Picket Fence Surprise. Kris Fletcher

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      Which was why Heather spent the following week staying far, far away from anyplace where she might possibly run into Xander.

      Because a woman who was trying to convince her ex to even up the custody arrangement—a woman who wanted to make sure her child had a solid, stable life—probably shouldn’t find herself remembering the sound of a man’s laughter long after it had burst out of him. Even if—especially if—that woman hadn’t laughed with a man in a long, long time.

      So a week after she submitted the résumé, when she received a request for an interview, she tamped down the urge to call him with the news. Email would be fine. And a couple of hours later when a call came in from his number, she deliberately let it go to voice mail.

      The best thing she could do—for herself, for Millie, for Xander, too—would be to keep him on the fringes of her life.

      To keep him as a satellite.

      What she really needed to do was make a plan. She had raced home from work as fast as traffic would allow, made herself a grilled cheese sandwich and settled in at her kitchen table with her laptop and a notebook. Step one was to review the materials that had accompanied the email.

      The selection process will go as follows:

      Qualified applicants will have one month to prepare a sample plan for a community celebration.

      Approximately one week after submitting the sample, applicants will be expected to discuss their vision for the Comeback Cove Tourism Department in an interview.

      Second round interviews will take place approximately two weeks after the completion of the first round.

      Assuming a qualified candidate has been found, the position is expected to commence in September.

      Followed, of course, by the standard disclaimer that submissions would become the property of the town and the strong recommendation that it not be based on any actual events currently held in Comeback Cove.

      Translation: “We want to see your work, but we don’t want you to sue us if we end up using something along these lines.”

      She could live with that. It covered the town’s behind, and it gave her freedom to design an event she would love to see being commemorated—a celebration of the rumrunners who had spurred the town’s growth during Prohibition. There was something about a town growing out of illegal activity that appealed to her. It was like the whole town was the ultimate second chance story, and Heather was definitely about second chances. Especially one that also included a pair of ill-fated local lovers and the legend of a treasure they had left behind. Because who didn’t love a Romeo and Juliet fairy tale?

      For a moment, right after she got the email, she had briefly considered immediately approaching Hank about custody, but she made herself hold off. Much as she wanted to follow through on her promise to Millie now, logic told her to get her ducks in order first.

      Step by step. One piece at a time. That was how she had clawed her way back to this point, and that was how she would continue.

      She opened a new, blank notebook and grinned. Eventually she would have to do all the support tasks associated with preparing such a campaign, market research and demographics and comparisons to events in neighboring towns. But for tonight, she had given herself free rein to daydream. To brainstorm. To simply create.

      It was playtime.

      Half an hour later she was lost in the process, scribbling notes as fast as she could, barely able to keep up with the firing in her brain. God, this felt good. The fatigue of work long forgotten, she moved from the table to the sofa, her feet tucked behind her as she drew pictures in the margins. There was an image lodged in her brain. She couldn’t identify it, but the image flitted in and out of her awareness, whispering that it was the perfect representation of what she wanted to create.

      “Hidden things.” She bit down on the end of her pen. “Buried things. Undiscovered things. Secret—”

      Her phone rang. She grabbed it from the coffee table, glanced at the display and went cold.

      “Travis?”

      “Hey, little sister!” Travis’s voice was booming and hearty, bearing none of the tenseness that had dominated their last conversation. She let out her breath—not completely, because with Travis, it was always better to hold a little in reserve—and propped her feet on the table.

      “Long time no hear,” she said. “What’s up?”

      “Not much. I figured it’d been a while since I called. Had to make sure you were still alive.”

      The fact that he was the one more likely to risk losing life or freedom seemed to be lost on him.

      “Everything’s good here. Except the other day, Millie brought home a review sheet for science that I could barely understand, and this is just grade four. I’m already getting the heebie-jeebies at the thought of high-school homework.”

      “Same old Heather. Still overthinking everything and expecting the worst.”

      Right. Because the worst had never, ever happened with Travis.

      She could picture him stretched out in some kitchen chair, his arm hooked over the back as he stared out a window at whatever vista he might be seeing these days.

      She wasn’t going to ask. Ignorance was the closest she could ever come to bliss.

      “Go ahead and laugh at me, but do you know anything about—what was it—amplitude?”

      “Not a bit,” he answered cheerfully. “But here’s what I do know. In the time you spend freaking out, Millie will have her own review sheet planned out, color coded and footnoted. That kid has enough brains for you, me and the rest of the family.”

      Considering that the rest of the family was the father—fathers?—they had never known, and the mother who they would rather not know, Heather thought his praise could have been pitched a little higher.

      Nevertheless, it was good to hear from him. It was even better that he was calling from his own phone instead of the prisoner pay phone like last time. “What are you...” She stopped. No. She didn’t want to ask what he was doing these days.

      “Millie’s in Girl Guides.”

      “She selling lots of cookies?”

      “Oh please. There was a North family thing before Easter, and she sold enough boxes there to fund the troop for six months. Did I tell you she’s a big sister now? Hank and his wife, Brynn, had a little boy a couple of months ago.”

      “Hank? Seriously? I thought he was too old for that kind of nonsense.”

      “He’s only a year older than me, doofus. So that means he’s two years younger than you.”

      “Yeah, but I know I’m too old for that kind of nonsense.”

      She laughed, but there was a layer of wistfulness that she couldn’t quite hold back. Travis would have been a great dad. At least, he’d been an awesome big brother, and she was pretty sure that was a decent indicator.

      “Well, СКАЧАТЬ