Long Shot

Chapter 7

Jen hauled open the glass door to Kathleen’s Kafe the next morning at precisely 7:59. It was one of the only buildings in town that had been renovated and updated, and that had been sometime in the seventies. Though hideous, the faux-wood veneer booths and tables, and the brown vinyl cushion covers felt like a warm blanket around her shoulders. The walls were covered with sagging shelves packed with tchotchkes: T-shirts and mugs from valley-area high school events, stuffed animals coated in a layer of dust, photos of people long dead but still smiling. She wondered if the hash browns were still as crispy as she remembered.

The place was nearly full, which gave Jen heart. It was the most number of people she’d seen in one spot while in Gleann, and if they still supported this place and its local flavor, it gave her hope for her version of the games.

As she entered, a bell over the door chimed. Eerily, as one, every patron in the diner looked up or craned their necks to see who’d come in. Every patron, that is, except for Leith, who sat sideways on one of those attached, swinging stools at the long, low breakfast bar, his back to her. He didn’t turn around, but he shifted on his seat—a slight squaring of his shoulders, an inch adjustment of his boot on the floor—which told her he was well aware she’d come in.

Last night she’d stumbled across Mildred Lindsay’s lawn, somehow found her way into her rented house, and stood in front of the air-conditioning window unit. It had taken her a good hour to get to work after that, those sixty minutes needed to thoroughly burn away the panty-melting sensory recollection of the tease of his mouth. Their connection had been combustible, undeniable, but she, like him, had no idea what to do with it. She didn’t know what she wanted either, though the buzz zooming through her body said she pretty much wanted him inside her.

With an inward groan and a squeeze of her eyelids, she willed the desire gone. Or at least toned down. Being this close to him wasn’t ever going to make it go away entirely.

She stood next to the stack of local, out-of-date valley newspapers by the door, and watched the rest of the patrons watch her with varying degrees of interest. She smiled back, to no one in particular, but it felt shaky and forced, and her own awkwardness shocked the hell out of her.

A woman with brilliant red hair sitting with two young teenagers absorbed in their phones studied Jen for a moment, but then returned to her magazine. Sue McCurdy and another woman, maybe in her fifties, sat in the booth farthest from the door. By their spread of newspapers and crumb-filled breakfast plates, it looked like they’d been sitting there awhile. Maybe for the past thirty years. Sue gave Jen a small lift of the hand, but the other woman peered at Jen suspiciously like Jen was here to bulldoze the entire town.

At the breakfast bar, the guy sitting next to Leith was younger, with long brown hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. The younger guy was shoveling French toast into his mouth while Leith talked. Leith clutched a coffee mug in one hand and drew something invisible on the counter between them.

Behind her, the Kafe door opened, the bell above making a strangled ping. Someone needed to get out the oil and screwdriver.

“Aunt Jen?”

Jen turned, the girl’s voice causing an instant smile. “Hey there. Having some breakfast?”

“Yeah.” Ainsley scooped a wad of bubble gum out of her cheek and slapped it into a wrapper. She shoved it into one shorts pocket while pulling a twenty out of another. “I told Mom I’m buying today.”

Jen swept a hand over Ainsley’s unbrushed hair. “Where’d you get that, Moneybags McGee?”

“She’s a little you,” Aimee said, and Jen finally looked up at her sister standing several feet away. Their argument from last night still pushed them apart; Jen could feel it as solidly as the hot summer air coming through the open door. Aimee’s green eyes shimmered with a coat of tears that she quickly blinked away. “She does odd jobs around town and sometimes helps me out at the Thistle. Yesterday Gary Ashdown had her pulling weeds and unpacking his groceries.”

“I used to pull weeds, too,” Jen told Ainsley.

“You did?” Ainsley gasped. “Maybe that means someday I’ll get to live in New York. Oh, look! T and Lacey are here!”

Ainsley shoved past Jen, dissolving any hope Jen had of quizzing her niece about her aspirations. The nine-year-old darted across the Kafe, running her fingers through her hair as she approached the table in the back with the red-haired woman and the two teenagers.

The red-haired woman. Melissa.

Jen turned, wide-eyed and worried, to Aimee. Jen held her breath, waiting for either Aimee or Melissa to explode into a scene worthy of a Mexican soap opera.

But Aimee just watched her daughter talking with the girls belonging to her still-married lover, and said an unexpected thing: “Maybe she will.”

Jen shook her head to clear it, to try to follow Aimee’s train of thought. “Maybe she’ll what?”

Aimee’s ear tilted toward one shoulder. “Maybe Ainsley will get to New York. She’s more like you than me anyway.” She sighed. “I often wonder how a kid created out of such ugliness managed to turn out so completely opposite.”

“Would you hate that,” Jen asked, “if Ainsley eventually went to the city?”

Aimee thought about that, still watching the scene over at the table that had Jen digging her fingernails into her palms in gruesome anticipation. “No. I mean, the place isn’t for me, but I think you and I both know that just because we’re born to certain people doesn’t mean we’re automatically like them.”

Jen couldn’t help adding, “You were exactly like Mom once.”

“And I fight that battle every day. You don’t think I do?”

Jen bit the inside of her cheek.

Aimee said, “I’m sorry for not telling you about the phone calls.”

Jen rolled her eyes. “No, you’re not. You would’ve kept on hiding them from me if I hadn’t walked in.”

“Maybe you should call her. Talk to her yourself. Then you’d see—”

“Nope.” Jen’s hair swished across her cheeks as she shook her head. “Can’t do it yet, Aim.”

“Then don’t get all pissy because I am.”

“I am mad. I’m mad you’re talking to the woman who almost ruined both our lives.”

“She was the only other adult left in our family, because you clearly weren’t.”

Jen distinctly felt the bite of those words.

“What’s worse?” Aimee asked. “A grandma with a shitty track record as a mom actually paying attention to and loving my little girl? Or the sister who was a better mom to me blowing off my little girl for most of her life, including one specific weekend in New York City?”

Jen nodded, understanding. “I’m sorry for that. I really am. I’m hoping that by being here now, I can try to make it up to you and her.”

Aimee didn’t look all that convinced. “I’m not like Mom anymore. I’m not even the same Aimee you knew and took care of.”

Jen raised an eyebrow. “Really? Because the other day with the water pipe—”

Aimee winced. “It was so weird. It was like the second you came back I reverted. And you always know what to do. I’m not really like that. Not anymore.”

“Then show me, Aim.”

Her sister drew herself up. “Okay. I will.” A glance across the Kafe. “I better go. Ainsley’s starting to give me the pancake stink-eye.” Then she let out a rueful laugh. “Another way she’s like you. She gets mean when she’s hungry.”

Jen saw that Ainsley had slid into the booth behind Sue’s.

“Okay,” said Jen. “I’d join you, but—”

“Leith,” Aimee filled in, with a tiny smile that cracked some of the tension. “I see him. And he sees you, too.”

Jen could feel Leith’s eyes on her, but she was watching Aimee cut to Ainsley’s booth and grinding her teeth against a potential mess with Melissa. Several of the other diners were whispering and pointing, too, their disapproval clear. Jen cringed. She was waiting for Melissa to jump up, flip the table to its side, and reach for Aimee’s throat, nails bared.

Jen expected this, because it was an exact scene she’d once broken up between Mom and some woman named Janet, who’d been Frank’s flavor of the week. Funny, she hadn’t thought about that day in such a long time. Now the visuals of the past and present overlapped, so much so that when Melissa looked up and gave Aimee a polite but aloof smile, Jen saw Melissa letting out a snarl, sharpening her fangs. Preparing to attack.

Jen was already three steps toward her sister, ready to step in, when her name cut across the Kafe.

“Jen.”

She startled, stopped, and looked over at Leith who was waving her over. A glance back at Aimee saw that her sister waved to Melissa, then slid into the booth with Ainsley.

“Jen, I want you to meet someone.” Leith swiveled on the stool, his hard, massive thighs taking up the whole seat, his grin aimed only at her. She joined him.

“This is Chris.” Leith gestured to the ponytail guy who held a forkful of French toast. “Chris works for me. Plays a mean fiddle in the band DeeDee hired for the games.”

There was a watchfulness to Leith’s expression. He seemed to be looking for something on her face. Then she realized what he’d done, calling her over here just as she was about to charge into a battle that didn’t exist. He’d spared her a scene. He’d saved her from embarrassing herself and Aimee, when Sue McCurdy and a good chunk of the town sat in the same room.

A long time ago, he’d witnessed some good fights between the sisters. He’d been there for Jen when she’d had to rescue Aimee from more than one mess.

Jen drew a deep breath, cleansing herself of the past. “Hi,” she said to Chris, offering him a genuine smile. “Great to meet you.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Leith’s shoulders relax.

Chris was chewing, nodding, but there was a wide-eyed worry in the way he stared at her. After he swallowed, he said, “We still get to play at the games. Don’t we?”

Jen gave him an exaggerated look of appraisal and pretended to consider it. “Have a digital file you can send me?”

Chris wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving smears of powdered sugar. “Oh, absolutely.” She gave him her email address and he practically jumped from his seat. “I’ll get that to you right now. I promise you, there won’t be any issues with the guys. Then I’ll get to Mayor Sue’s yard. That okay, Dougall?”

“Issues with the guys?” she asked Leith when Chris had gone.

“Remember I said he had problems with one of his roommates? That guy’s also the drummer. Alcohol problem he’s trying to kick. I don’t know if it’s working, though.” Leith picked up his coffee cup and said into it, “So what other Scottish folk rock band do you know that could possibly play here on such short notice?”

She steepled her fingers. “Oh, I have resources you couldn’t possibly know about.” Then, seriously, with a wave of her hand, “I’ll take Chris at his word that things will work out.”

He gave her that slow, sexy grin. “You shouldn’t tease a man like that.”

“Says the guy who taped false stalker notes to my door.”

“Hey, Lindsay wasn’t a stalker. He was just . . . interested.”

She leaned down and she could smell his shampoo. “Who exactly teased whom?”

His eyes flicked up over the top of his mug, and in them she saw the same desire from last night.

“Sit down.” He pivoted to face the bar. “I’ll buy you hash browns. I remember you liked them here.”

“Ooooh, are they still the same?”

He pointed to the silver-haired man at the burners, who was cooking so furiously and fast that little pieces of food flew everywhere. Jen recognized him and grinned. A middle-aged man wearing an apron, jeans, and checkered shirt came over to take their order, and the icy glare he threw at Leith was unmistakable.

“What was that about?” she asked Leith under her breath as the server shuffled off. “The only person within a twenty-mile radius who doesn’t worship at the feet of Leith MacDougall?”

Leith pressed his lips together and nodded. “Used to work for me. Had to let him go, along with two other full-time guys. Chris is the only one I have left.”

“Oh.” That had to have been hard for him. She was about to ask him more about it, when he turned and lifted a muscled arm to an older couple who’d just entered the Kafe. They came over, wearing the looks of delight she’d come to associate with being recognized and acknowledged by Leith.

The man looked older than the woman by twenty years, and she already had a pure-white bob and a face lined with distinguished wrinkles.

“Rob,” Leith said, “do you remember Jen Haverhurst? Used to come here every summer and stay with Bev at the Thistle. She and I stole the lawn furniture from in front of your hardware store that one year.”

An uncomfortable laugh erupted from Jen’s throat. While their harmless little pranks weren’t unknown, she just didn’t feel like reminding people of that side of her at this particular point in time.

“Ahhh,” Rob said in a hoarse voice, narrowing rheumy eyes on her. “That was you, huh. Remember you set the furniture back up in the middle of the high school football field.”

“And then we put it all back,” Jen added, throwing a disbelieving look at Leith, who looked ready to burst into laughter any second now.

“And now you’re back to run the games?” Rob asked skeptically.

Jen folded her hands and tried to look as professional as an admitted thief could. “Just for this year, yes.”

Leith touched the older woman’s shoulder. “And this is Bobbie, Rob’s wife.”

As Bobbie shook Jen’s hand, Rob pinched his wife’s butt. He said, “We met online.”

“How nice,” Jen said, not knowing how to take that.

“Yeah,” Leith said with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Bobbie’s a bit of an . . . Internet celebrity.”

Please, please don’t let that mean what they’re making it out to mean.

“You two need to stop doing that,” Bobbie said, slapping Leith’s arm. “You’re giving people heart attacks.”

“She’s got one of the biggest followings of any scrapbooking website,” Leith amended.

Jen let out a relieved laugh. “Scrapbooking. Oh! There used to be a store across the street.”

A pained, regretful look crossed Rob’s face while Bobbie swished the air with one graceful hand. “I should’ve known it wouldn’t work,” the older woman said. “It was always a dream to own my own store. I thought the online success would translate to a physical presence in my lovely new town, but it didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Jen said, and meant it.

“My belly says we need to go,” Rob said abruptly, and then the couple—please don’t let their last name be Roberts—left, hand in age-spotted hand.

As Jen and Leith turned back to the counter, the disgruntled former employee slid their plates in front of them. Jen eyed hers skeptically, wondering if he’d spit in it, but Leith shoved his fork into a mound of scrambled eggs and took the biggest bite she’d ever seen.

“The Roberts are good people to know.” He washed down the gigantic bite with a swig of orange juice.

“No way. That’s really their last name?”

“Heh, no. It’s just what everyone calls them.”

They talked and ate, with nearly everyone in the Kafe either coming up to Leith or him calling them over to their spot on the bar. At one point, a woman dressed in a pristine, belted dress and sunglasses the size of her face came in. Leith said she was Irene, married to a Hemmertex manager who’d chosen to retire rather than relocate out of New Hampshire, and one of Leith’s few remaining lawn maintenance clients.

By the time Jen’s belly was distended with perfect hash browns and homemade bread slathered with honey, Leith must have introduced—or reintroduced—her to half the town.

Sue McCurdy and her breakfast companion watched all the exchanges, and as Jen rose to leave, Sue’s friend gave Jen a slow nod that might have actually bordered on approval.