“Oh, for heaven’s sake. That’s ridiculous.”
“To you and me, yes, but not to Georgette.” He drained his mug and set it on the counter.
“Would you like more? I made lots.”
“No thanks.” He stood and stuffed the pages back into the envelope. “I’ve taken up enough of your time, and I know you have to go to work this afternoon.”
She walked with him to the front door. “If you and Casey don’t have plans tonight, you’re welcome to join us again for dinner.”
“Oh, thank you. That would be great but Liz Jacobson, the veterinarian who looks after the animals at the shelter, is having a barbecue for the volunteers who work there. She invited me to go with Casey. Petey’s going, too.”
“Sounds like fun.” Poor guy. He definitely wasn’t having any.
She reached up, placed her hands on either side of his face and trained her gaze on those very sad but oh-so-blue eyes. “If there’s anything I can do, I want you to call, okay? That goes for Kate, too.”
He leaned in and touched his forehead to hers. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
“I’m serious about that. Anything.”
KATE GRABBED HER phone when it rang, then hit cancel when her mother’s picture flashed on the screen.
“Ugh! I hate you. Go away.”
She pulled a pillow over her head and snuggled a purring Princess a little closer. She’d hated it when her parents split up, but she finally got used to living with just her dad. She’d hated it when they’d moved to Serenity Bay, but she already liked it here. She’d made new friends who turned out to be way cooler than she’d thought they’d be, and now she practically had a boyfriend. Last night he’d held her hand in the restaurant and again in the backseat of her dad’s car on the drive home. He might even have kissed her if her dad hadn’t been hanging around, waiting for her to come inside and for Henry to go across the street. Still, she’d gone to bed squee-ing over the hand-holding, then woken up this morning and squee-ed some more. And then her mom had to go and ruin everything...everything...with this stupid plan to send her to boarding school.
She pulled the pillow even tighter over her ears when her dad knocked on her bedroom door.
“Go away. Please.”
The door opened. “It’s me. Casey. Your dad said it was okay for me to come up.”
She flipped the pillow onto the floor and sat up. “You heard what happened?”
Casey nodded. “My mom told me.”
“Come in and close the door. I’m glad you’re here. I need to figure out what I’m going to do.”
Casey toed off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the end of the bed. “My mom said nothing’s been decided yet, not until you go to court or something.”
“You don’t know my mom. If she wants something, she gets it. When she first went to Europe, she didn’t want me there so she left me with my dad. Now she’s mad at him because she thinks it’s his fault I ran away, so she wants to stick me in a boarding school.”
Her friend made an I-told-you-so face.
“I know, I know. It was a dumb thing to do but nothing bad happened. At least not till this.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Casey said.
“Like what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll come up with a plan.”
“I’ll tell my mom that I’ll run away again if she sends me away to school.”
“Right,” Casey said, and she was actually laughing. “’Cause that worked so well last time.”
Princess stretched and then nudged Kate’s hand. “So what sort of plan do you have in mind?”
Casey gave her a sly little smile.
“What? Have you thought of something?”
“Well, maybe. Remember that first night you came to my house and you said that if our parents...you know, got together...then my mom would let me have a dog and your dad would get off your case?”
“Yeah, I remember. And then we got them to take Petey for a walk and saw them making out.”
“Ew. They were just kissing.”
Kate laughed. “You’re so naive. Has Dex kissed you yet?”
Casey’s eyes went wide. “No!”
“The two of you were pretty hot on the dance floor last night, and he had his arm around you the whole time we were at the restaurant.”
Casey blushed like crazy. “What about you and Henry? Holding hands under the table, as if no one could tell.”
“You could?” Rats. She’d liked believing it was something only she and Henry knew about it.
“Has he kissed you?”
“No. My dad wouldn’t let us out of his sight last night.”