Page 9

Doyle pulled into the diner in Blueberry Beach.

He hadn’t said much since Olive had admitted that she’d made mistakes. If she thought he was going to take her back just because she came and declared herself a new person, she was dead wrong.

Even though he thought that, he knew he was just showing bravado in his mind. He hadn’t stopped loving her simply because she had been unkind and walked away. Just because she hurt him. She was still the same person, sweet and fun, although obviously with a lot more baggage than she used to have.

It made him mad. She could have said yes to him, and none of this would have happened, they could have a few kids of their own, living a quiet life in Raspberry Ridge.

Of course, he wouldn’t have gone to Chicago and made some good decisions that had him ending up owning a property management company. He would never have been able to come back, renting a mansion on the outside of town and with the flexibility to work wherever he wanted to.

Still, he hated the fact that Olive had been sick and alone. That she had a child and had been hurt. Even though he was glad all of it had brought her back to God and back to him, too. Except... Did he want to go through that again? Could he trust the fact that she said she changed?

He pulled into the diner and got out, walking around the car, although Olive was out before he reached her door. So he went to the back door and opened it, figuring that it wouldn’t be that hard to unlatch the baby.

It didn’t take long to eat, and they didn’t talk at all other than what was necessary.

The grocery store wasn’t that far up the sidewalk, but he drove to it just so they didn’t have to carry the bags of groceries back to the car. He wasn’t sure how much she was going to get.

“I can carry the baby if you want to push the cart and pick out what you need.”

She looked at him with shock in her eyes. “You want me to go shopping?”

“I’ll pay for it.” He didn’t see why she was so surprised. He couldn’t pick out the groceries if she was going to be doing the cooking.

“Okay. How many days do you want me to shop for?”

“However many days you want to not have to come back and go grocery shopping again.”

“Well,” she said as she pulled a cart out of the line of carts at the front of the store. “I don’t really have any recipes in my head, so I would want to go home and make a menu for the week and create a list of the groceries that I need to purchase, so how about I get enough for...three days?”

“It’s up to you.”

He really didn’t want to have anything to do with the cooking. “I guess we could have talked about what I was expecting out of you and your job on the way here.” He had been too busy thinking about how much he liked her, and still liked her even after what she’d done to him, to be able to actually have a coherent thought about his life and employees apparently. “But I’m hoping that you’ll do all the cooking and all the cleaning. All the grocery shopping and all the food prep.”

“All right.” She paused for a moment, and he didn’t expect her to say anything else. What more was there to say?

“I remember that you don’t like coconut, and salmon is your favorite. Is there anything else you absolutely do not want to have? I don’t recall you not liking any vegetables.”

“I hate peppers.”

“Oh, that’s right. But you eat onions. In fact, you love them.”

“A little too much maybe,” he said, and he couldn’t keep the smile from turning his lips up. They’d had a couple of discussions about that back in the day.

Her lips turned up as well, and it was almost like they were sharing a moment. Almost, but not quite. Because there was still all of this stuff between them. The hurt and the anger, the betrayal and whatever it was that caused her to walk away from him. Caused him to not be enough for her.

He supposed that he had changed as well, but whether his changes were enough that she would decide to stay were open for interpretation. Or maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t want to be hurt like that again. Not that he wanted to live his life making his decisions based on fear. He just wanted to be prudent. A person with a heartache wasn’t nearly as good of a businessperson and asset to the community as someone who wasn’t fighting such a condition.

Still, the fact that she had remembered his likes and dislikes made him feel seen in a way that he hadn’t felt since she’d been gone.

She went around the store, like she was used to finding her own groceries, with confidence and careful consideration as she picked up various fruits and vegetables and looked at them. He had no idea what made her put one down and pick another up, but he admired that ability. He supposed that if he worked on it, maybe he could too, but that was the point of hiring someone to do it for him.

They were in the store less than half an hour, and the groceries that she had in her cart didn’t look like nearly enough for three days. But she was the one he had hired, and he would defer to her expertise in the area.

They got in the car, with him buckling the baby in, only this time she got in her seat without standing over his shoulder. Maybe she was content that he actually knew what he was doing. He wasn’t sure and didn’t ask. He just kept getting the feeling that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

But it felt like God had opened the doors and he just needed to walk through. If that’s what it was, he needed to accept it, and if it wasn’t, he just needed to keep an eye out for a sign from the Lord that he should be doing something else.

They were about halfway home when she startled him by speaking. “The car that I have is borrowed. I... I’ll need to borrow yours in order to go get groceries, and I’ll need to have Friday off so that I can take the car back to Ohio to my friend’s place.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. This was news to him. She truly didn’t have anything if she needed to borrow against the wages that she would earn in order to buy formula for her daughter and the car that she drove wasn’t even hers. She was truly in bad straits.

His heart wanted to fold over in compassion, but he reminded himself that she was the reason that he’d felt like a zombie for almost a year after she left him.

It was embarrassing to admit that it had taken him that long to want to live again. Not that he was thinking about suicide, but that he just didn’t have any motivation to get out of bed. Of course he did it anyway, because he had a job and that’s what the human thing was to do.

But he needed his heart to understand that even though the Christian thing was to help her and show compassion, he needed to be reserved, and careful, and not fall again. That would be foolish.

“I’m sorry to ask. I know I haven’t even worked a full week, and I just requested a day off, but I do have to get this car back. I promised.”

Irritation bubbled inside of him. She made promises to him and hadn’t kept them. Or maybe not promises exactly, but she allowed him to think that there was a future for them, when she was just planning on leaving.

“Of course. If you promised, you need to keep that promise.” He didn’t say any of the other things that were rolling around in his head. He didn’t want to be unkind.

“Thank you. So, you want me to cook all the meals and do all the cleaning. Do you have any set times for the meals? Or any specific things you want cleaned more often than others?”

“I’m typically up and have breakfast by six, lunch around twelve, and supper around six, although earlier is better. I don’t like to go to bed on a full stomach.”

“Me either. When we were younger, none of that stuff seemed to matter, but now...”

“We’re not that old.” They were barely thirty.

“You know what I mean. Kids can handle anything, but I’m definitely realizing that things change as you get older.”

It reminded him that she didn’t look that good. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of her being older. Maybe it was a matter of her being sick.

“Was malaria all you had?”

“Yeah. It ended up getting a little complicated, not the brain stuff, thankfully but... I fell into a coma, and I ended up being sick for about two months.”

“But you’re better now?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

He seemed to remember that malaria could flare up again if it wasn’t treated properly. And he wondered if maybe hers wasn’t. But in Ecuador, surely they were used to treating malaria, and they might even be better at it than a hospital here in the US that didn’t see many cases of it. If any.

Still, being sick for two months would explain why she looked so terrible.

“How old’s the baby?”

“She’s two months. I heard that pregnant women are more susceptible to malaria, and I kinda thought that maybe I was exposed right before I went into labor. I’m not sure. Regardless, she was fine, just... I couldn’t feed her, couldn’t really hold or do anything with her for the first few weeks. It was...tough.”

He could only imagine. Being in a strange country and having no one to help you. “What about the father?”

“I found out about his wife a few days before I went into labor. He wasn’t around for any of it and was clear that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me or the baby. He couldn’t afford to support us was basically what he said.”

Yeah. That sounded about right.

He wanted to quit thinking about it, didn’t want to have compassion for her, because after all, she was suffering because of her own choices. But he’d made bad choices. He’d made mistakes. And he appreciated when people didn’t rub it in his face that he’d been stupid, but instead held out a hand and gave him some help standing back up and getting on his feet.

“Who’s bringing you home when you deliver the car?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet. Probably one of my sisters.”

“Plan on me.”

Yeah. So much for staying away from her. For just letting her do her thing in his house, and he would do his. Except, he couldn’t just leave her stranded in Ohio because she had to have a car back. He had to help her. That just made sense.

“Are you sure?” she asked, sounding like she couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.

“Said I would,” he said, not wanting to question why and definitely not wanting her to question his motives. “I guess I know you won’t run off on me if I’m following you there and bringing you back.” That was a low blow, and he shouldn’t have said it, but he didn’t want her to get any closer to the truth, which was...he wasn’t even sure. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight? He didn’t want to take a chance that she would leave him again? He rejected both of those ideas, not wanting them to be true, although unable to say for sure that they weren’t.

He shouldn’t have said anything so unkind. Shouldn’t have rubbed it in. He didn’t want people to do that to him, and he shouldn’t do that to others.

But he didn’t take it back, and they rode the rest of the way in silence. It felt heavy and unnatural.

Most of the time that he’d spent with Olive had been fun. They had grown up along the shores of Lake Michigan in Raspberry Ridge together, and although they hadn’t been best friends, they’d known each other and played together all their lives. When she’d come back to visit for a summer after she graduated from high school, that was when their romance had really taken off. But that was also when she’d left.

When he first pulled into the drive, he didn’t notice anything amiss. Perhaps because he was thinking about the decisions he made over the last several hours and wondering if he’d chosen food over faith. But then, as he pulled the car to a stop, he noticed a figure moving on the porch. It took him a couple of seconds until she moved into the light where he could see her better that he realized it was Cassie, his housekeeper from Chicago.

He’d called and left a message but hadn’t heard anything back.

“Am I interrupting something?” Olive said from the front seat, her eyes on the figure on the porch.

Was that jealousy?

There was so much of him that wanted to say Cassie and he were a thing and she’d come to visit, but it wasn’t true. Although, he figured he could probably get out of the car and pretend with Cassie and she would go along with it because while he didn’t think that she actually had a thing for him, she did like him an awful lot. More than was suitable for a housekeeper. At least he’d always felt that way. Maybe she was just naturally flirty.

“No. That’s Cassie, my housekeeper from Chicago. I had called and asked her to come up and fill the position here, but I never heard back from her. I didn’t know she was going to be here.”

That was the truth. Even though it wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to punish Olive just a little, maybe see if he could get her to feel some of the painful jealousy and hurt that he had felt, but it wasn’t right.

“If you’d rather have her—”

“No. I would have brought her up here with me from Chicago to begin with if I wanted her, and I only contacted her out of desperation. I was afraid I was going to starve to death.”

That might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but it made Olive snort just a little, and he appreciated that he could make her laugh, rather than make her jealous. If he loved her, truly loved her unselfishly the way God wanted him to, he wasn’t going to try to hurt her every chance he got, no matter what she did to him. And he certainly wasn’t going to go out of his way to make her jealous. In fact, he should go out of his way to keep her from being jealous. But that was if she was his.

Regardless, the command to treat others the way he wanted to be treated was first and foremost and it would be right for him to remember that.

“I’m probably going to have to give her a place to stay tonight. She doesn’t have a car, either, and I won’t be able to send her back to Chicago until tomorrow.” He spoke as he looked at the sky which was on fire from the sunset. She could make it back to Chicago tonight, but he wasn’t going to do that to her, as much as he didn’t want her here and as annoyed as he was that she had shown up without saying anything. It was Cassie’s personality to want to surprise him.

He got out of the car and went around like he usually did. Olive was out again, but he made it to the baby’s door and was able to get the car seat out himself. She went to the back and started unloading groceries.

He grabbed several bags to carry in the hand that didn’t have the car seat before they walked up to the porch together.

Cassie had gone from smiling in welcome to having her eyes narrowed, as though trying to figure out what was going on. The baby certainly would have thrown her off.

“I know you didn’t have time to have a child since you left Chicago last year.”

“Seems to me like it only takes nine months,” he couldn’t help but say. He shouldn’t have been egging her on and continued to talk to try to make up for it. “But you’re right. The baby isn’t mine. But I have a housekeeper. I’m sorry you came all the way out here for nothing.”

“You sent me a message and said you needed one.”

“That was a month ago.”

“A girl has to get her loose ends tied up.”

“Maybe you could have answered my message and let me know that you were coming, and then I wouldn’t have hired someone else.”

“You hired a housekeeper that has a baby?” She sounded incredulous, if not annoyed. “That’s foolish. I don’t come with any such baggage, and I’m here now. So you can just tell her to go back where she came from.”

“You can stay here for the night. But you have to make your own bed. And in the morning, I’ll arrange for you to have a ride back to Chicago. I’m sorry you came the whole way out here for nothing.” He ignored her suggestions, as he usually did. She was a bit more bossy than what he cared for, and he didn’t particularly enjoy being told what to do. He didn’t mind a discussion, even though he was technically the employer and she was the employee, but he was not going to take orders from his housekeeper.

Or ex-housekeeper as the case may be.

“I’m not going back. You can get rid of her. I have a long history with you, and you’ve been very happy with my services.”

The way she said “services” sounded suggestive, and it made that icky chill that he often got around her clench around his backbone. It could have been his imagination, but beside him, Olive seemed to stiffen.

“I guess I’ll let you guys hash this out. I’ll go ahead and take these groceries in and start putting them away. If you need me to go, just tell me.... Can you carry the baby in?” she asked, since both of her hands were full.

“I’m coming in behind you.” He could tell that there was a distance in her that hadn’t been there before, or maybe more of a distance would be more accurate. Still, he wasn’t trying to erase the distance between them. He had said himself he wanted to keep it there. So he didn’t know why he was so upset about it.

Turning to Cassie, he reiterated his offer. “Come in, stay the night, but you’re leaving in the morning. If you want to leave this evening, I am fine with that as well.”

“I can’t leave. I left everything in Chicago. I tied it all up, came here for you. Because you asked me to.” Her words were snippy and annoyed. Like he had put her out somehow, when all he had done was ask her to fill a job, and when she hadn’t responded, a month later, he hired someone else.

“It’s not my fault you didn’t correspond with me. How was I supposed to know that you were coming? Regardless, I will have someone take you back to Chicago in the morning.”

“There’s no place to go back to. What are you going to have them do? Dump me on the street?”

He stood there and stared at her. Was she serious?

But it didn’t matter if she was, he couldn’t have two women living under his roof.

Why not? He had the room. And it wasn’t like he was short on money to pay them. The house didn’t need a full-time housecleaner, and he certainly didn’t need a full-time chef to make his meals, but that would make it easier on Olive, who already seemed like she wasn’t healthy, with getting over malaria and childbirth. If she only had the cooking to do, and Cassie took care of the cleaning, he might actually be doing a favor to her.

He hadn’t been looking for a way to do favors for Olive, but it did seem like she needed someone to take care of her. Cassie, on the other hand, could land on her feet. He didn’t believe her about getting rid of all of her things in Chicago, and if she had, she should have the money behind her as a cushion to land somewhere. Plus, all of her family and friends were in Chicago. He felt like she would be fine.

“Come on in,” he finally said, using one of his free fingers to open the door and hold it for Olive while she walked in ahead of him.

While he really did feel like he was making a decision that should make things easier for Olive, there was a bigger part of him that felt like it was flashing red warning lights indicating that this could be a very big, very bloody disaster.