Chapter 35
GEMMA
It’s a perfect spring day. The sun is shining. Birds are singing. There’s a slight breeze, just enough to rustle through the lilac bushes planted along the porch railing and carry their faint, sweet scent up to me.
I’m sitting on the front porch in one of Dent’s old rockers, another glass of questionable lemonade sweating on the table next to me. A plate of raspberry scones beside it while I try not to think about the fact that I don’t have many of these left—perfect spring days on my grandfather’s porch.
“How’s it going?” Emily asks, her face taking up the majority of my phone screen.
It’s her free period at work and we’re having our daily FaceTime session.
I finally confessed to her weeks ago that Riggs was back and that Reese had somehow managed to talk me into letting him stay with me while he recovered from surgery.
“Same.” I give her a deceptively indifferent shrug.
“We ignore each other. I sneak in and do what I can while he’s not looking and he pretends not to notice,” I report while my cat stalks through the tallish grass, topaz yellow gaze fixed on something across the yard.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t stand a chance.
“Live, live, live, live…” I start to chant like I’m an extra in Gladiator.
When she hears me chanting, Janet stops, mid-stalk, lifting her head to look at me—bitch, are you serious right now?
before she gives chase to whatever she’s hunting, zigzagging through the grass to disappear under one of the lilac bushes.
Watching my antics, Emily laughs.
Excitement over, I look back at the screen and sigh. “I’m just hoping the waitlist at the rehab in Houston is long enough for me to squeeze out a few more paychecks.”
Emily’s forehead creases in a frown. “Gem?—”
“Colt offered me his rental unit this morning,” I tell her, cutting her off before she can make me an offer that’s getting harder and harder to refuse.
“His current tenant is a travel nurse and her contract with the hospital is up, so she’s moving out.
He said it’s mine if I need it. He won’t rent it out until I know for sure. ”
“That sounds like Colt,” she says, giving me a faint smile. “He was always the nice one.”
In the yard in front of me, Janet comes out from under the lilac bush.
Something in her mouth, she disappears around the side of the house.
Slightly queasy, I make a mental note to check my pillow case before I climb into bed tonight.
“The Wilsons are selling.” Changing the subject, I aim my phone screen at the house next door to show her the for sale sign I watched a realtor hammer into the front yard about an hour ago.
“Becca just had a baby—they’re moving to Seattle to be closer to her. ”
“They’re going to hate it,” Emily says. “It rains all the time there.”
“Maybe not,” I answer her, trying to be optimistic. “They’ll be close to Becca and they’ll have a new grandbaby to spoil.”
When I swivel the camera around to face me, I find Emily frowning. “Who do you think will buy it?”
“I don’t know,” I say, frowning back. “Riverfront property is fetching a pretty penny these days. A for sale sign goes up and creekers come running with their checkbooks—worse than locust, I swear.”
“We’re creekers,” she reminds me on a laugh.
“No, we’re not,” I tell her firmly. “Not like that. Not like them.” Glancing at the for sale sign again, I catch movement and shift my gaze toward the end of the street just in time to watch Cade’s Challenger turn the corner, heading straight for me, the rumble of its engine growing louder by the second.
Knowing he can’t be coming to see Colt because Colt’s at work, I start to panic a little.
“I have to go,” I say, shooting a hurried glance at my phone screen.
“What’s wrong?” Emily shakes her head. “Is?—”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I tell her while Cade’s car rolls to a stop in front of my house. “Realtor’s here to show the house—they’re creekers for sure. I’m gonna go play dead in the yard.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she says on a laugh that leaches the worry from her pretty face.
“I know.” Aiming a smile at the screen, I watch Cade climb out of his car from the corner of my eye. He’s not alone. “I love you—I’ll call you tonight.”
Jabbing a hurried finger at my phone screen to end the call, I stand to make my way closer. At the top of the porch, I watch Cade round the front of the car to open the passenger side door to help his mother out of it.
Lifting my hand to shade my eyes, I watch while Penny Montgomery makes her way up my walk, her son close behind.
“It’s Monday,” I remind him, fighting to keep my tone light for his mother’s sake.
The truth of it is that Cade has become my own personal taxi service since the incident involving the drunk creeker he almost murdered a few weeks ago.
On Jensen’s orders, Cade shows up at my house, three nights a week to pick me up for my shift at the Mill, and he’s waiting in the parking lot to take me home.
Even though I’ve protested to Jensen in private about the arrangement, citing that everything had been resolved, and I’m not in any immediate danger, he remains unmoving.
You want your job? This is how you keep it.
“I know,” Cade gives me a flat, uncomfortable smile which is more than he’s give me in the weeks that he’s been forced to play chauffeur.
Aside from the first night when he tried to ask me about Emily, our car rides together have been silent.
He drives. I sulk. “We’re here on business,” he tells me while he mounts the porch steps behind his mother. “Mom wants to?—”
“Gemma,” Emily’s voice calls out to me from the phone still clutched in my hand. “You didn’t hang up—I’m still on the phone.”
When he hears her voice, Cade’s entire body goes stiff and he looks like someone just caught him with a haymaker, right in the face.
Ohshitohshitohshit
Lifting it, I find Emily looking shaken, staring at me from my phone screen, leaving little doubt that she knows exactly who’s standing on my porch steps and why I ended our phone call so abruptly.
“Shit.” Shaking my head like I’ve been caught doing something bad, I start to babble, because while I told Emily all about Riggs, I failed to mention the fact that Cade has become a semi-permanent fixture around here. “Shit, I’m sorry. I thought I?—”
“It’s okay,” she tells me with a faint, wobbly smile. It’s not okay. I know it’s not. “I still love you. Call me tonight.”
Giving her a quick, bobble head nod, I deliberately and forcefully jab my finger against the disconnect icon and wait for the screen to go black before I look up. Ignoring the punched in the gut expression on Cade’s face, I focus on his mother. “Business?”
For a moment, the three of stand here and stare at each other for what feels like a very awkward eternity before she answers me. “Yes.” Giving me a nod, she joins me on the porch. “Birthday business.”
Twenty minutes later—after I’ve sent Bruce off with a pair of scones and fetched Penny a glass of lemonade while worrying myself to death about what her son and Riggs are talking about on the deck—I’m sitting on the front porch with Cade’s mother, staring at her like I don’t understand what she’s trying to say.
“You want me to make Scarlett’s birthday cake.” My tone lifts at the end like I’m asking her a question when what I’m really doing is repeating back what she just said.
“Yes.” Bobbing her head, Penny takes a drink of her lemonade.
Confused, I shake my head. “Mrs. Mont?—”
“You offered to make it, didn’t you?” she asks, slightly exasperated like maybe I’d forgotten the conversation. “Told her to have me call you about it.”
“Yes.” I nod, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. “I did, but?—”
“But you didn’t mean it?” Her tone cools considerably at the thought of me making promises to her granddaughter that I have no intention of keeping.
“No.” Shaking my head emphatically, I blow out a harsh breath because now I’m getting frustrated. “I meant it, but?—”
Scowling, she cuts me off again. “If this is about my daughter or my knuckle-head of a son?—”
“It’s not,” I assure her, although I can’t imagine Sera will be happy to know that I’m the one who made her daughter’s birthday cake. “I’m happy to make Scarlett’s cake, Mrs. Montgomery—but you don’t have to pay me.”
When I say it, Penny sits back in her seat with a relieved laugh. “Of course I do. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.” Feeling my stubborn streak start to widen, I shake my head. “I’d never even consider charging you for a promise I made freely.”
“Well then, we’re going to have one sad birthday girl on our hands with an even sadder birthday cake,” Penny tells me with a head shake of her own.
“Because if you’re going to apply your skills and spend your time, I’m going to be spending my money and if you don’t let me, Sera is going to serve up a lopsided brick, covered in canned frosting.
” Before I can argue some more, Penny reaches into the space between us to lift one of my raspberry scones off its plate.
“Do you know how much you could sell this one scone for?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” I tell her honestly.
I bake because I enjoy it. I baked for June because I need the extra money, yes—but even before I started scraping my pennies together to save this house, I baked for her because I loved watching the way my pies and cakes disappeared from her pastry case, piece by piece.
It made me feel good to know people were enjoying my hard work.
That something I made was making someone else happy.
“Well, you need to.” Waving it in my face, she looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “This is your golden ticket, Gemma—this. June’s is a ghost town. Last time I stopped in, there wasn’t more than three tables occupied—during lunch rush.”
“Really?” I ask, instantly feeling bad. During the week, lunch was always my busiest shift. I never had a free table. Even though June fired me, that doesn’t mean I want to see her business fail.
“Really.” Finally taking a bite of her scone, Penny let out a soft groan of appreciation. “She won’t say it but she’s kicking herself for letting you go. She’s got some twit back there making blueberry muffins from a box mix.”
Imagining Melinda in June’s kitchen, reading the directions on the back of a box of Jiffy mix, I can’t help but smile. “That’s terrible.”
“It is—her pie crust tastes like soap,” Penny says.
“And she put raisins in the chocolate cake. Raisins—that’s almost as bad as putting them in your potato salad.
” Behind me the screen door scrapes open before banging shut.
When she sees her son behind me, Penny stands.
“Back to business—Scarlett’s requesting your hummingbird cake with the vanilla mousse filling and brown butter cream cheese frosting.
Better throw in a few dozen cupcakes while we’re at it—plain chocolate and vanilla is fine.
” Reaching into her purse, she pulls out a thin stack of one hundred dollar bills and places them on the table, next to the near empty plate of scones.
“The party’s at two o’clock, this Saturday and I’ve taken the liberty of adding a delivery fee to my payment—I’ll expect it by noon.
” Her tone leaves no room of argument, I’m taking her money whether I want to or not.
Slightly dazed, pride stinging, I look up at her with a smile that feels more like a grimace. “Yes, ma’am.”
Browbeating delivered, Penny relaxes. “Thank you, Gemma.” Glancing up at Cade, she smiles, half-eaten scone in hand. “I’d like to go home now.”
Watching Penny make her way to Cade’s car, I will him to follow her. He doesn’t. He just stands there, outside my peripheral, hovering like he has something to say. Sure he’s going to ask about Emily, I turn in my seat to tell him my best friend is none of his business.
“Judd cheated on her,” he says quietly before I can snap at him, watching his mom climb into the passenger seat of his car, tattooed hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans.
Lyle Judd was Penny’s second husband—the creeker she married after she divorced Cal Montgomery.
The Judds were Emily’s next-door neighbors and for a time, so was Cade.
“There was an infidelity clause in the prenup—my mom got three million dollars for every year she was married to that miserable bastard.” Sighing, he looks away from his mother to look down on me with one of his shitty half-smirks.
“They were married for five years.” Reaching past me, Cade snags the last scone off the plate.
“Take the money, Gemma—she can afford it.” Taking a bite of his scone, he follows after his mother to drive her home.