Small-Town Girl (7 page)

He flexed his hand against the memory of heat in the place she had touched.
Focus.
He cleared his throat and started the paddle wheeler. Kendall picked up the mic. As the boat began to churn its way up the shoreline, she started to share historical facts.

“The Goose Harbor area was almost lost at the turn of the century because of the lumber boom. People didn't realize that by removing all the trees they were letting the dunes creep in and take over the town. A group of forward-thinking individuals formed the Society in Favor of Saving Goose Harbor and started a program to reforest the area and stop the movement of the dunes. Thanks to them, our town still stands and we can all enjoy this gorgeous view.”

She pointed out the eagles and shared information about their conservation, and as they headed out farther onto the lake, she stunned Brice by launching into details about the active shipping industry on Lake Michigan. She had the gift of tilting her voice and sharing facts in such a way that made them all interesting, instead of how he would have said everything...like a boring history professor. Kendall must have spent a lot of time researching and learning about Goose Harbor to know all that. Did she already love this town and feel as tied to it as he was?

When the sun began to fall toward the horizon, he dropped the anchors so couples could stroll to the edge and wrap their arms around each other and watch the stunning display of nature. Kendall worked the crowd, handing out hors d'oeuvres and offering to snap pictures on people's cell phones. She'd been right about people taking selfies near the paddles. Once everyone seemed settled, she found an open spot at the railing and turned to watch the sunset.

Before he realized what he was doing, Brice's feet ate up the distance between the steering wheel and Kendall and he joined her. He wrapped his fingers around the cool metal of the railing and looked down at her, studying the play of orange and pink twilight on her features. Her gaze was fixed on the setting sun, her eyes wide and mouth slightly parted. She was beautiful, and for the first time since they'd begun this venture together, he wished he was one of the dummies on the date instead of on this side of things, running the event. If he'd brought Kendall, he'd have his arm around her right now. Know what it felt like to have her head resting against his shoulder.

He shook his thoughts away and moved to put space between them, but Kendall reached out and slipped her fingers over his wrist. “Stay.”

He nodded and swallowed against the lump in his throat. What was he doing to himself? Kendall had made it clear that she didn't want a relationship with any man. She said she'd left dating in the past. He had too.

She turned toward him and whispered, “We did good, didn't we?” She added a wink and bumped his shoulder with hers.

“Better than good.” His words came out hoarse.

“Here's to dreaming.” She flashed him a smile before turning back to the guests and announcing that they'd head back to shore in five minutes.

He made his way to the steering wheel and started the engine again but kept his eyes on Kendall. “Here's to dreaming indeed.”

Chapter Six

K
endall had to get ahold of Brice.

“Answer your phone,” she pleaded into her receiver.

Six unanswered calls to the phone at his warehouse and ten more to his cell phone. She'd called it even though she knew he never took the phone off Silent. Still, shouldn't he check his messages after two hours? Glance at his phone once? Most men her age were glued to their smartphone screens whether it was playing a game, reading articles, following sports or catching up on social media. She saw it all the time at restaurants—two people on a date who were both attached to their phones the whole time. Perhaps Brice's aversion to phones had merit. Either way, at a time like this, it was still annoying.

Kendall pushed away from her desk, clicked off her computer and stuffed a stack of file folders into her top drawer. It was past seven in the evening and she should have left her storefront an hour ago. A loud bang next door let her know that she wasn't the only one working late tonight. Evan might know how to get ahold of Brice. It was worth a try.

She slipped out her front door and entered Evan's woodshop. Brice's brother must have heard her enter, because he looked her way.

“Evening, Kendall.” He straightened from where he was working on a block of wood and pressed his hands into his lower back. “I'm just shaving this down. I hope it wasn't too loud.”

“Not at all.” She'd never live down the first time they met when she was grumpy with him about using the loud saw. “Actually I'm trying to track down Brice.”

“He's not here.” Evan glanced over his shoulder as if he might find Brice crouching in the corner of his store.

“Oh, I know.” She let out a puff of air that ruffled her bangs. If she didn't locate Brice soon, she'd have to call back the owner of the nearby bed-and-breakfast, Kellen Ashby, and tell him she couldn't accommodate the date he wanted her to plan for the next evening. So she pressed on. “I've tried his phone a couple times, both his office and cell phone numbers, but I haven't gotten an answer.”

“You probably won't.” Evan dusted his hands off on his jeans. “Brice doesn't like talking on the phone.”

“I need to get ahold of him, though—it's semiurgent.”

“I'm sure he's at his house.” He used his thumb to point over his shoulder.

Okay, Evan definitely was the type who needed a direct question asked. No dropping hints with this guy. “Could you possibly call Brice's house phone and tell him to call me?”

Evan grinned and shook his head. “Unfortunately my grizzly bear of a brother doesn't have a landline.”

Yeah, Evan was going to be zero help.

“Okay, well, thanks anyway.” Kendall started to turn to leave.

“Just go to his house. He won't mind.”

Kendall faced Evan again. She shouldn't go to Brice's house without the man in question offering that as a possibility, but she also didn't want to lose her first big client, her first chance to help plan a proposal, especially with the possibility of a newspaper interview in the near future. Sure, she was working with another client on a hot air balloon proposal, but that wouldn't happen until after the interview. She didn't want to turn down Kellen's business. She couldn't afford to.

Still...showing up at Brice's house felt strange. “I couldn't show up there uninvited.”

“Sure you could.” Evan batted his hand as if to say her hesitation was silly. “If you have to tell him something, that's your only option. That's the only way I get to talk to him unless he strolls in here.” He motioned her toward the cash register and then yanked a piece of paper out of the top of his old banged-up printer. “It's not far from town. I'll draw you a map.”

Kendall jiggled her phone. “Or I could just use GPS.”

“Brice lives back in the woods, down a dirt driveway. I don't trust the GPS to get you there. He's my next-door neighbor, but it's in a can't-walk-the-distance way.” He leaned over a sheet of paper and drew a quick map. “I'll give you my number to call if you get lost.” He jotted down his number. “And I actually answer my phone.”

True to his word, Evan's map was illustrated with great detail, including sketches of unique places she would pass, like the mailbox shaped like a lady riding a surfboard on a huge wave. Kendall climbed into her car and studied the piece of paper. Brice's house looked easy enough to get to; four turns out of town and she'd be on his road. But Evan had warned that Brice's driveway was easy to miss.

She left the downtown portion of Goose Harbor and drove down a road lined with apple trees; the temptingly sweet smell of their summer blossoms whipped into the car. The next street carried her past a horse ranch, quickly after which both sides of the road became flooded with forests of trees. Despite it being later, since it was summer, she still had sunlight working in her favor. Even still, she slowed her car below the speed limit. With trees so thick and so close to the road, it was almost impossible to see into the next curve of the road, and if a deer jumped out, she'd never avoid hitting it. And even if she did, it would mean driving her car into the trees, which wasn't a better option.

On the next curve the trees split for the space of ten feet and then resumed again. She craned her neck. Was
that
Brice's driveway? If so, she'd know shortly. Evan said if she missed Brice's driveway to continue a half mile up the road and she'd find his driveway and she could turn around there. He'd described what it looked like so she'd be certain. Sure enough, Evan's house and driveway came into view. Although, where Brice's had been a dirt trail between the trees, Evan's was poured concrete leading to a decent-sized Craftsman-style house with a wide terrace porch complete with hanging baskets of colorful flowers.

Not wanting to waste time admiring Evan's home, she completed her turn in the wide driveway and headed back toward Brice's home. This time she found the driveway without an issue and her car bumped down the lane toward a shaded cabin built deep into the woods. Brice's home was less than half the size of Evan's and lacked any sort of trimmings, but somehow that suited Brice.

She parked her car next to his, then climbed up the steps and knocked on the door. Brice answered a minute later in worn jeans, bare feet and a flannel with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, looking every bit the wilderness man his home boasted he might be.

“Kendall.” His brow lowered, but the grin pulling his cheeks said she was a welcome surprise.

“I'm sorry to appear uninvited at your place like this.”

“I don't mind.” He swung the door open wider. “Come on in.”

“Thank you.” She brushed past him on the way into his home, and her eyes locked with his pale green ones before she skirted her line of vision away to assess her surroundings. The cabin looked like an upscale lodge or the vacation rentals that could be found along the Appalachian Trail. It was built to showcase a floor-to-ceiling fireplace wall. A lingering mix of brewed coffee and grilled steak smell hung in the air. All the furniture looked like Evan's custom creations, and a large red-toned rug tied the whole place together. The lower portion of the home had an open floor plan, and there was a loft upstairs that looked like he might use it as his bedroom. It appeared as if that was all there was to the cabin. It wasn't large, but it was ten times better than the trailer homes she'd grown up in and didn't overwhelm her the way a house like Evan's would have.

“I like your house,” she breathed.

He hooked his hand around the back of his neck and looked around as if he was assessing his home with fresh eyes. “It's small.”

“No television?”

He shook his head. “No computer or air-conditioning either.”

“How do you live?” She swatted at his chest, meaning the question as a joke.

“I own twenty acres and back up to an abandoned summer camp that has a lake with the best fishing this side of Michigan. I don't need a television or computer to stay occupied.” Brice's Adam's apple bobbed. “I know it's not a lot. No one else would want to live like this. It's not enough...” His shoulders slumped, not by much, but enough that she noticed.

“Brice. Seriously. Look at me.” She snapped her fingers, gaining his attention again. “Your house is great. I like it.”

He shrugged. “I learned early on in life not to treasure material possessions.”

“You'd hate my place, then. I'm like a little hoarding rat that holds on to everything, I'm afraid.” She held her arms up by her sides to make little rat arms in an effort to lighten the mood. “I chalk it up to the fact that my mom and I moved around a lot when I was young. She was always forgetting to pay the rent and we'd come home sometimes to find all our belongings cleared out and the trailer locked up.”

He stepped closer to her. “I'm sorry that happened to you.”

She bit her lip. Wasn't her goal to
lighten
the mood? Yet she felt safe telling Brice something she'd never said to anyone. “I know it sounds stupid, but to a child, finding out that your beloved stuffed animal has been taken as garbage and you'll never see it again is traumatic. And it didn't happen only one time. I wish.”

Brice took a final step and entered her personal space. He brought a tentative hand up to her hair and tucked one of the loose curls around his fingers. “My father was—is—a heavy gambler.”

“Brice.” She hooked her hand on his wrist and squeezed. “If you don't want to tell me...”

He broke the contact between them and turned away. “You live in Goose Harbor. You're going to find out sooner or later. I'd rather you hear my side than what the rest of the locals think.” He paced toward the fireplace, running his fingers over the grooves in the wood that made up the back of his couch along the way.

“Because of my father's gambling addiction, every couple months he'd round up everything of value and sell it. It didn't matter if it was something you'd saved up your own money to buy or something special to you.” He laid a hand on top of the bare fireplace mantel. “So it was better to live without something to begin with than have it taken away from you down the road.” He touched the scar on his cheek. “I'm not afraid of my father taking my belongings any longer, but I've grown comfortable living without stuff now, so I figured it was better to stay that way. Stay satisfied with a little. You never know what will happen in life. What you'll lose.”

Kendall's heart squeezed and she fought the urge to rush over to Brice for a hug. Even though he was an adult and the days of his father taking his possessions were in the past, the memories still burned him. Kendall knew that better than anyone. First from her belongings being tossed as a child during all their evictions, but there were more recent memories too. Ones that hurt so much she couldn't voice them yet. Brice's father had stolen his beloved childhood items, which was horrible. But Kendall's mother had stolen her identity, destroying her credit. If it hadn't been for Sesser Atwood's generous loan, there would have been zero chance of her opening a business. To clean her record she would have had to file a report with the police against her mother, and she couldn't do that. Not to the only family she had.

* * *

Brice studied Kendall, but her face was an unreadable mask in the dim light coming in through the windows.

Not for the first time, he chided himself for judging her incorrectly when they met. Between the lines it was easy to comprehend that Kendall had lived through a rough childhood. Not unlike himself. Although hopefully she hadn't been kicked, hit and told she was unwanted on a daily basis. Their similar pasts gave them a mutual respect and understanding of each other. Something he had never felt before. He hadn't told Audra anything about his father, and here was Kendall, whom he'd known only two weeks, and he already felt able to trust her.

He braced his hand on the table. What was happening to him?

Maybe he was going soft as he aged. Maybe he was lonely.

He tried to will Kendall to meet his eyes.
Look at me.
You don't need to look downcast around me.

A knock at the door snapped him out of his thoughts. Was it National Drop In on Brice Day? Had he missed the memo?

Kendall wrapped her fingers around her purse strap. “You were expecting someone? I shouldn't have barged in like this. I'm so sorry. I should go.”

“One.” He held up a finger. “You didn't barge—I asked you to come in.” He held up a second finger. “And two, I wasn't expecting anyone, so this knock is a mystery too.”

He discovered his little sister on the other side, which turned his gut into a knot. Finding her on his doorstep close to nine when she had summer school the next day meant trouble at his parents' house.

“What's the matter?” He grabbed Laura's arm and dragged her into the house. His pulse punched against his temples, and his jaw ached—responses to phantom childhood memories, his body's built-in reaction to whenever he heard about his father's bad behavior.

But Laura's gaze landed on Kendall. “Brice!” she hissed. “You have a girl in your house. You never have girls over. I didn't even know you talked to them.”

Brice shot Laura a look, letting her know she was overdoing it.

Despite her darker complexion, Kendall's cheeks reddened. “On that note, I should be headed out.”

Laura waved her hands. “Not on my account.”

“No, don't,” Brice answered at the same time as his sister. He moved to block Kendall's retreat. “I'm pretty sure you dropped by to talk about more than my cabin.”

“More?” Laura waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe I should leave.”

Brice closed his eyes for a second and inhaled warm air. Laura was sixteen. He could only expect her to act like sixteen-year-olds. He had to keep reminding himself that. Calmer now, he opened his eyes. “Kendall, this is my sister, Laura. Laura, this is my friend Kendall.”