After the call, she contemplated her contacts list and scrolled to her aunt’s number. Kathryn Lindon. How easy it’d be to press that dial button and see if her connected relative could help her find a second job. She owed her aunt a thank-you for the gifts she’d sent while on a recent Paris trip—something she always did when traveling—an expensive raincoat and purse delivered yesterday. They were the kinds of items she tried never to sell in a consignment shop, since her aunt would consider that the ultimate insult.
Yet if Rebecca phoned, she’d only get Kathryn’s voice mail, followed by a call tomorrow from the cowed assistant through which Rebecca and her aunt usually conversed.
Nope.
No support there, unless the expensive flowers and a card bearing the generous check her aunt used to discharge (pay off?) her obligations would suffice. The cash would help. The I-told-you-so’s that’d come with it...not so much.
No doubt Aunt Kathryn would repeat the doom-and-gloom prophecies she’d made when Rebecca graduated from her master’s program three years ago.
“Use your head,” Rebecca could hear her aunt say over a glass of pinot. “You’re working a low wage job and spending nearly all of it to share a space slightly bigger than a walk-in closet. Start a private practice and move home where you belong.”
And the worst thing? It’d been tempting. Taking the hard road was...well, hard, and getting more difficult by the day. Especially with her school dragging its feet on granting her a permanent position. Denial of tenure was a scarlet letter D on your résumé, alerting every other district that you weren’t good enough. Made even getting an interview near to impossible.
If she didn’t get tenure at her current school, she’d fail at her bid for independence and not have the life she’d dreamed of, one filled with people who made time for her...put her first. Was that too much to ask? Laura had joked that Rebecca’s expectations were so high no one could reach them, but she’d rather be alone than compromise, even when her chances looked worse by the minute. Somehow, loneliness was more bearable when you were actually alone.
Rebecca sighed and shoved her phone back in her pocket.
No. She wouldn’t call.
Aunt Kathryn’s way of helping was money. Rebecca, on the other hand, wanted to make a difference by doing—exactly why she used her psychology degree to work in a public school system with at-risk teenagers. She didn’t want anyone else growing up feeling as though their problems didn’t matter...that they didn’t matter.
She’d just lost one job that mattered a lot to her. Tomorrow, when she confronted her principal about why the school board still hadn’t voted to grant her tenure, something they always did months earlier, in January, would she discover she might lose two?
Suddenly the rain picked up and a gust flipped her umbrella backward. If the car heading Rebecca’s way hit the huge puddle beside her, she’d be—
She shook her drenched self.
—a drowned rat.
Gross. How many toxins swam in that street soup? She mashed her broken umbrella closed and took deep, calming breaths. Guess this night could get worse. What she really needed was a friend. When a rivulet of cold water snaked down her back, she ducked beneath the nearest awning, and her breath caught at the bright sign in the window.
The White Horse Tavern.
She’d heard of it...but where?
The place looked friendly enough, at least, and was a good spot to take temporary refuge from the storm. Rebecca reached for the wrought iron handle and her hand slipped, missing it completely. She stepped closer and wobbled, tilting to the left. Why was she so woozy? A couple whisked open the door and paused, eyes wide as they took in her weaving form.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and stumbled to the side. The berth they gave her spoke volumes. If only they knew cold medicine was her drink of choice—the effects of which, combined with her muscle relaxers, were kicking in with a vengeance. Everything seemed fuzzy. She needed to get her bearings before heading home. Maybe she should splurge and grab a cab. Rebecca felt less and less sure she’d make it on her own, after all.
* * *
AIDEN WALSH RETURNED the departing couple’s wave and leaned against the wooden bar. It was 12:40. A little early for closing time, but this was Sunday. His younger siblings returned to school from their break tomorrow. Besides, it’d be just like rebellious Connor, his fourteen-year-old brother, to still be on the Xbox. With a superintendent’s meeting tomorrow, Connor’s expulsion on the table for a school yard brawl that’d happened the day before vacation, the kid needed to toe the line. Help, not hinder, what was already an impossible family situation.
Aiden squeezed out a washcloth over the cleaning fluid pail, hard. If his brother wasn’t readmitted, how would Aiden pay for private education, or worse, home school the kid? Money and time. Two things always in short supply.
“Excuse me,” a young woman’s voice called from the open door. “Are you still open?”
With a suppressed sigh, Aiden glanced up and spied an unsteady woman bracing herself in his doorway. He tried not to stare, but she looked like she’d face-planted in a puddle then fallen asleep in it. With her eyes at half-mast, her nose and cheeks red, and the ends of her blond hair dripping, she reminded him of his cat, Grinch, when he got caught in the rain: woeful and bedraggled in a way that made Aiden chuckle and then scold himself...and want to make it better.
“Come in.” He strode forward, his pace quickening as she swayed. No one passed out in his bar. Especially not a lady. His hand snaked around her waist and held fast as her exotic scent washed over him.
There was no other way to describe it: she looked and smelled expensive, from the satiny feel of her coat to her leather purse. In fact, noticing the designer plate plastered across the top of the bag, he remembered seeing the same kind in a Fifth Avenue window, a purse his sister had pointed out. Three thousand bucks. Enough to pay for Connor’s braces, Ella’s much begged for dance classes, or remodeling the bathroom with safety gear for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother.
Pick a bill, any bill, he’d often thought, after his father had died ten years ago and Aiden started struggling to keep the family and their business afloat as the eldest of seven children. Sometimes it seemed like he was the one drowning; his feverish, crazy work schedule was all that kept him and his family above water.
The woman blinked up at him with wet-spiked lashes and the sudden flash of blue eyes knocked the wind out of him. “I need to dry off.” Or at least he thought that was what she said. She slurred slightly, enough to make him wonder how many bars she’d visited before wandering into his. Uptown girls didn’t usually venture into a small operation like the White Horse.
“This is the place for it.” He helped her to a wooden bar stool, the dampness of her coat seeping through his shirt and slacks.
She blew her nose and swiped at the water dripping down her cheeks. “I look like a drowned rat.” Was it his imagination, or were there tears in her eyes? He’d seen plenty of people weep into their cups at his tavern, one of the many reasons he never imbibed himself. Yet her sorrow looked deeper than that.
“Here.” He handed over a bar towel and squinted at her. “And you don’t resemble a rat. A cat maybe,” he mumbled to himself, then clamped his lips shut. What an idiot. “I’m Aiden.” He flicked his eyes her way, but she seemed lost in her own world, running the cloth over her hair and face. In her state, she’d never remember what he said.
“I’m Rebecca. So how do I look then?” She shoved back her hair and peered at him with questioning eyes.
Under the soft glow of the antique light fixtures, her skin gleamed, her heart-shaped face prettier than he’d first thought. Her small nose flared above a mobile mouth with a generous upper lip. And those eyes. He couldn’t look away from them. “Fine,” he blurted, then hustled behind the bar.
“Loose