The First Time at Firelight Falls Read online

  She sighed. If only Annelise and Caitlynn hadn’t decided to be archrivals.

  But what softened Eden’s attitude toward Jan—toward everyone, really—was that she felt just a teeny bit of tender pity toward everyone who didn’t get to live with and know Annelise. She was pretty sure she had the best kid in the world, and she could think of nothing at all she’d done to earn that particular blessing.

  So Jan didn’t scare her a bit.

  Principal Gabe Caldera, on the other hand, scared the crap out of her.

  All six foot infinity of him.

  Big-shouldered, smoldery-eyed, bass-voiced, easy-charm Principal Caldera, around whom women collected the way fruit flies had swarmed the peach Annelise had left in her backpack for a couple of weeks. At soccer games (he pinch-hit as coach), at school open houses, at PTA meetings—sometimes it seemed the only reason he seemed visible at all was because he was tall. His behavior, however, always seemed beyond reproach. Not one whiff of scandal.

  She actually did know fear wasn’t precisely the right word. It was some other emotion that shortened her breath and kicked her heart into an approximation of a gallop. (She could hear her brother Jude now: “Hearts don’t gallop, Eden. They beat.” Which was the kind of thing that made her and Avalon and their other brother Jesse want to beat Jude. But that would deprive the community of a fine cardiac surgeon.)

  Eden didn’t have room in her schedule for emotions she couldn’t identify. She couldn’t delegate emotions to her mom or her sister, or reschedule them or negotiate a favor-trade, the way she could everything else in every square on her magnificent kitchen whiteboard, liberally and whimsically illustrated by her and Annelise.

  However . . .

  Last Christmas she’d been Room Mother for Annelise’s classroom lunchtime Christmas party, and as she was leaving at the sound of the recess bell, she’d seen Principal Caldera standing in the hallway, deep in conversation with a teacher, students swarming and eddying around them as lockers were flung open and slammed shut.

  And suddenly from the opposite end of the thronged hall some little bastard appeared, gleefully running, slaloming through the crowds. Which was strictly against the rules, for so many obvious reasons.

  Seconds later, time suspended in the way it did when you’re about to witness a disaster you could do nothing about: another kid was just about to open his locker right into the damn kid’s face.

  Suddenly Principal Caldera pivoted, stepped to the left, shot out an arm, snatched the running kid by the coat collar, and hoisted him straight up into the air. Literally plucking him from the milling stream of kids. Thereby saving him a certain concussion or expensive orthodontic surgery.

  As far as Eden could tell, Mr. Caldera hadn’t even turned his head. Or blinked. She had a hunch his heart rate hadn’t even elevated. There had been no evidence he’d even seen that kid coming.

  She knew then that all the while he must have been eyeing the entire hall the way Joe Montana eyed a football field.

  From time to time, say, at a stoplight, or while she was washing dishes, she replayed that moment in her head: that sidestep, that arm shooting out to pluck the kid from danger. It was unnerving and soothing and thrilling all at once, in a way she couldn’t quite put a finger on. Except that some part of her she’d scarcely been aware of, a tiny part she’d unconsciously apportioned to remaining tensely hypervigilant the entire time Annelise was out of her sight at school, relaxed. She felt ever so slightly . . . lighter.

  Her phone vibrated again right where her hands were rooting in her purse.

  “Gotcha!” She captured the phone and fished it out. It was her sister, who was staying with Annelise at the shop on Main Street while Eden attended the meeting. “Hey, Ava. Sorry. The meeting ran a little longer than I anticipated. On my way. I might even go at least five miles over the speed limit.”

  “No worries. I just talked to Mac. He’ll meet the contractor up at the house. He’s expecting a friend to come over and help with hacking some old stumps out of the field, but they can spare a few minutes away from his company.” Avalon and Mac were building a new barn on their property for their goats and a few other animals they hoped to welcome into their fold, hence the necessary field-clearing and stump-hacking. “Leesy and I are having Popsicles. Hope that’s okay. So what happened?”

  Eden sighed. Leesy had clearly just talked her auntie into Popsicles before dinner, usually a pretty significant no-no, but Eden would let this one slide. Avalon was helpless against the charms of her niece.

  She hesitated. “Let’s just say the principal defused the situation.”

  “That big hot guy we saw at Annelise’s soccer game?” Avalon said with relish. “I’ll just bet he did.”

  Avalon had recently reunited with and was freshly installed in a gigantic Victorian love nest at Devil’s Leap in Hellcat Canyon with her first and only true love, Mac Coltrane, a turn of events that had astonished—Avalon often astonished people—and ultimately pleased her family. She was back in Hellcat Canyon to stay, which was fabulous for many reasons, not the least of which was she was now an option in Eden’s game of Schedule Tetris and even voluntarily went to the occasional soccer game.

  “I somehow don’t think that’s the last I’ll have to deal with Jan Pennington, though.”

  “I met Jan Pennington,” Avalon said thoughtfully. “If Jan Pennington was a dog, she’d be the anxious kind who pees a little every time the doorbell rings.”

  Eden laughed. “Everyone needs a nemesis, right? She’ll keep me on my game.”

  “You could totally take her, you know.”

  This was an old and stupid and much-loved joke between Eden and Avalon. It started when they were kids when Avalon, already in a cranky mood, had crashed her hip into her desk in her bedroom and bellowed “STUPID DESK IN MY WAY!” and Eden, her voice oozing faux sympathy, had said, “I bet you could totally take that desk.”

  For pretty much no reason, it still cracked them up.

  “Oh, I know I can. See you in a bit, Ava.”

  Eden pressed the call to an end and deliberately installed her phone in the correct little handbag pocket. She stared for a moment down the hallway she’d once thought she’d left behind forever, more than a decade ago. It was rather dreamily lit courtesy of the tall window at the end of the hallway, and for a moment of vertigo she was back in school again, the entire world—and a few really great guys—at her feet. The same gunmetal-gray lockers, the slightly less gray floor. Redolent of literal student bodies—sweat and gum and fruit-flavored drugstore lip gloss—with a top note of disinfectant courtesy of Carl the janitor’s mop.

  Frankly, it wasn’t the song from the Man of La Mancha that worried her.

  It was the song Annelise had written last night: “Invisible Dad.”

  And boy, if Jan Pennington knew about that song. Talk about gossip fodder. And Jan used gossip like currency.

  “I could totally take Jan Pennington,” Eden muttered to the bank of lockers in front of her.

  “With one arm tied behind your back, even.”

  She whirled around.

  Oh shit.

  Gabe Caldera was standing behind her, incongruously backlit by the beam of light from the hall window, which was exactly the way she’d always thought an angel visitation would be staged.

  They stared at each other for a full, silent three seconds or so. It occurred to her that she’d happily go on doing that indefinitely. She’d better speak.

  Chapter 2

  “Were you a navy SEAL or a ninja?” she said finally. It emerged a little more irritably than she’d intended.

  “One doesn’t necessarily preclude the other. But I’m not at liberty to divulge.”

  His eyes literally seemed to fill with lights when he was teasing.

  And they were green.

  “Wow Green,” she would call it. Because she was too tired for metaphors, and because she couldn’t imagine a better description.

  She was star
ing again. She needed to say more words. “Um, thank you for your time today. And sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Any time, Ms. Harwood.”

  “Hopefully there won’t be another time.” This emerged a little more adamantly than she’d intended.

  To her astonishment, he looked faintly stricken for a split second.

  “I mean . . .” She touched his arm gently, an instinct to take that expression from his face. “. . . I hope Annelise’s behavior or song choices won’t inspire more meetings.”

  He glanced swiftly down at her hand, and she pulled it back swiftly.

  It had felt a bit like touching a brick.

  A brick covered in warm, smooth skin.

  A fraught, interesting little silence ensued, and a breath-stealing sensation skittered up her spine.

  “Well, she’s a live wire, Annelise,” he allowed diplomatically. “A real crackling little person. Very inventive. The recess game where they all pretended to be tomato worms, for instance, was her idea. Though she wasn’t one of the brawlers.”

  Annelise’s Hummingbird troop had learned all about tomato hornworms during an agricultural excursion on Mac Coltrane’s property up at Devil’s Leap—and had decided to play Battle of the Tomato Worms at recess. Apparently the mock battle had become a real battle, and a few Hummingbirds had wound up in the principal’s office for kicking and pulling hair. Annelise may have thought up the game, but she hadn’t turned it into a riot. Like her beloved cat, Peace and Love, Annelise was kind of a pacifist. Probably because she didn’t have any siblings to brawl with. Though she wrestled like puppies with her Uncle Jesse when he was back in town, which wasn’t enough to suit any of the people who loved him. He was forever traveling on behalf of Redmond Worldwide.

  “So what you’re saying is I can count on a few more visits to the principal’s office over the years,” she concluded.

  The principal grinned. “Ah, we’ll just take it as it comes. She’s an awesome kid. A total delight. Her teachers love her. And it’s a privilege to watch her thrive and challenge herself academically and in the world.”

  Eden was tempted to lean into these words like a flower leaned into the sun—what mother wouldn’t?—and yet she was perversely reluctant to be charmed. It was like the first time she’d put big-girl shoes on Annelise. Leesy had been astounded, as outraged as though she’d strapped anvils on her instead of little sneakers. And she’d refused to take even a single step forward without being tugged like a water-skier, howling.

  Of course, now the girl was nuts for shoes.

  But yeah. Principal Gabe probably said these kinds of things to all the moms. God only knew complimenting a kid was a foolproof ingratiating and disarming technique. She wondered if they taught that tactic in the SEALs.

  For some reason, the word we’ll was echoing in her mind. Like something she wanted to hoard and take out to mentally caress later.

  “You can call me Mr. Caldera, by the way,” he added. “‘Principal’ isn’t often used as an honorific.”

  He was actually giving her shit! The nerve!

  She liked it a lot. She all but loathed reverence.

  “Wait—so what you’re telling me is it’s not like Your Excellency?” She furrowed her brow in mock confusion.

  “I’ll happily answer to Your Excellency, if that’s what you prefer. It’s not like the shoe doesn’t fit. My friends—and maybe one or two, let’s say, overconfident others—call me Gabe. So feel free to call me any of those things.”

  Interesting. She was pretty sure this was a subtle dig at Jan Pennington. But he’d said it with such humor and subtlety that she could take it any way she chose. A canny man, this Gabe Caldera.

  She liked this, too, which was probably unworthy of her. And maybe this was also unworthy of him. But he was making it clear where his allegiances lay.

  “Well, I’ll take my options under advisement,” she said.

  “Great,” he said, smiling.

  “Great,” she parroted brightly. For no reason. Unless it was because she hadn’t had a frivolous exchange with a hot man in ages and in the interim she’d become a dork.

  Heat crept up the back of her neck.

  “Great!” he echoed. Then looked startled and a little abashed, as if he couldn’t figure out why he’d said that.

  Well, look at that. She’d infected the poor guy with her own dorkiness in mere seconds. And it was pretty difficult to imagine a circumstance in which he wouldn’t feel utterly in command.

  She was tempted to touch him again, a gesture to take away his discomfiture. She thought better of it, given that her cells were still on vibrate from the last time she’d touched him.

  But the image of him plucking that kid from danger flashed into her head again and . . . some gut instinct made her want to rescue him.

  He rescued both of them. “I thought for a moment you were tempted to deck Jan with your handbag.”

  Add mind reader to his résumé, she thought.

  She gave a short laugh. “You know, I do understand her concerns. I mean, I probably wouldn’t love it much either if I heard my daughter belting that song out of the blue. I probably would have gone about addressing the issue differently, however.”

  “What would you have done?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  “I wouldn’t have gone straight to Your Excellency, let’s put it that way. I’m good at handling things on my own.”

  “Of course,” he said easily, after a little pause. “No question. I can see that.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I can’t wield this like nunchucks in a pinch.” She gestured with her plumply full handbag.

  “Good to know, in case we ever find ourselves on the same side in a street fight.”

  “Or in the produce section at the Hellcat Canyon grocery store on coupon day. Same difference,” she added.

  “The two of us in our rubber-soled shoes would be nimble as hell. We could totally take those gals from Heavenly Shores Mobile Estates.”

  She laughed, delighted. Damn it all, anyway. Like sunlight, true charm always found its way in through any little fissures and chinks and structural weaknesses.

  And on the heels of the laughter, she didn’t like the reminder that she had any weaknesses. She needed to be a fortress of competence for Annelise’s sake.

  “You know, I thought you subdued Jan pretty well with your own weapons,” she said thoughtfully.

  After a little silence during which they stared at each other.

  “My weapons?”

  “Yeah, you know . . . this bit.”

  She flung her arms high in an imitation of his long, leisurely, chest-expanding, woman-mesmerizing stretch.

  And then crossed them behind her head.

  She held his amazed gaze the entire time.

  She hiked a brow. A silent way of saying, I’m onto you, Gabe Caldera.

  Then she pivoted, turning her back on his expression of wonderment and dazzled appreciation, and took off at a brisk walk down the hall, with one final wicked flash of blue eyes over her shoulder and a casual flick of her hair.

  “Hey, Avalon . . .”

  “Mmm?” Avalon was perched on one of the lushly upholstered little wheeled chairs pushed up against the round antique oak table where Eden held little conferences with demanding brides-to-be. She’d decided she could hang out for a few more minutes. But then Eden’s flower shop was such a pleasant little cocoon that guests always seemed to want to linger: the high walls were painted a soft shade of dusty rose; the window sheers floated like pretty ecru ghosts when a breeze wafted in; it always smelled wonderful. Annelise was upstairs in their apartment, supposedly getting her homework underway.

  Eden was leaning over the counter of her shop scrolling through phone orders. Behind her and along the wall, tall thriving plants—as well as vivid, enticing blooms in buckets and vases inside the windowed fridge—waited for new homes, eager to soothe or lighten someone’s heart. She was having a pretty great week, sales
wise. She could give her assistant, Danny, more hours, if he wanted, and Danny, who was nineteen and hands down the most enthusiastic person she’d ever met, basically Tigger in Chuck Taylors, would totally want them.

  “Okay, I don’t want you to make a big deal of this . . .” she began.

  Avalon levered her head up alertly. “Did that mole on your butt finally go funny?”

  Siblings knew way too much about each other.

  “No. I think . . . I think Principal Caldera might, um . . . like me.”

  Wow.

  She felt exactly the way she had when she’d been caught passing a note to Timmy Cohen in her first-grade class that included two check boxes. Do you like me? Yes or No.

  Avalon went still. “Like you, like you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Avalon’s face slowly illuminated with a sort of mischievous glee.

  So help her, if Avalon teased her right now, Eden would roll her right out the door on that chair and out into Main Street traffic.

  “Okay, let’s hear the supporting evidence,” Avalon said carefully. Wisely.

  A strummed A minor came through the vents. Leesy was upstairs playing her guitar and probably admiring herself in the mirror while she did it. She’d do just about anything to postpone the math homework.

  Eden would be up in a second to put a stop to that.

  “Today after the meeting when I talked to him alone he got a little . . . not stammery, per se, but kind of . . . when we were talking. I think . . . I think he was flirting.”

  She lowered her voice on the word flirting. She felt raw and patently ridiculous. She’d always been the loftily wise older sister, the one who made sound decisions and thoroughly studied for every test and never overdid anything, rather unlike Avalon, who was legendary for overshooting marks.

  Then of course, Eden, the wild card, had gotten mysteriously knocked up ten years ago. Which trumped even that time Avalon had tried to jump her bike over Whiskey Creek.

  “Are you sure he didn’t get stammery because your second shirt button came undone again, like that one time you accidentally flashed Jeffrey the UPS guy when he came into your shop? I mean, your boobs aren’t very big, but a boob is a boob as far as men are concerned.”