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“Fine. Apology accepted.”
“Thank you. I’d make you my dad’s cheesecake, but I left my recipe book at home.”
“Cheesecake?”
“My dad made his own from scratch. For him, fresh cheesecake was the answer to any problem—if anyone ever got mad at him, he’d whip one up and bring it to them with an apology.”
Fox smiled and pointed up ahead. “Make a right at the next corner.”
The remaining few minutes of the drive was a series of turns, and then we reached the building department. I pulled to the curb and put the car in park.
“I’m around all day,” I said. “If you need a ride, just give me a call.”
“Thank you.” Fox opened the car door. He set one foot onto the concrete, but stopped and turned back. “Just for clarification, your remarks last night weren’t unwelcome. And my offer to tell you what I did when I got home while watching the security video playback still stands. Ball’s in your court, sweetheart. Have a good day.”
***
“Hello?” I answered the phone later that evening.
“Hey there, chickadee. It’s Opal.”
“Oh hi, Opal. How are you?”
“I’m good. Are you busy tonight?”
I looked down at my eight painted toenails. “No, not really.”
“Could I bug you for a favor then?”
“Of course. What’s up?”
“I’m supposed to pick up Fox tonight, but I’m stuck babysitting later than expected. My daughter is a nurse, and I watch her kids on Wednesday nights. She usually gets home at eight, but someone called in sick, and she can’t leave until they find a replacement for her. I tried to call Porter, but he’s not picking up, and Fox mentioned you’d given him a lift this morning.”
Even though I’d obsessed over Fox all day, after what he’d said when he got out of the car this morning, he was the last person I wanted to see. Yet I couldn’t say no to Opal any more than I could’ve ignored Fox’s need for help this morning. They’d both been so generous. “Sure. No problem. Now?”
“Not until ten. Hope that’s not too late?”
“No, it’s fine. I didn’t realize he worked that late.”
“Oh, he’s not at work. He’s at the rink. He coaches a team on Wednesday nights. It’s about a twenty-minute drive—hope that’s okay. We had a rink in Laurel Lake, but the owner of the building sold the property to a developer last year. His practice is in Hollow Hills.”
“Okay, no problem. Do you have the address? If not, I can look it up.”
“I’ll shoot it to your phone after we hang up.”
“Great, thanks.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Josie. I owe you one.”
“You don’t owe me anything. Have a good night, Opal.”
After I hung up, I finished painting my last two toes. Twisting the cap back onto the bottle, I had a heart-to-heart with Daisy, who was sitting comfortably next to me in a pink dog bed I’d picked up for her this afternoon.
“You’ve lived here longer. What do you think of our grumpy neighbor, Paul Bunyan?”
The duck tilted her head. It seemed like she wanted to hear more.
“I know. I know. He’s grumpy and curt—not to mention arrogant, cynical, impossible to read, and judgy. Plus, he might have as much baggage as me. The one time his fiancée even came up, it was clear he had a lot to unpack.” I sighed and stroked Daisy’s head. “Yet there’s something else there, too…something buried deep beneath the surface that he tries to hide, but it slips out every so often. People can never hide who they really are for long, not when it’s part of the very core of their being. Fox is protective and thoughtful, honest and moral, with a real concern for the well-being of others.”
