He was just finishing when he received a text, this one fromSteph.
U should come by and watch pom practicetonight.
Curious, and more than a little relieved she didn’t seem to be mad at him anymore, he replied:Any particularreason?
Her reply, almost immediately:Mrs. Delton is here.Followed by three winky smileys and one with its tongue stickingout.
Declan laughed, and felt his cheeks flush a little even though no one was around. Emily Delton, the mother—thedivorcedmother—of one of the other girls on the pom team had managed to sit next to him during the last two football games, and she’d also invited herself in on the night she drove Steph home from practice. He’d ended up having a beer with her at the kitchen table while their daughters did something on thecomputer.
She thinks urhawt.
Speaking of hot, his cheeks—really?—were getting there. Thank goodness no one was around. Honestly, it was too weird and creepy that his daughter—whom he really hardly knew—was trying to set him up. Wasn’t that supposed to be weird for kids, to think of their parents hooking up withsomeone?
Not that Emily Delton was someone who’d send him running in the other direction. She might be a few years older than he—after all, he’d only been eighteen when Cara got pregnant—but she looked good. Though she was always well dressed and neat, she didn’t have that brittle, try-too-hard aura that divorcees sometimes got once they became single again and began to focus on dating. From what he understood, she co-owned a spa and salon on the edge of town that offered everything from hair styling to massages to nails—and something called mud wraps. Not something that sounded appealing tohim.
But the massages…most definitely. He wondered idly whether Emily Delton was a massage therapist, and the thought settled in his mind.That would be…interesting.
Well?Stephanie textedback.
Aren’t you supposed to be practicing? How can you be climbing onto the top of a human pyramid if you’re textingme?
The response was an angry smiley followed by three exclamation points, and Declan laughed again. It was an ongoing joke between them—for apparently, only cheerleaders climbed into human pyramids and did flips in the air; the pom squad danced and shimmied. Heaven forbid a dad should mistake one for theother.
See you when you get home, he replied, and tucked the phone into his pocket. He’d see Emily Delton soon enough—probably at the Homecoming game Friday night. Although if it rained like it was supposed to, he wondered if she’d even come and risk having her hair and makeupruined.
Declan left the house, locking it behind him and wishing—not for the first time—they had a dog. He hadn’t had a dog since he was a kid, and something about living back here in Wicks Hollow made him want to have a soft-eyed canine that would always be happy to seehim.
He’d been lucky getting this particular bungalow on one of the main streets just outside the touristy area of the town. It had a second, detached garage, which the previous owners had used to store their two boats: a sailboat and a speedboat, both of which could be taken to Lake Michigan (two miles west) or the smaller, windier, and warmer Wicks Lake (three mileseast).
This meant the outbuilding was perfectly suited for him to set up his forge. The exterior of both buildings had dark red wood shingles, big black shutters, and a white picket fence that surrounded the tree-studded lot. Stephanie had loved it—called it a doll house, to his dismay—and wanted to replace the shutters with white ones that had cutout hearts on them to match the cutout one on the swinginggate.
Declan had firmly declined. But he had allowed her to choose the color for the living room walls (thankfully, a reasonably easy to live with light blue) and the curtains for the kitchen (not quite as easy, due to the colorfulowlssplashed all over them). Their only real battle had been over the shared bathroom, which she’d wanted to do in Mickey Mouse (black, white, and red—with Mouse accents) and he’d been happy with just the black and white. They’d compromised—no Mickey tissue holder, shower curtain, or toilet cover, but a Mickey toothbrush stand. And one picture of theMouse.
“Be thankful I didn’t want the Little Mermaid,” she’d told himcheekily.
She was a great kid. She really was. How the hell more lucky could hebe?
He frowned as he began to walk briskly down the street. He still had to deal with this Leslie Nakano hiring Stephanie problem. The thing that burned his ass the most was the fact that she’d done so without even mentioning it to himyesterday.
She was a seasoned businesswoman. She should know better. Hell, she’d even been on the cover ofFortunemagazine (yes, Declan had looked her up after Stephanie mentionedit).
In fact, there was a lot of information about Leslie Nakano on the Internet, including several articles about the initial public offering for her company InterWorks, press releases about the company’s successes, and even a few photographs of her at various Philadelphia events. In some she was with a stiff-looking man named G. Elliott Yarborough—an attorney who seemed to be a personal friend, not a businessassociate.
In those pictures, the sleek, perfect Leslie Nakano sure as hell didn’t look much like the disheveled, dust-covered woman he’d met yesterday, wearing a ball cap and baggy clothes. In the newspaper photos, her gaze was cool and steady, and her hair was pulled back in smooth, dark, businesslike coils. Her obvious Japanese heritage was apparent in her facial features, as well as the almond shape of her eyes and the delicateness of herfigure.
True, he’d seen the businesslike determination in her eyes under the casual jokes and conversation yesterday, and he hadn’t been lying when he mentioned she didn’t look like she scared easily, but the woman he’d met was a far cry from the hotshot exec (“Twenty-five Women Ready to Shake Up Their Fields” was the name of oneFortunearticle in which she’d been featured) he’d seenonline.
But unkempt as she’d been, Nakano sure as hell knew what she was doing, hiring people. And that made him even more irritated with the situation. Why did she think she needed a fifteen-year-old girl to work for her? And why would she be hiring her without talking to herparents?
He had a bad feeling about it. A very bad feeling. He didn’t want Stephanie to be taken advantage of. He had visions of her slaving away doing all sorts of menial labor—clearing out moldy debris (without a face mask), climbing on a tall, rickety ladder to reach the ceiling in the foyer in order to scrub the plaster design around the chandelier, carting asbestos-ridden insulation to the Dumpster out front—while Ms. Nakano sat in her office and filed her nails and did press interviews via Skype or those fancy star-shaped conference-callphones.
The more he thought about it, the more irritated he became. He’d just spent the better part of his day working on iron spindles for her main staircase, trying to do it as quickly and inexpensively as possible (that was before he realized he was dealing with a woman who’d made a couple million in a public offering). And now she wanted to take advantage of his daughter aswell?
These thoughts fueled his stride as he made his way down three blocks past the main drag—by Orbra’s Tea House, The Balanced Chakra Yoga Studio, and numerous clothing stores, jewelry shops, and restaurants. He sniffed longingly when he passed Trib’s, the trendiest restaurant in town, with killer pizza and a beer list that went on for fivepages.
The brisk air and energetic stride eased some of his annoyance with Leslie Nakano’s high-handed employment move. By the time Dec had walked past all the shops and up the hill of Shenstone House’s residential street, the sun was down and the only light, though generous enough, was an occasional passing car and the streetlights along the way. But the drive leading up the hill to the house was dark, and as it was shrouded by thick trees and bushes—almost a forest there, really—he was walking more by faith than by sight, guided only by the faint glow through the windows ahead ofhim.
He knew better than to go to the front door; by the time he’d finished with their meeting yesterday, he’d realized Leslie lived in the back of the house by the large, sunny kitchen while the rest of it was being worked on—so that was where heheaded.
