“If you play your cards right,” she said, taking another step up the stairs before Tom held out a hand to stop her.
“Babe, the second floor is full of dust and bees and who knows what else today. Nothing good for Rosies. I swear everything is okay. Really. Everything is fine. Why don’t you just hang out at the cottage this morning?” he said.
A blonde woman in Crocs and tattered jeans appeared at the top of the landing with her two palms cupped together. “I found the queen,” she announced to Tom in a whispery voice and began to spread her fingers. Tom shot Rose a look of mild panic.
“I’ll be outside if you decide you need anything,” Rose said, and she left.
•••
Rose was now at loose ends. She was probably allergic to the bees, and for all she knew, one mistake would send her to the ER looking like a blistered cherry pepper. So she couldn’tstay in the inn. Tom seemed to have made huge progress in task management from the days when she’d had to hand him his homework assignments one by one, so he didn’t need her help with the demolition. And even from Singapore, Caroline had neatly picked up the weekly reports that were the most time-consuming part of Rose’s job. These were all good things.
Still, Rose was feeling a little adrift as she backed all the way down the stairs and went through the kitchen to the back patio.
When she’d dreaded taking over this renovation, she’d dreaded doing italone. She didn’t mind doing it for her family. She loved them. She’d just wanted to do itwithsomeone.
If all she’d done yesterday was choose the wallpaper in one room, she’d gotten to do itwithTom. She smiled as she remembered the shopkeeper’s face at Tom’s wildly inappropriate jokes. She’d expected to want to strangle him on this trip. And sometimes she did. But at other times…she thought she was looking forward to kissing him again.
Bolstered by this emotion, she managed to text the family group chat again, hoping to gin up some interest in the renovations. Even if they hadn’t displayed any interestyet, she felt like it was on her to at least keep trying.
Rose: I’m going to rake up the bocce ball courts today! Remember the year we did a tournament?
She squinted expectantly at the screen. It took a few long minutes before anyone replied at all. Only her brother andSeth:Lol. Too bad my kids only play Minecraft!andHow’s the drainage? The realtor thinks the back five acres could sell as a separate parcel, respectively.
Rose couldn’t bring herself to reply to either of them. She closed her eyes and tamped down her rising sense of disappointment as she shoved her phone back into the front pocket of her jeans. She didn’t know what she’d expected. It was probably hard to imagine playing bocce ball when it had snowed the previous day.
She trudged through decomposing leaves toward the deck but stopped when she noticed movement in the scrubby woods out behind the property.
“Hello?” she called. In response, she heard a distant gobble. “Oh crap.” She immediately cast around for a loose branch or something to fend off the wild turkeys if they attacked. She’d just picked up a decent-sized rock when she heard someone—a human person—call her name from deeper in the brush.
“Um, yes?” she replied, finally seeing a set of giant footprints in the slushy snow. She could guess who they belonged to. “Boyd? Boyd Kellagher? What are you doing back there?”
It took her another moment to spot him in the underbrush. Her brain hadn’t immediately registered his shape as another human, since he was squatting back on his heels, and also, he was sobig. She hadn’t appreciated it while she was dangling like a drowned possum from his grip, but his thighs were like telephone poles and his hands were like construction cranes.Big!her mind exclaimed, like it automatically saidHorses!when she saw horses orOh no!when she saw a rollover accident.
“I’m considering the motivations of the turkey,” Boydreplied in the tone of someone who was used to having his every utterance considered as though it made a great deal of sense.
“The big one who keeps tearing things up on the porch?” Rose asked, picking her way over to the movie star.
“Yes,” Boyd said. He lifted an arm and pointed back into the trees, where a large, round shape paced and flapped its wings with agitation. “The tom. Not Tom, capitalT. The tom turkey. He’s very distressed. There was an incident of violence earlier. Tom, capitalT, was pecked.”
Up close, Rose could see why Tom had been cast opposite Boyd. The two of them looked similar enough that her mind kept moving from feature to feature, marking the commonalities. It wasn’t just the muscles. They both had strong noses and full mouths. The long, shaggy haircut they were both currently sporting softened the severity of Boyd’s features and hid Tom’s big ears and fuller cheeks. Maybe they went to the same barber.
Boyd turned his head to look up at her with soulful brown eyes. “Tom yelled at both of us,” he said with enormous, dignified sorrow, like a sad granite outcropping.
It took Rose a moment to work out that Boyd meant himself and the turkey, not himself and Rose.
“Oh,” she said, feeling vaguely as though she ought to apologize on Tom’s behalf, even though she’d been rightly furious the day before at being manhandled and photographed against her will. “It’s been…a weird couple of days. Tom’s not usually a yeller.” Though that had been a different relationship and a long time ago.
She expected that thought to hurt, especially while looking right at the big handsome man who’d slept with Tom at leastonce, a lot more recently than she had. She’d expected to feel jealous if she ever talked to Boyd about Tom. Instead, she had only a big rush of fellowship and sympathy. Didn’t she know better than anyone else in the world what it felt like to be in a fight with Tom? It sucked.You tried to do something for Tom and it blew up in your face? Do I ever have a story for you, buddy.
“The tom turkey is concerned that we pose a threat to his hens,” Boyd said, swinging his gaze back to the trees. “I’m going to offer him some food.” He stuck his hand in his windbreaker pocket and brought out a wrapped energy bar.
“Maybe we shouldn’t feed him?” Rose said. “Won’t that just encourage him to, um, stick around?”
“He lives here,” Boyd pointed out, blinking at her in soft confusion before sighing and putting the energy bar away. “Tom told me to deal with the turkey,” he said mournfully. “But I don’t know what else to try. I don’t want to hurt him.”
It would have taken a heart of stone not to be touched by a giant man devoted to nonviolence. “Of course you don’t have to hurt the turkey,” Rose exclaimed, even though she’d roasted many of the turkey’s distant relatives over the years and would shed no tears for him if he met the same fate. “I’m sure that’s not what Tom meant.” She was sure that was exactly what Tom had meant.
Boyd pursed his lips, distressed. He rubbed his mouth with one bear paw–sized hand. “He saved my life, you know.”
