Long Shot

Chapter 3

Aimee hadn’t slept with Gleann’s sole plumber just once. A single occurrence might actually have made things easier to handle. No, apparently they were an ongoing thing. And in this case, “ongoing” meant “dramatic” and “exceedingly strange.”

Jen stood in the middle of the Thistle’s front sitting room, her sister hovering in the kitchen doorway and Owen, the handsome, middle-aged man with the gigantic metal toolbox, inspecting the buckled drywall on the walls and ceiling.

“I need to cut into this so I can get to the pipes and see what caused the burst.” Owen was cool as could be, but Aimee was watching him with her arms crossed.

Aimee said to Jen, “Ask him how long until it’s all done. New pipes. New walls and painting and everything.”

Owen’s eyebrows shot into his forehead.

Jen rolled her eyes. “Seriously? He’s right here.”

Ainsley flounced into the room, her sandy blond ponytail swinging, her oversized, crooked teeth chomping into an apple. She took one look at her mom and Owen, and heaved a sigh worthy of a guilt-loving grandma. “Are you guys fighting again? Hi, Owen.”

Owen turned from where he was running fingers down bubbled, soggy wallpaper. “Hey, you. If your mom wants to play games, tell her I said hi, and that I’m sorry.”

“What’d you do now?” Jen thought Ainsley said around a mouthful of apple.

Owen smiled. An affectionate dad’s smile. He wasn’t Ainsley’s dad, but he was someone’s, that was for sure. “Nothing I can tell you.”

“Ew.” Ainsley came over to Jen and gave her a quick hug.

Owen chuckled in a way that said he’d been teasing.

Ainsley seemed shockingly comfortable with the sudden reappearance of her aunt, considering how badly Jen had left them high and dry during their first and only New York City visit. Nine-year-old Ainsley didn’t care what happened three years ago, but Aimee would never forget. And really, could Jen blame her?

Last night Jen and Aimee had taken the girl to the Stone for fish and chips since the B&B’s water was still off, and Jen had desperately grabbed for something to talk about. But Ainsley, apparently a seasoned pro and a social natural, had it all covered. She’d chattered on in a way that reminded Jen so much of Aimee at that age, all opinion and I-don’t-care-what-you-think. Her favorite topic was these two older girls she seemed to emulate—someone named Lacey, and another she just called T.

Jen turned to her sister. “You have insurance, right? Money to cover repairs?”

Owen pulled out a long, narrow saw from his toolbox. “Aimee, I’ll only charge you for materials, as usual.”

Aimee ignored him and looked at Jen with worried, glassy eyes. “I’ve got a little put away, and insurance will cover some of it. But I need the income from during the games. The Scottish Society president is staying here and I’m fully booked. The rooms have to be perfect. Can you ask Owen when he’ll be done?”

“Maybe he’d be done quicker,” Jen noted, “if you didn’t play these games. What is going on here anyway?”

Ainsley laughed. Owen added wryly, “Yeah, I’d kinda like to know, too.”

Aimee worried her lip and suddenly looked sheepish. “Old habits,” she mumbled. Just as Jen had figured.

“I don’t have time for this, Aim. I’ll let you explain that comment to Owen.” Jen pressed a hand to her forehead. “You brought me here for another reason and I have to take care of that.”

“Taking care of that” involved getting out to the fairgrounds and seeing firsthand all the supplies and tents and signage stored there. She also needed to do a location assessment, make sure she agreed with the layout and found the grounds suitable.

“Aimee,” Owen said with a chuckle, “tell your sister it was nice to finally meet her.”

“Jen,” Aimee said wearily, “Owen says good-bye.”

Brother.

Owen whipped around to face Aimee. “Ha!” His wide grin made the silver in his cheek stubble shine. Aimee had always gone for older guys. So had mom. Two peas in a pod, those two, and usually not in the best ways. “Gotcha. You’re talking to me now.”

Aimee’s oval face went splotchy red and she glanced up at Jen in embarrassment. She kicked at a baseboard. “Oh, hell.”

As Owen started to cross to Aimee, his intent plastered all over his expression, Jen threw up her hands. “I’m out of here. You guys figure . . . this . . . out.” She headed for the front door.

“What was that all about?” she heard Owen say to her sister.

“I’m sorry,” Aimee replied.

“So am I,” he said, and there the talking ended.

It had heated up a good ten degrees since Jen had been delayed by Aimee’s retreat into her seventeen-year-old dependent self. Jen was already sweating through her wrap dress and her feet felt like they were swimming in her heels, but this was still work and she refused to dress down, even if she did sort of feel like she was playing a part while she was here. Besides, they were the only articles of clothing she’d managed to clean and get dry after yesterday’s waterlogging. The rest of her belongings were strung up all over the rental house on Maple. She didn’t trust that ancient dryer not to cook her delicates down to a size zero, which she definitely wasn’t.

Halfway to her car, Jen heard footsteps behind her. She turned to find Ainsley on the flagstone path, squinting up at her, the sun shrinking the pupils in her bright blue eyes to tiny specks. Aimee said her daughter looked exactly like the thirty-year-old guy who’d gotten Aimee pregnant at nineteen and then took off as soon as he got the news. Jen had just started college then, with Aimee stuck back in Iowa, so Jen had never known the guy. But Ainsley definitely didn’t take after her mom, and Jen wondered how long it had taken Aimee to get used to the everyday reminder of the asshole.

“They’ll be okay, you know,” Ainsley said, shaking her head. “They fight sometimes, but then it’s all good.”

Jen hid a smile. “So you like Owen? Is he good to your mom?”

“Sure, yeah. It’s only when he’s with the guys too much that Mom gets upset. That’s probably what that was about in there.” She looked at her dirty fingernails. “And sometimes things with Melissa don’t let them see each other.”

“Who’s Melissa?”

“His wife.”

“Wait . . . what?”

A serious, stomach-dropping worry swept through Jen. Two peas in a pod. How could Aimee do that, get involved with a married guy, especially after all the crap they’d had to deal with as kids?

She closed her eyes and mouth and breathed carefully through her nose. One problem at a time. Technically, it was Aimee’s problem, but when had Aimee’s issues ever only been her own?

She opened her eyes to find Ainsley tossing the apple core into the herb garden. “Melissa and Owen are still married and they live in the same house. That big old white one over on Catalpa?”

Jen ground the heel of a hand into her eye socket. “And Aimee knows this?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What about Melissa?”

“Oh, she knows, too.”

Jen thought she might be sick.

“T and Lacey say it’s no big deal,” Ainsley said. “So do I.”

Those girls again. “And who are they exactly?”

“Owen and Melissa’s kids. Relax, Aunt Jen.” The girl actually put a hand on Jen’s arm and gave this little bat of her eyelashes that screamed Aimee. “They’re getting divorced. It just hasn’t happened yet. Or maybe it won’t. I don’t know.” Then she shrugged and the kid was back. “Whatever.”

Whatever was right. Jen started to laugh. She couldn’t help it. “Alrighty then. My sister is dating a not-yet-divorced guy who still lives with his wife. Hey, where are you going?”

Ainsley turned from where she’d been heading down the sidewalk, away from downtown. “To Bryan’s. He got a slingshot yesterday.”

As Ainsley walked away, Jen turned to look through the big front window of the Thistle, where she—and anyone else walking by—could plainly see Owen the still-married-but-whatever plumber and her sister making out. What the hell was going on here?

Jen couldn’t help but flash back to so many days of her youth. To the embarrassing, awful, public scenes she’d been forced to witness—and sometimes break up—between her mom and the random women who seemed to know Frank, the live-in boyfriend who wasn’t Jen’s or Aimee’s dad, all too well.

No time for that, she reminded herself with a shake of the head. Now she was working, and the past was the past. First, she had to run back to the rental house and switch out her shoes for something more appropriate to traipsing around fairgrounds.

But when she pulled up to 738 Maple, there was a huge white pickup truck consuming the driveway. MacDougall Landscape Design was stenciled in green on the sides.

Jen sat there clutching the steering wheel and closed her eyes. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Leith—she did; she really did—she just wasn’t ready. She hadn’t prepared herself. Hadn’t thought it all through, as she was so good at doing. For a small, sleepy town, everything was happening so incredibly fast.

Maybe if she opened her eyes slowly, her mind would admit it had played a trick on her and he wouldn’t actually be here right now. She opened them. The truck stared back at her.

And then, there was Leith MacDougall sauntering out of the open garage. He lifted his thick arm to wipe the side of his sweaty face on the shoulder of his stained white T-shirt. The old poster tacked to the vacant store window downtown hadn’t done him justice. That kilt had hidden the true power of his thighs, but the dirty jeans he wore now showed them off like trophies. He was at least thirty pounds bigger than in high school, maybe more. Not ’roided out or disgustingly cut, but firm. Unmistakably strong.

Why was seeing him like this affecting her so much? It had been a high school thing, before either of them could even define the word mature. Nothing more.

Reaching over the side of his truck bed for something unseen, he froze. Turned his head. Saw her sitting there in the car.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Just sat there like a dumbass staring at him through the passenger-side window. Maybe in New York she could’ve gotten away with hitting the gas and peeling away. She could’ve lost herself in the traffic and there’d have been a good chance she’d never run across him again. But here?

She’d never been a coward her whole life, and she wasn’t about to start now.

Opening the car door, she swung her legs out and stood, turning to face him. She smoothed her dress that didn’t need smoothing, then lifted a hand in greeting. He was wearing thick working gloves, and he slowly tugged them off, finger by finger. Then he pulled one of those dark blue handkerchiefs with the white swirls out of his back pocket—the kind she remembered his dad always used to have—and wiped his hands on it.

She started toward him. He didn’t move.

“You were right, Leith. I do love you.” Her palm went damp around the phone.

He didn’t say anything for a long time, but she could hear him breathing and it sounded labored. “Why the fuck are you calling to tell me this now, when you’re half a country away?”

“Because.” She swallowed, and it hurt. “I thought you’d like to know.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I don’t want to know. Not now.”

Jen almost stumbled on the ragged asphalt of the driveway. That had been so long ago, when they’d been kids. And he was sort of smiling at her now. Sort of. Maybe he’d forgotten the crappy way she’d ended it. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. They were both adults.

“Hey, you,” she said, throwing on a smile of her own.

His brown hair had gotten lighter at the ends. A bonus—at least from her point of view—from working outside. It curled around his neck and ears in a way that might have looked like an overdue haircut on any other guy.

He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “So you’re really here.”

She stopped, the heel of one shoe clacking loudly. “You don’t look all that surprised.”

He glanced over her shoulder, down Maple where it dipped and curved around in front of the elementary school. “Small town.” His eyes drifted back. She’d forgotten how intense they were. How he always looked people in the eye. It was that personal attention, that charm, she remembered, that drew people to him. “I was surprised. Yesterday.”

“Ah. Yeah.” She nodded at the sidewalk. “It was a crazy day. To be fair, I had no idea you still lived here until I got into town. And then I was pulled in a million different directions.”

He just looked at her. How did he manage to stand so quietly when such violent tremors were rocketing through her body? She’d always been a fidgety person. Always had to move, to think about her next step—where to go, what to do, what to say. Standing there under this scrutiny, wearing this strange uncertainty, she had no idea where to channel her energy.

Leith was as still as his image on that poster. She knew what he was thinking: You never asked Aimee about me? But then, she also knew that he’d never once asked Aimee about her, so really, weren’t they even?

All kinds of awkward floated in the air, mixing with the midday June heat and the fine mist coming from the sprinkler in the yard of the small brick house next to 738.

He ambled to the back end of the truck, closer to her, his fingers trailing over a taillight. “So you’re here to save the games?”

Of course he would know why she was here.

“Small town,” they said at the same time. It cracked some of the tension, but didn’t break through completely. Her purse strap dug into her shoulder.

“I’m going to try to,” she told him. “Aimee called me, what, only three days ago? She begged. I had an opening in my schedule. Here I am.”

“An opening in your schedule,” he said, his voice flat as a board, as though he didn’t quite understand. “So this is what you do now? Plan . . . things?”

“Yes. All kinds of . . . things.” She smiled, proud. “I’m pretty good at it, too.”

He drew a deep breath, nodding. It seemed to relax him some. “Then I’m happy for you, that you got what you wanted. I really am.”

She looked at his truck, the one he couldn’t stop touching. Not much was bigger than him, but that white thing on wheels was a beast. “And you’re a landscaper? Like what you did in high school?”

The moment it came out of her mouth she knew she’d gotten it wrong, that she’d sounded dumb. She winced.

One corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m a landscape architect.”

“Of course. Right.” Who was this stupid, nervous woman who’d taken over her mouth? And why did he seem so calm?

She peered around Leith’s body to the open garage door of 738, where she could see all sorts of lawn equipment inside. Shovels and ride-on mowers. One of those small diggers. Piles of topsoil and mulch bags. A drafting table turned on its side.

“When I rented this place,” she said, “the owner said a local was using the garage.”

“I guess I’m that local.”

“Why here? In a garage?”

He sat on the bumper. It was so high that even with his height—six-three, as she recalled; an inch taller in those thick boots—he barely had to bend to park his ass on the edge. The truck sank. “I’m closing down my business in Gleann. Going somewhere else. Had to find short-term storage.”

“I saw that Hemmertex closed. It makes sense for you to move then. Follow the clients.”

He eyed her for a moment and she focused on not squirming. “Exactly.”

The next seconds were interminable. With him perched on the bumper, and her still in her four-inch sandals, they were eye to eye. Somehow, at some time, she’d edged closer. They were now maybe four feet apart.

She tried to seem as at ease as he did, but this was, perhaps, the most awkward conversation ever. “So we’re all caught up now?”

He pressed his lips together, like he was trying to stifle a smile. “Guess so.”

“Who needs Facebook, right?”

He just stared.

“Okay,” she said. “I can’t stand it anymore. Would it be weird to hug you?”

His answer came fast. “I wouldn’t.”

Hers came even faster. “Right. Sorry.”

“I mean, I’m pretty disgusting. And you look . . .” At last he dropped his eyes, shaking his head. The first hint he was somewhat affected by her reappearance. When he looked up beneath his lashes, she saw a very old pain, resurrected. “Wow, you look really great, Jen.”

The breath she drew refused to come easily. “So do you.”

“I’m in love with you, Jen. Don’t go to Texas. If you do, I know I’ll never see you again.”

She buried her face in her hands. “You just think you’re in love with me. And who says we’ll never see each other again?”

He never answered that. He just said, “I do love you. And I know that you love me, too.”

“God, Leith. That’s such a big word. Why would you say this, put me in this position, the night before I leave?”

He pushed to his feet, towering over where she sat on the blanket in the middle of the fairgrounds. “Because it’s the night before you leave,” he said. “And I don’t want to be without you.”

Leith kicked his legs out farther, his weight jouncing the truck. He cracked his neck, and more memories came back to her. How he used to do that when he was nervous.

She stretched for something neutral to say, because it was clear their past had been shoved off the table.

“So what do you know about this Mr. Lindsay?” she blurted out. “I don’t remember him from before.”

Leith loosely crossed his arms over his middle. “Not much. I think he, uh, lives on the other side of you, in that blue house. Why?”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I think he’s a bit of a pervert.” She reached into her purse and handed Leith the piece of paper she’d found taped to her front door that morning.

Leith took it after a strange pause. “Dear Ms. Haverhurst,” he read out loud, breaking into an immediate smile. “Would you kindly remember to close your drapes in the evening?”

She snatched it back. “It’s not funny. Should I be worried?”

He laughed. “Were you walking around naked or something?”

“No. Never mind.”

The glint in his eye was so much like the old Leith, the one who’d been hers.

“What are you doing now?” he asked. “Going upstairs to tease an old man again?”

“No.” She could always talk about work in a steady voice. “I need to get over to the fairgrounds and check out the space and the equipment they have in storage.”

He gave her a long, slow look from her face down to her feet. She couldn’t help but feel exposed. She couldn’t help but like it.

“Got any better shoes?” he asked.

“Yeah, some flat ones upstairs. I hope they’re dry.”

“Dry? Were you fly-fishing in them?”

Why did his humor make her heart hurt? “I was supposed to stay at the Thistle but a water pipe burst and”—she waved a hand—“here I am.”

“Ah,” he said, as if the whole world made sense now. He ran a hand through his hair, distributing some of the sweat gathering at the roots, making it slick and gleaming. “Owen over there now?”

“You know about that, too?”

“Everyone does. Been going on for about a year now.”

“What is that all about? I wasn’t about to ask Ainsley, and I really don’t know how to deal with it.”

He shrugged in much the same way Ainsley had. “Word is he and Melissa have been talking divorce, but just haven’t gotten around to it.”

“Listen to you. You’re like one of those women who used to do crosswords at the Kafe every Sunday.”

He flashed her a grin, ignoring her comment and continuing about Owen and Melissa. “They fight less now that Owen has Aimee, believe it or not. The whole town is thankful for that. I guess Melissa’s loaded? Maybe they’re still working it all out; I don’t know. Melissa’s with some guy over in Westbury.”

“Wow.”

Jen dropped the subject there. She’d never told Leith about her mom’s issues with Frank. Actually, she’d never told Leith anything about her terrible life back in Iowa. There’d been too much shame back then, and whenever she’d come to Gleann she’d wanted to forget. Here, she could be someone else.

“So.” He rubbed his thighs with the heels of his hands. “You, uh, want some company at the fairgrounds? I’ll give you a tour.”

Leith threw his long legs over the front seats and fell into the back. They were both laughing so hard, Jen could barely see through her tears. “Why don’t you come on back here?” he said, running a hand in a circle over the Cadillac’s white leather seats. “I’ll give you a tour.”

Jen blinked, the memory overlapping with reality. But Leith was just looking at her as though he didn’t recognize his old words, what they’d started that night. Chances were, he didn’t.

Workwise, she didn’t need him or his “tour.” She knew the way, and the fairgrounds lay just on the other side of the trees lining the backyards of the Maple houses. Personally, she . . . well, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted from him, just that now that she’d seen him again, she didn’t want to walk away yet.

“Sure,” she replied, and tried not to read into the way his chin lifted or the way his massive chest expanded. “Let me go up and grab those shoes.”

He nodded. Though she didn’t turn around, she could feel him watching her, even through the brick walls of the house as she climbed the stairs and threw on the ballet flats that were now just slightly damp. When she came back down, Leith was still leaning against the truck, arms across his chest.

He gestured to her purse. “You carry that suitcase everywhere?”

“It’s got my laptop in it. So, yes.”

He grunted. “Mind if I go back to my place so I can take a shower first?”

His place? This was moving too fast again, but she wasn’t about to let her minor panic show. “Not at all.”

He went around to the driver’s side door and nudged his chin toward the passenger seat. “Get in.”

“I can’t believe your dad is letting you drive his car when you just got your license last week.”

“He’s not.” Leith waggled his eyebrows. “Get in.”

So she did. Both back then—before he’d been grounded for a week for taking out the Cadillac without his dad’s permission—and today.

She clicked on the seatbelt, settled in. He threw the huge truck in reverse, backed out of her driveway with more speed than necessary, swerved the vehicle around, made a huge arc, and aimed it . . . right into the driveway of 740 Maple.

The truck stopped with a screech. He put it into park and whipped out the key. She sat there, mouth agape, looking first out the window at the tiny brick house with the metal window awnings, and then back at Leith.

With one arm crossed behind her seat back, he gave her the slowest, sexiest grin she’d ever seen. “Hey, neighbor.”