The Bachelor's Sweetheart Page 11

  She blinked her eyes open.

  “You have seating capacity for increased movie patronage spillover from dinner theater patrons,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. I lost my confidence for a minute.” Disappointment slowed her heartbeat to normal. “I’ve planned this, prayed on it. I know it’ll work.”

  “It sure will, as long as we get the work done by the start of tourist season.”

  “So let’s get going. What do you need me to do?” She folded the plans and spreadsheet over into Josh’s hands.

  He carried them to the near wall where he had his tools and came back holding a power drill like a gun and revving the motor.

  Tessa held her hands up in surrender, glad for his comic relief. “I didn’t do it, Sheriff. I didn’t do it.”

  “I know, but you’re going to.” Josh made a diabolical face and revved the tool again. “Over to the wall, woman.” He squatted in front of the first seat by the wall and motioned her to join him. “I need you to remove the bolts from the seats and I’ll carry them out the side door and put them in the truck to be carted away.”

  Tessa assessed the five rows of seats. “How many do you think will fit?”

  Confusion spread across his face, followed by the glint of understanding. “Not my truck. I made a deal with Your Trash, Someone’s Treasure to haul away the seats and sell them on consignment. The box truck is in the alley by the door.”

  “Your Trash, Someone’s Treasure?”

  “It’s a new business. Reputable. I checked. Don’t worry, the sales proceeds will come to you.”

  “Sounds good, but I wish you’d cleared it with me beforehand.” On the one hand, she appreciated Josh’s initiative. He had a way of turning anything and everything into money. But the theater was her business.

  He revved the tool again. “I was going to this morning. It was spur of the moment. GreenSpaces hired him to clear out an old warehouse Anne recently bought as-is. The owner was waiting to see my boss and I got to talking with him. It’s the perfect solution. Better than trashing the seats.”

  “True.” Tessa joined him on the floor. “So, how do I do this?”

  Josh showed her the bolts and how the ratchet bit fit on them, and they got to work. After removing the bolts from the last seat in the last row, Tessa surveyed the cleared floor space visualizing a flat floor space filled with multicolored bistro tables and chairs. She heard Josh come in through the side door and turned, excitement bubbling. “I...we’re really going to do it.”

  “You had a doubt?”

  She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “How could I with you behind me?”

  “Exactly.”

  Tessa brushed her hands on the sides of her denim capris. “I’m starved. Let’s get cleaned up for lunch. Where are we going?”

  “We could walk to the pizza-sub shop.”

  “Works for me.” She started up the aisle to the lobby and restrooms to clean up.

  Josh stepped in line with her. “Food reminds me. Are you going to the singles group’s barbecue tomorrow evening?”

  “No, a friend is going to be in Elizabethtown and I’m getting together with her.”

  Tessa pushed open the ladies’ room door and walked in. She stood in the dark for a moment. The friend was her sponsor, and the plans were dinner, a tour of Maura’s home since she hadn’t gone to the open house and a discussion of how to tell Josh. Tessa turned on the light and the sink faucets. She shouldn’t put off telling him any longer but wanted to talk with Maura to get her words right so she wouldn’t totally alienate him. Tessa ripped a towel from the dispenser. If that was even a possibility. She tossed the towel in the trash and pushed tomorrow and telling Josh from her head, not wanting to ruin the time she had with him today.

  Josh was waiting for her in the lobby. “It’ll be shorter if we go out the side door and down the alley,” he said. “I have the key you gave me, if you don’t have yours with you.”

  As they approached the side door, it cracked open. Josh stepped in front of her, not that she sensed any danger. This was the middle of the day in Schroon Lake. Her breath caught when his father stuck his head in and peered around.

  “What are you doing here?” Josh demanded.

  “Looking for Tessa,” his father answered in a conversational tone. “Betty, her grandmother, hired me to do some painting and house maintenance. She suggested I stop by here and see if you need any painting done on the theater. The front door was locked, so I tried this one.”

  “No,” Josh said before she could open her mouth. “We have everything here covered.”

  “Excuse me. Your father was talking to me.”

  Josh pushed by them. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  “Sorry about that,” Jerry said.

  “I understand. You and Josh...”

  “I suppose you do,” Jerry said.

  Tessa tensed with the unsettling notion that he knew her secret. But he couldn’t. Grandma wouldn’t have told him. She shook off the thought, even more determined to come clean with Josh as soon as she talked with Maura.

  “Josh was right, though,” Tessa said, seeing Josh’s stubborn jaw and sharp cheekbones reflected in his father’s face. “I don’t need any painting done. If you want, you can go out the front door. It’ll lock behind you.”

  “I probably should. I’ve riled Josh enough. Your grandmother didn’t say he was here.”

  “Give him time to come around,” she said, hoping that was true. She waited until she heard the front door open and click closed before joining Josh.

  “I can’t take it,” he said when she stepped into the bright noon sun. “He turns up everywhere I go.”

  She placed her hand on his forearm. He jerked as if he was going to shake her hand off, but stopped before he did and placed his hand over hers. The ping-pong game in her gut slowed.

  “I’ve got to do something to get through until GreenSpaces hands me my ticket out of here. Maybe Al-Anon like you said before. Learn the rules of his game so he doesn’t keep ambushing me.”

  That wasn’t even close to the reason she’d recommended Al-Anon, but that didn’t matter if it got him to attend meetings. She allowed herself the hope he’d come to accept his father in his life and her admission—if not right away, later.

  * * *

  Josh walked up the garage stairs to his apartment. His new earlier work schedule hadn’t seemed like such a great idea this morning when he’d dragged himself out at six-thirty, but getting home before five in the afternoon was all right. He’d have time to unwind before heading over to the Hazards’ boat landing on Paradox Lake for the singles group’s barbecue. He wished Tessa was going. He might need his wing woman to deflect Lexi’s never-subtle hints.

  He and Lexi had had some fun times together, but anything between them had been over for months. Why couldn’t she just be his friend now, like Tessa? But none of the women he’d dated ever became plain friends after they’d parted. He put his key in the apartment door and paused. Good thing for him, he and Tessa had never dated. Even better that he hadn’t given in to the insane urge he’d had in the theater yesterday to kiss her. Becoming romantically involved was the only thing he could think of that could ruin their friendship.

  Despite it still being spring, hot humid air slapped Josh in the face when he opened the door. He walked across the room to the window AC unit and turned the dial to On. He needed to check with Tessa and her grandmother about him putting in a new window unit with a programmable thermostat. He could justify his cost by the electricity he could save over the summer, not to mention his comfort. Above the hum of the AC turning on, he heard a strange scraping sound coming from the back of the garage. He walked to the window, picturing the trees behind the building. None were close enough to scrape it, and there was no wind to speak of.

/>   The scraping grew louder as he neared the window. Looking out he couldn’t see anything to either side of the AC unit. Josh went back downstairs to see what was going on. As he rounded the back corner of the garage, he nearly walked into an older, but well-kept, black pickup truck. Past the vehicle, he spotted a man on a ladder, scraping the old paint off the garage wall below the AC unit. He grimaced. His father.

  “Josh.” His father started down the ladder at a pace far slower than he’d expect from a man in his midfifties.

  Josh stiffened, his heart thumping in fear and his stomach roiling with disgust as he waited for his father to miss a rung and stumble and fall.

  “I expected to be finished and gone before you got home,” his father said. “Betty said you usually work late.”

  “My schedule’s changed. I get home by five now.”

  Josh watched his father close the space between them in a perfectly straight line. As his father reached around for a mini-vac in the back of the truck, Josh braced himself for the all-too-familiar stink of booze to hit him. When it didn’t, the force of his tension dissipating drained him.

  His father lifted the vacuum. “I’ll clean up and be out of your way. I’ve got a meeting to get to tonight.”

  Josh stood tall. Was that supposed to mean something to him? “Take your time.” He turned to go back inside.

  “See you Sunday at Edna and Harry’s,” his father called back at him.

  Harry’s eighty-fifth birthday party. There was no way he could skip that.

  “Yeah, Sunday.” He kicked a stone out of his way. Maybe he could get Tessa to come with him. He was sure his grandmother would have invited her grandmother, and his brothers would have their wives with them. He’d text Tessa when he got inside.

  Josh bounded up the apartment stairs and remembered Tessa was doing something with a friend tonight. He’d wait until tomorrow. But he had to do something to get a grip on his life, control his father’s influence on it—since the old man showed up everywhere Josh turned.

  A paper blew off his desk as he passed it on his way to the bedroom to change into jeans and a T-shirt for the barbecue. The list of Al-Anon meetings that he’d printed out last night. He skimmed it. There was one in Elizabethtown tonight at seven.

  Might as well check it out. He didn’t really want to go to the barbecue without Tessa, and what did he have to lose? The details said it was a step meeting. Steps sounded logical to him. Steps to guide him back into control.

  An hour and a half later Josh stood at the door of the meeting room in the Old Stone Church in Elizabethtown. He glanced through the window. The room was set up with chairs in rows, as he’d hoped, rather than around a table, and he didn’t see anyone he knew right off. He rolled his shoulders. Good. He could keep his distance. He twisted the doorknob, slipped inside and slid into a chair in the corner a couple of rows from the back. While the clock up front clicked off the five minutes until seven, Josh heard the door open and shut a few more times and people take seats behind him.

  Finally, a man stepped up in front and introduced himself as Roger. “Welcome everyone, especially if you’re joining us for the first time.”

  Josh squirmed as Roger panned the room, starting with him.

  “We hope you’ll find in this fellowship the help and friendship we’ve been privileged to enjoy. We urge you to try our program. It has helped many of us find solutions that lead to serenity. So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives.”

  That sounded good to Josh.

  “We’re a step group. We focus our meetings on the Twelve Steps, one of Al-Anon’s three Legacies, along with Al-Anon’s Twelve Traditions and Twelve Concepts of Service. We start our meeting with our group motto.” He pointed at a whiteboard on the wall behind him.

  Most of the room joined in saying, “I didn’t cause it. I can’t cure it. And I can’t control it.”

  “Let’s do that again with the new people,” Roger said.

  “I didn’t cause it. I can’t cure it,” Josh said in a low voice, stumbling on the last, “and I can’t control it.” That was why he’d come, for control. He pushed forward in his seat, ready to stand and leave when a voice in his head said give it a chance, echoing his earlier thought. What do you have to lose? He slid back and prayed. Lord, if that was You, show me a reason to stay.

  “Tonight we’re discussing the second step, coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.”

  Josh had his reason to stay. He understood God having a plan for him, leading him to sanity. If He wanted him to stay, Josh would.

  “Who wants to share?” Roger asked. “Al-Anon is an anonymous fellowship. Everything said here, in the group meeting and member-to-member, must be held in confidence. Only in this way can we feel free to say what’s on our minds and in our hearts and help one another.”

  Even with anonymity, Josh couldn’t imagine sharing. He was here to learn from them, come to a few meetings to get the information he needed and be done.

  A woman stood. “I’m Sandy.”

  “Hi, Sandy,” the group said.

  For the next hour, Josh listened to the others share and discuss the evening’s step.

  Roger stood in front again and said, “It’s after eight. Anyone who wants more information or has questions can come up after our closing. We close with the Serenity Prayer.” Again, he pointed at the whiteboard, and everyone stood.

  When they’d finished the prayer, Josh wished he could say his heart was lighter, but it wasn’t. He went to the table in front of the room to pick up some literature. Maybe he would understand everything better if he studied before coming to another meeting.

  “Good to see you here.” Another man standing by the table welcomed Josh and introduced himself.

  “Josh. Have we met?” Josh tightened his grip on the flyer he held and checked his memory. Did he know this guy from a GreenSpaces job or his camp-flipping renovations? He’d hoped Elizabethtown was far enough from Paradox and Schroon Lake to avoid running into anyone he knew.

  “I don’t think so.” The man shook his head. “Will we see you next week?”

  “Sure.” Josh loosened his hold on the flyer. If he came back. But he had to do something.

  Avoiding eye contact with the people lingering in the hall, he managed to walk to the stairs leading down to the church lobby at a normal pace. He blinked. Tessa stood in the lobby, talking with another woman. He’d know her anywhere, even from the back. She must have been at the meeting, come in later and sat behind him.

  She went to Al-Anon meetings. That’s why she was so big on them and AA.

  He looked again to make sure he wasn’t wanting the woman to be Tessa so he’d have someone to explain things and come with him next time. He took the steps two at a time. Weird that she hadn’t seen him sitting ahead of her in the meeting.

  “Tessa,” he said as he hit the floor.

  She turned, eyes wide.

  He drew back. She must not want people to know she went to Al-Anon. Of course. Otherwise, she would have invited him to come with her. But he wasn’t people. He was her close friend or thought he was. Why had she told him she had plans with a friend? Maybe the meeting was the plans. She went to Al-Anon. So what? What was the big secret about that?

  * * *

  At the sound of Josh’s voice, every ounce of air in Tessa’s lungs whooshed out. She gasped to draw some back in.

  “Are you okay?” Maura asked.

  “No. Excuse me.” She felt her sponsor’s eyes on her as she forced one foot in front of the other until she and Josh had closed the space between them.

  “Hey.” Josh followed his greeting with a soft smile. “Didn’t you see me in the mee
ting?”

  “No,” she answered in all honesty.

  “I was over in the left corner, near the back. Since I didn’t see you, I figured you came in after me and sat in the far back.”

  “Josh... I...” She took his hand and pulled him toward a small empty sitting room off the lobby. It had a wall of windows facing the lobby but would still give them some privacy to talk. His fingers closed around hers, the enveloping strength and warmth squeezing her heart until she couldn’t bear the pain.

  “What?” His forehead creased. “Are you okay?”

  As okay as I can be. She gulped a breath and fixated on the cross hanging on the far wall of the room. Dear Lord, stand with me. Guide me to say, do, what’s best for Josh and his healing.

  She pulled her gaze from the cross. “Please sit.”

  He lowered himself into one of the overstuffed chairs while she crossed the room and looked out the window at the front lawn of the church.

  “What’s wrong? You’re scaring me,” he said when she didn’t immediately turn back to face his question.

  She turned and swallowed the lump in her throat. Not much scared Josh, at least, that he’d admit to. But he couldn’t be half as scared as she was. His wide-eyed panic challenged that thought.

  “Sit down and tell me. We’re buds. I can take it, whatever you have to say.” His normal bravado returned.

  Tessa walked back and stood beside him, unable to look him in the eye. She rested her hand on the back of his chair. “I wasn’t at your Al-Anon meeting. I was at another meeting.” She dug her nails into the soft padding of the chair back. “An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.”

  Josh looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes darkening with understanding.

  “Yes,” she said, fighting to keep the pain from her voice. “I’m a recovering alcoholic like your father. Five years sober.” As if that would make any difference to Josh. Hadn’t he said once a drunk, always a drunk?

  Josh pushed himself from the chair so roughly, it flipped back onto the floor. “No,” he shouted.