Save the Date

Chapter 35

35

When the going got tough, Cara headed for the shower. She didn’t know when she’d started treating the shower like a combination confessional and therapist’s couch.

Maybe it had started when she’d first moved to Savannah. Leo was the kind of man who made friends effortlessly. Within a month of their move, he was having drinks after work with clients, weaseled his way into a golf foursome, was on a first-name basis with all their neighbors.

“Never met a stranger, that boy!” the Colonel liked to say of her ex.

It was harder for Cara. Every time she opened her mouth, people would stare at her and ask, “Where are you from?” And when she said Ohio they looked at her with pity. Nobody could pronounce her name—“Kryzike? Krisshick? What kind of name is that?”

“Krizz-ick,” she’d say patiently. “It’s a Croatian name.”

To which they’d look even more puzzled. “Croatia? That’s a country?”

She had little in common with the neighbors in their subdivision, most of whom were young mothers, who already had their own friends—their own play groups, their own supper clubs, their own girlfriends. They never came right out and said it, but the situation was clear. Nobody was currently taking applications for new friends.

Once, that first fall after they moved in, out of desperation, she’d written out invitations to a soup supper and slipped them into the mailboxes of all eight houses on their end of the block.

She’d fixed a huge pot of Italian wedding soup, a salad, and an apple streusel pie, and set everything out on the dining room table, along with a gorgeous arrangement of fall flowers she’d placed in a hollowed-out pumpkin. Exactly one couple—Arnie and Sheila Jenkins, retirees who lived at the head of the street—came. They’d eaten their soup hurriedly, made lame excuses for why nobody else had come—“Georgia has a home game tomorrow”—and rushed off without even touching dessert. She would never forget the look of pity on their faces.

Cara had thrown the whole pie in the trash and retreated to the shower to weep and curse.

Friday nights during the spring were the worst. She’d come home from work, and see women standing in knots in the cul-de-sac, chatting, sipping from plastic wineglasses, while their children circled on bikes or scooters. She’d smell the charcoal drifting from backyard grills, see couples hurrying to each other’s houses with covered casserole dishes, or coolers tucked under their arms.

Cara would retreat to the shower. She’d stand under the shower and cry while she washed her hair. She’d curse the snobby neighbors and call them crackers and ignorant rednecks while she shaved her legs. While she was rubbing conditioner into her scalp she’d tell herself it wasn’t her—it was them. She’d had friends back home. Lots of friends.

When her marriage to Leo crumbled, Cara hid in the shower. She could still remember that night—that awful Valentine’s Day night—when she’d figured out he was having a fling with the dental hygienist. She’d locked herself in the bathroom and stayed in the shower for two hours, only emerging after the hot water ran out. Then she’d packed her bags and run away from home. And cursed again, when she realized she’d left a nearly new bottle of expensive shampoo in her old shower. Would the dental hygienist use it?

Now, two years later, just when she’d thought maybe her luck was changing, just when she’d managed to feather a new nest for herself, the tiny pink bathtub in her downtown apartment—the one Jack referred to as the Barbie dream tub—became her solace once again. Her building sold? Where would she go? Where would she get the money to start over? Not from her father, she knew. She already had a missed call from the Colonel this morning. He always called on the shop phone, thank goodness.

The old lead pipes in the town house knocked and shuddered when she turned on the spigot, and normally the hot-water heater took a full fifteen minutes to heat up, and would run out before she’d finished crying—or rinsing her hair. But today she was taking a cool bath.

Somehow, this time, when she stepped onto the bath mat, she felt a little better. Maybe Sylvia Bradley was mistaken. Any landlord would be an improvement over the Bradleys. Maybe the new owner would finally fix up the building and allow her to stay. And if not? This was not the only house in the historic district. Nearly every block had at least one “for lease” sign in a front window. She’d call her real-estate agent and start looking. At least, she thought, she had the Trapnell wedding coming up. She’d have to postpone paying off her debt to the Colonel. She’d just have to make him understand. He was her father—he’d have to understand.

***

The one good thing about sleeping on the shop floor was that she was up early every morning. By eight o’clock, she’d already finished making the four bridesmaids’ bouquets for Saturday’s wedding. She’d pulled incoming orders off their internet server, and written up the phone orders so that Bert could get started on them when he got in at nine. She frowned, remembering the earlier confrontation with her assistant. He’d better get in at nine.

At 8:45, she was wheeling the vintage garden cart out to the sidewalk when she saw Jack’s big black truck come down the block. She felt a little tug in her chest. It was pathetic and needy, but yes, she’d wondered if and when he’d call again.

He parked across the street and jumped out of the truck. He was dressed for work, blue jeans, clean white T-shirt, work boots. She found herself studying him, measuring him against Leo, Leo in his expensive sport coats and silk ties and spit-polished shoes. Leo with his salesman’s smoothness. No. Make that slickness.

Jack Finnerty wasn’t polished and he wasn’t smooth, and his jeans were faded and ragged at the knee, and he looked so good right now she got a little weak in the knees as he crossed the street, bounded onto the curb, and grabbed her around the waist for a kiss.

“Some welcoming committee,” he said, when he let her go.

“What are you doing in town?” Cara asked, smiling up at him. “I thought you were working out at Cabin Creek all week.”

“Ryan’s over there now, waiting on a lumber delivery,” he said. “We found some old-growth heart pine that came out of a closed-up textile mill in Greenville, South Carolina, for the new floor for the barn.” He hesitated, then frowned.

“You’re not gonna like what I’ve got to tell you.”

She sighed. “I guess you’ve heard. Probably Torie told Ryan and Ryan told you, right? Well, it’s true. Somehow, I managed to lose Lillian Fanning’s heirloom silver epergne. She’s called the police, and now it’s a whole big thing.”

“Epergne? No, I don’t know anything about that,” Jack said, running a hand through his hair. “But hell, that’s bad enough. Lillian’s not saying you stole it, right?”

“Not me. No. She’s convinced Bert is a thief.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “She probably misplaced it herself. It’ll turn up.”

“I hope you’re right,” Cara said. “Because the thing is worth like a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

His eyes widened. “Holy crap.”

“I know. So, what is it you have to tell me that I’m not gonna like? You’re married? Carrying an STD? Come on, Jack, just spit it out and get it over with.”

He picked a bloom from a potted gardenia on the garden cart and handed it to her. A consolation prize? “I’m here because your new landlord wants an estimate of what it’s gonna cost to renovate your building.”

“Well, at least you’re not married, and you haven’t given me a venereal disease,” Cara said, making a weak joke.

“Did you have any idea your landlady was selling the place?” he asked.

“None. Sylvia finally returned my calls yesterday, and while I was in the middle of chewing her out about the air-conditioning, she dropped the bomb. Said it didn’t matter because she’d sold the building. Without even telling me! And then she basically told me I should start packing, because the new landlord has plans that don’t include me.”

Jack nodded sympathetically. “It sucks. Big-time.”

She grabbed the front of his T-shirt. “So who hired you? Who bought the building? Sylvia wouldn’t even give me the satisfaction of telling me. I guess maybe she’s afraid I’ll call the guy and tell him everything that’s wrong with the building before the sale closes.”

“He hasn’t hired us yet. But I get the feeling the guy already knows what all’s wrong with the building. He’s been in it a couple times, from what he told me.”

“What?” Cara’s fists clenched and unclenched. “She let somebody in the building when I wasn’t home? She didn’t even have the decency to call me? Who is it?”

“You know a guy named Cullen Kane? Another florist in town? He’s the guy.”

***

Cara’s jaw dropped. She was well and truly flummoxed. “No. That can’t be. Not him. Anybody but him.”

“You know him?”

She nodded dumbly. “I think he wants to put me out of business. And this is step one in his Kill Cara Kryzik campaign.”

They went inside the shop and he sat at the worktable while she recounted how she’d unwittingly managed to become Cullen Kane’s business rival.

“It’s not like I went after Brooke Trapnell to get her to hire me. But she did, and this wedding is too big a deal for me to pass up. It’s the biggest budget I’ve ever worked with, and I’ll make enough money from it to finally pay back my dad—maybe even get a decent delivery van.”

Jack still wasn’t convinced. “You really think Cullen Kane bought this building out of revenge? That’s pretty far-fetched, Cara.”

“I know,” she admitted. “I’m really not normally this paranoid. But you didn’t see the look on his face when I ran into him at the wholesale house. It’s like I’ve taken his favorite toy and he’ll do anything to get it back.”

Jack drummed his fingertips on the table. “Okay. If that’s his game, I don’t have to work for him. I’m pretty sure he’s getting bids from other contractors. I’ll tell him I’ve got too much work on my plate right now. Which is actually kind of true.”

“Thanks.” Cara gave his hand a grateful squeeze.

“I’m not the only contractor in town though,” he reminded her. “It won’t be hard to find somebody who will give him an estimate, and do the work, when it comes right down to it.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Just out of curiosity, what did Kane say when he called you?”

“He told me his name, that he was in the process of buying a building on Jones Street. That it had retail space on the ground floor—currently occupied by a florist shop.”

“Currently,” Cara said bitterly. “But not for long.”

“He said there was an apartment on the second floor, and that the top floor was currently not occupied.”

“That’s true,” Cara said. “What else did he say? Did he tell you his plans for the building?”

“Not really. He said it looked like the previous owners had been pretty slack on maintenance. He’d seen the water stains on your apartment ceiling, so he wanted the roof and chimneys checked, and was concerned about the air-conditioning unit after seeing how hot it was on the second floor. I think he must have been up there in the past week, now that I think about it.”

“Oh my God.” Cara shuddered. “It gives me the creeps, knowing he was sneaking around, looking at my stuff, checking everything out, and I had no idea he was even here.”

“Yeah. It sucks your landlady didn’t even have the decency to let you know she’d let him in to check it out,” Jack said.

“Did you tell him you know me?” Cara asked.

“I didn’t see any reason to tell him, especially since I figured you’d be pretty upset about all this anyway.”

“‘Upset’ is putting it mildly.”

“Have you ever been up to the top floor?” Jack asked.

“No. There’s stairway access through a door at the end of my hallway, but that door was locked when I rented the place. I just figured the Bradleys were too cheap to get it redone. And I was glad to have the building all to myself.”

“Did you say the Bradleys were your landlords? Do you mean Bernice and Sylvia Bradley?”

“They’re the ones. So, you know them?”

“They live a couple streets over from my parents. Couple of old tightwads,” Jack said. He held up a key. “I got the impression Cullen Kane plans to open up the third floor and get it redone. We could take a look—if you’re curious.”

“I am curious. But I’ve got too much work to get done this morning. I’m already behind schedule—and we’re not even officially open.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Bert’s got five minutes to get here, and if he’s late again today, I might have to start looking for a new assistant as well as a new address.”

Jack stood up. “I’ll leave you to it then. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll run upstairs and take a look at that third floor.”

“Suit yourself,” Cara said.

He went down the hallway toward the stairs, then thought better of it.

“Hey. Whose wedding are you doing tomorrow? Not Lindsay Crawford and Will Becket by any chance?”

“No way,” Cara said. “What? Are you the best man?”

He grinned. “Nah. Just an old friend from high school.”

“Does that mean I’ll see you there tomorrow night?”

“I wasn’t gonna go,” Jack said. “Ryan and I are working tomorrow. But now that you mention it… maybe I’ll change my plans. Especially if you’re gonna wear that pink dress of yours.”

“Oh geez. That’s right. You’ve seen me in that same dress now what? Three times? How embarrassing.”

“I love that dress,” Jack said enthusiastically, remembering how it swished about her knees when she danced, and the view of her cleavage. “You were wearing that dress the night we met.”

“And I was wearing a dirty T-shirt and grubby shorts earlier that day when you stole my dog,” she reminded him.

“Wear the pink dress, okay?” He waggled his eyebrows in that comic way of his. “For me.”