Free Let Me Call You Sweetheart: Come Rain or Come Shine by Gwen Hayes

home.
    Love,
    Cleaver
     
    March 3
    Mr. Allencaster,
    Please find the enclosed newspaper clipping. I thought you might want it for your scrapbook. It’s a nice picture of you. I especially like the way you are so wrapped up in kissing your co-star that you didn’t realize you weren’t on the set, but rather in a restaurant in downtown Vancouver.  
    Do me a favor. Don’t write. Don’t call. Just don’t.
    Sincerely,
    Charlotte Jeeves
     
    March 4
    Dear Charlotte,
    Please find the enclosed photograph similar to one you so thoughtfully included in your last letter. The difference, however, is that this photograph does not have my co-star’s husband cropped out of it. They had just told me the happy news that she was expecting their first child. I’m afraid the kiss I laid on him was even sloppier.
    I can assure you that I won’t write again. I can’t keep prostrating myself in front of the tank you use to run me down with. When you are ready to be a grown up, I hope you’ll give me a call.
    Love,
    Jeeves

Chapter Eight
     
    Jeeves pulled in front of the remote cabin, turning off the engine with a sigh of relief. He turned to Medusa and said, “Never trust a female. No offense.”
    Myrtle had been all charm when she asked him, no tricked him, into making this delivery for her. It’s an important client, she’d said. Sam is busy. I just put wedding cakes in the oven . Jeeves would have done it anyway, of course, but when she promised him a dozen muffins every Sunday for a year, he told her he’d be there in five minutes.  
    An hour and a half later, he realized he’d been conned. Sam was a very intelligent man. Jeeves had no doubt he broke the pipe in the basement himself to avoid delivery duty. This place was in the middle of nowhere. He half expected to hear “Dueling Banjos” when he stepped outside.  
    Still, it was a beautiful day, the first day of spring, and Medusa liked car rides. And he really had nothing better to do. He’d been back from Vancouver for a week, but he’d yet to see his neighbor. He knew she was there, probably simmering with some self-righteous indignation. Jeeves had almost broken down and called her several times, but he just couldn’t do it.  
    Which meant he was simmering with the same self-righteous indignation.  
    It was stupid really. All of it. Her mistrust, his stubborn pride. He missed her more than air. Just last night, he’d stayed up rereading all her letters again. She’d told him snippets about the violence, but it was the stories from before the stabbing that were the most telling.
    Before that night, Charlie had been a different person. Losing everything would do that to a person, he supposed. Despite the physical ache in his heart whenever he thought of that sweet young girl with everything to live for changing overnight, part of him knew that girl could never have handled a relationship with Jeeves. Not that the jaded version was doing much better, but at least she could hold her own with him.  
    Jeeves let Medusa out to stretch her legs a bit while he got the pink box out of the back of his car. The cabin was small, rustic, but a little deceiving at first glance. It wasn’t exactly rough—the craftsmanship evident the closer he looked at it. Yes, it was tucked away in the woods like a hunting box, but it seemed more like a getaway than shack.  
    He was calling Medusa back to the truck when he heard a voice call out, “Let her run.”
    He glanced toward the front porch framed in well-cared-for timber and surrounded by the first blooms of spring. On the top step, the surliest woman alive stood barefoot in one of those pretty dresses she liked so well.
    Medusa leaped with joy when she realized it was Charlie up there. Jeeves would admit his heart did the same.
    Her hair was down, swirling around in wild ribbons of cocoa. Her dress was loose and white, reminding him of a nightgown maybe. His first thought was to wonder if she was wearing panties. His second