Summer Street Secrets (The Hills of Burlington Book 3) Read online

  Court could understand that. He was still seething every bit as much as when Mary had told him about the whole sordid situation the night before. "And you want me to disconnect your internet access." He played in his head what could be done and the easiest route to take.

  "I'm not certain exactly what I want you to do. I'd like to just be able to tell her the system is down and a repairman can't get to us for a day or two."

  "Sneaky." But he could admire how her mind worked.

  "Yes. Well I'm doing the best I can with what I know very little about."

  "Sounds like a good start to me." He rocked back on his heels thinking about how to make it look like an outage. A very limited outage which shouldn't be a problem since the kid didn't know anyone else in the immediate area. "Mallie and your Mom are going to lose their service too." He could almost hear her worrying about putting them out. "Mallie can always come by here to use mine if she really needs to."

  "I'm not concerned about Mallie. It's my mother that I'm concerned about if she doesn't have internet service. She could very well call the cable company and let loose on them."

  "So you want to keep this really quiet." And wasn't it interesting he thought that she was willing to come to him with it.

  "You know what they say about secrets. As soon as more than one person knows about it it's not a secret any longer."

  "I know."

  "You're one of the most reliable people I know." She thought about his young teenage nephew Brian who just happens to be dating Mallie. Besides the fact that she considered her niece to be a good judge of character she'd also always believed you could read a person by how they treated and related with children. That was probably doubly true when it came to teenagers. Court Gordon adored and was adored by his nephew. She didn't need much more to place her trust in him when it came to Addie's well being. She could almost hear him thinking on the other end of the line.

  "I need a reason to look around the outside and possibly the inside of the house. If we're lucky there's a wire I can disengage until you want it reconnected." He paused, still wondering if being considered reliable was in any way a stepping stone to how he wanted her to see him. "And there's the issue of your mother."

  "I haven't worked that part of it out yet. She'll be busy for a bit. She's got Addie over there right now and I'm hoping the two of them will stay busy long enough for you to do what you need. If not I'll just tell them you're looking at whether it's possible for me to put in an office or work-space up in the room connecting to my bedroom." It was something she'd been thinking about anyway, she thought as she twisted the phone cord around her finger. "Actually, since you'll be here anyway let's do that."

  "I'll be there in a few minutes."

  "Okay." Carrie spoke into the now dead phone. Obviously phone manners weren't high on his list. She set the phone back down in its cradle and went to the front door taking the long way through the kitchen so she could glance out toward the Carriage House. She could still see figures seated around the table in the small kitchen so things had to be going well. She crossed her fingers. As she'd left Addie in her mother's company earlier, she’d casually mentioned that she now had another built-in model. And instead of Civil War era ball-gowns she ought to imagine Addie in something along the lines of a young and innocent Tatiana. She remembered her mother's phase of painting fairy tale figures. Maybe now she could delve into the fairy world all by itself.

  She watched Court come around the corner from the opposite side of the street that she had expected him to. Shouldn't have surprised her. He was forever throwing her off guard. Then she saw the half smile that played over his face. It reminded her of one of her brothers after they'd pulled a fast one on her...when they were all kids. As he approached the door where she waited he winked. Without a word he gently took her arm and led her back in the house. He'd been in and out of the one-hundred-plus-year old structure working on it since Mary had bought it. With that knowing smile on his face he walked back with her to the computer station set up in the little room directly off the kitchen.

  "Try it out." He said simply. And watched her as she pulled up a window to sign on to her browser. Unsuccessfully. When she looked over at him he pulled the small screwdriver out of his pocket, slapped it across his palm a few times with that same self satisfied smile on his face. "I came down the alley on the hunch that there might be a box back there." He glanced at the computer screen that showed absolutely nothing. "And it looks like my hunch paid off." He winked again, feeling even better when he saw the confusion splayed across her face. "Let's check out the space you want to make into an office. Your Mom waved at me as I came around the corner so we want this to look good for when they figure out they're without internet access."

  "Do you think she saw anything?" Even as she decided she didn't care to know exactly what he’d done Carrie thought frantically about whether she could count on her mother from saying anything if she had to let her in on this. She would never do or say anything intentionally but most of her concern had to do with what her mother might inadvertently blurt out.

  "No. The box is back behind the middle of the building. All the windows are on each end. And she was in the kitchen end when she saw me. There's no way she could have seen anything." He tilted his head in her direction as they reached the top of the steps. "How long you plan on leaving it off?"

  "Just a couple of days." She moved into her room and toward the connecting door into the one next to it. "Do you know how long it takes normally for the phone company to get out and repair service when it's really down?" She turned around to find him right in front of her. Instinctively she took a step back. Tried to. Her back was up against the small desk she'd dragged in here with the thought of making it into an office for herself. At the moment she wished it was anywhere but there. "Court."

  "To answer your question," he spoke softly. For the first time she didn't seem nervous, cautious yes, but not nervous. He didn't want to change that. "They usually try to get to folks within 48 hours not counting weekends so you've got your couple of days easy." He watched her take a deep breath, watched those eyes finally rise to meet his. They'd been doing this dance a while. And they both knew it. "Here's another question. Have dinner with me a week from tonight." He could see she'd been ready to turn him down flat. The timing of his request caught her off guard as he hoped it would.

  "Why a week from tonight?" Carrie couldn't help but ask.

  "It gives you a week to get your niece settled in. The last thing I'd want to do is anything to harm that child more than she's been already."

  Carrie felt something soften deep inside her. She didn't want it to. She didn't want to like this man. Didn't want to like any man for that matter. But his thoughtfulness toward Addie tore apart shields that had no defense against kindness. And as she looked at his eyes she would have to have been blind not to recognize the anger that seethed there for what Addie had been through. What she had yet to go through. Damn him.

  "Okay." She put her hand out to rest on his arm. "Thank you for this." She didn't need to explain what this was.

  "It was a good thought. Gives the kid some time to put some of it behind her. And hopefully it won't be the hot topic of the day when she does get around to checking it out again." He looked at the woman across from him. "You do know she'll be on there at some point looking to see what's what."

  "I know."

  "Okay." Court looked around the room. Saw the potential and the drawbacks both. "So, what is it you want out of this room?"

  

  Mary hung up the phone thoughtfully. Court had never been a man of many words but she'd sensed a cautiousness in them just now that was unusual even for him. She set it aside for the moment and turned back to the women sitting around her kitchen table with her at the moment.

  "That was Court." She looked at her aunt. "He heard that your internet service was out and knows your penchant for online solitaire." She looked toward the source of the giggle that she saw
Mallie attempted but was unsuccessful at holding back. With a wink at Grace who was seated beside her and trying with more success at holding back her own smile she sat and faced her aunt. "He'll be over in a bit. He said he has something that will make you very happy."

  Charlie picked at the coffee cake that sat in the middle of the table of her niece's cheerful kitchen. "It's not like I couldn't live without it for a couple of days." She wondered to herself though what it was Court was talking about. "Probably wouldn't hurt for little Addie not to be fiddling around on it anyway. Precious child. It just makes me see red every time I think about what those prissy girls did to her."

  "You'd be surprised at how often this kind of thing happens." Grace gave in to temptation and sliced herself another piece of the cake she'd brought with her. At least what was left would be sitting in Mary's kitchen instead of her own. "I think it's wonderful the way Carrie is keeping her busy and encouraging her to put pictures of what they're doing on her Facebook page showing she's not sitting around feeling sorry for herself."

  "Once the internet is back up," Mallie reminded her, glancing at her grandmother with a knowing smile shared between them.

  Grace nodded. "I wonder if Carrie realizes how important it is that she's standing with Addie on this. It has to be horrible for her to think of how those photos are out there but how much worse must it be for someone at her young age to deal with the betrayal of the very people she thought she could trust."

  "Her friends," Mallie said with no little bit of contempt in her voice. "Right." She pushed back in her chair, anger vibrating with every move she made. "Beth and I were talking about it. We think she needs to do more. Pay those pool babes back!"

  "I'm not certain payback will help her all that much Mallie." Mary reached over to the counter for the ever full pot of coffee.

  "Maybe not," Mallie allowed. "But it would make me feel better to know they aren't getting off scot free on this."

  "I have a feeling by the time Addie is featured in some of Aunt Charlie's paintings they'll get a little of their own back."

  "How do you figure that?" Mallie studied the slight smile on Mary's face but didn't understand how that would pay back those who had done such a dirty trick.

  "Anyone who does what they did does so for a reason. I'd bet quite a bit that they're getting an unusual bit of attention themselves for their role in this fiasco."

  "Probably," Mallie agreed. "But how does Grandma using Addie in her paintings get back at them?"

  "Your grandmother's paintings are much sought after." Mary licked the icing off her fingers. "We barely get them on the store site," she glanced at Grace, "at the unbelievably high prices Casey and Grace put on them. And even then we barely get them on and they're sold practically before we can count to ten."

  Mallie looked over at her grandmother who simply smiled at her. She still had a hard time seeing her grandmother as an artist who people paid thousands of dollars for any of her paintings. She'd seen some of the emails from people practically begging for advance notice of when her paintings were going up for sale. Some had offered crazy amounts of money to be able to buy her paintings sight unseen. "Okay. But how does that get back at those bimbos?"

  Mary held back from discussing with her young relative that calling them bimbos wouldn't help anyone. She understood it was her way of dealing with what had been done to a young girl just a few years younger than herself. She likely was also dealing with the fact it could have just as easily have been her. "Those girls," she emphasized, "wanted attention for themselves. Negative attention on Addie was acceptable. The attention she'll get from being in your grandmother's paintings is going to be far from acceptable to them."

  "That's for certain," the woman in question added to the conversation. But before anyone could question her adamancy Grace spoke up.

  "I've been thinking ever since you told me about this that there may be another way to help Addie." Grace folded her hands in front of her on the table. She'd thought this through but wasn't certain how anyone else would feel about it. She certainly had no idea how Addie, who'd she'd yet to meet, would feel about it.

  Mary turned to the woman sitting beside her. Besides being the owner of the store up at the corner of her street she’d also become a dear and trusted friend. In addition to all that she was also a business partner in some of the small but financially sound businesses she along with her cousins, her aunt, and Mallie had ventured into. "Go on," she encouraged her.

  "I really don't have any firm idea, just the thought that it would be great if Addie could do something more." She nodded towards Mallie. "Just like Mallie talked about." She forced herself not to fidget, these were her friends, and so much more. "But I think it would be even better if she could do something that helped others who found themselves in the same position she is." She looked around the table, saw she had their attention and something more. That same need to somehow make things different as she felt was such an important part of this. "Addie is so lucky to have her parents, Carrie..." she spread her hands out now, palms up, including all of them in her meaning. "To have all of us behind her. Supporting her."

  "Making sure she knows that she's not the bad person, that they are," Mallie added.

  "Exactly." Grace shook her head in sorrow for all those she knew must be out there without that kind of support. "Just imagine if she was all alone. Feeling all that hurt with no one to help her through it."

  "What are you thinking of?" Charlie asked, raring to be part of whatever it was. She had her own plans to help the little one but there was nothing she enjoyed more than a good turnaround on those who deserved it most.

  "I don't really have anything concrete yet. I've just been tossing around differing ideas, nothing really feels right yet though," Grace explained almost apologetically.

  "Well, now we can all be thinking about it. Between all of us I imagine we'll come up with something that will work." At the sound of the knock at her door Mary pushed away from the table. "That's probably Court." She winked at Grace as she stood. "Now we'll get to find out what he's got in store for Aunt Charlie."

  

  "We did pretty good if I do say so myself." Carrie stepped back from the pile of bags they'd just finished dragging in from her car. At the moment the numerous bags sat in a fairly clustered pile in the center of the front room. She sent her niece a wink and a smile knowing without a word said they had achieved more in two days of non-stop shopping than simply passing the time. The day before she had focused on things for Addie and hadn't stopped with clothes. They'd haunted out specialty stores and even some of the second-hand stores she'd found. The closet in the room Addie was slowly getting comfortable in was now filled to the brim with new shoes, purses, clothes for every possible event, and a wonderful old jewelry case that was home to some of the beautiful earrings her niece had a weakness for. In the bathroom were creams and makeup to experiment with to her heart's delight.

  Today she’d taken her along on one of her buying trips for their online store. They'd hit garage sales, estate sales, several of her favorite shops in Burlington and many of those on the outskirts of the city as well.

  She'd also taken her up to one of her favorite little cities that as Addie had dryly noted, you could easily miss if you didn't know it was there. She'd said it in a tone that had Carrie quietly patting herself on the back simply because it meant her niece was getting her sense of the ridiculous back which had always been such a keen part of her personality.

  It was months ago that she had come across the small museum and gift shop in Swedesburg completely by accident. But it had become one of her favorite places and she stopped by whenever she found herself anywhere close by. As always she’d bought some of her favorites that moved quickly in their store. The wonderful Dala horses and just about anything that featured them never stayed long in inventory. She had also found a wonderful antique Swedish bible she'd purchased for her mother. It reminded her of the one she'd seen only in pictures that
had belonged to her mother's grandmother and passed down to her own grandmother, her Nanno, but had been lost somewhere along the way. She knew it couldn't replace that which had been lost but it would provide a gentle reminder for her mother of what had once been so cherished.

  During their visit there Addie had found several small knick knacks for herself and more that she had asked if would be suitable for the store. Thrilled that her niece was showing an interest in anything she readily agreed uncaring whether they ever sold them or not.

  "Aunt Carrie..."

  Carrie turned to her niece who stood almost too casually by the pile of shopping bags.

  "Yes, honey?"

  "Do you think we could go back to that island sometime?"

  "It was wonderful wasn't it?" Carrie said slowly, wondering what it was that she was really being asked, if anything. This was the first time, the first thing, Addie had asked for herself since she'd arrived. "We can go back next week if you'd like." She tilted her head slightly, trying to get a better view of her niece's expression. "Was it one of the stores specifically you wanted to go back to? Did you see something you liked? I can call and have it held if you want." She tried to think back to if there was anything special she'd seen her looking at but was coming up blank.

  "No, not really," Addie struggled to explain the feeling she experienced walking along the streets of the island that had seemed so out of place but at the same time more perfect than anything or anyplace she'd ever been.