Love on the Outskirts of Town Read online

  “Hello?”

  She listened to his side of the conversation, trying to figure out if she should get up and start coffee for him.

  “Understood. I’m close by, I can respond. I’ll find someone to meet me there, no need to call the OPP.”

  The police? That had her attention. She sat up as he ended the call.

  “That was the military police. The vault alarm went off at the armouries. I just need to go over there and check it out.” He grinned. “Convenient that I’m close by. Usually it takes a few calls down the list before they find someone.”

  “Where are the military police?”

  He named a base a few hours away. “The sensor just pinged. Old building, new technology, it doesn’t always work well together.” He kissed her fast on the mouth. “Go back to sleep, I’ll be back for breakfast.”

  A bleary examination of her bedside clock said it was barely three in the morning.

  She tried to drift off again, but it was no use.

  She grabbed her phone and went downstairs. While her coffee was brewing, she checked social media. Her sister’s profile showed a green dot for chat, so she clicked on that.

  Natasha: Are you awake?

  Meredith: Packing up the kitchen. What are you doing up?

  She hit voice dial. “Long story,” she said when her sister answered.

  “A good one or a bad one? I feel like we haven’t talked all week.” They’d texted the day before about the new job, but Natasha had kept it brief.

  She hadn’t felt like talking when she didn’t know what was going on with Matt. Now all these thoughts were bubbling up inside her, fast and furious. “I know. I tried to bury myself in the job hunt, but there was other stuff going on and I didn’t want to burden you.”

  In the background, Tasha could hear her sister running water. “Are you making tea?”

  “Of course I am. You should do the same.”

  “I put coffee on.”

  “Not quite the same, but okay.”

  “I wish you were here.”

  “We’re going to have to get used to doing this over the phone. Tell me what’s wrong. What did David do?”

  “It’s not David this time.”

  “Oh no, what did the cute firefighter do?”

  “He has a name.”

  Meredith laughed. “I’m aware. What did Matt do?”

  “Nothing, really. We had a…non-fight? Just a thing that happened.” She considered how much of Matt’s story to share with her sister. “He has some job stress, like a lot of first responders do. And he didn’t know how to share that with me. He’s just…not perfect. And apparently that’s hard for him to realize.” She laughed out loud. “Actually, I’m more fine with it than he is.”

  “None of us are perfect.”

  So far from it. “Right? And all of us have scars, isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yep. You know, I like the guy, but I’m glad to know he’s been knocked around a bit, too. It puts you both on an even keel. You live life harder than anyone I know, and you deserve someone who does the same.”

  “I’m not sure I am at the moment.”

  Meredith clucked her tongue. “Okay, your coffee is clearly not inspiring you to have faith in yourself. Make tea. I’ll wait.”

  She put her phone on speaker. “I haven’t even had the coffee yet.”

  “Fine, pour that, give it a go.”

  Natasha laughed and grabbed a mug. “Shouldn’t you go to sleep?”

  “In a bit.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Her sister sighed. “I am. You know how excited I am about the move. But this is the house I brought my babies home to from the hospital. I just scrubbed seven years of fingerprints off the trim around the kitchen door, and I thought…what am I doing?”

  “Showing up for the fight?”

  “Shut up. Do not turn my advice around on me.”

  They talked for another fifteen minutes, and just as Meredith announced her tea mug was empty, Matt knocked at the front door. “I have to go,” Natasha said as she went to open it for him. “I’ll see you tonight for dinner.”

  “Your sister?” Matt asked as she hung up the phone.

  “She was packing and I couldn’t sleep, so…yeah. Middle of the night sister chat. Everything okay at the armouries?”

  He nodded. “I gotta say, it was nice dashing over there from here.”

  “You can stay here more often,” she murmured. “If it’s convenient.”

  He unzipped his winter coat and cupped her face in his hands. “I want to stay here a lot. And not because it’s convenient. I want to stay here even when I have to work at the other end of the peninsula the next morning.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “Well, Emily’s going to be gone for two nights around Christmas, if you’re interested in an extended sleepover—no pyjamas allowed.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He hung up his coat. “Do you want to go back to bed? Or should we make an early breakfast?”

  “I’m not tired,” she said quietly.

  “And we have a lot to talk about still, too.” He gestured to the kitchen. “Lead me to the coffee.”

  “I’m not sure you’ve finished your story about your brothers,” she said after pouring him a cup.

  “My brothers?” He barked a laugh. “Oh, last night. Yeah, I, uh, may have lost the train of thought there. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve realized I have a complicated relationship with my brothers. With my father, too. Him first, then with them. We’re best friends in theory, but we keep secrets from each other. I was thinking about you and your sister, and how close you are. We aren’t close like that. It took me forever to tell Jake about you, and not because I didn’t want to. It just didn’t need to come up.”

  She nodded slowly. “And by comparison, I told Meredith about you at the first opportunity.”

  “Right.”

  “Wow, that’s kind of a heavy realization.”

  “Yeah. We want to have a good relationship with each other, you know? So it’s weird. And it was the same, frankly, when Jake was going through his thing with you—we had no idea.”

  She winced. “Yeah?”

  “He didn’t tell us anything. He told Dani’s brothers, because he thought he owed them an explanation. But confiding in each other for emotional support?” He snorted. “Yeah, that’s not a Foster thing. But on the other hand, when Sean was hurt, there was no question about the fact that Jake, Dean, and I were all in that together. Jake and I drove Dean to the airport and he flew to Europe not knowing what he’d find, but he knew he had to go and sit with Sean, or bring his body home.”

  “You guys can’t talk about your feelings, but you’ll carry each other’s bodies?”

  “That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” He glanced at his watch. “Deep thoughts for five in the morning.”

  “We need pancakes to go with this conversation, don’t we?”

  “Extra syrup. And maybe bacon.”

  She pointed to the fridge. “Get on it, mister.”

  The rest of December swept by in a blur. Natasha found a local daycare provider who would take Emily three days a week, starting immediately, so she started working at the lumber store. On her second day, she used her employee discount to place a big order, everything she’d need to put in the kitchenettes in the apartments, and tile for the bathrooms, too. It ate a big chunk of her budget, but once she had the kitchens built, she could take pictures of the studios and get her listings live online.

  * * *

  Coming this spring! Modern, cozy weekend getaway spaces.

  * * *

  She couldn’t wait.

  The cashier job proved more similar to bartending than she’d first expected. Because they primarily served contractors, she saw a lot of regular customers—and it paid off in a big way that she could remember what they’d come in for before. Plus she learned a lot about renovation trends from the
ir conversations with Raj, which he happily included her in. She’d been agonizing over how to refinish the staircase to the second level on the apartment side until a contractor dropped a tip about his favourite wood paint. “A quick sand, then primer and two coats, and voila, you’ve got a brand new staircase that will look good for a decade.”

  Done. She picked up the paint before she left that day.

  In general, her shifts went by quickly, and left time for her to do work at the house as well before she picked up Emily from daycare.

  Matt slept over twice, and came for an early dinner before his Wednesday night parades at the armouries.

  It was all in all an exhausting but rewarding routine she’d stumbled into.

  But she was still looking forward to a few days off around Christmas, especially because a wicked winter storm was brewing out there.

  As the temperatures dropped overnight the night before Christmas Eve, the wind howled and seemed to hammer the house from all sides. Tasha tucked Emily into bed, then took the baby monitor to the apartments. She’d already assembled the cabinets for the kitchenettes, and her countertop chunks had arrived earlier that day.

  It was pretty straightforward—one piece of butcher block for the cabinet beside the sink, another to turn into a high island with legs she’d found at a recycling store. She finished the downstairs unit, then headed upstairs, where it was colder, and her fingers stiffened up as she got the screws and drill ready.

  As she worked, she realized it wasn’t just cool up there—it was pretty damn cold, and getting colder.

  She ratcheted the last screw into place, then crawled out from the lower cabinet and ran her hand over the ancient register.

  The air coming from the furnace wasn’t hot at all. It felt like the air conditioner was on—except she didn’t have AC.

  Something was wrong.

  Damn. She looked at the still-to-be-assembled island parts and decided that was as much as she could do tonight. She collected the baby monitor, her phone and her keys, and made sure the back side of the house was locked up before she went through the interior door into her own kitchen.

  It was just as cool on this side of the house.

  Double damn. Wincing at the thought of an emergency repair visit, she searched for the name of an HVAC guy and placed the call anyway.

  “Lot of calls tonight,” the guy who answered the phone said. “I’m not sure how long it’ll take for her to get there. Would you rather wait until the morning, or be on the overnight list? It’s a bit cheaper to have a daytime call.”

  “Okay, let’s do that.”

  “Bundle up under blankets,” he said cheerily. “She’ll call when she’s leaving the previous customer.”

  Great.

  Natasha knew what call she had to make next, and it physically hurt her. Be brave, she told herself. Be fearless. Hmmphf. When it came to her judgemental ex, she wasn’t there yet.

  David answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Hi, sorry for calling so late.” It wasn’t that late. Barely ten. He was probably still drinking wine after a lovely dinner in his always-perfectly-heated condo.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Damn it, that was not how this conversation was supposed to start. “First of all, everything is fine. But I might not be able to drive Emily to Collingwood tomorrow to meet you at the cottage. My furnace just decided to act up, and now I need to wait for a repair person to come on Christmas Eve, so…”

  “Act up?”

  “It stopped working.”

  “You don’t have heat right now?”

  “Uh…” She wiggled her fingers in the air. “I mean, I did until like an hour ago, so the house is fine. I’ll put Emily in my bed and we’ll be fine under the blankets together.”

  “You don’t have any heat?” He repeated the question, which was unnecessary. She’d answered it.

  “This literally just happened, and you were my second call after the furnace people. So—”

  “We’ll pick her up first thing.”

  “You don’t need to come that early. Or I can bring her after the appointment.”

  “First thing, Natasha. I don’t want my daughter to be cold.”

  Oh, he did not just say that. “Obviously, I don’t want her to be cold either. We have warm clothes and blankets. It’s fine.”

  “Is it? The weather is terrible up there right now. What if your pipes freeze?”

  Jesus, could that happen this quickly? “The repair person is coming as soon as possible.” Except that was a lie. Natasha had pushed it back until tomorrow to save a few dollars. Her stomach sank. “Look, I just wanted to give you a heads up. Let’s not make this into a thing.”

  “A thing like, my daughter needs a home with reliable heat and real furniture?”

  She hung up the phone. She was shaking with rage as she switched to text messaging.

  Natasha: Per our phone call, I would underline that I have given OUR daughter a loving, safe home every single day of her life, and your new interest in parenting needs to be grounded in an understanding of MY constant care for her. Do not ruin her Christmas by making this a judgmental pissing match. Please let me know what time you’ll come tomorrow to pick her up.

  He didn’t reply.

  She wasn’t surprised. She stomped upstairs, carefully picked up her beautiful baby, and carried her down the hall to her own room.

  It didn’t take long to get warm under the covers. It took much longer to fall asleep, her mind racing with what challenges the next day might bring.

  For the first time in a year, Matt’s partner on a shift was his sister-in-law, Dani.

  Which meant he had to field a hundred inappropriately nosy questions in between calls. But it also meant he had lots of food to eat as she bugged him about Natasha while they stretched their legs in the break room of the station in the early hours of Christmas Eve.

  “I’m just saying, I think I should invite her out for a girls’ night,” Dani said.

  He stabbed his fork into a bowl of meatballs. “These are great. What spice did you use?”

  “Can I have her number?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not like I’m a complete stranger.” Dani had been the first responder when Natasha had wiped out in a snow storm—the same night everyone had found out Jake’s former fling was pregnant and the big question was, might he be the father? “I want to meet her again, properly this time.”

  “And I want you to leave her alone.”

  “I bet she’d like to share a bottle of wine with me.”

  Natasha probably would—at some point. “Can you give me space to explore this relationship in privacy, first?”

  “Of course.” Dani tried to look hurt, but failed. “Come on, we have so much in common.”

  Matt choked on his next bite of meatball. Yes, they did.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “Soon. Okay? I’m going to her place for a couple of days, and we’ll talk about it then. But I don’t know when she’s going to want to start hanging out in Pine Harbour, and frankly, I’m in no rush either. I like having her all to myself.”

  “Don’t be creepy and controlling. Girls’ nights are essential to life.”

  That was a fair point. And with Natasha’s sister moving away, maybe Dani’s forceful brand of love might be an entertaining alternative to sister time. Not a replacement, but… He held up his hands. “How about this. I’ll give her your number, and we’ll see what she does with it. Deal?”

  “Deal.” Dani grabbed another Tupperware container from her bag. “And give her these cookies.”

  “Who’s trying to woo her here, you or me?”

  “Maybe you should bake her cookies.”

  Actually, maybe he should.

  He’d already bought both Emily and Natasha more Christmas presents than Tasha would probably think is appropriate. But if he made her something, that would be her favourite gift of all—
and soften the reaction to the spoiling he was going to do no matter what.

  He should have thought of that before Christmas Eve.

  Dani eyed him suspiciously. “Are you going to tell her you made these cookies?”

  He opened the container and grabbed one. He shook his head after tasting it. “No way would she believe I made them. But I am going to make her something. Anyway, enough about me.”

  “Never.”

  “Let’s talk about—” The radio squawked to life, and they were both spared the rest of that conversation. They shoved their food away and headed for the ambulance bay.

  They were flat out until the end of their shift.

  He went to his apartment, and before he got in the shower, he sent Natasha a text.

  Matt: Happy Christmas Eve. Done my shift. What time are you taking Emily to her dad’s? I need to grab some sleep, but I don’t want to miss any time together.

  Natasha: About that…

  His heart sank as he watched the bubbles appear on the screen.

  Natasha: So my furnace is broken. I’m waiting for a repair person, and David’s coming all the way here to pick up Emily. Christmas may need to be postponed, because it’s really freaking cold here.

  He was already pulling on his coat.

  Matt: I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Hang tight. I’m so sorry.

  Natasha: No, it’s okay, get some sleep.

  Matt: I’m honestly fine, and I bet you could use some moral support right now.

  Natasha: I won’t say no to that.

  Matt: Good. I also have cookies.

  Natasha: Even better. I could use them more than Santa right now.

  When he arrived, the house was cool, but not freezing, and Natasha’s smile was bright if a bit forced. “Hey,” she said as he gave her a quick, one-armed hug.