“I’d better head out,” he said.
“Should I have Mom call you when she wakes?” the kid asked hopefully.
“No, that’s fine. Let her rest.” He’d better get going before Amiee started looking at pictures of wedding dresses for her mother.
“Okay.” Amiee sounded disappointed as she walked him to the front door. “You can stop by anytime,” she assured him.
“Even if I don’t bring KFC?” he teased.
“Oh sure,” she said, taking him seriously. “But if you do happen to have a bucket with you, all the better.”
Steve headed out to his truck and couldn’t keep from chuckling.
Chapter 14
For the whole following week, Steve refused to allow Cassie on the construction site. It both angered and frustrated her—at this rate, it would take years to get in her hours. While Cassie might not have had any contact with Steve, he communicated with Amiee on a regular basis. Cassie overheard their phone calls, which her daughter did her best to keep secret. She let Amiee believe she didn’t have a clue what was transpiring between the two.
From what Cassie could make out, Steve was checking up on her, making sure she was taking her meds and not working too hard at the salon. Actually, the injury was pretty much self-limiting. Cassie had overdone it that Monday and had paid a steep price. By the time Steve arrived she’d been ready to collapse.
On Monday, eight days after the accident, Cassie was starting to feel more like herself. It was a gorgeous day in the Pacific Northwest. The sun was out and the temperatures were in the mid-seventies with a light breeze. Amiee finished with her homework in record time without Cassie even needing to ask, which came as a surprise. She assumed her daughter wanted to get out into the gorgeous sunshiny day with her friends, but she hung around even when her homework was done.
Cassie was thinking about mixing up a big salad for dinner when someone knocked on the front door.
“I’ll get it.” Amiee tore out of her room like a prisoner set free. She opened the door and then a high, overly loud voice said, “Oh hi, Steve, what a surprise to see you.”
Cassie didn’t know what these two had concocted, but she was fairly certain she was about to find out.
Steve came into her apartment with his fingertips tucked in his back pockets. “How are you feeling?” he asked, his eyes on her.
“She’s in a much better mood,” Amiee answered for her mother.
Cassie tore her gaze away from Steve long enough to glare at her daughter. “I can answer for myself, thank you.” That said, she returned her attention to Steve and announced, “I’m in a much better mood.”
He grinned, and once more it came unbidden to her how sexy he looked. She really shouldn’t be thinking these kinds of thoughts about him and at the same time was completely helpless to stop.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said casually. “Are you up to a little outing?”
“Mom and I would love—”
Cassie cut her daughter off with a single look. “What do you have in mind?” she asked, as if the possibility existed that she might have other plans.
“I know you heard about the building lot Habitat recently purchased not far from here.”
Cassie could feel her heart starting to race. “I did hear something about it.” Megan had casually mentioned it, but Cassie had been afraid to press for more details. She was only one of several people on the waiting list for new homes and it seemed wrong to ask for this piece of land when there were surely others on the list ahead of her.
“Being it’s such a nice afternoon, I thought you might like to take a look at that lot,” Steve said.
Amiee folded her hands like she was in deep prayer, and she looked to Cassie, her eyes wide and appealing. “Please, Mom, can we at least look at the property?”
Cassie had no intention of refusing. “I think we could squeeze it into our busy schedule.”
Unable to hold back her glee, Amiee jumped up and down, clapping her hands.
“If you can behave yourself,” Cassie added under her breath.
“I’ll be good, I promise,” Amiee assured her.
“It’s a go?” Steve looked to Cassie.
“It’s a go.”
He led the way outside and waited while she locked the apartment door.
Steve drove a car this time, a four-door sedan that looked as if he’d just driven it off the showroom floor. She’d only seen him with his truck. He must have read the question in her eyes because he opened the passenger door for her and stepped aside before explaining, “This was Alicia’s car.”
“Oh.” This was the first time he’d mentioned his dead wife.
Amiee hopped into the backseat and made loud sniffing sounds. “Wow, this car even smells new.”
“It’s over three years old,” Steve said, as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Alicia didn’t get a chance to drive it much and I mostly drive my truck.”
Cassie didn’t need to worry about carrying the conversation. Amiee chatted with Steve like they were longtime friends. She filled him in about her week at school, chatting about a difficult math test and her friend Claudia, who was no longer her BAE. “I hope you don’t mind me telling you these things,” she said, stopping in the middle of her long-winded story of why she’d downgraded Claudia.
“Not at all,” Steve assured her. “This is fascinating.”
“Mom insists on hearing every detail of my day,” her daughter added, as if burdened with the telling. “It was something Mom and her sisters did at the dinner table with their mom and dad, so now Mom makes me give her a minute-by-minute report of my day.”
Steve took his gaze off the road long enough to make eye contact with Cassie. He arched his brows and she was left with no choice but to explain. “I wanted more than a one-word reply when we chat at dinner.”
“See what I mean?” Amiee said, sighing with the weight of such a heavy burden.
“Got it,” he said.
It didn’t take more than ten minutes to reach the property, which was on the west hill of Kent. Steve had barely put the car in park when Amiee threw open the backseat passenger door and leaped out with all the urgency of someone avoiding an explosion.
“This is it?” her daughter cried, already halfway onto the lot.
“This is it,” Steve echoed, following her onto the land. “And it’s all yours.”
Cassie had a hard time taking it in. The lot was huge, much bigger than anything she’d ever hoped or imagined. Slowly she joined her daughter. The back part of the lot had several trees tucked up against a fence. Steve followed her. “What kind of trees are these?” Cassie asked. She reached up and examined a small bud.
“Apple. Two apple trees and a plum.”
Cassie sucked in a deep breath. “Fruit trees.”
“Mom, we can make applesauce. Claudia’s grandmother served us applesauce she cooked herself. It was so much better than what we buy at the store.”
“I bet it was.”
“Can we?”
“If we get enough apples, then yes, we could do that.”
In her enthusiasm, Amiee hugged the tree. “Give me apples,” she told the tree. “Lots and lots of apples.”
Cassie caught sight of Steve doing his best to hide a smile. He glanced down at the ground and softly chuckled.
Although there were neighbors on each side of the property, they both had fences up, so she had a clear idea of the lot size. It seemed immense. “Will there be room for a garden?” she asked Steve.
“Would you like that?”
Afraid her voice would betray the emotion that came over her, Cassie nodded. Her mother had kept a huge garden and it’d been her and her sisters’ job to weed it every summer. The three of them found ways to make games out of the task. Karen had taken delight in chasing her with a huge worm. Cassie had run through the sprinkler in order to avoid her sister and screamed loud enough to send her mother running out of the house.
She looked up and noticed Steve was talking to her. “I’ll check with Stan and see if we can situate the house in such a way that you have ample room for a garden.”