“Are you all right, Mr. Cresswell?”
The old man slowly turned his face in her direction. For an instant, Candy didn’t even recognize him. He looked ugly. His mouth was pulled down at the corners and a mean squint had replaced his usually kind eyes. A red welt of anger had discolored his skin. “You should be downright ashamed of yourself,” he hissed, ripping the change from her hand. “Your daddy would disown you if he was still livin’.”
And suddenly, the lightness she’d held in her heart was replaced by confusion and anger. What the hell had that been about? She couldn’t seem to close her mouth while watching Mr. Creswell walk out of the diner.
Lenny’s large hand landed on her shoulder. “I heard what he said. You okay?”
“What’s wrong with people?” she whispered. “Really! What is it with people around here? It isn’t 1850 anymore! For heaven’s sake—our country’s president is a man of biracial heritage! All I did was give the sheriff a peck! What is their problem?”
“Maybe you should take a break.”
Candy nodded at Lenny’s suggestion, ran into the kitchen and out the back door, where she took big swallows of fresh air. Her tears came fast and hard, and it didn’t take long for her to understand that they weren’t about Mr. Creswell. They were about her father. They were for the way her father had spoken to Turner all those years ago. About everything that happened that night—the night she swore hadn’t happened, hadn’t been real.
What a bastard Jonesy Carmichael had been. What a sorry excuse for a man.
Eventually, Candy cried it all out. She threw cold water on her face and went back to the counter, and made it through the rest of the rush without incident. In fact, a couple of her regulars told her to not pay any mind to old Creswell.
“Meaner than a skillet of rattlesnakes,” said one customer.
“So ignernt he couldn’t piss his own name in the snow,” said another.
Later that afternoon, while she sorted silverware, Candy told herself she had to be the stupidest girl on the planet to get all excited about the way Turner made her feel—she was leaving Bigler in two and a half months. While she folded aprons, she decided she wouldn’t worry about what was down the road, but would focus on enjoying the ride instead. The only thing that mattered was that she was completely, perfectly honest with Turner.
While Candy baked seven cakes, she talked herself into going back to the Victorian house on Chester Street to try negotiating with the landlady one last time. She wanted that apartment. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. This was one of those things in life she would just have to make happen.
It was close to five P.M. when Candy knocked on the door. The same woman answered and the same kids gathered behind her legs.
“Oh!” she said, looking surprised.
“I know you weren’t expecting me, but I’m back,” Candy said. “I am begging you to reconsider my offer. I can get you letters of recommendation if you’d like—from my boss and the publisher of the Bugle, who happens to be my best friend. I can provide copies of my last paycheck. And my tax returns for the last few years. It might be hard to believe, but at one point my net worth was—”
The woman put her hand on Candy’s arm. “I rented it yesterday. I’m sorry.”
Candy wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. The apartment was rented? But she was supposed to have that place. It was perfect. It was her place.
“I’m very sorry to have bothered you,” Candy said, turning away and heading down the steps.
“Good luck!” the woman called after her.
After last call in the library reading room, Candy again headed for the church garden. When it began to rain, she raced back to her car in Lenny’s parking lot and used the time to brainstorm by the glow of the overhead security light, jotting down some business ideas in the notebook she kept in the glove compartment. That little exercise segued into a list of pros and cons for getting involved with Turner. The cons she’d already gone over a million times in her head and began and ended with the fact that she was L-E-A-V-I-N-G. How much simpler could it get?
The pro column ended up being pretty long. Turner was a good man. He was available. He was sexy. He was sweet and kind and compassionate. He was doing something to make the world better. He believed in something more than his bank account balance or how much he could bench press. He loved his job and worked hard at it. He made Candy feel special, beautiful, desired. He made her laugh. His kisses caused her to levitate. She could watch that man walk till the end of time and never grow tired of the view.
She had to stop writing when her hand began to cramp.
Chapter 14
Candy headed home, and since it was raining hard when she arrived at Cherokee Pines, she decided to take the risk and park adjacent to the rear entrance. Her usual spot behind the senior citizen vans would require a long run to the building, which would certainly ruin Gerrall’s cake. She’d just have to remember to leave a few minutes early the next morning to make a clean getaway.
It hardly mattered. Candy was sopping wet by the time she reached the door. The cake looked more like pudding. She yanked hard on the door handle, finding solace in the fact that she’d be inside in seconds. But it didn’t budge.
“What the—?”
She tried again. Nothing. She tried harder. It was locked! Uh-oh.
Candy knocked. No one came. Where the hell was Gerrall? She knocked harder but stopped before she reached a full-out pound, knowing that if she banged hard enough for Gerrall to hear from the lobby then everyone else in the place would hear, too. That left her no choice but to make a run for the front entrance.
Shoving her car key in her pocket and balancing the cake in both hands, she ran through the rain, glad that she wore gym shoes, grateful for the brief dry pavement she found beneath a stand of evergreens near the building. But as she rounded the corner and hit the front lawn, a brilliant flash of lightning crackled so close she could feel the hairs on her arms stand up, and the loud boom! that followed made her lose her footing on the wet grass. She fell forward, the cake shooting out of her hands and skidding to a stop on the wet pavement, where it split into pieces and collapsed in a pile. Another crack of lightning, another loud boom!, and Candy struggled to her feet, her only goal now to get inside before she got toasted like a campfire marshmallow. But as she staggered headlong toward the entrance doors, she saw that Gerrall wasn’t at the front desk—Miller was!
“Shee-it!” Candy ducked low and ran quickly past the double glass doors, hoping Miller wouldn’t look up and see her. Now what? She plastered her back against the red brick exterior of the building and caught her breath, then checked her arms and legs for charred flesh. She stared out through a curtain of rain, thinking … thinking …
Candy suddenly looked to her left. The window! She could climb in Jacinta’s window! It should be easy enough to find. Hers was the sixth apartment on this side of the building.
She crouched down low and counted her way along—a bedroom and a living room window for each unit—until she reached the sixth apartment. Unfortunately, the window was just a bit too high to reach from the ground, so she jumped up and quickly tapped her fingers on the glass. The light remained off. She jumped again. Still dark. Clearly, she needed to make a more regular tapping sound to get Jacinta’s attention, so she whirled around and looked for a stick or twig in the mulch, but since the property had been landscaped to within an inch of its life, she found nothing sticklike anywhere. So Candy decided to break off a limb from one of the shrubs, an idea that sounded simple enough but involved several minutes of bending and ripping and pulling. Right when she began wishing she’d joined the Girl Scouts instead of the cheerleading squad, the branch snapped off. “Yes!” she whispered.
Candy began rhythmically tapping the branch on the window, hoping her mother would get the message that she was locked out and couldn’t come in the standard way. But nothing. Oh, no! Maybe she’d fallen asleep!
“Ja
cinta!” Candy hoped her loud hiss could be heard over the rain and through a closed window. “Open up! I’m outside! Jacinta!”
Candy had no choice but to climb. Dammit—she sure picked a bad day to wear a skirt to work, but there was nothing she could do about it now. So Candy pulled up her denim skirt to mid-thigh, reached up to grip the brick window ledge, and lodged her gym shoe into a groove of mortar. She pulled with all her might and rose above the ground, only to hang there in midair, too weak to pull herself all the way up. She tried again. Still couldn’t manage it. She banged the branch on the window again, harder this time, and still got no response. This was ridiculous. She was ready to cry from frustration.
“Get it together, Carmichael,” she said aloud. “You can do this. This is nothing. You can climb in one little freakin’ window. Now stop your blubbering and do it. Just do it!”
Candy gritted her teeth in determination as she reached up, jammed her toe against the brick, pulled. And pulled harder. And soon her chin cleared the window ledge, and even though her arms were shaking she let go with one hand and clutched at the vinyl window frame while walking her toes up the wall. She did it! She was there! And as soon as she pushed against the window frame it moved. Unlocked! Thank God! Finally—something had gone her way tonight.
Candy balanced all her weight on her left big toe and raised her right leg. If she could only get her knee on the ledge, then she could push her body up and over. She could get the top half of her body inside and then—
Suddenly, the whole world flooded with a flash of light, and Candy winced, expecting to hear another crashing boom! explode all around her. Instead, she heard Miller’s voice.
“There she is! Arrest her!”
Candy ratcheted her neck to look behind her, and what she saw was a spectacle that made no sense. A half-dozen police vehicles were pulled onto the lawn, lights flashing in the rain, spotlights aimed directly up her skirt.
“Oh, my God!” Candy tried to push herself off the ledge but something was stuck. She couldn’t move!
“Get me down!” she screamed. She flailed around with one hand and discovered that her skirt had bunched all the way up to the middle of her back, which meant her entire ass was exposed! “Oh, my God!” she yelled out again, trying desperately to pull her skirt down.
Suddenly the lights went on in her mother’s apartment, and Candy felt something smack her on top of the head. Once. Again. And again and again.
“Thief! Trailer park trash! She’s probably armed!”
Lorraine Estes?
She’d climbed in the wrong window. And Lorraine was beating her on the head with a rolled-up newspaper.
“Candy. Let me help you.”
Turner? “Oh, God, get me down from here! Please! I’m hung up on something and I can’t move. Help me!”
“It’s gonna be all right,” he assured her, his voice slow and steady. “I’m gonna reach up under you now and see if I can help you get unstuck.”
The soothing sound of that mellow voice in the middle of all this crazy shit was almost too wonderful to be real. Then she felt his hand reach up under the front of her body and rub against some extremely sensitive places before he squeezed it between her belly and the brick.
“I think … wait … your belt loop is twisted around the window latch. Here. Hold on.” Turner’s forearm and hand began to twist and turn, doing some pretty amazing things to places on her body that had nothing to do with belt loops.
Candy shut her eyes and wanted to die right there. She swiveled her head around again in the hopes that the audience had dispersed, only to find that over a dozen residents had wandered out, clustered under their umbrellas, hoping to get a look at the crazy woman stuck ass up in a freakin’ window. Among those whose mouths were hanging open were most of the law enforcement types she’d delivered lunch to a couple weeks back. The pretty woman with dark hair looked horrified. A guy who’d tried to tip her was smiling like he’d won the lottery.
That’s it—she was going to cry now.
“Candace?” Her mother popped her head out the window just to her right. “Oh, dear Lord! What are you doing, child?”
“Here, Sheriff.” Miller scurried under his umbrella and held out a utility step stool to Turner, not bothering to hide his glee.
“Thanks.” Turner climbed up and got face-to-face with Candy. He stroked her hair and whispered in her ear. “Candy baby, you’re a hot, wet mess. What in the world were you thinking?”
“Just get me down, Turner.” Her gaze latched onto his and she saw his eyes crinkle up in amusement. “You can poke fun at me later, but please, please get me down now.”
“You got it. Now, you’re going to try to unsnag the belt loop when I lift you, okay?” He grabbed her by her hips and lifted enough for Candy to reach underneath and rip the small denim loop off a hook-shaped piece of metal.
“Got it!” she said.
Turner immediately pulled her skirt down to cover the lower half of her body.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling the tears start to stream down her face.
“Stay there just a second and I’ll help you down.” Turner climbed off the utility stool and stood on the ground with his arms out. Candy lowered herself down the wall and he caught her. She was so ashamed and worn out that her legs didn’t hold her.
“Come on,” Turner said, propping her up and walking her toward his SUV parked in the grass.
“I am filing charges!” Miller screamed. “Don’t think you’re getting away with this, Miss Carmichael!”
Candy felt herself start to collapse. A sob escaped her shaking lips. She was soaked to the skin and the rain dripped from her hair into her eyes. At least it would mask the tears.
Turner opened the door and helped her inside the passenger seat. He put his hand on her cheek and looked at her with concern. “Just stay put. I’ll take care of Miller and then we’ll get you dried off, okay?”
She nodded, wiping the water out of her eyes, feeling herself start to shake all over. Candy sat in the silent SUV and with the windows sealed. She could hear her own heartbeat. She could hear rain pound and her teeth chatter. But she couldn’t hear a word Turner was saying to Miller. Candy could only watch him touch Miller’s arm to calm him down, nod patiently as the nasty man yelled and complained, and reassure Miller that he had the situation under control. At that moment, she was immensely grateful for Turner’s people skills.
Suddenly, she panicked. Sophie! Candy groped around under her skirt to find that the bracelet was still in place—oh, thank you, God!—but felt sick with the knowledge that everyone must have seen the belt around her thigh. She’d have to come up with a viable explanation. Maybe she could say she didn’t trust banks, which would be accurate enough, and chose to carry her pay under her clothes.
She watched all the law enforcement people start to get in their cars and drive off, the pretty woman stopping to speak with Turner before she flashed a look of pity in Candy’s direction and left. What were all those cops doing here, anyway? Candy was just a woman overstaying her welcome at a senior citizen home! You’d have thought that kind of all-out response would be saved for a dangerous terrorist or something!
One by one the residents went back inside, some waving to Candy before they disappeared. It took a good fifteen minutes, but Turner eventually finished his negotiations with Miller and jogged back to the car. He got in the driver’s seat and backed up.
“Take me to my car,” Candy said.
Turner put the gearshift in drive and frowned at her. “Where is it?”
“Just out back.” She pointed toward the rear of the building, and as they drove she noticed the remains of Gerrall’s orange crème cake oozing all over the pavement. She busted out laughing.
“Something funny?” Turner looked sideways at her.
She pointed to the wet blob. “I was thinking of that stupid old song Viv used to put on her record player when we were kids. Remember? ‘Someone left the cake out in the rain a
nd I don’t think I can take it’—”
“‘Cause it took so long to bake it…’”
Suddenly, they both exploded in laughter. Turner seemed to be enjoying himself as much as she was, at least until her guffaws turned into sobs and she bent over from the weight of the ridiculous, sad disaster that her life had become, hanging her head between her knees as she cried.
Turner stopped his truck. “Are you all right, baby?”
And just like that, in her mind she was seventeen. It was that night Turner called to ask her out, that awful night she swore hadn’t been real. She felt the sting of her father’s hand, but it was nothing compared to the sting of his words. She heard her mother’s high-pitched begging. She watched as the red velvet cake dripped down the walls.
Candy quickly sat upright, gasping at the clarity of that memory. She glanced at Turner. He looked worried, doubtful of her sanity, even.
He touched her shoulder. “What is it, Candy?”
She shook her head. Tried to swallow. Felt panic rise in her throat.
“Tell me.”
“That night you called…” Her voice sounded far away to her own ears, as if it belonged to someone else. Candy stared out the window. “I have to tell you about that night you called and my father answered. I have to explain to you why I forgot. I have to—”
“You don’t have to do anything, sweetheart. I’m here and I’m listening if there’s something you want me to know, but you don’t have to do or say anything.”
She looked sideways at Turner. He was so calm. Sensible. He just didn’t know. “My parents were having a dinner party for some of Daddy’s clients. My mom asked me to bake a red velvet cake for dessert. I did that a lot for those parties, you know, and I’d have to sit there and look nice and not say much. I hated those dinners. Daddy would be so charming and nice and it would be like he was showing off his lovely, happy family and his daughter’s cakes so these suckers would feel good buying an insurance policy from him. It was awful.”