“Yes.” She bit her lip. “If this gets out…”
“People love you, Kaelin. You might be surprised.” She rose to her feet. “I have to go.” She opened her arms for a hug and Kaelin too rose from her chair and went into her arms. “Think about what I said, okay?” She drew back and smiled at Kaelin.
“Yes. I will.”
Mrs. Wirth picked up her purse and left, and for some reason Kaelin felt like Mrs. Wirth was saying goodbye for a long time. Weird.
In a daze, she headed toward the garage where she kept her lawnmower. Cutting the grass didn’t stop her brain from working, though, as she pushed the mower back and forth over the small lawn first out front then in back. She kept hearing Mrs. Wirth’s words about going after what she wanted, and Nick’s words about whether she’d find that “something wilder” she wanted in Mapleglen and Avery’s words about Tyler caring about her. Avery had told her to think about why he’d been so angry at her. Yesterday. Saturday night. Ten years ago.
Could Avery be right? Could it be because he cared? But if he cared about her, why? Why would he push her away like that? Did Mrs. Wirth think the same thing?
She remembered pieces of their conversation that night in the hotel room, about how he never could live up to his parents’ expectations so he’d given up trying. About how it was easier to just let them think the worst of him. How she’d accused him of mocking her to make up for his own insecurities.
Her feet slowed and stopped in the middle of the yard as she stared at the big maple tree in the corner. Did he really think so little of himself that he thought he didn’t deserve to be loved? Had his parents really done that much of a number on him?
And yet he’d made such a life for himself—put himself through college, begun a successful career in a tough industry in a big city. She’d seen his accomplishments in those secret internet searches—the awards he’d won, the big advertising campaigns he’d been a part of, magazine articles about him even.
He’d been angry the night of the wedding after his parents had asked him to leave, and yeah, maybe some of that had been misplaced and directed at her when she’d come after him along with Nick. But maybe he really had been angry because she was putting her reputation at risk by doing that.
Her reputation. She rolled her eyes then realized she was still standing in the middle of the yard and pushed forward again. What exactly was a reputation anyway? Mrs. Wirth had said that people loved her. People who cared about her knew her and knew if she was a good or a bad person. People had judged her dad after his injury, because he was different, but he wasn’t a bad person because of it.
She wasn’t going to run away from Mapleglen because of that. If they fired her over some rumors that nobody could prove, she’d sue them for wrongful dismissal. If people didn’t want to talk to her or didn’t want her to visit them at the seniors’ home, that was their problem. She’d lived through people looking at them and talking about them and feeling sorry for them once before when her dad had been hurt, and she could do it again.
If she left Mapleglen it wasn’t going to be because of that. It wasn’t going to be because she was running away in fear. It was going to be because she was brave enough to start over.
She felt a compelling need to see Tyler again. And Nick. To reassure them of that. So they knew that even though she’d done what she had, to her it didn’t really seem like any kind of sacrifice. She wanted Tyler’s parents to know the truth and so she’d told it.
There was no reason she couldn’t go to Chicago for a few days.
Other than Taz. She gazed at her little dog and bit her lip. What would she do with him? She couldn’t put him in a kennel. She just couldn’t. Maybe one of the neighbors…
“Hi, Kaelin.”
She looked up to see Dillon standing at her gate. “Hey, Dillon. How are you?”
Taz ran to the boy, tail wagging, yipping excitedly. Dillon grinned and held out a hand to Taz to sniff, then bent and picked him up. “I came to see if you wanted your lawn mowed, but I guess I’m too late.”
She smiled back at him. “Yeah. I’m just about finished for today. But how would you feel about dog sitting? And maybe a regular job cutting the grass for the next while. I’m thinking of going on a little trip.”
Chapter Fifteen
Friday night Tyler walked into the apartment. He’d done the happy hour networking thing after work for a couple of hours while Nick—the numbers guy, not the people guy like Tyler was—went to the gym to work out. Nick still wasn’t home, the apartment was empty. Tyler yanked at the tie around his neck, but stopped at the fridge for another beer before changing.
What a fucking brutal week. He and Nick were still at odds over the Healthy Solutions contract and they had to make a decision by Monday one way or the other. They’d dicked around long enough. Other problems had come up and Tyler knew he wasn’t able to deal with them with his usual quick decisiveness. He was distracted and restless and grouchy. His neck and shoulders were killing him. He was going to have to make an appointment to see his massage therapist. Nick hadn’t been offering to do the massage he often did. And that was another thing that was fucking with Tyler’s head. He hated that things between him and Nick were strained.
He guzzled down some of the beer, flipped through the mail. Bills. Crap. He tossed them onto the desk. He rubbed the back of his neck. He’d thought once he’d had it out with his parents things were supposed to be better. Ha.
A knock at the door startled him. What…? Did Nick forget his keys or something?
He strode to the door and flung it open.
Kaelin stood there.
He stared at her. She gazed back at him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Nice greeting.” She stood there in a pretty pink flowered sundress and flip-flops, her purse slung over her shoulder. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”
He regarded her dumbly. “You were?”
She bit her lip, starting to look a little uncertain. Then he noticed that her fingers on the strap of her purse were shaking. Just a little. “No,” she whispered.
“Come in.” He stood aside to let her into the apartment.
She walked in and looked around. “Nice place,” she said, standing in the middle of the living room. The older building had been recently renovated, the oak hardwood floors refinished, the original creamy brick walls cleaned and new windows installed in the arched frames looking out onto the tree-lined street.
“Thanks. It’s a lot better than the dump we lived in during college. How’d you know where we live?”
“Avery gave me your address.”
“Ah.”
She turned to face him, looking so pretty and fragile, her slender calves bare beneath the hem of the dress, curvy arms revealed by the narrow straps. Her breasts rose and fell as she breathed in shallow breaths. Her eyes flickered. Again, they both just stared at each other in thick, sticky silence.
“Uh, want a beer?”
“Sure.”
Her answer surprised him. She didn’t seem like a beer-drinking kind of girl. When he said so, walking to the small galley kitchen, she replied, “Beer reminds me of that summer we were hanging out.”
Hanging out. Yeah. They’d been hanging out. Having fun. Falling in love.
Christ. He closed his eyes, one hand on the handle of the fridge door, then yanked it open and pulled out another beer.
“Nick’s not home?” she asked.
He found a glass and handed her the beer and the glass. “No. He’s at the gym.”
“Oh. Yeah, I could tell he’s been working out a lot.”