The Time in Between by Kristen Ashley
“Shit,” Pat whispered back.
“You should have seen them go at it. I kid you not, if he’d taken one step up, she would have flown out of that chair and thrown herself in his arms and they’d have done it on the veranda. Or if she’d gotten out of that chair, he’d have been on her in a flash, and they’d have done it on the veranda.”
“I’m seeing you do need a cold shower.”
“After all the frustrated sex vibes I just absorbed, I need my husband not to be most a continent away.”
“Okay, I gotta make breakfast for our son and daughter this morning, baby. No turning me on unless you intend to do something about it and fast.”
For once, Kath was not in the mood for sex (or in this case, phone sex).
“They’re gonna get back together,” she informed her husband.
“We’ll see,” he murmured.
“She made some joke in the beginning, because you know Cady can be so funny, but she was being sarcastic, though still funny. He didn’t hear the sarcasm. He just heard Cady being funny and, Pat, honey, swear to God, it looked like she’d sunk a knife in his heart, it hurt him so much to be reminded of that part of Cady.”
Pat made no reply.
“He’s not gonna last long.”
Pat still said nothing.
“Did I lose you?” Kath called.
“Dad said.”
“What?”
She heard her husband clear his throat and he repeated, “Dad said.”
“Your dad said what?”
“He said there’d come a time when Coert Yeager realized he’d been a fool and then the world would stop spinning, that’s how fast he’d run back to her.”
Kath felt tears prick her eyes and she whispered, “He was right.”
“You think it’s safe to leave her alone?” Pat asked.
“I think it’ll delay things if I don’t.”
“Yeah,” Pat mumbled.
“You’re worried,” Kath surmised.
“She’s my little sister.”
“Yeah,” she said gently. “She’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
“I think the road there will be bumpy, but I also think when they look back at it they’ll love every minute of it.”
“Just as long as that road’s not long.”
“What I saw, it won’t be long.”
“Good,” Pat replied.
“Miss you,” Kath said.
“Miss you too. Call later so you can talk to Dex and Verity.”
“I will, babe. Love you.”
“Love you more.”
“Love you the mostest, most most.”
Pat chuckled and ordered, “Go to Cady, make sure she’s all right.”
“Okay, honey. Talk to you later.”
“Yeah, sweetheart. Later.”
They hung up.
Kath set the phone aside.
And then she ambled downstairs to make sure Cady was all right.
What Was He Waiting For?
Present day . . .
“AS YOU CAN SEE, IT’S all comin’ together.”
I turned from taking in the view from the observation deck of the lighthouse and looked to Walt who was coming up the stairs.
“No offense, Walt, but what I can see with my unprofessional eyes is that it looks like a disaster.”
He shot me a smile and stopped a few feet away. “The windows have been replaced. The new furnace is in and functioning. The plumbing got done three days ago. The electrical will be done tomorrow. That means we’re able to get into the good stuff. In other words, from a professional standpoint, it’s all comin’ together and you might wanna start your self-imposed absence because if you thought the studio was perfect, this place is gonna knock your socks off.”
I smiled back. “Then you won’t see me for a while even if I’m fifty yards away.”
He nodded, looked beyond me toward the studio and back to me. “Your sister still here?”
I shook my head and endeavored not to look sad. “She left a few days ago.”
“Right, my wife wants to see this place.”
I blinked up at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Been telling her about it, she’s dyin’ to come have a look. And she doesn’t need the reveal, she likes to watch the whole thing come together, but she’d love a shot at lookin’ at the studio. If you don’t have a problem with me bringing her around, maybe you two can have a coffee in town after or something.”
I stood still, and for a second speechless, as I realized I might or might not have hidden my sad look moments before about Kath leaving, but that didn’t matter.
Walt knew I was from out of town. He could guess I knew no one or mostly no one. He knew I’d lost someone. And he liked me enough to introduce me to his wife and a possible future friend so I wouldn’t be so alone.
“I’d love to meet your wife and she’s welcome at the lighthouse any time,” I said quietly.
“Great,” he muttered, looking uncomfortable.
“We’ll sort a time,” I offered.
“Great,” he repeated.
“Now I’ll let you get to work.”
“Right. Got any questions, you know where to find me.”
I nodded.
He jerked up his chin and moved to the stairs.
I watched him disappear down them and then turned to my view.
From start on the lighthouse to finish, Walt assessed the work would take six to eight weeks. They were three weeks in. I was thinking it’d be closer to eight, which meant I’d be in by October.
This meant I could contact Kath and have her ship the rest of my stuff in a couple of weeks. If it came early, I could store it in the generator building. There wasn’t much: more clothes, winter stuff we didn’t need to take up room in the car to pack when we drove out there, some keepsakes.
I’d have it and I’d be in and that would be it.
I’d be back home.
Turning to a fresh chapter with blank pages for me to write.
And as long as I had no more clashes with my brother (and I’d have no more clashes with my brother), I could just enjoy and draw strength from all I’d wrought (well, Walt, Paige and Patrick’s money had wrought, but I’d picked the fixtures and fittings). And if I ran into Coert occasionally, considering he’d proved he was a man who could carry an unnecessary and mean grudge, so be it.
This was me.
Cady Moreland.
I did things that were perhaps unwise, like make friends with Maria and Lonnie, get drunk and nearly raped, which put me in the path of an undercover police officer who would use me to (rightly) stop my friends from their illegal pursuits, marry a man old enough to be my grandfather, and finally, pull up stakes to live in the town where the only man I ever loved (that way) also lived, and did it hating me.
But I was right here.
My decisions meant I’d replaced a family who didn’t understand me, and one of them detested me, with a family who adored me. They meant I’d been given the honor of making the last years of a good man’s life as comfortable as they could be as he battled pain and wasted away before my eyes. And they meant I had the opportunity to take hold of a historical legacy and was breathing new life into it, showing it the love it deserved.
So my decisions might be unwise but they were a part of me, and in the end, they’d put me right there.
So I should embrace them.
Because they were me.
And on that thought, I wandered down the stairs, through the disaster that was now my lighthouse, doing this what would be the last time for weeks because the next time I walked through the front door, I’d be coming home.
It was Saturday, four days later, when it happened.
I was walking down Cross Street in Magdalene. There was a used bookstore there that I had not taken time to fully peruse and I needed a new book (or five), and if memory served, they had a small espresso counter and I fancied a coffee.
I was marveli
Therefore, the door to the ice cream parlor in front of me had opened and the little girl had danced out, but I didn’t see her.
Or the man who came out after her.
But I ran into him as well as my shoulder slamming into the still-opened door.
I cried out in surprise, not pain, took a small step away and opened my mouth to offer my apologies for not paying attention when I tipped my head back and looked from close into hazel eyes that were more light brown with some green in them to make them interesting.
And my lungs squeezed.
“You al’right?” a little girl’s voice asked.
I stared into hazel eyes I’d seen that close time and again before a kiss, after a kiss, lying on a pillow across from them.
“Hey lady, you al’right?”
The voice came again and I tore my gaze from Coert’s and looked down into an identical pair of hazel eyes, and when I saw them, my lungs didn’t squeeze.
Every inch of skin on my body opened up, causing pain even with the life I’d lived I couldn’t believe.
“Hi,” she said brightly.
“Hi,” I forced out, the one syllable sounding strangled.
She tilted her adorable little head to the side. “You al’right?”
“Sorry?” I whispered.
“You ran into Daddy an’ the door.”
Daddy.
It happened then.
God.
God.
It happened and I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to. I should have been able to. I’d seen her pictures. I knew she existed. I should have been able to stop it.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t stop the tears from filling my eyes as I stared down at the most beautiful child in history.
“You aren’t al’right,” she whispered, her eyes getting big as she stared up at me.
“Cady,” Coert murmured.
I took a quick step away.
Jerking my head to look at his shoulder, I mumbled. “Fine. Fine. I’m fine. So sorry.”
“Cady,” Coert said again.
It seemed he was reaching to me so I lurched away, feeling the wet fall over and course down my cheeks.
“I’m . . . I . . .” I looked down at Coert’s girl. “You should eat that, honey,” I pushed out, clumsily angling my head to the cone she was holding. “It’s melting.”
And with that and a choked back sob, I let my eyes list through Coert’s and I turned and rushed away.
I got into my car and I had the presence of mind to sit in it, stare at my steering wheel and take deep breaths before I switched it on, dashed my hands across my cheeks, carefully backed into the street and went home.
It seemed to take a year for the gates to open, and my phone started ringing while I was waiting.
I left it to ring, and when the gates opened I drove around the garage to park beside the studio.
I got out, grabbing my purse, and let myself into the house.
I didn’t know what to do then. All the words I said in my head telling myself it was all right, I could do this, I’d done the right thing, I was in the place I was meant to be were gone, vanished, with just one look at Coert’s daughter’s face.
I’d made a fool of myself. I’d alarmed his daughter.
God.
God.
Why hadn’t I handled that better?
It wasn’t like I didn’t know it would happen (eventually).
It was just that I didn’t think it would happen that soon.
My phone rang again and for something to think about that was not the humiliation I’d just perpetrated on myself, I pulled it out of my purse and stared at the screen.
No name, just a number. A local one so it probably had something to do with the construction or the Historical Society, or it was someone from Stone Incorporated calling for reasons unknown (since they only said “Mr. Stone wishes to make an appointment with you,” something I always refused) for the fiftieth time or I didn’t know.
And I didn’t care.
It wouldn’t have anything to do with what just happened so I took the call like it was a lifeline, putting the phone to my ear.
“Hello,” I answered.
“Where are you?” Coert growled.
My body froze solid.
He had my number.
I forgot he had my number!
“Goddamn it, Cady, where are you?” Coert bit out when I didn’t answer.
“I’m home,” I whispered.
“Do not leave,” he clipped, and I heard a beep that said the call was disconnected.
I took my phone from my ear and stared at it.
Okay, I needed wine.
No, I needed whiskey.
No, I didn’t drink whiskey so I didn’t have any whiskey (but Pat and Daly drank it so I’d have to get some in, mental note).
Vodka was out, that wasn’t my thing either.
I’d never even tasted gin.
I only drank rum on vacation on a beach.
And I only drank tequila in a margarita and I didn’t have margarita mix (another mental note).
In fact, I actually only had wine in the house.
“Why can’t I drink spirits?” I shrieked like a lunatic.
I needed to go to a liquor store and break my rule about rum only on a beach.
But Coert said not to leave and frankly I was in no state to drive.
“Shit,” I hissed, breaking another rule and that was to curse as sparingly as possible, because Patrick was a gentleman and he’d made me a member of his family so I felt it was my duty to be a gentlewoman.
And anyway, it was only two o’clock in the afternoon.
I would allow myself to have a glass of wine (or a bottle of it) in two hours.
Until then . . .
Until then . . .
Until then I was going to clean the bathroom.
Shoving everything out of my head except cleaning supplies and getting on with a chore I’d actually done only two days before, so I didn’t need to do it again, I was just starting to do that when there came a hammering on my door.
The boys worked on Saturdays, not the whole crew of them, but a few here and there, picking up overtime or finishing up a certain job.
I knew that hammering was not one of the boys or Walt.
“Shit,” I hissed again and threw the sponge into the sink, rinsing my hands and drying them but hurrying to the door when the hammering didn’t stop.
Really, what was the point of a gate when it didn’t keep anyone out?
There were three small squares of windows at the top of the door and most people were tall enough to be seen through them.
Coert was definitely tall enough.
He also saw me through them and only when he did, did the hammering stop.
He scowled at me through the windows, and witnessing his scowl, I considered running and hiding in a closet or perhaps attempting the impossible and trying to vaporize.
But I didn’t do either when he saw me stutter step and slow, making him order irately through the door, “Open this, Cady.”
I moved the rest of the way to it, opened it and stepped back mostly because he stepped right in, the screen door he’d opened in order to give him free access to hammer on the front door whooshing closed behind him.
“Are you all right?” he ground out.
“I . . . yes, sorry, that was—”
“Scared the shit outta me.”
I clamped my mouth shut and stared up at him in shock.
I scared him?
How?
Why?
Why would anything I did scare him?
“Freaked my daughter out totally,” he continued.
Oh no. I’d upset his little girl.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Got behind a wheel and drove home in the state you were in, are you flipping crazy?”
&n
“Could you see?”
“Um . . . what?”
“Your eyes were filled with tears, Cady.”
God.
Could this get any more humiliating?
“I’m so sorry, Coert,” I said feebly.
“What was that?” he clipped.
God, God, God.
“I just . . . well, it seems I wasn’t prepared for—”
“You had someone follow me. You gotta know I have a girl.”
I pressed my lips together, unprepared for all of this, definitely not prepared to get into the subject of the fact my husband-not-husband had him followed on and off for nearly two decades.
“I gotta deal with you, on top of that I don’t need you runnin’ into my baby on the street and fallin’ apart, freaking her out.”
His baby.
It might not be able to get more humiliating but it clearly could get more painful.
“I’m really sorry, Coert.” I didn’t look beyond him even though it seemed she was somehow no longer with him when I asked, “Is she okay?”
“She’s in dispatch talkin’ to my deputies on the radio, her favorite pastime when she’s not makin’ a mess of my kitchen bakin’ cupcakes, her current obsession.”
Oh my God.
How adorable.
“So she’s fine,” he stated curtly. “Apparently she gets over a freakout when some strange lady loses it on the street if she’s got a mic wrapped around her head and she can babble at my men.”
Completely adorable.
I swallowed.
“I hope you . . . you, uh . . . oversee the cupcake making business,” I said lamely since he’d stopped talking, but he didn’t make a move to end this or leave and I desperately needed to fill the silence.
It was a mistake.
His eyes narrowed dangerously and he asked incredulously, “You think I let my daughter near an oven when she’s five years old?”
“Of course not,” I replied quickly.
He lifted a hand and dragged it through his hair, looking beyond me, all this with a muscle jerking up his cheek.
His gaze came back to me.
“That shit can’t happen again,” he demanded.
“You’re right. Definitely right. I won’t . . . it was just bad luck. I was looking at the streetlights. I wasn’t paying attention. I was taken off guard. Next time I’ll . . . well, there really isn’t likely to be too many next times but if there is, I’ll hold it together.”