The Luck of the Paw (An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy Book 9) Read online

  Chris drew a happy face on the placemat and circled it. “We can always take comfort in that fact. I’m guessing you won’t be attending the next reunion, huh?”

  “Not likely. Did you go to the one they had a few years ago?”

  “Are you kidding? No way.” He drew an elaborately decorated arrow pointed at her. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you planning to do next?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The waitress came up with their plates of food and placed them on the table. After she left, Mia handed her plate to Chris in exchange for his. “Thanks for not ordering anything from the sea.”

  “After the last twenty-four hours with you and Lulu, I’m swearing off seafood for a while.”

  “Good idea.”

  He pointed his fork at her. “Speaking of plans, are you avoiding the question? You still didn’t say. What’s next?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I’m going to travel and look for a new place to live. Then figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.” Mia turned her palms toward the ceiling. “That’s as far as I’ve gotten. How about you? How long are you in Alpine Grove?”

  “Probably another week after I’ve hashed over all the preliminary stuff with the developer. Then I go back to the office and get to work drawing my fingers to the bone. They want to begin construction on the house in the spring.”

  Mia took a sip of water. “Your plans are a lot more organized than mine.”

  “Yours sound like a lot more fun. Being away from the daily grind of my life and meeting you has caused me to think about a lot of things I normally don’t think about.” He picked up the crayon again and began doodling a cartoon thought bubble.

  Mia pointed at the drawing. “It’s empty. Is this you emptying your mind? Cartoon meditation? Are you being Zen here?”

  “Very funny.” He scrawled a twisted black blob into the bubble. “Here you go. I give you a representation of complete confusion.”

  “What are you confused about?”

  He looked up. “Everything. I hate my job, I’m broke, and I have a girlfriend I fight with constantly. I wish I could just run away and join the circus with you.”

  “I don’t think your girlfriend would approve.” Mia was not entirely surprised to hear about a girlfriend, and yet she was startlingly disappointed nonetheless. Just when she was sort of starting to like him. It figured.

  She shook off her irritation and made a wry face. “You do get points for coming up with maybe the only idea I actually haven’t considered. The circus, while interesting in theory, upon reflection, I don’t think it will work for me. Clowns creep me out.”

  Chris laughed. “Good point. Maybe traveling minstrels?”

  “I can’t carry a tune.”

  Chris drew a jester on the placemat. “Can you juggle?”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  He crossed out the jester. “I’m starting to see what you’re dealing with here.”

  “Don’t feel bad; I have this problem with every idea. I told you—you’re lucky. You are qualified for a career where you can be creative. How cool is that?”

  “I guess it could be cool. But right now, it’s not, for a bunch of reasons.”

  “Then maybe those are the things you need to change.”

  Chris ordered some coffee while Mia pondered the dessert menu. All the dog walking and washing had made her hungry. The chocolate cake was calling her name. What the heck. Why not? Presumably Chris’s expense account was paying, so she may as well live it up. She handed the menu to the waitress. “Chocolate crack, please.”

  The waitress raised her penciled brows. “What?”

  “Cake. I mean cake.” Mia glanced at Chris, who smiled at her. As the waitress retreated, Mia silently mouthed “sorry” at him.

  “No big deal.” He picked up the crayon again and drew a slice of cake. “It’s interesting to me how you can talk with me for so long, then someone else walks up and all of a sudden the wrong word pops out.”

  “Welcome to my world of weird. It’s because I’m not nervous around you anymore. Maybe because you knew what I was like in high school, I figure how could you possibly think I’m any more strange than you already do.”

  “I never thought of it that way. Maybe that’s why it’s easy for me to talk to you too.” He scribbled a remarkably accurate caricature of himself as he looked at sixteen, complete with the black-framed owlish glasses and huge backpack.

  Mia laughed. “That’s fantastic. If the whole architecture thing doesn’t work out, you can do caricatures of people.”

  “Not everyone appreciates this form of illustration.”

  “Do one of me in high school. That could be frightening.”

  “Are you sure you won’t get mad? I mean, I didn’t know you then, and I only sort of remember what you looked like.”

  “Oh, come on. I’ll be fine. Go for it.”

  Chris began drawing while Mia looked on. The waitress arrived with the coffee and cake and they both looked up. She put the food down without comment. Drawing on the placemats was undoubtedly a common occurrence. If they were going to put crayons on a table with paper placemats, drawing was inevitable.

  Chris turned the placemat around. “Okay, here you go, but you promised not to get mad.”

  “I think you didn’t give my hair enough gel.” She took the crayon from his hand and added a few more spikes. “It was the eighties. Big hair, remember?”

  He laughed. “You’re taking this with remarkably good humor. I did one of my girlfriend and I thought she was going to rip my throat out.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Donna.”

  “Well, at least you have a girlfriend. I haven’t gone out with anyone in forever, well, except with you, and that doesn’t count.”

  “Hey, why don’t I count?”

  Mia raised her eyebrows, “Hello? Remember Donna? The girlfriend you just mentioned thirty seconds ago?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m pretty sure she hates me though. She hasn’t called me the whole time I’ve been in Alpine Grove.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Well, I had to fly back to go to that meeting. I tried sending an email from work, but she was busy.”

  “So you didn’t see her?”

  “I didn’t, but I wasn’t there long. I guess the last time we saw each other in person was sometime before I left. It’s been maybe a month I guess. Six weeks?”

  Mia doodled a flower on her placemat. This was getting interesting. “Have you called her from here?”

  Chris took red a crayon from the cup and scrawled some lines that looked like the beginnings of a house. “I, uh, well, I was going to. Okay, no.” He drew some flames coming out of the house.

  Mia pointed her crayon at his placemat. “I’m guessing there’s trouble in paradise?”

  “The truth is I don’t want to talk to her. I know it’s horrible to say that, but it’s true. I feel like such a failure when I’m around her. When I had to admit to all my money problems, we had the fight to end all fights.”

  “So you broke up?”

  “Not exactly.” He drew a bouquet of roses. “I apologized and begged her to forgive me. I promised to change things, and it was this whole big drama. Donna gets really emotional. I can’t handle it when women cry.”

  “So you didn’t break up?”

  “No, not technically. But in a way I wish we had. I can’t see any type of future with her anymore. It’s not like I’m suddenly going to change and become the wealthy, successful, revered architect she wants me to be. There’s not going to be a spread in Architectural Digest about my work anytime soon.”

  “Well you never know. You might design something amazing.”

  “Not gonna happen. I’m more likely to end up in MAD magazine as part of a round-up of the twenty dumbest investments ever made by struggling architects.” He scrawled a tiny person jumping out a window of the house with limbs flailing. “She sa
id I lied to her and misled her. I don’t know, maybe I did.”

  “About being a rich architect?” Mia drew a swirly question mark. “You seemed pretty up-front about your money problems with me.”

  He slapped the crayon down on the table. “I know! What’s that about? I have no idea why I felt compelled to dump all that personal stuff on you last night.”

  “I already proposed the theory that it’s easy to spill your guts to the loser mushroom girl, but you didn’t buy it.”

  “Maybe I wanted to make sure you know who I really am. With Donna, I kept thinking I’d be able to fix the debt problems, so I didn’t say anything for a long time. Too long.”

  Mia added more tendrils to her curly question mark. “Maybe you needed someone to listen without getting mad, instead of trying to change or fix anything. Just to listen.”

  He leaned back in the chair and looked at her for a moment. “I think that’s the least judgmental thing anyone has ever said to me about this whole mess. You’re full of surprises. I’m so glad we met.”

  “I am too.” Mia smiled. “Does that mean we can be friends? I guess technically we’d be vacation friends, since neither of us lives here and we’re both leaving in a week. But like you said, it’s nice to have someone to talk to for a change.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a friend. Well, except Gizmo. And he isn’t much of a conversationalist. Maybe I should threaten to throw up on people more often.”

  “I don’t think you need to barf on anyone.” Chris reached across the table and pulled the crayon from her fingers, so he could clasp her hand. “It’s been a long time since anyone has cared enough to take the time to listen to me.”

  Mia grinned. “You probably figured out that I’m better at listening than talking.”

  “I don’t agree. I like hearing what you have to say. Even when you say the wrong word, it’s okay. I know what you mean. And you usually get your words out eventually.”

  “You must be a patient guy.”

  “It takes a long time to build a house, but in the end it’s worth it.” He squeezed her hand. “So, do you want to do something more fun than washing a stinky dog tomorrow?”

  “Sure. I’m going out to Kat’s place to walk Gizmo in the afternoon, and I have to meet some people there after that, but I was thinking of driving out and visiting some places around here in the morning. I have some postcards with pictures of the area and I’d like to see the real thing.”

  “Want company? I have some work to do, but it can wait until the afternoon.”

  “That would be fun.”

  Chapter 5

  Postcard Tour

  After bonding with Chris over dinner and doodles the night before, Mia woke up in a good mood, looking forward to exploring Alpine Grove with him. She picked up a postcard off the nightstand and examined it. Not all of the postcards were particularly interesting. Many were of buildings that now housed different stores downtown. There was even one with a picture of the H12 motel, which looked more or less the same in 1976 as it did in 1996.

  She held up a postcard that had a beautiful view of the lake. It was taken from a rocky overhang high above the lake, but the back of the card didn’t indicate a location other than Alpine Grove. Maybe if she showed it to Kat’s friend who had lived here for a while, she’d recognize the spot. In the meantime, she and Chris could check out one of the places that was identified on one of the other cards.

  When she’d gotten her flat tire, Mia had been headed for Garfield Beach, but ended up turning back. She was determined to get there this time. Chris had said there was a trail along the water that was nice. They’d agreed she’d pick him up and drop him off back at the Enchanted Moose, since she’d be heading north to Kat’s house afterward.

  She got a bagel at the cafe and then got into the RAV for the trip back north. She drove around to the back of the Enchanted Moose and parked near Chris’s unit, but he was already outside with Lulu. She walked across the parking lot to the picnic area, where Chris was sitting hunched over with his back to her. Lulu jumped up and barked as Mia approached. He turned to look and hurriedly jammed a cigarette into an ashtray on the picnic table.

  Mia squinted at him as he flopped his leg over the bench to extract himself. What had happened to him? He looked terrible and had dark circles under his eyes. She waved a hand in greeting. “Ready to go?”

  He nodded and smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too, although I guess I need to establish some ground rules. Dogs are fine in my brand-new car, but cigarette smoke grosses me out. There is absolutely no smoking in the car.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Well, you do a good imitation of it.” Mia gestured toward the picnic table behind them. “The cigarette in your hand was my first clue.”

  “That’s the only one.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got my zombie Elvira thing going today. You’re a stress smoker, aren’t you? What happened?”

  Chris opened the back door of the RAV, lifted Lulu into the backseat, closed the door, and got in the front. He turned to Mia as she settled into the driver’s seat. “I was working this morning and kind of freaking out about it. Smoking is one of those leftover bad habits from architecture studio in college. I got very little sleep back then. There was a lot of pressure and the cigarettes helped keep me awake. The room here is nonsmoking, so I went outside.”

  Mia glanced at him. “Is the project going that badly? You didn’t say anything yesterday.”

  “It’s fine so far. The developer, Ben, is a nice guy. He loves Alpine Grove and has a summer place here.”

  “Then what happened between yesterday and today?”

  “After everything we talked about, I ended up calling Donna.” He looked out the passenger-side window. “That was a mistake.”

  “How come? I thought you wanted to talk to her. Well, okay, maybe you sort of didn’t, but talking to your girlfriend is a good thing, right?”

  “I suppose. She wanted to find out how the project was going, telling me how important it is and that maybe I could submit it for awards, if I can meet some deadline. After I talked to her, I looked at my preliminary sketches for Ben for today and decided they were crap. I kept thinking, these are horrible and I have no business designing this house.”

  Mia briefly took her eyes from the road to look at him. “Now I’m curious. What does she do for a living?”

  “She’s an interior designer. We met through a client.”

  “Interesting. So you design the house and she furnishes it. You could be a power couple.”

  “Sure, except she thinks my designs stink. When I talked to her, it was like the pressure to be creative and unique in my designs all came rushing back. Talking to her is as bad as being at work. It’s like my brain shuts down and I can’t think.”

  Mia tapped her finger on the top of the steering wheel. “That’s really odd to me because when you told me you were an architect, you said it was exciting to see a project go from start to finish.”

  “It’s true. I do feel that way, and I even believe it when I’m just sitting here with you, driving around Alpine Grove. But usually I work on buildings like retail complexes, where I’m dealing with one tiny aspect of a massive project.” He pointed at the road. “The turn to Garfield Beach is up there, by the way. You might want to slow down.”

  “When you think about the house on the lake, what are you most excited about?”

  “Bringing that view into the house.” He smiled. “It’s going to be an interesting design challenge. You saw that property. Imagine a house built into the hillside, cantilevered so most of it is actually airborne over the water. Then windows that bring the outside in. It would feel like you’re flying over the lake. Absolutely fantastic.”

  “Okay, I’m sold. I thought almost the same thing when I saw the lot. It sounds way better than my aged Airstream.”

  He tapped the back of h
er hand on the gear shift. “Hey, you said you came into some money.”

  “Don’t get excited. It’s not that much money. How much is this guy Ben going to sell this place for when it’s done?”

  “More than I can afford. Your trailer is looking pretty good for me, remember?”

  “Hey, you said you wanted to travel. Technically, it’s a mobile home. Well, maybe not so mobile anymore. I think it was trying to return to the earth by decomposing into its core elements.”

  “Nice.”

  “So when you’re designing, maybe you need to think about the house itself. Not winning awards or all that. Just focus on what you’re excited about.”

  “I suppose. But I think the other moral of the story is don’t call Donna again until this project is over. After freaking out last night, I told myself that if I got up super early, I could fix my designs. But I think I just made everything worse.”

  “You’re pretty hard on yourself.”

  “I might deserve it.” He pointed toward the road ahead. “There’s the trailhead up there.”

  Mia parked the car and they got out. Lulu had been such a perfect, polite traveler that Mia had forgotten the little dog was in the backseat. Lulu stood up, but was too short to see out the windows.

  Chris unloaded the dog and put her on the ground. He crouched down and stroked her head. “Remember this place?”

  Mia smiled as Lulu marched toward the trailhead. “I think she does. Follow that poodle!”

  Chris took her hand. “Thanks for talking me down off the ledge. You must think I’m a basket case. Maybe I’m having an early midlife crisis or something.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Mia pulled the postcard out of the bag and handed it to him. “Here’s what we’re looking for. I wanted to see the view for myself. I guess Riddell Point is along this trail somewhere.”

  Chris looked at the front of the card. “Pretty.” He flipped it over. “So I guess your dad is Dan? It says, ‘It’s beautiful here today and I reflected upon the simple pleasures of a walk through the forest. Just me, trees, nature, and the babies. Love, CA.’ Who is ‘CA’?”