The kindergarten playground at school was separate from the larger playground and backed up to a fence that separated that yard from Main Street. Shaded by large trees and bordered by a grassy lawn, the climbing structures were crowded with children as Kate and her fellow teacher, Janice Brinker stood together, watching the shrieking children chase each other around the yard. Janice had a few years of teaching on Kate and was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way. But she’d come from Chicago and dressed like a big city girl and Kate adored her.
“I heard,” Janice told Kate, looking glum. “Bette Moynihan s coming back earlier than she expected. In two days? Wasn’t your gig supposed to be until November?”
Kate nodded with a sigh. “It’s a miracle. I guess her mother’s broken leg healed faster than they thought.”
“I’ll miss you. So will they,” Janice said, staring off at the children on the playground. “Unemployment sucks. Maybe they’ll find you another spot in another classroom.”
Kate sighed. “A day here and there, I suppose. But that’s not going to pay my rent.”
“What will you do?”
“Apply elsewhere. Maybe another city. Maybe Missoula.” She shrugged, leaning her head back to absorb some sun. “There’s a whole dating pool there I haven’t dipped a toe into for years.”
Janice chuckled. “But leave Marietta? Your whole family is here.”
Kate nodded, wondering if that wasn’t part of the problem. “Maybe no one’s meant to be in one place too long. Especially a town this small. This place is feeling a little crowded suddenly.”
Cutter, wearing his neon-green cast, now covered with drawings and happy faces, darted around the swings, playing tag with two other boys. “You’d never guess that two nights ago, he was in the ER”
“Lucky he didn’t break worse than his arm, from the sound of it,” Janice said as they watched Cutter Scott collide with another boy in true Cutter fashion. The boys fell into a pile and rolled on the thick protective matting, laughing.
“Boys,” Kate said.
“They will be,” Janice agreed.
“What about Caylee?” Kate asked. “She seems...quiet.” The child was sitting by herself in the sandbox drawing circles in the sand.
“She is. Sweet girl. But I think she’s hungry for something. Female attention would be my guess. She’s the only girl in a very male household, you know. All that testosterone...”
Yes, she knew. Her own pheromones were still tingling in reaction.
“Cutter’s dad had just left a teachers’ conference with me the other night when Cutter took his fall. I missed the whole thing. That was the first time I’d met him. He was, um, nice.” Janice leaned against a concrete wall with a sigh. “And he’d give Charlie Hunnam a run for his money.”
Kate shot a wide-eyed look at her.
“What? I’m married, not blind,” Janice said with a chuckle. “I had to force myself not to gawk at him.”
Kate grinned and looked away. She knew the feeling. But she wasn’t ready to talk about Finn yet. She was hardly even ready to think about him. “You and a thousand other girls.”
“You met him. You drove him to the hospital, I hear. You don’t agree?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but one of the school secretaries, Mabel Kramer, poked her head out the door of Janice’s classroom just then and called, “Phone call in the office for you, Janice. It’s your husband. He says your cell is turned off.”
Janice glanced down at her phone, which was, indeed, set on mute. “Darn! I’d better go call him. He’s been waiting all week to hear about a promotion at work. You okay here for a couple of minutes alone?”
“Sure. Go on.”
After Janice disappeared into her classroom, Kate took a stroll around the playground. The children weren’t the only ones who loved this time of day. Kate appreciated the break and the warm September breeze that tugged at the nearby trees as her thoughts strayed to the man who had been barging into her mind like this for days.
She didn’t need Janice to remind her about Finn Scott’s uncanny effect on womankind. He didn’t even have to try to look hot, which was, she supposed, part of his appeal. His sexiness was effortless and unaffected. Women simply couldn’t help themselves around him. God knows, the other night, she couldn’t.
She’d allowed him to breach her defenses. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. Case in point: the womanly parts of her that had ached for hours after she’d left.
For instance, just remembering that knee-buckling kiss—right now—caused her nipples to harden into tight little buds.
Stop that right now! Stop thinking about him!
She gave her long hair an irritated flick over her shoulder. Think of something else. Think of Cree Malone and the tongue lashing he gave your cheek.
Disturbingly, that worked.
Better.
She let out a breath. After all, she’d already allowed herself to lose several perfectly good nights’ sleep over their little encounter the other night and the confusing way things had ended. Far better to nurture her anger with him than to allow those feelings to dissipate in a haze of unwanted lust.
And thoughts of his mouth sliding against her skin.
She blinked and throttled her thoughts. For all her hastiness, possibly jumping to wrong conclusions the other night, the problem, she decided, was that she needed closure. A once-and-for-all, get-him-out-of-your-heart kind of closure. Anyone who knew her well knew she wasn’t a wrap-things-up-neatly kind of girl with men, and usually kept things light enough that no such messiness was required.
But if she were being honest, the Kate that never needed closure, the serial dater, the girl who inspired interventions, had evolved from the girl who still felt bruised by Finn’s leaving six years ago. And deep down she feared that feeling of not being good enough might never go away.
Two five-year-olds darted in front of her, practically colliding with her and nearly took her out. “What speed do we use on the playground?” she called to them.
“Slow speed,” they answered in one voice, and immediately put their heads together to conjure up more trouble.
“That’s right...” Kate murmured, allowing her gaze to wander across the sun-warmed heads of the children to the nearby road.
That’s when the car parked across the street caught her attention. The black town car had tinted windows that made it impossible to see inside. All but the back window, which was halfway down. Inside the car, an elegant-looking dark-haired woman wearing expensive dark glasses sat, her gaze pinned on Caylee. She looked like she might have gotten lost from a funeral procession, in her little black dress and as out of place in her town car on the streets of Marietta as a greyhound was at a rodeo.
Kate took a couple of steps toward the fence to get a closer look, which drew the woman’s attention. She made eye contact with Kate for a long moment before she seemed to recognize her. And suddenly, Kate recognized her right back.
Melissa.
Finn’s ex-wife in a town car, looking like she’d stepped off the pages of Vanity Fair. Kate had only seen her once, walking down the street in Missoula, months after she and Finn had broken up. She’d been minding her own business, when she’d practically walked into them on the sidewalk. Melissa had been very pregnant and Finn had his hand on the small of his wife’s back, the way he once had done with her.
The three of them stopped short, right there on the street, speechless, frozen. Awkward didn’t even cover the moment. She remembered him fumbling Melissa’s name and Kate remembered wishing the sidewalk would swallow her up right there as the woman possessively tightened her arm around his. Kate had mumbled something about the weather, while Finn’s expression thundered up like a dark cloud.
And then, the encounter was over. She moved on. So did they.
Until now.
But the woman in the town car? That was Melissa all right, though she looked nothing like the sad woman Finn had described the other night. The woman who had passed out on his couch and abandoned her children. This woman looked pulled together. Wealthy.
Arrogant.
Kate gripped the wrought iron fence in one hand and Melissa lifted her Audrey Hepburn chin in a little gesture of recognition, an unfriendly half-smile tilting her mouth. And then...and then she waved five fingers at Kate in a little ‘take that, Bitch’ toodle-loo. The window rolled up and the town car pulled away, disappearing down the street.
Cold seeped into her, despite the warm day. Oh, no, she didn’t.
But she had. Girl, you have just messed with the wrong person.
Somehow, Kate had imagined a fair fight between Finn and his ex. A fight that he could, and probably would, win. But this woman, this new version of Melissa, had landed, somehow, in a pile of money. And that, she feared, was very bad news for him. Money talked in a courtroom. Money that he didn’t have.
Worse than that, even, was the possibility that this custody battle Melissa was about to wage on him, was just another game to her and had nothing to do with her wanting her children back. And everything to do with winning. And that possibility made her sick to her stomach.
“You’re pale as a ghost, Kate. Are you all right?” Janice asked, appearing at her side.
No. Suddenly, she wasn’t okay at all. She dragged her gaze away from the disappearing town car. “I’m just, um...warm. I’m just going to run in and grab a bottle of water. Did you get good news? The phone call?”
Janice’s face lit up. “As a matter of fact, yes. He got the promotion. So proud of him. He couldn’t wait ’til he got home to tell me.”
Kate smiled, happy for her. What would her life be like with someone to share things with? Good things. Big and small things. The very idea seemed out of her sphere of reference. How many years had passed since she’d shared anything of herself with anyone, she wasn’t even sure she remembered how.
Janice bumped Kate’s arm affectionately. “I haven’t given up on finding someone for you, you know.”
Kate backed away from her, saying, “You always were a sucker for lost causes.”
“...says the gorgeous redhead,” Janice scoffed.
“Just to ease your matchmaker’s burden, be advised that I’m on a dating hiatus. So, look no further. Men are off my list.”
“Hey,” she warned, with a straight face. “Don’t get crazy on me, now.”
“Thanks for the warning, but you may be too late.”
She left Janice laughing as she ducked inside the classroom, digging her cell phone from her pocket. She dialed her attorney father’s cell.
“Katydid!” She could hear the pleased smile in his voice. “To what do I owe the honor of a mid-day phone call? Everything all right?”
In the background, she could hear the bustle of what sounded like the courthouse. She’d caught him away from his office, which wasn’t unusual. “Everything is just fine,” she assured him. “I’m sorry to bother you. Do you have a second to talk, Daddy?”
“More than a second. Always. What’s up?”
“Okay. I need your legal-eagle opinion on something. It’s a Family Law matter. A custody case. I...um...” She hesitated, almost afraid to say what she was thinking out loud. “Do you know a judge up in Missoula named Corillo?”
***
Finn was knee deep in mud that afternoon, pulling a broken fencepost from a mud-filled hole when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but it was local, so he pulled off one glove and answered. “Hello?”
Silence on the other end. “Hello?” he repeated.
“Just so you know,” the very female voice on the other end said, “kissing me like that changes nothing.”
Kate. His heart stuttered and he couldn’t help the automatic grin that curved his mouth remembering that kiss. And the way her arms slid around his neck. And her knees buckled. Most of all, he liked that he wasn’t the only one still thinking about that kiss. “Okay,” he said, waiting for more.
“And I still hate you.”
That wasn’t what he was hoping for. “Okay.”
“Just so we’re clear.”
“Then why’d you call? And how’d you find my number? Not that I mind you did...”
“I have my ways. I just thought you should know, I saw your ex-wife earlier today. She was watching the kids on the school playground from across the street.”
A shot of cold straightened his spine. Damn the woman. “You sure it was her?”
A pause stretched between them that he couldn’t interpret. “Yes. I’m sure. She was in a town car. Looking very...well...let’s just say she’s not hurting at all for money.”
Something inside him took a plunge. He should have known she’d land well. But what was she doing here in town? Stalking the kids? Trying to figure out how to contact them? Why didn’t she just come to him? Or maybe she was watching Kate. She’d never gotten over her jealousy of her.
He blinked and stared down at the muddy hole he was standing in. He tugged his foot from the goo of the hole.
“What’s that sound?” Kate asked.
“Mud. Winning.”
“Oh.”
An awkward silence stretched between them. A thousand things filtered through his brain to say to her, but none of them managed to make the cut and find his tongue. He pictured her at the other end of the line, waiting for him to speak, and finding herself similarly speech challenged. He wondered if she was thinking about what he was thinking about. His lower half stirred at the thought.
“Carry on, then,” Kate said at last. “I just thought you should know.”
“Thanks. I...appreciate the heads up.”
“All right then...”
Another pause, but she didn’t hang up. “Kate?”
“Yeah?” she said quickly.
“Do you really hate me?”
Pause. “When the rational part of my brain is functioning,” she said. “I mean...yes.”
A smile edged the hard line of his mouth. He could almost hear her twirling her red hair around her finger, contemplating her next smart aleck retort. He glanced up at the sprawl of land surrounding him—his land—and wished she was standing beside him. “I’ve missed you, Kate.”
“Oh, hey,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m getting another call. Gotta run.”
“Okay. See you around?”
The next sound he heard was the dial tone.
***
That evening, Kate joined her step-mother, Jaycee, on a sunset ride on her parents’ ranchette, called Lane’s End. With her father out of town on a deposition in Helena, she and Jaycee had saddled up two of her step-sister, Olivia’s, gentlest horses and taken the trail through the north pasture toward the glassy smooth Yellowstone River.
It wasn’t often that Kate rode anymore, even though, conveniently, Olivia ran a riding school out of her parents’ stable. Riding here would always be easy to manage, but her life had gotten caught up in a relentless cycle of work, more work and the long string of men she’d wasted her spare time on dating these last few years. In fact, now that she thought about it, she’d spent very little time just enjoying this beautiful place.
Which felt, at this moment, like a crime.
“I like it here. The kids like it,” Finn had said. Of course he did. What’s not to like? She’d be hard pressed to find any country more beautiful than this. But sharing her hometown with Finn was another matter altogether.
Except for the phone call, she’d had no other contact with him since the other night, which had given her more than enough time to obsess over every twisty turn the evening had taken. More than enough time to realize that her accusations about him setting her up couldn’t have been true. He couldn’t possibly have known they’d end up at the ER that night, nor could he have planned to put those papers where she could accidentally find them. And if such a thing had, belatedly, occurred to him-that she had the potential to help him fight his ex-wife’s custody case by fake-marrying him-she couldn’t exactly blame him for that.
The kiss, on the other hand...she could blame him for that kiss. Even now, as she remembered how he’d teased her into that blunder with that irresistible smell of his, talking her down from the high horse she’d climbed up on with the nip of his teeth, while demolishing her perfectly good reasons for hating him by making her want him.
She couldn’t want him.
But she did.
She’d lain awake, trying to imagine a life in Marietta, where they lived parallel lives that never intersected. But this valley was too small for that. Too small for both of them to share this place with all their unresolved ‘feelings’ still floating around like little predator drones, lying in wait to ambush them when they least expected it.
Seeing him again—kissing him—had made her itch for something she’d forgotten she’d ever wanted.
She’d have to be crazy to get in the middle of that fight he was about to wage with Melisssa. Or masochistic.
Or ...crazy.
At least, that’s what the sensible right side of her brain was saying. The left side, the side that chronically had her rubbing shoulders with fallen angels, assigning a time stamp on men’s shelf-lives and was generally occupied contemplating her next scathingly brilliant debacle, was currently up to no good at all, thinking about saving Finn and his children from ‘that woman.’
She’d consulted, hypothetically, with her father about the situation and, knowing that particular judge, he’d agreed, in theory, with Finn’s attorney. About everything. Not that that had surprised her. Her father had only confirmed the trouble Finn was about to step into alone.
None of this was her problem. If they hadn’t run into each other, she’d still be blithely unaware of his predicament. But she wasn’t, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. About them. About her own pathetic attempt to forget him with a string of losers who couldn’t hold a candle to him.
She wasn’t in love with him. No, that had ended long ago. Whatever she felt for him could be summed up in two words—animal attraction. Because, despite everything, he could still make her burn and hate herself for that weakness later.
That would pass. Just as such feelings did with every other man she’d ever dated. Finn’s sell-by date had expired years ago and to stir up anything between them now would only be rehashing the good after the bad.
Wouldn’t it?
She sighed up at the peachy clouds that tinged the darkening blue sky ahead as she and Jaycee picked their way down a trail to the river where the horses could take a drink. Even now, the early September evening was still warm. They’d talked little on the ride and Kate knew that was Jaycee’s way of giving her the space she needed to figure out how to broach whatever topic had brought her here this evening.
After Kate’s own mother had died when she and Eve were still young, Jaycee and her daughter, Olivia, had come along a few years later, like a bright wish, to save them all from sadness. But Kate’s issues around secrets had started long before that, though, when she’d decided not to burden her father or Eve with things that might bring them sadness, to layer atop the loss all of them felt. And despite the fact that she could always count on Jaycee to listen and be a sounding board for them all, as the years passed, she found herself more and more protective of that happiness they’d managed to find. Which, in turn, mutated into an unhealthy tendency toward keeping secrets.
It was a problem she’d managed to mostly ignore until Finn came back. Now, it just felt...lonely.
At the river, they dismounted and let the horses drink and graze, simply ground tying them so they wouldn’t stray. She and Jaycee stretched out the kinks, then perched on a granite overhang and stared out across the valley. In the distance, the low profile of Marietta skimmed the horizon. To the east, the craggy Beartooth Mountains fingered up into the blue and the tips disappeared in low clouds.
“Did you ever think you’d end up here?” she asked Jaycee. “When you were younger?”
“Here, as in here? Or as in living the life I’m living?”
“Yeah,” Kate answered with a smile. “How did you know what choice was right for you?”
“I suppose when I was still married to Olivia’s father, I couldn’t have imagined this life. I’d made choices and thought I was just stuck with them. Turns out, I wasn’t.”
“I’ve always thought you were brave. That you must always have been brave.”
Jaycee shook her head, her long salt and pepper hair shining in the sun. “I became brave. I took my life back. My first husband...Olivia’s father, well...we were a bad match. When I finally got nerve enough to leave him, your father, who’d been widowed a few years already, gave me a job and the rest, as they say, is history. I just knew when I met him that he was the right choice for me. I fell in love with him and I just knew.”
Kate shook her head and plucked a piece of nearby bluestem grass and stuck it between her teeth. “But taking us all on as a package...my dad and Eve and me, I mean, that could have been awful. I’ve heard stories.”
“So had I,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t have asked for more than you girls gave me and each other. You were easy to love. No bravery involved. And don’t forget your father’s part. He gave Olivia his name and raised her as his own. I couldn’t have asked for a better father for her, or for you girls, for that matter. We’re all very lucky, I think.”
The river burbled by with a steady hum. Nearby, the comforting sound of the horses cropping up tufts of grass mingled with the rusty songs of the redwing-blackbirds as they chased bugs along the surface of the water. Beneath her hands, the granite still held the warmth of the day, but Kate had felt cold for days and she couldn’t shake the chill.
“What is it?” Jaycee asked, touching Kate’s hand. “Is something bothering you?”
“I...” she began, then took a deep breath. “I never told you about...someone.”
Those grey eyes sharpened. “Who?”
“A boy from college. I don’t know why I never told you, told any of you. To be honest, I wasn’t really planning to tell you about him now. I don’t know why I am.”
“Because you’re ready to, I suppose.”
Kate brushed her hair from her eyes, thinking of the way he’d looked at her and how incorrigible she’d been in return. “I was in love with him once. But...I guess I couldn’t quite believe my good luck, even then. I kept him a secret. From everyone.”
“Oh. Kate...” She squeezed her hand.
“I know. And I know you know what Olivia and Eve did last weekend. I know they had your full approval.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but they did tell me their concerns. We’ve all been a little worried about you.”
“Well, they weren’t right to get in the middle of my messed up life,” Kate said, “But I don’t think they were exactly wrong either.”
“Which is why you’re telling me this now?”
“No. I’m telling you now because... he’s here. That boy I loved once. Not a boy anymore. At all. I saw him the other day.” She told her about the ER debacle and the dinner after. “It wasn’t a date. He invited me over to thank me for helping them.”
“Not a date,” Jaycee said with a smile, marking the distinction down in an imaginary note-to-self. “Is he...still married?”
Kate shook her head. “Divorced.”
“And so...?”
“And so nothing. The night ended weirdly.” Her edit button on how exactly that night had ended was firmly in place. “But, that wasn’t exactly a surprise. That’s pretty much money in the bank where men and I are concerned. What surprised me was how hurt he looked when I admitted I’d never told anyone about him. We dated for almost a year.”
“You didn’t tell anyone because...?”
“I don’t know.” Kate stared at the river sliding by and the rocks visible below through the crisp, clear water. How long had they been there, those rocks? And did they move or had they been planted there for centuries? She glanced up at her step-mom. “Okay, that’s not true. I told him I’d kept our relationship a secret because I was afraid to jinx what we had. But now, I don’t think that was the reason. I don’t think I trusted what we had and I didn’t want to be caught making a huge mistake. Or admitting it to you guys. Turns out, making mistakes is practically a calling with me.”
“Ahh. That’s not true and you know it. And, besides, there are worse things, you know, than mistakes,” Jaycee said, patting her hand.
“There’s never learning from them...” Kate propped her elbows on her knees and scraped her hair back from her face with two hands and a sound of frustration. “I mean, I push people away. Men. Like...I’m afraid of anything good. The old, ‘I ditch them before they can ditch me,’ conundrum. Except for him, of course. That was the other way around.”
Jaycee shook her head in the way she did when she knew arguing with that kind of logic was illogical. “And how’s that working for you, darling?”
Kate sighed. “Not well.”
“So, he’s here now...why?”
“Apparently, he inherited Frank Greevy’s old place. But I could have something to do with his decision to stay in Marietta.”
“You could always ask him.”
“I don’t think we really tell each other the truth anymore.” She lifted her gaze to the woman who’d never steered her wrong, despite years of Kate believing that she knew better. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Do?”
“He might need my help.”
Jaycee sighed, brushing dust off her jean-covered thighs. “Do what your heart tells you to do. That’s the fun of it, Kate. Choosing. This, and not that. That, and not this? And if you make a choice, and you don’t like where it’s going, change it. It’s only when we stand still that we really fail. Because, Katie, choosing is all we have.”
***
Finn had promised the twins a special dessert at the Main Street Diner for their date night if they finished up their chores. Deprived as they were by a father who had no baking talents, they finished their chores in record time. So after a home cooked meal, they took an evening ride to the diner.
There, the hostess, a pretty, high-school girl named Emily, escorted them to an empty booth along the wall. The Main Street Diner, run by Paige Joffe, had been a fixture in Marietta for years and boasted hand-made desserts and kid-friendly food and he’d often eaten there when coming into town for coaching by his mentor, Frank Greevy.
A pang of sadness struck him as he remembered the man. An old bull-rider himself from the old days, Frank had coached some of the best bull-riders out there. He lived alone, never married and considered his boys family. Cancer had taken him after a long battle and Finn was certainly not the only rider to come back to visit him. He’d died surrounded by friends. Not in a million years did he ever expect the gift Frank had left him and he would be forever grateful to the man for thinking enough of him to leave him his precious land.
And someday, this place would belong to his children.
“What’s your pleasure, you two?” he asked once they’d settled into their places and cracked open the crayons and children’s menus. “Sundaes? Cupcakes? Apple pie?”
The kids crowed their answers simultaneously.
“Cupcake!”
“Sundae!”
Then, for good measure, they shouted, “Miss Candy!”
Finn froze as Cutter waved his casted arm at someone apparently sitting directly behind him, then started crawling across the table in greeting. He held out a staying hand and half-turned to look.
And there she was. How had he missed that red hair of hers?
Kate turned in her seat and tipped a small smile at the twins and him. He felt his stomach take a tumble at the sight of her. She had her hair up in a clip and was wearing her work clothes, a short-sleeved blue thing that made her eyes look a smoky grey-green.
With a half-eaten salad beside her, she had her laptop open to what looked like a Craigslist of job listings. She shut the laptop with a snap and he swallowed thickly, bracing himself for her to get up and walk away again in a rush of frigid air.
“So,” she said, in a voice more welcoming than he’d expected. “We meet again.”
“I guess Marietta is a smaller town than I thought.”
“Come and sit with us, Miss Candy? There’s room,” Caylee beseeched her. Cutter heartily agreed and slid over to make space for her on their side. “We’re having a special dessert!”
Finn held his breath, expecting a no, but she was apparently waiting for him to extend the invitation himself. He gestured to the seat beside the kids and said, “Please.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she gathered up her purse, laptop and food, and changed booths, sliding in beside Caylee, who wrapped an arm around Kate’s in a sweet hug.
“So, what’s the special occasion?” she asked the twins.
“It’s our date night,” Caylee said, matter-of-factly. “With Daddy because we have a new ranch. And because he can’t make cupcakes.”
“And we did all of our chores,” Cutter added.
Kate’s eyes flicked up to his and caught him grinning at his daughter.
“Date night? That is special,” Kate said.
Breathlessly, the kids launched into a description of what they would do with all that space at the ranch, and how they decided to share a room, even though they each had one. With wide-eyed fascination, Kate listened to every word, intermittently glancing at Finn, who could not take his eyes off her, or get over how smitten his children seemed to be with her.
He motioned to the waitress and quietly ordered for them as they got to the part about the cow they’d petted on the Double G Ranch this afternoon where he’d been negotiating for a bull, and described, in detail, the definition of chewing cud.
“Kind of like this?” she asked, chewing a bite of her own food, then mooing for them. That earned her a roar of giggles.
“But you need hay,” Cutter said and Kate lifted her hands helplessly.
Dessert arrived and, like magic, the children fell silent, digging into their sweet treats. Finn, who had gotten a hot fudge sundae, dug beneath the whipped cream for a bite of chocolate.
She smiled up at him. “I’m glad we ran into each other,” she said, pushing salad around on her plate.
“Really? Me, too.” He was. He just wasn’t sure if he should be ducking or not. She might want to make good on that punch.
“I don’t know if you heard, but the teacher I’m subbing for is coming back early. Tomorrow, in fact. So, I suddenly find myself officially out of work.”
Hence, the job site on her laptop. “They’re crazy to lose you.”
“Stuff happens,” she said with a twitch of regret in her smile.
“So what’ll you do now?”
She shrugged. “I’ll have to apply elsewhere. The budget here in Marietta has tightened up. I’ll look out of town, I guess.”
Disappointment tightened his jaw. Just as he was getting here, she was leaving.
“But...in the meantime,” she began, “to be honest, I’ve done a lot of thinking about the other night at your place.”
Here comes the boom. “Really?”
“Yes. You cooked such a nice meal,” she said, meaningfully, glancing sideways at the kids who were watching the exchange, with sudden interest. “And I was thinking how sometimes, you leave things on your plate you wish you hadn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, trying to follow along. She had left food on her plate.
“And maybe you were a little hasty. And you didn’t even get to the dessert. You know what I mean?”
He squinted at her. Cutter nodded his agreement as he ate. “Daddy doesn’t make dessert.”
“Well, why don’t you get one?” Caylee asked, looking up with frosting on her nose.
“You’re absolutely right, Caylee. I will.” She snagged their waitress and pushed the remains of her salad away. “I’d like one of those, please,” she said, indicating Finn’s sundae. But to him, she said, “Because sometimes, a little chocolate is in order.”
“A little chocolate is always in order, in my opinion,” he said warily, delaying scooping a bite of his confection in his mouth. “You...want a bite of mine while you wait?”
She stared at him through a sweep of dark lashes as if she were trying to decide. But the moment stretched beyond a simple bite of chocolate sundae. She glanced pointedly at his children. “What I’m saying is...I might,” she suggested, finally, stealing a small bite from his sundae, “be able to assist you with the dessert you made—” she eyed Cutter and Caylee pointedly—“temporarily, that is. Just until the waiter in Missoula decides who gets which dessert.”
He handed her his spoon, glancing at his children who were happily wolfing down their sugary treats. His heart suddenly started pounding against his ribs. “What?”
“You see, I’ve given this a lot of thought, since I saw you last. About how some recipes can be accidentally messed up. You know, like when you should have added sugar but you added salt, instead?”
He nodded.
“Take cupcakes, for instance.” She slid her gaze again to the twins. “In the hands of the right baker, they can be so delicious. Everyone wants them. But sharing cupcakes can be difficult. If not downright impossible. Right?”
“Right!” Caylee agreed, scooting her plate away from Cutter.
He nodded, feeling heat crawl across his skin.
“And bad for the cupcakes, too,” she said. “Since cupcakes are so small and have no say over who gets to keep them.”
Caylee studied her half-eaten cupcake in a new light, then took another bite.
“So, you’re saying,” he began, slowly, “that the baker might be able to keep his cupcakes with the help of someone who had a fondness for his particular cupcakes.”
With an exaggerated nod, she handed him back his spoon. “Yeeess. A fill-in assistant baker, so to speak, to stand up for those cupcakes. Solely for their sake, of course. And only until she knew they were safe with the baker who had already worked so hard to make them.”
Finn leaned back in his seat, his heart in his throat. “But why would she do that—this assistant fill-in baker...for him?”
With a shrug, Kate said, “In the interest of fairness. And because she’s in between bakeries?” The waitress delivered her hot fudge sundae. She pulled the cherry off the top and popped it in her mouth. Around the delicacy, she added, “And because maybe she’s not really as nice as the first baker thinks. Her motives might have something to do with...well, payback for the third baker. For barging into her kitchen uninvited.” She smiled sweetly at him.
“Seriously?”
“Oh. She never jokes about dessert. Of course, that’s only if the baker truly wants her help. Through the front door.”
A disbelieving smile spread across his mouth. What she was offering, out of the blue, was nothing he could have imagined or anticipated and the reality of that stung his eyes. For the first time in days, he felt like he could breathe.
He leaned forward and braced his forearms on the table, knowing he was agreeing to venture into unknown waters by way of a questionable vessel. But he didn’t care. He’d take help any way he could get it. “I know for a fact that the baker would certainly and gratefully accept for the sake of his special cupcakes.”
“All right then. Done.” She took another bite of her sundae with a smile he couldn’t quite interpret. This Kate, this self-contained Kate who seemed to run hot and cold about him, was a mystery he wanted solved. He couldn’t get a handle on her or what her motives really were for helping him. Of course, he wanted to believe her willingness to help came from wanting to resolve their differences and find her way back to him. But simple had never been her M.O. And over time, she’d only gotten more complicated. Whether or not, in the short month he had, he could change her heart about him, one thing he knew for sure—his children would be safe with her.
Cutter, who had found the bottom of his sundae, suddenly shifted his gaze between the two adults with a questioning look. “Who is this baker, anyway?”