Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Summer slept restlessly. She got up before the crack of dawn and grabbed her hiking gear.
There was an early staff meeting at Creative Interiors II, right before the big opening day, but she still had several hours before that, so she drove northeast to Palomar to hike among the towering conifers and oaks.
When she’d finished, she felt better equipped for the day and smiled as she showered and changed before heading to the new shop.
She had the VW’s windows down so that the gorgeous morning could show off its bright sunshine and already warm breeze.
She breathed it all in and promised herself another long hike tomorrow.
She pulled into the parking lot of the store at the same time as Chloe. Her cousin got out of her car and looked Summer up and down. “Where did you run off to last night?”
Summer looked right back. Chloe’s green-tipped hair shimmered in the morning light, matching her eye-popping green miniskirt and tank top. “You look like a lucky charm.”
“Nice subject change. What happened, you get hot monkey sex?”
“Hot monkey sex?” Summer laughed. “Who gets hot monkey sex?”
Chloe put her hands on her hips. “Did you or did you not do it with your fire marshal?”
“Since when is he my fire marshal?”
“Do you ever answer a damn question?”
“No. But I didn’t get hot monkey sex.” But she’d wanted to.
God, she’d wanted to. One touch of Joe’s yummy mouth to hers and she’d nearly imploded.
He’d been hard and sexy, and she loved how his wary eyes softened when he kissed.
He put everything into it, too, knowing when to linger, when to go slow, how to drive her crazy with just a nuzzle of that mouth and a touch of his tongue.
“We’re just old friends,” she said. “You know that.”
“He’s a snack. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”
“He’s changed a lot.” And she still couldn’t believe he’d let her walk away last night.
A rejection, and damn, that had hurt. It’d been a long time since a man had turned her down.
Actually, a man had never turned her down.
Joe was her first. The thought made her feel melancholy, and she eyed the bakery across the street. “The doughnuts smell good.”
“You don’t eat doughnuts.”
She did if she was stressed enough.
“You know how the moms feel about junk food,” Chloe said.
“Are you telling me you never have junk?”
“I’m telling you I do what every self-respecting daughter of a health nut does. I sneak them. So if you’re going, I’ll take an old-fashioned glazed. Two.” She smoothed down her short, short skirt. “I’m going in to see if I can catch Braden’s attention.”
Summer eyed Chloe’s wild outfit before she headed across the street. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
When she got back a few minutes later, Bill was in the lot, buried under the hood of Tina’s car.
“The woman never checks her oil,” he said with exasperation. He wore baggy painter pants, splattered with clay from the last decade, and a Deadhead T-shirt.
“Doughnut?” Summer opened the box.
“Aren’t these against Tina’s and Camille’s code of food ethics?”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“You know they can smell this sort of thing from a mile away, right? I got caught with McDonald’s once and Tina was mad at me for a week.”
“Well, if you’re not interested…”
“Hey, I never said I wasn’t interested.” He grinned and took a jelly-filled.
“You doing ceramics today?” she asked.
“For a bit. Then I’ve got stuff to do.”
He often had “stuff to do,” which was code for picking horses at Del Mar, or playing cards at one of two local casinos.
He and Tina actually met at one of them, though they no longer played together.
This was because Tina mostly lost, and Bill didn’t.
Tina would come by and pull from his winnings, which was the only thing that ever made his temper surface.
Tina thought it was funny; the man had helped her raise her three girls without a rise in his blood pressure, but she couldn’t mess with his winnings until he got up from the gaming table, or he’d lose it.
“You’re going to want to hurry,” he said with a nod of his chin toward inside. “Staff meeting’s going to start before they split up to handle both stores.”
Summer looked at the new building. It seemed so big and roomy in the light of day, and she couldn’t figure out what had panicked her so much last night. “What’s the mood like?”
“Excited. Tense too.”
“Wish me luck.” She went inside and opened the box of doughnuts on the employee table. Everyone promptly ditched her mother’s offering of herbal iced tea and dove into the box to grab their favorite sugar rush.
She refrained from the box with a worried little frown as Socks wound through her legs, purring loudly. “Too much sugar in the morning isn’t good for—” She sighed when everyone practically inhaled theirs. “Well. Okay, fine. Kill your arteries.”
Summer surreptitiously wiped the sugar off her fingers.
Her mom noticed anyway and rolled her eyes.
“As I was saying, make sure you all familiarize yourself with the new stock. We’ve just received quite an impressive shipment from Tina and Bill’s spring shopping trips, so that will help with what we lost at the warehouse.
More stock is stuffed in every corner of the storage rooms of each of the two stores, in my house, and also Tina’s, so if people are looking for something specific, make sure you check the list.”
Diana was pretending to take notes but was really reading a manila file–covered Cosmo. Madeline was making little smiley faces on a pad of paper, completely lost to the group. Stella and Gregg sat together, silent but attentive.
“Call Braden to verify a product hasn’t been sold,” Summer’s mom continued. “Or to get a price.”
Braden hoisted his laptop. His eyes were dark and unreadable as he looked around with a cool, brooding calm.
Chloe stared at him dreamily as she stuffed herself with an old-fashioned chocolate glaze. “He’s hot,” she mouthed to Summer.
That happened to be true, but Summer was thinking hot wouldn’t necessarily feed the soul. And since when had she ever cared about feeding the soul—she had no idea.
When the meeting was over, Stella, Gregg, and the twins moved toward the door to get themselves downtown to the original Creative Interiors, but Summer’s mom stopped them.
“I should mention, the fire marshals will be stopping by both shops today for any final questions they have for their report. Please cooperate with them fully.”
Chloe turned to Summer and raised a suggestive brow.
Summer ignored her but had two conflicting emotions barrel through her at the news she’d be seeing Joe today. Anticipation and trepidation.
But mostly anticipation.
Madeline scooted close and showed them Diana’s magazine, opened to the horoscope page. She pointed to Chloe’s and read, “Your moons are lined up.”
“So full speed ahead,” Diana said to her older sister.
Chloe snagged the magazine and greedily soaked up her horoscope. “What does Summer’s say?”
“That she shouldn’t have gotten out of bed,” Diana read.
Summer sighed but she couldn’t work up any real irritation because she was still stuck on having to see Joe today. She needed more time to process the embarrassment of his rejection, and to distance herself from the fact that Chloe had been wrong—she wasn’t so irresistible after all.
Damn, he’d wanted her. She’d tasted that want, she’d felt it. And still, he’d walked away.
As she’d once done to him.
She hoped they were even now.
She caught up with her mom behind the counter. “Where do you want me to work today?”
“Oh.” Her mother looked around. In her long, flowing flowery sundress and natural makeup, she looked serene and elegant. Socks meowed at her feet and got scooped up, making him look quite pleased with himself. “You know you don’t have to,” she said.
“I want to.”
“You want to deal with beach cushions and pictures and lighthouses and grumpy toddlers and bossy shoppers, oh my?”
Teasing sarcasm. The gesture felt like a hug, and Summer grinned. “You know it.”
“It’s going to be too tame for you.”
Maybe she was ready for a little tame, ready to belong here. She reached for her mom’s hand and squeezed it with hers twice. In the old days, that had been their code for “love you.” In keeping with the code, her mother would squeeze back three times, meaning “love you too.”
With a distracted smile, she squeezed back. One squeeze.
What the hell did that mean?
Her mom hesitated and then said, “Honey, I’m grateful you’re here, but I just don’t think you should force yourself to stay. That’s all.”
“I’m not. I want to do this. I want to be with you.”
She looked down at their joined hands. “You haven’t always.”
The words sat in the air like two thick, black storm clouds for a beat before her mom shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this now. I…need some more tea.”
“Is that what you think?” Summer asked hoarsely, having to follow her mom back to the small employee back room. She couldn’t believe it. “That I don’t want to be with you?”
“I’m sorry,” her mom said again and closed her eyes, a trick Summer recognized all too well as she did the same when she felt the most. “I know being here is getting to you.”
“Mom.” She let out a mirthless laugh. “We’ve got to stop tiptoeing around this. Around everything. Let’s just say what we feel, okay? Yes, it’s hard to be here, but I want to stay.” Now you, she thought. Now you tell me you want me to stay too.
“Camille!” Tina poked her head in, waved her sister over. “This you have to see.”
“What is it?”
“Guess who just executed a slow drive-by to put her nose into our opening day business?”
“Not Ally,” her mom said in faux shock.
“I swear it’s her, wearing a big straw hat and dark glasses, the sneaky bitch.”
“I’ll be right there.” She looked at Summer.