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“Dinner in five.”
7
Vivian
Vivian was nothappy to be heading home without the sleigh. Apparently there were some swanky insurance guys coming and she couldn’t touch it until they’d done a full review of the damage.
She pulled up her schedule and tried to sort through what was what. She was in a dire situation, but all she could hear over and over again was Camden Ross telling her he loved her and always had.
And Lyra doubling down on it.
It was not the distraction she needed.
Sure, he’d been her first love—and as first loves went, he was a great one. That was why he was stuck on this. On her.
It wasn’t like women weren’t basically falling at his feet on a regular basis. It was almost ridiculous to watch them when he, Noah, and Jamie went to The Lighthouse, the local pub.
She forced her mind back to work. And then forced it back again.
When she’d returned to Starlight Harbor, she’d had to struggle to get jobs. Not just because she was a woman, but because small towns had long memories. Now she was afraid if she handed off any of that work to the garage just outside town, she’d never earn it back again.
She pulled her hair out of the bun it was in and ran a French braid down the back of her head, needing to do something with her hands as she thought about her options.
None of them were good.
She was running at capacity which, of course, was a huge blessing. With a nine-year-old boy just starting another growth spurt, she knew she’d be needing one more round of summer clothes and then all new school clothes over the next couple months.
And the food. My goodness, the food.
Did all kids eat like this?
It was going to take some really long days. She might have to find a babysitter for Tyler. There was no way she could be a present mom for the next sixteen days.
If she thought he’d be safe with Ms. Angie, she’d be packing his bag and dropping him off on her porch. But she kind of wanted to keep her son safe, sane, and out of jail, so that was a no go.
Of course, Tyler wasn’t the only issue as she circled back to Cam.
She still had to figure out what to do about him. They were going to be stuck in close quarters together for the next two weeks. And there wasn’t really a lot of room around that. He’d have to be over here working on the sleigh when she was doing her other jobs. It wasn’t like she could move it over to his place when it was his turn to work on it.
Maybe she could put Tyler and Cam on a fishing boat and send them off for a month of hard labor. Then she could have some peace for a couple days.
Another hour later and her focus had narrowed to just the sleigh and making it go again. Preferably without dying or blowing up in the middle of the parade.
She had a surprising amount of research to do after a glance at the dinosaur of an engine. And they were losing time every moment the insurance company kept doing their thing.
“Mom! Can we order pizza?” Tyler shouted down the stairs to the garage.
The fact she was exhausted, filthy, and nowhere near done for the night made her shout back, “Yes. Call Jonah and ask him to deliver.”
“Soda?” a hopeful shout came back.
“Nope. You lost any chance at soda this afternoon.”
There was a long pause while she waited for an argument or a retreat. When the door finally closed, she got back to work. She had some time to research before the sleigh was brought over.
She was contemplating if just replacing the entire engine was a better way to go. The hardware under the hood was amazingly old and had been cared for in a daily-maintenance type of way—not the ongoing care that would be needed to keep a classic going for a long life.
Which, in Starlight Harbor, was forever.
