“Not that I saw.” Deb Harkness, who also had a future first grader going on the camping trip, started toward the front of the bus. “Do you want me to check?”
“Would you?” Tulsi asked, hooking the duffel bag over her shoulder. “I’m going to run to my friend Mia’s place and make sure she didn’t go there. If you find Clem, don’t let her move, okay?”
Deb gave her a thumbs-up. “Will do. Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”
Tulsi spared only a second to nod before she turned and hurried down the sidewalk, scanning both sides of Main Street and calling out for Clementine as she went. But there was no sign of her daughter and no response, and by the time Tulsi hurried across the street to Mia’s lingerie shop, her skin was crawling with terror. The thought that her child might have been snatched away by some monster while Tulsi was standing right next to her was so horrific she didn’t spare a second to knock and make sure she wasn’t interrupting Mia and Sawyer’s morning. She simply threw open the door of the closed shop and shouted, “Clementine, you’d better be in here!”
After a heart-stopping moment, Clementine called out from the back room, making Tulsi sag against the door in relief. “I’m here. Keep your shirt on, Mom. We’re looking for Monster Princess in my tent.”
Tulsi pulled in a ragged breath, anger flooding in to mix with her relief. “Don’t you dare tell me to keep my shirt on, Clementine Rae! Your doll was in your bag right where I said it was.” Tulsi stormed through the shop toward the back room. “And I was about to have a heart attack. I thought someone had snatched you off the street. Don’t you ever run off and—”
Tulsi whipped aside the curtain, cutting off mid-sentence when she saw who was helping Clementine sort through the toys in her play tent.
She’d expected to see Mia or Sawyer. Instead, she was greeted by the sight of Pike in a pair of striped pajama pants and a black tee shirt, his hair sticking up around his head and a sleepy look on his handsome face. He looked exactly the way she remembered, back when they would wake up bleary eyed in their shared sleeping bag and greet each other with drowsy smiles and long lingering kisses.
Their eyes caught and held, electricity leaping between them while a voice in Tulsi’s head wailed that her house of cards was about to come tumbling down. Surely, now that Pike had seen Clementine, he would realize the truth. Clem was tiny and blond—a miniature copy of all the women in Tulsi’s family—but surely Pike had to sense something. Surely…
The thought made Tulsi’s already pounding heart slam in triple time. She braced herself for the worst, but when Pike lifted his hand in greeting, he didn’t seem outraged. In fact, the look in his hazel eyes was warm and almost…welcoming. Like he was actually happy to see her.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a smile. “I let her in. I heard her knocking and I knew she had a bunch of toys back here, so…”
“No, it’s fine,” Tulsi said, shaken by the combined shock of seeing Clementine and Pike standing side by side and having Pike smile at her for the first time in seven years. She’d almost forgotten the way that smile made the bottom drop out of her stomach and her head feel like it was going to float off of her shoulders. “It’s not your fault. She knows better than to run off without telling me where she’s going.”
Tulsi shifted her attention to her daughter, grateful for the reprieve from eye contact with Pike. “What were you thinking, Clementine? Didn’t you realize I’d be terrified?”
Clem’s fists tightened around the doll clothes in her hands and a guilty look flickered behind her blue eyes. “I knew you’d say we didn’t have time. I didn’t want you to say no.”
“Not wanting me to say no is not a valid excuse for scaring me half to death,” Tulsi said, propping her hands on her hips. “Honestly, I have half a mind to keep you home from camp.”
“No!” Clementine wailed, her jaw dropping at the injustice. “Jesus, Mom! I’ve been so good it’s almost killed me. I want to go to flipping camp!”
Pike brought a hand to his mouth and coughed hard, but it was obvious he was trying to conceal a burst of laughter.
“Don’t encourage her,” Tulsi said, fighting a smile. “She’s a hellion already.”
“I can see that,” Pike said. “Must have gotten it from her mama.”
“Mama’s not a hellion,” Clem said glumly. “Mama’s good all the time.”
“Is that so?” Pike arched a brow and shot Tulsi a look she felt all the way down to the tips of her toes.
Her mouth went dry as visions of all the naughty things she and Pike had done together cantered through her thoughts like a herd of runaway horses, shaking the ground beneath her. Thankfully, Clementine broke the charged silence before Tulsi’s knees could get too weak.
“Please, Mama,” she said, wadding the doll clothes as she clasped her fingers under her chin. “I promise to be so good everyone will think I’m an angel come down from heaven. Just please, please, please let me go to camp.”
“We’ll talk about this outside,” Tulsi said, circling one hand as she prepared to herd Clementine out the door, needing to get them both away from Pike ASAP.
“You’re going to say no!” Clem moaned, tears rising in her eyes. “I can tell you are!”
Tulsi sighed, realizing her attempts to take the conversation somewhere more private were futile. “If I say yes, you have to promise not to run off while you’re there. You stay with the counselors and the other girls in your cabin. Do you understand me?”
Clementine nodded vigorously.
“And it’s church camp, so no taking the name of the Lord in vain, and no ‘flipping,’” Tulsi added with a hard look. “Everyone will know what you’re really meaning to say and they will be shocked.”
“You say flipping,” Clem said, her bottom lip pushing out.
“I am a grown up!” Tulsi shook her head in frustration. “Honestly, Clementine, how many times do we need to have this conversation? You are six, not sixteen. If you can’t remember that, you’re going to be in trouble once school starts. Your teacher won’t put up with the attitude.”