Butternut Summer by Mary McNear

reaching behind her for a clean cup. “Why don’t you choose a table and I’ll join you in a minute,” she added.
    He nodded and went to sit down at a table while Caroline poured him a cup of coffee, adding plenty of half-and-half, and poured herself a glass of iced tea with a lemon wedge. Then she carried them over to the table, set them down, and sat down across from him.
    â€œThanks,” he said with a smile. Not the slow smile she’d thought about in the bathtub last night, but a quick, easy smile that touched his blue eyes and reminded her again of what a good-looking man he still was. Damn him , she thought with annoyance, sipping her iced tea. She watched while he took a sip of his coffee, then said, with surprise, “You remember how I like it.”
    â€œI remember how everyone likes it, Jack,” she said, staring back at him impassively. “It’s my business to remember.”
    â€œOf course it is,” he agreed, unfazed. “And if there’s one thing you know how to do, Caroline, it’s run a business.”
    She thought of her most recent bank statement, which would seem to dispute this assertion, but to Jack she said simply, “Let’s skip the compliments, all right? I didn’t ask you to come here so that we could exchange pleasantries, Jack.”
    â€œNo?” he asked innocently. Too innocently .
    â€œNo,” she repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. “So let’s cut to the chase, all right?”
    â€œAll right,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his dark blue eyes resting on her.
    â€œWhat are you doing here, Jack? In Butternut?”
    â€œI told you. I’m living here.”
    â€œAt Wayland’s old cabin?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œAnd you say Wayland left it to you?”
    Jack nodded.
    But she was skeptical. “I didn’t know you and Wayland had stayed in touch, Jack. I mean, when was the last time you even saw him?”
    A shadow crossed his face. “I went to visit him in the hospital in Duluth when he . . . when he was sick. Really sick, toward the end.”
    Caroline nodded somberly. “He had cancer, didn’t he?”
    â€œLiver cancer,” Jack said. “Terminal cancer’s never good, obviously,” he said, quietly. “But this . . . this seemed especially bad, somehow.”
    Caroline sighed. Poor Wayland. He’d been a sweet, though ineffectual man. And unlike Jack . . . well, unlike Jack, all the good times had finally caught up with him.
    â€œAnyway,” Jack said. “Wayland didn’t say anything about a will when I visited him in the hospital. Honestly, I would have been surprised to know he even had a will. But then, about a year ago, I got a call from his lawyer. I didn’t know he had one of those, either. Anyway, it wasn’t until this summer that I was able to move back up here and, you know, actually live in it.”
    â€œYou can’t be serious, Jack.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAbout living in that . . . place ,” she said, because cabin suddenly seemed to be too kind a word. “I mean, is it even habitable?”
    â€œDepends on your definition of the word. But it’s going to be, by the time I get through with it. I’ve never done anything quite like this before, but I figure, what the hell. I know my way around a tool belt.”
    â€œA tool belt , Jack? I think a bulldozer might be more apt, don’t you?”
    There was that little shoulder lift again. If he was intimidated by what lay ahead, he wasn’t saying so.
    â€œOkay, so you’re going to fix up that cabin. But with what money, Jack? And what are you going to live on while you do it?”
    â€œI’ve saved some money over the past couple of years, working at the refinery.”
    She’d taken a sip of her iced tea, and now she practically choked on it. “Oh please,