The Pick Up Page 7

  “What, that I’m a genius?”

  “No, that a tomato is a fruit.”

  They both laughed. Kyle enjoyed the ease of it, the absence of the tension that had seemed to underscore so many of his conversations in the last month.

  “What about you?” Adam leaned back. “Word on the street is you’re a girl Friday.”

  “I’m a virtual personal assistant.” Kyle thought about his call with Shannon earlier and deflated a bit. “Slash travel agent slash PR rep slash general crisis manager.”

  Adam frowned, dark brows scrunching together. The man had a scowl that could stop traffic.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a bit of everything and not what I ever thought I’d be. I started in event planning after college. I interned for a charity in Seattle and helped plan fundraisers and things, then got hired as the charity director’s personal assistant.” He pursed his lips and tried to decide how to handle the next part. “After Caroline was born, being out and following my boss while she traveled around the country to raise funds got tricky, so I took my job virtual. It gives me time to spend with Caroline and still keeps me busy. The business has grown too, over the years, and I’ve taken on a few other clients. I do what they need me to do.”

  “Is it what you want to be doing though?” Adam asked.

  “It’s what I’m doing now. It’s . . . it’s been a tough year.” He hoped his voice and expression implied and I don’t want to talk about it.

  “Must be nice being back in your hometown.”

  Kyle snorted. “I wouldn’t say nice. It was . . . necessary, but sometimes I wake up and it’s everything I can do not to pack us up and get the hell out of here. But my dad likes having us around.”

  “You said he’s working tonight?”

  “He works as a security guard at the hospital.”

  “My sister says she knows him. Did he work at the hospital while you were growing up?”

  Kyle shook his head. “He got laid off from his factory job a few years ago, and it’s hard for a guy with less than ten years to go before retirement to find anything full-time in a small town like this, so he took what he could get.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  Kyle shrugged. “He says he’s doing okay, but I know he appreciates the help taking care of the house. It’s weird being here as a grown-up though.”

  “I noticed you didn’t move back into your old bedroom.” There was a crease in Adam’s cheek like he was trying to hold down a smile.

  “I told Caroline she got to live in my room because the bed was too small for me, and that’s true, but I think if I woke up in there every day and had to be greeted by my T-ball trophies, I’d probably go jump off a bridge or gouge my eyes out with a spoon.” His dad had said Kyle needed to get out and make friends. This was not the way to go about it. “Sorry, that was grim.”

  “Grim,” Adam said, “but reasonable.”

  It was a relief that he didn’t try to cheer Kyle up. So many times people went for the old when life gives you lemons approach. If that were that case, losing Olivia must have been equivalent of an entire lemon tree. He was grateful his dad had been there to take them in, and was happy to help out, but he didn’t see the current situation as the best possible solution, and was glad he didn’t have to pretend like it was in front of Adam.

  “I should get going,” Adam said, half standing. Kyle checked his watch. It was later than he had expected. Around them, the sun had mostly set and the backyard had turned gray.

  At the front door, the words that would ask Adam if he wanted to stay longer were forming on Kyle’s tongue when Adam said, “Thanks for having me. Always nice to get to know my students and their parents better.”

  Kyle’s invitation died on his lips. “My students and their parents.” That was how Adam saw him. A parent.

  “Right. Thanks for coming, Mr. Hathaway. It was good to get to know you too.”

  Adam nodded and stepped out into the evening. Kyle shut the door behind him. He watched the headlights of Adam’s car as he backed out of the driveway.

  In the den, Caroline had fallen asleep in front of her movie. Kyle bent and scooped her up off the couch.

  “Daddy?” she asked, bleary.

  “Yup, it’s me. Time for bed.”

  “But I’m not sleepy.”

  Kyle squeezed her as he headed up the stairs. “No problem, Bean.”

  Kyle still felt a bit out of sorts the next morning, like he’d been shot down at the end of a date. It was weird, because what else had he expected to happen? Kyle had spontaneously invited Adam to dinner in the grocery store while his daughter and half the town had watched. If he’d wanted a romantic evening, he should have reconsidered his approach a little. It was very possible Adam had only accepted the invitation to be polite, and Kyle should have been satisfied with that. After weeks of only speaking to people who were related to him or a quarter of his age, it was a relief to talk to someone new. Olivia had said almost the same thing about eight months after Caroline was born.

  “You’re never around,” she’d sobbed. “You work all day and you’re out at some function almost every night. I need to talk to someone with a vocabulary.” There had been dark circles under her eyes. He’d never seen her cry before, and the experience had shaken him. A week later, Kyle had started making changes toward taking his business virtual.

  He thought he understood now what Olivia had meant. While Caroline’s vocabulary had expanded considerably in the last six years, her primary conversation topics were school and cartoon princesses, and there were days he hoped for one of Amazonia’s animal friends to rise up out of nowhere to drag him off into the jungle.

  That was what he was feeling that morning, he decided. It wasn’t attraction. The night before hadn’t been a date. Maybe a parent-teacher conference in an alternative location? With a little coffee to get him jump-started, he could see that it was simply gratitude and relief at knowing his social skills hadn’t completely atrophied.

  On Monday, Kyle had lunch downtown with Ben. They talked about their kids, sports, cars. Ben tried to reminisce about things that had happened when they were growing up, and Kyle dodged the topic. The difference between their relationship at seventeen and what it was now made him uncomfortable. Back then, their days had been full of adventures and half-baked plans to help Kirsten sneak out of her parent’s house so she and Ben could go make out in his car. Now, Ben seemed so settled and Kyle was starting all over again.

  After lunch, he headed across the street to a café he’d seen when he’d pulled up. He didn’t remember it from his childhood, or from his visits to see his dad after he’d moved away, but a sign in the window said Free Wi-Fi, which was all he needed to know. He’d already eaten, but he ordered a coffee and a muffin anyway and sat down at an empty table. There were four new emails from Eva, two from Shannon, and a number of others from various publishers, lawyers, travel companies, and one from Shannon’s bank reminding him her credit card payment was due. Kyle worked through them.

  His big project, the one that Shannon had called him about the night before, was to organize a long weekend in Vegas.

  “I’m burnt out,” Shannon had said. “I need some me-time. Ted’s working eighty hours a week, and I’m sick of coming home to an empty house. Can you get me set up with a girls’ weekend in Vegas?” Because Shannon’s me-time never meant traveling with fewer than three other people.

  Flights were easy, Shannon had enough miles to fly round-trip to Vegas once a month for the next decade. Hotels were trickier, since Shannon’s naturopath had diagnosed her with a sensitivity to most commercial laundry detergents. Kyle sent off a number of emails to boutique hotels on the strip to find out the type of laundry detergent their cleaning services used. They were not the weirdest emails he’d sent in his professional life. Two years ago, he’d taken on a client, a cardiologist from Portland, who was so afraid to fly that he wouldn’t get on plane without gettin
g a detailed maintenance history from the airline. That had been a tougher assignment than finding out who used what soap.

  Kyle was making a list of restaurants to contact about Shannon’s dietary restrictions when the chair on the other side of his table was pulled back and someone sat down. It was a woman with dark hair and blue eyes. She wore an apron with the café’s logo printed on it.

  “You’re Kyle Fenton?” she asked, in the same tone she might have said You’re George Clooney? Kyle wondered where she’d come from.

  “I am?”

  “Gord’s kid?”

  He folded his hands into his lap so she didn’t see him ball them into fists. In Red Creek, he would always be Gord’s kid. “That’s me.”

  “I’m Rebecca. This is my café.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “I hear you’re an event planner.”

  “Oh.” He hadn’t expected her to say that. Wasn’t she going to tell him how sorry she was to hear about Olivia? “I’m actually a—”

  “I want to hire you,” she said. There it was. The other kind of pity.

  Kyle held up his hands. “Did my dad put you up to this? Because I haven’t really planned anything major in the last few years and—”

  “But you could, right?” She smiled again. It was a toothy smile that said this woman might eat him alive, but the prospect of a real live planning job was very tempting. In front of him, his laptop showed new emails from Eva, each with an increasing number of exclamation marks in the subject line. He closed the screen.

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

  “It’s going to be big. Can you come back? I can’t talk now; it’s busy.” Sure enough, the café was full, and there were seven people lined up at the cash. “We close at six o’clock. Come at six fifteen.”

  “Tonight?” He usually had dinner on the table at six. Rebecca smiled her big bad wolf smile again. “Sure,” he said.

  “Great. See you then!” She pushed back from the table and hurried away.

  The rest of the afternoon tripped by in a rush. He sent inquiries to restaurants in Vegas, crossed hotels off his list based on their responses to his laundry question, and emailed out blog posts for Eva’s book tour. At three o’clock, he packed up his things and drove to the school to pick up Caroline. His head buzzed with possibilities for Rebecca’s mystery event, and he practically made Caroline duck and roll to get in the van.

  He was home before four and took a sweet potato casserole out of the freezer.

  “I thought it was fish taco night?” Kyle’s dad didn’t look pleased with the change.

  “It was fish taco night, but now it’s sweet potato casserole night.” Kyle turned the oven on. “Put this in the oven when it beeps to say the temperature is set. It will be ready at six thirty.”

  “Yes, sir.” His father gave him a quick salute. “So organized. What did I ever do without you?”

  “You lived on salt and butter and takeout, and you had a heart attack two years ago. As an employee of the health care system, even a relatively new one, you were expected to know better.” Kyle kissed the top of his head.

  “Where are you off to? I take it you’re telling me all this because you won’t be here for dinner?”

  “Nope.” Kyle pulled out a bag of premixed greens from the fridge. “Use the ranch dressing, not the Caesar. Caroline doesn’t like the Caesar. Sometimes she says she doesn’t like the ranch either, so ask her before you toss the salad.”

  “Kyle, I know what to do. Where are you going?”

  “I have to meet a client about an event!” He raced up the stairs to get ready.

  In an hour and a half, Kyle put together a short portfolio with pictures of events he’d organized in Seattle. He did a quick internet search on the café, but only found their website, which said it was Under Construction, and a Facebook page that hadn’t had a new post in six months. He fidgeted in the desk chair as he continued to research, unable to keep still. This might be it. After a month at his dad’s house, his situation might be looking up.

  He raided his closet. The shelves were stuffed with novelty T-shirts. His wardrobe had been reduced to Super Dad Kyle. Toward the back, he found two suit bags that contained his working clothes from Seattle.

  He settled on a pair of charcoal trousers, white shirt, black vest, and a tweed jacket. The jacket had always made Olivia call him the professor when he wore it, because of the leather patches on the elbows. It had turned out that Olivia had a preference for the academic vibe, and Kyle had unapologetically used that fact to his advantage on the occasional time they’d had a night out. His throat tightened as he considered the jacket again. He slid it back into the closet and selected a pinstriped blue one.

  There was a fight with the iron to get the shirt into wearable condition. He hung the jacket and pants in the bathroom while he showered to steam out the worst of the wrinkles. He took ten extra minutes to get his hair styled the way he’d worn it in Seattle. When he got downstairs, his father whistled.

  “Wow, Daddy,” Caroline said. “You’re so different!” Kyle decided to take that as a six-year-old’s version of a compliment.

  “It’s a whole new side of you,” his father agreed. “So what’s the event?”

  “Is it weird that I don’t know? I got ambushed by this crazy lady downtown this afternoon. She said she wanted to hire me and told me to come back tonight.”

  “It’s a surprise?” Caroline asked, eyes wide.

  “Yes, Jelly Bean.” Kyle kissed her cheek. “It’s a surprise. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.” They wished him luck, and Kyle hurried out to his van to meet Rebecca at the café.

  Big plans for the cafe.

  Need your help.

  Come after close tonight, 6:30.

  Adam parked his car in front of the café. The text messages had come from Rebecca earlier that afternoon. He’d texted her to ask her what was up, but she hadn’t replied.

  The sign in the café’s door said Closed. The lights were off in the display cases, but he could see Rebecca sitting at one of the tables, talking to someone who had his back to Adam. Adam let himself in, and the bell over the door tinkled.

  “Oh good, you’re here!” Rebecca hopped up from her chair and came toward him. She hugged him, but Adam didn’t bring his arms up to return the gesture. He was too focused on the man across the room, who had just turned around.

  It was Kyle.

  Holy shit.

  It was a different Kyle.

  Holy fucking shit.

  Adam could barely process what he was seeing. The rumpled skinny-jeaned comic book T-shirted single-dad man-boy was gone. He had transformed, suddenly sophisticated and confident and unspeakably attractive.

  “I think you know Mr. Fenton,” Rebecca said, but Adam couldn’t take his eyes off Kyle. He took in the narrow-cut blazer with the vest buttoned snugly underneath it, and the gray pants stretching down long legs to black leather shoes that pointed at the toes. Even his face was different; it seemed leaner, older. Adam couldn’t turn away. That was why he saw the moment that Kyle’s blank smile faded, and his stare hardened.

  “What’s going on?” Adam asked.

  “I was about to ask the same thing,” Kyle’s voice matched his expression. The sound made Rebecca still.

  “It’s like I was telling you,” she said. “I want to plan a celebration. I’ve owned the café for five years, and I want to plan . . .” Her voice faltered, as Kyle’s face darkened.

  “What does Mr. Hathaway have to do with your café?” Kyle asked.

  Rebecca’s cheery expression faded a little, but she kept talking. “He’s my brother and—”

  “Your brother?”

  Adam had a sinking sensation that had not been the right answer.

  “Yes and—”

  “Did you put her up to this?” Kyle was talking to Adam now. His eyes, normally dark chocolate brown, were sharp and flinty. Adam still wasn’t clear on what was going on
, but whatever it was, it was going south quickly.

  “No!” he said. And when he saw the scowl on Rebecca’s face, he was forced to add, “That is, I told her about what you do and—”

  “Did my dad put you up to this?”

  “What?” This was Rebecca. “No! I mean he comes into the café sometimes and he said you’d come back to town and that you’d be looking for work. I just thought that—”

  Kyle shook his head. He turned away from them and gathered up a stack of papers from the table. There was a laptop set up too, with a slideshow running pictures of a flashy party.

  Oh shit.

  “It’s what I do now.”

  Kyle had said that when Adam had asked him about work the other night. Based on the way he’d frowned, it was clear it wasn’t what he’d always done or what he wanted to be doing long-term.

  “But I need an event planner. I wanted to talk about—” Rebecca was still talking. Adam put a hand on her arm and, mercifully, she stopped.

  “I’m sorry.” Kyle packed the laptop into a black case. “There’s obviously been a misunderstanding. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m a professional and I don’t need a handout.” His voice wavered and Adam’s gut clenched. “I’m sure you’ll find you’re capable of organizing this on your own. I’m sure Mr. Hathaway can . . .” He faltered, cleared his throat, and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Mr. Hathaway is very capable . . . Excuse me.”

  Rebecca went to go after him, and Adam stepped in front of her. Kyle hurried out the café door. The bell tinkled overhead. It was then that Adam noticed Kyle’s van parked on the street.

  As soon as the van drove away, Rebecca turned on him.

  “Oh my god, Adam! What the hell?”

  Adam glared at her. “Exactly, Rebecca, what the hell? What the hell were you thinking?!”

  “I wanted to help!” She glared at him. “I don’t know what happened. He arrived and he was amazing! He had these ideas, and then you showed up and it all went to hell. Why is that, Adam?”

  “Did you tell him you were my sister?”