Mistletoe Bay (20 page)

Maybe she had been babying her daughter a little too much. Here she had thought she was helping Felicity out with her laundry. Between school and working part time for Jenni, Felicity had very little time to relax. She had done Kenny's laundry until he went away to college, and then when he did manage to come home to visit, he always brought what seemed like a semester's worth of dirty laundry home with him. “Mom, you know I didn't mean it that way.” Felicity rolled her eyes. “It's just that Sam is going to be here any minute and I need to change.”

“What's wrong with the jeans you have on?” The pair looked perfectly fine to her. They were better than fine; they didn't have any holes in them. It had taken Felicity four months to talk her into buying a brand-new pair of jeans with holes already in them. Today's fashions were ridiculous and depressingly dark.

“I wore these Tuesday to school.” Felicity looked appalled.

“And they were washed on Thursday.” She shook her head as she carried the basket of towels into the bathroom. “They're clean.”

“I worked five hours today in them. They smell like soap and have glitter all over them.” Felicity followed her into the bathroom and brushed her thigh. “See?”

When they had first moved into the house, Jenni and she had gotten into their first fight. Jenni had insisted that Dorothy take the master bedroom with its adjoining bath. The house was Jenni's, so she believed Jenni deserved it. While she had been busy with the movers in the kitchen, Jenni had directed the placement of the bedroom furniture. Jenni had won that argument by default. Dorothy wasn't strong enough to move the furniture and switch Jenni's and her bedroom sets.

Felicity and she now shared this one bathroom, while Jenni and the boys had the main, out-of-date bath, off the hallway. Most of the time the turtle spent his day in the bottom of her tub because Corey swore that Buster hated pink. The color made the turtle sick, and the main bath of the house was a putrid shade of 1960s pink, down to the commode, sink, and floor and ceiling tiles. At least her and Felicity's bath was white, ancient, chipped white. The walls were papered in a current 1970s style of crushed-velvet paisley. Retro was alive and well in the Wright house, and she hated it.

Pink sparkles now glittered on the white throw rugs she was using in the hopeless cause of toning down the room. “Don't do that, Felicity. They get everywhere.”

“Yeah, like on my jeans.” Felicity studied her face in the mirror and moaned in dismay. “I'm getting another zit.”

She stood beside her daughter, who was at least three inches taller, and marveled at the woman she was becoming. It was scaring her to death. In two years Felicity would be away at college. Felicity wasn't anything like her brother, Ken. With her daughter she wasn't sure if she would come home for visits, dirty laundry or not. “You are not. Stop poking at it.”

“See? You said it; you see it too.” Felicity moved closer to the mirror above the sink.

“I see a freckle. In fact I see a whole face of freckles. You got them from your father's side of the family.” The red hair ran on both sides, but George had been blessed with the Irish freckles. “Your father used to rock you in the chair and claim all those freckles were from where the angels kissed you.”

“Dad was Irish; he was full of baloney.” Felicity grinned at herself.

“Hey”—she lightly smacked her daughter on the arm—“watch it, sister. I'm Irish too.”

“Mom, so am I.” Felicity glanced over at the tub, where Buster was playing in the half-inch of water at the one end. “I forgot to tell you about tonight and Sam.”

“Speaking of Sam”—maybe now was the time to have the heart-to-heart with her daughter—“you're a beautiful girl, Felicity. Do you really want to be spending all your time with one guy? Sam's a really nice boy, don't get me wrong.” She could see the anger building in her daughter's face. “What I'm saying is that you barely know anyone else at school. Maybe you should be, I don't know—what do you young kids call it nowadays?—playing the field.”

“It's called being a ‘sleaze-ut,' Mom. Is that what you want me to be?”

“Of course not.” She didn't need to be seventeen again to figure out that a “sleaze-ut” was a sleazy slut. “What I'm trying to say is that maybe you and Sam shouldn't be so serious. You barely know each other.” All she had been hearing from Felicity for the past three months was Sam, Sam, and more Sam. Her daughter's world was starting to revolve around one guy, and she was way too young to be acting so serious. “You have your whole world ahead of you.”

“What's that got to do with Sam?” Felicity crossed her arms. “What's wrong with him?”

“Nothing is wrong with him, hon. He seems like a very nice and polite boy.” It was time for her to do some backpedaling. “Your nephews love him, and his family seems really nice.”

“Great, glad you like his family.” Felicity was being sarcastic. “Because what I forgot to tell you is that not only is Sam coming tonight, so are his father and sisters. Sam said something about his father having one or two parts he wanted to put on the furnace in the basement, so they decided to make a night of it.”

“Here?” Eli Fischer was coming here tonight. The house was a disaster, and so was the kitchen. She had baked a chocolate cake this afternoon while doing the laundry, but she hadn't had a chance to frost it yet. Tonight she had been planning on giving the kitchen a good scrubbing while Sam and Felicity occupied the boys.

She didn't even want to think about what she was wearing. She wasn't fit for company.

Before she could think of what to do first, there was a pounding on the front door that vibrated the whole house. One of these days they had to get the doorbell fixed before the walls came tumbling down. The boys heard the pounding, sprinted from Jenni's room, and started running down the stairs, shouting, screaming, and, knowing her grandsons, probably pushing each other. It was a miracle no one had broken their neck yet, the way the boys raced up and down those steps.

“I'll get it!” shouted Tucker.

“No, me!” answered Corey.

“Boys, no pushing!” Jenni came out into the hallway to yell down the stairs.

She and Felicity joined Jenni at the top of the stairs as Chase made it to the front door first and flung it open.

The Fischer family tumbled into the house with pizza boxes, bags of chips, bottles of soda, and what looked like a month's worth of DVDs. Eli stood at the bottom of the stairs, glanced up at them, and grinned. “I declare it movie night!” He held up an economy-size box of microwavable popcorn, boxes of Milk Duds, and a bottle of wine.

Chase, Tucker, and Corey all stood there with their mouths hanging open, probably thinking that Christmas had come early to Mistletoe Bay.

 

 

Jenni snapped her seat belt and watched as Coop walked around the front of her SUV and then got into the driver's seat. The man was not only gorgeous, but attentive and a perfect date as well. She couldn't remember the last time she had been this relaxed over a meal.

What Cooper Armstrong did to a suit should be illegal. The man oozed sex appeal. All through dinner she kept getting whiffs of his aftershave and it was driving her nuts.

Coop started the car and turned on the heat. “Give it a minute to warm up.” Coop's gaze was on her legs.

She nervously shifted her legs as the scent of his aftershave filled her car. Coop had taken one look at her shoes and declared his pickup truck unacceptable. She had handed him the keys to her SUV without an argument. “It's okay, Coop. I knew it was cold out when I got dressed.” She had debated long and hard what to wear tonight. Since she didn't have time to go shopping, she was left with only a couple suitable choices. The knee-length red silky dress worn because she had shoes to match. Bojangles had chewed the heel off her good navy dress shoes and the ears off her bunny slippers.

The next free moment she had, she was doing some major shopping and buying a lock for her bedroom door. She didn't know who was worse, the boys spilling her one and only bottle of perfume tonight before she'd had a chance to put any on, or the animals. At least the boys didn't chew her shoes, but her bedroom now reeked like a whorehouse.

She had been left in the awkward situation of asking her mother-in-law if she could use some of her perfume. Although Dorothy had excellent taste in perfume, it wasn't hers, but it beat Felicity's odd assortment.

“You don't have to go straight home, do you?” Coop started to drive. “I wanted to show you something.”

“Now that's a loaded question if I ever heard one.” She chuckled at some of her thoughts.

“Don't tease, Jenni,” Coop groaned. “I'm trying to be on my best behavior tonight.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why, but she already knew the answer. Cooper Armstrong was trying to impress her, and she thought that was sweet. Of course, he didn't need to make a good impression on her; she was already impressed. She had been in awe of him since he'd rescued Tucker off the porch roof and captured the iguana underneath the dinner table. “So what did you want to show me?”

“Sunset Cove.” Coop drove out of the restaurant's parking lot and headed out of town. “It's the best place to go sledding for the boys, once we get a good pack of snow.”

“That's where Suicide Hill is, isn't it?” She'd take the boys sledding, but there was no way she was tobogganing down that hill. “How come I've never heard of it before?”

“It's a town secret.” Coop clicked the heater on, now that the car was warmed up. “We don't advertise it because of the tourists. It's nice for the locals to have a place of their own. During the summer months it's great for swimming and just bobbing around in a rowboat pretending to fish.”

“Sounds nice.” Mistletoe Bay was far enough out of town that most of the tourists didn't bother with it. “Doesn't anyone live there?”

“Sure, there's a few houses, but there's also a lot of open spaces. Teenagers use it as a hangout area, and the sheriff knows to patrol it regularly.”

“So what you are telling me is that my sister-in-law and Sam have probably been there. Now there's a thought that would give Dorothy more gray hair.”

“Felicity seems to have her head on straight.” Coop chuckled as he made a left turn. “I think you should worry more about Eli taking Dorothy there.”

“Eli does seem to enjoy flirting with her, doesn't he?” She remembered the banter going on in the kitchen between the two when she and Coop had left for dinner. “He's quite a few years younger, though.”

“In case you didn't notice, Jenni, Eli didn't seem to care. I would say the man is smitten.”

“Smitten.” She couldn't help but laugh at the image. “Now the question is, what's he smitten about—Dorothy or her cooking? The man does like to eat.”

“All men like to eat, Jenni.” Coop turned off the street and onto a gravel road. “I still can't believe you hadn't eaten at the Catch of the Day before tonight.”

“I never had the opportunity before tonight. It's not the kind of place one would take Tucker for a meal.” She glanced around as the cove came into view. The crisp, cold night air was clear and bright, allowing the nearly full moon to reflect off the still water of the cove. “This is beautiful.”

At her house you couldn't see the water of the bay from any first-floor window. A couple of the windows on the second floor allowed a few glimpses between the trees. It was Chase's third-floor window that had a clear view. One of these days, when she had some extra money, she was going to hire a landscaper to thin out a lot of the branches to open up the view from the second floor, and possibly remove a few trees and bushes so they could all enjoy the view from the back family room.

Coop stopped the SUV and turned off the headlights. “This is where everyone has picnics and swims in the summer. There's a small sandy beach right at the water's edge, and little kids can wade out pretty far before it drops off.”

She could picture what it must look like during the summer months when the trees had leaves and the occasional flower dotted the underbrush. “I bet the water is still cold.”

“Nicely chilled, but on hot summer days, it hits the spot.” Coop pointed off to the right. “Over there is a rope tied to that big tree leaning over the water. It's the perfect Tarzan rope, and the water beneath it is deep enough that you don't have to worry about banging your head on anything. Every spring the volunteer fire company holds a clean-up day out here. It's more like a party, but they always put up a new rope for the kids and wade into the cove to remove anything hazardous they can find.” Coop turned back on the headlights and drove back out the gravel road back to the paved street. “It's sorta like Misty Harbor's unofficial park.”

“Where's the sledding?” She hadn't see any hilly area that looked cleared enough to sled down.

“I'll show you. It's at the farthest end of the cove.” Coop passed a couple of homes that backed right up to the water. “Everyone in town knows to drop off extra firewood, branches, and logs out at the hill. During the winter months they feed the fifty-five-gallon drums that keep everyone warm. A few of the local residents along here even keep the gas-powered generator filled. There's a donation box up there to help cover the cost.”

“Why do you need a generator?” She leaned forward and stared out into the darkness. The only thing she could see was the occasional house, and trees. The actual water of the cove was nowhere to be seen.