Getting Lucky (The Portland Pioneers Book 2) (33 page)

If Noah could have seen her face, he would have seen the slow, purposeful grin on it. But as it was, he only heard her say, “yeah, I’d like to see
that
happen,” in the most sarcastic voice she had in her arsenal. It was cliché, but there was a reason for that. It worked
so
beautifully.

He flipped her over even faster than she imagined he could, and she giggled helplessly as he proceeded to make very
good on his threat.

Tabitha hadn’t set the kitchen on fire after all, Maggie noted as she sauntered into the kitchen an hour and a half later, still a little boneless and relaxed from sex and a hot shower.

The coffee pot was half-full, though and Maggie glanced at it dubiously.

Maggie pulled two mugs from the cupboard and proceeded to pour herself a cup. Stirring in a splash of milk, she took a cautious sip and thankfully managed to make it to the sink before she spit it out. Flipping on the water, she didn’t even bother grabbing a glass—she just leaned over and drank right from the faucet, trying desperately to erase the god-awful taste from her mouth.

She really didn’t have a clue how Tabitha could actually make coffee that tasted like a burnt twig, but that still smelled halfway tolerable, Maggie thought as she sniffed at the coffee still in the pot before she dumped it in the sink.

Even more surprising was that the pot had been
half
-full. Someone had managed to drink half of it without actually dying? Maggie heard voices on the front porch and decided to investigate.

She opened the front door and nearly fell over. Tabitha was sitting on the porch swing, looking like she’d just stepped out of the pages of
Town and Country
, and Cal was leaning against the rail, and they were actually
speaking
to each other. It was only then that Maggie noticed the mug in Cal’s hand and watched speechlessly as he raised it to his lips and took a large sip without a single grimace.

“Maggie, you’re up!” Tabitha exclaimed, but Maggie could only stare incredulously at her best friend, who she never heard say a single nice thing about her sister or
to
her sister, but who was currently drinking her terrible coffee and chatting with her as if Tabitha was perfectly pleasant and he
liked
spending time with her.

Maggie had thought Noah was completely crazy when he’d even hinted
that Cal could have had a thing for Tabitha, but now she wasn’t sure what to think. None of this made any sense whatsoever.

“You’re here,” she finally said to Cal. “I thought you weren’t coming over until later.”

He flushed and Maggie felt every hair on the back of her neck rise.

“I wasn’t, but I had some tile samples to show you. I mean to show Noah. And you.” He finished with a lame, horribly transparent smile that Maggie saw through in a split second.

“Wait, why would I want to look at tiles?” Maggie didn’t think she was very easily distracted, but Cal had dangled out the one bit of bait that might get her attention away from his bizarre presence on her front porch.

“Uh,” Cal hedged. “Noah expressed that you might
have some personal stake in what the kitchen looks like.”

“In
his
house?” Maggie questioned, making sure she understood exactly what Cal was trying to say here. If he was being real and this wasn’t all some massive distraction technique, her heart might have begun to ache a little with all the words that she and Noah weren’t saying to each other.

“What other house is there?” Tabitha snapped, and Maggie glanced up to see frustration etched all over her sister’s beautiful face. “Please don’t tell me you’re that dense, Maggie.”

“I’m not dense,” Maggie insisted slowly. “Just confused as this is the first I’m hearing about it.”

“Do you want to look at the samples?” Cal asked.

Of course
she wanted to look at the damn samples—but she wasn’t going to pick out something without him. They’d choose the tile
together
. “Yes, I do. But not without Noah.”

Cal’s smile was wide. “Where is he?”

“He’s still in the shower,” Maggie said, managing to get through that particular confession with almost no blush whatsoever.

“I told you. They were busy
and you didn’t want to go barging in and bothering them. He just came back to the house last night. About time,” Tabitha sniffed with exasperation, rolling her eyes, but Maggie could see the approval hidden in her sister’s eyes. And that just confused Maggie even more. There seemed to be one particular thread to this entire story that she was missing and until she discovered it, nothing was going to make any real sense.

“I know,” Cal snapped back, setting his mug on the railing. “I believed you. Which is why I said I’d wait.”

Tabitha rolled her eyes. “I don’t see how this is so important you had to do it this morning.”

“Noah said he wanted to get a start on the kitchen as soon as possible,” Calvin argued. “It’s called forward-thinking
,
Tabby.”

“Don’t call me that,” Tabitha retorted.

Maggie watched with fascination as the two of them tore into each other like there was literally nobody else on the porch. Then the door opened again and Noah emerged, dressed in dark jeans and a gray t-shirt, hair still wet from his shower.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “I heard all this noise outside.”

“Cal’s here to show me some tile samples, apparently,” Maggie said, turning towards him before anyone else could beat her to the punch.

“Oh.
Oh
.” Noah looked a little green around the edges, but he held his ground. “Yeah, I was meaning to talk to you about that. . .”

“I assumed so,” Maggie said sweetly.

“Can you just pick out the tile without having to talk about it?” he pleaded, his voice dropping low. “We will, I promise. Just. . .just not right now. Not like this.”

Maggie’s heart felt like it was beating out the words so loudly it was a miracle he couldn’t hear them. Surely everyone could hear just how much she loved him. “That’s fine. I don’t mind.”

“Good,” he said, clearly relieved.

“Let’s go inside and I’ll make some actually decent coffee and breakfast. Calvin, are you hungry?”

As Calvin set out the tile samples on the table, Maggie whipped up a batch of pancakes and started a new pot of coffee.

“You’re a miracle,” Noah said in a low voice as he wrapped an arm around her waist and leaned in close as she stood at the stove and flipped pancakes.

“It’s just pancakes,” Maggie giggled as his breath tickled her ear.

“It’s never just pancakes,” he replied seriously. “Not when it’s you.”

“Is that the idea behind the tile then? If I like the kitchen, maybe I’ll make you pancakes all the time?” Maggie held her breath as his arm tightened around her.

“ Absolutely, yes.”

He sounded so certain, happiness was literally bubbling through her veins as she served up the pancakes.

“I like this subway tile,” Maggie said half an hour later over empty, sticky plates and a full coffee cup. “The white and the navy. Noah, what do you think?”

She glanced over at him, but he was too busy watching the weird space between Cal and Tabitha, and Maggie couldn’t really blame him at all. The two of them were a fascinating combination of prickliness, defensive posturing and a clear and obvious interest in absolutely
anything
the other said. Something was brewing between them, and Maggie wondered, not for the first time this morning, if Tabitha could have had multiple reasons for returning to Sand Point.

Maggie had never dreamed that it could be possible, but maybe Calvin was one of them.

“They’re nice,” Noah said, dragging his attention away from where Tabitha and Cal were probably arguing over whether the sky was blue or not.

“Nice isn’t going to cut it,” Maggie objected.

“I want you to have whatever you want,” Noah said and that got everyone’s
attention. Maggie just gaped at him, as Cal and Tabitha’s heads swiveled Noah’s direction, their own bickering apparently not as interesting as Noah declaring himself at the kitchen table.

“It’s your
kitchen, Noah,” Tabitha said, and Maggie knew that cat-got-the-cream tone in her sister’s voice. It never meant anything good.

“I know it’s my kitchen,” Noah snapped at her. “Thank you for clarifying that so beautifully.”

“The point was fairly valid,” Cal inserted, and Maggie was even more surprised to hear the heat in
his
voice. Cal had the most even temper ever, and if he was getting worked up defending Tabitha. . .well, that was definitely strange.

Noah went brick red. “Um, what I meant is that Maggie will definitely use it more than I will. I can barely boil water.”

“That’s very true,” Tabitha observed, clearly from personal experience.

“Then it’s a good thing he’s with Maggie now,” Cal inserted, clearly annoyed by the direction the conversation had taken, “since you’re even worse than he is.” His glance at Tabitha just spoke
volumes
and Maggie wasn’t sure who she wanted to drag out of the room to interrogate—Noah or Calvin. Both of them had quite a bit of explaining to do.

“The blue and white tile it is, then,” Maggie interrupted, before anyone could actually throw down on her kitchen table. “Thank you for your all your helpful input.”

“Maybe next week, we can go out to look at some granite?” Calvin asked, gathering up the scattered tiles. “What’s your schedule like, Mags?”

“Next week is going to be crazy busy,” she admitted. She’d decided on hosting the New Year’s Eve dinner, but she wasn’t quite ready to bring it up to Cal and Tabitha yet, because she anticipated an overabundance of qualified enthusiasm and even more unsolicited advice.

“Did you tell him about the dinner, Maggie?” Noah asked, his own enthusiasm unqualified by even the slightest bit of discretion.

“What dinner?” Cal asked.

“I thought I’d do a trial run for dinner service. New Year’s Eve,” Maggie finally admitted. “That’s why I’ll be so busy. I have the menu to finalize and quite a lot of publicity to do.”

“That’s wonderful,” Cal said, clearly pleased. Tabitha smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes and Maggie wished she could literally tie her sister down and force a confession on what the hell was up with her because there was definitely something she wasn’t saying.

“It’ll be a lot of work,” Maggie said.

“Let me know what I can do,” Tabitha said, “but I won’t be able to stay until New Year’s. I have to get back to town.”

“San Francisco?” Cal asked and Maggie didn’t miss how casually he phrased the question. She’d been right that night almost two months ago, when he’d first brought up the idea of dating—he was
awful
at this. And of course, he had to fall for her sister, who was practically a black widow in designer clothing.

“Of course, Calvin,” Tabitha retorted. “That
is
where I live.”

“We’ll do the marble some other time then. After the first of the year,” Cal mumbled, and Maggie felt a tiny pulse of sympathy for him. Did he even realize what he was up against? Of course he did. He’d known Tabitha their entire lives. He knew exactly what she was like but somehow she’d sucked him in anyway, and that was honestly the strangest part for Maggie. She hadn’t believed that he was lying all those times he’d complained about Tabby’s behavior, so what had changed between them? Maggie wanted to believe that if he’d somehow seen her in San Francisco, he would have mentioned it. The whole situation just didn’t make sense.