can hire a housekeeper, I guess you’ll have to come with me.”
She stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why can’t I be serious?”
Her eyebrows nearly reached her fringe of bangs. “I’m almost thirteen. I don’t need a babysitter! I’m old enough to be a babysitter, for heaven’s sake.”
Yeah, how many nights had he spent on his own? After his grandma had died when he was nine, Billie sometimes wouldn’t come home for a couple days at a time. Of course, she didn’t spare a thought for the child she only remembered half the time.
A vivid memory flitted through his mind, the first time she had decided to stay at the bar all night until closing and then go home with somebody who bought her a few drinks. He remembered locking the front door and huddling in his bed, missing his grandmother like crazy. He hadn’t slept at all that night and had been so bleary-eyed, he had ended up in detention for dozing off in class, where he was warm and safe.
He hadn’t thought about these things much in years. He wasn’t sure he liked the way the memories had started to bubble up to the surface since his return, like some geothermal hot spot reinvigorated by volcanic activity deep beneath the crust of the earth.
Peyton probably was old enough to stay by herself but the idea didn’t sit well with him, for reasons he couldn’t fully explain.
“I have no problem with you being on your own for a few hours. Even three or four,” he said. “But this is all day long. I just don’t feel good about leaving you in a strange house by yourself when you don’t know anybody in town yet that you could call in case of an emergency.”
“I don’t want to sit around a stupid, boring recreation center all day!”
He licked the last bit of yogurt from his spoon and tossed it in the sink and the empty container into the trash. “It’s a recreation center,” he reminded her. “By its very definition, you should find plenty to do. Swimming, racquetball, mountain biking. You won’t be bored unless you want to be, trust me on that, ladybug.”
“Would you stop calling me that? I’m not five years old anymore, and I’m so tired of you treating me that way. I don’t want to spend all day at your stupid job!”
He should have known she would dig her heels in about this, as she did about every other damn thing in their lives.
“This isn’t negotiable,” he said, trying not to grind his teeth. “Get dressed. I can give you half an hour.”
She stared at him for a long moment and apparently seemed to know he had drawn a line he wouldn’t let her cross.
“I hate you and I hate this stupid town!” she exploded. “Why couldn’t I have stayed in Portland with one of my friends or with Mrs. Sanchez?”
“You think Mrs. Sanchez would have extended the retirement she had been planning for a year in order to stay with you?”
“If you paid her enough, she would have! You just didn’t want to.”
A bleak sense of futility seemed to settle in his gut. His daughter would have preferred staying with their housekeeper to moving here and having a new adventure with him. She said she hated him. For all he knew, she meant the words.
Like the rest of the world, she blamed him for her mother’s death. He wanted to believe she didn’t think he was literally responsible for Jade’s drowning, that he had held her head underwater or something, but Peyton seemed to think he should have done more to help Jade when her addictions spiraled out of control.
The hell of it was, she was right. But by then, he was tangled in his own legal issues and busy trying to stay out of prison to spend much time worrying about the woman responsible for tangling him up in the whole mess in the first place.
“We’re a family, like it or not,” he said now, trying his best to keep his temper contained.
“I don’t,” she muttered under her breath.
“Look, you’ve convinced yourself you hate it here but we’ve only been here a few days. Give it time. I think you’ll change your mind. And I promise, first order of business for me is to hire a housekeeper. I’m working through an agency and expect to have someone by the end of the day.”
“I don’t see why we need a housekeeper.”
He couldn’t take any more. “Face it, kid. We’re slobs. I haven’t washed dishes in a long time. We need somebody to clean up after us, cook for us, run you around, be here if you break your thumbs with all that texting.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she muttered.
“You will. Once you’ve been here awhile and have a chance to make some new friends, you’ll probably find all kinds of things to do. Meantime, today I would like you to come with me and be my moral support. Please. Just get dressed, Peyton.”
He could tell she wanted to offer more arguments but she finally slid off the bar stool.
He whispered a prayer of gratitude that at least he didn’t get another whatever out of her.
* * *
“GOOD NEWS. NOTHING’S broken.”
“What did I tell you?”
Charlotte shifted her aching ankle to a little more comfortable position on the exam table while her primary care physician, Susannah Harris, examined the X-ray displayed on the wall-hung light cabinet.
Dr. Harris tucked a strand of steel-gray hair behind her ear. “It’s not broken but your ankle is badly sprained. In my experience, sorry to say, a sprain can sometimes be more painful than a fracture.”
Charlotte closed her eyes, foreseeing a difficult week. “This is going to be a problem for me, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to be. But I would recommend you stay off it for at least a week.”
“I can’t do that! What about the store? And my running? I have to exercise!”
Susannah had been with her through her whole weight-loss journey. She knew how deadly a change in routine could be for someone trying to establish new habits.
“Calm down, Charlotte. You can do this.”
Easy for Susannah to say. She was athletic and tough and ran marathons for fun.
“Have you done much swimming?” the doctor went on. “The new pool at the recreation center is wonderful. James and I went up over the weekend. They reserve it for lap swimming in the morning and it wasn’t very busy when we were there.”
When she was young, she used to swim all the time but since she had gained weight, she hated how she looked in a swimsuit too much to subject herself to that humiliation very often.
What other choice did she have? She couldn’t run on her ankle. Right now, she couldn’t even walk. She had a reclined exercise bike but the thought of pedaling made her ankle give an angry throb.
Yet another reason to be angry with Spence Gregory for coming back to town and ruining everything.
She frowned. Okay, in all fairness she couldn’t really blame him. How could he have known she would become so off balance to see him there that she would lose track of where she was running?
She could only imagine the trouble she could get into if he happened to walk past while she was swimming at the community center. Susannah would be treating her for a concussion from heedlessly ramming into the side of the pool.
“I’ll figure something out. Thanks, Susannah.”
“I’m going to write a scrip for some crutches. You can pick them up at our pharmacy here at the clinic. Use them, got it?”
“At least it’s my left foot. I can still drive, right?”
“If you’re careful.” The doctor gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry I can’t give you better news. But look at it this way—you don’t have to wear a cast.”
Small favors. This would definitely complicate her life. In addition to the difficulties at work, she would have to try very hard to make sure she didn’t lose hard-fought ground when it came to working out.
Susannah gazed at her computer screen for a moment. “It looks like you’ve lost another five pounds since I saw you two months ago. That’s fantastic, Charlotte. Doesn’t that put you right at your goal weight?”
She smiled. “Yes. Three pounds ago.”
“You’re an inspiration. You’ve added years to your life, you know. I can tell you that, if you hadn’t lost the weight, this injury probably would have been far worse—and I think you’ll find your ankle will heal much faster than it would have otherwise, since you’re more toned and your diet is more healthy.”
Of course, if she hadn’t lost the weight, she probably wouldn’t have been running in front of Spence Gregory’s just after sunrise to go sprawling into the street. But she decided not to mention that little fact to the doctor.
She left Susannah’s office with her ankle wrapped and her palm bandaged, wielding a rented pair of crutches.
She drove to work trying to figure out how she was going to handle parking. Most downtown merchants used a lot a block off Main Street in order to leave the prime spots for customers. She certainly had a good excuse to park closer but she couldn’t find a more convenient spot. Besides, parking along the street was limited to two hours anyway. She ended up circling around the block and finally pulling back into the off-street parking lot.
Ah, well. It would give her good practice on the crutches and a little of that exercise she and Susannah were just talking about.
By the time she made it half a block, she was reconsidering. Besides the steady throb of her ankle, her hands hurt where she clutched the crutches and her armpits burned.
This would get old fast.
She was walking past String Fever, her favorite place to bead, when Claire McKnight, the owner of the store, and her manager, Evie Thorne, came out the front door.
“Oh, my word,” Claire exclaimed, consternation temporarily shunting aside her voluptuous pregnancy glow. She planted her hands on her hips. “Charlotte Caine, what have you done to yourself?”
She was grateful for the chance to take a break and sank onto the conveniently situated bench outside the bead store. “Nothing. It’s so embarrassing. I sprained my ankle this morning on my run.”
Tripping over my feet, just because Spence Gregory happens to look gorgeous in a pair of jogging shorts.
“Do you have to use the crutches long?” Evie asked. She was a physical therapist by training, though she only maintained a select few clients and preferred to spend most of her time working at the bead store.
Charlotte sighed. “Dr. Harris tells me I’m supposed to keep weight off it for a week. It’s really no big deal.”
“It is. Believe me, I know how horrible crutches can be,” Claire said. “Why don’t you come into the store and let me get you a drink and fuss over you for a bit? The fall bead magazines showed up this morning.”
Fall, already? She supposed so. It wouldn’t be long, anyway. Here in Hope’s Crossing, the quaking aspens would start turning gold in another month.
“That sounds tempting, believe me, but I’m afraid I’m already late heading into the store. I missed the whole morning at the doctor’s. I hope nobody needs an urgent order of fudge made today because I’m afraid it’s not happening.”
“You’re coming to the book club meeting tomorrow, aren’t you?”
She had completely forgotten in the chaos of Spence’s return. “I should be there, as long as I can find a convenient spot to prop my ankle.”
“We’ll make sure you do,” Evie promised. “Here. Stand up. Let me help adjust those crutches to a better fit.”
Charlotte had learned a long time ago it was best to just obey when her dear friends started trying to order her life. She stood and let Evie fuss over her for a moment.
“There. Try that.”
She took a few exploratory steps with the crutches and smiled back over her shoulder. “That’s tons better. Wow. Amazing!”
“We all have our little skills. You make the best fudge in the Rocky Mountains. I adjust crutches. Take it easy. Even when your ankle starts to feel better, you can do serious damage if you push yourself.”
“So Dr. Harris warned me. Thank you for the double dose of caution. I promise, I’ll sit in my office at the store all day long and let my employees wait on me hand and foot.”
“Good idea,” Claire said. “Or better yet, take the day off. You’ve got smart people working for you. They can handle things without you during an emergency like this.”
Charlotte gave Claire and Evie a warm smile. “I’m a lucky woman to have friends to fret about me.”
“Yes, you are,” Claire answered.
With a smile and a wave, Charlotte started to hobble toward Sugar Rush when Evie moved up to walk beside her.
“Wait,” her friend said. “I’m heading that direction anyway to grab coffee at Maura’s place. I’ll walk with you.”
She had a feeling that wasn’t precisely true, and that Evie was manufacturing a reason to accompany her, probably to make sure she didn’t take another dive off the sidewalk.
As long as Spence didn’t happen to walk by and start some leg stretches, she should be fine.
“So I understand Alex is trying to set you up next weekend with one of Sam’s army buddies.”
Crap. She had completely forgotten about that. She absolutely didn’t want to go out on a blind date while she was on crutches. She would just have to hope she didn’t need them by the following weekend.
“I’ve met Garrett King,” Evie said. “He seems very nice. You should have a wonderful time.”
Evie was another of her friends who had a great husband. She and Brodie just seemed to fit together, perfectly complementing the other’s strengths.
Evie had moved to Hope’s Crossing a few years ago from Los Angeles, where she’d had a successful pediatric rehab practice. After Brodie’s teenage daughter, Taryn, had been injured in a severe car accident that had killed another teen, Evie had stepped in to help the girl’s recovery.
Charlotte started to ask about Taryn, but before she could get the words out, an old blue battered pickup pulled up to the curb beside them and the driver killed the engine.
Tucker’s big droopy face hung out the passenger window and a moment later, Dylan climbed out the other side and walked around the front of the truck. He wore his customary scowl but for once, he looked more concerned than angry at the world.
“What the hell happened to you?” he exclaimed. “I just saw you last night!”
She sighed, wondering how many times she was going to have to go over this with people. Probably a couple dozen more that day, at least. “You know me. Clumsy as a deaf bat. I sprained my ankle while I was running this morning.”
