the afternoon sun. She stared in horrified silence at the destruction—which wasn’t only the windshield, but also two broken headlights.
“Geez, Viv,” said Jake, sliding a comforting, protective arm around her waist as he let the Nutcracker head slide to the ground. “I’m so sorry. Whoever the asshole is who’s messing with you…”
He trailed off and simply hugged her closer as she dug the phone out of her pocket, fighting tears of fury.
Despite her initial reluctance, Vivien ended up at Jake’s house anyway. Since she couldn’t drive anywhere, she capitulated when he again offered his place.
“You might even settle for a glass of wine instead of a cocktail at this point,” he said with a wry grin. “Although I might have something stronger.”
Instead of getting a ride from the attending police officer (not Helga, who was out on another call), Vivien and Jake decided to wait until after the tow truck came to pick up her poor, battered Accord, then walk to his house.
“I just bought that car,” she muttered as they started out of the parking lot on foot. “I never had one in New York. Didn’t need it.” Then she shook her head as if to clear it and hiked up the duffel bag she’d retrieved from her trunk. She’d taken to keeping a change of clothes and toiletries in there in case she made it to the gym or a yoga class after a day at the theater.
She looked down the road. “Where’s your place?”
“Up there,” he said, and pointed to the small bluff just behind and beyond the cul-de-sac at the end of the road. “The sort of Brady Bunch-meets-Frank Lloyd Wright-looking place.”
“That’s your house?” Vivien stumbled to a halt and looked at him in astonishment. “It’s… Wow.”
She knew the house, of course. She’d noticed it every time she drove by because though it looked pretty dated—all angles with its flat, half-pitched roof that was higher in the front than the back and the huge 1960s-style windows—she knew it had to have an amazing view of the big lake.
“Yeah,” he said with a bashful smile. “I got really lucky. The owner had to sell quickly, and it was the dead of January in the middle of a blizzard.”
“Is the view as amazing as it seems?”
“You’ll soon be able to see for yourself.” He gave her a warm smile, and she was annoyed when her heart gave a little thump.
This is not happening. You’re not going to let this happen again, Vivien Leigh.
“This way,” he said, pointing to a narrow walkway. “Through this little park here, then it’s just a little climb up a path over the rise over there. A lot shorter than taking the road, which goes out of its way to get up there.”
She didn’t say much as they walked, although she couldn’t wait to see the inside of the house. He carried the Nutcracker headpiece the whole way while she toted her duffel, and though it took extra effort to walk up the small path (calling it a “little” climb was a bit of an understatement), it was short enough that she wasn’t out of breath. Much, anyway. Though her calves might be feeling it tomorrow.
She was used to walking on flat surfaces all over the city—not climbing small mountains.
“That’s why I like to take this route when I run,” he said once they got to the top. “It’s a nice trail, and I have to work a little harder than on the treadmill or just running through a neighborhood.”
Someone had done some work to the outside of the single-story house since its original construction in the 1960s. You couldn’t do much about the roof, which not only rose to a steeper pitch in the front, bluff side, but it also canted up higher on the right, giving the front an almost triangular facade.
Instead of the brown siding and orange brick Vivien imagined had been the original, the exterior was covered in slender shale-brown bricks and fieldstone. They all had different depths, giving the wall a pleasing, uneven texture instead of a flat face. The trim was cream, and the front door—which faced the road, not the lake—was ocean blue.
“I didn’t pick it,” Jake said when she commented on the color of the door.
“I love it,” she replied as he unlocked it and gestured her into the house. “It’s unusual and gives what could be a drab-looking house a nice— Oh, wow…”
She dropped her duffel bag and stepped into the living room with its