Hitched (23 page)

But did she want to be over Gavin? That was where things got tricky again and Allie forced her thoughts back to Devon. It wasn’t like she was going to win any Best Friend of The Year awards, but thinking about her screwed-up relationship with Devon was easier than thinking about her whatever-the-hell-it-was relationship with Gavin.

Okay. Devon.

Devon was awesome. Devon was beautiful and smart and fun and…the perfect woman for Josh, frankly.

Maybe when she got back to the harbor, she’d invite Devon out for a chai latte and she could nudge them together. They probably wouldn’t go out unless Allie told them it was okay. Sure, she’d gone off with Gavin, but Josh and Devon were better people than she was.

She’d be sure to tell them that she wouldn’t mind a bit if they dated again.

That might even help Josh forgive her.

Allie frowned at that. Would Josh forgive her? Did she deserve to be forgiven?

Allie tossed her brush back into her bag and headed downstairs.

She was really getting into this whole I-don’t-like-this-topic-so-I-just-won’t-think-about-it thing.

Not sure where else to start looking for Gavin, she headed for the kitchen. Lydia was there, of course, and her back was to Allie as she stirred something in a big pot on the stove.

But Allie had no more stepped onto the ceramic tile and the girl said, “Don’t even think about it.”

“Geez, you have eyes in the back of your head?” Allie groused.

“I know all,” Lydia said, not even turning.

“Where’s Gavin?”

“Out.”

“Out working?”

“Yeah.” Lydia leaned to grab a bowl of what looked like chopped onions.

“For how long?”

“A while.”

“I suppose you packed his schedule full in an attempt to keep him away from the house and drive me crazy.”

“Pretty much.”

Allie sighed. Loudly. “You’re clearly a natural, but I’ve had more practice being annoying than you have.” She guessed Lydia to be nineteen or twenty at the most. “I can do this all day. I’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do.”

Lydia finally glared at her over her shoulder. “What do you want?”

What
did
she want? She could
not
stay here while Gavin was out most of the day. If it was just her and that Wii in the other room, one of them was going to get hurt. And it might well be her. She was more out of shape than she’d realized. “I need something to do.”

“So?”

“So, I figure either you tell me how to get to town, or you move over.”

“Move over?”

“I was thinking about making cornbread.”

Lydia turned to face her fully. “You’re not making cornbread.”

“It goes great with soup.”

“Stew,” Lydia said flatly.

“That too.”

“My sourdough rolls are better.”

Dang, that sounded good.

“My mom’s cornbread was award winning,” Allie said. Lily had won the Promise Harbor bake-off five years straight. “I know the recipe by heart.”

Lydia crossed to the door that led in the opposite direction from the one that went to the clinic. She pulled a set of keys from a hook by the door. “Gavin bought the work truck when he got here, but kept his car.” She tossed the keys to Allie and pulled the door open.

Allie caught the keys. Okay, she was going to town. Big surprise. “I need directions too. And,” she pointed a finger at Lydia, “no getting me lost on purpose. I
will
make you regret that.”

“Take a left at the end of the driveway. Go three miles. Take a right and drive until you hit town. If you get lost, you’re stupid.”

Wow, Lydia
really
didn’t want her around. At the moment, that was a good thing.

Allie started for the door, but Lydia didn’t move. She was watching Allie contemplatively. Which made Allie nervous.

She stopped a good five feet away. “What?”

“There’s something you need to hear.”

Crap, what was this going to be? How happy Gavin was here in Alaska? How she was just using him to feel better but deep down she knew she had to go back to Massachusetts eventually? Yeah, she knew all of that.

She was also doing a really good job at ignoring it and would not appreciate Lydia bringing it all to the forefront of her consciousness, where she’d have to deal with it.

Allie crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. Maybe she could intimidate Lydia into
not
telling her. “Oh, really?”

“Your mom wasn’t perfect.”

Okay, then. Definitely not intimidated. Allie dropped her defensive stance and drew up straight, staring at Lydia. “
What
?”

“She made your dad codependent, your brothers lazy and gave you a guilt complex.” Lydia said it all coolly and evenly. There wasn’t a mean tone in her voice or a resentful glare on her face. She just met Allie’s gaze steadily.

Allie swallowed hard. “
How
do you possibly know all of that?”

“I’ve been Skyping with your brother.”

If Allie had been shocked to hear this near-stranger talking—somewhat accurately—about her mother, she nearly fell over to hear mention of her brother. “
Excuse me
?”

“He got Gavin’s number and called, but that was while you were still in bed.” It was clear from Lydia’s tone of voice that she thought that was a major sign of weakness.

Allie bit her tongue.

“He called again the next day, but not for you that time. We moved to Skype the next day.”

“You’ve been talking to my brother since I got here?”

“Yeah.”

“Which one?”

“The one that can’t hold a job.”

Allie gaped at her, Lydia’s negative judgment of her forgotten, then glanced at the laptop that was never far from the girl. Clearly she’d overheard some of Allie’s conversation about her family with Gavin last night.

“What have you talked about?”

“I told him he’s too hot to be a loser.”

“Um…wow.” Lydia thought Charlie was hot? Charlie was twenty-five to Lydia’s maybe-twenty. Then again, the girl was more grown up than some people twice her age. And Charlie definitely
wasn’t
grown up.

“I also told him that everyone has a mom and that sometimes they die. It doesn’t get to be his excuse for everything.”

Allie had
no
idea what to say to that. There was definitely something not-all-that-subtle under Lydia’s words…

“And he should be thankful for what he does have—a sister who gives a shit and a father who doesn’t smack him around.”

Allie worked on not wincing. Not all that subtle, for sure. That explained some, if not all, of the running away.

“And I told him that sometimes you have to make things happen the way you want them to if they don’t happen that way on their own.”

Allie shook her head. “I have no idea what to say.”

“When we talked this morning he told me he’d gone to a job interview and he got it.”

Allie looked at the clock. It was just after ten here, which made it two o’clock in the harbor. “How long did you talk last night?”

“About four hours,” Lydia said.

Based on when she and Gavin had been talking on the couch, that had to have extended Lydia’s conversation with Charlie well past midnight in Massachusetts. And he’d gotten up for an interview? And impressed someone?

“What’s the job?” Maybe flipping burgers didn’t require being fully awake.

“It’s at the bank. It’s entry level but there’s a management program he can apply to after six months and start moving up.”

Allie knew she was staring at Lydia like she was speaking a foreign language but…wow.

“I don’t suppose you could work on getting Danny back in school.”

Lydia nodded. “Charlie’s going to talk to him.”

Maybe the girl could cure cancer and end worldwide hunger while she was at it.

“I don’t know what to say,” Allie said for the second time.

“Well, I prefer you speechless,” Lydia said. She swung the door wide open and then headed back for the stove.

Allie moved for the garage, feeling strangely dazed.

She got into Gavin’s car, still processing all the information Lydia—of all people—had just given her. Lydia’s mom had died, she had an asshole father and she was counseling Allie’s brother. Charlie was a role model—for better or worse—for Danny. If Charlie got his act together, Danny really might follow.

But why was Charlie listening to a stranger on the computer?

Maybe because she was talking straight with him. Her mom had died too. She knew how that felt. Maybe because she was living what she said—if things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to, you
made
them work out. She hadn’t liked her home life so she’d left.

Running away wasn’t always the answer but—Allie looked around at the Alaskan landscape as she followed the directions to town—she certainly couldn’t throw stones here.

Gavin’s driveway was really just a long dirt road—a long, bumpy dirt road. It went for at least two miles through the birch and spruce trees, and she took it slow over the bumps and dips. The road leading into Bend was wider. That was about the only improvement.

She finally got to town and decided to drive around and see what Bend had to offer.

That took five minutes.

The businesses all lined the main street and sported old-fashioned storefronts with painted wooden signs and wood-slatted front porches. It looked very much like it probably had back in the early nineteen hundreds.

She wasn’t sure if the main street through town was actually called Main Street because there were no street signs. Then again, giving a specific address wasn’t necessary to find a business. You just drove until you saw it. You’d eventually find everything—as long as you didn’t blink.

It was clearly tourist season in Bend. Even though it was early in the day, people strolled up and down in front of the main shops. The farther down the street she went, the more the crowds thinned, until she reached the end and turned around. Visitors didn’t have as much need for the hardware store, grocery store and bar at the end of the street as they did for the main cluster of shops that included the Outdoor Adventures office, the Alaskan Gifts shop, and the coffee shop. The main street boasted everything from bike rentals to rafting to helicopter rides to hiking tours, hunting and fishing suppliers, outdoor gear shops and local artists, including painters, jewelry makers and clothing.

Allie’s destination, Denali Adventures Climbing School, was right in the middle of the west side of the street.

Climbing up a solid, unmoving, unchanging mountain still sounded like a great idea. Fun even. That’s what she wanted and if it didn’t just happen, or Gavin didn’t set it up for her, she’d follow Lydia’s advice and make it happen.

“Hi,” she greeted the guy behind the counter of Denali Adventures with enough enthusiasm to make the good-looking twentysomething chuckle.

“Hi. Can I help you?”

“I want to climb a mountain.”

“Well, I like you already.”

She smiled. “What now?”

“How much experience to you have?”

“None. Well, rock walls,” she said.

“You have any equipment?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He grinned. “So we need a few classes.”

Right. Probably. But she frowned slightly. Class
es
? “How many are you thinking?”

“That depends on how good you are and how fast you catch on.”

Well, how hard could it be? You held on tight and headed in the general direction of “up”. Seemed simple enough to understand.

An hour later, Allie was frustrated and sore. She’d forgotten—or had chosen not to remember—that she hadn’t been very good at climbing rock walls.

“I think we have some work to do,” Scott, as he’d introduced himself before the lesson started, said good-naturedly as he helped her down off of the small wall behind Denali Adventures.

It was a real, outdoor, honest-to-goodness rock wall, not manmade. And it was amazingly difficult. Or she sucked. Or both.

“How much work do you think?” she asked, trying not to breathe so hard. “I want to
actually
mountain climb. It sounds really fun.”

Or at least it had an hour ago.

Scott smiled. “Some definite work. Climbing takes training, Allie. It’s a fantastic sport, but you have to know what you’re doing so you’re safe, and you have to be in shape.”

She pulled in a deep breath and wiped the sweat, that she shouldn’t have even worked up at this point, off her forehead.

“You’re fresh,” he went on. “And I like your enthusiasm, but we’re gonna have to take some time.”

“I wanted to climb
today
,” she said, unreasonably.

“Well, you did. Kind of.” Scott gestured to the wall they used to train beginners.
Real
beginners. Like people who had never seen a mountain before. And her.