Save The Date Part 48

"He mentioned that," Leo said cautiously. "Your mom is gone and you're his only kid. He's lonely. Why is that so hard for you to swallow?"

"Because I know the Colonel. If he's lonely, why has he never, not once, come to Savannah to visit me? And don't give me any bulls.h.i.+t about him hating to travel. He goes to Vegas two or three times a year. If he was so worried about how my business was doing, why didn't he come down here to see for himself? Since I moved here, I'm the one who has to fly or drive up to Ohio, to see him on his own terms."

"I can't answer why your dad does or doesn't come down here," Leo said. "Okay, he's set in his ways. That's the military, right? He's always been like that. The Colonel just wants what's best for you, Cara. I want it too. You say you're moving because this building was sold, maybe that's true. But I think you're moving because business stinks, and you can't make the rent here. It's no big crime to admit it, you know. So what? Walk away. I don't happen to agree with the Colonel about you moving up home again. There's nothing in Ohio for you. On the other hand, I think enough time has pa.s.sed, we should take another shot at making things work between us."

Cara blinked. "You really think so?"

"Yeah." He nodded thoughtfully. "We've both changed a lot. Matured. Maybe we got married too young to be able to appreciate what we had. But now, I know where I'm going, and what I want." He leaned in so close Cara could smell his cologne. "I want you, Cara. That's all. Just you. What do you say we load all these boxes in my car and take them over to my place?"

She took a step backward, and then another step. She could actually feel the blood rus.h.i.+ng to her face, her fingertips tingling-with what? He'd caught her off-guard, that was sure.

"Move in with you again? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yeah. Exactly."

"Close up the shop. But how do I pay off the Colonel?"

"I got money. I'm doing great. They just gave me the two biggest accounts in the territory. I've actually been thinking of selling the condo, buying a house again. Have you seen those houses out at Southridge? Four bedrooms on the golf course, swim and tennis club. You could decorate it like you like...."

"And then what?"

"Whatever you want. I don't know, you could maybe keep doing flowers if you wanted, work for somebody else, not as much pressure. And I was thinking, maybe next year, we could start a family."

"Have a baby?"

He nodded. "Yeah. My mom is crazy to have another grandchild...."

She felt a roaring sensation in her ears. "Are you crazy? I'm not moving in with you, Leo. I'm not closing up my business and moving to some country-club development. I am not taking money from you to pay off my dad, and I am most definitely not having your baby."

"We could wait on the baby like another year or so...."

"Leo!" Cara was shouting. "We are over. We've been over. I don't need your money, or your pity or your advice. Maybe you have matured, but I seriously doubt it if you were able to convince yourself that this fantasy of us remarrying and moving to the suburbs could ever become reality."

"You don't have to shout," he said, putting on that hurt look of his. "I was just trying to help out, okay? You want to talk about fantasy?" He gestured around the kitchen, with its chipped laminate countertops and faded linoleum.

"This right here is a fantasy. You can't even afford this place, and you think moving someplace else is going to fix things? Who are you kidding? The Colonel is right-you are a screwup. You're pathetic, Cara. Really. So you just keep on doing what you're doing. Stay right here in your dreamworld. Move on over to the next roach motel. You're all about doing everything for yourself, not accepting help from anybody. Maybe that's why the boyfriend left you. Great. Keep it up. Be a ballbuster. You're going to end up the crazy dog lady of Savannah, broke and alone."

"Get out," she whispered. "Don't call me again."

"Not a problem," he snapped, heading for the stairs. She stood in the hallway, watching him go. She heard the front door open, and now Bert was heading back to start retrieving the moving boxes. "Some a.s.shole parked a black Lexus in the loading zone out back," he called."I had to park the van a block over."

Bert stood in the downstairs hallway, glowering when he spotted Cara's ex.

"I'm just leaving," Leo said curtly.

"s.h.i.+tbird," Bert muttered.

Cara couldn't help it. She had to have the last word. She ran down the stairs after Leo. "Tell the Colonel he'll get his money. Tell him I have three weddings and a big fat contract to do all the flowers for a new hotel in town. Tell him..."

It was too late. She heard the back door slam.

64.

It was nearly six by the time Jack got back to Savannah from Cabin Creek. He told himself he was only driving past the shop to see if Cara really meant what she said about moving out. He slowed the truck to a roll as he approached the shop, but when he saw the large, hand-lettered MOVED TO NEW LOCATION sign in the window, he pulled up and parked in the loading zone.

BLOOM HAS BEEN TRANSPLANTED TO EAST HALL STREET, the sign said in smaller letters. Trust Cara to make that seem like a good thing.

He fished the set of keys with the C&S Bank key fob out of his pocket and unlocked the front door. The first thing he noticed was that the little tinkling bell that announced visitors was gone.

The second thing he noticed was the smell of antiseptic. True to her word, Cara had stripped the walls of the reclaimed-pine shelves and the chippy wrought-iron trellis, the mirrors and the chandeliers. A slight indentation in the wood floor was the only sign that a flower cooler had once occupied this s.p.a.ce. The shop was spotless. And empty.

He walked through to the back of the first floor, glancing into the kitchenette and noticing that this, too, had been cleaned out. The undercounter dorm-size refrigerator was gone, but he noticed that the coffeepot had been left behind.

Jack unlocked the door to the courtyard patio. To his surprise, the s.p.a.ce looked the same as it had the last time he and Cara and the dogs had sat out here. He was relocking the door when he spotted a small yellow Post-it that must have fallen to the floor.

J-I won't be needing patio furniture in the new place until I get backyard cleared out. Hope it's ok to leave here for now.-C.

He shrugged. This was her idea of a good-bye note. No "Dear Jack," no "Fondly, Cara."

The second floor had been as thoroughly cleaned out as the first floor. The walls bore the faded outlines of where Cara's pictures had hung, and there were depressions in the carpet left there by the now departed bookshelves.

Curtains still hung at her bedroom window, and when he brushed the thick linen panel aside to look out onto the street below, it released a scent he realized was Cara's. Her box fan was still wedged inside the window casing.

Jack slid down to the floor, his hands on his knees, his back against the wall. He inhaled and the faint floral bouquet of roses and some other flower-maybe honeysuckle-filled his nostrils. He thought about the night they'd danced at Ryan and Torie's wedding, the way she looked in that pink silk dress and how she felt in his arms.

Sweat trickled down his shoulders to the small of his back. It was unbearably hot up here. How had Cara stood it up here for these past few weeks? He stood slowly and started toward the stairs, but then he backtracked to the bedroom, where he unplugged the fan and tucked it under his arm.

As he was pa.s.sing the kitchen, he spotted a lone coffee cup sitting on the kitchen counter. All the cabinets and shelves had been emptied. He wondered if Cara had meant to leave this one behind. He picked up the cup, and on the rim saw the faint pink remains of her lipstick. He told himself he would return the cup when he returned her fan. That's what he told himself.

The prospect of returning home alone to the cottage on Macon Street did not appeal. Anyway, there was a good chance he wouldn't really be alone. Zoey's check still hadn't arrived, so despite her sketchy description of a job offer in New Orleans, she was still hanging around, sleeping on the sofa at a friend's house, but "dropping by" Jack's place, ostensibly to be with Shaz.

Tonight he was in no mood for Zoey's laughably obvious attempts to seduce him. What he was in the mood for was a cold beer and some hot wings. He called Ryan.

"Hey bro," Ryan said. "What's shakin'? You finish up over at Cabin Creek? Pick up the rest of the tools and stuff?"

"Change of plans," Jack said. "Libba wants us to go ahead and finish everything. Including the kitchen."

"Even with the wedding off?"

"Yep. She wants it finished. How did you guys do today over at Sylvia Bradley's?"

"You don't want to know," Ryan said. "That old lady is driving me nuts. We put the new roof on that mud porch yesterday, and this morning when I got over there, she'd somehow managed to climb up on the ladder, and she proceeded to b.i.t.c.h me out about how the new s.h.i.+ngles were a different color than the ones on the rest of the house!"

"Did you explain that those old s.h.i.+ngles probably hadn't been manufactured since the Eisenhower administration?"

"I tried, but you don't explain nothin' to Sylvia Bradley. She wants you to call her. I think she's gonna try and talk you into giving her a new roof for the rest of the house."

"Not happening," Jack said succinctly. "Hey, I'm headed over to the Exchange to grab a bite. You wanna meet me?"

"Awww, man. Wish I could. We've got our first childbirth cla.s.s at the hospital tonight."

"Okay, no problem. Listen, in the morning, I'm gonna get the HVAC guy to walk through Jones Street with me, to see when we can get started on that."

"Oh. So ... Cara went ahead and moved out?"

"Yeah. Probably for the best. You know what a pain in the a.s.s it is to rehab a building when somebody's living there. Anyway, good luck tonight. I hope you do better with childbirth cla.s.s than you did with high-school algebra. Cuz I am not helping out with that homework."

"Smart-a.s.s," Ryan growled.

Jack sat in a booth by the window. The tables around him were filled with groups, families with young kids, gray-haired couples there for the early-bird specials, and groups of office workers stopping in for happy hour after work.

He drank a beer and ate half a plate of wings before deciding he was tired of avoiding his own home. Zoey had managed to find his spare key. By G.o.d, he would go back to Macon Street right now, and if she was there, he would kick her a.s.s to the street. And then he would go to Home Depot and buy a new lockset and install it himself.

65.

"I forgot the coffeepot," Cara said.

Bert dumped the last box of dishes on the dining-room table. Which was sitting in the middle of the large open s.p.a.ce that would allegedly someday be Cara's living quarters.

"Forget about it," he said, collapsing onto one of the chairs. "We've still got to get your bed set up, and anyway, there's no telling where your dishes or pantry stuff are. I'll go over to Back in the Day in the morning and get us coffee and m.u.f.fins."

"No more takeout coffee," Cara said stubbornly. "Our overhead here is going to be killer. We've got to start economizing. And that means no more five-dollar lattes. I'll just run over to Jones Street and get the coffeepot. I think the pantry stuff, with the coffee and the sugar, are in that box there." She pointed to a large carton on the floor. "If you'll start unpacking that, I'll take Poppy with me, and we'll bring back pizza for dinner.

"Come on, Poppy," Cara called. "Let's go, girl."

The dog came running and happily allowed herself to be loaded into the front seat of the pink Bloom van for the short ride back to their old home.

Cara let herself in the front door and felt the gloom descend on her, like a heavy wool blanket. She wouldn't allow herself to look at the barren walls, at the swept-clean floor. Get the coffeepot and get out, she told herself.

Poppy raced down the hall. She stopped in front of the back door, glancing back expectantly at Cara, and pawed at the door.

"Okay," Cara said with a sigh. "One more try. Maybe that squirrel will get careless, and you'll get lucky." She opened the door and Poppy was out like a shot.

She went back to the kitchenette and unplugged the coffeemaker.

"Hey!" a woman's voice called from the front of the shop. She banged on the gla.s.s window. "Hey, are you in there?"

Cara poked her head out of the kitchen nook. A willowy blonde stood on the sidewalk, peering in through the window.

She opened the door. "Can I help you?" Over the woman's shoulder she spied a yellow VW bug parked in the loading zone. A familiar fluffy white dog's head hung out the open pa.s.senger window.

"Rowlf!" Shaz barked a greeting.

Zoey was a stunner, even with her long blond hair pinned carelessly atop her head. She wore a tight-fitting turquoise tank top that showed off impressive cleavage and a span of flat, tanned abdomen above low-slung white denim shorts. She had dancer's legs, long and toned, if just the slightest bit bowlegged, and she stood at least four inches taller than Cara, making her feel like a dwarf. A dowdy, depressed dwarf.

Zoey was studying Cara, too, and not bothering to pretend otherwise. "So you're the new girlfriend," she said, her lips flickering amus.e.m.e.nt. "Sorry for the intrusion, but I just had to check you out for myself before I leave."

Cara was looking at the VW. The backseat was loaded with boxes, and there was a bike on a rack strapped to the rear b.u.mper.

"You're leaving town?" she asked. Stupid question.

"Sure am. My severance check from the cruise line finally came today, so I am out-like the fat kid in dodgeball." Zoey laughed at her own little joke.

Shaz had managed to wriggle her whole upper body out of the toylike VW window.

"Does Jack know you're leaving?" Cara asked.

"He'll figure it out when he gets home and sees that Shaz is gone."

"Where are you moving?" In her mind's eye, Cara could picture Jack arriving back at Macon Street, opening the door, and waiting for the dog to nearly knock him down with her bad-mannered adoration.

"New Orleans," Zoey said brightly. "I'm going to teach at a new studio that just opened in the French Quarter. It's called Sweatbox. Cool, huh? And I've rented the cutest little furnished efficiency you've ever seen, on the third floor above it."

Cara frowned, thinking of Shaz cooped up in a third-floor studio all day. Jack's cottage might be small, but it had its own fenced backyard, and these days, she knew, more often than not, Jack took Shaz with him to his job sites.

She turned her attention back to Zoey. "Why are you telling me all this?"

Zoey's laugh was deep and throaty. She could have had a great career doing phone s.e.x. "That's a very good question. First off, before I leave town, yeah, I wanted to check you out, see what the hot attraction was between you two. Honestly? I don't get it. But you know what? I have no regrets. You want Jack Finnerty? Honey, you can have him. Yeah, he's cute, and he's great in bed. But you already know that, right?"

Cara stared up at the blonde, wondering where this was going, and whether she should admit that she and Jack were no longer an item.

"But here's something you might not have realized yet. He might have a hot body, but deep down, Jack is cold. He's cold and he's emotionally unavailable. He walls himself off from you, and there's no breaking that down. And did I mention he's a tightwad? We lived together for over a year, and he never bought me the first piece of jewelry."

And yet, Cara thought. She and Jack had slept together exactly three times by his accounting, and then he'd gone out and bought her a building. A three-story $750,000 building. And to thank him, she'd thrown it right back in his face. Figuratively speaking.

Shaz barked, and Zoey looked over her shoulder and frowned. "Quiet, baby, we're leaving in just a minute."

Cara's mind was working. She kept picturing Jack, walking into that cottage and realizing just how empty it really was.

"It's a long ride to New Orleans," she said, trying to sound casual. "And it's so hot. You don't want her to get dehydrated. Why don't you let me take Shaz out back to my courtyard, where my dog is? I'll give her some water and she can have one more potty stop before you hit the road."