frown deepened. “Painting? You never told me you painted.” Everything about her face and voice was like a soft, fluffy white kitten with a hurt paw.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bree’s frown turn. Her posture straighten. One brow twitched ever so slightly as if to say, Trouble in paradise, Chippy boy?
They all split up quickly after, Bree and Theo continuing their stiff conversation on one side of the Creeper Trail, Chip taking on Ashleigh and her endless questions on the other. Chip’s mother directed the tribe to a spot beneath the canopy of some trees while covering her son’s lapse of judgment with phrases like, “My youngest son has always carried the mysterious virtues found in such men as Picasso and Kandinsky. I’m not surprised, honestly, that he’s expressing the cerebral needs of his right brain through the lens of the canvas. Much like Van Gogh, in the 1800s, who was misunderstood by so many in his time . . .”
* * *
Chip paid for his little lie to Ashleigh. By that evening, he’d ignored twenty-five work calls, sixteen text messages, and fourteen emails so he could focus on fifteen thoughtful apologies, mostly in the form of “I’m sorry” and “No, I don’t have a hidden alternate lifestyle.” It also cost him one exquisite, covered-in-guilt-and-gravy dinner for two at the Tavern.
Finally back at home, Chip pulled himself out of his truck and shuffled to his own dark house. The street was silent, void of signs of life from the parallel-parked cars and lightless houses. But Mrs. Lewis’s porch light glimmered.
Beneath the caramel full moon, Chip dragged himself up the porch steps and sat down. Soon Russell lay beside him with his head on his paws, drooping eyelids slowly closing off the midnight-blue world.
He felt the jab in his pants pocket and pulled out his business card.
He twirled it around a few times between his fingers.
He was five days overdue paying four subcontractors.
Six hundred forty-two dollars away from the business account dropping into the red.
Twenty degrees from freezing in his fixer-upper home.
But, he thought, spinning the business card around and around . . .
He had his dog.
A girlfriend who was better than he deserved.
A house with a terrific view of the Appalachian Mountains.
And perhaps, just perhaps, a date with destiny.
Now all he needed was a bank crazy enough to lend him two million dollars.
Chapter 11
Bree
“Yes, Cass, I have walked through my options. And this is the only logical plan of action.”
On the other end of the phone line, Bree heard a sharp whistle and the telltale noise of sneakers squeaking against the linoleum flooring of a gymnasium. Bree pulled the phone from her ear while Cassie yelled, “Go, Star!” before her voice shifted with scary speed. “Sorry, Bree. Anyway—this idea is completely insane. Surely you have more sensible options.”
“You tell me then,” Bree replied, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder while pulling up the workout leg warmers Birdie had supplied. She pulled the phone away from her ear to check the time: 11:42 a.m. Almost game time. “You try. Tell me what you’d do in my position.”
“You could sit down with him and have an honest conversation.”
“I have. And by the end of that conversation, I was balled up on the floor of his kitchen trying to hide inside my own jacket. Then he laughed, and then he promised to move that fence, which he didn’t do, and then he laughed some more—”
“C’mon, Ref! Fine,” Cassie said, cutting off Bree’s rant. “Then just do whatever every neighbor on the face of the earth does. Ignore him.”
Bree hopped down the porch stairs. “I do that already. Regularly.”
“No, I mean really ignore him.”
“I did. Cass, he got a card in the mail from my parents—and he sent one back. They’re corresponding now. They’re planning a trip here in three weeks to bring their dog to his house for ‘dog-training camp.’”
Bree flung open her car’s passenger door, twitching away when Russell presented himself beside the vehicle. The English mastiff stood on the line, barking. She frowned at him, slipped into the passenger seat, and popped open the glove box.
The dog kept barking.
“Honestly, Bree, how bad can this guy be if your parents love him so much?”
“You know their value judgments mean nothing. Remember Flapjack Jack?”
Cassie went silent. Neither she nor Bree could forget the man her parents tried to set her up with at an IHOP. The man whose face suddenly popped up on the restaurant’s corner