Page 16

Doyle pulled into the drive, exhausted, covered in sweat and dirt, and looking forward to spending a little bit of time with Olive. He didn’t even mind the idea of spending some time with the little one. In fact, he had to admit he was looking forward to that too.

They finished the fence, and Miles had agreed to help him out with the job he needed. They’d even talked about marriage a little, although Doyle didn’t feel like he had any good advice to give Miles. Still, he listened as Miles talked about what the pastor had told him the last time he was out. It all sounded like good advice to Doyle. In fact, it was advice he might be able to use someday. Maybe someday that wasn’t too far away, although Olive still hadn’t shown any sign of being the slightest bit interested in him.

He walked into the house. It smelled amazing, and he had to hand it to Cassie. She was an excellent cook. She was serving the Parmesan-crusted carrots again; he could see their orange color as he stepped into the kitchen to greet her and wash his hands.

“This smells good.” He stuck his hands under the water after squirting some soap on them and rubbing them together.

“Thanks. If you don’t mind, I’m going to eat with you tonight.”

“Sure. As soon as I finish washing up here, I’ll go get Olive. She’s probably tired, maybe taking a nap.”

“She’s gone.”

He paused, thinking that he must have misheard Cassie. “I thought you said she was gone.”

“I did. She left.”

“She left. For good?” he asked, trying to reconcile what Cassie was telling him to the Olive he had just spoken with earlier that day. She hadn’t mentioned anything about leaving. It hadn’t looked like she had any intentions of going anywhere, and... They’d had that moment.

Maybe that had scared her. It certainly had rocked his world. There was still something there after all these years, and he wanted to figure out what it was. Maybe she... She’d always been kind of commitment shy, afraid to stay in one place for long. She said she changed but... Maybe she hadn’t after all.

“Yep. For good.”

“You know why?” He knew he probably shouldn’t ask Cassie. She had not exactly been friends with Olive.

“Because I asked her to.”

“What?” He couldn’t help it; his voice raised a little.

“I asked her to.” Cassie lifted her shoulder. “It was too much to have the two of us here. You were having trouble paying attention to both of us, and I decided that it would be best if one of us left. I asked for it to be her, and she agreed.”

That sounded a little fishy, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong.

“So you asked her to leave, because I couldn’t give both of you enough attention?”

“You couldn’t give me enough attention, because you were so focused on her.” Cassie folded her arms across her midsection and turned to look at him, defiantly almost, daring him to contradict her.

“I hired you to be my housekeeper. Not my relationship police.”

“Well, maybe I want to be more.”

He drew back, almost as though she had tried to smack him.

“Maybe I don’t.” He said the words slowly, carefully, realizing that he was traversing some type of land mine that he hadn’t been expecting.

“Oh, come on, you know you do. We were really getting close in Chicago, before you left.”

“I left because I wanted to move here, and you made me uncomfortable.”

“I knew it.” She looked triumphant. “I knew that I had scared you.”

“You tried to kiss me.”

“And you were scared. You’re afraid. But there’s no need. You don’t need to be afraid of me. We can have something really good together.”

“But I don’t want that.” He wasn’t sure how to say it so that she would understand. Yes, she was right, she had scared him, but not in a “I think I really like her, but I don’t want to have a commitment” kind of way, the way she seemed to think. It was more of a “this girl is taking liberties that I don’t want her to have and trying to be closer to me than I’m comfortable with, not because I like her, but because I don’t like her that” way.

How could he tell her that?

“Really? You’re a man. You don’t know what you want. That’s why I’m here to tell you. You want me, we’re good together. We can be even better. You just have to let your guard down and let me in.” She smiled reassuringly, and he supposed that was supposed to make him do something, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

“I don’t like you that way. I never will. I am uncomfortable with this whole situation, not because I like you and you’re making me uncomfortable, but because I don’t. I feel like our relationship is purely professional, and you’ve crossed some lines.”

“Didn’t you hear me? You’re a man. You don’t know what you want.”

“Oh no. I promise you, I know what I want, and it’s not you.” He didn’t want to be mean, he didn’t want to shove her away with no ceremony, but this was getting a little bit ridiculous.

“Did Olive say where she was going?” He didn’t know how to handle what Cassie was throwing at him, and getting out of the house seemed like the best thing.

“No, not really. But she has sisters, and this whole town loves her. She’s probably around somewhere, with one of her friends or with her sisters. Maybe at her parents’ house?” Cassie held a spoon in her hand and leaned against the counter, like she hadn’t thrown the woman he...was fond of...out of his house.

“I guess that’s a good place to start looking.” He finished drying off his hands and hung the towel up before turning around and facing her. “I think it might be best if you were gone when I get back.”

“Doyle. You don’t mean that.”

He put a hand up. “I know. I’m a man. I don’t know what I want, except I do. I want you to be gone when I get back. If you need money or a ride, I can help you out, but you can’t stay here.”

He wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do or not. She could stay there. It wasn’t going to bother him, but she couldn’t keep making passes at him and kicking people out that he’d invited to stay.

“Where am I going to go?” she asked softly, and doggone it, he hated it when women cried, and her eyes were filling with tears.

“Listen, I don’t care if you stay. I don’t care if you continue to be my housekeeper, but that’s all it is. You being a housekeeper. I don’t want these uncomfortable confrontations where you have this weird idea that there is more between us. Because there is not. I’m fine if you stay, fine if you go, but I’m not fine if you ask someone to leave after I’ve asked them to stay, and I’m not okay if you keep confronting me about whatever thing you think is between us. Because it’s only on your side, I promise you.”

He thought he was as clear as he could be, and it seemed like she understood, because she nodded slowly.

“I’m gonna stay.”

He nodded, then looked around. “I’m going to go find Olive.”

“Aren’t you going to eat first?”

“No. If you want to, go ahead. I’ll skip supper, and we’ll talk about breakfast in the morning, depending on where Olive is.”

He found that he was getting angry. It was a delayed reaction apparently. Because Olive shouldn’t have left, and Cassie shouldn’t have asked her to. He wasn’t sure which woman he was more angry at.

Olive probably. Just because his emotions toward her were sharper, stronger, and more tender. She’d left him once before, and surely she knew how he would feel about her leaving again, even though they weren’t supposed to be in a relationship. Plus, she could have told him. She could have talked to him about it. She didn’t have to just walk out.

Yeah, definitely Olive was the one he was the most angry at.

He probably should take a shower, but he felt an urgency to find her immediately. The first place he was going to look was the mansion; if she wasn’t there, he was going to find one of her sisters and talk to them.

He was out the door and halfway to his truck when he realized that he could just call her.

Man, for a child of the twenty-first century, he was a little bit dense. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of his phone up until that point.

Pulling up her contact, he pressed the call button, realizing as he did so that maybe she wouldn’t pick up.

But it had only rung three times before she answered.

“Hello?”

“Olive. You left me. Again.”

“I’m sorry. I have a big long text that I had written out, but I didn’t send it because it sounded dumb.”

“A big long text? Telling me why you left?”

“I didn’t want to talk about why,” she said softly.

“Because Cassie asked you to?”

“She told you that?” It was Olive’s turn to sound shocked.

“She did. What? Didn’t you think she’d admit it?” He got in his truck, waiting until his phone connected to the truck speakers before he put it in reverse and backed out of the drive.

“No. I thought she’d make something up.”

“We can talk about it later. I’m on my way to wherever you are. Where is that?” he asked, realizing that he really didn’t know, he was just taking off and going somewhere, probably because there was a part of him that just couldn’t stand not doing anything.

“I’m at the mansion. By myself, but I’m fine. You don’t have to come.”

“I’m on my way. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

He almost hung up, because he didn’t want her to tell him not to come, but he didn’t want to lose that connection.

“Did she really just ask you to leave?”

“It’s a little bit more involved than that. I had just told her that I would be her friend, and that was after I had given her the gospel. I... I didn’t feel like I could refuse her request because it felt like she was testing me. Was I really going to be a friend? Was I really going to be there for her like I had just said I would be?”

“She has friends and family in Chicago.”

“She said it wasn’t like here. And she’s right, what I have with my sisters... We’re not as close as we could be, but I know I could depend on them to do anything for me. I could call them up right now, ask them to do anything, and they would.”

He could not believe it. She was right; Cassie’s family in Chicago was spread out and not exactly the nicest people he knew, but still, how Olive had figured that out and had known that she needed to show true friendship, keeping her word, was beyond him.

“It still makes me angry that you left. You know, she was probably just working you.”

“But I needed to do what I said I was going to do. Whether she was working me or not. If I’m a friend, it can’t matter what other people do to me, I have to just continue to be a friend. Right?”

Wow. She was supposed to be the one who had walked away from the Lord and done her own thing, and he was supposed to be the one who was the rock, but she had just taught him a lesson. His actions shouldn’t change based on what other people did to him, and yet... So often they did.

“You’re right. And I definitely can learn from you how to handle people, or how to handle myself, more like it.”