The Single Dad Finds a Wife (9 page)

“You should have been,” snapped a woman who was standing nearby and clearly eavesdropping.

“It's all right, Mary,” Spring said. “Why don't you go catch up with the others? I'm fine here.”

“Are you sure, Dr. Spring?”

Spring assured her that she was. Then, with a dubious look at David, the woman nodded. “You holler if you need some backup.”

“I will,” Spring told her with a gentle smile. The woman departed, and so did the warmth in Spring's voice and demeanor.

She took a step back, putting distance between them. Her moment of contrition about her assumptions had ended, and the reality of the situation came crashing back on her. “Your mission is to destroy my house!”

She may have been mistaken about his financial solvency, but on this she was more than certain. David Camden's objective in Cedar Springs, North Carolina, was to destroy her home, the history and heritage of the six generations of Darlings who'd come before her.

“You're here to steal my land,” she added.

He shook his head. “I'm here to give the city council recommendations on three proposed sites.”

“One of which is the mayor's preferred location. And, I might add, a location that goes straight through Darling land—land she is probably already finagling to snatch via eminent domain.”

“You could extend to the city a right of way, easements.”

Spring snorted. “A fat lot of good that will do when a four-lane thoroughfare is on one side and a twenty-four-hour burger-hangout-slash-fast-food-drive-through-slash-gas-station-slash-multiplex-theater is on the other.”

David folded his arms and regarded her. His laugh held no humor. “You're one of them,” he said.

“One of who?”

“One of those self-righteous do-gooders who like to do good for the unfortunate,” he said, adding air quotes around the word
unfortunate
, “as long as the application of said services doesn't touch your backyard. In my field, we have a name for folks like you, NIMBY. That stands for—”

“I know what it stands for,” Spring snapped. “And this isn't about my backyard. It's about preserving history. You don't know me. You don't know anything about me, so you can keep your little name-calling and stereotyping to yourself.”

Had the ice in the air between them been real, her words could not have been colder.

“Why would you think that this wouldn't be important to me?”

“Spring, I never said it wasn't important to you. I have a job to do here. That task is to integrate design with function and present options to elected officials and city staff.”

“Options? What options?”

“They are as varied as each of the properties,” he said, hedging.

“And among those options can be recommend taking the whole thing to some other city?”

David sighed and ran a hand over his face. “This is getting us nowhere, Spring. I'd like the opportunity to show you what it is I do. I think there are some misconceptions about exactly what that is and what I'm in Cedar Springs for.”

Spring was pretty sure she knew exactly what it was he did and what Mayor Howell had in mind for the city. But for the sake of peace, she was willing to go along with him. They were on opposite sides of this issue, and there was little he could do to sway her on the topic of development.

But if—
when!
—she was honest with herself, she just wanted to spend some time with him, even though she was so angry. Since she could hardly admit
that
to him, she used the one plausible rationale she had at her disposal. Despite the shield she'd erected around her heart, David Camden had somehow wiggled in when she wasn't on guard.

She was thirty-five years old, a responsible and respected adult in a professional field. Long gone were the frivolous years when she could act on any whim like her youngest sister, Autumn.

Spring shook her head. Who was she kidding? She'd never been young and carefree. She was thirty when she was ten. Her grandmother always said Spring was an old soul who took after her grandmother's mother. But did being rooted mean she had to be boring, not willing to take a chance when happiness unexpectedly presented itself in her path?

She'd been in love once, and all it had gotten her was a broken heart and a disciplinary citation in her academic file. The last ten-plus years had been spent making up for that indiscretion, proving to herself that she was no longer that vulnerable and naive medical student she'd been when she'd fallen hard for Keith Henson. Keith. Just his name made her shudder.

“Well?”

Spring blinked. “Huh?”

“You've clearly been standing there debating all of the pros and cons. I've seen the arguments flash across your face,” David said. “Instead of looking for ways to say no, let me show you that your fears are misplaced.”

She doubted he would be able to accomplish that. But she nodded her assent.

“All right, David. Show me.”

* * *

They took the discussion outside, where both could get some air away from the prying eyes of a few onlookers who clearly wondered if there would be any additional fireworks to view.

“You give him what for, Doc!” an elderly woman he'd seen in the meeting room called as he followed Spring.

Outside city hall, the sun was shining warm and bright, in stark contrast to the chilly atmosphere inside the building.

If he had been hoping to be led to a downtown café for a repeat of their amiable conversation over lattes like before, he'd been sadly mistaken. Spring walked no more than a few yards from the building's main entrance to a bench that was in a grassy parklike area fronting the building. People sat on other benches nearby, none close enough to overhear a conversation. An elderly couple tossed bread crumbs to birds at one; a young mother with a stroller watched a toddler run after a puppy on another. Across the way, an older black man sipped from a cup and watched people go by.

“My intent was not to upset you or anyone,” he said without preamble.

He watched as Spring placed her purse on her lap and then clasped her hands on top of it reminiscent of the way his grandmother used to sit in church. All that was missing were the white gloves and little hat that matched her shoes.

On Spring, the pose looked as prim and proper as it did on his nana. But the curves on the woman sitting there waiting for him to explain himself were far from grandmotherly.

He suspected she'd taken the afternoon off from work to attend the meeting. She was dressed in a light blue linen wraparound dress, one of those numbers that women could dress up or down depending on the occasion, and heels. She'd paired the outfit with a simple small crucifix on a gold chain around her neck and minimal makeup. The look suited her—well put together and subtle though unmistakably expensive. Not for the first time he wondered why she didn't have a husband and children to dote on.

The competitive businessman in him—or, rather, the caveman, he mused—wondered why she didn't have a family to tend to rather than expending so much energy on history. But David knew he was as passionate about his work as Spring was about her family's land. And he'd seen firsthand her commitment to her patients.

The words should have come easy to him, but he struggled to explain his work to this woman who'd been there for him in the middle of the night, this woman who had shown compassion and care beyond the call of duty toward his son.

For reasons he was unwilling to delve into too deeply, what she thought mattered to him—a lot. And right now, what she assumed was that he was out to destroy her family's long-held homestead.

The land was private, so none of his team had been able to survey it. But the images from Google Earth had shown just a few buildings on the vast acreage, and most of them were centered near a large house. A rudimentary trail that connected with the property owned by the city had lots of potential for a nature way that could be a key selling point to those who wanted to live in the new community.

The words were all there in his head, but when he verbalized them, they sounded condescending to his ears.

“You don't understand,” he said.

“I have an undergraduate degree in biology and a medical degree,” she said. “I'm capable of understanding complex sentences.”

Ouch.

The lady had a bite.

He sighed. Then he loosened his tie and leaned forward on the bench, dropping his hands between his legs.

“We—”

“You.”

He glanced at her. Then decided to concede that point. “My firm identified areas that were best suited for a couple of small retail shops, with garden-style apartments and midpriced condos, residences that would appeal to empty nesters as well as young professionals. There would be businesses to support the residents who call the community home.”

“We have that here,” she said. “Look around. It's called downtown.”

Spring pointed down Main Street which had the look of a village. With the exception of the bookends of city hall and the library, none of the thoroughfare's buildings were more than two stories high.

“Everything you're seeing is the product of a recently completed downtown renovation effort to bring people and businesses downtown,” she said. “And as you've gathered—or already knew when you met me—my family has more than a passing interest in these plans. Plans, I should add, that were hatched from Mayor Howell's vendetta against my mother.”

“Excuse me?”

Spring sighed. “That was probably an exaggeration, at least my sisters and I would like to believe it is.”

“I feel like I've stumbled into a feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.”

“No blood has been shed...yet,” she said. “But as you saw in the meeting, tempers tend to run high on this topic.”

“Yes, of the ‘not in my backyard' variety.”

Spring shook her head. “It's more than that. Something happened between them, my mother and Bernadette Howell. Neither I nor any of my sisters have been able to suss out from Lovie what it was.”

“You call your mother by her first name?”

Spring's eyes widened, and she gave him a look that could only be called incredulous. “Not to her face! She may be approaching sixty, but she's still our mom and therefore the boss.”

He smiled. “You favor her.”

Spring shook her head. “You mean I look just like her. Everybody says so. At least I know that if I still exercise, remain healthy and stay out of Sweetings—and away from my sister Summer's cheesecake and cooking—I'll look good when I reach her age.”

“Spring, I don't want what just happened in there to come between us.”

“Us? There is no us.”

He reached for her hand and held tight when she would have pulled away.

“I thought we'd made a connection. At the hospital and at the coffeehouse.”

“I thought so, too,” she said, tugging her hand free from his grasp. “But that was before I found out just what your business is here in Cedar Springs.”

David pinched his nose and sighed. “All right, Spring,” he said. He reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and retrieved a card and a fountain pen.

He scrawled something on the back and handed it to her.

Spring stared at the drying ink and then raised her gaze to meet his.

“My number. In case you change your mind. Jeremy and my mom will be in town for another day before they head home. I'll be here for two more days after that.”

With nothing else to say, he got up, retrieved his laptop bag and the large portfolio containing the preliminary renderings and walked away without a backward glance.

Chapter Seven

T
he day was pretty much a bust for Spring. In a surly mood, she wasn't up for the rehashing of the meeting that she knew would take place if she went home and saw her mother.

Living on the estate the sisters affectionately called The Compound within a stone's throw of her mother's house had its advantages at times. This was not one of them.

She thought about driving out to the farmhouse. But all that would do was remind her of just how precarious a situation that property might be in if David and the mayor got what they wanted. The very notion depressed her.

She picked up her mobile and speed-dialed Winter, the sister she could count on to get her mind off land deals and medical trauma. Even as she waited for the call to connect, she thought of young Jeremy Camden. He was such a sweet little boy. Like his father, he'd managed to squiggle into her consciousness in ways that she didn't want to explore too deeply for fear of what that excavation might reveal.

“Hey, Doc Sis. I was just talking about you,” Winter said by way of hello.

The greeting made Spring smile. She was Doc Sis. Autumn was Coach Sis and Summer had the title Perfect Miss from the second-eldest Darling daughter. The reference was to Summer's pageant days and her reign as Miss Cedar Springs.

“What are you doing?” Spring asked.

“Getting ready to cut into a slice of strawberry cheesecake.”

Spring groaned. “You're at Sweetings?”

“Better than that,” Winter said.

Spring knew what that meant. Winter was at Summer's place. And if Summer was baking, there had been some sort of trauma or drama related to the wedding planning. “How much is left?”

“I'll hide a slice for you.”

She didn't have a shift at the Common Ground clinic today. Deciding that talking about Summer's wedding plans was preferable to thinking about David Camden's plans to turn her farmhouse and land into a condo development with convenience stores, she hung up with Winter and got up from the bench in City Hall Park.

Spring paused at the park bench where the elderly black man still sat. He'd placed the cup on the ground and watched as she approached.

“Hi, Sweet Willie,” she said.

He bowed his head as if tipping a hat to her. “Afternoon, Doc. Heard I missed a good one in there.”

Spring scrunched her face up as she sat next to him. “That's one word to describe it.” She looked him over, trying to be subtle about the cursory exam but knowing he wasn't fooled. She opened her bag.

“Uh-uh, Doc. I don't need a handout and I gots plenty of them cards of yours for when I decide I need some doctoring.” He tapped his forehead. “You done give me so many of 'em, I gots the address and the numbers memorized.”

Then, as if to prove his words true, he rattled off the address of the Common Ground Free Clinic and both its main telephone number and her mobile number.

She smiled and closed the bag. “All right. You're on to my tricks.”

He grinned, and Spring realized that for a homeless man, Sweet Willie was awfully grounded and seemed at peace. Other homeless men and women that she encountered at the clinic or on the street seemed to have a ready tale of woe to share with anyone who would listen.

Sweet Willie seemed, for lack of a better word, content.

She wondered if maybe not doing so much was the key to contentment. She'd been searching for it for a while, but that particular emotional state always seemed to elude her. So she'd thrust her mind and her body into patient care at the hospital and at the clinic and during the hours when she wasn't doing that, she worked to restore old buildings and educate people about the history of the city.

Maybe she needed to adopt Sweet Willie's model. Just sit on a park bench on a pretty day and watch the world go by.

She regarded the man. “Would you at least let me give you a ride somewhere?”

He shook his head. “No, ma'am. I'm right where I need to be.”

She patted his back and rose. “All right, then. You have yourself a good rest of the day.”

“You, too, Doc.”

* * *

Sweet Willie was still on her mind when she arrived at Summer's. She parked on the street in front of the house rather than block Winter in the driveway.

At the door, she girded herself for the happy discussion that would take place inside. The thought of it gave her a pang, and she almost turned around to head back downtown where she knew she could sit in companionable silence with Sweet Willie.

“Stop being ridiculous, Spring,” she said.

“Who are you talking to?”

She hadn't even heard the door open, yet there stood Summer in shorts and a scoop-neck top looking like a model for a designer's casual-elegant line of sportswear, while Spring thought she herself looked positively matronly in the plain wrap dress she'd worn to work that morning in anticipation of the afternoon meeting at city hall. The shoes were the only concession she'd made, but they had remained in the car until she'd arrived at city hall, where she'd met up with her mother and Mrs. Lundsford.

Spring shook her head. “Just muttering to myself,” she said, entering. She kicked off her shoes in the foyer and dropped her handbag on a table just inside the door.

Summer trailed behind her toward the parlor where they usually gathered.

“It took you long enough,” Winter said. “I had to fight them off to save a slice for you.”

“After the day I've had, I think I need more than a single slice of cheesecake,” Spring said.

Winter handed over the plate, and Summer chuckled. “I guess that's my cue to make espresso.”

“Make it a double shot,” Spring said.

“How can you sleep with that stuff in your system?”

“I built up an immunity while doing my residency. It's never worn off,” Spring said, sinking her fork into the tip of the slice of cheesecake. “What's up with this?” she said lifting the plate.

They all knew that Summer only baked when she was stressed out.

Winter leaned back to make sure their younger sister was out of earshot.

“The wedding,” Winter reported. “Summer wants a small affair, just family and close friends.”

“And Cameron wants a royal to-do?”

Winter shook her head. “He wants whatever will make Summer happy and would just as soon have Reverend Graham marry them right here in the kitchen with the mailman and the trash collector as witnesses than go through with a big wedding that's starting to make her miserable.”

“So, what's the problem?”

“Your mother and his mother,” Summer said, reentering the parlor. “I knew you'd blab just as soon as my back was turned,” she told Winter.

For her part, Winter didn't look repentant. “It wasn't blabbing. It was keeping Spring informed.”

Summer handed Spring the little espresso cup and a coaster, then plopped into the chair facing the sofa where her sisters sat.

“What about me?” Winter complained.

“Blabbers can make their own coffee,” Summer intoned.

Shaking her head, Winter rose. “I get no respect.”

“And deserve none,” Summer shot back.

Spring smiled at the bantering. Some things never changed no matter how old they were.

“Where's our merry fourth?” she asked of their youngest sister.

“Autumn has a game at the rec center tonight,” Summer said. “Don't ask me which sweaty sport it is because I have not the first idea.”

“It's a soccer clinic,” Winter hollered from the kitchen, from where there suddenly came sounds of much clanging and swooshing.

“How can she hear over all that racket?” Summer whispered to Spring.

“I heard that!” came from the voice from the kitchen.

Summer's blue eyes widened, and she cast a glance toward the kitchen.

Spring laughed and shook her head. One of these days it would dawn on Summer that she always asked the same question about Winter's hearing, and, knowing her sister, Winter could always anticipate Summer's next question to whomever was nearby. She didn't have to actually hear it to know Summer would ask.

After taking a sip of the espresso, Spring placed the little cup on the coaster on the end table. “What's going on with Mom and Cameron's mother?”

Summer sighed. “Lovie got it into her head that it would be just lovely to have the wedding at the country club and mentioned that to Carol, who just adored the idea of her son getting hitched at a country club.”

“It's your wedding. The bride gets to decide.”

Summer gave her a look, and Spring knew her sister was right. Once Lovie Darling got her mind wrapped around an idea, it was hard to let it go.

Winter returned with a cup of tea in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other. “If I were evil like you, I'd just toss the can your way,” she told Summer, handing her the soft drink.

“What was all that racket if you were making tea?”

“I was trying to use your fancy machine,” Winter said.

“Guess it'll have to go to the repair shop now,” Summer intoned. The comment earned another grin from Spring.

“Love you, too,” Winter said, settling back on the sofa.

“We're thinking about eloping.”

That earned Summer raised eyebrows from both sisters.

“Oh my,” Winter eventually said.

“I know, I know,” Summer said. “Lovie will have a cow. But I've had a big wedding before. And Cameron just wants to get married without all the hoopla.”

“Then do it,” Spring advised.

Summer tucked a foot under her on the chair and bit her bottom lip, then pulled a tube of lip gloss from her shorts pocket and applied it to her mouth. “It feels wrong,” she said. “Like cheating.”

With the elopement avenue closed, Spring asked, “Have you given either of the mothers a date?”

She nodded. “Next spring. In May. I like that month. The early flowers are in bloom.”

“Mom isn't paying for anything, is she?” The question, which Spring had just been about to ask, came from Winter.

“Goodness, no,” Summer said. “She and Daddy gave me a wedding already. I wouldn't hear of it. The engagement party is the concession-slash-compromise,” she said with air quotes, “that we made on that score.”

Spring bit back a sigh. The engagement party. This was the last thing she'd wanted to talk about.

“You know,” Summer said, “I wouldn't be in this bind with her if one of you would bother to find a decent guy to marry.”

“Operative word being
decent
,” Winter said. “My last date was a disaster.”

“When'd you go on a date?”

Winter stuck her tongue out at Summer in answer to the question.

“He was a decent enough guy,” Spring said. “He just turned rotten when he forgot to tell you about the criminal convictions.”

“What?” Summer squeaked. “Why don't I know this? What happened? Who is he?”

Spring reached for her espresso. Winter sipped her tea and then calmly said, “How many are on the guest list for the engagement party?”

Not so easily put off by the tactic, Summer narrowed her eyes at her sisters. “I want to know what's going on.”

“Nothing,” Winter said. “That's the point. Now, back to your little soiree.”

Summer sighed. “At the rate you-know-who is going, we'll need to rent the country club for the engagement party.”

“I thought it was supposed to be at The Compound,” Winter said.

“It is. In the garden. You know, a nice little backyard garden party. How are you two coming along on dates, by the way? It'll be so much better if all four of us have some eye candy on the arm.”

“Eye candy? Since when do you talk like that?”

Summer blushed. “I heard someone at Manna say that. She was talking about a couple of the firefighters who have been volunteering there.”

“Uh-huh,” Winter said.

Spring had already made her position on this known on two previous occasions and had no intention of changing her mind. The last thing she needed was some hapless man getting the wrong idea about her interest in him by inviting him to escort her to a family affair like an engagement party. She'd already run through a mental list of potential doctors and staffers at the hospital, and every single one of them would come to the wrong conclusion about such an invitation. The rest of her social acquaintances were married or nonexistent.

She could, of course, ask Sweet Willie to escort her. The fact of the matter was she felt far more comfortable with him than with someone who might be considered more socially acceptable. The leech she'd almost married years ago had the sort of pedigree that would appeal to most women. He'd said and done all the right things to woo her and sweep her off her feet. What he lacked was human decency or a conscience. He was after one thing, and Spring's heart was not it. The only good thing that had come of the debacle was that vows had not been exchanged between them.

“Spring?”

She blinked and focused on her sisters. “Yes?”

“You weren't listening to a word I said,” Summer accused.

“Guilty as charged,” Spring said. “I was thinking about—”

“Oh, my goodness!” Summer exclaimed. “Today was the planning commission meeting. I totally forgot. How did it go?”

From one topic she didn't want to talk about straight into another.

Spring sighed and resigned herself to rehashing the fiasco that had been the meeting—leaving out the parts about her private interactions with David Camden.

* * *

“Are you sure you want to do business with these people?” Charlotte Camden asked her son after he summarized his day with the officials and residents of Cedar Springs.

Because Jeremy was sleeping, they'd opted for dinner in David's room while Jeremy lay sprawled across the second bed in Charlotte's room. They'd ordered their meals and sat talking while waiting for them to be delivered. But after they said grace, David found that his appetite wasn't quite what he'd thought it would be.