Chapter 17
Four days later, Beth knew going with Dave to Cedar Ridge had been a mistake before they’d even made it out of town. Not a terrible mistake. Not the sort that involved ambulances, lawyers, or explaining yourself to your children.
Just the kind that left you sitting in the passenger seat of a man’s truck at nine-thirty on a Saturday morning, holding two takeout coffees while he drove through Sapphire Bay.
It was as if spending several hours alone together was the most ordinary thing in the world. Which, Beth reminded herself, it was. Sort of.
They were here because an elementary school was being renovated. Someone on the school board had heard about the arts center and offered them a collection of storage cabinets, timber shelving, two large worktables, and several boxes of art supplies they no longer needed.
Dave had planned to collect everything himself. Then Beth had made the mistake of asking how he intended to lift the furniture onto a trailer without help.
“I’ll manage,” he’d said.
She’d folded her arms, and he’d sighed.
And somehow, ten minutes later, she’d agreed to go with him. It made sense. The arts center needed the furniture. Dave needed another pair of hands. She didn’t have anything that couldn’t wait until Saturday afternoon.
It was a perfectly sensible solution.
Except she’d spent far too long deciding what to wear that morning.
Instead of second-guessing her dark denim jeans and pale peach sweater, Beth focused on the road. “We could have taken my truck.”
Dave glanced at her. “You already told me that.”
“I know.”
“Twice,” he reminded her.
Beth cleared her throat. Since the council meeting, she’d been trying hard not to have a gazillion plans for every contingency. She put her relapse down to stress, and the amazing aftershave Dave was wearing.
She glanced across the cab. “I was making sure you’d considered all the options.”
“I considered them.”
“And?” she asked.
“Mine has the trailer attached.”
Beth looked over her shoulder at the empty utility trailer following them. “That’s a surprisingly practical reason.”
“I have them occasionally,” Dave said dryly.
She smiled and handed him a cup of takeout coffee. “Careful. It’s hot.”
Dave wrapped his hand around the cup. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Beth warned him. “The woman at the café was very busy, so there’s a reasonable chance one of us has a decaf.”
Dave took a careful sip. “Not me.”
“That’s good,” she said as she sipped her coffee. At least the coffee order had gone to plan. “After the long hours you’ve put in at work this week, you’d probably fall asleep at the wheel.”
The smile on Dave’s face did strange things to Beth’s stomach.
“If I was that tired, I’d pull over first,” he told her.
“That’s very reassuring,” Beth said as Dave smile turned into a grin.
After a couple of minutes, Dave placed his coffee in the cup holder and reached for the radio. “Do you mind?”
Beth shrugged. “It depends on what you want to listen to.”
His eyebrows rose. “You have rules?”
“I have standards.” She smiled at the expression on his face. “Go ahead.” Dave pressed a button and a guitar riff filled the truck. Beth turned slowly toward him.
He kept his eyes on the road.
She listened to the hard-driving rock song for another few seconds. “I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d like listening to this sort of music.”
Dave frowned. “What did you think I’d listen to?”
She considered the question. “Country.”
He looked offended. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Beth told him easily. “You drive a truck. You own more plaid shirts than anyone I’ve ever met, and you like fried chicken and green beans.”
“Those things aren’t connected.”
“They might be.”
Dave sat back in his seat. “Just for the record, I like some country music, but this is better.” He turned up the volume.
Beth laughed. “How old are you?”
“Old enough to listen to whatever I want.”
“Apparently.”
The song changed, and she recognized it immediately. “Oh, I love this one.” Beth reached across and turned the volume higher.
Twenty minutes later, they’d established that Dave’s taste in music wasn’t as bad as Beth had first thought. She knew almost every word to half the songs they’d listened to, and the rest didn’t make her cringe.
Singing together at the top of their lungs was ridiculous.
It was also fun.
“When was the last time you went on a road trip?” Dave asked between songs.
That was easy. Without hesitation, Beth said, “Kayla and I went to Glacier National Park three years ago. It was just before she started culinary school. What about you?”
Dave was silent for a few seconds. “I drove to Lethbridge, Alberta, for a friend’s wedding five years ago. On the way home, I drove back through the Rockies.”
Beth hadn’t been to the Rocky Mountains in years. “Kayla was about ten when Jessie and I took her to the Rockies. It was an amazing vacation. Have you been anywhere else since your friend’s wedding?”
“I’ve driven to different places. Just not on a road trip.”
Beth frowned. “There’s a difference?”
“Completely. A road trip requires bad coffee, a wrong turn, and an argument about where to eat. Which leads to the main difference. You have to go with at least one other person.”
Beth held up her cup. “The coffee is good.”
Dave grinned. “So, we’re already doing it wrong.”
“And we haven’t taken a wrong turn,” Beth added.
Dave pointed to his dashboard. “That’s because I have a navigation system that makes it impossible to get lost.”
Beth placed her empty coffee cup in the cup holder. “That’s what men always say ten minutes before they admit they’re going around in circles.”
Dave laughed, and Beth couldn’t help smiling with him. She turned her attention back to the road, but the warmth of the moment stayed with her.
That seemed to happen a lot around Dave. She noticed his smile, the easy sound of his laughter, the way he glanced at her when she said something he hadn’t expected. None of it should have mattered as much as it did.
And yet, lately, she seemed to notice everything about him.
They were twenty minutes from Cedar Ridge when the first snowflake struck the windshield.
“It’s beautiful.” Beth watched the snow gather along the edge of the road.
It wasn’t heavy enough to cause problems. Just a soft scattering of white floating through the air.
“The best thing about winter is driving through the snow, but only when it’s as light as this. Any heavier and it’s a nightmare.”
Dave turned on the wipers. “I know what you mean. Some of the construction sites I’ve worked on have had terrible access. Driving through the snow to reach them can be horrendous.”
Beth looked at him. “Do you know what Jessie used to do whenever it snowed?” The words came out before she’d decided to say them. For a second, something inside her tightened. But Dave didn’t look uncomfortable and he didn’t go quiet.
He simply asked, “What did he do?”
“He’d insist we go for a walk,” Beth told Dave. “It didn’t matter how cold it was or what we were doing. The first decent snowfall of the year, we’d have to go outside.”
“Even at night?” Dave asked.
“Especially at night.” She smiled at the memory. “One year we walked halfway across town at eleven o’clock because he wanted to see the Christmas lights in the snow. It was so peaceful that we could have been on a different planet.”
“He sounds like a nice person.”
Beth studied Dave’s strong jaw, the curl of his hair along the collar of his shirt, and the way he kept his gaze firmly on the road. Jessie would have liked Dave. They both had the same work ethic, the same sense of compassion and kindness.
“He was a lovely man,” Beth said quietly. “He liked eating chocolate chip ice cream on a cold day, swimming in Flathead Lake each morning, rain or shine, and fishing. Although the stories he told me about the one that got away became more creative the longer we were married.”
Dave’s hands shifted slightly on the steering wheel.
“Carol liked strawberry cheesecake. The real kind made from cream cheese. And if it had a gingerbread base, she was in heaven. But she didn’t like fishing or swimming in the lake.
” He glanced across the cab. “I’m surprised we didn’t meet before you started working at the arts center. ”
Beth looked back at the snow. “I guess we were never in the same place at the same time.”
For the next few miles, they listened to Dave’s music. Neither of them spoke, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable.
That surprised Beth most of all.