Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door: Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door

“All she’s missing is the wand,” Cassidy agreed as she followed him toward the front door. He had it unlocked and opened before she reached it. Though boarded up, there was a beautiful frosted glass panel in the door that remained undamaged. Unconsciously she ran her fingers over the expertly etched flowers. “Beautiful,” she whispered to herself.

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg. This place is a gem just waiting to be polished.”

Cassidy stepped inside the foyer as Joshua flipped on the lights. She immediately understood the love for the old house that she’d heard in his voice. If the rest of it was as wonderful as the sweeping staircase and oak wainscot panels, this house really was a gem. “So why don’t you buy it and polish it to your heart’s content?”

He shook his dark head. “Because even though they aren’t asking much and I could afford it on my salary, it’s too big for one person. This old place deserves a family. Or at least to be turned back into a B & B so a lot of people can enjoy it. I don’t have a family or the inclination to run a B & B. But I’d love the process of watching it come alive again. Can you understand that?”

“Maybe you ought to rethink your profession. You sound more like a carpenter than a country preacher.”

Joshua chuckled. “Well, that’s kind of appropriate, since I serve a carpenter who became a preacher. I like to build things, fix things up—but it’s a hobby, not a calling like my work with Henry.”

“I just meant that carpentry and cabinet-making is a more lucrative profession.”

“But it wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling. I really think that has to be the most important thing in choosing your life’s work.”

“I suppose. It’s a shame we can’t all be as fortunate as you’ve been in finding both a profession and a hobby.”

Joshua stood in front of a set of floor-to-ceiling doors with his thumbs hooked in the front belt loops of his jeans. He stood casually, but the look in his eyes was anything but. “If you’re so unhappy in what you do, then why don’t you look for another job that won’t give you ulcers.”

His comment cut a little too close to the bone for comfort, and Cassidy stiffened. “It isn’t my job. I’m where I belong. I just need to find a way to cope with stress better. That’s all.”

“So what exactly is all the stress from? What kind of work do you do?”

“Until yesterday I was acting vice president of Jamison Steel. I’ve been running the Information Systems department.”

Josh heard a note of hurt in her voice. He narrowed his eyes, watching for her reaction to his next question. “Why until yesterday?”

“My grandfather appointed someone to the position permanently.”

“But not you,” he said, “even though you’ve been doing the job?”

“No. I was hurt at first, but I realize now that it wasn’t all that important. After all, I’ll be running Jamison someday. This will just give me a chance to learn other areas of the company in more depth.”

“But you still have to be deeply hurt.”

“No,” she snapped, needing desperately to believe that she was indeed over her hurt. “I understood. It was a business decision.”

“You’re still hurt. I hear it in your voice. You shouldn’t deny your feelings. No wonder you have ulcers if you hold all your emotions inside you like this. I know it hurts most when it’s a family member who deals the blow that—” Joshua cut off the thought, his eyes widening in what looked like shock. He looked upset, but at that moment she didn’t care. She couldn’t let her grandfather’s decision matter because then she’d never be able to return to work. And returning to Jamison Steel was her duty.

“If I’m hurt, I’ll get over it. Do I have to stand here being analyzed as payment for seeing the house?”

Joshua turned away and slid open a set of pocket doors. “This was the parlor,” he said, as if neither of them had spoken of anything other than the house.

Joshua closed and locked the front door to the Swenson house as Cassidy hurried along the walkway toward the street. He wished he could help her. He didn’t know why Henry thought Josh could, but Josh wanted to try. Sometimes she seemed like two different people. The nervous, tense, rich girl who’d become short with him when he’d touched a nerve. And the sentimental dreamer who’d so clearly fallen in love with the Swenson place. He’d really like to get to know that person.

The trouble was that since she’d arrived she had stirred up too many feelings inside him. Some he understood, like his attraction to her. But others were shadows and whispers of a past that seemed lost to him. And he had felt them again when she’d related her story of being passed over for the promotion by her grandfather. He’d felt her pain as if it were, and had once been, his own.

There was also the problem that most times when he said anything that called her life-style into question, she got angry. That was a huge roadblock. He shrugged. Maybe he needed to take another route with her. Maybe he could show her how the other half lived. Maybe if she saw firsthand that money and power weren’t the way to true happiness, that knowledge would stay with her when she returned home to the rat race of her life in Philadelphia.

“Want a ride home?” he called after her retreating back.

Cassidy stopped and pivoted toward him. “I thought I’d stop and see how much closer Earl is to looking at my car. I honestly don’t see why he can’t just look at it sooner. If he’d looked at it this morning, he could have ordered the part it needs by now. I’d be that much closer to getting on the road to Mountain Top or one of the other resorts up here.”

Josh could easily have offered to take her on to one of those high-priced resorts. They weren’t all that far away. But he knew Henry was right. Cassidy’s unhappiness was deeper than just ill health and being passed over for a promotion. She needed to recognize that she must find a new direction for her life, or she’d never really get well. Doctors would cure the ulcer…and then her tension headaches would blossom into migraines or she’d have to battle high blood pressure. Something else would buckle, and her strong will would carry her forward on what he’d begun to suspect was the wrong path for her.

“Mind if I tag along?” he asked as he caught up with her.

“I’m on foot these days, but suit yourself. You could point out the other points of interest in town. We’ll call it a walking tour.”

Josh grimaced. “You may as well hop into the truck. I need to stop at Earl’s for gas, and you just saw our only point of interest. Everything else is closed up till summer. We don’t get the ski trade here. The hunters who come through don’t need more than gas at Earl’s, the occasional hot meal at Irma’s and the odd item at The Trading Post, so the shop owners don’t bother to stay open in late fall or winter.”

Joshua found his attention snagged by the look in her stormy blue eyes. He would swear he could see the wheels turning behind those arresting eyes of hers.

“Maybe you could talk Earl into looking at my car sooner.”

“Earl’s been known to be pretty stubborn,” he warned.

She grinned. “But we’ve already established how stubborn each of us is. If we double-team him, we can talk him into looking at it today.”

Before he could protest his unwillingness to put undue pressure on Earl, she barreled around the truck and opened the passenger door. Joshua stared at her over the hood, not knowing what to say. Sometimes she reminded him of a steamroller, and others, like when he’d seen her staring up at the Swenson house, of a sad little girl. A honk of the pickup’s horn made him grin. He guessed she was a little of both.

“I’m coming. You’ve got to slow down, little lady,” he drawled. It was a southern parody of Earl’s upstate Pennsylvania twang, but it was the best he could do. “You’re on Mountain View time now.”

She shot him a look full of exasperation. “Hopefully not for long.”

“You know, I’m starting to get real insulted on behalf of everyone in town over this hurry of yours to get out of our little burg.”

“I’m sorry,” she said on a sigh. “It isn’t what the town is so much as what it isn’t. Let’s just say this isn’t my idea of a vacation.”

“Well then, what is?” he asked as he started the car.

“I don’t know. Maybe a day or two lying by a pool and sleeping in—but then I’d want to do things. See things. Go places. Make memories to take out and remember when life drives me crazy.”

“Sounds like just another variation on your everyday life. To me, a vacation would be to live in a way I don’t usually live. I see your idea of a vacation as the kind I should take and staying in Mountain View as exactly what you need.”

He made a left into Earl’s and took the opportunity to glance at Cassidy to gauge her reaction to what he’d said. She looked thoughtful, if nothing else. A little progress, he thought, but before he could enjoy the triumph, he brought the truck to a stop and she jumped out of the car. By the time he’d set the brake, she was already off searching for Earl.

“…but this is the same car you were working on yesterday,” she was saying when he came upon them inside the garage after he’d pumped his gas.

“Well, now that’s mighty observant of you to notice, little lady. And I do appreciate your concern. I had a devil of a time loosening the bolts to…Oh, there I go running off at the mouth. You wouldn’t know a water pump from a fuel pump, would you?”

“No, I’m sure I wouldn’t,” Cassidy admitted, her tone aggressive and businesslike. “And yes, I am concerned. You said you couldn’t look at my car until you did the work on the other people’s cars who were in line ahead of me. But now that won’t be for another day longer. I need to get out of here.”

Joshua noticed Earl’s eyes shift to him as he stepped behind Cassidy. There was something calculating and shrewd in his expression that Josh had never noticed before.

“How’s Irma and Henry today?” Earl asked as he reached out to take the money Joshua held out. “I haven’t even had time to stop for lunch so I didn’t get on over to the diner yet today.”

“It was Molly’s day to work the morning and early afternoon shift. Ma’s probably there by now. You really ought to stop and rest for a while.”