Even though she acted tough on the outside, somewhere deep inside Katy wanted me as much as I did her. The only thing keeping us apart? Her damn stubborn streak. She’d rather cause herself pain than do something she thought would upset her grandmother. A woman she’d idolized since birth.
It wasn’t like my family would be happy if I hooked up with Katy either. None of that stopped me from pursuing her. My mother constantly set me up with women she’d decided matched the family prestige, and Katy was definitely not on any of her lists.
But sometimes when I was alone, or it was just the two of us, I liked to pretend life was different. We were nothing more than a normal guy and girl who fall in love while I helped her rescue dying frogs. If my last name wasn’t Kensington and hers not Kadish, we’d be married by now. Have a child or two. We’d have our whole lives ahead of us. Nothing but happiness and memories.
“You want to grab an ice cream?” I asked as she hit the beginning of Main Street and the first brick buildings came into view.
She paused, slowing the car and scowling at Jerome’s tall building at the end of the street.
“I’ll pay,” I said to get her mind away from the building she hated so much. Probably because it represented me.
She shook her head with a slight smile. “Well duh. I have no job. I can’t afford ice cream.”
“Speaking of that, there’s an open position at the bed-and-breakfast. You can come and be the new manager for me?” I slipped the offer casually into conversation. It Katy knew the full extent of my planning over the years, she’d never accept the job. It was bad enough I slipped earlier and told her anything at all.
I purchased the place last month right before Mari ran off with my cousin Oliver, but renovations hadn’t started. I wanted to get everything done over the winter so we’d take reservations for the next tourist season in the spring.
Somewhere, something I said had been the wrong thing because Katy’s tongue pushed out between her lips as if she was biting it. “Hmm. The job your fiancée vacated?”
Oh, this was about that. “I told you, Katy. She wasn’t my fiancée.”
She twisted her hand in the air almost taking off my rearview mirror and I flinched. “I’m sorry. The job your fake fiancée vacated. I don’t want to work in her sloppy seconds. Plus, I’m sorry Pierce, I get you won, but I won’t stand back and watch the bed-and-breakfast be destroyed. It’s a staple of Pelican Bay.” She slowed in front of the ice cream shop along the beach and pulled off to the side.
“Katy, I’ve told you repeatedly, I’m not going to destroy it.”
She revved the engine and then pulled into the long line, which stretched around the ice cream store for the drive-through.
“But something tells me your idea of destroy and mine are different. You’re going to make upgrades. Right?”
“Of course.” The building was practically falling apart. No one had invested significant time or money into fixing up the building since they’d built the place. If someone didn’t do something soon, it would collapse.
She shook her head. “I just can’t. If it was my decision nothing would change.”
That’s what Katy and the women at the auxiliary didn’t understand. Things were always changing. The only thing that happened to people and places that didn’t change was decay. If they decided anything, the whole town would be crumbling to pieces. Just because you were changing didn’t mean you destroyed the inner beauty. The bed-and-breakfast could maintain the pieces that made it special while having its bones stabilized. It didn’t need to be all one way or the other.
Our car inched forward, getting closer to the order window, and Katy waved her hand in the air hitting me on the shoulder. “Duck.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t get caught with you in the drive-through at the ice cream shop. Do you want to be part of tonight’s phone tree?”
When she put it that way, she made sense. She usually had a good point at least once a month, how sad that she used this time over ice cream. “The whole town knows my car, Katy.”
“Maybe, but no one will believe us two together. They’ll think I stole it from you.”
Also more than likely true. The car ahead of us pulled forward and Katy didn’t move to the ordering window until I sighed and lowered my head.
She ordered a chocolate fudge cone with sprinkles and a chocolate dipped fudge layer on top. Probably because it was the most expensive thing on the menu she could think of at the time. Then without prompting, she ordered my preferred ice cream. A standard chocolate vanilla mix in a cup, not a cone. I chucked as she belted out the order and confirmed she paid attention to what I liked.
Just as quickly as the smile I wore formed, it eroded away into a scowl. What the hell was I thinking letting Katy eat ice cream in my car? I’d made one terrible choice after another while in her presence.
She drove my two-hundred-thousand-dollar vehicle to the lighthouse with one hand on the steering wheel and the other gripping her ice cream cone. I closed my eyes. If she crashed us, I at least wanted my body to be limp enough I wouldn’t break a bone in the accident. It also meant I didn’t see it when her ice cream dribbled onto my seat even if I felt the drop through my entire body.
Katy parked in front of the lighthouse and moved her leg quickly to soak up the spilled ice cream. I stared out at the water, pretending I never noticed so I didn’t freak out and get a baby wipe from the glove box. She’d never let me forget it if I did.
“Do you ever wonder if life would be different? If I wasn’t me and you weren’t you?”
Her eyes never left the shoreline. “Don’t think about something that can never be, Pierce.”
