by Jamie Magee
“I’ll see if I can make it by.”
She leaned forward to kiss her grandmother on the forehead. Marie Armstrong gripped her granddaughter’s shoulders as strongly as she could. “Now remember, it’s not how it looks, it’s how it feels. A house has to be you, and this one is about as perfect as it can be, I think.”
“And why is that?” Georgia asked when she saw her grandmother raise her brow to emphasize her point.
“’Cause you can fix that, sure enough, and you like to fix things.”
***
Memphis was told to take all the leftover food from the tea to the fire hall. Georgia went simply because he was her anchor.
The trucks were dispatched when they got to the firehouse. Which eased some of the tension Georgia was feeling, but not all—she was in Easton’s lair and it wasn’t awesome realizing she was—she could swear she could smell his cologne, feel his dominant energy.
Memphis gave her the grand tour, and now she was standing before a massive map on the wall which showed the jurisdiction of the calls the firehouse would go to.
Her grandmother’s words were still ringing in her mind, stirring and stoking the war of emotions they’d caused. She had the address to the house memorized, even though she’d only glanced at the card. New Beginning Lane; hard not to remember. She found the street on the map and saw it was only a few blocks from where she was standing.
Memphis adjusted the sound on the radio sitting on his desk. “Perfect. The boys are on their way back.”
Georgia swallowed anxiously. “I was thinking about taking a walk.”
“A walk?” Memphis repeated with a raised brow. “It’s not going to kill you to meet them. You’re going to see them tonight anyways.”
“Right, so I’ll meet them anyway. I just need some air, Memphis.”
Suspiciously, he searched her eyes before he spoke. “All right, I’ll walk with you. No sense in you getting lost.”
“I seriously doubt anyone could get lost in Willowhaven. I know where the pub is. I’ll meet you later.”
She strapped her bag around herself, kissed his cheek, and took off in a brisk walk. Not sure if she was outrunning a past or charging toward a destined future.
Chapter Six
Easton Ballantine was riding shotgun in the lead engine. His strong profile was covered in soot, highlighting luminescent green eyes hidden behind dark lashes.
He was gazing down at his phone at the image of the one soul who’d given him purpose in his life.
“Good Lawd, what did we miss? Holy hell I didn’t know they made women like ‘dat anymore,” one of the guys behind him said. Easton barely glanced up, then did a double take, and actually leaned out the window to look at the goddess walking at the speed of light down the sidewalk.
Legs that went on for days, leading right up to a tight black skirt. Long raven hair whipping in the wind, an image that could only belong to an angel. She was completely flawless, without a doubt the sexiest woman he’d ever seen. A high compliment coming from Easton.
There was only one other girl who’d stolen his attention like this. Of course, she was near bones the last time he’d seen her, had long purple hair, and for some reason found it fitting to hide her eyes in a mask of black makeup.
Eyes so blue they would rob a man’s breath… Just as the thought of Georgia passed his mind the woman, for the briefest of seconds, glanced up and caught his eyes. Their gaze felt like it lasted an eternity. So long he felt himself fall into her blue incandescent orbs, so long every inch of her visage was burned into his mind; the high cheek bones, the heart shaped lips parted slightly, the way her raven hair whipped across her neck.
He felt a burn spread through him, a quickening in his heart. A hum settled over him.
It couldn’t be her, he told himself. No fucking way. Memphis would have told him she was here, surely.
“I think hell’s done froze over, boys,” the driver, Truman, Wyatt’s kid brother and one of Easton’s best friends, said. “Easton is panting like a dawg, hanging his head out the window.” He reached over and slammed his hand on Easton’s broad shoulder. “There is hope for you yet, my man, there really is. Proof. You still have your manhood about you.”
Easton spat out a curse and slid back into his seat, not willing to entertain the taunts. “Where did she come from?” he asked, not meaning to say it aloud.
“I don’t know? You want me to turn around so we can ask her if it hurt when she fell from heaven?” Truman teased.
“If that’s a line you use with any girl you need help with your game,” Easton spat back.
“I’m too nice to be an asshole like you. I bet she’d at least smile when I asked.”
Easton shook his head and let out a breath. In his mind he kept seeing those eyes.
When they parked the trucks he lingered for a second. He reached up for his wallet that he had stashed in the truck and pulled out a picture. One he had in a plastic bag now because it had already been singed by fire and threatened by water.
Years ago, when he and Wyatt left the funeral, right after they stopped for gas for the first time, Easton found a few of Memphis’s things he’d left in the cab, things from Lucas’s belongings. That’s where the picture was. It was one with Lucas in the center, Memphis on one side, and Georgia on the other.
Her hair was purple but her makeup was absent. She was even smiling as she leaned into Lucas. The sun had hit her eyes in this image, making them even bluer.
Easton had told himself he kept it because of Lucas, but over the years somehow it had been folded to where you could only see Georgia. There was even a place beside her image that was barren from where his fingertips had grazed it one too many times.
Bad idea, Easton. Bad idea, he thought as he stuffed the photo back in place. Just like he told himself every single day she crossed his mind.
***
He looked right through me. Asshole, Georgia thought, too. God, he looked good, too damn good.
She could swear she could smell him on the wind. Adrenaline rushed to the surface of her skin, and the sound of her heart boomed in her ears.
She felt like a fool, a complete idiot, for thinking about him as she had over the years only for him to not even recognize her.
Clearly, there had been one too many girls in his life for her to have any footing in his thoughts.
Easton and the mental rant she was giving herself shifted to the back of her mind all at once, simply because she recognized where she was. She recognized all of Willowhaven to some degree. But there were parts she really recognized, and this street was one of them.
At the very top of it, just before you left Main Street there was an ice cream parlor, a place she went with her dad often. Every night after dinner when she was there, they’d walk and talk. It was their time, just the two of them.
One time, long ago, Georgia had seen a kitten lurking around and went to chase it, worried it was hungry. Her father let her. They made it down the street, even charged through a few backyards. One of those yards had a tree house—that was where she got the idea that she wanted one. The moment when she asked her father to build her one.
“You want one just like this?” he asked.
Georgia glanced to the yard she was in, the house she was at. “No, I want it to have a porch, too, flowers…” She went on and on and her father only smiled. By the time she was done she described the house and not the tree house.
“Can we build it, Daddy? Can we?” she asked, jumping in place.
“We can, little bit, but to me it sounds like you want this house, not the one in the tree.”
Georgia gazed up at the house. To her it looked like a castle, simply because of the bay windows and oval peaks.
“Can I have it, too?” Georgia asked with wide eyes, already planning how she would decorate her new room and tree house.
He laughed as he lifted her up. “One day, maybe. This is someone else’s home now.”
“When the
y’re done can I have it?”
He laughed more as he tickled her sides. “If you want something bad enough, somehow, someway it will be yours.”
“This is mine?”
“I don’t know. How bad do you want it?” he asked as he playfully lifted his chin.
“With all my heart,” Georgia had sworn.
“Then it’s already yours.”
“We can move now?”
“No, we have to wait.”
“Why do we have to wait?”
Her father clenched her closer and his smile fell a little, but the glint stayed in his eyes. “The best things are worth waiting for.”
“Why do you have to wait if it’s the best, though?”
“Because that way, you know for sure.”
“But I’m sure now,” Georgia had argued only for him to change the subject to the tree house they were going to build.
The voices of the past faded with the wind as her steps carried her down the sidewalk. Her heart started to beat a little faster.
She knew, before she ever saw the for sale sign, it was the same house. She stopped in her tracks and stared, completely dumbfounded her grandmother had sent her there.
Yep...there’s that flame he was talking about, she thought. Tears of fury prickled in her eyes. Here. Of all places, the town with all her ghosts is where her fucking root was. Her luck was on a perpetual downward spiral.
The house was on the opposite side of town from Memphis’s, on the same kind of street, though. It was meant to be white, but had dulled to gray. There was a wide porch on the bottom level, wooden, the kind of porch you could live on.
Prominent oval windows arched out of the top level on each side. A short wrought iron fence boxed in the yard. The neat sidewalk path, the flowerbeds that had met their death, and the fallen limbs from the massive trees on either side of the house, along with shrubs that were out of shape all had dying branches here and there.
Her grandmother was right about one thing—it needed to be fixed.
A prim kept, older blonde woman stepped out of the front door with a fake smile plastered across a face that had a gallon of makeup on it. “Come on in. Would you like coffee?”
When Georgia reached the woman, she shook Georgia’s hand like she was running for mayor and desperately needed Georgia’s backing.
“I was just passing by.” She knew if she didn’t run right then she was going to make a mistake. When logic and dreams collide there was never a way out without facing a life-altering path.
For a nomadic soul, Georgia hated change—at least change that entrapped her.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t have coffee. Judith Shaw, nice to meet you.”
“Georgia Armstrong.”
Judith Shaw’s smile faded a bit, but the fake cheer stayed in place. “One of Marie Armstrong’s little ones?”
“That’s right.”
Judith Shaw let out a laugh that sounded like two chipmunks cackling back and forth. “My, my, my. I told the owner today that I was certain that Marie Armstrong had cursed my sale. Everything falls through as soon as I get it in line,” she said, pulling out her phone and sending a text.
“Something wrong with the house?” Georgia asked, taking in the porch, the broken pieces of wood along the floor, the chipped paint, the weathered wicker furniture, the empty planters.
“Not at all. It’s precious, a solid investment. We were holding the open house for businesses this weekend.”
“Businesses?”
All at once Georgia felt fiercely protective of this home.
“Mmm hmm,” Judith Shaw said as she answered the text that just came in and puckered her hot pink lipstick. “Those dentists and such like these houses close to the heart of town.” She reached her arm out. “Come on in now, Randal is on his way.”
Instead of following Judith in, Georgia walked around the porch. She was making her way around to lay eyes on the tree house, to get a little closer to the dormant memory she’d uncovered when a shrill voice stopped her. “There you are. Come on, now,” Judith said, taking Georgia’s arm.
Inside, the home seemed to carry an eccentric whisper of a past that was full of every kind of harmony Georgia had never known. All the floors were hardwood; the originals, according to Judith.
There was crown molding that looked like it belonged in a governor’s home, yet even that needed some TLC.
Georgia’s boots hitting the floor echoed across the walls. The rooms were built big, like Memphis’s house. Built to entertain, Georgia thought. A waste on her, but the comment about business that Judith had made was still swimming in her thoughts. The ground floor would be a killer studio.
The kitchen was the only room that had been restored with granite countertops and dark oak cabinets. It had a cute little breakfast nook that was surrounded by bay windows and looked out into the backyard that was littered with fallen tree limbs, and yes…the tree house was still there, looking just as worn as the main house.
There was a master bedroom and a guest room downstairs, along with a dining room and what was supposed to be a formal living room. Upstairs, there were two more rooms and what Judith Shaw called a playroom.
Right as the detailed tour ended the front door opened. An old man was standing there in his Sunday best.
“No doubt, a beauty like you belongs to Marie. Good genes,” the man said, reaching for Georgia’s hand. “Randal Blake. It’s a pleasure,” he said, kissing Georgia’s hand instead of shaking it.
“Ge-Georgia Armstrong,” she finally managed to say.
“Of course,” Randal said, letting her hand go. “Marie called just a bit ago and told me I was going to sell my house today.”
Georgia blushed. “I don’t live in Willowhaven.”
“Not yet,” Randal said with a becoming smile.
“This is your home?” Georgia asked.
“Oh, it was, when I was a boy. Judith give you the tour?”
“She did.”
“And?” he said, lifting his gray, bushy brows.
“I wasn’t in the market to buy any home. I travel a lot,” she hedged.
“Sometimes the right home comes when you’re not looking. The wrong one pops up when you’re desperate.”
Georgia tilted her head in an off-hand agreement. “What is the listing price?”
Judith wasted no time handing the flyer with all the whatnots of the home to Georgia. The price tag stole her breath.
“Negotiable for you, of course,” Randal said right as a nasty look came from Judith. “There is financing, too. Surely, we can get you a good rate. This home is a great investment, hands down.”
“Can I have a second?” Georgia asked, taking the listing from him. She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she made her way to the screened in back porch and pulled out her phone. She needed to do a little math and soul searching.
Living here still seemed impossible to her…but it seemed right, too, and that was bugging the hell out of her.
This was a sign she told herself. She’d dreamed the night before about that damn tree house, and then this happened.
Spending all of her money, even though it was meant for something like this, made her queasy. But the longer she stood out there, the longer she played with the numbers the closer she got to a number she thought she could handle.
Her grandmother told her she didn’t have to live there, but that she needed roots. That’s what this could be.
Roots that could make her money down the road.
She played with a few more numbers, and came up with an offer that was below the asking price—a good thirty percent below the asking price. But if she nailed the interest rate she was after, then nothing in her lifestyle would change. The house could sit empty, and she would not be hurting to cover the note.
She wrote the offer down on the back of the flyer Judith Shaw had handed her and walked back in with her head held high.
Randal must have been a confident man, not that the fi
rst impression had supplied a different point of view. On the bar in the kitchen was a host of papers; loan applications were what it looked like to her.
“This is my offer,” Georgia said, sliding it to him.
Randal took the paper, looked over the note, and clucked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Not what I had in mind,” he said, only angling his eyes up at her.
“Let’s do this professionally, now,” Judith said. “I’ll help her put the offer on a formal form. We’ll work out the details over what she wants repaired before the sale and such, then you can counter just the same,” Judith said, reaching for the paper. All too eager to see how much of a loss she was taking on this deal.
Randal took a pen out and drew a line through Georgia’s offer and wrote another. “Don’t need formal papers. Just need to agree right here, then we’ll get her set up with Henry down at the bank. I already gave him a call. He’ll be over directly.”
For a small town, these people move fast, Georgia thought to herself.
Randal handed the paper back to Georgia. Here we go, she thought, but as she read the number she swayed back on the heels of her boots. The offer was another thirty percent below what she had said, a downright steal. That can’t be legal, she assumed.
The rational side of her wondered what the hell was wrong with this house. Was it haunted or something?
“You take that offer, and I’ll cover the closing, send a crew over here to clean up the yard and knock the cobwebs out of the corners for you.”
“Do you want to look at the number you wrote down again?” Georgia asked, thinking maybe he flipped the numbers in his mind or something.
“I’ll have a look,” Judith Shaw said in a high-pitched voice. “I know you’re old fashioned, Randal, but there are procedures.”
“Why don’t you go see if Henry is on his way, help him on in when he gets here. You know he carries his computers with him,” Randal said, dismissing Judith. She left in a huff.
Randal gave Georgia one long, hard stare before he spoke. “Nineteen seventy-three,” he finally said, which made no sense to Georgia. “The year I almost lost it all: my job, my home, more than likely my family in the long run. Then out of nowhere the lady down at the bank called me and told me my loan had been settled. Not only was my home no longer in foreclosure, but I had a small pillow that would feed my family for a solid six months.”
