Olivia took a few breaths and squeezed his hand. Willie was just coming in the door and looking around. “I need to get Alan and her together.”
“Now you are talking fantasy. You want scrawny, flabby Trumbull to look at her when you are in the room?”
Olivia couldn’t help smiling—but then it’s how she’d always felt. Vain, yes, but Willie wasn’t especially pretty or built or smart. Yet Alan had liked her better. “Thank you,” she said. “So how do we do it?”
Kit smiled at the we. “Empty the earth of all people so only those two are left. They might notice each other but I’m not sure.”
In spite of the trauma she’d felt since entering the store, Olivia laughed. Alan was wearing that expression she knew so well, that he expected her to follow him.
But Kit’s sarcasm, and the way he was holding her hand so securely, was giving her courage. “There’s a storage room,” she whispered and Kit bent down to hear her. “Down the hall to the left. If we lock them in there for a while they might realize that they like each other.”
He nodded in understanding. “Think the girl will go with me if I ask her to?”
She was so grateful for his help that when she looked up at him he seemed to have starlight encircling his head. “I think she’ll believe she’s died and gone to heaven.”
“Keep looking at me like that and I’ll show you what you can do with a vibrating washing machine.”
“How do you know that?” she snapped.
Smiling, Kit let go of her hand and went toward Willie, who was looking lost.
“I’m glad you sent him away,” Alan said. He was looking her up and down in a way she’d always disliked. “I knew that as soon as you returned to Summer Hill you’d come see me.”
Has he always been this arrogant? Olivia wondered. She knew he was after they were married, but if he’d done this at first, she wouldn’t have married him. No. At first he’d been quiet and unassuming and helpless, she thought. And she had jumped in and taken over. “How have you been?”
“Better now that you’re here.”
“Alan,” a customer said, “I was wondering about—”
“Ask a salesman,” he said quickly.
The tone he used sent Olivia back in time. After they were married, Alan would snap, “Ask Olivia.” Behind him, the door opened and in came a pretty young woman Olivia had only met once. She was Kevin’s mother. During the birth, a blood clot had erupted and she’d died instantly.
“I thought you were going out with Diane.” Olivia nodded toward the young woman.
“I was but, now that you’re here, I’ll let her go.”
Olivia had a flash of panic. What about Kevin? Did he have to have Diane as his mother? If Alan and she didn’t marry, would Kevin be born?
She saw Kit across the room. He was walking with Willie and listening to whatever she was saying. Behind his back, he pointed toward the end of the hall and Olivia shook her head. They had the wrong woman! In spite of all Kevin’s ingratitude, Olivia had helped raise him and she couldn’t risk that he’d cease to exist. Willie was going to have to take care of herself.
She smiled at Alan. “I seem to remember a big closet at the back of this building.”
With a smile that said he’d won, he led the way.
When they passed Kit, she said, “Not Willie, get Diane.”
Kit took only seconds to recover from his confusion, then he went back into the store.
Fifteen minutes later, Olivia and Kit were walking away and smiling. She held up her hand to him but he had no idea what she meant. “It’s a high five.” She showed him how to slap hands. Behind them, they couldn’t hear the yells of the two people they’d just locked in the big closet.
As they got back to the showroom, Kit halted. “Are you feeling better?”
“Much,” she said. “Thank you.”
“So why’d you stay married to that jerk for so many years?”
Considering that she was twenty-two years old and had never been married, what he said was absurd—and funny. “Great sex,” she said.
“Anything you’d like to teach me?”
She slipped her arm in his. “I don’t think I need to teach you anything.”
His eyes turned hot. “How about if we leave this place?” He nodded down the hall toward the locked door of the closet. “Unless you want to release them now.”
“No, I’ll call later. I think they need a few hours together. We can—” She broke off because she saw Mr. Trumbull sitting in his office. He’d unexpectedly died of a heart attack the year before Olivia returned to town, and she didn’t really know him. But she knew he’d had the reputation of being an honest, hardworking man—and he and his son never got along. Their arguments were legendary.
“I need to do something.” She tapped on his door, then opened it.
Mr. Trumbull looked up. “Why, it’s pretty little Olivia Paget, isn’t it? And who is your lucky young man?”
“Christopher Montgomery, sir.” Kit held out his hand to shake.
“I just wanted to say that my father speaks very highly of you,” she said. “He says you were a war hero.”
Mr. Trumbull smiled, obviously pleased at the accolade. “Not a hero, but I did my part.”
Olivia picked up a little framed photo of Mr. Trumbull in his army uniform, his chest adorned with a long line of medals. “Didn’t you give Audie Murphy a run for his money?”
Mr. Trumbull looked like he might blush. Audie Murphy was the most decorated man in WWII and he went on to star in some movies.
Kit was standing to the side, waiting to see what she was up to.
“I hate to be a pest, Mr. Trumbull,” she said, “but Uncle Freddy wants a new stove. I was wondering if we could get some prices on something gas, thirty-six inches? I’d ask the salesmen but you know Uncle Freddy, he only trusts you.”
“Sure.” Mr. Trumbull got up. “I’ll just be a few minutes. Anything for Uncle Freddy.”
As soon as the door closed, Olivia went to her knees and started using her nails to pull at the cheap, thin paneling on the wall. “Hand me that letter opener, would you?”
Instead, Kit knelt beside her, put his hands on the paneling, and pulled up. The thin wood came away on one side.
Olivia put her hand inside and reached up as far as she could. She withdrew a long, narrow wooden box.
“What’s in it?”
“It’s full of Mr. Trumbull’s war medals.” She hesitated, then thought, Why not tell? “Alan did it. He was sick of hearing how his dad was a hero, so he stuck the box of medals behind the paneling, then messed up the office and said there’d been a robbery. I found it years later when I remodeled the office.”
“How about if we let Mr. Trumbull think he found it?” Kit slipped the box back behind the paneling, but left the nails sticking out.
“I don’t know what happened to Alan,” Mr. Trumbull said as he returned to the office. “He was supposed to be helping on the floor tonight.”
“Oh, you know Alan,” Olivia said. “If there’s work to be done, he disappears.”
Mr. Trumbull looked at her in shock, then laughed.
“I bet he’s out playing golf,” Olivia said.
Mr. Trumbull laughed harder. “I shouldn’t think it’s funny, but his mother—”
“Believes Alan can do anything,” Olivia said. Behind her, Kit was doing something with his foot.
“He’s a clever boy but...”
“He’d rather spend time figuring out how not to do something than to do it,” Olivia said.
Mr. Trumbull was still laughing. “Oh, Livie, I had no idea you knew my son so well. Why don’t you come over for dinner some night? Get to know all of us better?”
She stopped laughing. It was as though he was matchmaking her with his son. She knew how lazy he was, therefore she should marry him? Scary concept!
“She’s taken,” Kit said loudly. “Mr. Trumbull, I seem to have stepped on a nail and I can’t move my shoe. I’m caught on a corner of the paneling and there seems to be something under here. Would you mind giving me a hand?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight