Chapter Two
Kyra went in silently, like a shark, quietly circling around the two women bent over their wineglasses, sliding in to collect the check so she could get the hell out of here. The women had been at the Lakeside Bistro since two o’clock, giggling and whispering across the table, ordering glass after glass of wine, showing no signs of going anywhere, which meant Kyra had to wait it out until the night shift showed up.
This was not how her day was supposed to go. But when did it ever go as she’d planned? Had anything gone as planned since Brandi met Kyra at Planned Parenthood and Kyra had realized she couldn’t end her pregnancy? As much as she hadn’t wanted to be pregnant, as much as she’d hated that unexpected and catastrophic complication in her life, she just couldn’t go through with it. She’d had a breakdown in the lobby instead, and Brandi had gently steered her in through another door—the intended pregnancy door—where they verified Kyra was indeed pregnant, loaded her up with prenatal vitamins, and advised her to visit her OB-GYN.
Everything since had been a struggle. But Kyra wouldn’t change anything.
She’d managed to keep her job at US Fitness until Ruby was born, but Brandi had warned her, “You know you can’t work here anymore, not with a baby. It’s too demanding.”
Kyra had already figured that out. So she’d taken her paid maternity leave, and when that had run out, she’d handed in her resignation and had begun to look for a job. Unfortunately, jobs were hard to come by when you had a baby on your hip. Kyra was forced to take low-wage jobs where she could get them, then spend all her spare time looking for something better that would pay her enough to live and give her flexible hours so that she could manage with a toddler, then a preschooler, and now a first grader.
After a series of part-time jobs, she’d felt lucky to land a position at a day care, because she could bring Ruby to work with her. But the day care didn’t pay the rent, and Kyra had struggled to keep the roof over their heads. When the opportunity for something better had come up in East Beach, she’d jumped at it.
And still nothing was going as planned. Today, it was already almost five o’clock. Her babysitter had said, unequivocally, that she would not stay past six. Kyra would be extremely lucky to get home by then, and then she’d have to try to read boring real estate law while a six-year-old talked and danced and sang around her. Kyra loved her daughter so much, of course she did . . . but that child made it impossible to concentrate on reading her coursework.
She hurried back to the wait station with the credit card and ran it.
Dinner. What was she going to feed her kid? This morning she’d had the idea of spaghetti, and really, when was she going to learn to cook a few things so she’d have them for days like this? She vowed then and there that on her next day off, she was going to do exactly that. But not tomorrow, which happened to be her next day off—she had too many other things to do. But the next day off for sure.
At this rate, by the time she got home, made dinner, then gave Ruby a bath and read to her, she’d be lucky if she could study even a page before falling asleep.
With the ladies dispatched, Kyra popped into the kitchen, where the staff was preparing for the evening rush. Megan, the lunchtime sous chef, was still on the clock. Kyra had been hoping for Rob, the nighttime sous chef. Rob never cared what Kyra took from the kitchen. But Megan? She could be a little judgmental. “Hey,” Kyra said brightly and wiped her hands on her apron.
“Hi, Kyra,” Megan said as she searched a file of papers for something. “You’re still here?”
“Late table. Ah . . . I kind of need a favor.”
Megan’s head instantly came up. She eyed Kyra warily, like she expected Kyra to ask for money.
“Was there any pasta left over from lunch today?” Kyra asked. “This table is so late, and I don’t have time to get anything for my daughter before her babysitter leaves, and my kitchen is a little bare.” She made herself laugh, as if that was supposed to be funny. As if she were that girl about town who just never had time to get to the grocery store. “You know how it is.”
Megan’s green-eyed gaze narrowed slightly, because Megan didn’t know how it was. Megan was the poster child for organization and perfect mothering. “This is the second time this week,” she pointed out. Megan had two girls, and she’d lectured Kyra about children’s nutritional needs earlier this week when, in a similar mothering fail, Kyra had asked for pasta. “Kids love pasta,” Megan had said in a tone one might use to deliver basic information to an imbecile. “But you have to make sure your kids are getting fruits and vegetables.”
“You’re right, it’s the second time. It’s been a crazy week.” Kyra smiled, hoping she would not have to endure another lecture about nutrition.
“We’re not supposed to give food to employees,” Megan added.
“I know,” Kyra said, nodding. “But come on, Megan—you’re going to throw it out, anyway, and it would be a huge help to me tonight.”
Megan sighed.
Why was it that some moms seemed to believe that if you were a single parent, you had no concept of how to do it right? Kyra knew what her child needed—she just couldn’t always deliver. If anyone was keeping score, she was guilty of bad mothering on a fairly routine basis—but it wasn’t from a lack of trying.
The truth was that Kyra was slightly envious that Megan apparently had time to grind up vegetables and make sure her kids’ meals were balanced. She could imagine Megan’s kids had their baths by six, their teeth brushed, their hair combed, and were dressed in matching flannel pajamas before seven. They probably had a grandma to fill in on those rare occasions Megan had to work a night shift, and a hands-on father to read charming stories to them.
Ruby didn’t have a grandma to fill in. She didn’t have a father. She did have a grandpa in Florida who could never hear her on the phone and kept shouting “What?” when Ruby tried to tell him something. Frankly, the only thing Kyra’s daughter had was a mother who was constantly running behind the eight ball, and today she needed that pasta.
“I wish you would find a better alternative than pasta and some store-bought sauce that is full of empty calories,” Megan said. But she was pulling a large container off of a gleaming chrome service table as she spoke, so Kyra kept her mouth shut. “I mean, pasta as a treat once a week or so is okay, but . . .” She shrugged. “At least it’s not mac and cheese out of a box.”
Please. If it wasn’t for mac and cheese out of a box, Ruby would be dead by now.
Megan spooned a serving into a to-go container and handed it to Kyra with a smile of superiority, as if she pitied her poor, irresponsible coworker. “Child nutrition is a personal passion of mine.”
Whatever. “Great cause,” Kyra said, nodding. “Thanks, Megan.”
“Hey, maybe we can get the girls together sometime,” Megan said brightly. “You could come over for dinner. Chet and I would really like that.”
Kyra could well imagine a night at Chet and Megan Bonner’s house—a lot of talk about how Megan’s kids went to dance class or art class while Ruby did something inappropriate, like eat with her fingers. “Sure, maybe,” she said, already backing up to the door. “Thanks again—you’re a lifesaver.” She whirled around and went through the swinging doors before she got any more mom advice and was forced to punch someone in the throat.
At five to six, Kyra drove her sport utility vehicle onto the rutted drive of her cottage. Fern Miller had been very clear about her expectations in babysitting Ruby, and Kyra couldn’t afford to screw it up. She grabbed her purse, her bulky book bag with her workbooks for the real estate license she was working toward, the basket of laundry she’d done at eight o’clock this morning at the Spin and Swim Washeteria near the pier, and her favorite sandals, which she tucked up under one arm. The laundry basket was piled too high for her to balance the bag of pasta on it, and she thought perhaps she ought to make two trips . . . but Kyra didn’t want to make two trips. Her feet were killing her, she was tired, she was hungry—so she slipped the handles of the bag between her teeth, wincing at the thought of how many germs were probably on that bag.
She backed out of the seat, hoisted everything into her arms, and turned toward the door of her cottage. She glanced back over her shoulder so she could shut the car door with a bump of her butt.
“Excuse me.”
A man’s voice startled Kyra so badly that she jerked around and dropped the bag of pasta. She tried to catch it, but it bounced off the laundry and landed on the drive, upside down. So did her book bag, which she ended up dropping when she tried to catch the pasta. Her books landed on top of the to-go bag with a thunk.
Before she could do anything but stare in horror over her laundry basket, a dog suddenly appeared, depositing his slimy, overchewed tennis ball next to her feet so he could eagerly nose under her books for the pasta.
“Hey!” Kyra cried at the same moment the man said, “Otto!” and grabbed the dog’s collar, jerking him backward and away from the bag.
Kyra lifted her gaze to the man. It was her neighbor, Dax, otherwise known as the guy she’d decided might possibly be an ax murderer.
He picked up the bag, glanced inside, and handed it to Kyra. “Looks like the lid came off. Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Ah . . . what do you want me to do with it?”
“Here,” she said impatiently, waving the only two fingers she could spare at him from the side of her laundry basket.
He looked as if he disagreed with her solution but slid the plastic onto her two fingers, then bent down to pick up her book bag as well as the two workbooks and notebook that had spilled out. He balanced the book bag on top of her laundry, then tried to tuck the books in around it, but her basket was stuffed. “Just . . . just put them on the hood of my car,” she suggested irritably.
The dog, realizing he would get no food, lunged for his tennis ball, then decided to give his coat a good shake. Up until that point, Kyra hadn’t realized the dog’s coat was wet. “No!” she said, moving backward. But it was too late—she glanced down at her arm, now covered in the spray of dog and lake water.
“Otto, sit!” her neighbor loudly commanded as he slid the books onto the hood of her car.
The dog didn’t sit; it lay down to chew its tennis ball.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Kyra. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Yeah well, what did you think would happen, sneaking up on a woman looking the other way?
“I was walking my dog and saw you and thought I’d say hello. Name is Dax, in case you’ve forgotten. Dax Bishop.” He stuck out his hand as if he was offering to shake hers, but glanced at her armful of books and pasta and quickly withdrew it, awkwardly shoving it into his pocket.
“I remember,” she said, as if she could forget that strange first meeting. “I’m Kyra Kokinos.” His weird, almost nerdy vibe didn’t go at all with the way he looked. He was a very good-looking man. He should have been a GQ model. Not an ax-murdering nerd. She would bet herself that he was good at sex.
“I, um . . . I was caught a little off guard when we met the other night,” he said.
Caught off guard? So when a guy stands outside a cottage looking totally deranged, that’s caught off guard? God, she hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those where are you from chats. She wanted to go inside, pay Mrs. Miller, and kick her shoes off. She didn’t want to be neighborly.
His gaze was locked on hers, as if he expected her to say or do something. His eyes were an unusual color of blue—they reminded Kyra of rain clouds. His tea-leaf-brown hair was neatly trimmed, and he was clean shaven. It was kind of refreshing, really—so many men came into the bistro with beards these days. He was tall, too—a couple of inches over six feet. She thought he was surprisingly young to be living in the East Beach Lake Cottages. She had the idea this place was where old people came for the summer.
He frowned lightly. “Okay, well, I won’t keep you,” he said.
Praise Jesus.
“But I wanted to mention that I’ve met your daughter.”
“Wait, what?” Kyra said, startled. What did that mean, he’d met her daughter?
“The girl with red hair,” he said, as if Kyra had dozens of daughters and didn’t know which one he meant.
“Right, my daughter has red hair.” How did he meet Ruby? He wasn’t some kind of freak, was he? Wouldn’t that be just fantastic, to find the only affordable rental in East Beach only to discover some pervert was living next door? If he was nosing around Ruby, Kyra would go to the owners and complain. She’d go tonight. She’d given the McCauleys a full month’s rent, and she wasn’t going to put up with a weirdo this close to her daughter while she was at work. “How—”
“That’s the thing I wanted to mention,” he said. “I work out of my house, and she . . . well, apparently she likes to climb fences. Or go under them. And she’s really . . . friendly,” he said, as if mystified by that.
Oh. Well then. Not a pervert after all. Potentially still a nerdy ax murderer, but not a pervert, which was a relief, because of the ridiculously cheap rent. Furthermore, as Kyra had a bad habit of secretly sizing up every man she met as a potential sex partner, she would not like to know she’d pictured this guy as really good at sex only to find out he was a sicko. “Ah,” she said, nodding and wincing apologetically. “Sorry about that. I’ll talk to her.”
“Yeah,” he said and ran his hand over the crown of his head as if he was uncertain about the whole thing now. “Cute kid, but, you know, I have to work.”
“Sure. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll nip it in the bud,” Kyra said and smiled as she took a step forward. Would he go now? Please?
“Great. Thanks.” Now he shoved both hands into his front pockets. He didn’t move, just stood looking at her.
Kyra’s arms were starting to ache. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going to get these things inside . . .”
“Yep. Right. Thanks again,” he said and turned, as if he meant to leave. But he hesitated.
She waited for him to speak.
He didn’t speak, just sort of nodded, then whistled for his dog, who was now half under her porch, his butt in the air, his tail wagging. The dog scrambled out and raced after his owner. Kyra watched the two of them go around the fence that stretched between their cottages.
Her neighbor had a very strong and broad back. She wished she’d known someone with a back like that to help her lug stuff when she’d moved in last week.
He paused at his back porch and glanced back at her, as if he thought she might have called out to him. Only then did Kyra realize she was still standing there, ogling him.
She lurched forward and strode for the front porch. She tried to dash up the steps like she was Holly Golightly carrying a Tiffany bag. But she wasn’t Holly Golightly, she was a woman who’d worked all day and was carrying too many things at once to save a second trip, and she misjudged the top step. As she tried to catch her balance, her knee collided with the porch railing. “Ow, ow, ow,” she gasped and hobbled to the door. She didn’t dare look back to see if her neighbor had seen that, and hastily and precariously balanced everything on her knee and up against the wall so she could pull open the screen door. She used her foot to hold it as she fit herself through, then let it bang shut behind her.
She dropped everything onto the worn sofa and leaned over, glancing out the window.
Her neighbor had gone inside.
Kyra sighed. She reached for the TV remote and tapped down the volume as the Wheel of Fortune spun. “Hello!” she called out and started for the kitchen with the spilled bag of pasta.
Fern Miller stuck her head in the doorway between the living area and kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “You’re late,” she said.
“I know, and I’m really sorry,” Kyra said. “I had a really late table.”
Mrs. Miller waddled back to the kitchen sink. She was a sizable woman who was partial to khaki capris and big, roomy tops in lots of bright colors and patterns. She wore her hair in a halo of silver curls around her face and once bragged she washed and set it only once a week. “Now, Carrie, you know I don’t mind babysitting, but my husband likes his supper ready when he gets home. He’s going to have a fit.” She put the dishtowel down.
Kyra had long since given up getting Mrs. Miller to say her name correctly. “I won’t be late again, I promise,” she said and hoped like hell she could actually keep her word this time.
Mrs. Miller looked her up and down, as if she were gauging her sincerity. “Well,” she said. “Just don’t make a habit of it.” She picked up her black, utilitarian purse from the tiny kitchen table and slung it over her shoulder.
“By the way, I just met my neighbor,” Kyra said. “He said Ruby was over there today?”
“Yep,” Mrs. Miller said. “I guess she got into his yard.”
Kyra really wanted to ask where Mrs. Miller had been when Ruby had gone over to the man’s yard. But Kyra was also afraid of upsetting this apple cart. She needed child care she could afford, and in a town where most people employed au pairs, Mrs. Miller had been the only one to answer her ad on Craigslist. No one else was going to watch Ruby for thirty bucks a day, and that’s all Kyra could swing right now. She figured she just had to keep a lid on the situation until the fall. Ruby would be starting first grade, and she’d be in an after-school program and everything would be okay. Get to the fall, get to the fall . . . that’s what she kept telling herself.
“What was she doing over there?” she asked.
“Who knows why that girl does anything?” Mrs. Miller said with a shrug.
Kyra tucked her hair behind her ear. “Were you, ah . . . outside with her?”
“That girl is in and out all day.” She said it accusingly, as if Ruby were at fault for being six.
“Where is she now?” Kyra asked.
“In her room,” Mrs. Miller said. “Now, I fed her,” she said, gesturing with her chin at the kitchen table and the deflated juice pouch, the empty paper plate, and the half-empty tube of saltine crackers. There had probably been cheese, too, which Ruby loved. Wouldn’t Megan lose her mind if she saw this?
“You should get some groceries,” Mrs. Miller said.
“Yeah . . . I’m going tomorrow since it’s my day off,” Kyra said guiltily. But come on, like she’d had time in the last few days to drive to Black Springs to the only grocery of any size in the area.
“She needs a bath,” Mrs. Miller said, wrinkling her nose. “She got into mud or something. I hosed her down in the yard, but she kind of stinks.”
Hosed her down in the yard? Would it have been too much trouble to put her in a bath? Kyra bit back her irritation. “I’ll take care of it.”
Mrs. Miller started for the door; Kyra followed her, reaching for her purse on the couch. She pulled out two crumpled bills—a twenty and a ten. “Thank you,” she said, handing Mrs. Miller the money.
Mrs. Miller looked disapprovingly at the crunched bills, took them from Kyra, and made a show of straightening them out against her knee. Not only had Kyra run out of time to grocery shop, she’d run out of time to iron the bills. If Mrs. Miller wanted cash every day—and she did, having said, “What Ed don’t know won’t hurt him”—she was going to have to take some crumpled tips from time to time.
“See you Wednesday?” Kyra asked hopefully.
“I’ll be here at seven a.m.,” Mrs. Miller said as she walked out the door.
A moment later, Kyra heard the truck rumble awake as she stuffed the takeout into the fridge. “Ruby?” she called and stifled a yawn as she walked down the little hallway to the two bedrooms. They were small, separated by a bathroom. Ruby’s room had a twin bed with a pink cover. Kyra had decorated the walls with a Minions poster and pictures of flowers and of balloons she’d found on sale at Walmart. She’d bought a small white dresser at a thrift shop and had wedged that under the window. The closet was teensy—maybe three feet long and one foot deep—but it held Ruby’s things well enough.
Ruby was sprawled on the bright green shag rug, coloring madly on a pad of construction paper.
“Hey, pumpkin,” Kyra said. She stepped over her daughter and sank onto the bed, lying back with her head on Ruby’s pillow. She yanked a stuffed dog out from under her back and placed it on her stomach.
“Look, Mommy, I made a unicorn,” Ruby said and held up her drawing.
One day Kyra would know what Ruby’s talent was, but she felt pretty safe in saying it wouldn’t be art. The unicorn was a blob and its horn was twice the size of its body.
“It’s beautiful, Ruby. What do you have all over you?”
Ruby rolled onto her side to look. “I don’t know.”
“It looks like paint,” Kyra said. Ruby’s glasses were splattered, too. Kyra sat up and leaned down to have a better look. “Where did you get paint?”
“I don’t remember,” Ruby said. “I’m going to make a dog next. Mommy, can I have a dog yet?”
“Not yet. Come on, you can draw your dog after you have your bath. I brought some pasta.” She hoped she could salvage some of it, anyway. “Do you want some?”
Ruby shook her head no. “I’m full.”
Fantastic. Kyra had suffered Judgmental Megan for nothing. She bent over to pick up her daughter. Ruby was getting too heavy for Kyra to hold anymore, but sometimes she still tried, unwilling to admit that her baby was now a little girl.
Ruby giggled as they wobbled toward the bathroom and she slowly slid out of Kyra’s grip. “You’re dropping me, Mommy.”
“Because you’re getting so big!” Kyra said, huffing, pretending to struggle more than she was. She managed to get her daughter into the shoe-box-size bathroom and started the bath.
Ruby stripped off her dress. Her hair, a vivid and dark orange-red shade that sometimes made Kyra think of garnets, was a tangled mess of curls. Kyra often wondered where that hair had come from. Her own hair was black, thanks to her Greek heritage, and her eyes were brown. Ruby’s father’s hair had a reddish tint to it, but it had been more blond than red, or at least in her memory that was so. She hadn’t seen Josh since conception.
Ruby also had the most amazing blue eyes Kyra had ever seen. They sparkled like the surface of a pool, and in her glasses, they looked much larger than they actually were.
Kyra worked the hair ties out of Ruby’s pigtails, then picked up Ruby’s dirty clothes when she climbed into the bath and started to play with the red plastic Solo cup, her only bath toy. Another thing Kyra hadn’t had time to get for her daughter. She really had to fix that tomorrow. Not only could she not seem to feed her child properly, her child was playing with a red Solo cup in the bath.
“Dax has a dog,” Ruby said as Kyra began to wash her. “His name is Otto. He told me not to pet him. But he’s really nice, Mommy. He’s got brown eyes.”
Kyra glanced at her daughter. “His name is Mr. Bishop, and I think he has blue eyes.” Definitely had blue eyes. A very blustery shade of blue.
“The dog,” Ruby said with great exasperation. “His name is Dax, Mommy.”
“He is Mr. Bishop to you. By the way, did you get in trouble for playing in his yard today?”
Ruby considered the question. “No,” she said.
“Ruby—”
“I got in trouble for crawling under the fence and touching his stuff and petting his dog,” Ruby clarified. “His dog is big,” she said. “He likes it when you scratch his ears.”
“Listen to me, Ruby. You are not to go into that man’s yard again, do you hear me?” Kyra demanded.
“Yes.”
“I mean it,” Kyra said sternly. “If I find out you’ve been over there, you will lose your TV privileges this week. I don’t care how much you want to pet that dog, you do not go over that fence.”
Ruby didn’t say anything. She had turned her head slightly and stared at the white tiles on the bathroom wall as she fluttered the fingers of one hand against the water, as if considering and debating what Kyra had said. That, or she was thinking of dogs.
“Hey, are you listening to me?” Kyra said sternly.
Ruby didn’t answer.
Kyra snapped her fingers in front of Ruby’s face. “Did you hear me?” she asked again.
“What?” Ruby asked and blinked at Kyra.
Kyra caught her daughter’s chin in her hand. “Ruby Ellen Kokinos, do not pet that dog.”
Ruby blinked. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Yes, you did. You went somewhere you weren’t supposed to go. You have to respect people’s things, and the yard and the dog are Mr. Bishop’s things, not yours. Wash your face and I’ll be back to check on you in a moment.” She stood up. “Don’t forget to use soap.”
“I won’t.”
Kyra left Ruby—not washing her face, she noticed, but playing with the cup again—and went into the kitchen. She opened the old, white fridge that looked as if it might have been salvaged from the fifties and pulled out a bottle of wine. She uncorked it, removed a mason jar from the cabinet, and filled it to half full. Wineglasses. Add that to the list of things she needed to find the time to purchase.
She had a good, healthy sip, and another, then rummaged around the fridge for something quick to eat, landing on the cheese Ruby hadn’t completely polished off yet. She went back to the bathroom with her mason jar of wine to get Ruby out of the tub.
It was the same every night—dinner, bath, and the inevitable struggle to comb Ruby’s hair while she wailed about how much it hurt but also refused to let Kyra cut it. Brush teeth, find pajamas, read a story—Kyra would say a short story, Ruby would say a long one—and then finally to bed with a bit of tickling and talking about the day. Put up the laundry, iron a work shirt, wash dishes, take out the trash . . .
It was almost nine when Kyra was finally able to sit down at her ancient laptop with her books and her wine, the rest of the saltines Ruby had left on her plate, and the cheese from the fridge. As she nibbled a cracker, she opened her laptop and her notes, looked at the quiz at the end of her reading assignment, and groaned. Sometimes this goal of hers seemed impossible. Sometimes it felt like she couldn’t summon one more ounce of energy from her body.
A new career in real estate was a crapshoot, anyway, a pipe dream that was looking totally unattainable at this magic hour. Ever since Kyra had found herself accidentally pregnant seven years ago, everything seemed like a pipe dream.
It was hard to remember the person she’d been then—fresh out of college, working at US Fitness. It had been her first foray into adulthood, her first time making it on her own without help from her dad, and the possibilities had seemed endless.
She’d been dazzled by the magazine and the staff of beautiful, toned people. With her dark hair, her olive skin, and a body with more curves than angles, Kyra had stood out as the exotic one and had fit right in.
She shook her head now, recalling how glamorous she’d thought she was. She’d believed she was just like her beautiful coworkers and, for that matter, like all the beautiful people who streamed into New York looking for bigger and better futures.
What a great run, she thought wistfully. Her coworkers were always jetting off to exotic locales for race photo shoots or to follow a new fitness trend and then write the articles that Kyra copyedited. They met up on weekends for “long” runs, whatever those were, and traded passes for spin classes. Kyra didn’t run, and the one spin class she’d attended had almost killed her. But she could drink with the best of them, and she was the life of the party at those happy hours.
And then had come one long weekend in Puerto Vallarta, and look at her fabulous life now.
Not that she could possibly conceive of a day without Ruby. It still nauseated her to think she’d considered abortion, and then adoption . . . but when she’d held Ruby in her arms for the first time, she’d felt a swell of love so great that she’d almost swooned with it. No, she wouldn’t want to be without Ruby for a moment. She just wished she’d been a little further along in life so they didn’t have to struggle so much.
Things had been better since they’d moved to East Beach. She’d found out about this village one day when she’d happened to run into Trace, a guy she knew from US Fitness. She had been living in Queens at the time and had gone into the city to have lunch with Brandi on a rare day she had off and Ruby was at day care.
She and Trace had stood on the street corner, catching up. “How’s it going with the baby?” he’d asked.
“The baby is six now.” Kyra laughed. “We’re hanging in there.”
“Where are you working?”
“At a day care. For free day care.” She laughed self-consciously. She definitely wasn’t one of the players anymore. “It’s been tough financially, to be honest.”
“That sucks,” he said. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. I’m just back from East Beach. You know East Beach, right?”
Kyra shook her head. She didn’t know anything that didn’t involve McDonald’s or Dora the Explorer.
“Sure you do. Lake Haven,” he clarified. “We did that great shoot there a few years ago, remember?”
Kyra suddenly remembered. She definitely knew Lake Haven—everyone on the East Coast knew Lake Haven. That’s where rich people hung out in the summer. “Right, I remember,” she said.
“So I had dinner at Lakeside Bistro—they have a great chef there, excellent food. They have some openings for waitstaff, I heard. You could make some serious scratch, Kyra.”
Kyra snorted.
“I’m not kidding. I dated a girl who worked there last summer. You can make some great money in the summer months,” he’d said. “All the fat cats come up from the city to their vacation homes. They drink a lot, they eat a lot, and they tip a lot. You should totally do it. It’s not that far out of the city. The girl I dated said you could rent for pretty cheap, too.”
When she told Brandi about her chance meeting with Trace, Brandi’s eyes lit up. “You should totally do it. A small town would be better for Ruby than your part of Queens.”
That was true. And cheap rent sounded really good to Kyra. Brandi was right—Ruby would be starting school soon, and Kyra was leery of their rough neighborhood. Maybe she was wrong, but Kyra guessed that a school district with money like they probably had in East Beach would be better than the impoverished school district where they lived now.
The more Kyra thought about it, the more she agreed—she should totally do it. So one Saturday she’d found a babysitter. She’d taken the train up to Black Springs, paid an outrageous amount for a cab to East Beach, and applied at the Lakeside Bistro.
“Thank goodness you came in,” said Randa Lassiter, who, along with her husband, owned the bistro. “We can’t find anyone to work the day shift. Everyone wants nights, because that’s where the real money is. If you can work days, I can throw a few night shifts your way, and if something opens up there, I’ll move you to nights.”
She’d explained to Kyra what she could expect to make, and Kyra hardly had to think about it—she’d taken the job on the spot, then had packed up Ruby, who had tearfully said good-bye to her best friend at day care, Taleesha, and had moved to East Beach.
Things were better. But Kyra was determined to make things even better for her and her daughter.
She stood up and returned to the fridge to study its contents. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the fridge that looked even remotely appetizing at this late hour. She glanced at the apples as if they’d hurled a personal insult at her and shut the fridge door. She moved on to the pantry, where she discovered that her package of Oreo cookies had been decimated. She kept them on the very top shelf so Ruby couldn’t find them, but there were only two left. Damn babysitter. She removed the package from the pantry, grabbed the last two cookies, then walked across the kitchen to toss the package into the bin beneath the sink. As she stood back up and stuffed a cookie into her mouth, a movement outside caught her eye. She leaned forward to look out the window and saw her neighbor carrying what looked like a small table on his shoulder. He put it in the bed of his truck, then walked back to his cottage, his dog enthusiastically trotting behind.
As Kyra munched on her Oreo, her neighbor appeared again with another, identical table on his shoulder. He had one of those firefighter physiques—strong and built for physical work. Not like the guys at US Fitness—some of them had been so puffed up they’d looked like a bunch of Michelin men walking around the offices. No, this guy was more natural in his strength, and Kyra found that far more appealing.
He placed the table next to the other one, then went about strapping the two together and securing them with nylon rope. Was he moving? That would be ideal—that dog was too tempting for Ruby. But then again, someone else would take his place, and if they had kids, or a cat, or a parakeet, or floats for the lake, Ruby would be just as excited. And it wasn’t hurting Kyra’s feelings any to have a bit of eye candy living next door, even if he walked a little on the weird side. That’s about as close as Kyra got to sex these days—checking guys out through the kitchen window.
She stuffed the second cookie in her mouth—whole thing, wasting no time—pondering her neighbor when he suddenly looked up and directly at her. Crap, had he seen her watching him? Worse, could he see her with a mouth full of cookie? She suddenly ducked down, then bent over and darted out of sight. Note to self—don’t stand at the kitchen window in plain sight while you ogle the guy next door. The last thing she needed was complications with the neighbor.