Kitabı oku: «Hometown Cinderella», sayfa 3

He still didn’t say anything for a while and she wondered if her explanation and apology were too little too late. She wouldn’t have blamed him if that were the case. Certainly if one of her tormentors were standing there saying the same things to her she didn’t think it would make any difference—she still would have disliked them intensely.

But then Cam’s expression seemed to soften slightly—only slightly—and he said, “Metal-mouth, four-eyes, pizza-face, Halloween-hair and what else?”

“Pumpkinhead, geek-bot and nerd-girl, just to name a few.”

“And I got the brunt of you being called all that?”

“You could think of it as taking one for the team,” she suggested carefully, trying a tiny bit of levity to see if he’d respond to it.

And, lo and behold, he did.

He smiled. Only a little. And maybe in spite of himself. But it was a smile nevertheless.

And if he was handsome scowling, it was nothing compared to how good he looked when that face relaxed with amusement.

“Taking one for the team?” he repeated.

“You could factor in that I really was only a scared, insecure kid—not that I’m excusing my behaviour. And that I have regretted it all these years, if that helps any. And really, when all is said and done, can you hate somebody in ducky pants?”

Her second stab at a joke broadened the smile. He glanced down at her pajama pants—brown flannel printed with goofy-looking ducks.

“They’re mallards,” Cam corrected. “And I suppose I’ll think it over while I turn your lights back on.”

It wasn’t overt forgiveness but at that point, Eden decided to take what she could get.

“Thanks,” she said.

Cam nodded toward his front door. “After you.”

Eden went out into the cold again and Cam followed her as she retraced her steps, keeping her fingers crossed that peace might really have been reached between them.

The inside of her house was remarkably cooler than the inside of his and Eden knew she’d made the right choice in asking him for help.

Cam took the lead once the front door was closed behind them, using his flashlight to help navigate around and through packing boxes and debris to get to the basement.

Eden followed, happy not to be going down into the blackness of the basement alone.

The circuit box was under the stairs and one flip of the main breaker set music playing upstairs, letting them know it had worked.

“There’s a light here,” Cam said, pulling a string that turned on a bare bulb under the steps to prove his point.

Eden hadn’t realized until that moment how close they were standing. Or in what position. But they were standing very close in the small space beneath the stairs, and he’d pivoted away from the breaker box to face her.

They were so close that she had to look almost straight up at him, the way she might have tipped her head if they were about to kiss.

Which, of course, they weren’t.

But once more that strange Cam-trance thing happened and she suddenly found herself staring up into his dark eyes, thinking about what it might be like if he did kiss her. If he just leaned down a little and pressed his lips to hers.

Cam Pratt, of all people…

Then it registered that her mind was wandering again and Eden yanked herself out of it, stepping from under the stairs in a hurry.

“I’d better go turn some things off or this is going to trip again,” she said as her exit excuse, dashing up the steps far ahead of Cam.

She had turned off the stereo and some of the lights by the time he reached her, and she could hear the heat switching on.

“I really appreciate this,” she told him as he headed for the front door.

“I keep one of those lights that work on batteries stuck to the wall next to the breaker box down there so when this happens I have that option, too. In case the flashlight isn’t easy to get to for some reason.”

“That’s a fabulous idea,” she said, too effusively because she was overcompensating for calling him stupid all those years ago. She toned it down and added, “Plus I’ll be more careful about how many things I have on at once. But you know how it is when you move—I was going from room to room looking for what I needed in all the boxes so every light was on.”

He merely nodded. There wasn’t anything to say to her ramblings. But he was watching her with those penetrating eyes again as they stood at her door. Eden wasn’t sure what else to say, either.

Cam broke the silence—and the meeting of their eyes—by glancing at her pajama pants again.

“Ducky pants, huh?”

“They were my back-to-the-cold-of-Montana present to myself.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess you’re right, you can’t hate somebody in ducky pants.”

This time Eden smiled. “Does that mean I’ve been granted amnesty?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead he raised his gaze to hers once again and gave her a small, forgiving smile. “Yeah, I suppose it does.”

Eden wasn’t sure if she’d been carrying around even more guilt than she’d realized or if it had something to do with how bowled over she’d been by this guy from the start, but the relief she felt was like a huge, heavy weight lifted from her shoulders. And she was far more pleased than seemed warranted, too.

But she decided to simply enjoy it and smiled back at him a second time. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

He merely nodded and opened her door to go.

“And thanks again for help with the breaker box,” she called to his back as he walked across her porch.

He didn’t turn around, he just raised the hand that held his flashlight and said, “Anytime.”

And as Eden closed her door to the sight of that man who had so enthralled her already tonight, she was a little shocked at just how tempting it was to turn on every light in the house, hit the microwave start button the way she had earlier and trip the breaker all over again.

Just so she could take him up on that offer and get him back there.

Cam Pratt.

Of all people.

Chapter Four

“Help has arrived. Bearing coffee and doughnuts.”

Eden craned around a stack of boxes in her living room to see her sister Eve come through her front door bright and early the next morning. “I’m saved! I can’t find my coffeemaker.”

Eve went directly to the kitchen to deposit the cups and doughnut box. Once she had, she turned to Eden, who had followed her, and gave her a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re back!” Eve said just before she let go of Eden.

“Me, too. Even if these temperatures are a shock to my system after Hawaii,” Eden responded.

She took the coffee that was intended for her, curved both hands around the cup to warm them and, after a sip, sat on one of the kitchen chairs at the table.

“How was Billings?” she asked her sister as Eve sat across from her.

“It was fine. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here when you got in yesterday. I wanted to be. But the Reverend made an appointment to see his attorney and his headache doctor, and I was the only one of the grandchildren who could take him. And you know you can’t go to Billings and not have dinner with the folks and Uncle Carl and Aunt Sheila, and spend the night or everyone gets upset. So I was stuck. But I’m here now and I’m all yours for the whole day. On one condition,” Eve added.

They’d each settled on a doughnut and Eden chose to ignore the on one condition portion of what her sister had said as she took a bite of hers.

“How are the folks?” she asked after savoring the sweet fried cake.

“Same as always—good,” Eve answered. “They told me to say hi and for you to get to Billings to see them as soon as you can.”

“I will. And how is the Reverend?” They’d never called their grandfather—who had been Northbridge’s reverend until his retirement a few years earlier—anything else. He wasn’t a cuddly kind of man and had never invited anything but formality. From anyone, as far as Eden could tell.

“The Reverend’s the same, too. The man will die the way he’s lived—with a stick up his butt.”

Eden laughed at her sister’s bluntness. “Why was he seeing his lawyer and a doctor?”

“You know the Reverend—no explanations and I certainly wasn’t allowed in on either appointment. I was lucky to get a thanks for taking him everywhere he needed to go.”

“Do you think the renewed interest in the bank robbery and Celeste was why he wanted to talk to the lawyer?”

Eve shrugged elaborately as she sipped her coffee and chose a second doughnut.

“And maybe he’s stressed-out about it and that’s why he’s having his headaches again,” Eden continued to postulate.

“Hard to say. I can’t believe he isn’t stressed-out by having all this old stuff brought up again. You know that stiff-upper-lip-never-talk-about-it thing he does has to be hiding what he really feels. And having his wife run off with a bank robber? That had to have been the worst, the most humiliating thing that ever happened in his life. But of course he’s acting as if he’s above it all.” Eve took a bite of her doughnut and then said, “He says hello, too, by the way. And that he’s looking forward to seeing you again after so long.”

Eden wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t that she disliked her grandfather, but he wasn’t her favorite person, either. She certainly hadn’t been sorry that of all her family, he’d never visited her in Hawaii.

“Yeah, I think you might be in for it,” Eve said, interpreting Eden’s nose wrinkle. “The Reverend doesn’t seem particularly happy that you’ve agreed to do the age progression on Celeste. He said he doesn’t see the point in pursuing what’s long past and important to no one,” Eve finished, mimicking their grandfather’s stiff speech pattern.

“It’s important to a whole lot of authorities,” Eden said. “Important enough that if I didn’t do it they’d get someone else to.”

“I’m just warning you.” Eve brushed crumbs off her hands.

“I guess it’s good to go in knowing what I’ll have coming but it doesn’t make me want to see him more.”

Eve took a turn ignoring what Eden had said and changed the subject. “Now for my one condition as payment for my help. I want you to be my plus-one at Luke Walker’s wedding tonight.”

“Your love life is in sorry shape if I have to be your plus-one,” Eden said with a laugh.

“There’s no question that my love life is in sorry shape. But I want you to be my plus-one. I thought it would be a good opportunity for you to jump right into things again here. See some people, get reacquainted. The Walkers would have invited you themselves if they had known you would be here.”

“Why are they having a wedding on a Tuesday night?”

“The minister they wanted to perform the ceremony is an old friend of the bride and this was the only time he could get here.”

“But still, I have this whole house to put together,” Eden demurred.

“We’ll work all day and then stop, get pretty and go to the wedding. I’m not letting you hibernate. You’ve been doing that since Alika died and now you’re here and starting over and you need to do it right. Faith is coming in next week and I swear that I’m going to get you both going again if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“Like a couple of stalled engines?” Eden asked, laughing again.

“Like a couple of cars that have been up on blocks. It was good that Faith spent all that time with you in Hawaii after her divorce but I know you both just used it to hide out from life together. Faith doesn’t know what to do with herself and you’ve thrown yourself into work since Alika died. But things have to change and now’s the time for it.”

“And you think that starts with my going to a wedding tonight.”

“It’s as good a place as any. So I RSVP’d for me and my plus-one and you’re it.”

Eve was right that Eden had thrown herself into work as a kind of protective shell to get through the last awful year and she had made up her mind to put some effort into coming out of that shell when she’d decided to move back to Northbridge. Eve was probably also right that tonight, at a wedding, was as good a place as any to start.

“Okay,” she said as if she were conceding reluctantly when, in fact, she wasn’t. “But we’d better get a whole lot of stuff done today to make up for losing tonight.”

“We will,” Eve assured. “I told you, I’m all yours.”

But neither of them was in enough of a hurry to leave the coffee they were still drinking.

Eve’s attention did seem to turn to the job at hand, though, when she glanced around at the mess. “The house is okay?” she said.

Eve had done Eden’s house hunting for her and served as her proxy at the closing.

“It’s just the way I remembered it. Unfortunately I never had occasion to find out where the circuit box is when I babysat here for the Dundees,” Eden said, going on to tell her sister about the blackout of the previous evening.

“And speaking of Cam Pratt,” Eden said when she’d finished with the entire story. “You didn’t tell me he lived next door.”

“Why? Does it matter?”

Eden couldn’t very well say it did when Eve didn’t know what had gone on with Cam years ago, so she said, “No, it just might have been nice to know. The Realtor led me to believe my neighbors would be people named Poppazitto.”

“They own the place but Cam lives there and is probably going to buy it.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Eve finished her coffee and took the cup to the trash bag in the corner. “Cam’s a good guy,” she said along the way. “He helped you last night, didn’t he?”

“Uh-huh,” Eden said noncommittally, thinking that he’d helped her out of a whole lot of rest the night before. She hadn’t been able to stop the image of him from haunting her each time she’d closed her eyes and for some reason it had made her too restless to fall asleep.

“I’ll bet he was surprised to see how you’d changed from when you used to tutor him,” Eve said, laughing at the thought.

“He didn’t seem to be.”

“How could he not have been? You’re so different you don’t look like the same person—that’s another reason I want you to go tonight, I want to be there when everyone sees you now.”

“Very few thirty-one-year-old people look exactly like they did when they were sixteen. Even Cam has changed,” Eden said, picturing him again in her mind and once more judging the changes to be improvements.

She didn’t have any idea what alerted her sister to her thoughts, but apparently something did because Eve’s eyebrows rose. “Do you have a little thing for Cam?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t,” Eden said, hoping it came out as even-toned as she’d wanted it to so she didn’t raise any more suspicions in her sister’s mind.

But whether it had or not, Eve was still not convinced. “Did you have a secret crush on him when you tutored him?” she said as if she’d just hit on a surprise of her own. “He was the big man on campus, as I recall. And you were the mousy kid who should have been a sophomore rather than a senior, who got to be all alone with him to teach him… What was it?”

“Physics,” Eden said, rolling her eyes at the fiction her sister was weaving. “And no, I absolutely didn’t have a crush on him, secret or not. I didn’t even like him.”

“Then maybe you just like him now,” Eve said, switching gears.

“Or maybe I was just saying I thought I was going to be living next door to people named Poppazitto and I’m not,” Eden said, taking her own cup to the trash.

But again Eve didn’t seem to be fooled because when Eden turned back to her, Eve was grinning. “Cam will be there tonight, you know? Luke Walker is marrying Cam’s half sister.”

“Cam has a half sister?” Eden asked, interested in this bit of news but also hoping it would distract Eve.

“That’s right, you don’t know the dirt, do you?” Eve said. “Well, Cam’s father had two daughters with the woman he left Cam’s mother for. One of them was a nightmare and she ended up dead when the meth lab she was living in exploded. But Karis—the other Pratt half sister—is nice and she came here with her sister’s baby, thinking Luke might be the baby’s father because he’d been married to her sister for a while. It turned out that he isn’t the baby’s father, but that’s how Luke and Karis got together and now Luke and Karis are adopting the baby and getting married tonight.”

If that story wasn’t a distraction, Eden didn’t know what was.

But it wasn’t distraction enough because Eve managed to go full circle and ended with, “So Cam will be there tonight and you’ll get to see him again.”

“I don’t care about seeing him,” Eden insisted, lying through her teeth when the truth was, she’d been looking out every window she passed since she got up this morning, hoping to catch sight of him. And failing. And being inexplicably disappointed each time.

“I don’t kno-oh,” Eve said, making two syllables and a song out of know. “I think there’s more going on here than you want to tell and I’ll bet it’s an old crush.”

Eden rolled her eyes again, shook her head and said, “If only you knew how wrong you are.”

At least about there being an old crush.

But a new crush?

Well, maybe not exactly a crush.

But as much as Eden hated to admit it even to herself, deep down there might be brewing the tiniest hint of something a little like that.

The wedding of Luke Walker and Karis Pratt was held at the Pratt family home. The large house had been built by the Pratt’s maternal great-grandfather, and was where the first seven Pratt siblings had all grown up.

The ceremony was short, sweet and traditional, with the bride beautiful in a white suit composed of a fitted jacket and skirt, and the groom handsome in a navy-blue suit of his own.

But not as handsome as Cam—that was what Eden thought as her gaze drifted to him from the moment he stepped up as one of the groomsmen. He and Luke’s brothers—who were also groomsmen—wore blue suits, as well. And despite the fact that the Walker men were indisputably a good-looking lot, to Eden, Cam had them all beat by a mile.

Which was not something she wanted to think.

But she just couldn’t help it. Any more than she could take her eyes off him from the wedding’s very beginning to the pronouncement of man and wife, and the kiss.

The kiss that made her recall her own thoughts about what it might have been like to kiss Cam the night before.

A recollection she shunned the minute she realized she was having it.

When the ceremony was over, congratulations were given during an informal receiving line. Then champagne began to flow, and an elaborate buffet of food and a three-tiered cake were unveiled.

After a full day of making headway putting her new house in order, Eden had showered and shampooed her hair, and slipped into a dress she’d worn to the last wedding she’d attended. It was a fairly simple, knee-length silk halter dress in an exotic print of black, brown and beige. The dress wasn’t tight but it did follow her curves nicely and bare her shoulders.

On her feet she wore her sassy and very pointy black satin mules with the jeweled flowers, golden rope cutouts and thin three-inch heels.

She’d scrunched her damp hair just enough to give it a little added fullness without frizz, added a taupe-colored eye shadow to her blush and mascara regimen, and as a finishing touch she’d slipped several hoop bracelets over one wrist.

All together she’d been pleased with how she’d looked and had left home feeling comfortable and confident.

That had been reinforced at the Pratt house where old friends and acquaintances marveled at the changes in her. But although she didn’t understand it, she discovered as the evening wore on that the approval—and maybe admiration—of only one person was what she craved. And that person didn’t come anywhere near her.

Maybe things with Cam weren’t as improved as they’d seemed the night before, she fretted as the post-receiving-line mingling got underway and Cam kept his distance. Or maybe she had read more into the night before than had actually existed. Maybe having granted her amnesty still didn’t mean that they were going to be friendly. Maybe the best that amnesty afforded her was a cease-fire and she should just be glad for that because that was really what was important in order for them to coexist in the small town.

But still, each time their glances met and he only nodded or raised a chin at her, she wished for more.

Why that should be the case, she didn’t know. And what more she wanted from him, she also didn’t know. She just wanted more.

She wanted it so much that it was alarming and it took the fun out of the occasion for her.

In fact, she was feeling so disheartened as she turned from the buffet table with a slice of wedding cake, that rather than joining any of the other guests who were chatting while they ate theirs, she went to the entryway and sat alone, one step up from the bottom.

And that was when Cam chose to seek her out. One bite into the cake and there he was, sitting next to her.

“Tired of talking?” he asked in greeting.

“No, not at all,” she answered with a tinge more eagerness than she would have liked. But she was worried that now that he’d finally approached her, he might leave her to solitude if she didn’t convince him otherwise. Then, as an excuse for exiling herself, she added, “Pointy shoes. I needed to sit for a minute.”

“Ah,” he said, in acknowledgment.

That left a lull Eden didn’t know how to fill because her mind suddenly went blank.

“So are the lights still on at your place?” he asked.

Okay, not a great conversation starter but it was more than she’d been able to come up with.

“They are, thanks,” she said. “And you’ll be happy to know that I found my flashlight today, too. Just in case.”

Ugh. She knew she wasn’t helping matters. But she just couldn’t get her brain to function.

Which was why all she could think to say next was, “Nice wedding.”

“I thought so, too.”

“Eve told me Karis is your half sister.”

“Mmm-hmm. There were two of them but the other one died.”

“That’s what Eve said. It looks as if Karis fits in, though. She seems like one of the family.”

“Yeah, we all think of her that way now. Even me,” he added in a bit of an aside that drew Eden’s glance from the bride in the distance to Cam.

“Even you?”

“I wasn’t too sure about Karis when she first showed up. Her sister had come around before that and Lea was trouble. Plus I guess I learned not to be too trusting working in Detroit. But Karis won me over.”

“Detroit?” Eden said, pleased to have something to build on. “Don’t tell me you put a branch of your family’s dry cleaning business there.”

“No, we all left the dry cleaning business to Mara to run here in Northbridge. I was a cop in the heart of Detroit.”

“Really? How did you get there, doing that?” she asked as if this was the first she’d heard of it when, in fact, Luke Walker had told her that the day before at the police station.

He shrugged one shoulder. “I left home to go to college—” He paused and there was challenge in the arch of his right eyebrow. “Did you want to make a crack about how surprised you are that I went to college?”

“No,” she said, chastising him with her tone for even thinking that. “Did you go to college in Detroit?”

“Uh-uh. From here I went to Mesa College, in Grand Junction, Colorado. I finished with a degree in business administration, didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I joined the army.”

“You did?” she said.

“That surprises you?”

She could tell he was still on the verge of taking offense and she chose her words carefully. “Yes, a little. You said you hated anything inflexible—like physics. I guess I wouldn’t have thought you would volunteer for something so regimented.”

“I may have exaggerated when it came to physics to sound cool,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Anyway, I was an MP—military police—”

Eden smiled. “I know what an MP is.”

He answered her smile with one of his own. “Just wanted to be clear,” he said and she realized he’d been teasing her. Then he continued, “Anyway, I liked being a cop and when I got out of the service some other things led me to Detroit and I got on the force there.”

Some other things led him to Detroit….

Apparently he didn’t want to say what those other things were—which would have answered her question about why he’d ended up in Detroit.

But Eden thought that this new relationship they were forming was too tenuous to push for what he wasn’t willing to disclose, so she pretended not to notice and said, “How long were you a cop in Detroit?”

“Four years.”

“And then you came back here to be a cop?”

“I did something else there for a little while. Six months. Then I came back here.”

He also didn’t seem to want to get into any details about what else he’d done for those six months and again she thought it unwise to pry. So instead she said, “And can you be a trusting cop here?”

Something about that made him smile and she liked the way it looked a little too much. “Things here are pretty straightforward. But when Karis came around after her sister had conned us out of money, she took some heat from me. It all worked out, though, and you’re right—she has become one of the family. And she deserves a nice wedding.”

That neatly tied up what had launched this conversation but he’d left her with more questions than she’d started with and Eden wasn’t sure where to go from there.

Cam took the lead again, however, and said, “What about you? Hawaii?” he asked, as if it were the moon.

Eden nodded and took her cue from him to talk about her path out of and back to Northbridge. “I went from here to college in Philadelphia. I thought I wanted to be a doctor so I was taking biology and anatomy courses with art as my elective. There was one other person—a guy—who was taking the same combination of anatomy and art and we became friends. He wanted to be a forensic sculptor and the more he talked about it the more interested I became in forensic art, too. That was how I got into this line of work.”

“And Hawaii?”

“Forensic art is a freelance business. I traveled all over doing it. A case took me to Hawaii and—” She decided she wasn’t at a stage herself where she wanted to get into anything too personal, so she opted to omit details of her own. “—I ended up moving there as my home base.”

“But now you’re back and getting out of the forensic art game,” he said, obviously fishing.

“It was time for a change all the way around. I’m ready for small town life again and being close to family.”

“Rumor has it that you never even came to visit,” he said.

“I never came to Northbridge, no. I’m sure you know that my folks and my aunt and uncle took over a freight business in Billings just after I left for college and moved there. So when I’ve visited, it’s been to Billings. My sisters and cousins would meet me there rather than me coming here. Or everybody would come to see me in Hawaii. When you live in paradise and for no more than the price of a plane ticket your family can spend weeks at a time visiting, you get a lot of company.”

He smiled once more. “I’ll bet.”

“So it isn’t as if I haven’t been close to my family all this time. But now I want to close the mileage gap, too.”

“But still no more forensic art after this age progression on Celeste?”

Eden shook her head. “I’m contracted to do the illustrations for a series of children’s book a friend has just sold for publication. At this point painting fairies with peanut butter on their wings has more appeal. So as soon as I finish your job and get the house situated, that’s my new career.”

They hit another lull and Eden realized she hadn’t had any more of her cake since Cam had come on the scene so she took a bite and then said, “This is good, you should have a piece.”

“Cut me a chunk of yours and I’ll eat it with my fingers.”

“Who says I want to share?” she countered even as she did as she’d been told.

He took the confection from the end of her fork when she held it up to him.

Eden watched his long, thick fingers in action, unwillingly picturing that same big hand wielding the towel to dry his hair the previous night and feeling a flutter like butterfly wings in her stomach.

And the flutters weren’t halted by the sight of him putting the cake into his mouth—something that she’d never found sexy before and yet now somehow did.

Maybe this is some kind of sudden reawakening, she thought. Maybe grief had put her awareness of the opposite sex and of all things arousing in a coma for the last year and now, out of nowhere, she was just emerging from it. And maybe that reawakening made her supersensitive to the smallest, most inconsequential things. About the first man who happened to cross her path. Not about Cam Pratt in particular, but just about any man.

Although no other men—and there was no shortage of good-looking ones at the wedding—had caused it.

But she didn’t want to analyze her feelings too closely because she needed a reason that didn’t indicate an attraction to him to explain being turned-on by watching him eat cake with his fingers.

“You’re right, this is good cake,” he judged when he’d finished his portion.

Eden had taken a forkful of her own to buy herself some time to think of what to talk about next. She was spared when Eve came from the living room into the entry.

“Do you still want me to be the clock-watcher? Because if you do, I’m here to tell you it’s eleven,” she said to Eden after exchanging a few pleasantries with Cam.

Eden cast him a glance and explained. “I told her to keep an eye on the time and make sure I didn’t stay past eleven. I’ve been up since before dawn working on the house and I thought you’d probably want to get an early start tomorrow on the age progression, so I need some sleep.”