Walk Me Home

by Liza Kendall

  It broke Charlie’s heart. Twelve years after the tragedy, Jake was still putting flowers on Babe Nash’s grave.

  Chapter 10

  Sleep. I need more sleep, thought Jake, robotically hefting the final sack of groceries out of the Durango and heaving it across the garage to Tommy to pass up to Mick in the kitchen.

  “Last one,” he heard Tommy shout upstairs. Jake checked for any missed apples or bottles that might have rolled under the seats, then slammed the truck door.

  Last night had been a total bust. He could not get yesterday out of his brain. That moment on the dirt road, with Charlie in his arms and his mouth covering hers, the soft sound she made when he kissed her . . .

  He’d told her it was a mistake, because what the hell else was he going to say, confused as all get-out, thinking he should still be angry but liking way too much the way it felt to hold a grown-up Charlie in his arms. You’d think he’d kissed her enough back in the day to not react like a lovestruck high school virgin now.

  All night long, his brain had reminded him it was a mistake. But his heart—and, oh hell, his body—seemed to have a different opinion.

  Charlie’d thrown that brick of banana bread through his window, and for a split second he was sitting at Grandma Babe’s kitchen table with a glass of milk and a half a loaf on his plate, Charlie giggling into his ear, her arm draped around him. For a split second, he’d remembered the simple joy that a completely ordinary day could bring.

  Jake pushed open the door leading from the garage to the living space, tempted to flop onto the worn navy couch and pull one of the plaid pillows over his face, so he wouldn’t have to look at Grady’s latest terrible abstract painting. The thing was a “study” in blues, purples, and blacks, with a dribble of bright green stinking up the middle. In short, it was weird. But they’d all have to look at it until he got inspired to do another one. Tommy kept suggesting nudes, to no avail.

  Jake bypassed the couch and was headed for the kitchen when he heard Ace and Mick on the horn. They were talking about how many more games the Lone Stars would need to clinch the pennant race.

  Ace saw him enter the frame and gave him a chin nod.

  Jake smiled. “You look better than last time,” came out of his mouth at the same time that Ace ran his fingers through his newly cropped hair. Those fingers were attached to a hand attached to an arm that was in a massive splint. “Oh, crap,” Jake added.

  Ace grunted and continued to fidget, running the top of his good hand across the newly landscaped scruff on his chin. “I was telling Mick earlier that I’m thinking of coming home for a visit.”

  Jake had heard that one before. Although Ace hadn’t been injured the other times he’d said it. “Seems to be all the rage.”

  “What’s all the rage?”

  “Coming home.”

  Ace’s eyes widened. “Rhett came home? No way.”

  Jake barked a laugh. “Everett? He’s never coming home. Unless you know something I don’t know. Are you in touch with Rhett these days?”

  Before Ace could answer, Mick leaned over the couch and said loudly into the video-chat microphone, “He means Charlie. Charlie’s back. They bumped into each other yesterday.”

  “Charlie who?”

  Behind his head, Jake could tell Mick was making some kind of big motion with his arms.

  “Charlie Nash?” Ace asked. “I hope you kicked her to the curb!”

  “Not exactly,” Jake said.

  “Why is Mick smiling like that?” Ace asked.

  “He didn’t kick her,” Mick said. “It was a different word he used. But it also started with a ‘k.’”

  Jake punched Mick in the shoulder, which was sort of like punching a very dense piece of wood, in more ways than one. Shaking out his fist, he said, “They’ve still got you on the injured list. You doing your PT like they’re asking, or am I going to have to take a leave of absence and come make you?”

  “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. You should come out here,” Ace said. “Everybody should definitely come to me.” He was not nearly as skilled as Jake was at deflecting serious questions.

  “He can’t come out there,” Mick said. “He’s too busy canoodling with Charlie.”

  “Oh, Mick, you’re the worst, man,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I kissed her once, and it was a mis—”

  “Mick wasn’t lying? You really kissed Charlie? Charlie Nash Charlie?” Ace leaned back and let out a hoo-boy! “The same Charlie Nash who broke your damn heart into so many pieces I think some of the shards are still stuck between the floorboards of Declan’s living room? That Charlie Nash? You kissed her?”

  Jake crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against the sofa, and gave Ace a stony glare. “You done?”

  Ace was wearing that lopsided grin of his. The one that could slay any female—and even some of the males—for miles around. “What else did you do with her?”

  “Charlie and I had our shot. Our time ended years ago,” Jake said. “So I told her the kiss was a mistake, and that was it.” Well, that wasn’t exactly it. Because he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Thinking about it to the point of being unable to sleep. He kept that part to himself.

  “I totally hear what you’re saying, my man,” Mick said, making it clear from his expression that he totally didn’t.

  Jake snorted. “Sorry to disappoint you both, but I’m not going to let her affect me.”

  “Hmm . . . that’s not quite the same as saying you’re unaffected,” Ace drawled. He drummed his fingers on his chin and narrowed his eyes, looking like Sherlock Holmes trying to solve the mysteries of the human heart.

  “Can we talk about something else?” Jake said. “Like your muscle tone or your RBIs or something? Want me to say hey to Coach Adams for you?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t want to talk about baseball,” Ace said flatly, his smile vanishing. “I gotta suit up for the bench now anyway.”

  Mick and Jake shared a concerned glance.

  “Speaking of which . . .” Ace’s face suddenly looked boyish again. “I know I’m not playing, but . . .” He shrugged.

  “Declan, me, Lila, and as of two days ago, Rhett—we’re all alive and well,” Jake said quietly.

  “Amen,” murmured Mick, rapping his knuckles against the wood knife block.

  Ace nodded, looking embarrassed and relieved. Then a devilish gleam appeared in his eyes, and he leaned forward. “Jake, a word of advice?”

  “Oh, no,” Jake said.

  But Ace was undeterred. “You see Charlie Nash again, get Mick to help you establish a fire line, and stay well back. ’Cause, brother, you are gonna get burned.” He winked and killed the connection before Jake could get in the last word.

  “He hangs up on me every single time,” Jake muttered.

  Mick was still laughing as the two of them finished jamming the groceries into the firehouse refrigerator and then jumped into an SUV to head out for Felicity Barnum’s fire-safety check. He wasn’t looking forward to meeting the woman who was giving the whole town fits with her crazy demands, but Old George had asked him to step in today, and Jake didn’t have a good reason to say no.

  Turned out, he just didn’t know he had a good reason; Mick was intolerable. The twenty-minute ride was a litany of inappropriate fire-related puns pertaining to what Jake had or hadn’t claimed to have done with Charlie Nash. Jake just sighed and kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the road.

  Well, he never should have kissed her.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Jake pulled the SUV up to the barn. Mick grabbed the paperwork and a clipboard, and they hopped out, heading straight for the side entrance that connected an outer equipment shed to the main barn.

  It wasn’t a shed anymore, just like a lot of the property wasn’t just a working ranch anymore. It was now what Lila called her “staging are
a,” which Declan had reluctantly transformed into a sitting room for a bride before her big moment walking down the aisle.

  He had paneled the walls and painted them a soothing pale blue color. Lila had brought in a 1930s-era walnut vanity with an oval mirror and placed a chair with a needlepoint seat in front of it. She’d placed an antique silver-plated brush, comb, and hand mirror set on the vanity. And in a corner, she’d set up an old-fashioned art deco changing screen with a painted motif on each panel.

  Jake pushed open the shed door and said to Mick over his shoulder, “I’m counting on this to go fast. I have to go see Mrs. Baxter for her PT. And it’ll take a while, since I know she’s gonna want to read my tea leaves or something.”

  Mick suddenly gasped, and Jake nearly reached for his radio to call for Big Red based on his partner’s expression alone. When he turned back around, he saw the cause of Mick’s horrified face.

  It wasn’t on fire, though it would have been better if it were.

  It wasn’t alive—in fact, it seemed more suitable for the undead.

  Charlie stood in the middle of the room next to the changing screen, wearing what had to be the worst dress Jake had ever seen. Behind her were several identical awful dresses hanging from a couple of bridle hooks on the wall.

  Jake choked on involuntary laughter, forced it into a cough, then dragged a hand down his face. “You. Are. A. Vision.”

  “Holy guacamole,” was all Mick could contribute.

  Jake’s male mind went straight to the expanses of pale nude skin exposed by the dress: neck, arms, legs . . . cleavage. He then tried his best to process the short strapless dress she wore, made of a shiny silver fabric that exploded with apocalyptic red tulips. A ten-inch ruffle festooned the hemline like a length of folded fire hose—and looked just about as elegant.

  Standing next to Charlie was an extremely made-up woman in city clothes. She had the body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, glossy black hair, and stop sign red lips. This could only be the high-strung, beautiful, and spoiled Felicity Barnum, a.k.a. Bridezilla. All of Silverlake had been buzzing since she’d breezed into town earlier in the day.

  “Good to see you again, Charlie,” Mick said, his mouth twitching with amusement. “Long time no anything.”

  Along with the god-awful dress, Charlie wore an expression of complete horror. “Hi, Mick. What are you doing here?” She breathed the words more than said them, looking between the two men.

  Jake couldn’t tell if it was how she felt about the dress or him, but he figured both he and the dress deserved it, at least a little. There were no words.

  “Fire-safety check,” Mick said, knocking Jake’s shoulder. “Right, Jake?”

  “Right,” Jake mumbled. “We should probably go . . .” And yet his eyes stayed glued on Charlie in that dress, and his feet stayed glued to the floor.

  “And you must be Felicity,” Mick added, when neither Jake nor Charlie did anything to help move this strange eyesore of a situation along.

  “Yes, I’m the bride,” said Felicity, pressing a manicured hand to her chest and fluttering her eyelashes. “Felicity Barnum. Soon to be Mrs. Will Spence.” She held out her hand, nearly blinding the men with her massive sparkler, and giggled. “Hello, Mick, is it? And Jake, obviously Will’s told me all about you.”

  Charlie winced. Jake shrugged it off.

  “You are just in time to give me a second opinion,” Bridezilla said. “These are the bridesmaid dresses. Don’t you just love them?”

  Charlie squirmed, tugging the hem of the dress down. Jake followed the motion to the curve of her thigh.

  “Don’t you just love them?” Bridezilla repeated, more nervously this time.

  Jake looked at Mick. Mick looked at Jake. After a couple of stuttering attempts at speech, it was Charlie who pulled herself together. “They’re . . . amazing. Really unique,” she said.

  “The red tulips will echo the red in my new lace dress!”

  “They’re perfect,” Jake finally said.

  First, Charlie could wear a garbage bag and still look fantastic. Second, he knew how stressed Lila was about all of Felicity’s changes; a change to the bridesmaid dresses at this stage would put her over the edge. So, in his mind, they were perfect. And, yeah, if he went back to focusing on the parts of Charlie the dress didn’t cover, there was a lot—a lot—to appreciate.

  The only downside, if you could call it that, was that the dress was clearly making her chilly; she seemed to be trying to cover herself up where the skirt hit high and the top hit low.

  A quick elbow from Mick got Jake’s attention back on track. “What happened to not letting her affect you?” Mick asked in a low voice.

  Jake tried to shift his focus back to fire safety. He looked away from Charlie’s body to her face. Well, her face was certainly on fire. See? He could be professional.

  “And the best news?” Felicity was saying to Charlie. “I ordered red satin elbow-length gloves for all of the girls! I found them online. I have them in the car.”

  “Fabulous!” Charlie managed.

  “Actually . . . I’m dying to see if the gloves are the same red as the tulips on the dress. They’d better be. If you just stay right here, I’ll look for them now!” Felicity was gone in a flash.

  As the door shut behind her, the guys hooted with laughter.

  “Stop it,” said Charlie. “This is so not funny.”

  “Yes, it is!” Jake said.

  “Talk about a pain in the butt.” Mick shook his head. “Are you second-guessing being in the wedding yet, bro?”

  “No. It was a peace offering to Lila,” Jake said.

  “I think I’d have chosen war . . .”

  “I thought Old George did the safety checks,” Charlie said.

  Jake let his laughter fade. Charlie was starting to look really distressed. “You’re really not laughing, are you?”

  “I’m trying, but . . .” She shook her head, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

  Suddenly, Jake would have given anything to wrap his own arms around her. “Hey. Listen. You don’t have to worry. The dress is bad, but nothing ever looked bad on you.”

  Charlie managed an uncertain smile, and all of a sudden there was a lump in Jake’s throat the size of Felicity’s ego.

  At the same time, he and Charlie said, “Listen, I—”

  They looked at each other in silence until Mick cleared his throat and muttered, “Uh, right. So . . . I think I hear Lila yapping in the main barn. I’ll get the show on the road. Leave you two to . . . whatever . . . Okay, uh, bye.”

  Before Jake could find the words he wanted to say, Charlie stepped behind the changing screen.

  “Thanks for the banana bread,” he said, and then rolled his eyes at how stupid he sounded. Thanks for the banana bread? “Okay, so—”

  Charlie let out a soft oath. “Um, do you mind getting the zipper?” She backed out a little ways from the screen so he could reach.

  Jake stared at the way her hair swept forward, exposing the pale skin at her nape. “Sure,” he said roughly. He awkwardly grabbed for the zipper tab, his fingertips sliding down her skin as he loosened the dress.

  Charlie shivered and disappeared back behind the screen. Her voice was a touch breathy when she said, “Thanks for taking care of Grandma Babe’s grave, Jake. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “I . . . uh . . .” Jake shook his head the way Not-Spot did after a dousing. Didn’t seem to do a damn thing to clear it when he could see tiny glimpses of skin where the three sides of the screen were hinged together. Her blond hair cascaded past the hinges. Charlie must’ve flipped her hair the way she used to after blowing it dry. “It was on my way,” he muttered.

  Charlie poked her head around the screen, giving Jake a quick view of one bare shoulder. “Jake Braddock, we both know that was not on your wa
y. You did a kindness, and I thank you for it.”

  Jake turned his back on the screen, sending a silent request up to the heavens for some of Declan’s stoicism. What was he even still doing here? Once a zipper’s down, a zipper’s down. Wait, don’t think about it that way. “If you’re good,” he said, “I’ll go ahead and just meet you in the barn.”

  “I’m not good,” Charlie said.

  I’m not good, either. “We can’t change the past,” he said roughly.

  “Is there anything you think we can do?” Charlie asked.

  Jake dragged a hand down his face. Maybe if you talked to me. Really talked to me about everything. Explained why. My whole life, I feel like I’ve been waiting for you to tell me why. Why did you let me go?

  “Jaaaaake!” Lila’s voice called from the barn.

  “Coming!” Jake yelled back. He sighed and turned back toward the screen. “You’re not even going to be in town that long. In the meantime, as Grandma Babe always said, it don’t cost anything to be friendly.” Well said, Jake. That sounds mature. You’re like a grown man or something.

  Charlie came out from behind the screen, fully dressed, her hair tucked behind her ears, looking fresh and adorable and utterly, utterly kissable. Damn it.

  “I’ll take friendly,” Charlie said. “I can do that. I’d love to do that. There will be no more of those pesky . . . confusing . . . complicating . . . inappropriate . . . mistakes. Scout’s honor.” She sliced her hand through the air like she was using a cleaver on a piece of meat. “Just friends. Or, well, at least, friendly.”

  “Jake! Where are you?” Lila yelled. “We gotta get this safety check off my list!”

  Charlie smiled at Jake and headed for the door. “Duty calls, eh?”

  Jake followed behind, trying to find his own smile. She’d just suggested exactly what he thought he wanted, everything he knew was for the best.