Heaven Beside You (8 page)

Beside the town hall was the post office. Cass pushed through the door and breathed deeply. The post office always smelled of wood, paper and coffee. Sanity itself, something in short supply after that lunch.

“Well, hello, Cassandra,” Ben, the postmaster greeted her. “I didn’t expect to see you in town already. And dressed up so pretty today. I heard you got yourself a winter guest.”

“Hi, Ben.” Cass set her box on the counter. She should have known the whole town would know about Jason even if they didn’t know who he was. How had she not considered that when she’d offered to drive him down for groceries and lunch? “I do have a guest, but he didn’t pack any food so I volunteered to bring him in to the grocery store.”

“Good girl,” Ben told her, his white walrus mustache quivering. “Got some things to go, do you?”

“Yeah.” She took the letter she’d written to Gretta off the top of the box. “I need this one to go overnight.”

Ben raised an eyebrow. “Truck’s already been.”

“I just want it to go out as soon as possible.”

“I think that’s doable. I’ll take this and get you your mail.”

Ben shuffled into the back room. He’d been the postmaster here all her life. The post office was only open a few hours a day and those were apt to change if he wasn’t feeling well. Years ago, everyone in town started picking up their mail because they worried about Ben trying to deliver it. He didn’t even try any more. The only way anyone got their mail was to pick it up themselves. Another thing she’d hated about Potterville before she’d left that hadn’t seemed so bad when she returned. So the mail didn’t show up at her door on a daily basis. Nothing coming that way needed to be dealt with all that fast anyhow.

“Here you are, my girl. You should be needing stamps next time, too, if I count these right.” He winked. “You should dress up more often, Cassie. You look very pretty today.”

She forced a smile. She’d worn a nice coat, and he’d be on the phone the moment she pushed out the door. Within half an hour everyone in town would know she’d come down to town all gussied up with her guest and had a special lunch at Ida’s with the guest and her parents. They wouldn’t go so far as to dress her in a ball gown, but the off-the-rack peacoat would have morphed into a designer coat she must have bought in New York City. By the time this seven-day wonder had petered out, she’d be wearing a Chanel coat and carrying a Coach bag.

And her father approved of the rock star over the accountant.

She hefted the refilled box from the counter and hurried out the door. The sooner she finished her errands, the better.

“Hey! Hey, Cassie! What’s your rush?”

She stopped. How had she managed to forget she’d have to pass Finn’s office to get to Sue’s? She didn’t want to deal with Finn right now, or ever really. Not that she didn’t like him, she just didn’t like him as much as he did her, and it never failed to make her guilty. As she turned to deal with this albatross, she tried to compose herself. “Hi, Finn.”

“So that was your famous guest,” he stated, wrapping his long arms around his chubby body. He must have been in such a hurry to hunt her down, he’d forgotten his coat. A blob of mayonnaise also clung to the corner of his mouth. If she had any romantic leanings for him, that sight would have been adorable. As it was, she only wanted him to go finish his lunch.

“It is.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to be up there on the mountain with him?” Finn asked. “I mean, I saw how he was looking at you and it didn’t look like…look like he had good…intentions.”

He wasn’t worried about her safety as much as her virtue, what remained of it. She couldn’t resist pushing him, and widened her eyes. “What intentions would he have?”

“You’re all alone up there with no one to protect you. News said a storm’s coming. What if you get trapped? What if he becomes a sex-crazed maniac and attacks you?” Finn blushed. Then his teeth started to chatter.

“It’s pretty unlikely. Word would get out. There might be a trial or something. Go on back to your office before you freeze to death out here.” He’d been after her since high school, and she’d never once felt the slightest spark of attraction for him. Repeated explanations of this fact didn’t hinder him in the least, though it left her mildly annoyed. If she could settle for Finn, her life would be so much easier.

“I’m just trying to help.” Now he verged on whining.

“I can take care of myself. Remember two years ago, when that bear decided to hang out around my house? I survived just fine. And those five years I lived in New York? Still alive. It’s amazing really.” She folded her arms. He started shivering and didn’t seem inclined to go where it was warm, like Angela Costi’s arms. “Finn, go back to your office. I’ll bring my taxes by next time I come down the mountain and we can talk about them over lunch, okay?”

He smiled through his chattering teeth. “That would be great. We can talk about your property. I can help you, Cass.”

“I know.” Finn could always help her. He set up her computer, did her taxes and her financial planning, worked out legal and fiscal details she hadn’t even considered, and occasionally appeared to help her clean up her camp sites after the winter. He wasn’t so bad looking, even if the desk job and winter had him a little chubbier than ideal. Any woman in her right mind would leap at the chance.

But her father disapproved of the accountant and approved of the rock star, so madness might run in the family.

“You look nice today, anyway,” Finn said, breaking into her thoughts.

“Thanks, now get inside before you freeze to death.” She turned and walked away from him. He wasn’t stupid, just obtuse. She’d lain awake nights wondering if she should be mean to him so he’d get over it. The small amount of friendliness she gave only served to encourage him. She did like him as a friend, and he was an excellent accountant, but maybe in order to help him, she had to hurt him. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She pushed through the door of the travel agency and Sue looked up with the wild look of a woman with too much coffee and too little company.

“Cassie! Did you hear?”

At that volume, Cassie could have heard her from across the street. “That the school is planning on doing some events this summer?”

“Small potatoes. Small, small potatoes.” Sue waved her hands in the air over her desk. “You will never guess who I got a call from. Trish, the marketing director from the ski lodge. They want to distribute our schedule, and gave me their events and activities list to add to ours. They want to join in. This is big. This is huge!” She flailed her arms, knocking over her oversized coffee cup. Coffee splashed up the wall behind her. “Even better. Well, you heard about the school.”

“I did.” Cassie bent forward to watch coffee continue to dribble down the wall. “Don’t you need to clean that up?”

“It’s fine. I was going to call you. I figured out how to put the schedule online. We can advertise to a whole new segment. This is really getting big.” Sue leaned over the counter conspiratorially. “Have you heard about the Donaldson Funeral Home? Wegman’s are going to buy it and make it into a B&B.”

“I heard.”

“I hope Maddy doesn’t poison anyone. But you came in to get the stuff to do the schedule, right?” Sue started shuffling through the piles of papers on her desk. She snatched up a red file folder, rifled through it, picked up a couple of papers off her desk, jammed them in and held it out. “This is everything. Absolutely everything.”

And it would be. Under that chaotic and hyper exterior hid an organizational genius.

“Thanks, Sue. I’ll send you the schedule as soon as I get it worked out.” Cassie backed through the door, slightly exhausted by the encounter.

Outside, she paused to investigate what her mother had started.

The music teacher at the high school had a full schedule of evening concerts in the pavilion on the town hall green. Nothing could be more divine than listening to an out of tune, out of sync high school jazz band playing under the stars while being attacked by mosquitoes the size of helicopters.

Not to be out done, the drama-slash-English teacher offered plays, different ones every month for the whole season, Friday and Saturday nights. Their own little taste of Broadway in the high school gym yet, where the scent of floor wax, sweaty sneakers and chalk dust could complete the experience.

The middle school gym would be used for nightly dances, and Irma and Bob Tompkins were giving dance lessons in the afternoons. Irma and Bob were lovely people, but they could hardly walk anymore, let alone dance. Their daughter, the middle school principal, was probably behind that.

The shop teachers were organizing their own robot wars for Sunday afternoons on the football field, which made her wonder how the football coach felt about having his field torn up, or if perhaps they had misrepresented what robot wars involved. Of course, the football boosters were selling refreshments so maybe he knew.

And the PTA planned a rubber duck race for Labor Day Weekend. She really should start going to the school board meetings. Something was going on with those people.

She leafed through the rest of the papers. The usual suspects: nature walks, Civil War site tours, star gazing, church dances, a quilt show, etc.

The guests would love the out-and-out Mayberry-ness of it. Then they would go home and tell all their friends about this little gem of a town. She’d be booked solid by March, and the Wegmans, too. And the townspeople would have a blast.

Crap. Today was Wednesday and she’d sent Jason to the grocery store unescorted.

She jammed the folder in her box with the mail and sprinted down the sidewalk. She tossed her box in the back of the truck before running inside.

Jason was under siege in the canned vegetable and soup aisle in front of the cream soups. Nobody at the register, in the office or in the deli. All three employees surrounded him. Mr. Henderson hadn’t noticed yet, but he might be sleeping in the warehouse. There was no telling how long Jason had been stuck like this.

His eyes lit up when she rounded the chip display. “Cassandra,
bella
,” he called.

She almost stopped and looked behind her. He couldn’t be talking to her. Beautiful Cassandra? “How’s it going?” she asked, hoping to pass off the heat on her cheeks as windburn.

“Well—”

“Mr. Callisto said you made him dinner last night, but you’re leaving him on his own for the rest of his stay.” Cori Gwynn pouted her too-pink-to-be-natural lips. She’d been Homecoming Queen last year and now rang register. A pretty far drop. “I said I’d come cook for him.” Her voice had dropped to a sultry tone that left nothing to the imagination. The clingy fuchsia sweater she wore didn’t either.

“And I told her she’d have him poisoned before the weekend.” Kady Stern smirked. The Prom Queen. Both of them seemed to think it still mattered. Kady worked in the office by virtue of a letter grade difference in high school business math. She held that over Cori, too. Her sweater wasn’t skin tight, but her skirt was about an inch from obscene. And they hadn’t even known Jason would be coming.

“Oh, Mr. Callisto, you don’t want that kind.” Sweet round face clouding with worry, Angela Costi picked up one of the cans in Jason’s basket and put it back on the shelf. “It takes milk. You want this kind. This you just put in the pan and heat up. You do have a pan, don’t you?” Angela had the imagination of a block of wood, but she was passionately in love with Finn Runningwater, who didn’t seem to notice she was alive, and the only one concerned about what Jason would eat for the next two weeks.

Jason looked at Cass. He seemed terrified by the attention. She couldn’t imagine why. Most of his life looked like this. “Do I have a pan?” he asked.

Cass sighed. She should have known better than to let any eligible man walk into Henderson’s Grocery unescorted on a Wednesday, let alone one as wildly eligible as Jason. “I can loan you one. Listen, Kady, Cori, if Duke catches you out here there’s going to be trouble.” Using Mr. Henderson’s first name felt awkward, but did the trick. They both paled. “Angela, why don’t you go back to the deli and slice up a pound of ham, a pound of turkey and a loaf of Italian bread for Mr. Callisto?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea, Cass,” Angela said. “I’ll get some potato salad and broccoli salad, too. Would you like that, Mr. Callisto? It’ll keep to the end of the week at least.”

“Great.” Jason managed a smile. He hadn’t moved from his defensive position against the cream soups.

“Oh, and some cheese. We have some really nice cheese.” Angela hurried away, signaling the other girls to leave, too. Under the guise of discussing Jason’s grocery basket, they sniped at each other as they disappeared around the Grandma Shears chips.

“It was like a scene from
The Birds
. All the sudden they were everywhere,” he whispered. He moved out to the middle of the aisle and peered around the corner.

“Sorry, I forgot about them. Do you really plan to eat canned soup for two weeks?” In his basket were twelve cans. She couldn’t possibly let him sit alone and eat canned soup for two weeks.

Her carefully-cultivated distance was shrinking. She’d thought running down the street to get her mail and the events from Sue would have been enough time out of Jason’s gravity that she wouldn’t have gotten sucked back in so fast. Her heart rate said different.

He shrugged. “I haven’t gotten to the frozen food aisle yet. I’m really not very good at this. I eat out a lot.”

She met his eyes. Familiar heat spread through her. His face softened. He shifted his grip on the basket so it hung at his side. The view changed, and she couldn’t understand why until she realized she was leaning forward. The pulse in his throat throbbed inches from her face. Her body matched his beat. His dark eyes seemed darker, inviting. He licked his lips. Her stomach tightened in anticipation.

“Cass,” someone said.

Jason and Cass leaped apart. His basket banged against the canned vegetables shelf behind him, knocking a can of peas on the floor. She reached back to steady herself, nearly pulling down half the Campbell’s soup display. When she’d gotten her feet under her, she turned to meet the voice’s owner and tried not to look like she’d been caught stealing something. Duke Henderson didn’t seem to realize he’d interrupted.