Chapter 4
FOX
Skye is in the back room when I arrive at Seventh Heaven. I find a pair of khakis to replace the coffee-splattered jeans, and change in the dressing room, then rip the tags off. Ava, nose in a book, is manning the register. She grins when she sees me.
“New braces?”
“You’re not supposed to see them! They’re clear.”
“I barely see them.” I reach around her to grab a bag for the jeans I was wearing. “Ring these pants up, will you?” I toss the tags onto the counter. “How’s the swimming and snorkeling lessons with Tank going?”
She beams. “I’m probably better than you now.”
“Doesn’t take much. I’m not the fastest swimmer, and you’re not going to find me snorkeling around looking at fish.” I pucker up my lips and make a fish face, and she laughs. “So, when are you coming to ride Silver Bullet?”
“I renamed her Rose Petal. Lacy said I could.”
“Pretty name.”
“Lacy said I can come today to ride her.”
“I can take you if your mom is busy. I’m going back to May Ranch after I have lunch with Andy and stop in at Book Bliss. Lacy wants me to get a couple books Reagan ordered for her.”
“Lucky her.” Ava makes a face. “I always have to get secondhand books.”
“Secondhand books are the best,” Skye says, pushing through the backroom curtains, lugging an antique, dark mahogany rocking chair. “They’re preloved.”
Ava rolls her eyes.
“Like me,” Skye says. “And this gal here. Look at this preloved beauty.” She sets the rocking chair down.
“Esther Grady asked me to come to the house, so she could get rid of a few things. She was going to just give me everything, but I made her sign a commission contract, so she could make money from the sales. She needs the money, and some of these are going to bring in a pretty penny.”
“Where do you want that thing?” I nudge a chin toward the rocking chair.
“Next to Annie and Mannie.” She points to the mannequins in the front window.
“Do you need anything for the cabin for your new guys? There are a few other pieces in the backroom. A mid-century coffee table, a sturdy bookshelf if you’ve got any book lovers, and a desk.
Your guys are taking community college classes in their spare time, right? ”
I nod. “Lacy said she was looking for a desk. And a couple more chairs for the front porch.” I glance at the price tag on the rocking chair, lift an eyebrow, and whistle.
“And I priced it down. But I bet it’ll be gone by the end of the week.
” She walks to the counter and holds up a book.
“I almost forgot. I got this in. Did you feel my cosmic message to come and pick it up? Father Wakowsky was getting rid of some of his books. A ton of European history, if you want to go look.” She waves toward the bookshelves.
“You were going on and on about the Austro-Prussian War the other day, so I nabbed this one.”
“I don’t get cosmic messages.”
“Everybody does. They just don’t pay attention.”
“Was your cosmic message in the form of hot coffee?”
“Huh?” She squinches her nose.
“That woman who’s staying at Heaven accidentally spilled coffee on me. That’s why I stopped in. I needed some dry, non-stained pants.”
“Do you mean the woman who bikes from Heaven?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you talk to her? Was she nice?”
“A little snippy, but she didn’t cuss or punch me.” I shrug. “That’s all the intel I have on her.” I don’t mention the intel I have on her legs and how sexy they are.
“Rylee says she’s mean,” Ava says from the counter. “She never smiles or talks when she’s at Book Bliss.”
“We shouldn’t assume. Maybe she’s shy,” Skye says. “If she comes into Seventh Heaven, I’ll suss her out.”
Ava groans. “Please don’t say suss, Mom.”
Skye laughs and steers me toward a rack of shirts.
She pulls out a sage green polo and holds it up next to my face.
“Yep. I was right. It looks gorgeous with your baby blues. Go put it on. Consider it a buy one, get one free special offer.” She eyes my pants, then shakes her head sadly.
“Let me give you your money back. Those pants were in the dad bod, already married and not looking for a woman section. It’s a perfectly respectable section, but it is not yours. ”
I turn to Ava. “Are these so bad?”
She shrugs. “You always look the same.”
“Exactly,” I tell her. I turn back to Skye. “What’s wrong with a man knowing their own personal style and sticking with it?”
Skye steers me to the dressing room, grabbing a pair of jeans on the way and handing them to me. “These won’t be baggy like those pants. I swear, you’re purposely trying to hide all your good features.”
“And all along, I thought my good features were pretty damn obvious.”
She opens the door to the dressing room and waves a hand for me to enter.
“I have a limit to how many times I can go in a dressing room in one day, and I’ve already reached it,” I say.
“Those jeans and that shirt will be perfect for your date.”
“I didn’t know I had a date. Is my date cute?” I pause and think about that for a moment. “Never mind. What’s more important is if she can talk about history and cows.”
“Andrea can talk about cows… and maybe the history of cows.”
“Andy?” I squint at her.
“Didn’t you tell me you had a lunch date with Andy? Or she told me. Someone did.”
“Welcome to Paradise Springs,” I mumble. “Small town charm with all the gossip. My lunch with Andy is not a date. We’re talking business.”
“Does Andy know that?”
“Yes,” I grumble.
She pushes me in the dressing room.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re bossy?”
“Everyone who meets me. But I know they mean it as a compliment.” She calls out from the side of the door while I kick my boots off, “Maybe if you acted like it was a date, it would turn into one.”
I open the door and pop my head out. “The last person I wanted to date put me in the friend zone and broke my heart. I’m done with trying.”
“It was for the best. I’m too bossy.”
After my business lunch with Andrea—not a date—I pick Ava up at the store to take her to May Ranch. She chatters about snorkeling and horses until we get to Meyer’s Crossing. Then, she kicks her shoes off and sticks her head out the window, like a dog, letting the hot wind flutter her hair.
When she sticks her head back in, she says, “How come your pickup truck is older than me?”
“It’s a valuable antique. Like half that shit your mother sells.”
“You’re not supposed to cuss in front of me.”
“Right. I forgot. And just so you know, when I say shit, I usually mean it as a general word for ‘stuff.’”
“Why don’t you just say stuff then?”
“Good point. I will try.”
“Remember Mom’s rule—you owe me a hot fudge sundae for cussing.”
“I thought it was one scoop of ice cream at the Cosmic Creamery?”
“Inflation.”
I glance over at her. “You know what inflation is?”
“You want me to explain inflation to you?” Her eyebrows shoot up. “Didn’t you learn about it in school?”
“The only subject I paid attention to in school was history.”
“What’s this thing?” She fiddles with the cigarette lighter. “My mom doesn’t have one of these in her car.” She bolts straight up and points to the side of the road. “There’s that lady who’s staying at Heaven!”
I slow the pickup. She’s bent over her bike.
Ava rolls her window down and waves while I pull the truck onto the berm.
She looks up, and I can tell she’s wavering on whether she can completely ignore us, even though we’ve already stopped. She finally straightens and walks over.
“This isn’t my day,” she says.
“How about I throw your bike in the bed, and I take you to Ned’s?”
She eyes Ava then nods and turns back to the bike, grabbing a satchel and the cooler from the basket.
I jump out of the truck and heft the bike up and place it in the bed.
“Thank you,” she says softly, tugging at her big, floppy sunhat. “For being neighborly.”
“I try.” I watch her walk to the pickup.
I wasn’t wrong about those legs.
Ava pushes the door open and scoots over, making room for her. “Hi,” she says, her voice a friendly chirp that even someone with a stick up their butt couldn’t resist. “I’m Ava.”
I hide a smile as Ava waits for the woman to offer her name.
“Hi Ava,” she says. “I’m Wren.” She tugs at her seatbelt.
“Sometimes it sticks,” Ava offers. “You have to pull it until your arm feels like it’s going to yank out of its socket.”
“I keep on meaning to fix that,” I mumble.
Wren yanks, and her satchel slides off her lap. She and Ava gather up the spilled contents while I pull the pickup back onto the road.
“There’s a full moon in three days,” Ava says to Wren when they’ve gathered up all the shit…
things from her satchel. “You should try swimming in Heaven’s Spring.
It’s supposed to heal people. But you have to do it at midnight when the moon’s really full, not like almost, almost full.
Rylee, my best friend, and I tried it with our moms. My mom said she felt something different after.
But she’s like that.” She shrugs two thin shoulders.
“She feels all kinds of woowoo things. Rylee has ADHD, and I sleepwalk and have night terrors, but neither of us got any better. But we’re going to try again next full moon. ”
“Maybe I should throw my tire in the Springs,” Wren says, a smile in her voice. I glance over to catch it, but it’s gone by the time I look.
“I bet Ned’ll fix it. You should have him put a motor on it as well. My friend, Allie, has a motor on her bike,” Ava says.
“I might ask him.” Wren’s voice is warm honey now. This time when I glance over, she’s full-out beaming at Ava.
“I wish my mom would let me bike to May Ranch,” Ava says.
“And deprive yourself of my company?” I slow the pickup before I turn down the path to Heaven, gesturing toward the next turnoff you can see if you squint.
“Wren, Danni or Ned may have told you, but that turnoff ahead is Rat’s Tail.
You can shave off some time if you take it around past Ned’s workshop.
And if it’s raining, it generally stays high and dry.
The path is overgrown with ferns, and it’s a squeeze for a truck, but you can bike and hike it. ”