The Time in Between by Kristen Ashley
“My thoughts exactly,” Coert muttered in return.
I’d find them funny if I wasn’t so mad in order not to be so upset about my conversation with Elijah.
“Coert, can I talk to you?” I asked.
He handed a plate to Daly and then nodded to me.
He had pecan pie all over his fingers so he rinsed them before he joined me by the fire.
I situated us so his back was to the room, hiding me, and he got close, but I got closer.
“He says she’s the one,” I proclaimed.
“Oh shit,” he murmured.
Apparently, a guy did know when he found the one.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Coert certainly knew.
And girls could know as well, because I knew too.
“Uh . . . yeah,” I snapped. “You need to do something about that.”
He did a blink that went very slow.
“Um . . . say that again,” he ordered.
“You said you were going to have a beer with him. You need to have a beer with him and set him straight.”
“Baby, I don’t know him. I also don’t know Verity very well. I’m not the person to wade into this.”
“That’s precisely why you should wade into this. You’re an objective observer.”
“An objective observer who kinda agrees with Elijah.”
I snapped my mouth shut and felt my eyes bug out.
He got even closer and put both hands to my jaw.
“Cady, honey, they’re both too young and if this got this intense between them without them even sharing a kiss, they both need to back off and let time guide them to each other or not, as the case may be.”
“They have kissed,” I informed him. “Verity made a pass at him. Elijah just deflected it.”
He looked to the fire and mumbled, “Jesus.”
“And I was twenty-three when I kissed you once and knew you were the one.”
His attention returned to me.
“I think I kissed you,” he corrected.
“Whatever,” I snapped. “I still knew you were the one.”
“And tell me, those three years you got on your niece were really like ten, weren’t they?” He asked the question but he didn’t want an answer because he continued, “And don’t deny it because you know it. You were still growing up but you were paying rent and feeding yourself. She’s two years out of high school. How old is Elijah?”
“Twenty-six.”
He nodded. “And he’s paying rent and feeding himself and getting his ass out of bed to go to work every day and finding ways to sort his life when it throws him a curveball. Pat was teasing Verity about paying her credit card bill after Christmas dinner. There’s a gulf here, Cady, that he might be able to swim, but it’s the man he is, and I’m saying it’s a good one, he’s not going to allow her to make that effort and maybe get drowned on the way. And don’t,” he said quickly, taking one hand from my jaw to put a finger to my lips, “get up in my shit about how I laid that out. It isn’t a man thing like that. It’s a good man thing looking out for a woman he feels something for, and you have to let him have that. She has to let him have that.”
I opened my mouth to say something regardless of Coert’s finger still on my lips but he kept talking before I could.
“If she doesn’t, this plays out in one of two scenarios. She pushes, and right now it’s heartbreak, but if he digs in, that could turn a lot uglier and be a hard lesson she never wants to learn. Or she pushes and he cows and wonders for the rest of his life with what he can give her if she could have done better even if that idea never enters her mind, it’ll torture him and may turn things bad.”
He took his finger from my lips and moved that hand back to my jaw when I returned, “And the other scenario is that they’re both young but they’re both smart and sensitive and aware of the emotions they’re feeling, the draw they have to each other, and even if they’re young, they could be happy.”
“Maybe but she’s on holiday from freaking Yale and he came home covered with drywall dust and had to take a shower before he could go out to dinner and they’ve known each other days.”
“Jake and Josie.”
“Sorry?”
“I’ve met Jake and I’ve met Josie, but I met Josie first. My vision of Jake would not have been the man I met tonight after I met Josie. But she didn’t only marry him, she adopted his son so I don’t know her at all but my take from that is her commitment to her husband and his family is pretty flipping strong. Are you seeing the correlation here?”
“Jake and Josie are in their forties. They understand their hearts and what they want out of life a whole lot better than Verity Moreland does, Cady. She’s a great kid and I would say with Elijah she has great taste. She may be becoming a woman, but she’s still a kid.”
He had me there.
He also knew it so he gave my jaw a squeeze and said, “Now I need pie and I gotta make sure my daughter doesn’t get pecan goo and cream all over herself, and then I got two girls to take care of tonight so I need to get that show on the road.”
“All right,” I mumbled.
“And you need to resolve to be Switzerland.”
My brows drew together. “What?”
“He needs you and she needs you so you need to be Switzerland. Neutral. A safe place for them both. So you said whatever you said to him out there. And you had your chat with her. Now, retreat to that safe place for them and let them play it out.”
He was right again.
I just didn’t like how he was right.
I frowned.
Coert grinned.
Then he used my jaw to pull me up to him, gave me a kiss then said, “Need pie.”
I nodded.
He let me go to slide an arm around my shoulders and guide me back to the island.
He took his pie up to the observation deck.
I gobbled mine down glaring at the door that led to the walkway to the garage.
Mike had already gobbled his down so he came to me when I was halfway through and wrapped an arm around my waist.
I turned my glare up to him.
His lips twitched.
“I like him,” he stated.
I stopped glaring.
“Fits right in,” he carried on. “He’s got a nutty woman on his hands, meets her at the fire, talks soft, touches softer, gives her a kiss and brings her to heel. Totally fits right in.”
I swallowed a bite of pie and asked, “Would you like a punch in the gut?”
“No,” he said, now fully smiling.
“Coert talked sense,” I explained.
“I’m sure he did. That happens when the talker has a penis.”
He was totally teasing. That was Mike (and sometimes Daly). The two younger brothers, they were always pushing buttons to get a rise.
Then he became the part that mostly made up Mike.
He yanked me to him, kissed the side of my head and said softly into my hair. “She’s gonna be okay. Elijah’s gonna be okay. It’ll all be okay and end up the way it’s supposed to be.” He pulled away and looked into my eyes. “Your job is not to worry yourself sick about it along the way.”
I nodded.
“Am I talking sense?” he teased.
I started glaring again.
He burst out laughing.
Verity walked down the steps with a suitcase.
She scanned the space. “Where’s Coert?”
“He’s upstairs finishing his pie with Janie. Come here,” I called. “Let me get you some pie.”
She dropped her suitcase at the foot of the stairs and started toward me, but did it saying, “I can’t eat any pie right now, Aunt Cady.”
I set my plate aside and held out an arm. “Then just come here.”
She came there and I folded her in my arm, and since Mike still had me in his, he shifted so he folded her in his arm too.
“You’ll be all right, kid,” Mike murmured, now talking against the side
“Yeah,” she replied, not giving a lot of effort to sound like she wasn’t lying.
Coert came down, and Janie came with him as well as a variety of other people.
But it was only Janie who was excited. “We’re having a kind of slumber party!”
Verity went with that flow.
They prepared to leave and Coert commandeered Verity’s suitcase.
Verity and I commandeered Janie.
We got her bound up in her winter gear and we both held a hand as we walked her out to Coert’s truck.
It was me who helped strap her into the seat in the back and gave her a kiss before I said, “See you later, sweetie.”
“Can’t wait, Cady!” she cried.
I smiled at her, closed her in, gave Verity a hug and she climbed into the front.
I rounded the hood and gave Coert a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
He kissed me on mine and whispered in my ear, “I’ll call after I got them settled.”
“Thanks,” I whispered back. “Love you. Drive safe.”
“Will do.”
He climbed in.
He started up his truck.
He pulled out and it wasn’t only me this time that waved them away.
But it was only me who turned and looked up at the windows over the garage just in time to see a curtain fall back into place.
“Switzerland,” I muttered.
“What?” Shannon, standing beside me, asked.
I looked to her. “Nothing. I need wine.”
“No truer words have been spoken,” Kath decreed, not quite hiding the worry on her face as she watched Coert’s truck drive through the gate.
Mike raised a remote pointed at the gate and it started closing.
I went inside, straight to the wine.
Mm-hmm
Coert
Present day . . .
WHEN THEY WALKED INTO THE Eaves that Sunday night, Coert should have been paying attention.
But he wasn’t because Cady was wearing that green dress.
When they were together in Denver, they’d never had an occasion where Cady could get dressed up.
And since then, although she always looked nice, stylish, he could tell her clothes were good quality therefore expensive, and she’d sometimes wear heeled boots to dress something up, mostly she was casual.
He’d noticed she’d had lip gloss on a couple of times, saw her clean off her mascara at night. But she didn’t even wear full makeup.
That night however, when he’d picked up the women from the lighthouse to drive them to The Eaves, he’d seen Cady standing in the kitchen holding a wineglass and he’d not wanted to go to dinner with seven women and three men.
He’d wanted to grab her hand, haul her out to his truck, take her to his house, remove that dress and tie her to his bed . . . again.
Simple, one shoulder bared, blousy at the top, overlaps in the front of the skirt, it wasn’t tight, skin baring or in-your-face sexy. It showed a nice amount of leg (and Coert would admit to a good deal of infatuation with her gold sandals as well), arm and shoulder, but it wasn’t about sex kitten appeal.
It was classy. Elegant.
Gorgeous.
And her hair all done up in soft curls and pulled back in a loose ponytail that fell over her shoulder, her face entirely made up . . .
Christ.
Coert hadn’t thought about it because it was Cady. All he wanted was Cady. She could have third degree burn scars over most of her body and he’d want her back, and then be over the moon when he got her.
But she wasn’t about primping and preening way back when and he knew now it wasn’t just because she didn’t have the money or the reason to do it seeing as she wasn’t about that now.
It just wasn’t her.
And seeing her made up like that for their meeting-of-the-friends dinner, he realized he liked that it wasn’t.
She was just what she was, natural and beautiful.
But now he knew it was more because he knew he’d get the gift of seeing her like this when they were going to share something special.
Kath’s announcement of, “Oh no, we’re not meeting you there so you guys can go upstairs and have a quickie. I’m hungry and I have a daughter in love who’s pining in New Haven and a husband who single-handedly needs to pry my teenage son out of bed and get him to school for a week without losing the will to fight back the urge to commit murder, so I need wine and we’re running low. But restaurants have a ready supply so we need to go there, STAT,” had killed any dream that Coert could last minute bow out of that evening and do that with Cady.
Kim had taken Janie a day early so Coert could go out which meant Cady was back in his bed that night. Her overnight bag by the door confirmed that plan hadn’t changed.
So he’d have to wait.
And he could wait.
That didn’t mean he was over that dress.
And snatching her into his arms and kissing the lip gloss off her lips after the other women had filed out of the lighthouse earlier hadn’t helped even a little bit.
So Coert’s mind was on Cady’s dress, and taking it off later, not on the meeting of the friends, or the fact that Kath was Kath, Alyssa was Alyssa, and he should have paid attention.
But he didn’t.
And Kath started it off being Kath.
Hilarious, but still, in the end he’d lose Cady being close (in that dress) for most of the night.
“Okay, well, not . . . gonna . . . work,” Kath announced the minute they hit the long table where Jake and Josie, Mickey and Amelia and Alyssa and Junior were already seated. “First, let’s not pretend that this isn’t gonna be ninety-nine point nine percent gossip about Coert and Cady so this boy-girl thing,” she had a hand lifted, finger pointed out, and she slid it side to side to indicate how the couples were arranged at the table, “is just gonna get in the way. Second, my eyeballs are attached to muscles and arranging all the hot guys together means I won’t have to strain them by looking around too much. So up! Rearrange. This is the girls’ end of the table, and that’s the boys’.”
She indicated where everyone was sitting, then tugged out a chair in the women’s section and sat her ass down.
“Uh, this is my sister, Kath, and she’s had a traumatic Christmas with her twenty-year-old daughter falling in love with the man who rents the apartment over my garage,” Cady introduced.
Josie and Amelia turned concerned eyes to Kath.
“So she sometimes has some manners, but now, not so much,” Cady finished.
Coert slid a hand along the silky material at Cady’s waist and curled his fingers at her hip and he did this watching the men at the table smile at his woman.
“I think I love you,” Alyssa stated, staying in her seat in the women’s section at the same time shoving at Junior to move him out of his, her eyes not leaving Kath.
“I know I love you,” Kath returned. “Any sister who’s got it and isn’t afraid to flaunt it receives premier status. But you have to tell me, how do you keep those girls in? Double sided tape?”
“That’s for amateurs. Hairspray,” Alyssa replied.
“Really?” Pam asked, taking her seat in the women’s section.
“Really,” Alyssa confirmed.
“What the hell are they talking about?” Coert whispered in Cady ear.
“Cleavage,” Cady whispered in his.
He still didn’t get it and her answer didn’t make Coert look at Alyssa’s display. He was a guy, he liked tits, that was prerequisite. But he was an ass man and Cady’s ass in her dress was all his mind needed.
“Hi, I’m Amelia. You’re Cady?” Amelia said to Cady as she shifted out of her seat and Mickey shifted one over.
Josie also came around from the men’s section and gave Coert a touch of her cheek to his before she pulled away and also gave him a smile.
“We’ll take care of her,” she said softly, turning to Cady.
A
Cursory introductions were performed between the people who hadn’t met yet and Coert sat next to Junior, who was now at the head of the table, Mick on Coert’s other side, and Jake across from him in the men’s section.
He looked down the table to Cady, who’d been seated opposite him and all the way down the table next to Shannon on one side, who’d taken the foot, and Alyssa on her other.
He would have preferred her next to him but the placement didn’t suck since he could look at her all night.
She gave him an amused smile.
He returned it.
“She’s pretty,” Junior murmured.
“She’s everything,” Coert murmured back.
The men exchanged glances.
Coert ignored them, grabbed his menu from in front of him, opened it and studied it, even though he knew he would get the ribeye because he always got the ribeye at The Eaves.
“By the way, I’m paying and I don’t want any backtalk,” Kath called from her seat on Shannon’s left.
“That’s gonna go bad for her since we already gave the waiter our credit cards,” Mick muttered.
Coert chuckled and looked to his friend. “How’s things?”
“Bought her a ring and we’re goin’ to the Keys so I can give it to her,” Mickey answered.
Coert smiled. “So they’re good.”
Mick didn’t answer. He just returned Coert’s smile.
Yeah. Things were good.
And a glance at Amelia, who was sitting next to Mickey but was turned to face the women, Coert was glad for him. She was a short, pretty brunette who had two kids and currently lived at Cliff Blue, one of the three great houses in Magdalene (now that Cady had done up the lighthouse and it could again be considered a house). Cliff Blue was situated across the street from Mickey’s place and it was so spectacular, Coert reckoned even if Mick had grown up in the house he and his kids now shared, once the ring he intended to put on her finger was joined by another one, Mick and his kids would be moving across the street.
“Brother,” Jake called and Coert looked to him. “How’s Janie taking things? She seemed good at Tink’s. That still goin’ on?”
“Yeah. She gets it,” Coert answered. “We had our first alone night this week with Cady coming over after me and Janie had dinner. She watched TV with us and left before I put Janie to bed even though she said she didn’t want Cady to go. We’re trying to take it slow but she likes her. And Janie loves Cady’s family. Thought I’d have to pry them apart with a crowbar when Janie had to say goodbye to Cady’s niece after the last dinner with the whole family New Year’s night at Breeze Point. Cady’s going to show her how to Skype.” He paused before he finished, “And Kim’s helping. Being cool.”