A Taste of Ice (49 page)

“I want you to know that I feel bad asking, for taking you away.”

“Don’t. It’s no biggie. Came at the perfect time.”

She hadn’t told Aimee about the impending partnership. Or the risk she’d taken coming here now.

Aimee wrung her hands. “I’m older. I should have been taking care of you, instead of the other way around. And here you are again.”

“And here I am.” With a final smile, as reassuring as she could make it, Jen left and headed downtown.

Gleann legend said that its founders had used Celtic magic to transport a chunk of old Scotland into this out-of-the-way valley, from its stone-facade shops crowding the narrow
sidewalks, to the meandering path of its streets. Gleann reality was that little plaques hung from every building and fixture, describing how the immigrants had constructed their new home.

Jen had always found it magical, truth to the legend or not. Now, however, the place was practically deserted. The ice cream shop where she’d scooped out orders one summer had long since closed, but she could see that at its last use, it had been a scrapbooking store. The Picture This sign still hung over the door.

A faded poster was taped inside the window, one corner curling back.
GLEANN’S GREAT HIGHLAND GAMES! DON’T MISS IT!
Looking around town, it was the
only
mention of the Games anywhere, and the thing was supposed to happen in three weeks. If this was the kind of hills she’d have to scale, she was in deep shit. But then, that’s what she was good at: climbing her way out and putting on the best events any amount of money could buy.

She looked closer at the poster.

Leith. His brown hair longer than the last time she saw him, wet and clinging to his jaw. His rugged face contorted in exertion. Hammer clutched in his great fists, arms extended out, his body even bigger and more muscular than she remembered. And he wore a kilt.

Good God, a kilt.

She’d seen him wear his family’s tartan before, in high school when the whole town had turned out for the Games. But a kilt on a boy was a much different thing than a kilt on a
man
. In the photo, the wind had kicked up the hem of the kilt, displaying the hard lines of his thigh muscles, set in a wide stance. Black knee socks showed off bowling balls for calves.

None of the men in New York were
that
kind of gorgeous.

The shrine out on Route 6 had said he’d last won the heavy athletics competition five years ago. What did Leith look like now? Looking at the poster and seeing how much he’d improved from age eighteen to twenty-three, the curve for hotness progression over time indicated he should be approaching godhood right about now, at twenty-eight.

Her phone blared a warning and at first she didn’t recognize the sound of the alarm. She was never late. Ever.
Crap
. She
hurried down the street to the small brick house that served as Town Hall.

Jen rang the doorbell to the locked Town Hall front door. When
the door finally opened, a silver-haired woman in jeans and a Syracuse sweatshirt frowned down at her. It was an expression Jen remembered with painful clarity.

“Hi, Mrs. McCurdy. It’s good to see you.”

Mrs. McCurdy, former manager at the ice cream shop and a steady dog-walking client of Jen’s, stepped back and opened the door wider. “Here. Let me show you the mess you’ve inherited.”

Jen took a deep breath. “Ah, great. Thank you, Mrs. McCurdy.”

“It’s Mayor Sue now,” the other woman threw over her shoulder as she headed toward the back of the hall.

“You…you want me to call you that?”

“Everyone else does.”

Mayor Sue turned in to what must have been a bedroom at one time, but was now a tiny, corner conference room with a giant box fan whipping warm air around. A laptop sat on the table. Mayor Sue hooked her wiry hair behind each ear and flipped the laptop around.

Jen bent over and squinted at the spreadsheet. At the tiny number in the bottom right rectangle. “That’s what’s left? Where’d DeeDee run off to again?”

“France, we’re told.” Mayor Sue snorted, and Jen wasn’t sure if the disgust came from the fact that the long-time organizer of the Highland Games had run off with a sizable chunk of the town’s money, or that she’d run away to a place that wasn’t Scotland with a man who didn’t have a drop of Scottish blood in him.

Neither did Jen, which might have accounted for some of Mrs. McCurdy’s disdain over the years.

The amount left in the Games’s account wouldn’t even have covered Jen’s fee back in the city, but she wasn’t here for the money. A part of her got way too excited at the challenge. She wouldn’t be sitting on her ass the next few weeks, that was for sure. Her goal? Put on the best Highland Games Gleann had ever thrown, and convince the state’s Scottish Society to keep the event here next year and beyond. With the departure of
Hemmertex—and its employees and monied executives—the Games were all Gleann had left.

It was, quite simply, a matter of pride.

“Think you can do it?” Mayor Sue crossed her arms under her generous boobs.

Jen pulled her dark hair back into a ponytail and took a seat. “I think so. Yes.”

Mayor Sue frowned again before leaving, as though she’d had hundreds of other event planners lining up around the block to take this gig for free, and Jen had to prove herself.

She
would
prove herself. To Aimee, who’d been so clearly disappointed in Jen’s absence the past decade. To Aunt Bev, whose love and encouragement had brought her to Gleann in the first place. To Leith, who’d been so hurt and angry when she’d gone.

And to her parents, who probably wouldn’t give a shit but whose negativity and laziness had driven her out of the house in the first place.

Jen spent the next hour flipping through old files, memorizing spreadsheets and totals, and rearranging numbers in her head. There were very few resources, even less money, and practically no organization or innovation. She needed to take inventory. She needed to contact vendors, renegotiate terms. Check up with the competitors and judges and—

Her phone rang. Aimee.

“Hel—”

Screeching and sobbing filled her ear.

“Calm down, Aim, I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”

“Oh, my God, the whole place, Jen!” There was splashing and squishing in the background. “The toilet or the bathtub or something up in your room. Something must have burst. Water everywhere. Totally flooded.” A sob, a sniffle. “It’s dripping through the floorboards, into the guest rooms downstairs. Oh, my God! I don’t know what to do!”

Jen’s first instinct was to run. To swim like hell far, far away from this mess, grab onto the first floating thing she could find and paddle in the opposite direction. Why on earth had she ever thought this would be an easy three weeks? Especially if Aimee was involved? Why the hell was her sister calling
her
now? Ah, of course. Because she was here, and when Jen was here, Jen took care of things.

All her clothes and things were in that room, sitting right outside the bathroom. Probably floating down the hall by now.
Shit.

She ground fingers into her temple. “Maybe you should, I don’t know, turn off the water at the source and then call a plumber?”

“What? No.” More crying, more splashing.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I can’t call
him
.” It came out like
hiiiiiiiim
, in a child’s voice, and Jen finally got it. Aimee had probably slept with whoever
hiiiiiiiim
was and they hadn’t moved past the After-Sex Awkwardness.

Lovely.

Jen Haverhurst to the rescue. “Just hold on, Aim. Be there in a second. Can you at least find the water shutoff?”

“Okay. Yes. I think so.”

Jen hung up and sighed. She pushed back from the table and poked her head out of the conference room door. “Mayor Sue? Know of any places in town I can rent? Like, today?”