Getting Lucky (The Portland Pioneers Book 2) (2 page)

“Well, she’s not here,” Maggie said matter-of-factly. “And I can’t imagine she’ll be coming to Sand Point anytime soon.”

He gave her a surprised look. “But it’s almost the holidays. Thanksgiving is in a few weeks.”

“Again,” Maggie said with exaggerated patience, “you must not know Tabitha very well.”

“Pretty well,” he said and face was a careful, blank mask. “I had a feeling this might be a wild goose chase.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Maggie said, letting him know that he’d gotten everything he was going to out of her—which was nothing.

“Can you at least let her know I stopped by? Maybe she’d be okay with you providing a way to contact her.” The desperation was back and Maggie couldn’t help but feel the
waste
of such a beautiful man who was likely blind to any member of the female sex other than her unapologetically shiftless sister.

But despite her innate sympathy, Maggie couldn’t help but shoot him a dubious look at his request. “I don’t think so.”

His handsome face changed almost in an instant, morphing from confidently charming to abruptly lost, and Maggie felt the world tilt under her feet a little. This terrible sadness was what he’d been hiding under the charming mask? Maggie swore a blue streak at the image of Tabitha in her mind’s eye.

“Please,” he said. “All I ask is that you call her and tell her that I’m here and I want to talk to her.”

Through her adolescence, Maggie had had a lot of experience with the aftermath of Tabitha. All through junior high and high school, she’d seen the walking wounded who’d been chased, used and left by her precocious sister who never seemed to know what she really wanted. She remembered the devastation in so many of those boys’ faces and their confusion at why Tabitha’s ardent affection had abruptly vanished. Maggie should have been immune to that pleading look on Noah Fox’s face, but apparently she wasn’t.

“Fine. Will you be staying in town a few days?”

“It’ll take that long?” he asked.

“Despite what you may think you know about family, and especially about sisters,” Maggie had to admit, “Tabitha doesn’t always answer my emails right away.”
Or at all
, she added mentally.

“Right,” Noah said, and for the first time, Maggie could see he wasn’t surprised. Maybe he wasn’t under Tabby’s spell as much as she’d thought he was. But then what was he so sad about? Maggie wished he’d never shown up here tonight, because now she was curious and like most people born with innate curiosity, she knew she’d probably never discover an answer that truly satisfied her. No doubt Noah Fox would merely disappear into the night, just as he’d arrived.

He reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his wallet, the leather the same shade as an expensive Cognac. He handed over a business card, and she took it, surprised again at the symbol embossed into the thick cardstock. “The Portland Pioneers? The baseball team?”

He grinned. “Obviously not a baseball fan.”

“Am I supposed to recognize you or something?” Because she didn’t. But then she didn’t really follow baseball—or any other sport, for that matter.

“Again,” he merely shrugged, “you’re clearly not a baseball fan.”

“I’ve been a little busy the last few years, running this Café,” Maggie retorted.

“I play for the Pioneers,” he said casually, but the shuttered expression on his face told some other story. Maggie made a mental note to definitely google him when she got home. If he was a famous baseball player, then she might be able to figure out why he wanted to talk to her sister so much. Plus Maggie much preferred to start with some kind of advantage when dealing with Tabitha, even if all she had was information.

“Ah.”

“Well, thanks for your help.”

It was wrong but Maggie waited a split second after he departed the kitchen to turn off the light. After all, a butt that excellent deserved an audience, even if it was only her and the grill.

“What do you think that was about?” Cal asked, as Maggie locked the front door and walked over to where he was maneuvering chairs and tables back to their original positions. The Council had finally departed about fifteen minutes after Noah Fox had left, when they’d finally realized that not only was Maggie going to stay tight-lipped about what the visitor had wanted from Tabitha, but that she wasn’t willing to speculate either.

The truth was, Maggie wasn’t sure she
wanted
to know why the man was so hot on her sister’s trail. Her imagination was fairly vivid, but chances were the reality was even worse than the possibilities she’d contemplated. Still, she’d made her promise to Noah Fox, and tonight she’d email her sister and pass on his request. If she even answered, she’d no doubt be vastly amused, and, as usual, completely immune to the pain she’d caused. In the end, she’d just repeat what Maggie already knew: that Tabitha had already moved on from Noah and didn’t want anything more to do with him.

Because Maggie had been stupid enough to make the promise, she’d have to face Noah again and despite all the sadness that he carried deep within himself, add a little more to the burden. That was a moment she wasn’t particularly looking forward to.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll probably never know.”

Cal shrugged then, and though he’d grown up with Maggie
and
Tabitha, she could see the silent judgment on his face for her sister’s actions. Cal had never liked Tabitha’s carelessness with people, and the intervening years and her exploits hadn’t done much to endear her any more. Maggie knew Cal like she knew herself, and she knew Tabitha’s behavior contradicted every code of honor that Cal believed in. He was maybe a little overly righteous sometimes, but there was no one kinder or more loyal— and the highest expectations were the ones he placed on himself.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his quiet, careful look so familiar that Maggie wanted to wrap it around her like a fluffy blanket. She might not be able to count on her sister, but Cal was the brother her parents had never had. She’d survived Tabitha’s behavior before, and she’d survive it again.

“I’m fine.”

Maggie walked back to the alarm panel that Cal had installed when she’d first opened the Café. Punching in the code, she hit the lights, and they exited the building as the alarm chimed.

She didn’t even have to look back to see that like always, Cal checked the door knob to make sure the back entrance was secure. Anybody else might question his nearly fanatical dedication to her safety, but Maggie understood that his protectiveness was just the way Cal was, the way he gave of himself to those he loved.

She’d walked to the Café for the Council meeting since her house was only a few blocks away and it was still pretty warm for early November. Still, the air had chilled during the last two hours, and Maggie wrapped her arms around herself as they walked out of the little parking lot at the back of the Café and onto the sidewalk of the main drag in downtown Sand Point.

“How’s the Sanderson job going?” Maggie asked as they turned from the main street to the side street her childhood home was on.

“Good,” Cal said. “Slow, but good. I think we’ll just be about ready to start the tile in the bathroom this week.” Cal ran his family’s construction and remodeling business, which even in such a small town as Sand Point kept him plenty busy. He’d gone to school to become an architect, but when his father had had his first heart attack, Cal had come home. Two heart attacks and a funeral later, he’d never ended up leaving again.

Sometimes Maggie wondered if, unlike her, he was truly happy settling in the town they’d grown up in. Of course, being Cal, he’d never say so; he saw managing the business his father had started as a privilege. Every father probably wished he had a son like Cal Keller.

They reached her house, tiny and dark. “You didn’t leave the security light on in the back,” Cal objected, and Maggie just rolled her eyes.

“It was still light when I left,” she protested. “And that light is so damn bright. Plus, it’s not like we’re a hotbed of crime and violence.”

Cal didn’t say a word, just sighed. Maggie dug her keys out of her purse and started to hug him goodbye, when something in his face made her pause. “What is it?” she asked.

She’d thought she’d cataloged nearly every one of his expressions over the years. Knowing someone for twenty seven years would do that, she supposed, but the look he was giving her now wasn’t one she recognized at all.

“I need to talk to you about something,” he said hesitantly, which was nothing at all like him. Cal did everything with certainty and confidence. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” she said, shooting him a questioning look of her own as he followed her up the porch steps to the front door. “I think I might even have a beer or two in the fridge.”

“Sounds perfect,” Cal said but there was a strange distraction in his voice now, which in any other person she might have said was nerves, but this was
Calvin
. Maggie literally couldn’t remember him ever being nervous about anything.

When he’d been the star quarterback in high school and had led the football team to the state championship, he’d been annoyingly relaxed. When he’d spoken at his dad’s funeral, Maggie hadn’t believed that someone could be so composed. Cal was kind of an extraordinary person, Maggie thought as she dropped her bag on the kitchen counter, flicking on lights as she went.

She grabbed two beers from the fridge. Popping the tops off, she returned to the living room and handed him one. “Is everything okay?” she asked, perching on the arm of her favorite comfy chair.

“I’m fine,” he said, and it wasn’t lost on her that she’d said the identical phrase not half an hour before and she hadn’t really meant it either.

Cal set the beer down on the coffee table, and to her utter surprise, began to peel away the damp wrapper, leaving a litter of paper crumbs on the coaster.

Something was definitely up.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Maggie said again, but this time didn’t bother phrasing it as a question.

He glanced back up at her, his eyes meeting hers. “Do you ever feel alone here?”

“In Sand Point?” she asked in surprise. Cal was the stoic sort; she’d never heard him talk about loneliness before, but of course he must have felt it. He was still human, after all.

“Yeah, in Sand Point. In life. In general.” He lifted the bottle and took a long drink. “I’m going to be twenty nine this year, and you’re twenty seven. We’ve met everyone worth meeting here. Don’t you ever worry you’ll never find someone special? Someone you could settle down with?”

Before she’d moved back to Sand Point three years ago to open the Café, Maggie had gone to culinary school in San Francisco and had lived and worked there for several years after. She hadn’t been an avid dater when she’d lived in the city, but she’d done okay for herself. Since moving back home, she’d been too busy to worry about her love life. Now that Cal had brought it up, it
had
been three years since she’d been on anything resembling a date. “Not really,” she admitted. “But then I haven’t thought about it.”

“I have.” Suddenly he sounded like the Cal she knew so well, the Cal who was absolutely certain about everything. Whatever it was that he was about to say, he was one hundred percent convinced it was the right thing. That should have reassured Maggie, but instead she felt a twinge of anxiousness deep in her stomach.

“I think we should date.”

Her jaw dropped. “We should date? You mean
each other
?”

He gave a sharp nod, as if this wasn’t the most insane, ridiculous notion in the entire universe. As if she wasn’t practically his sister and he wasn’t practically her brother. For god’s sake, he was
Calvin Keller
.

For a moment, she tried to entertain the idea, and looked him over with what she hoped was a totally clinical detachment. She supposed he was good looking, if you liked that clean-cut, all-American look, but well, he was still
Cal.
And that was the crux of the problem; she’d honestly never once thought about it, and that was probably more an indication of her own blindness than it was of what Cal had to offer a woman.

A sudden, horrific thought occurred to her. “You’re not. . .” She took a deep gulp of beer and swallowed, hoping it would give her courage she needed to ask this un-askable question. “You’re not in love with me, are you? Like secretly, for years. . .?”

She wanted him to laugh, like really laugh, a deep belly-splitting laugh at how truly ridiculous the notion was, but instead he just gazed at her seriously. “You know I love you, Maggie. But no, I’m not in love with you. I just started thinking about this a few months ago.”

“Then
why
?”

“Like I said, I love you. You’re the most important person in my life. Who’s to say we’re not compatible romantically?”