The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine (28 page)

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Authors: Kate Angell

BOOK: The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine
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Read more Kate Angell next month in
 
T
HAT
M
ISTLETOE
M
OMENT
 
by Cat Johnson, Kate Angell, and Allyson Charles
 
As the holidays descend, three single women take a thoroughly modern approach to good old-fashioned romance and wonder if the best—and most complicated—gift of all is just a click, tap, or swipe away....
 
MADE UP
 
Like a Christmas miracle, the Build-a-Boyfriend app lets you simply input the stats of your dream man, and witty texts, passionate e-mails, and hot Instagram pics start flooding in. No more awkward questions or pitying looks as you face the holidays alone!
 
MIXED UP
 
Even the best technology has its glitches. When real-life emotions come into play, this trio of twentysomethings find themselves in a tangle of crossed signals, flying wrapping paper, disastrous Christmas parties . . . and surprising kisses.
 
MATCHED UP
 
Despite the confusion of their mistletoe misadventures, when the New Year dawns, these very satisfied women just may find themselves waking up with true love beside them.
Love Jennifer Dawson?
Be sure to check out the
Something New Series
 
Take a Chance on Me
The Winner Takes It All
The Name of the Game
As Good as New
 
 
As well as the e-novella
 
She's My Kind of Girl
Available now from Zebra Books
Watch for Sharla Lovelace's charming new romance, the
first in her Charmed in Texas series—available from
Lyrical Shine in April 2017!
 
 
A Charmed Little Lie
Lanie Barrett's life didn't turn out quite the way she had hoped, or has led everyone from the town of Charmed, Texas, to believe. As her beloved aunt got sicker, Lanie wove a fairytale story even her aunt apparently found questionable. Now, Aunt Ruby has died, and in her will she's challenging Lanie to prove that her stories are true. If Lanie is to receive the house she grew up in, the only place that ever felt like home, she must live there for three months and prove to everyone that she and her husband are as happily in love as she told her aunt they were. The only problem is that Lanie doesn't have a husband. Not even close.
Until she meets Nick McKane. Nick is everything Lanie's husband was described to be. Even better, he's just lost his job and needs money to pay for his daughter's art school dreams. With an agreement in hand that will give them both what they want, the two move into Aunt Ruby's house and set out to pretend to live Lanie's fantasy. The only problem is that it isn't long before fantasy is starting to feel more and more like reality....
 
Read on for a preview....
Chapter 1
“Take caution when unwrapping blessings, my girl.
They're usually dipped in poop first.”
 
 
I
n retrospect, I should have known the day was off. From the wee hours of the morning when I awoke to find Ralph—my best friend's ninety-pound Rottweiler—in bed with me and hiking his leg, to waking up the second time on my crappy uncomfortable couch with a hitch in my hip. Then the coffeemaker mishap and realizing I was out of toothpaste. Pretty much, all the markers were there. Aunt Ruby would have thumped me in the head and asked me where my Barrett intuition was.
But I never had her kind of intuition.
And Aunt Ruby wasn't around to thump me. Not anymore. Not even long distance.
“Ow! Shit!” I yelped as my phone rang, making me simultaneously sling pancake batter across the kitchen and burn my finger on the griddle.
I'm coordinated like that.
Cursing my way to the phone, I hit speaker when I saw the name.
“Hey, Tilly.”
“How's my baby boy?” my best friend crooned.
I glared at Ralph. “He's got bladder denial,” I said. “Possibly separation anxiety. Mommy issues.”
“Uh-oh, why?” she asked.
“He marked three pieces of furniture, and me,” I said, hearing her gasp. “While I was in the bed. With him.”
“Ralph was in the bed?” Tilly asked.
“
That
was the part that caught your attention?”
“Well, I just don't allow him to,” she said.
“It wasn't by invitation,” I said. “I woke up to him staring down at me and then he let it rip.”
I loved my sweet friend, Tilly. We'd met in college and been inseparable ever since. She would do anything for anyone, including fly across the country to help someone move. She was a much better person than me. Which is why I decided to take a page from her perfectly organized, color-coordinated book and be a
giver
. Offer to dog-sit Ralph while she was gone.
“Oh wow, I'm so sorry, Lanie,” she said.
I'm not really cut out to be a giver.
“Not a problem,” I lied. “We're bonding.”
“How's he eating?” Tilly asked. “Sometimes he's shy about eating around other people.”
I glanced over to see Ralph lick pancake batter off the cabinet, then sit back on his haunches and lick himself.
“I think he's doing all right.”
Tilly sighed happily on the other end. “Thank you so much for this,” she said. “Do you know how expensive it is to fly an animal his size? And then he would have been underfoot the whole time and probably unhappy.”
“How's your brother-in-law's move?”
Not brother.
Brother-in-law
. Ex, actually. He
used
to be married to her sister, like five or six years ago. The move didn't even involve her sister; he just needed some help. That's how good a person she was, and why I tried to cut her some slack over her slightly OCD love for this dog. She would do it for me. Saint Tilly.
Ralphed belched.
“Great,” she said. “Or mostly great. We have a lot to tackle today, but it'll work out. Hey, remember, when you leave for work, talk sweet to him outside so he doesn't think it's a punishment.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“Seriously, Lanie.”
“He peed on me, Tilly!” I exclaimed. “His fragile ego isn't my biggest concern right now.”
“I know, I'm sorry,” she said. “I'll pay to clean your mattress. I actually kind of hoped he'd cheer you up.”
What? “Cheer me up?”
“You've been so—I don't know—forlorn?” she asked. “Since your aunt died, it's like you lost your energy source.”
That's why Tilly was my best friend. She could nail it in one sentence. Aunt Ruby
was
my energy source. Even from the next state over, the woman who raised me kept me buzzing with her unstoppable magical spirit. When her eyes went, the other senses jumped to the fight. When her life went, it was like someone turned out the lights. All the way to Louisiana.
Honestly, I had this thought. That I'd feel her more after she passed. After all, she'd been the one with all the
intuition
. A rumor that had wagged tongues in Charmed, Texas, my whole young life. Something I'd thought was cool when I was little, spent most of my teenage years denying, and mostly forgot as an adult—living hundreds of miles away. Forgot until I'd go for a visit, anyway. One step inside that old house left little question.
There hadn't been any
intuition
coming my way, however. No feelings. No aromas of baked apples or orange peels. No sudden penchant for the color blue or the new ability to sew. No Aunt Ruby.
I was truly alone and on my own. Realizing that at thirty-three was sobering. Realizing Aunt Ruby now knew I'd lied about that was mortifying. Maybe that's why she was staying otherwise occupied out there in the afterlife.
Then again,
lying
was maybe too strong a word. Was there another word? Maybe a whole turn of phrase would be better. Something like
coloring the story to make an old woman happy.
Yeah.
Coloring with crayons that turned into shovels.
No one knew the extent of the ridiculous hole I had dug myself into. The one that involved my hometown of Charmed, Texas, believing I was married and successful, living with my husband in sunny California and absorbing the good life. Why California? Because it sounded more exciting than Louisiana. That's about all the thought that went into that.
The tale was spun at first for Aunt Ruby when she got sick, diabetes taking her down quickly, with her eyesight being the first victim. I regaled her on my short visits home with funny stories from my quickie wedding in Vegas (I did go to Vegas; with Tilly), my successful career in advertising (I hadn't made it past promotional copy), and my hot, doting, super-gorgeous husband named Michael, who traveled a lot for work and therefore was never with me. You'd think I'd need pictures for that part, right? Even for a mostly blind woman? Yeah. I did.
I showed her pictures of a smoking hot, dark and dangerous-looking guy Tilly and I hung out with one night at Caesar's Palace. Who, incidentally, was named—Michael.
I know.
I rot.
But it made her happy to know I was happy and taken care of, when all that mattered in her entire wacky world was that I find love and
be taken care of.
That I not end up alone, with my ovaries withering in a dusty desert. Did I know that she would then relay all that information to every mouthpiece in Charmed? Bragging about how well her Lanie had done? How I'd lived up to the Most-Likely-To-Set-The-World-On-Fire vote I'd received senior year. Including the visuals I'd sent her of me and Michael-the-Smoking-Hottie.
So later on, in Aunt Ruby's last days, when the guy I'd sort of been seeing—a very fair, blond-haired
GQ
-style guy named Benjamin—wanted to come with me to meet the woman who'd raised me, and be with me at the sparse little funeral, I couldn't do that. Not when Lanie Barrett's
husband
was dark-haired, tall, and blue-collar-sexy Michael. Which would have come as somewhat of a surprise to Benjamin.
“I know, Tilly,” I said, pulling my thoughts back to her as Ralph finished up cleaning the cabinets and had come nosing around the counter to find the source. “I probably have been in a funk. Just—nothing's been the same.”
“Well, and Benjamin,” she said, and I could hear the nod.
“Benjamin was a douche,” I said, feeding Ralph a burned pancake. Maybe he'd be less likely to pee on me tonight. “He called me cute.”
“Ugh,” she said. “I remember.”
He didn't understand the insult, but it was really the whole disclaimer phrase that went with it that got my goat. The words still echoed in my head.
I've always wanted that average, girl-next-door, dependable girlfriend. The one who isn't too sparkly. Cute, but not gorgeous
.
I wanted to throw up just thinking about it. Nothing in my entire life had made me feel more mediocre than that. Whether it was true or not, your man shouldn't be the one to say it.
My phone beeped in my ear, announcing another call, from an unknown number. Unknown to the phone, maybe, but as of late I'd come to recognize it. Probably enough to give it the name of the pre-Tilly best friend.
“Hey Till,” I said, finger hovering over the button. “Carmen's calling. I should probably see if there's any news on the will.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “I'll call you tonight and see how my Ralph is doing.”
Don't roll your eyes. She'll know.
“Sounds good.”
That girl. Ralph was lucky I loved his mom.
“Hey, Carmen,” I said, clicking over.
“Hey yourself,” she said, her voice friendly but smooth, and full of that lawyer professionalism they must inject them with in law school. She warmed it up a little for an old friend, but it wasn't the same voice that used to prank-call boys in junior high or howl at the top of her lungs as we sped drunk down Dreary Road senior year.
This Carmen was polished. I saw that at the funeral. And when I met her for drinks afterward, and we drove over to the house to reminisce.
This Carmen was miles from the childhood best buddy who had slept in many a blanket fort in our living room. Strung of course with Christmas lights and blessed with incense from Aunt Ruby. That Carmen was the only person I truly let into my odd little family circle. She never made fun of Aunt Ruby or perpetuated the gossip. Coming from a single-mom household, where her mother had to work late often, she enjoyed the warm weirdness at our house. It wasn't uncommon for her to join us for a spontaneous dinner in the backyard under the stars, or dress up in homemade togas (sheets) to celebrate Julius Caesar's birthday.
Returning for the funeral, it broke me, walking into that house for the first time without Aunt Ruby in it. It was full of her. She was in every cushion. Every bookcase. Every oddball knickknack. Her scent was in the curtains that had been recently washed and ironed, as if she'd known the end was near and had someone come clean the house. Couldn't leave it untidy on her exit to heaven for people to talk.
We had sat in Aunt Ruby's living room and cried a little, and told a few nostalgic stories, trying to bring back the old banter, but it was as if she were wound up on a spool of bungee rope and someone had tied the ends down. Tight and unable to give.
Still, we had history. At one time, she was family. Which is why Aunt Ruby hired her to handle her will and estate.
A word that seemed so silly on my tongue, as I would have never associated
estate
with my aunt or her property. But that was the word Carmen used again and again when we talked. Her
estate
involved the house and some money (she didn't elaborate), but it had to be probated and there were complications due to medical bills that had to be paid first.
Which made sense. It had taken almost two months, and I had almost written off hearing anything. Not that I was holding my breath on the money part. I was pretty sure whatever dollars there were would be used up with the medical bills, and that just left the house. I figured that would probably be left to me. I was really her only family after my mom died young. Well, except for some cousins I barely knew on her late husband's side, but I couldn't imagine them keeping up with her enough to even know that she died.
I didn't know what on earth I'd do with the house. It was old and creaky and probably full of problems—one being that it was in Charmed and I was not. But it was home. And it had character and memories and laughter soaked into the walls. Aunt Ruby was there. I felt it. If that was intuition, then okay. I felt it
there
. But only there.
So I'd probably keep it as a place to get away, and spend the next several months going back and forth on the weekends like I had right after she passed, cleaning out the fridge and things that were crucial. Mentally, I ticked off a list of the work that was about to begin. That was okay. Aunt Ruby was worth it.
“How's it going over there?” I asked.
“Good, good,” Carmen said. “How's California?”
Oh yeah.
“Fine,” I said. “You know. Sunshine and pretty people. All that.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Where did I get this shit?
“Sounds wonderful,” she said. “It's been raining and muggy here for three days.”
“Yeah,” I said, just to say something.
“So the will has been probated,” Carmen said. “Everything's ready to be read. I wanted to see when you'd be able to make it back to Charmed for that?”
“Oh,” I said, slightly surprised. “I have to come in person?”
“For the reading, yes,” she said. “You have to sign some paperwork and so do the other parties.”
“Other parties?”
“Yes—well, normally I don't disclose that, but you're you, so . . .” she said on a chuckle. “The Clarks?” she said, her tone ending in question.
“As in my cousins?” Really?
“I was surprised, too,” she said. “I don't remember ever even hearing about them.”
“Because I maybe saw them three times in my whole life,” I said. “They live in Denning. Or they did. I don't think you ever met them.”
“Hmm, okay,” she said, her tone sounding like she was checking off a list. “And you'll need to bring some things with you.”

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