Along Came Trouble(87)

She cocked her head at him like a tiny bird. “She’s told me all about you, too, sweet cheeks, and I’m sorry to say not all of it’s good. I’ve been rooting for you in the pool over at the home, but you were starting to look like a lost cause. I’m so glad you finally turned up. I was worried I was going to lose a hundred bucks.”

“You bet a hundred bucks on . . .” He really wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“That she’ll take you back. Georgie who runs the pool puts the odds at twenty to one against you, but I know my Carly better than that. She has a soft spot for you.”

That sounded promising. “Can I see her?”

“Oh, no. She told me not to let you in.”

He swore, and Nana smiled. “She knows I’m out here?”

“It was a sort of blanket prohibition. But I’ll tell her when I go back inside. Want me to pass along any messages?” She rocked up and down on her toes, clearly excited to be at the center of the drama.

His mind was blank. Whatever he had to say to Carly, he didn’t want to pass it along via this tiny, bawdy, captivating old woman. “Just that I’d like to talk to her.”

Nana frowned at him. “You’re going to have to do a lot better than that. Come back in an hour. I’ll make you some cookies. You’re much too thin.”

At ten, Nana informed him Carly had called him “rather a lot of awful things” and still wasn’t too keen on talking to him.

She steered him toward a chair on the corner of the deck, seemingly oblivious to the cameras flashing, and fed him warm shortbread and a glass of milk. “Do you have a plan?” she asked. “Because I’m starting to think maybe you’re not too bright.”

“Sorry?”

“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? What are you sorry about? You come all this way from Los Angeles, and you want to see Carly. Who wouldn’t? She’s a very sweet girl. But you can’t just expect her to take you back. You have to win her over. What’s your strategy?”

“I—I guess I thought I’d talk to her, and we could figure it out together.”

Nana shook her head, terribly disappointed. “That’s never going to work. She’ll cut you to pieces.” She patted him on the knee. “You go back to your sister’s house and come up with something. I’ll see you in an hour.”

When she went back in the house, he heard Carly through the open door. “—tell him to take his sorry ass back to L.A. where he can bonk brainless supermodels, and then I’ll—”

Just hearing her voice fired him up. He loved that woman. Maybe he’d been a little stupid about her, but he’d never been in love before, so it had taken him a while to get with the program.

He was entirely with the program now. He just needed a plan.

At eleven, he brought her flowers. He’d had to pick them from Ellen’s garden, which she probably wouldn’t have been pleased about if he’d told her, but she was way too preoccupied with staring out the windows and muttering to pay attention to him. He found a vase under the kitchen sink, arranged the stems as best he could, and carried them over to Carly’s.

Nana took one look at the flowers, pursed her lips, and said, “You’re really not very good at this, are you?”

Screwing up his courage, he said, “Tell her I love her.”

Nana plucked the flowers out of his hands. As she shut the door in his face with a wink, he heard Carly shout, “Tell him he can go to hell!”

He smiled. He was going to marry that woman.

At eleven thirty, his PR guy called and basically forbade him to continue walking over to Carly’s. All the gossip sites were running pictures of him at her front door. The suits said it made him look helpless.

He wasn’t helpless; he was in love. He hung up on the PR guy and grabbed Ellen by the arm, pulling her away from the window. “You have to teach me how to cook,” he said.

At twelve, he took grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup over on a tray. It had been the only thing Ellen could show him how to make in half an hour. Cooking turned out to be both difficult and time-consuming, which was, of course, why he’d avoided it all these years.

Nana opened the note he’d put on the tray. He’d written out the lyrics to a song about Carly that he’d been working on back in L.A. He had a whole album’s worth of songs about her.

With a smile and a shake of her head, Nana shut the door.