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“Small towns are like that. It can feel like you’re living under a microscope. You’ll get used to it. When I was a kid, I hated it. Everyone was watching. I’d do something I shouldn’t, and my parents would know before I got home.”
“I’ll bet that forced you to follow the rules.”
He laughed and she turned away from the farms outside her window to look at him. He had the best smile. Soft, sexy, enticing.
“You’d think so,” he said. “What it taught me was to be sneaky. If we were careful enough, we could hide just about anything. Once my friends and I mastered secrecy, we kept our youthful stupidity hidden. Until the time we accidentally set fire to an abandoned barn on the Wilkerson’s land.” He winced. “That one got me grounded for three months.”
“Oh no! What happened?”
“We had to be about eleven. Maybe twelve. My friend Elton, he’s a police officer now, found a magnifying glass. We were trying to light things on fire.”
Heather laughed. “More than trying apparently.”
Zander winced. “We lit a few leaves on fire. We played for hours. Lighting fires and putting them out. We extinguished the last fire and went home. We were young and stupid. We didn’t put it out properly. The wind came up during the night. Luckily a passing motorist called the fire in before it got out of control.”
“How did you get caught?”
“Guilt. I felt terrible for days. Eventually, I confessed. My friends were mad. Luckily, by the end of my grounding, they were over it. We’re still friends. What about you? Did you ever get caught doing something you shouldn’t?”
“Actually, no. Dad was an investment banker. We lived five miles from town and had a chauffeur pick us up and bring us home to our nanny. I led a very sheltered, boring life. Ava and I just hung out at home.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“You’d think so, but it was all we knew. I didn’t mind much. I was quite a bookish kid. We did have ‘playdates’ now and then and the occasional sleepover with friends. It was a good life. We never wanted for anything.” She struggled to explain how it felt. “Anyway, I was twenty-four when Dad died. I was whiling away time at university, taking classes, not even working toward a degree. I’d been going since I turned eighteen. I had at least thirty-one and two hundred level courses under my belt. All from a dozen different fields. Dad was starting to pester me about choosing a major, but nothing really interested me beyond learning. When he died, I was lost for a couple years. Mom died when Ava was a baby, and I was only three. Eventually, I went to culinary school and here I am.”
“I suspect there’s a lot more to it than that. I can see why you’d feel overwatched in Half Moon Bay.”
“Ya, after Dad passed, I kind of went nuts. Doing nothing and everything. Running amok. Spending money like crazy. Not having someone watching my every move was liberating. Fortunately, I never really had a taste for alcohol or the desire to do drugs. I could have ended up in trouble. But I traveled a lot and wasted money on stupid stuff.”
She smiled. “Once I decided to learn to cook, culinary school was incredible. It straightened me out. But I sure learned to like being my own person without the world watching me.” She chuckled. “I loved the city and the freedom. Your little town is so vigilant, it scrapes on my nerves now and then.”
“You get used to it. When I first came back, I felt like a teen again. After I proved myself responsible, people lost interest. I expect once you’ve been around for a while, they’ll find someone new to watch. Fortunately, gossips have short attention spans.”
“I certainly hope so!” She was tired of feeling like a fish out of water. Everyone noticed her and now that she was ‘dating’ Zander, they’d notice even more.
This was such a bad idea. So why did it feel so perfect?
Chapter 11
Zander didn’t laugh at Heather’s strong hope that the eyes of Half Moon Bay’s gossips would move on. It was funny to him, but probably not to her. He understood exactly how she felt. He’d shuddered under those judgmental eyes when he returned home. Now, he barely noticed the gossips, except when they were trying to find him a date. Last week alone, three of his patients tried to hook him up with someone they knew. Two daughters, and one granddaughter. Nobody understood that he was content with his life as a bachelor caring for his family.
“How much further?” Heather asked.
“About five minutes. Why?”
“Curious. I’m excited to look at some old stuff.” She paused. “I have a few of Dad’s antiques in storage. I couldn’t bear to part with them when I sold everything else. Ava and I decided to sell the house. Neither of us wanted it. It wasn’t that big, but it was cold and lifeless. It always reminded me of a museum or mausoleum.” She shuddered. “No, thank you.”
“It’s a shame you lost all that money.”
“It infuriates me when I think of it. But the worst part was the betrayal. He broke my trust. We had a verbal deal, and he broke it. You said it the other day, betrayal has to be the hardest thing to get past. It makes trusting again difficult.” She inhaled a calming breath and tried to push away her disillusionment. “The past is dead and gone and I’m making my way ahead. The fact that Marv blackballed me won’t mean anything once I open my own place.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “You didn’t hear that. Please, don’t tell your brother I plan to leave.”
“How soon?” He seemed curious, not judgmental of her plans.
“Likely years. I need to save enough money to open my own place. The inn pays well, but not as well as a trust fund.”
“Years? Wow. In that case, it doesn’t matter, does it. A lot can change in that length of time. Who knows where any of us will be in five years, or ten. Your secret is safe with me.”
He slowed and turned on his signal light. “Two minutes now.” He drove down a quaint street of brightly colored businesses and pulled into an enormous parking lot in front of a cinder-block building. The building had been painted a calming blue with rust trim. A six-foot-high sign proclaimed it Rusty Anchor Antiques. “And here we are.”
