Kiss Me Now: A Romantic Comedy Read online

  “So, tell me how school is going,” Miss Lily said as we moved on to the green beans. “You feeling ready yet?”

  I sighed. “I don’t think I ever will. I was working in my classroom until after lunch, putting up a display of the metric system. And as I’m trying to staple butcher paper to the wall and think of cute puns, I’m thinking, ‘Am I rearranging deck chairs while The Titanic sinks?’ It won’t do me any good to have clever bulletin boards if I freeze when those lab tables fill with students.”

  “You worry too much,” Miss Lily said. “It’s a cliché for a reason, but truly, those children want to know how much you care before they care how much you know. Stand up there and let your true self shine through and the rest will take care of itself.”

  Miss Lily had taught high school English for twenty-five years, so I wanted to believe this, but I didn’t have that same twinkle in my eye that Miss Lily did, the one that invited whoever met her to come join her mischief. But I kept any further worries for myself. Burdening Miss Lily with them would be a poor repayment for all the kindness she had shown me in the last few months.

  We worked in comfortable silence for a while, plucking crisp string beans and adding them to Miss Lily’s basket. I had always liked green beans well enough, but they’d been a revelation when they’d ripened a couple of weeks ago and I’d brought my first batch home to stir fry straight from the vine. They’d popped and burst in my mouth, tasting like good earth and sunshine. “I can’t imagine I’ll love anything else from this garden as much as I love fresh beans.”

  “Wait until the sweet corn comes in next month. Nothing like an ear picked from the stalk then walked right into your kitchen and cooked.” Miss Lily paused for a minute to pat at her glistening forehead with a hand-embroidered kerchief from the pocket of her gardening shirt. She glanced over the rows and smiled. “Gardens are how I get to know God, and how he shows his love for me. Sweet corn is proof.”

  I wished I had that same kind of faith, but I was glad I could at least borrow from Miss Lily’s unshakeable belief. In gardens. In corn. In me. Every time Miss Lily spoke one of these little nuggets, it felt like my world steadied a bit. Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have believed that I could ever regain the faith that people were fundamentally good and kind. But Miss Lily was slowly convincing me that at least one twinkly-eyed octogenarian on this earth was exactly that, and one was better than none.

  Immediate annoyance followed the thought. Her Ian is an absolute idiot for not coming to soak this all up. Miss Lily had seven grandchildren, and two lived in other states, so it was understandable they didn’t come to visit often. I had met most of the other five. Landon, Ian’s brother fresh out of law school, had been by a few times. And Ian’s cousins all visited to check on Miss Lily. But Ian, the one who lived closest, somehow could not be bothered to check on his grandmother.

  The late afternoon sun was sliding toward dusk, and though Miss Lily turned her head at the sound of every car coming down the road with an air of expectation, there was still no sign of him as we gathered the last of the ripe beans.

  Well, I couldn’t do anything about my neighbor’s flaky grandson, but I could at least try to manage Miss Lily’s expectations, prepare her for yet another weekend where Ian the Idiot didn’t show.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” I noted, keeping my voice casual.

  Miss Lily glanced at the sky. “Another hour at least. Though I should get this haul to Mary so she can start supper.”

  I wanted to say, “Tell her she’s only cooking for you two,” but I couldn’t bear to squash Miss Lily’s hopes so directly. Maybe my best bet was to give Miss Lily something else to look forward to. “What are we doing in the garden tomorrow?”

  “We are doing nothing,” Miss Lily told me. “I’ll be transplanting the fall lettuce seedlings, but you have work to do on your house. You’re going to be awfully busy when school starts. Better use your time while you have it. Are you working on the floors next?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The sound of a riding mower cut through the quiet dusk as the teenage boy across the road set to work cutting his lawn. Better now than 8 AM, I decided. I raised my voice to be heard over the high whine of the engine. “I need to refinish the front room floors. But why don’t you let me come over first thing in the morning and help you with the planting? I’d love to. I find it very satisfying.”

  “You’re sweet, honey, but my grandson can do it. You get those floors taken care of. You’ll feel better not having them to worry about.”

  I studied the elderly woman as she bent to examine a bell pepper plant, my irritation toward her grandson renewed. “I don’t think he’s coming, Miss Lily. No one who’s ever eaten Mary’s cooking would risk missing supper. If he’s not here now, I think you’d better assume he won’t be here at all.”

  I braced myself for the brightness to dim in Miss Lily’s eyes, but her smile was steady as ever when she said, “You worry too much. He’ll be here.”

  “Well, I hope so for your sake, Miss Lily. But just know if your grandson doesn’t show up, I’ll be here first thing in the morning to help you with the planting.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” a male voice said from the edge of the garden.

  We both turned from the pepper plant, and Miss Lily’s face brightened even more as she hurried down the row toward a tall man with dark blond hair, broad shoulders, and a big grin on his face. The mower had covered the sound of his arrival.

  “Ian,” Miss Lily cried as he hurried to meet her, his arms stretched out for her hug.

  “Hey, Gran,” he said, gathering her close to his chest. “How are you?”

  “Completely copacetic now that you’re here.” She stepped back and waved me over.

  I walked toward them slowly, taking the measure of this prodigal grandson.

  “You cut it awfully close,” Gran scolded him, but her tone held a world of love. “Mary will have supper on the table soon.”

  “Gran, how can you say I’m late when I didn’t tell you I was coming? This was supposed to be a surprise. I didn’t even tell Dad I was coming.”

  “Gran knows everything,” she said. “Brooke, come here and meet Ian.”

  I took the last few steps to put myself in handshake range. Ian’s wide grin for his Gran turned polite and cool as I extended my hand.

  “Ian, this is my lovely neighbor, Brooke Spencer. She’s going to be the new science teacher at Lincoln.”

  “Brooke,” he said, his voice as cool as his smile. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Same here,” I said. All of it good, and I don’t believe a word of it. I hoped the unspoken words showed up in my equally polite smile to him.

  “You’re off the hook,” he said. “I’ll help Gran with the planting tomorrow.”

  “How nice,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate having someone besides me coming over here every single day.” I hoped he understood this subtext too: I’m here because you never are.

  “I’m so pleased you two can finally meet,” Miss Lily said, unaware of the undercurrents between me and my new nemesis, Ian the Idiot. “Brooke, why don’t you go get cleaned up and come over for supper in half an hour? I’d love for two of my favorite people in the world to get to know each other.”

  Ian’s brow creased slightly, but he didn’t need to worry. I had no interest in crashing their dinner.

  “That’s kind, Miss Lily, but I have big plans for this squash tonight. Miss Mary doesn’t need to stress about two extra mouths to feed. I need to get home and try my own kitchen experiment.”

  “That squash will keep forever,” Miss Lily said. “You can experiment on it tomorrow. Mary just happened to cook a Mississippi roast, and there’s plenty to go round. I’ll send Ian for you in a half hour.”

  “But I—”

  “But nothing,” Miss Lily said. “You don’t want to hurt an old lady’s feelings, do you?”

  I sighed. “You’re not playing fa
ir.”

  “Child, you lost this argument the minute I mentioned Mary’s roast and you know it. Now go on and get ready for supper.”

  I conceded defeat and gathered up my garden tote, the squash resting inside on a pile of green beans large enough to keep me fed for three meals in a row. I gave Miss Lily a warm smile and Ian a polite nod and headed back to my place.

  Unlike the upscale neighborhood in McClean where I grew up, the properties here on the outskirts of town weren’t separated by fences or even perfectly manicured hedgerows. It was as if people in the country each had enough land that they didn’t feel the need to stake it out down to its last inch. The open yards allowed Miss Lily and me to wander between each other’s homes freely, and it was one of the things I liked best about Creekville: everyone seemed to feel this way. Chances were when the kid across the street finished mowing his half-acre lawn, he’d glance around to see if any neighbors’ grounds needed attention and cut it for them without a second thought.

  I walked into the kitchen and unloaded my tote into the waiting wooden bowl on the counter, giving the pile of fresh string beans and squash one last look of longing. Mary’s roast might be the only thing that could tempt me away because cooking up my small harvests had become one of my favorite parts of the day. Making small talk with strangers...not so much, however good I’d been at it in my old life.

  Still, Miss Lily had issued her orders, and I would obey her because she was the grandmother I’d always wished I had, and I could appreciate her even if Ian the Idiot could not.

  Chapter Three

  Ian

  I watched Brooke go, analyzing my reaction to her. I’d been startled by her appearance. It’s not that I’d expected her to dress the part in sunglasses and a trench coat, but neither had I expected the fresh-faced prettiness of a woman straight out of one of my mom’s Land’s End catalogues.

  I should have. My training was better than that. Sometimes corruption advertised itself in the faces of people who had indulged themselves too long in hard living. Rich foods and expensive drugs made for soft bodies and worn faces. But far more often, the most corrupt people were the ones you didn’t see coming, the kinds who looked unassuming and ordinary. Pleasant, even. It was what made them so dangerous.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Gran said again, squeezing me around the waist, and I returned the love.

  “Me too, but how did you know I was coming?”

  She smiled up at me. “Grandma instincts are as good as motherly ones about things like this. Now come on into the house. Let’s get you settled, then you can tell us all about the capi-dull over dinner.”

  I grinned at Gran’s unrepentant disdain for the nation’s capital. She’d always said the only thing more useless than a square tire was a politician. I couldn’t disagree, but the very consistency of their self-absorption and naked thirst for power enabled me to make a very nice living, so viva la politicians, the more craven, the better.

  We returned to the house, and I inhaled deeply as we stepped through the French doors into the large, open room she called the “gathering room.” The familiar scent of gardenias, soft but distinct, wafted to me. I didn’t know if the house smelled like Gran or vice versa, but I could never smell gardenias without it transporting me straight back to this room. It was the figurative and literal center of the home, where our family gathered at Thanksgiving for every minute that wasn’t spent in the formal dining room feasting on the spread Mary cooked up. We all lounged in the gathering room while the grandkids played at one end, the sports fans watched football at the other end, and everyone else spread on the sofas and comfy armchairs in between, laughing and catching up. It had been too long since I’d come to visit.

  “It’s been too long,” Gran said, echoing my identical thought. How did she do that? “But I’m glad you’re here. Now run up and put your things in your room while I check on dinner.”

  I fetched my weekend bag from my BMW convertible. It had been forever since I’d taken it for a joyride. I spent most of my time driving a sensible hybrid painted a color somewhere between beige and silver, the perfect car to blend into any neighborhood. The BMW was my gift to myself three years ago on my thirtieth birthday, a luxury for when I was on my own time, but I’d had so little time to put any mileage on it that it looked brand new.

  I traded my wrinkled gray golf shirt for a collared button up appropriate for Gran’s country club casual dinner aesthetic, splashed cold water over my face, and headed downstairs.

  “Hey, Mary.” I popped my head into the kitchen to smile at the woman tossing a salad. She was probably near sixty, but her plump face had a softness to it that always made her seem ten years younger, especially when she beamed at me.

  “Ian!” she said, setting down the salad tongs and clapping her hands in delight. “It’s so good to see you.”

  I sniffed the air. “All you have to do is cook this every Friday, and you’ll lure me out here every weekend.”

  She laughed and held her arms out for a hug. I stepped into the room, happy to oblige. “You’re too skinny,” she complained.

  “No good food in DC,” I said.

  She released me and shooed me toward the door. “Go find your grandmother. Dinner is almost ready.”

  I obeyed, wandering into the gathering room where Gran stood beside the drinks cart. “Bourbon?” she asked.

  “Sounds great.” I accepted the glass and then sat beside her on the sofa to wait for the gold digger to arrive. “So, tell me about this new neighbor of yours,” I said, taking a sip. She might be a poor judge of neighbors, but she had great taste in whiskey.

  “Brooke is a sweetheart, isn’t she?” Gran said.

  “Mmm,” I offered, a noncommittal sound that she could interpret however she liked.

  “She’s been a breath of fresh air around here. It’s good for Mary and me to have her youth and energy in the house. She’s smart as a whip and funny too.” She eyed me over the rim of her martini glass as she took a casual sip. “And pretty.”

  Gran was never as subtle as she liked to think, and I ignored the bait. “Hope she comes soon. I’m starving.” To know what she’s up to, I silently amended. And for Mary’s roast. Only a fool wouldn’t be salivating over the aroma drifting from the kitchen.

  The French doors stood open, and Brooke chose that moment to step in from the falling darkness outside. Speak of the devil and she shall appear. She’d changed to a sleeveless white dress that made her lightly tanned skin kind of glowy. If she’d put on any makeup, she’d used a very light hand. She was projecting the effortless dewiness that Washington socialites spent thousands at the high-end spas outside of the Beltway to achieve.

  “Hey,” she said, gliding toward Gran to drop a kiss on her cheek. She waved Gran back down when she rose to prepare Brooke a drink. “I’ll get it. You relax.”

  She poured herself vodka and tonic with a splash of cranberry, navigating the drink cart with ease, like she’d done it often. She knew exactly where to find everything, no hesitation as she reached for the ice tongs or seltzer water.

  “When did you say you moved here, Brooke?” I asked.

  “In February,” she said without looking up.

  Not quite five months ago. That was no time at all in a place like Creekville where most families had lived for a minimum of three generations. How had she weaseled into Gran’s life so quickly? It didn’t smell right. At all.

  “Do you like it here?” I asked, trying to draw her out. I needed a better sense of her so I could look for the cracks that would expose her.

  “I do,” she said, taking a seat in the armchair opposite us, her drink in hand. “It’s a nice antidote to the way I grew up.”

  It was a helpful clue and gave me a direction to follow. If she’d grown up opposite of Gran, that meant poor. The quiet wealth of Gran’s home and property would be dizzying to someone who came from less. Everything about Gran’s home was understated and welcoming, but there was no mistaking that
a house of this size on grounds this large, all of it beautifully maintained, spoke of deep pockets.

  I didn’t care about that kind of stuff. Not really. Not beyond liking that I could buy my dream car and afford a decent condo. Gran and Gramps had raised their three kids to work hard and value what they earned by their own hands, and my parents had passed that to me and my three siblings. One day, when I slowed down long enough to marry and have kids of my own, I’d teach them the same thing.

  But I currently worked too hard to slow down and figure out the dating and marriage thing. Besides, in my line of work, I saw way too many cheaters. But Brooke, she’d gone one rung lower to gold digger, if I didn’t miss my guess. And I never, ever missed my guess. My work depended on it.

  “So you’re Fred Sandberg’s niece, huh?” I asked.

  “Great-niece, yes.” She sipped her cocktail.

  “I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like a nice man.” All the Greene grandkids growing up had spent two weeks with Gran every summer at what she called Cousin Camp. She’d filled our days with all kinds of activities, and perhaps more importantly, plenty of unstructured time to play and explore. Often, we’d sent balls and frisbees sailing into Fred Sandberg’s yard, and if he happened to be out, he’d toss them back with a smile and a friendly wave, but not much conversation. “Fred didn’t have kids, did he?”

  “No. His wife died when he was my age, and he never remarried.”

  “Were you close?” I was careful to make my tone warm and curious, not interrogatory. She didn’t need to know she was now under investigation.

  “Not really. He’s my mother’s uncle, and she’s from Charlottesville. Most of her family is still there, so I only remember coming to visit him a couple of times, once when I was a kid, and once a couple of years ago when...” she trailed off, taking another sip of her drink.