Chapter 5
Later that evening, I climb into Dalton’s truck. I didn’t get much sleep, more like none, no thanks to the hot construction worker, but my stomach is growling. Tired or not, I’m impatient to see what is so special about this woman’s dinners.
“Brace yourself,” Aubrey warns when I’m sure we’re close. It’s not a long drive, but every minute that passes feels long.
“For what?” I ask.
“Meadow Lane,” she quips from the front seat.
A massive jolt nearly sends me flying back toward the window. I grab the armrest and hold my breath. It makes no sense when Dalton continues to drive up the road. “Did the tire fall off?” I ask.
Aubrey giggles. “No. It’s just the road.”
“Worst road in all of Colorado,” Dalton gripes. He takes Aubrey’s hand, though, and I smile. Seeing him be so sweet with her warms my heart. If I could ever think about finding and holding on to love, I’d want it to be something like what he has with her. Lasting and deep.
“Hey, if it wasn’t for this road, I wouldn’t have hated you so much,” she reminds him.
“And then we wouldn’t have fought enough to get so close.”
I blink. “That sounds kind of backward to me.” Another hard jolt rocks the sturdy truck, and I slant in the opposite direction as he zooms around a twist in the road.
“But it worked for us,” Aubrey says as she leans close to him to kiss his cheek.
“Pothole,” Dalton announces before he holds her close.
“They’ll never fix this road,” she grouses as she sits facing forward again.
He grunts. “Caleb and I are already trying to rally for it.”
After more potholes, large cracks, and so many curves I lose count of them, we pull up at a large yellow house. We step out of the truck, and I smile as Aubrey tells me about how Lauren found this place. One of her bigger projects was painting the place this canary color, and I have to agree that it suits it. It’s lovely with the setting sun. In the fall, it probably blends in a bit with the leaves changing colors, and then in the winter and spring, it must be a peppy, bright hue to herald the coming return of summer against the drab gray of coldness.
Lauren is no less charming this time as she welcomes me into the big house.
Caleb hugs me and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Welcome to the Goldfinch,” he says warmly.
“What is that smell?” I inhale deeply, about to drool at the scents of freshly baked something. I just spent years in the heart of Paris. There was no shortage of bakeries around my apartment I shared with Owen, but nothing there smelled as lovely as the goods being prepared in here somewhere.
“Marian’s magic,” Aubrey says with just as deep of an inhale as I did. “Oooh. I love this casserole. She makes these little apple biscuits to go with it, and it is divine.”
An older woman with long, graying hair comes through the hall, beaming at us all. “Oh, you boys are right. She does look like a model!”
Lauren and Aubrey giggle, and I give in to the urge to smile. “I do not,” I protest.
“So glamorous.” She steps closer, taking my hand to squeeze. It’s not a shake, but still, kind of comes across as one. Having her hand on mine doesn’t make butterflies take off in my stomach like when Sawyer gripped my finger earlier. A slight blush threatens to warm my cheeks as I think back to it. Why didn’t I let go? Why did I let him hold on to me like that for so long? I hated how stuck I got on the feel of his rough hand on me, like a taboo threat that was too exciting to stop.
“I’m Marian,” she introduces herself, “and I’m so happy to have you here. The boys have talked about you so often, I feel like you were destined to show up.”
“Why?” Caleb asks as he leads us into the dining room. “Because her life is kind of rocky?”
I cut him a stern look. I don’t need a reminder of why I’m practically hiding here. Lauren jabs her elbow in his side.
“Where are your manners?” she scolds.
“He’s not wrong,” Dalton says. “We all ended up here when we needed a change of scenery.” He gives me a sympathetic look as he holds a chair out for Aubrey.
“Marian,” an older man says as he pops his head around the doorway, “that backsplash is done for today.” He grins and winks. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I do a double-take, almost missing my chair as I sit. I’m new here, but he looks so familiar that I need to glance at him again.
“Thank you, Jason,” Marian says as she waves at him.
After he leaves, I glance around the table, wondering why everyone’s giving Marian such sly looks. She doesn’t pay them any attention, and I feel too much like a stranger to be so rude as to ask what’s going on.
“He totally has a crush on you!” Lauren finally blurts out as we pass dishes around.
Still, Marian doesn’t react, not looking up at her and acknowledging her comment. “More chicken, Aubrey?”
“Marian and Jason,” Aubrey sings, “sitting in a tree. K-I-S—”
The BB owner smirks at her. “The only tree Jason and I would fit in was the one that fell down near the house last summer. Stop that nonsense.” She’s not scolding. It looks like she’s fighting a losing battle not to smile.
“It is interesting, though,” Caleb says, “that Jason is hanging around fixing so many things so soon after we had the place remodeled last year.”
“He’s finding something wrong everywhere he looks,” Dalton teases. “Almost like he wants an excuse to be here.”
Marian still doesn’t react. She’s either the coolest cucumber ever, or there’s nothing to what they’re hinting at.
“Maybe the person who did the remodeling did a lousy job,” I say, eager to back up this sweet older woman.
She cackles, laughing.
“You won’t hear an argument from me,” Dalton grumbles. “Hayes was an ass.”
Caleb chuckles as Marian beams at me. “No. Jason is looking for excuses to hang around.” She winks. “I’m just playing hard to get. But thank you for being on my side.”
Lauren and Aubrey give her a hard time about being coy with Jason, and even I struggle to keep a straight face. “Why does he look so familiar?” I ask when the chatter calms down.
“Jason?” Dalton asks. “Well, since you met Sawyer earlier…”
Guilt gnaws at me. I regret being so curt with him, but I was so damn tired!
“Sawyer is Jason’s half-brother,” he answers.
Aubrey nods. “He’s got another brother, too, Kevin. He teaches at the same school that I work at.”
Marian raises her brows at me. “You’ve already met Sawyer?”
Dalton snorts a laugh.
“Yes, yes, I have,” I reply.
Marian smiles. “We don’t often have too many crews working around here. But with these two determined to renovate the whole state, it seems we’ve got a bevy of business coming our way.”
Lauren rubs her hands together. “The bed-and-breakfast will be booming in no time.”
“Maybe I won’t need to rely on the advertisement to get my reservations,” Marian says.
“For this food?” I ask as I take my second helping. “No. If you advertise this, you’ll never run out of customers.”
“No, how couples who meet here stay together.”
I give her a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”
“Lauren met Caleb here. Then Dalton met Aubrey here.”
As one, they turn their heads to me. I roll my eyes and shake my head. “No matchmaking on my agenda. Give up on my love life before you even think about it.”
I have.
Marian’s smile is polite, and when she immediately asks me about my so-called lux life in Paris, I’m grateful. She’s sharp, witty, and too observant in noticing that I didn’t want any attention on that matter. I need the easy out, and talking about the years I spent in Paris is a much more preferable topic than why I shouldn’t hope for a lasting love like the others have found here.
“It sounds like the adventure of a lifetime,” Aubrey says. “Studying abroad?” She sighs as Lauren brings out dessert. “I stayed in LA for college because of the scholarships that got me there, but I wish I could have seen more of the world.”
“It’s no different than an education anywhere else.” Being in Paris sounds like a vacation, but it wasn’t. I chose it not only because it is such a fashion center, but also because I needed that distance from my mother. “And that is what I went for. After all the hours of studying and working on projects, I didn’t have much time to party or explore.”
“You’ve always been so dedicated to your interests,” Caleb agrees.
“More like her one interest,” Dalton corrects. “It’s always been fashion.”
“Not fashion,” I reply. Before they can do that model nonsense again, I add, “I’m interested in designing fashion.”
“All work and no play?” Marian teases gently. “You’re a workaholic?”
I sigh, trying my best not to let her use of that word hit me like it did when Owen said it. He’d shouted it like a cruel accusation. Marian is too kind to be like him, and I can’t envision her ever calling anyone stuck-up either. It irks me, though, that having a steadfast commitment to making a career can have such a negative connotation, especially as a woman. My mother has and will never lift a finger to do anything that would be construed as work. She’s lazy and entitled, with only one goal of maintaining and holding the wealth my father granted her when he was alive. He passed away when I was a teen, and it didn’t matter—whether my mother was married or widowed, she was still an old-fashioned elitist, deeming a career a waste of time better left for the inferior plebs of the world.
“It takes one to know one,” Marian adds. “This place is my work, and no matter how much I let Caleb and Lauren help, it will always be my dream job.”
I grin, loving how easily she gets it. I’m not a workaholic, and neither is she. We simply want to never quit on our dreams.
I counted on coming here to relax and hide from my mom the best I could, but I hadn’t anticipated how much I could benefit from finding a mother in Marian here, too.
On the topic of working, though, I smile at Lauren. “And I can’t wait to get started on your dress.”
“You’ll do it? You’ll really make me a dress?” Her eyes widen with excitement.
“I can design it.” I sigh. “But I don’t have the tools and materials to it make one here.”
Caleb grunts. “Uh, yeah, you will.”
“Fabric? Threads? A form?” I huff. “A sewing machine?” I shake my head. “I know you can do what you want with your money, but it’s not so easy to set up all of that so quickly here.”
Dalton chuckles. “Just you watch.”
Caleb takes Lauren’s hand. “She will have a gown she wants for this wedding. Cuz it’s gonna be her last.”
“At any rate, Lauren,” I tell her as I wait for the jealousy to fade over how much love they have for each other, “could you come over soon to start the design process?”
She agrees, and soon enough, we wrap up dinner and head home.
Caleb and Lauren simply walk over to the big house next door to the BB, and Dalton drives me and Aubrey back to his property. Within minutes, Aubrey’s conks out, too sleepy from the big homecooked meal, I bet.
“Claire?”
I perk up at his voice. “Hmm?”
“Maybe you can go easy on Sawyer, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “He called you to tattle?”
He chuckles. “We’re all adults here. No tattling necessary. We were discussing projects and he expressed confusion about why I was renting out that cabin when I knew work was going on. So I explained that you’re not an ordinary guest but family.”
“Whatever. I don’t plan on running into him anymore.” And I already ordered the heaviest-duty headphones I could find online.
“He’s just doing his job. Keep that in mind the next time you happen to see him.”
I narrow my eyes at his smirking reflection in the mirror. I’m not sure I want to know the reason for that amused expression. Just what did Sawyer say to him about me?
I shake my head and turn back to the passenger window.
It doesn’t matter what his first impression of me is.
He’s not worth my curiosity.
Regardless of how strong it is.