Rip flinched and then turned away from me. “I think we also need to take some of the gold and get it tested. Anonymously. If that’s possible. It might be fool’s gold and we’re getting excited over nothing.”
Well, that went well. He just changed the subject. I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “No. It’s real gold. I can feel it.”
He smirked and I wanted to slap him. “As scientifically proven as that is, I think we better get an outside opinion. Let’s go get a nugget and I’ll get it tested.”
He ducked under the branch and then held it up for me to walk under. Funny how he could make fun of me and then be kind and thoughtful in the next breath. Then again, when had anything with Rip ever made sense? I trudged behind him, keeping my gaze either on where I was stepping or the bright moon overhead. Not on his ass. Definitely not on his decidedly delicious ass.
“Here we go. I brought a hammer in case we need it.” Rip stopped by the pile of rocks, and I inhaled fully to clear my head. So much for not looking at his ass.
I got busy moving rocks, leaving the larger boulders for Rip to handle. He had the muscles for it, after all. NOT that I was looking.
Rip let out a whistle and I straightened, getting a good look at the mouth of the cave. He shined his flashlight on it and hundreds of little specks flashed back at us, little threads winding through the walls. Short icicles hung down from the ceiling of the cave.
“How can this be fool’s gold?” he whispered, tone reverent and finally quiet enough even Poppy couldn’t have heard him from three feet away.
My heart rate accelerated just looking at the gold. I hadn’t grown up with money. In fact, I knew more about not having money than having it. I always thought I didn’t care about wealth, but now, staring at a veritable fortune in front of me, my entire body lit up with possibility. I was straight giddy for the shiny stuff.
“Oh my God, Rip! Stellamites!” I tore my gaze away from the gold and saw him staring at me with the same look of crazed excitement in his eyes. “It’s gotta be real.”
He nodded slowly. “Pretty sure they’re stalactites. But we have to do this right. I need to find out who owns this land and get the gold verified. You have to keep this a secret.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, I will! I love a good secret!”
The right side of his mouth twitched.
My smile faded. “Not that I really have anyone to tell, so it’s quite easy to keep a secret.”
Rip reached up and tried to pry one of those icicles of gold loose from the cave ceiling. He grunted with the effort. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged, finding it easier to talk to his back. “Well, Lucy is going to have that baby any day now. Lenora is also pregnant and working double time to get their business in order before her maternity leave. Finnie is, well, Finnie. Working a ton at her clinic. Amelia is so in love with Titus and that new B and B of hers, I only get to see her for short snippets of time.” My chest ached the more I said out loud what I’d been feeling. “I talk to my granny’s cats more than I do my Hell Raisers.”
A weak chuckle was all I could manage. Rip must not have found my attempt at humor very good either. He spun and looked at me like he wanted to say something. It was harder to get words out of Rip than it was to get gold out of this damn sea cave.
“What?”
“I talk more to the seagulls that land on my boat than I do humans.”
My heart tumbled and rolled, wondering how it was that Rip and I could be having a moment. I hadn’t felt so heard and understood in years.
Before I could say anything in response, like thank you for confirming that I’m not crazy to feel so alone in this world, he turned back around and whacked at the cave with his hammer, ending all possible conversation. It was better that way. Rip and I were like Pop Rocks and soda. If we mixed, we exploded and made a huge mess. Better to avoid each other, give each other a wide berth, and skip the mess.
My eyes squeezed shut with each clang of the hammer against the stone, the sound reverberating through the pine trees. Poppy could totally hear that.
“Got it!”
At Rip’s jubilant outburst, I opened my eyes to see a nugget of gold the size of a squished golf ball in his hand. He stared at it, the hammer falling to the ground and a smudge of dirt across his forehead.
Then he was swooping me into a bear hug, my cheek pressed to his impressive chest, and I couldn’t think of anything but how good he smelled.
3
Rip
“Rip?”
Mom stood inside the front door to the house I’d grown up in, her dress looking far more like the First Lady than what was required from a small-town-mayor’s wife. But that had always been Mom’s way. She’d probably keel over one day in her nineties, wearing her kitten heels and pearl necklace.
“Hey, Mom. May I come in?”
Yep, I had to knock on my own front door. We didn’t have the kind of family life that lent itself to unlocked doors and the casualness of just walking in unannounced. I’d moved out the day I graduated high school, thanks to a trust fund from my grandfather that had been mine on my eighteenth birthday. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t need much either. I was a simple man, much to my parents’ disappointment.
“What brings you by?” Mom waved me in and I followed her to the formal sitting room, feeling a lot like a stranger trying to get a word with the mayor.
“Well, I was hoping to speak to you and Dad about—”
A horn beeped twice out front, interrupting me.
“Oh! That’s Penelope, picking me up for the town council meeting.” Mom patted my cheek. “Can we talk later, son?”
I nodded, feeling that same sense of disappointment churning in my gut. That was the way it always was. My parents didn’t have time for me, and on the off chance they did, it was to tell me all the ways I hadn’t lived up to the Bennett name.
She beamed at me and dammit if my traitor heart didn’t lift a little at seeing that smile aimed my way. “Make sure you lock up, would you?”
I nodded again and she was off, the front door clicking behind her and the grandfather clock marking my time alone in this house. Looking around, I took in the antique tables without a speck of dust on their surfaces and the framed pictures of my parents with famous politicians on the mantle. Not one of those pictures held my smiling face. Or my more usually frowning face for that matter. According to the pictures on display, I didn’t exist. Self-loathing mixed with the disappointment and I had the cocktail I always got served when I visited my parents. Or tried to visit, rather.
Then Hazel’s excited face hit my brain and a ribbon of positive energy made me stand taller. I didn’t want to let her down. Hell, I didn’t want to let myself down. I’d done that enough to last a lifetime. I rushed down the hallway to Dad’s home office, ignoring the expensive paintings on the wall, or my bedroom they’d turned into an exercise room the day after I moved out.
The door was unlocked, which to me meant an open invitation to explore. It wasn’t really breaking and entering when your mom let you in and the doors were all unlocked, right? The heavy maple desk sat in its familiar location, the dark leather chair as imposing with my dad in it or not. A faint whiff of cigar smoke still permeated the air. I rolled my eyes. What a fucking cliché he was.