Getting Lucky (The Portland Pioneers Book 2) Read Free

quiet, careful look so familiar that Maggie wanted to wrap it around her like a fluffy blanket. She might not be able to count on her sister, but Cal was the brother her parents had never had. She’d survived Tabitha’s behavior before, and she’d survive it again.
    “I’m fine.”
    Maggie walked back to the alarm panel that Cal had installed when she’d first opened the Café. Punching in the code, she hit the lights, and they exited the building as the alarm chimed.
    She didn’t even have to look back to see that like always, Cal checked the door knob to make sure the back entrance was secure. Anybody else might question his nearly fanatical dedication to her safety, but Maggie understood that his protectiveness was just the way Cal was, the way he gave of himself to those he loved.
    She’d walked to the Café for the Council meeting since her house was only a few blocks away and it was still pretty warm for early November. Still, the air had chilled during the last two hours, and Maggie wrapped her arms around herself as they walked out of the little parking lot at the back of the Café and onto the sidewalk of the main drag in downtown Sand Point.
    “How’s the Sanderson job going?” Maggie asked as they turned from the main street to the side street her childhood home was on.
    “Good,” Cal said. “Slow, but good. I think we’ll just be about ready to start the tile in the bathroom this week.” Cal ran his family’s construction and remodeling business, which even in such a small town as Sand Point kept him plenty busy. He’d gone to school to become an architect, but when his father had had his first heart attack, Cal had come home. Two heart attacks and a funeral later, he’d never ended up leaving again.
    Sometimes Maggie wondered if, unlike her, he was truly happy settling in the town they’d grown up in. Of course, being Cal, he’d never say so; he saw managing the business his father had started as a privilege. Every father probably wished he had a son like Cal Keller.
    They reached her house, tiny and dark. “You didn’t leave the security light on in the back,” Cal objected, and Maggie just rolled her eyes.
    “It was still light when I left,” she protested. “And that light is so damn bright. Plus, it’s not like we’re a hotbed of crime and violence.”
    Cal didn’t say a word, just sighed. Maggie dug her keys out of her purse and started to hug him goodbye, when something in his face made her pause. “What is it?” she asked.
    She’d thought she’d cataloged nearly every one of his expressions over the years. Knowing someone for twenty seven years would do that, she supposed, but the look he was giving her now wasn’t one she recognized at all.
    “I need to talk to you about something,” he said hesitantly, which was nothing at all like him. Cal did everything with certainty and confidence. “Can I come in?”
    “Of course,” she said, shooting him a questioning look of her own as he followed her up the porch steps to the front door. “I think I might even have a beer or two in the fridge.”
    “Sounds perfect,” Cal said but there was a strange distraction in his voice now, which in any other person she might have said was nerves, but this was Calvin . Maggie literally couldn’t remember him ever being nervous about anything.
    When he’d been the star quarterback in high school and had led the football team to the state championship, he’d been annoyingly relaxed. When he’d spoken at his dad’s funeral, Maggie hadn’t believed that someone could be so composed. Cal was kind of an extraordinary person, Maggie thought as she dropped her bag on the kitchen counter, flicking on lights as she went.
    She grabbed two beers from the fridge. Popping the tops off, she returned to the living room and handed him one. “Is everything okay?” she asked, perching on the arm of her favorite comfy chair.
    “I’m fine,” he said, and it wasn’t lost on her that she’d