by Ruby Laska
Straightening up and stretching his cramped limbs, Mac grinned as the voices of his employees rang out when the latest Sheryn Sawyer hit came on the radio.
“Listen to that! Isn’t that Sheryn?”
“Yeah, I hear the lady’s going to be a neighbor.”
“Hey, Mac, soon you won’t be the biggest employer in town!”
Mac’s smile wavered a little. “That gal’s got quite a fight ahead of her if she thinks she’s going to turn Heartbreak into Dollywood.”
“Yeah, you’ll probably get your undies in a knot along with all those grandmas at the Preservation Society,” Junior called. “Nothing fries you more than progress, right, Mac? You probably pitched a fit the day they invented indoor plumbing.”
Mac took the good-natured ribbing in stride. “Well, I suppose if she manages to slice off a big piece of the pie around here, and lures you all away to work for her, maybe I can take that fishing trip up to Canada this summer after all.”
“Yeah, right,” Turner Sheldon, his shop supervisor, said. “When’s the last time you took a vacation, Mac? Five years ago? Seven?”
“Hey, I went to the Boat Show up in New York last year,” Mac protested.
Everyone knew how much he hated to leave the shop behind. In a way, the success of the place had been a curse, since Mac now needed to meet with industry reps to look over new lines, and attend RV and outdoor shows. Sometimes it seemed like weeks went by when he didn’t even get his hands on a boat. Still, the guys saved the tough stuff for him; no one knew the older equipment like he did.
“You know what you need,” drawled Bill Overton, a sixty-ish relic from his father’s days. “Get you a gal. Bet you’d be a lot more fun to be around if there was a lady in your life.”
“Hey, I was out with you guys just last night, and there were women there.” Mac protested.
“That don’t count,” Junior chimed in from across the room. “You could hang out at Buzzy’s every night of the week and it still wouldn’t count. The gals down there—”
“They aren’t really the sort of lady we’re talking about,” Sheldon agreed. “You’ve known all of them for years. Every last one of them probably wouldn’t mind getting her hooks in you, but if you was going to get close with one of them you would have done it by now.”
“I’m saving myself for Charlene,” Mac said, hoping to put an end to the train of conversation, which was getting a little too close to the truth for comfort.
“Aw, the hell you are.” Though attractive, Charlene was very much married, his office manager and bookkeeper since he took over his father’s operation. Married to one of his best childhood friends, Charlene had four kids and was the closest thing he had to a sister.
Junior’s retort hung in sudden silence. The lull in the noise level in the shop, Sheryn’s voice on the radio echoing through the room, caused Mac to pause, curious as to what had diverted their attention.
“Look at that,” Turner mumbled under his breath at the next bench. “That ain’t local goods.”
Mac turned slowly in the direction of Turner’s gaze, knowing it had to be Amber even before he saw her standing uncertainly in the doorway, sunlight streaming through the thin material of her skirt, outlining her legs in a most enticing fashion.
Amber looked around the shop with a mixture of admiration and apprehension. Coming here was not a good idea—that was the message her mind had been telling her loud and clear on the way over. Her heart was another matter. At the moment it was thudding like a bass drum. As heads turned in her direction, she was almost afraid that the men in the room could hear its pounding rhythm.
Another fear nagged at her as well: that they knew her, all of them; with one glance recognized the naive girl from fourteen years ago. That all the efforts she’d made over the years to mold and change herself had failed; the expensive wardrobe and perfectly-shaped hair and subdued makeup were inadequate camouflage, and with a single glance they would be able to look inside and see....
...what? Amber shut her eyes tight to force the memories back, but for a moment it was as though the years fell away, and she was standing in the shop when it was still Mac’s father’s place. The old, battered workbench was...over there, off to the right. The acrid stench of perspiration and cigar smoke and chewing tobacco filled the room. Pete McBaine would be on his ancient, cracked-leather stool, smoking and glaring at his workers if no customers were around.
He never glared at her, of course. Not even as he...
Amber shook her head and opened her eyes, gulping deeply as she fought to regain her composure. The air she breathed was clean, the scents that mixed were honest and not unpleasant. The men who stared, she reminded herself, were just reacting to an unfamiliar face, a woman, no less, probably not a frequent sight even for one of the largest boat dealerships in Tennessee.
It really was amazing, what Mac had accomplished. In the big light-filled showroom, sleek powerboats gleamed, their curvy lines enticing even to Amber, who knew very little about boats. In fact, the last time she’d been out on the water was years ago with Mac. Signs advertising Mercury outboards hung high above the gleaming floor, and the smell of new chrome and fiberglass mixed with the buzz of customers.
And even the original building, which housed the repair shop, was completely transformed. Racks and racks of tools gleamed above well-organized workspaces. Bright lighting supplemented the sunlight filtering through new windows. Motors in various stages of disassembly lay with their innards exposed as men worked over them, and strains of music could be heard over the sounds of activity.
It was a far cry from what she remembered. But on the other hand, Amber would have been surprised at anything less. Mac had always been fiercely committed to everything he did.
Then she spotted him, observing her quietly from his post at a workbench, dressed in a pair of jeans faded to a soft pale blue, a yellow polo-collared shirt straining against his powerful biceps. A rush of pleasure went through her to see the familiar profile, the long limbs that had the grace of a dancer’s, no matter what he was doing.
Mac had always been able to make something as mundane as bending to pick a penny off the sidewalk look like an artist’s study, an effort to capture the beauty of the human form. He was unconscious of it, and she had never found words to tell him—but it was one of the things she’d loved most about him.
To find his natural grace preserved after all these years pleased her, and she returned his frank gaze, adding a smile. She notched her chin up, squared her shoulders, and took a step toward Mac, ignoring everyone else in the room. None of them, she was sure, could tell she’d been briefly unnerved to find everything so changed.
Except, perhaps, Mac, who knew her better than anyone. Better than she would ever allow anyone else to know her again.
As he walked toward her, the corners of his mouth tugging upward in a slight grin, she found her body responding. A small spark ignited deep inside, sending a pulse along her nerves, which were suddenly hypersensitive to the slight draft in the room. It riffled the hair on the backs of her forearms, and brushed her long skirt against her calves.
Her pulse quickened, and she became aware of another sensation, long absent—desire, wending its way through her system, setting her body aflame as easily as a pile of dry kindling takes to a match. Ignoring the stern admonishment from her brain, her arms longed to wrap around his wide, hard torso, bringing her cheek in contact with his firm, stubbly jaw, as she had a thousand times before.
Desperate to douse the unwelcome fire in her body, she focused on his shoes, well-worn canvas sneakers meeting the frayed hems of his jeans, and a laugh escaped her lips before she had time to think.
“Mac!” she said, “I swear, that could be the same pair of shoes you used to wear when this was your Dad’s place.”
Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, crestfallen. In one little sentence, she’d broken all the rules she’d set for herself: she was going to avoid the past like the dea
dly threat it was, and especially any reference to his place in it. And in front of his employees, no less.
He looked unruffled, though—until he reached out to take her hand. He held it a second too long, and she saw a cloud pass the blue sky of his eyes, a slight tremor in the wide, easy grin.
She’d have given anything to know what was running through his mind.
“I guess I never outgrew my Jack Purcells,” he said. “Listen, Amber, I have to finish up something I was working on,” he went on, his voice soft enough that the other people in the big workroom couldn’t possibly hear, over the noise of machinery and the music.
“It’s really no problem,” Amber said, covering her nervousness with a series of small gestures, straightening her collar and smoothing her hair and adjusting her purse on her shoulder. “I only had a few minutes, I just thought I’d stop by and see the shop since I probably won’t get another chance.”
“Oh...so what do you think of the place?”
He regarded her openly, setting her hands in motion in another round of nerve-quelling movements. Of all her features, her hands were the ones she cared for the most attentively, with frequent manicures and regular slatherings with expensive scented lotions. Her nails were short but perfectly shaped, painted a shell pink. On her wrist was a simple gold watch, a gift from the Sawyers.
There was a reason for this one vanity she allowed herself. A part of her felt that it made up, somehow, for the years when her hands were ragged and red from plunging into buckets of ammonia to clean other peoples’ floors; from scraping plates in restaurants; from scrubbing her own tiny apartments over and over to make them seem a little nicer than the dumps they were. She’d made it. Through all the hard work she’d reached a level of financial independence and comfort she only dreamed she’d attain, and her hands were her badge of achievement.
Still, all the manicures in the world weren’t enough to plug the hole, the emptiness that had been a part of her life ever since she left Heartbreak—and Mac—behind. And now she was staring that demon in the face, and rather than nostalgia or sadness or even indifference—all the emotions that would be all right—she was feeling something very different. A heat inside her, starting in her abdomen and arcing up to her heart, was burning so strong it rose off her face in waves.
“It’s...so different,” she said weakly.
“I suppose you could say that.” Mac’s expression was hard to read, tentative and impassive. Then, he touched her again, his hand resting lightly on her arm, as he smiled once more. “Tell you what,” he said. “Give me five minutes. Come sit in my office and relax and call your boss, and tell her something came up, and then we can do a proper job of catching up.”
“But -”
“Surely you have a few minutes for an old friend,” he said, his eyes locked on hers, deep and searching.
Before she could reply, he took her hand again and led her, unresisting, past the gamut of admiring glances and down a cool, dark hallway in the back of the shop.
CHAPTER THREE
Mac stared at the wrench in his hand as if he’d never seen it before, and then wiped it with a cloth before setting it aside. His claim that he needed to finish up his task had been a bluff, a way to steal a few moments to compose himself. He was well aware of the stares of his employees, but he’d squelched their comments with a single, no-nonsense glare. He had known these men long enough—some practically his whole life—that they would read his expression accurately and give him the space he needed.
Still, stalling for time wasn’t going to help. It certainly wasn’t putting his cascading emotions in order. For so long he had battled to gain control of them, and having reached adulthood without succumbing to any obvious vice, he’d thought he’d finally mastered his heart and his desires.
No. No, no. The long, angry scar on his heart had been sliced open again the moment he’d seen Amber in Buzzy’s, and now the poison had spread through his system, causing pockets of emotion to flare like forest fires dangerously close to raging out of control.
Anger. Anxiety. Desire. They battled for control of his mind, even as he struggled against them. Deliberately he set the heavy wrench down on the bench and strode down the hall. Whatever the demons that waited, he intended to face them head on.
Amber was sitting in one of the big rough-hewn ash chairs in his office, her lithe body looking small and vulnerable on the oversized woven cushions. He followed her gaze around the room, and for a moment paused to imagine what she must be seeing and thinking. It must have been quite a surprise to her. This room, once his father’s office, was the one room whose walls he hadn’t moved when he tripled the size of the original structure. It had seemed to contain a little bit of his father’s soul, and he wanted to preserve that, keep it there to remind him that hard work had gotten him where he was.
At the same time, though, he’d changed every surface, every stick of furniture. In his father’s day it had been a large cinder block-lined cell, the walls stained with cigarette smoke, cold in winter and hot in summer. His father had stacked paper wherever there was space; invoices and catalogs and mail cluttered the desk and filing cabinets. There’d been just one spare chair, a straight-backed wooden one. It had supported many trembling employees receiving reprimands through the years. And sweaty-palmed salesmen and factory reps, delivering their pitches in the face of his father’s grim demeanor. The floor had been tiled with cheap linoleum, and the only decorations on the walls were faded calendars from tool companies.
All of that—gone. Mac had taken considerable trouble to create a place where he and his employees would be comfortable. His management style was loose, cooperative; several comfortable chairs and a twig coffee table created a comfortable seating area for impromptu discussions. Since many workdays found him in the office long after everyone else was gone, the room bore his mark more than any other place in the world, even his home. Watercolors of white-tailed deer, bobcats, and wild turkey, native to the area, lined one pine-paneled wall. On another hung a pair of quilts stitched in traditional Appalachian patterns, and local pottery graced the end tables.
“It’s lovely,” Amber said. “You always appreciated beautiful things. I’m...glad you’re able to enjoy them now.”
“The business has treated me well,” Mac said simply. He crossed to the window, a large one he’d installed to replace the tiny, dusty panes that had lit his father’s desk. Cranking it out, he reached on the sill where he kept a pitcher of sun tea brewing. Taking sliced lemon and ice from a mini fridge hidden in a wall of knotty pine cabinets, he poured them each a tall glass.
“I’m impressed again,” Amber said, and he looked quickly to see if she was being sarcastic. The tiniest lines at the corner of her eyes reflected gentle humor, and he relaxed and lifted his glass.
“A bachelor learns a few tricks,” he said.
She lifted an eyebrow slightly. He couldn’t help noticing how her movements had changed. Gone were the ebullient gestures, the unrestrained laughter or spontaneous flashes of anger and irritation. Her movements were graceful now, but compact, as though she were preserving her energy for a secret dance.
At eighteen, she’d worn her emotions painted clearly on her features; her eyes expressed volumes before she ever spoke. Now they were veiled, her lips set in a cautious expression. Only her hands gave her away: their quick movements, the long, pretty fingers flashing signals of which, he was sure, Amber was unaware. Right now the fingers of one hand thrummed softly on her glass, while the other hand smoothed invisible wrinkles from her long ivory skirt, and he read a nervousness that matched his own, as well as hesitation.
To trust, perhaps?
A wave of pain caused him to tighten his grip on his own glass. Trust. His trust in Amber had been absolute, until the night when she came to tell him the one thing he couldn’t accept. He’d sent her away, unable to hear another word of the story she told, a story of betrayal from the one man who would not—could not—let him down. And
the next day she disappeared forever, without a word of explanation save for that one letter.
“To your return,” he said gruffly, and before she had a chance to protest, went on, his voice his only tool to keep her from objecting and possibly leaving. He felt as though her presence were so ephemeral, and wanted—needed—to hold on to it a little longer. “Ordinarily I’d toast with something a little stronger,” he said. “But tea will have to do. For now.”
Amber hesitated, as if she wanted to disagree, but apparently changed her mind. She took a sip of her tea, and Mac nearly missed the tiny tremor in the hand holding the glass.
Draining his own glass, he chose a chair close to Amber rather than the one behind his desk. He wanted to be close enough to inhale her scent, read her expressions without giving her a chance to turn away.
He wanted to settle something.
As Mac slid into his chair, his knee dangerously close to her own, Amber fought to master conflicting urges. She wanted to push her chair away, to put some distance between the two of them. Mac was not good for her; as sure as it had been a mistake to come here, it was worse for her to stay. To share a cool drink with him, as though she were an old friend just catching up on the news, passing the time on a slow-paced summer day.
As if she ever could be that.
She’d once promised to marry him. Intended to marry him. Wanted nothing more than to be Mrs. Lawrence McBaine, whatever challenges that brought. Eighteen and twenty had once seemed plenty old enough to join their lives, and they had known each other’s hopes and dreams by heart.
How she’d relished the thought of telling her mother the news, sharing the joy she felt. For years her mother had looked forward to creating a gown for Amber, the most beautiful wedding dress in the world. Like the gown Cinderella wore to the ball, she’d promised a dreamy ten-year-old Amber as she hemmed skirts and fitted jackets and monogrammed tea services for the ladies of Heartbreak, working at her sewing machine with a mouthful of pins while her daughter sat nearby, coloring pictures and daydreaming.
