Pushing aside a lifetime of criticism about her sister, Kat said, “Thank you so much for bringing by that casserole. Jenny and I will really enjoy it tonight.”
Susan apologized again. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of giving you anything last night. The church ladies have been so helpful—they’ve kept our freezer stocked for months.”
“I’m glad you’ve had that type of support,” Kat said. And she was. She still couldn’t imagine any of her friends in New York cooking for a colleague in need. Certainly no one would organize food week after week. “How was Daddy last night? Did either of you get any sleep?”
Susan’s smile was brilliant, warming Kat from across the room. “Oh, yes, sweetheart. I had to wake him up once for his meds, but he fell back to sleep right away. It was the best night he’s had in months.”
Glancing around the living room, Kat swallowed a proud grin. She had been right to come down here. If one night could help Susan so much, what would an entire week accomplish?
Susan went on. “And it was a godsend, not fixing breakfast for Jenny before the sun was up. That elementary school bus comes so early, it’s a crime.”
Kat was accustomed to being awake well before the sun rose. She usually fit in ninety minutes on the treadmill in the company gym before she even thought about attending her first dance rehearsal of the day. Of course, with the walking boot, she hadn’t been able to indulge in the tension tamer of her typical exercise routine. She’d had to make due with a punishing regimen of crunches instead, alternating sets with modified planks and a series of leg lifts meant to keep her hamstrings as close to dancing strength as possible.
As for Jenny’s breakfast? It had been some hideous purple-and-green cereal, eaten dry, because there wasn’t any milk in the house. Kat had been willing to concede the point on cold cereal first thing in the morning, but she had silently vowed that the artificially dyed stuff would be out of the house by the time Jenny got home that afternoon. Whole-grain oats would be better for the little girl—and they wouldn’t stain the milk in Jenny’s bowl.
There’d be time enough to pick up some groceries that afternoon. For now, Kat knew her mother had another task in mind. “So, are you going to drop me off at the studio now?”
Susan looked worried. “It’s really too much for me to ask. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it when I called you, dear. I’m sure I can take care of everything in the next couple of weeks.”
“Don’t be silly,” Kat said. “I know Rachel was running things for you. She’s been gone for a while, though, and someone has to pick up the slack. I came to Eden Falls to help.”
Susan fussed some more, but she was already leading the way out to her car. It may have been ten years since Kat had lived in Eden Falls, but she knew the way to the Morehouse Dance Academy by heart. As a child, she had practically lived in her mother’s dance studio, from the moment she could pull on her first leotard.
The building was smaller than she remembered, though. It seemed lost in the sea of its huge parking lot. A broken window was covered over with a cardboard box, and a handful of yellowed newspapers rested against the door, like kindling.
Kat glanced at her mother’s pinched face, and she consciously coated her next words with a smile. “Don’t worry, Mama. It’ll just take a couple of hours to make sure everything is running smoothly. Go home and take care of Daddy. I’ll call Amanda to bring me back to Rachel’s.”
“Let me just come in with you….”
Kat shook her head. Once her mother started in on straightening the studio, she’d stay all morning. Susan wasn’t the sort of woman to walk away from a project half-done. Even
if
she had a recuperating husband who needed her back at the house.
“I’ll be fine, Mama. I know this place like the back of my hand. And I’m sure Rachel left everything in good shape.”
Good shape. Right.
The roof was leaking in the main classroom, a slow drip that had curled up the ceiling tiles and stained one wall. Kat shuddered to think about the state of the warped hardwood floor. Both toilets were running in the public restroom, and the sinks were stained from dripping faucets. Kat ran the hot water for five minutes before she gave up on getting more than an icy trickle.
The damage wasn’t limited to the building. When Kat turned on the main computer, she heard a grinding sound, and the screen flashed blue before it died altogether. The telephone handset was sticky; a quick sniff confirmed that someone had handled it with maple syrup on their fingers.
In short, the dance studio was an absolute and complete mess.
Kat seethed. How could students be taking classes here? How could her parents’ hard-earned investment be ruined so quickly? What had Rachel done?
Muttering to herself, Kat started to sift through the papers on the desk in the small, paneled office. She found a printout of an electronic spreadsheet—at least the computer had been functional back in January.
The news on the spreadsheet, though, told a depressing story. Class sizes for the winter term had dwindled from their robust fall enrollment. Many of those payments had never been collected. Digging deeper, Kat found worse news—a dozen checks, dating back to September—had never been cashed. Search as she might, she could find no checks at all for the spring term; she couldn’t even find an enrollment list for the classes.
Susan had been absolutely clear, every time Kat talked to her: Rachel had shaped up. Rachel had run the dance studio for the past six months, ever since Mike’s diagnosis had thrown Susan’s life into utter disarray. Rachel had lined up teachers, had taken care of the books, had kept everything functioning like clockwork.
Rachel had lied through her teeth.
Kat’s fingers trembled with rage as she looked around the studio. Her heart pounded, and her breath came in short gasps. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, angry tears that made her chew on her lower lip.
And so Kat did the only thing she knew how to do. She tried to relieve her stress the only way she could. She walked across the floor of the classroom, her feet automatically turning out in a ballerina’s stance, even though she wore her hated blue boot. Resenting that handicap, she planted her good foot, setting one hand on the barre with a lifetime of familiarity.
She closed her eyes and ran through the simplest of exercises. First position, second position, third position, fourth. She swept her free arm in a graceful arc, automatically tilting her head to an angle that maximized the long line of her neck. She repeated the motions again, three times, four. Each pass through, she felt a little of her tension drain, a little of her rage fade.
She was almost able to take a lung-filling breath when heavy footsteps dragged her back to messy, disorganized reality. “
There
you are!”
Rye stopped in the doorway, frozen into place by the vision of Kat at the barre. All of a sudden, he was catapulted back ten years in time, to the high school auditorium, to the rough stage where he had plodded through the role of Curly.
He had caught Kat stretching out for dancing there, too, backstage one spring afternoon. She’d had her heel firmly anchored on a table, bending her willowy limbs with a grace that had made his own hulking, teenage body awaken to desire. He could see her now, only a few feet away, close enough for him to touch.
But his interest had been instantly quenched when he’d glimpsed Kat’s face, that day so long ago. Tears had tracked down her smooth cheeks, silvering the rosy skin that was completely bare of the blush and concealer and all the other makeup crap that high school girls used. Even as he took one step closer, he had seen her flinch, caught her eyes darting toward the dressing room. He’d heard the brassy laugh of one of the senior girls, one of the cheerleaders, and he’d immediately understood that the popular kids had been teasing the young middle-school dancer. Again.
Rye had done the only thing that made sense at the time, the one thing that he thought would make Kat forget that she was an outsider. He’d leaned forward to brush a quick fraternal kiss against her cheek.
But somehow—even now, he couldn’t say how—he’d ended up touching his lips to hers. They’d been joined for just a heartbeat, a single, chaste connection that had jolted through him with the power of a thousand sunsets.
Rye could still remember the awkward blush that had flamed his face. He really had meant to kiss her on the cheek. He’d swear it—on his letter jacket and his game baseball, and everything else that had mattered to him back in high school. He had no idea if he had moved wrong, or if she had, but after the kiss she had leaped away as if he’d scorched her with a blowtorch.
Thinking back, Rye still wanted to wince. How had he screwed
that
up? He had three sisters. He had a lifetime of experience kissing cheeks, offering old-fashioned, brotherly support. He’d certainly never kissed one of his sisters on the lips by mistake.
Kat’s embarrassment had only been heightened when a voice spoke up from the curtains that led to the stage. “What would Mom think, Kat? Should I go get her, so she can see what you’re really like?” They’d both looked up to see Rachel watching them. Her eyes had been narrowed, those eyes that were so like Kat’s but so very, very different. Even then, ten years ago, there hadn’t been any confusing the sisters. Only an eighth grader, Rachel hadn’t yet resorted to the dyed hair and tattoos that she sported as an adult. But she’d painted heavy black outlines around her eyes, and she wore clunky earrings and half a dozen rings on either hand. Rachel had laughed at her sister then, obviously relishing Kat’s embarrassment over that awful mistake of a kiss.
Rachel must not have told, though. There hadn’t been any repercussions. And Rye’s fumbling obviously hadn’t made any lasting impression—Kat hadn’t even remembered his name, yesterday at the train station.
Kat stiffened as she heard Rye’s voice. A jumble of emotions flashed through her head—guilt, because she shouldn’t be caught at the barre, not when she was supposed to be resting her injured foot. Shame, because no one should see the studio in its current state of disarray. Anger, because Rachel should never have let things get so out of hand, should never have left so much mess for Kat to clean up. And a sudden swooping sense of something else, something that she couldn’t name precisely. Something that she vaguely thought of as pleasure.
Shoving down that last thought—one that she didn’t have time for, that she didn’t deserve—she lowered her arm and turned to face Rye. “How did you get in here?”
“The front door was open. Maybe the latch didn’t catch when you came in?”
Kat barked a harsh laugh. “That makes one more thing that’s broken.”
Rye glanced around the studio, his eyes immediately taking in the ceiling leak. “That looks bad,” he said. “And the water damage isn’t new.”
Kat grimaced. “It’s probably about six months old.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s been six months since my father got sick. My sister, Rachel, has been running this place and…she’s not the best at keeping things together.”
Rye fought the urge to scowl when he heard Rachel’s name. Sure, the woman had her problems. But it was practically criminal to have let so much water get into a hardwood floor like this one. He barely managed not to shake his head. He’d dodged a bullet with Rachel, seeing through to her irresponsible self before he could be dragged down with her.
But it wasn’t Rachel standing in front of him, looking so discouraged. It was Kat. Kat, who had come home to help out her family, giving up her own fame and success because her people needed her.
Rye couldn’t claim to have found fame or success in Richmond. Not yet. But he certainly understood being called back home because of family. Before he was fully aware of the fact that he was speaking, he heard himself say, “I can help clean things up. Patch the roof, replace the drywall. The floor will take a bit more work, but I can probably get it all done in ten days or so.”
Kat saw the earnestness in Rye’s black eyes, and she found herself melting just a little. Rye Harmon was coming to her rescue. Again. Just as he had at the train station the day before.
That was silly, though. It wasn’t like she was still the starry-eyed eighth grader who had been enchanted by the baseball star in the lead role of the musical. She hardened her voice, so that she could remind herself she had no use for Eden Falls. “That sounds like a huge job! You’ll need help, and I’m obviously in no shape to get up on a ladder.” She waved a frustrated hand toward her booted foot.
Rye scarcely acknowledged her injury. “There’s no need for you to get involved. I have plenty of debts that I can call in.”
“Debts?”
“Brothers. Sisters. Cousins. Half of Eden Falls calls me in from Richmond, day or night, to help them out of a bind. What’s a little leak repair, in repayment?”
“Do any of those relatives know anything about plumbing?”
Rye looked concerned. “What’s wrong with the plumbing?”
For answer, Kat turned on her heel and walked toward the small restroom. The running toilets sounded louder now that she was staring at them with an eye toward repair. She nodded toward the sink. “There isn’t any hot water, either.”
Rye whistled, long and low. “This place looks like it’s been through a war.”
“In a manner of speaking.” Kat shrugged. “As I said, my sister’s been in charge. She’s not really a, um, detail person.”