Page 45 of Stirring Up Trouble
A burst of genuine laughter spilled from Bree’s lips to fill the kitchen, and Sloane felt a bolt of shock at how girlish it made her look.
“So, what did you do? To get them to stop, I mean,” Bree said.
“There wasn’t much I could do, really. My older sisters told me the boys were just embarrassed that they hadn’t grown so tall yet, and that made sense, but it didn’t help much. Once we got to high school a year later, lots of the boys were as tall as me, even taller by the time I graduated. And everyone kind of forgot about it.”
“Does anyone still call you Sloaney Baloney?”
Sloane cracked a self-deprecating grin. “Not if they want to live to tell the tale.” She paused, dipping her chin to meet Bree’s eyes across the counter space.
It was now or never.
“You’re growing too fast to keep up with your clothes, aren’t you?”
Bree wound her arms around herself in a flash of long limbs. “Nobody’s calling me names, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Well, I’m glad no one’s calling you names. But I respectfully disagree about it being a big deal. Can I ask why you’re hiding it from Gavin?”
“Who says I’m hiding it from him?” She angled her body away from Sloane on the other side of the breakfast bar, but didn’t flee, so Sloane proceeded with gentle caution.
“Because if he saw that shirt, he’d take you shopping in about ten seconds flat.” Sloane had no doubt Gavin did his best to take care of Bree. But if she’d been hiding her ill-fitting clothes from him, he wouldn’t have the chance. Plus, noticing the length of her shirt sleeves was probably the last thing on his mind, considering everything they’d been through.
Bree huffed softly. “Would you ask your older brother to take you shopping for clothes? For…” She lowered her voice to a thready whisper. “Forunderwear?”
Eh. The kid had a point. Sloane sighed. “I hear what you’re saying, Bree, but maybe you should give him a little credit. It might not be as bad as you think. And pretty soon, you’re going to run out of shirts. You need clothes that fit.”
“I can fix this.” Bree lifted her arm again, twisting to get a closer look at the tear. Something utterly strange ripped free in Sloane’s chest, and before she could even process the sensation, she was moving with swift intention. She pushed away from the counter and took a step around the breakfast bar, then another and another until they were close enough for her to see the shock in Bree’s eyes.
“I know you can, but you don’t have to. Now, go get your coat.”
“What? Why?”
Sloane marched over to the kitchen cabinet where Gavin kept the coffee and propped it open with a decisive tug.
“Because your brother has a hundred dollars in here in case of an emergency, and today’s emergency is a trip to the mall.”
14
Gavin raked a hand through his hair as he made the turn onto Rural Route Four, finally succumbing to the delicious exhaustion that signaled yet another successful Friday night shift. He’d never been a nine-to-five kind of guy, and while the weariness wasn’t exactly relaxing, it was the sign of a job well done. At some point, he’d probably pay for it, but come on. He was only thirty-two. There was plenty of time before he had to worry about his body yielding to the long hours and brutally hectic nature of his job. Of course, he’d thought there would be plenty of time for other things too. Things that could vanish in the blink of an eye, without warning.
Things that mattered a lot more than a couple of aches and pains from a double shift or two.
“Great attitude there, Carmichael,” he grunted, guiding the Audi up the shadowy driveway toward the cottage. While things with Bree weren’t all hearts and flowers, there had been some hopeful glimmers lately, and in truth, those tiny moments had saved him. She wasn’t the fun-loving little girl he’d left behind with their mom in Philly, although the three years he’d spent traveling for work had gone by so fast, they’d been reduced to a smudgy blur of cities with restaurants desperate for rescue attached. The bakery bistro in San Francisco—his first big break into management—had been a grueling series of trial and error for eight months. But after going to culinary school and doing his time to move up the ranks in Philadelphia’s bustling restaurant scene, he was hungry for the backbreaking work of managing his own place. When that job opened up in San Francisco, he’d pounced on the chance to go.
Gavin put the car in Park, and rather than fighting his thoughts like usual, he let them spin backward, into his past. The success he’d felt at righting the bistro, at going in to fix what needed fixing in order to make the place flourish, had been addicting, so much so that he’d wanted to do it again. San Francisco became Santa Fe, which had then morphed into Chicago, and before Gavin could turn around, over three years and just as many restaurants had passed, not to mention half a summer’s worth of European wine tours in between.
In spite of the fact that he’d made it home to Philly for a grand total of seventy-two hours over the course of those years, his mother still encouraged him. He’d cultivated a passion for something he truly loved, and he felt right at the helm of a restaurant, restoring it to former glory.
Yes, he missed his family, and was in awe even then of how fast Bree had seemed to slingshot from a gap-toothed little girl to the cusp of adolescence. But his own father had left when Gavin was five, and Bree’s father died when she was a toddler. Gavin could barely remember a time when it wasn’t just the three of them, and he’d owed it to his mother and sister to make a good living, to support them as best he could, even if it had to be from afar. He wasn’t crazy about being absent for such long stretches, but there would be plenty of time to make up for that later. Doing whatever he could to bolster his mother’s single-parent salary while gaining the experience to write his own ticket had seemed like a win-win of the first order.
Until his mother got sick, and he realized he’d failed both her and Bree miserably by not being there until it was too late.
Gavin shook off the wad of guilt building in his gut and got out of the Audi, welcoming the snap of cold night air around him as he stalked up the porch steps. No matter how badly he wanted to, he couldn’t change the past. The most important thing now was to take care of Bree, and while their talk earlier in the week seemed like small potatoes on the surface, the relief he felt at finally making progress tasted more like a four-course banquet. He might not be perfect parent material, but he was getting the hang of things, slowly but surely.
The sound of voices floating into the foyer from the living room hit him like a thick web of confusion, and concern immediately pinpricked his senses. Frozen to the threshold between the porch and the cottage, he tried to place the voices. Bree’s light timbre mixed in with Sloane’s deeper cadence, and the concern upgraded a level. He hadn’t told Sloane about Bree’s nightmares, but what if she’d had one? It was after midnight, and a nightmare might explain why she was up. A curl of laughter shot from the kitchen right into Gavin’s chest.
If Bree had woken from a nightmare, no way would they be laughing over it. So, what the hell was going on?
Stuck to his spot between outside and in, he listened. The actual words were unintelligible, but the way Bree’s girlish voice layered over Sloane’s throaty laughter took a potshot at his gut. The sounds held strains of something he hadn’t heard in far too long.