“What’s going on out here?” Leda strode out of Eric’s barn-house dressed in her usual outfit of sundress and worn boots. Jackson, the old dog who technically belonged next door, followed her, woo-wooing and wagging his tail.
“I’m trying to put Hera down and it sounds like someone’s being murdered with a dull chainsaw. Oh.”
“Leda Plett, meet Madeleine Cash and Cynthia Henley,” said Chad with a grunt. There was a price for all those curves and his lower back was paying it.
Maddie clutched him around the neck with one hand and held out the other. “So you’re Eric’s Leda. We’ve heard so much about you.”
“It’s all true,” said Leda. “Whatever it is.”
“Good to see you again, Leda,” said Cynthia. “Need a lot of security here, do you? I’d have thought Cujo over there would be more than enough.”
“Sorority sister with a sense of humor,” Leda fired back. “Or should I call you Cyn? See?” She tapped her temple. “Mind like a steel trap.”
“Maddie rolled her ankle,” explained Chad, flinching as the woman snaked a tickling hand up his chest.
“I think it’s broken.” She wiggled the limb back and forth, identifying it as a mild sprain, at worst. “It hurts when I move it.”
“Don’t move it, then,” said Leda. “Who wears do-me heels to a farm, anyway?”
He heard a muffled snort. He looked at Cynthia, who had a hand over her mouth.
“You and Cindy are singing the same song,” said Maddie, morosely.
“I said nothing!” protested Cynthia.
But this time, the glance she exchanged with Leda was a little less icy.
Good. If Leda and Cynthia didn’t get along, the next few weeks would be even more stressful.
Leda followed them to his house where Chad gratefully lowered Maddie onto the couch.
“Thank you, gallant prince,” said Maddie, managing to smear a kiss onto his cheek before he got away. Her top had shifted and before she adjusted it, Chad got a glimpse of the skin at her side. More than a glimpse, given the low-rider jeans she was wearing. Spray-tanned and gym-toned, very nice, overall.
Moles? Not that he could see.
He wiped the lipstick off his face, surprised at his lack of disappointment. So, Maddie probably wasn’t his dream girl, either. Whatever.
“Like what you see, cowboy?” she purred at him.
Cynthia opened up one of the coolers she’d brought with her, fished out a small, ziplocked package of ice and tossed it at her stepsister.
“Ow! What was that for?” Maddie complained.
“Ice,” said Leda, nodding solemnly. “Good idea, Cynthia. Very necessary in cases like this. Right, Chad?”
“Uh, right.”
Leda put her hands on her hips and waggled the cell phone she was using as a baby monitor. “I’ve got about an hour before the fruit of my loins starts squawking. Let’s start tasting.”
“I’ll have a cosmo,” said Maddie.
A pained expression flitted across Cynthia’s face but before she could say anything, Eric came through the door.
Chad quickly repeated the introductions and explanations, while Cynthia busied herself at the table, setting out bottles and mixers and small containers of garnishes. She spread colored index cards out in front of her, with what looked like recipes on them.
Organized, prepared, professional.
“A signature beverage can set the tone of an event,” she began, looking at each of them in turn. “I thought we’d create something special to tie in the Fixer-Upper theme with that of Building Tomorrow and Anders Run, which is where it all began.”
Chad marvelled at the thought, the heart, she’d put into this. The sisters might be flakes, but he’d chosen well with DMC Solutions. He’d chosen well with Cynthia Henley, who had it all under control.
“I suggest a screwdriver, in honor of the construction trade,” she continued, “an apple drink because of the orchard and a honey drink, because of the bees, which are also a symbol of new beginnings.”
“No cosmo?” Maddie pouted.
“Aren’t you supposed to be part of the presentation?” asked Eric. He looked between Cynthia and Chad, frowning.
“She’s working on... other things,” Cynthia said quickly. “She sure is,” muttered Leda.
Cynthia began mixing drinks, smiling behind the sheet of blond hair. It lit him up inside, that smile. It was... real. Or something.
“The drinks are just drinks,” she said, handing the first one around. “It’s what we name them that will make them ours.”
He liked the way she said ours. Unlike Eric’s attitude, it made him feel like he was in a partnership, like he had someone on his side.
“What do you suggest?” he said, when she gave him his drink. Her hand, when he brushed it with his, was cool from the chilled glassware.
“I’ve got some ideas,” she said quietly. “But I wanted to hear yours, first.”
Maddie was arguing the merits of cosmos with Leda and Eric and for a moment, Chad and Cynthia were in a private conversation, a world within a world.
“What if yours are better?”
“Oh, they will be. I was being polite.”
She lifted an eyebrow and he felt something in his stomach tip sideways.
“How do you know?” he asked, unable to resist the teasing in her voice.
“The Stafford Screwdriver, complete with orange slices on wooden toothpicks stacked to look like lumber.”
“Not bad,” he said. “What else?”
She narrowed her eyes at the challenge.
“Anders Apple Sangria, with sliced apples and sparkling white wine. Served in mason jars for a rustic look.”
“A girly drink, but okay. What about the honey one?”
She paused.
“Chad’s Kiss.” Her voice was hoarse. “You know, like the Mocha Kiss dessert at Grey’s.
She hadn’t taken her eyes off him, or even moved for that matter.
“Good marketing. What would you put in it?”
She swallowed. “It’s really just lemonade and vodka. With a kiss of honey. For sweetness. You know.”
She was trembling slightly now. He wanted to pull her down onto his lap, soothe her like an anxious young horse.
“Why Chad’s Kiss?”
What had made her come up with a name like this, to think about him and kissing in the same phrase? Did she feel the same odd pull that he did?
Or was it because of his reputation? Shame twisted lightly in him for all the careless kisses he’d bestowed over his lifetime, for all the throw-away love he’d made with women who thought as little of him as he did of them.
Then he thought of something else.
“Why not Eric’s Kiss?”
“What are you two talking about over there?” Maddie called from the couch. “I’m ready for my next drink.”
Cynthia tensed to move, but Chad caught her wrist. Suddenly the answer was more important to him than anything else in his life. She hesitated, then smiled gently at him.
“They’re your bees, aren’t they?”
Cynthia watched as Chad’s truck pulled out of the yard with Austin Sweet from next door at the wheel, on the way to the emergency room. She’d deliberately been light-handed with the alcohol, but somehow Maddie managed to get drunk enough to stumble down the porch, turning her mildly sprained ankle into an obviously broken ankle.
She shuddered. They’d packed the rapidly swelling limb in enough bags of iced berries that it would probably be frozen solid by the time they got there. Melinda Sweet, the nurse next door, had come over immediately, taken one look and informed her husband that tonight he would be playing the role of ambulance driver.
Chad had gone along. Eric and Leda had walked back to their place.
Cynthia, not ready to get behind the wheel yet herself, had been forgotten on Chad’s porch.
“Hey, blondie, come on over.” Leda’s voice carried easily over the night air from where she stood outside Eric’s sprawling home. “I’ve got coffee.”
“Okay,” she called back.
Leda met her on the veranda, her sleepy daughter bobbing on her hip.
“Sit,” she said, pointing to a chair. “It’s too nice to be inside.”
A cup of coffee sat steaming on a small table next to the chair and Cynthia took a grateful sip. Although she was several years older than Leda, she couldn’t help feeling a little intimidated. The girl had her own style, spoke her mind, no matter what anyone else thought, and made no apologies.
“So, your sister’s got a thing for Chad, huh?”
Cynthia started. “Stepsister. And no. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s none of my business.”
“Okay.” Leda looked up into the starlit sky. “There’s two stepsisters, right? Is the other one just as nice as the first? Oh, tell me there’s an evil stepmother, too. Please! It would be so perfect.”
Perfect for whom?
“DeeDee and Maddie aren’t bad, just spoiled.” She forced herself to laugh. “Joanie, my stepmom, is wonderful.”
“Fine, don’t tell me. Are you over Eric now?”
“Gosh, Leda, you don’t pull your punches, do you?”
Leda shrugged, then patted her daughter’s back. “Life’s short. You gotta smell the flowers, eat dessert first, have sex on a train, tell the truth. Fill in the blank.”
Cynthia leaned back in her chair and let her eyes soften into the vast darkness. “Sex on a train?”
Leda gave a wicked, growly chuckle. “On a train, in a plane, in a house, with a mouse. I read a lot of kids’ books these days. And I have a lot of sex.”
“Thanks for sharing.”
“Never mind. I can see how it is.”
“How what is?”
“You’re totally over Eric. It’s Chad who’s got your skirts in a twist now.”
“Wuh-what?” Cynthia’s voice came out in a squeak. “He does nuh-not! Eric was just an adolescent cuh-cuh-crush, nothing more. I never even nuh-noticed Chad back then. Now he’s a... a business associate. That’s it. Anyway, as you said, Maddie’s got him in her sights, so it wouldn’t matter if my heart was bleeding all down my sleeve for him, he’d never notice.”
Cynthia stopped, breathing hard. She hadn’t meant to go off on Leda like that. Where was her head?
“I know just how you feel. Those Anders boys can put one heck of a knot in the old heart strings.” said Leda, smiling gently. “To think I once considered Tasering you.”
“I don’t... I’m not... you had a Taser?”
“Bet your boots, you love-sick puppy. Now go home.” Leda took the empty coffee mug from Cynthia’s hand and flounced inside, her sundress flickering back and forth behind her like a sail.
“I’m not in love with Chad!” Cynthia called after her.
The wind happened to catch her words just right, picking up a few and bouncing them back to her.
Love... Chad... love... Chad...
She ran to her car, started it up and peeled out of the yard, trying to escape a message that was ridiculously wrong.
Impossibly wrong.
When she got home, Cynthia pulled her little car to a stop and jumped out, then leaned back against the car door. She had to get a grip. Leda’s words didn’t mean anything. It had been an eventful day, it was late and she was tired.
She quickly carried her supplies and notes into the barn. She’d summarize and organize in the morning.
But once in the quiet of her own sanctuary, she braced herself against her desk and let the thoughts come. And with them, worries.
How was she going to finish everything, with Maddie out of commission now too? It was bad enough with DeeDee gone. Now, every dinner-dance detail would fall to her and she still had the website and social media package to complete.
Who was she kidding? She’d always expected to be doing most of the work. But like Charlie Brown, running at Lucy’s football, she always hoped that this time, this time, things would turn out differently.
Wasn’t that somebody’s definition of insanity?
She always ended up doing all the work. Now it was just official. It might even be easier now, with both sisters physically out of the way. Maybe now Joanie would accept that her plan for her daughters wasn’t working, for anyone.
Cynthia pushed herself up and ran a hand through her hair. She should go to bed. Morning would come all too soon. She set her notes out on her desk, so she’d remember where to begin but couldn’t seem to focus properly.
Fatigue and worry weren’t the only things she was feeling.
There was a strange exhilaration too.
Chad hadn’t been making out with Maddie. In fact, he hadn’t looked interested in her at all. And the way he’d looked at her when she was describing his drink... Chad’s Kiss...
She hadn’t imagined that, had she?
Those deep blue eyes, looking at her, not through her or over her but really at her, like he saw who she really was... a girl could get used to that.
She didn’t envy Maddie the broken ankle, but what had it felt like to be held in his arms, so closely, his face so near that he scarcely had to bend his neck to drop a kiss onto her?
Chad’s kiss.
Then she recalled Leda’s comments and heat flushed through her. If her... crush... was that obvious, did Chad know? Was he playing along, indulging her? She was new to the game. He was an old hand. She thought of how transparent she must have seemed to him. Inexperienced, wallflower. Was he laughing at her now?
A small sound at her office door made her look up. In the dim light shining from her doorway into the darkness she saw whiskers and a little pink nose, there for a moment, then gone.
“Hey,” she said softly.
She ran in the direction the little cat had been going and crouched down facing the haystack again.
“Hey, little guy,” she cooed. “You hungry?”
Two eyes blinked at her, bright orbs at the back of a dark, straw-lined corridor.
“Stay right there, good sir. Your order will be up in a jiffy.”
She pulled a fresh can from the shelf, opened it and spooned some chunks out onto a plate. Fois gras, the label said.
“You’re eating better than me tonight, sweetheart,” she said. She pushed the plate into the opening, then sat back. This is what the doctor ordered, she thought, feeling herself relax for the first time in days.
Forget about flirty, gorgeous Chad. Forget about happily ever afters, like Eric and Leda or Melinda and Austin or Logan and whatever her name was.
Forget Maddie and DeeDee and old embarrassments and new humiliations.
She had a good life. She wasn’t half of a pair, so what? She was a whole person. Complete and content to be herself. A lot of women got lost in relationships, lost who they were. Not her. She was lucky, really. If she wanted to sit on a barn floor and make friends with a little wild-cat, she could.
“Mrrt?” said the creature.
Like before, he stretched his head toward the food and nibbled, delicately. He looked thin, but not starving, exactly. But there were some angry-looking scratches on one of his ears. She wondered if someone was picking on him.
“Hey, sweet boy,” she murmured, creeping closer.
He hunched down and ate faster, keeping an eye on her.
“There’s a good boy,” she continued, edging still nearer. He’d eaten the entire meal and let her get almost within arms’ length before he finally fled.
She got to her feet and went up to the house, ready now to sleep, heartened that at least in one area of her life she was making progress.
“Maddie should be home any time now,” said Joanie, hovering at the window.
Because it had been so late when they’d brought Maddie in last night, she hadn’t been treated until today. Chad, probably feeling bad that the accident had occurred at Anders Run, had insisted on driving Maddie home when she was discharged, a fact that Joanie couldn’t get over.
“That lovely Chad is bringing her. What a gentleman he must be. I’m so glad you three are working with him. What a wonderful opportunity!”
Cynthia was on her second cup of coffee, her first ibuprofen and her last nerve.
“Opportunity, yeah,” she muttered.
Joanie’s idea of opportunity wasn’t quite the same as hers. And did she think DeeDee was somehow contributing to this job from the other side of the country? It hadn’t been the three of them working together, even when the three of them had still been working together.
“I’ll be in my office,” she said, taking her mug with her.
The air was heavy and clouds hovered at the edge of the mountain, lending a sepia tone to the world that matched her mood exactly.
“Kitty?” she called. Her little friend didn’t show up, but she left her office door open a crack, hoping he might peek in while she worked.
Quickly, she sorted out her notes from the night before and filed them in the catering folder. Checking things off her to-do list calmed her fears and reassured her that she was doing fine. Everything would work out as planned, despite the glitches.
Several hours later, ready for a new task, she opened her photo-editing program. Between Logan and the Marietta Heritage Society, she had folders and folders of photographs of houses in various stages of reconstruction. Logan’s students featured in most of them, brandishing tools and mugging for the camera. It would make a great slide show for the dance, illustrating the amount of work involved, and the cooperative spirit Logan brought to his projects.
The before and after shots of the houses were amazing.
She opened another file and began clicking through still more images. She looked closer, recognizing the buildings of Sweet Montana Farms. Wow, that had been a disaster.
And wait, here were pictures of Anders Run. Was that Chad’s house?
The hurried tour he’d given them last night suggested he’d rather not draw attention to it, but she could see now that he’d actually done a great deal of work already. None of the shots had people in it, though. Was he doing it all on his own?
She worked steadily throughout the afternoon, pausing only to stretch. Then, at about five o’clock she heard the sound of tires on gravel.
Chad, delivering the damsel in distress.
Cynthia went out to meet them, noting how the sky had darkened while she’d been inside. Heavy clouds now hung directly overhead and thunder sounded in the distance.
“So?” she said, hurrying over to Maddie’s side. “What’s the verdict?”
“Look at me!” Maddie had a heavy walking boot covering her foot and lower leg, leaving her pretty painted toenails peeking out.
“High ankle sprain,” said Chad. “Hairline fracture too. Not as bad as it looked last night, but still bad enough.”
Together, they managed to get Maddie to the front door of the ranch house.
“The doctor was so sweet and gentle,” said Maddie, looking a little blowsy. “He understood that I have a low pain threshold and told the x-ray technicians to be extra-specially careful with me.”
“Good-looking, I take it,” Cynthia said softly, to Chad.
“Excellent bedside manner.” He gave Cynthia a quick grin. “Plus, he was generous with the pain meds. In case you hadn’t figured it out.”
“Wheeee!” said Maddie.
“Oh, my poor girl,” said Joanie, rushing to her side. “Chad, I can’t thank you enough for looking after her. You must come in and have supper with us.”
If Cynthia didn’t know better, she’d think Joanie had told Maddie to break her foot deliberately, like Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet, sending her daughter into the rain, to snag Mr. Bingley via a virulent case of pneumonia.
She recalled that her dad and Joanie had met when she’d crashed her cart on the golf course. Hm.
The Cash Plan on How to Catch a Man:
Step one: get something in your eye, so he gets close enough to fall under your love virus, aka, Chanel #5.
Step two: fall down. Regency Romance Novel Heroines Can’t Be Wrong!
Step three: break a body part. Make it a sexy one though. An ankle is excellent. A hip, not so much. And a skull, forget it. They want pretty, but temporary, fragility. No black-eyed, slack-jawed amnesiacs.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Henley,” said Chad. “But I’ll have to take a rain check.”
He glanced up at the sky and gave her that trademark grin.
“Joanie, to you,” said Joanie.
“Thank you, Joanie. Cynthia and I were going over some important details of the fundraiser, when Maddie’s injury occurred. Now that your daughter’s safe and sound and in good hands, would you mind terribly if Cynthia and I got back to business?”
Joanie recovered quickly, probably due to Chad’s good manners.
“If you’re sure,” she said, helping Maddie into the house. “I’ll bring a tray out to you once I’ve got our patient settled.”
The door banged shut behind them and Chad turned to her, exhaling loudly.
“Thank God.”
She laughed, and just then the skies opened, pelting them with fat, cool drops.
“Come on, you can tell me all about it in my office.”
He grabbed her hand and together, they ran.