Seaside Avenue (Cedar Cove #7)(32)

“What did Rachel say?” Jolene asked. She’d been waiting patiently, completing a jigsaw puzzle of horses grazing in a field. Five hundred pieces! He was impressed.

“She said she’d be by to pick you up at nine-thirty on Saturday morning,” he said absently. An hour. He’d spent an entire hour on the phone with Rachel?

Something was wrong.

Bruce didn’t even like talking on the phone. Five minutes, tops. Say what’s necessary and hang up. He could barely remember a conversation in his entire adult life that had lasted more than fifteen minutes.

“Dad?” Jolene cut into his musings.

“What?”

“You’re standing up but you’re not going anywhere.”

“I am?” He hadn’t been aware that he was on his feet until Jolene pointed it out.

“Are you okay?” his daughter asked.

Bruce sat back down. “I—I don’t know.” He felt dizzy, and that was unusual for him. In fact, his head was spinning. Maybe he had the flu. Yeah, a flu named Rachel. Where did that thought come from? Squinting at his daughter, he noticed she was looking at him strangely.

“Should I call 911?”

“No.” He forced a laugh. “I’m fine. I do have a question for you, though.”

“Sure.” She knelt in front of him, her hand on his knee. “Do you want me to get you a glass of water?”

“No, no, it’s nothing.” His heart felt like an oil-rig pump that had gone berserk, but he chose to ignore that. “You like Rachel, don’t you?” But Jolene didn’t need to answer. Rachel had taken Stephanie’s place in her life. His own parents lived in Connecticut, and Jolene had only seen them two or three times. Stephanie’s parents had divorced when she was young and she’d never had a good relationship with her father. Her mother had died within two years of Stephanie; she’d never recovered from the loss of her only child. So it’d always been just Bruce and his daughter. Except for Rachel…

“Dad, of course I like Rachel,” Jolene said. “You like her, too, don’t you?”

He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.

“You’re not mad at her or anything?”

“No, no, everything’s…fine.”

The relief in his daughter’s eyes quickly turned to fear. “She’s not marrying Nate and moving to San Diego, is she?”

Not if I can help it, his mind shouted. With Jolene studying him intently, he shook his head and pretended nothing was amiss.

Together they made dinner. Jolene prepared a green salad while Bruce fixed tuna sandwiches. Dinnertime had been important to Stephanie. Because he knew this was something his wife would’ve wanted, Bruce had continued the practice of having dinner with Jolene every evening. While she described her day, he did his best to pay attention. During the summer she attended a church day camp, which she loved. She launched into a long, complicated story about a little play she was in, and he forced himself to nod and exclaim in the right places.

Summer bedtime was nine-thirty and Jolene went without an argument. He cleaned up the kitchen, then thought about going to bed himself, only he wasn’t tired. After washing a load of laundry and dumping it in the dryer, he cleaned the bathroom. This burst of nervous energy wasn’t a bad thing, he decided. Rare and surprising, perhaps, but nothing to be alarmed by.

Once in bed, he tossed and turned for another hour, then realized he wouldn’t sleep until he’d talked to Rachel again. Her phone rang four times before she answered.

“Hello.” Her voice was soft with sleep.

“It’s me,” he said, feeling a bit unnerved when he glanced at the clock on his nightstand and saw that it was after midnight.

“Bruce? Do you know what time it is?” She sounded more awake now—and annoyed.

“Sorry…”

“What’s wrong?”

“When we talked earlier,” he began, not knowing where to go from there.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“We were on the phone for over an hour.”

His announcement was met with silence, so he forged ahead. “There’s something happening between us, Rachel.”

She sighed, or it could have been a suppressed yawn. “No, there isn’t.”

“I’ve never talked to a woman for that long in my whole life.” He hesitated, then added, “Someone other than Stephanie, I mean.”

“You woke me out of a dead sleep to tell me that?” Now her voice was incredulous.

“Yes.”

“Bruce, listen, we’re friends. We’ve been friends for years. Friends talk.”

“I don’t chitchat on the phone,” he said forcefully. “I just don’t. I never have.”

“You’re making too much of this, okay? It’s not a big deal.”

“Jolene’s worried.” He said the next thing that came to mind.

“About you?”

“No,” he told her swiftly. “She’s worried about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. She’s afraid you’re going to marry Nate and leave.” He was worried, too, but he couldn’t tell Rachel that. He’d already revealed far too much of his confusion. His feelings for Rachel were changing—or perhaps he simply hadn’t recognized them for what they were.