Currant Creek Valley(77)

Alex was tempted to go back out to the garden but she made herself stay. This was a test, of sorts. If she couldn’t endure a few minutes of conversation with the man, how did she expect to spend the next several decades in the same town?

“You’re going...to the gala tonight?” Caroline asked him.

He nodded.

“Make sure you dance with...my Alex. She’s a good dancer, when she’s not in the kitchen.”

Alex could feel her face heat. “He has a date, Caro.”

“Oh? Who?”

Sam was under no obligation to tell and he seemed reluctant to share but he finally did. “Charlotte Caine,” he answered, gazing out at the garden.

So he had taken her advice from several weeks earlier and asked Charlotte out. It had been her idea. She had thought from the beginning that Charlotte would be perfect for him. She was sweet and kind, unlike Alex, and certainly deserved a great guy like Sam.

It was one thing to have the image of some nameless, faceless woman in Sam’s arms playing through her head. But, oh, it was something else entirely when that woman was her good friend.

“She’s a...nice girl,” Caroline said. “Pretty as can be, even before...she lost all that weight.”

She winced for Charlotte’s sake but Sam didn’t even seem to register the comment. “She is. Very nice.”

“Charlotte is wonderful,” Alex said. “I told you so. You should have a great time.”

He gave her a long look over his glass. “I’m planning on it,” he said, rather grimly, she thought.

“I hope you...dance all night,” Caroline said.

Her voice seemed to catch on the last word and Alex gave her a closer look. Just in the past few moments, more color had leached away, leaving her features tight and pale as the sweet william growing along her porch.

“Perhaps it’s time for you to go inside and lie down. You’re in pain.”

“Just a...twinge.”

“Let’s get you inside and I’ll give Helen a call.”

“That’s not necessary. But...maybe I should lie down. Just for a bit.”

“Can I help?” Sam asked.

Caroline summoned a smile for him. “No, no. I’m fine. Enjoy...your lemonade. Alex...can help me.”

Sam stood and looked as if he wanted to sweep the frail old woman into his arms and carry her inside but Alex shook her head. Caroline would be embarrassed and flustered with his help, for all her talk about sexy men.

She tucked Caroline’s arm through hers and helped her into the house and toward her bedroom, just off the living room.

It seemed to take all of her friend’s energy to walk those few steps. Alex helped her out of her slippers and settle into bed.

“Now he is...hot,” she declared after the blanket was tucked up and she had the pillows just so. “I...love a man with a few muscles.”

Yes. She did, too. Unfortunately. That particular man.

“That’s the sort of fellow...you should be spending some time with. Not those...snowballers and ski bums.”

“Snowboarders, you mean?”

Caroline waved her blue-veined fingers. “Yes. You need a man.”

A man like Sam. She sighed, feeling battered and achy.

“And that...boy of his. Charming, the both of them.”

“Yes. They are. Utterly charming.”

Something in her clipped tone must have tipped Caroline off—or maybe she had just been talking to Claire.

“He’s the one...isn’t he? The one you’re...sweet on.”

She shook her head at the old-fashioned terminology, even though it was an understatement. She had passed “sweet” a long time ago. “We’re friends and neighbors, that’s all, Caro. He finished the kitchen at my restaurant and now he’s fixing up the old Larson place down the street. That’s all there is to it.”

“Too bad. I love...a man...who’s good with his hands.”

This saucy side of Caroline always made her smile. “Don’t we all,” Alex murmured, even though she was trying hard not to remember just how good Sam Delgado could be with those big, strong hands of his.

“Remember...what I said the other day. If you like the man, and his hands, you need...to let him know. A smart girl...would snap up a handsome widower like that in...two shakes.”

She was not a smart girl. Hadn’t she proved that again and again? “I will definitely keep that advice in mind.”

“I mean it. Don’t waste chances. Life is...gone in a moment.”

She blinked back tears, refusing to show them to her friend. Caroline was dying and she couldn’t fix this with chicken broth and fresh-baked cookies.

“I do...need to rest. Please tell everyone...thank you again for me.”