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She glanced out the window. “I saw them kissing once. Not long after you’d gone away to college.”
She’d been thirteen. He swallowed, hard. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing. I didn’t confront him, or tell Mother, or anybody else. I was afraid if she found out, they’d get a divorce and I’d be shuffled back and forth between them forever.”
A wave of guilt washed over him as he acknowledged he’d left her here without an ally in his hurry to escape from home. “I’m sorry, Angela. But maybe now it’s time to move on. Have you thought about getting out of here, too?”
“I’ve been dying to move out, get my own place downtown, but Mother plays the guilt card whenever I mention it.”
“I meant, maybe it’s time to get out of Pleasantville.”
“I can’t. I don’t want to leave him…I mean, leave here.”
Him? He didn’t think Angela was seeing anyone, though she’d been divorced from her third husband for over a year.
She stood abruptly. “I have to go. I have a nail appointment. Be sure to lock up when you leave, okay? Mother doesn’t trust Sophie to secure the house.” Her jaw clenched.
“After all, she’s not nearly as trustworthy as Edie was.”
Judging by the way she spat out the other woman’s name, Jack surmised his sister had not been able to forgive and forget.
As Angela left the room his parents’ ever-hopeful dog, Leonardo, slunk in and strolled over to the desk. At Leonardo’s longing glance at his jeans-clad leg, Jack shot him a suspicious glare. “Dog, how many years is it gonna take for you to figure out you’ve got no balls?”
Leonardo gave him a sheepish glance from his wrinkled face. Walking around in circles once or twice, he appeared to be looking for something—or someone. He finally curled up at Jack’s feet and looked up at him with sad eyes.
“Okay,” Jack said with a sigh. “I guess you miss him, too.”
A half hour later he straightened up to leave, determined to get out before his mother got back. After making sure the mutt had enough water, he locked up and headed for his father’s pickup truck, which he’d been driving during his stay.
As he drove down the street, he glanced toward old Mr. Miller’s house and saw a shapely brunette in a red tank top trying to drag a big mattress across the driveway.
He immediately stopped the truck. “Kate, are you trying to break your back? Put that down.”
She dropped the end of the mattress and frowned at him. “You distracted me. Do you know how long it took to tug that thing out of the garage?”
He trotted across the driveway to her side. “I thought your cousin was going to help you.”
“She is. She’s had a bunch of phone calls to deal with. Problems with her agent.”
“And Miss Have-To-Do-It-Now can’t wait for her?”
“I’m not helpless. I’ve gotten a bunch of other stuff by myself.” She gestured toward her SUV, which already held a couple of chairs. And, judging by the upraised legs that nearly reached the interior roof, a small kitchen table.
He couldn’t believe she’d done it all alone. “I suppose you plan to unload all this stuff without help when you get back home, too?”
She scuffed the toe of her sneaker on the driveway and mumbled, “Well, I kinda figured you’d be back sooner or later.”
“Back to help you unload it, or to make you another ice pack and take care of you again after you slip a disc?”
Wrong thing to say. They both instantly remembered how he’d taken care of her the night before. Awareness hummed between them, as always, now not below the surface, but right out in the open again.
She bit the corner of her lip. “Look,” she finally said, “I’m almost done, are you going to help me or criticize me?”
He glanced at the open hatch and the mattress. “Honey, I hate to tell you this, but you’ve got a size problem here. I don’t think something this big is going to fit in there.”
“You sound like a conceited teenage boy about to get laid for the first time.”
Not recognizing the sultry voice of the woman who’d spoken, he turned and saw a shapely blonde standing just behind them on the driveway. She had her head cocked to the side and her hand on one hip, smiling wickedly. With her eye-popping build, sunny-blond hair and outrageous words, he immediately assumed she was the cousin.
