скачать книгу бесплатно
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.
