Now You See Me (12 page)

J.T. tossed rolls of masking tape in a paper bag in the middle of the floor and asked, as casually as he could muster, “Did you know my dad?”

“A bit. From church and stuff. He was nice to us.” He shrugged. “Everyone is nice to us.”

From the way he said it, it was clear that Ben shared his mother’s feelings about excessive niceness from the town.

“I’m sorry if you thought he was too nice, but I’m glad you had the chance to know him. He was a good guy.” He waited a beat, then added, “Just like your dad.”

“My dad got shot.” It was flat, almost accusatory, as if J.T. had done something wrong by bringing Glenn into the conversation. Tough. Glenn was part of what lay between the two of them, and now that they’d started, J.T. wasn’t about to back off.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Ben made a sound that sounded like a cross between a cough and a snort. “Oh, yeah. If he was still alive, you wouldn’t be kissing my mom.”

Finally, an opening.

He pulled a strip of masking tape away from a dry wall and spoke as if they hadn’t just made a giant leap forward.

“I’m not gonna play games with you, bud. You want answers, speak up.”

Silence. No surprise there. J.T. didn’t know how he would feel if he caught someone doing a lip-lock with Iris, and he was supposed to be an adult.

“You ever realize how complicated life is, Ben?”

“Nope.” And the way he was driving the roller into the wall made it clear that Ben didn’t particularly care if he ever did.

“Well, it is. And one of the most complicated parts is when you feel two apparently opposite emotions at the same time.”
Go for it, J.T.
“Like the way I can feel bad about your dad and still want to kiss your mother.”

Ben scowled at the paint. “You said you weren’t going to hit on her.”

Gone was the bravado of the earlier night. All that remained was a confused boy who’d already dealt with too much in his life.

“You want me to stay away from her?”

A too-casual shrug lifted the skinny shoulder.

“Or are you pissed because you think I lied to you?”

A smack of the roller against the wall seemed to confirm that theory.

“You have a drip on your right. See it? Good.” J.T. stared at the runaway paint. “Look, I wasn’t really lying. When we talked before, I wasn’t planning to do anything. But things change. I know this will make you want to hurl, but your mom is a very special woman. I like spending time with her. You gonna give me a hard time about that?”

“What about when you have to go?”

Newspaper crunched in J.T.’s tightening fists.

“Your mom and I are adults. We both know I have to leave at the end of summer. If we decide to spend some time together before I go, have a few laughs, that’s our choice.”

Listen to him. Going on about choices and fun when he hadn’t had so much as an hour alone with the woman. Damn it, once again he was taking the heat for something he hadn’t done. Not that he hadn’t wanted to, of course....

“She likes you.” Ben’s white-knuckle grip on the paint roller made it clear that this was an accusation, not a compliment. Good thing he didn’t know that J.T.’s gut did a little flip thing at this bit of information.

“I’m not trying to make her like me. But—” He stopped, unsure how much to say, then decided he could take the chance. “Listen. You ever have a time when everyone treated you like dirt?”

“Sort of.” The words came slowly, then in a great gush, as if a dam had been breached. “Not dirt. But after my dad—it was like the guys didn’t know what to do with me. You know?”

“Exactly.” His heart ached for the kid. “So when that was going on, was there maybe one person who made you forget it all, who made you laugh and feel normal again?”

The roller slowed. “Yeah.”

It was the most cautious agreement J.T. had ever heard. He wasn’t sure what to make of it until he saw the faint color in Ben’s cheeks.

If he were a betting man, he’d lay money that the person who had helped Ben was a girl. If he wanted to make any progress whatsoever with the kid, he had better stay far, far away from that topic.

“Okay. So, I know your mom probably doesn’t talk about me in front of you, but you have to know I’m not this town’s favorite son.”

“I heard things.”

I just bet you have, bucko.
“First, most of what you’ve heard is bull. Second, you have any questions about me, you ask me. Not your mom, not your grandma, nobody else. Got that?”

A slight nod.

“Good. Now this is the big one. Your mom hasn’t treated me like the others have. She gave me a chance. I can relax with her.” Except when he was trying to hold back from kissing her. “I hang out with her because she’s one of the only people here who lets me be me. Believe it or not, even us bad guys want to be liked once in a while.”

Ben frowned and concentrated on the paint. There seemed to be some sort of mental tug-of-war going on, and J.T. held his breath, waiting to see how it would come down. Finally Ben turned to face him.

“But what about when you leave?”

This time the question wasn’t delivered with anger or blame. It was filled with need and a hint of loneliness, overlaid with a plea, and J.T. cursed himself for not realizing that, in helping Ben, he may have set the kid up for yet another loss.

Ben wasn’t worried about his mom. Well, some, yeah, but that wasn’t all of it.
Ben
was the one who liked J.T., the one who liked hanging with someone who understood. He wasn’t worried about what would happen to Lyddie when summer ended: he was worried about himself.

Another autumn. Another loss.

No wonder the kid had been so concerned about J.T. kissing or not kissing Lyddie. If there was no kissing, Glenn’s position in the family would remain unchanged. But if there was kissing going on, maybe J.T. would stay.

This was almost worse than making Iris face the truth.

“When I leave...” He took a moment to yank up a strip of tape, trying to figure out how to ease the truth.

“Is it for sure that you’re going?”

“I’m not gonna lie. I have to go back to Tucson. Staying here isn’t an option for me.”

“Because they all hate you.”

“That’s part of it. But there’s other people involved. It’s not all about me.”

Ben shrugged as if to show how much he didn’t care about those other people. “You could try to make people like you.”

“Too much water under the bridge, buddy. It’s not gonna happen. And like I said, there’s those other people.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Look, when you go to camp, do you make new friends, and maybe wish you could have more time with them?”

“I guess. Sometimes.”

“When you’re with them, do you spend all your time worrying about how hard it will be to say goodbye, or do you have as much fun as you can while you have the chance?”

A slight understanding dawned on the boy’s face.

“This isn’t exactly camp for me, Ben, but it’s kind of like that. I know I have to leave. So does your mom, and...and anyone else who might wish I could stick around a bit longer.” God help him, he would never have believed that someday, someone other than his mother would want him to stay. “As long as we all know the score going in, we can all make the most of the time we have together, and nobody gets hurt.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Saying goodbye will be hard. But it’s always better to have fun with people you like while you have the chance, instead of shutting them out so it won’t hurt when it’s over. Does that make any sense?”

“Some. Maybe.”

“Good.” He waited a beat. “By the way, I’ll have some time left in town when you get back from camp. These cottages are almost ready and I know I’ll need an excuse to get away from my mother once in a while. I don’t suppose you’d take pity on an old man and go fishing with me once or twice before I leave, would you?”

Ben turned back to the wall, but not before J.T. spotted the pleasure shining in his eyes. “Yeah, I could probably manage that.”

“Good. I haven’t been fishing all summer. If I try to go back without getting out on the water at least once, I’ll probably get arrested.”

Ben snorted. J.T. took advantage of the good mood to add, quietly, “And by the way—you might want to know that I didn’t kiss your mom the other night.”

“Were you gonna?”

“Maybe. Hard to tell about these things sometimes.”

Okay, that was a lie, but it was the first out-and-out falsehood he’d uttered all day, so it was allowed. He’d had every intention of kissing Lyddie. Every intention and every desire. It was just his own worries about letting loose with her—well, that and Ben’s intrusion—that had stopped him.

But he hadn’t been blowing smoke when he said it was better to have fun while the chance was there. It was good advice. Good for adults, too.

He had a little over a month left in town. Maybe he could let Lyddie come a little closer. Maybe a lot closer.

The hell with it. Next chance he got, he was asking her to dinner. If he were going to be blamed for something, then damn it, he should at least have the fun of doing it.

CHAPTER NINE

A
WARM
FRONT
moved in overnight, leaving the dawn too sticky for even the river breeze to cut. Judging from the number of people staggering in and ordering oversize iced coffees in place of their usual hot double-doubles, it seemed half the town had spent most of the night hunting for relief from the humidity.

“Give me a blizzard over this any day,” Nadine snapped as she lifted her apron to wipe her face.

Lyddie knew the feeling. Comeback Cove could handle the worst winter Mother Nature produced, but a stalled tropical air mass was enough to wilt even the pleasure-seeking tourists. Nothing moved on a day like this. Well, nothing except tempers.

Tempers, and Lyddie’s ever-increasing jitters about whether or not she should approach J.T. By lunchtime she felt ready to break.

She should never have talked to Zoë. Now it all seemed so...
possible.
And that was the most terrifying part of all. To know that all she had to do was work up her courage and—

“Holy doodle, she actually eats?”

Lyddie set down the cream pitcher she’d been refilling and looked in the direction of Nadine’s amazed glance. At the end of the counter, Jillian perused the chalkboard menu. Lyddie was glad of the distraction. Wondering about Jillian was a lot easier on the nerves than wondering whether or not she might get lucky in a few days.

A few moments later, the reason for Jillian’s unusual behavior became obvious when Ted strode into the shop.

Tracy Potter paused in the middle of paying to lift an eyebrow in Lyddie’s direction. “Uh-oh. Ted must have caught Jillian breathing in the presence of another man again.”

“As long as they don’t get into a shouting match or go all kissy-kissy on us, I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do.” Nadine nodded toward the happy couple, holding hands and whispering to each other as they pointed to the chalkboard. Lyddie knew she was in bad shape when she caught herself in a momentary spurt of jealousy.

She took their orders—club sandwich and coffee for Ted, naked salad and a skinny iced latte for Jillian—and had just finished loading their tray when the heat-dampened hum of conversation dropped in half. Everything in Lyddie went still. There was only one person in town that had that effect on business.

She fumbled through giving the First Couple their change and held her breath, waiting for J.T. to approach the counter. He seemed edgy somehow, sitting at one table, hopping to another, glancing in her direction before moving on.

If jitters were measured on the Richter scale, hers would have officially progressed from minor tremor to major trauma.

Finally he seemed satisfied. He left his soft leather briefcase on a table by the big bay window and approached the counter. Lyddie gave silent thanks that Nadine was in the kitchen. This way, she didn’t have to do anything suspicious like shove the older woman aside in order to serve J.T.

“Hey,” she said, only slightly breathless. “Where’s my kid?”

“Packing for my mom. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was in the way and should go get lunch.” He grinned, and for a moment he seemed like his usual casual self, not the man who had run his thumb over her lip and left her weak-kneed for the past two days. “I think Ma just wanted me gone so she could pack every pot and pan she owns without me telling her they sell cookware in Tucson.”

“At least she’s packing.”

“In theory. Could I have some soup, please?”

“Coming right up.” Soup. Great. How was she supposed to serve soup when her hands kept shaking and the sight of his muscled forearms resting on the counter only made it worse? Lyddie grabbed a bowl, took a steadying breath and lifted the lid of the pot. “What do you mean, ‘in theory’?”

“Well, she says she’s getting ready to go, but the number of boxes doesn’t seem to be increasing. I think she sneaks down at night and takes stuff out.”

“Seriously?”

“Maybe.”

Lyddie ladled soup into the bowl, wrinkling her nose against the extra heat and tomato-scented moisture. “You think she’s just pretending to agree while she has a different agenda?”

“I’m almost positive.”

“What do you think she really wants?”

“Easy. She wants to stay.” He grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler. “Both of us, me and her.”

Lyddie’s stomach did a funny little contraction. J.T.? Stay? In Comeback Cove? That would play hell with her love-him-and-let-him-leave plans, for sure.

On the other hand, life was definitely more interesting since he had swaggered back into town. The idea had a certain appeal. Well, except for the way it made her stomach twist.

She added a spoon and two packets of crackers to the tray. “But there’s no chance of that happening, right?”

“About the same chance of a snowstorm blowing through here in the next hour.”

That should make her feel a whole lot better.
Should
being the operative word.

He slapped money on the counter. “Anyway, I was wondering...”

Lyddie glanced up. The edginess was back, hovering just below the surface of his voice. He seemed almost as jittery as she felt. Almost like a fifteen-year-old who was getting ready to ask a girl out for his first date.

Now, there was a wonderful prospect. Maybe he would make the first move.

“Yes?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too eager.

“Would you be interested in— I mean, would you have some free time later today? I have some papers for you.”

Oh.

Lyddie’s hopes fell as the heat rose in her cheeks. Business. He wanted to talk business. The man was
this close
to two weeks of a virtual male fantasy—no-strings sex with a woman who had four years of celibacy to make up for—and he would rather talk business.

She stared at the briefcase on the table, sure that the heat of her glare could burn right through the leather. From the corner of her eye she saw Ted and Jillian whispering in a way that boded no good, but for the moment, she really didn’t care.

“Lyddie?”

Back to reality. She let her hands drop below the counter so he couldn’t see the way she was curling them into fists of frustration. “Sure. This afternoon. Right.”

“Great. I’ll be here.” He tossed his change on the tray before carrying it to his table.

Nadine bustled through the door, a fresh tray of muffins in her hands. “Did I miss any excitement?”

Argh.

Lyddie slipped through the kitchen and locked herself in the bathroom. Once there, she ran the water until it was icy, filled the sink, then closed her eyes and dunked her face as deep as she could without drenching her hair. Maybe the shock would knock some sense into her.

“Damn it!” She came up sputtering, groping blindly for paper towels. She didn’t feel any more sensible, but at least she was awake enough to smell the coffee.

Unless she worked up a boatload of courage real soon, the temperature was the only thing that was going to make her break a sweat.

* * *

J.T.
STARED
AT
the papers before him and tried to remember why he’d thought this was a good idea.

The morning had been pure hell. Iris insisted on packing everything, Ben chattered nonstop about fishing and there was enough humidity to make him long for the dry heat of Tucson. Add in the fact that he seemed to have forgotten the basic steps in asking a woman to dinner, and he was left with a knot in his gut and a bad taste in his mouth.

Oh, he remembered the essentials. Grin, get her smiling, lower the voice so no one else could hear, deliver the question. If this were anyone but Lyddie he would have been fine. But somehow, the usual steps didn’t feel like enough with Lyddie. He didn’t want to drop an invitation into the middle of a conversation about packing and soup. Silly as it seemed, he wanted to do this right. A little more privacy. A few less ears to overhear.

For now, though, he was stuck eating a bowl of soup that he barely remembered ordering and couldn’t decide if he liked or not. There was something green floating in it. Spinach? Not that it mattered. He was too edgy to eat. He shuffled the papers and tried to look serious while spooning up broth. If he were lucky he could keep this up long enough for everyone to return to their previously scheduled lives, and he could leave without everyone watching.

He turned a page, opened the crackers and frowned as the light dimmed. For a second he hoped a cloud had rolled in. Then a footstep grabbed his attention. He glanced up to see Ted McFarlane looming over his table.

Damn it to hell.

Ted had always loomed. He seemed to think it made him seem intimidating. Good thing he didn’t know it just made it easier to notice the slight bend in his nose that had been J.T.’s last and only gift to him.

“Mornin’, Ted.”

“Afternoon, J.T.”

J.T. winced. So much for appearing cool and collected.

“Something I can help you with?” he asked, hoping Ted wanted nothing more than a donation to a local charity.

“Sure can.”

Every muscle in J.T.’s shoulders seized tight.

“You can call off your dogs.”

Ah, damn.
Every head in the place had turned in their direction. Even Lyddie’s, as he saw when he instinctively glanced her way. For a second he felt bad that this was going down in her shop. Then he realized that while everyone else was staring at him in morbid fascination, like something about to be thrown to the lions, Lyddie’s expression alternated between fury—when she looked at Ted—and encouragement, when she looked at him.

Lydia Brewster was cheering him on.

“There’s only one dog in my house, Ted. It belongs to my mother, and the most I’ve ever seen it move is to lift its head to eat. Other than that, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ted shifted. “Your buddies. The ones harassing my wife to fast-track approval for your sale to Lyddie.”

What the hell? “Thanks for the compliment, Ted, but you’re giving me way too much credit. I haven’t asked anyone to do anything for me except sell me paint and soup.”

J.T. purposefully kept the words low and mild. Nonetheless, they raced through the store like an urban legend on the internet.

Ted’s face reddened slightly. “Right. That’s why my wife has people coming up to her on the street, telling her to approve your sales and get you out of town.”

He remembered Steve’s nervousness in the hardware store.
Damn.

J.T. sat back in his chair and feigned indifference, though it took every ounce of his willpower to do so. “Sorry that I’m overstaying my welcome, but I’ll be gone as fast as I can. Meantime, believe it or not, all I’m doing is minding my own business.”

Ted laughed, short and disbelieving. “Right. Tell me another one, J.T.”

Three tables over, he saw Jillian watching, her lips slightly parted as if in anticipation of a kiss.
Oh, lord.
Ted needed to impress Jillian, and he was doing it by coming after J.T. It was high school all over again.

“Sit down, Ted,” he said with more fatigue than rancor. “It’s too hot for this crap.”

“Fine. Just tell me what kind of trouble you’re trying to stir up.” Ted lowered his voice to what he probably thought was a menacing growl. He jerked his head toward the counter. “And why you had to drag Lyddie into it.”

“First, I don’t drag people into situations against their will. Anyone who’s with me is there because they want to be.” He pitched the words loud enough to carry to Jillian and the rest of the room. Lucky for her, he was probably the only one who noticed the way she paled.

“And second,” he continued, “you know as well as I do there’s nothing illegal about this sale.”

“Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.”

“It’s right for me. And for Lydia.”

“But not for the town.”

He didn’t even try to stop the snort. “You think that’s gonna make me change my mind?”

“Would it kill you to do the decent thing for once?”

“Hell, no. I can be as decent as the next guy. I’m selling a great property to a long-standing tenant at a fair price. What could be more decent than that?”

“Call off this sale. Help Lyddie move on. Let Cripps Chips come here.” Ted’s fists tightened. “Think of it as making up for what you did.”

“You think I owe this to the town.”

“Damned straight.”

“And what about Lydia?”

The stubborn expression on Ted’s face never wavered. “We’ll take care of her, just like always. We’ll make sure she gets something good. Something newer, where she can—”

“I don’t want another place,” Lyddie said quietly from behind Ted’s back. J.T. let loose with the grin he’d been holding back since he’d spotted her stalking toward them, tucking a towel in the pocket of her apron as if she planned to use it to whack some sense into someone.

To give Ted his due, he didn’t get flustered or angry. He simply smiled gently at Lyddie, the way he undoubtedly would to a small child incapable of understanding a complex problem.

He was so dead.

“Lyddie, come on. You know you don’t want to do this.”

“I don’t?”

Ted shook his head. Obviously he had missed the flatness in Lyddie’s voice. “Of course not. You understand that we’re not trying to be the bad guys. We just want to do what’s best for everyone.”

“How nice.” She smiled sweetly. J.T. shivered. He wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of this. “And what if I told you that nobody is allowed to accost anyone else in my establishment?”

Whoa. Who would have thought there was a hellcat hiding inside Lyddie?

Ted blinked. “Huh?”

Lyddie kept her voice very quiet, but there was no doubting the force of her words. “I mean it, Ted. You can’t attack anyone in my store and you definitely can’t tell me what to do with my business.”

“I’m not trying to—”

“Oh, yes, you are. And while you’re generally an okay guy and I have no doubt you believe you’re doing what’s best for everyone, the fact is, I’m not willing to let you choose the course of my life. So right now, I suggest you apologize to J.T. and go eat your sandwich before I turn it into humble pie.”