tore open a box and turned up her nose at the contents. “Kitchen stuff.”
“Good to know. How about you keep opening boxes and I’ll put them where they belong?”
“Seriously?”
“This’ll go a lot faster if we work together.”
Kate exhaled a long, dramatic sigh. “I guess, but I need my shoes.”
Knowing it would be futile to remind her that she was already wearing a perfectly good pair of shoes, Jon carried the box of pots and pans into the kitchen and set it on the counter. Kate had ripped opened two more boxes by the time he returned.
“Another one for the kitchen and this one—” She touched the box with the toe of her pink sneaker. “Bathroom. We should have labeled these.”
“There was no time,” he said, depositing the box of towels at the bottom of the stairs. “Did you write anything on your boxes?”
“Never thought of it. I’ll remember that for next time.”
Next time? Best let that drop, he decided as he returned to the kitchen with the second box. He had signed a one-year lease on this place and until that was up he was in no hurry to move again, so there was no point in giving her a chance to say she wanted to move back to the city. He had already accepted the position as PE teacher at Serenity Bay High School, and he had every intention of giving this fresh start his best shot.
Besides, this was a great house with its front facing onto a quiet cul-de-sac. Jubilation Court—which really was their new address—had lived up to its name from the moment he’d gazed out the kitchen window. He stared out the window now and surveyed the cedar-plank deck and, between the two towering firs growing at the bottom of the slope that was his backyard, the sweeping curve of Serenity Bay and the Salish Sea beyond.
Okay, maybe jubilant wasn’t exactly right, but in spite of his daughter’s resentment he sensed he could feel settled here, content even. Emotions that had evaded him since his ex-wife had dropped her bombshell. With a shake of his head, he chased the memories away. Fresh start, remember? The old baggage had been left behind. Right? Right. That’s what he told the kids on his soccer team. We can’t dwell on the past, we can only analyse it and improve our game. If they could believe it, so could he.
Kate, suddenly quiet, was sitting on the floor and gazing intently at framed family photographs when he once again returned to the living room.
“Are you going to put these on the mantel?” There was no missing the hint of accusation in her voice. “Or did you plan to leave them in the box and hope I didn’t find them?”
With her long dark hair and engaging blue eyes, she was every bit as stunning as her media-darling mother, and that scared him more than he liked to admit. It also hurt, more than a little, that she thought he would try to erase her mother from her life. He was a bigger man than that, or at least he wanted to be.
“I had no intention of hiding that box of photographs. Tell you what, why don’t you unpack as many as you want and put them on the mantel right now?”
Kate rolled her eyes as only a teenager could. “Maybe later. I’m looking for my shoes, remember?”
How could he forget? And what had become of the little girl who used to hang on every word he said? Huh. Who was he kidding? Long before her fourteenth birthday last month, his little girl had been morphing into a beautiful young woman with a personal sense of style and a mind of her own. He watched her shift boxes, tear flaps open, peer inside and purposefully move on to the next.
Never get between a woman and her wardrobe, he reminded himself. If he’d learned nothing else about women during his marriage to Georgette, he’d learned that.
“All right!” Kate’s gleeful exclamation indicated the all-important shoes had been found. Before she picked the box up, she returned to the photographs. “Can I have this one of Mom for my room?”
“Of course.” It was important that she maintain a connection with the mother who’d moved halfway across the world, he knew that, but he worried that daily phone calls wouldn’t be enough.
She set her mother’s photograph in the box and closed the flaps. “Did you give her the phone number here?”
“I did. Emailed it yesterday along with the address and our new cell phone numbers.”
“Good.” She picked up the coveted carton of footwear and made her way upstairs, leaving the unasked question hanging in the air. When would Georgette call? She had initially promised to call every day but that was impractical, given her hectic travel schedule, but she did her best. She always called on Saturday, though, and he knew Georgette wouldn’t let Kate down. He hoped. She seldom did, and she had to understand what an important day this was for their daughter. If she didn’t call by dinnertime, he would send a text message reminder. If that was too late for her, well, that was too bad.
He went back to opening boxes and moving them to the rooms where they belonged. As he did, his thoughts drifted, searching for the exact moment his marriage had run off the rails. The reality was that there hadn’t been a moment. He and Georgette had spent most of their marriage slowly growing apart. He’d gradually become accustomed to being the very-much-on-the-sidelines husband of Vancouver’s most talked-about news anchor, and she had eventually stopped trying to turn her “I’d rather be at the gym” husband into a tuxedo-wearing socialite. Even after they knew it was over, they’d both spent several agonizing months coming to grips with it and helping Kate adjust to their new reality.
The real end had come in the form of a European businessman named Xavier who had swept Georgette off her feet and onto his Paris-bound private jet. She had agreed to Jon’s having full custody of their daughter and generous child support in exchange for summer visits. The first visit should have happened at the end of the last school year. It hadn’t. Then Kate was supposed to join her mother for a week in Rome, but that had fallen through. Instead Georgette had promised to be in Vancouver several weeks ago, and that, too, had fallen through at the last minute. Now it was going to be Thanksgiving. He knew Georgette loved their daughter and wanted to make her a priority. He just wasn’t sure Kate knew that.
The doorbell rang as he was contemplating, for something like the millionth time, the overwhelming difference between being a divorced guy with shared custody and a single dad with total responsibility for a rebellious teenager.
Jason Oliver, the real estate agent who’d rented the house to him, had said he would drop by sometime today. Given that Jon didn’t know anyone else in Serenity Bay, it had to be him. Grateful for the distraction from demoralizing self-doubt and disorganized packing boxes, he wound his way through the clutter and opened the front door to a beautiful woman with a paper plate of cookies in her hands and a teenage girl by her side.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Sarah Stewart. My daughter, Casey, and I live next door and we wanted to welcome you and your daughter to the neighborhood, to Serenity Bay.”
Jon’s heart sank, and not in an entirely good way. The real estate agent had mentioned that a widow lived next door. This was the widow? This expensively dressed and stunningly beautiful woman whose poise and self-control reminded him of Georgette.
“These are for you.” Sarah held out the plate.
“Thanks. I’m Jonathan Marshall. Jon.”
“We
