by Maria Luis
It was a good idea.
It was also a terrible idea.
Besides the fact that he wanted to go nowhere near Hackberry, there was also his relationship on the line with Lizzie. Wouldn’t a trip with her push them to the next level? Would that be such a bad thing?
Yes, but only because he wasn’t a forever kind of guy.
Maybe he was a glutton for punishment, though, because he heard himself ask, “How abandoned are we talkin’ with this plantation?”
“I looked up photos. It seems pretty desolate.”
Dammit, he was going to do this.
To see the smile flit back to her face.
To see the excitement in her hands when she waved them around like a crazy lady.
To feel as though, briefly, he wasn’t on a track to a solitude of his own creation.
“We could leave Saturday morning.”
He said it quietly, but as the sun dipped its final descent beyond Algiers, she launched at him with a hug and a loud, smacking kiss to his cheek.
“C’mon, Officer,” she said in his ear, “I have to finish rubbing the genie lamp.”
He grinned. “You’re crazy.”
She nudged his ear with her nose, hands on his shoulder. “Just as crazy as you.”
Yeah, they were pretty much two peas in a pod.
He didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Three days later, Lizzie could admit that perhaps she’d stretched the truth about the plantation just outside of Hackberry, Louisiana. Maybe. Just a little bit.
Seated in the passenger’s seat of Gage’s pickup truck, she spared him a quick glance and edged out, “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
His jaw worked—hopefully with the effort to keep from grinning. Or so she told herself, to feel better. “I thought you said the place was abandoned?”
She squirmed in her seat, fighting the urge to stare at the plantation. “I mean, technically it is abandoned.”
Teeth scraping his bottom lip with an indrawn breath, he raised his fingers off the steering wheel to point at the Greek Revival structure. “There’s a gift shop, princess. With electricity. And correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s a stand selling fresh lemonade. Forgive me when I say ‘desolate’ isn’t the first word to come to mind when I look at this place.”
Yeah, so perhaps Mayberry wasn’t completely abandoned any longer, not in the way she’d originally hoped. Some internet stalking had shown her that Mayberry House was under restoration by a local non-profit preservation organization. The shop, the nearby inn, even the lemonade stand provided the necessary funds to bring the nineteenth-century building back to its original glory.
Lizzie unclicked her seat belt, determined to make their overnight stay the best it could be. So what if the place wasn’t crawling with critters and bats? It was just like a man to ignore the haunting beauty Mayberry offered.
Plus, after four hours of driving, her butt was sore, her back even more so, and she refused to sit in the truck for another minute longer.
“I’m going to go poke my head around,” she said. “You’re more than welcome to join if you want.”
Snagging his LSU cap off the dashboard, he settled it over his head. “Obviously I’m coming. Can’t let you face the unknown alone.”
Her lips pressed together. “How gallant of you.”
“Just doing my civic duty, princess.”
Climbing out of his truck, she slammed the door shut and took a deep breath of good, old country air. Abandoned or not, she didn’t regret their impromptu trip at all. She and Gage had discovered a similar taste in music during their drive—a blend of country and rock, although she didn’t care so much for the heavier stuff. She’d leave the screamo to him.
Her phone buzzed in her back pocket, and she pulled it out. Jade. You and lover boy arrive yet?
Lover boy. Lizzie snorted as she typed out her response. Yup. Just got here.
Jade’s response was instantaneous. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
Well, that pretty much gives me open rein, doesn’t it? Don’t forget that I know everything you’ve done with my brother, and I’m still scarred by the knowledge. Freaks.
From the stories you’ve told me about you and Gage, I’m guessing it runs in the family. Freak.
“What are you laughing at over there?” the man in question asked as he came around the hood of the truck. “You’re snickering like a school girl.”
She tucked her phone back into the back pocket of her jeans. “It’s Jade. She just gave us permission to have wild, crazy sex all over this place.”
His dark eyes were obscured by the brim of his hat, but she didn’t miss the curl of his mouth. “I like Jade,” he announced, hands going to his lean hips. “She’s a great girl.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “You don’t even know her.”
“I know you and I know your brother. By default, I know Jade.” He turned to look at the historic Mayberry House. “Abandoned,” he scoffed under his breath, shaking his handsome head in clear disappointment. “Remind me to take you to this place out on the Northshore if you really want something desolate.”
“Scary?”
“Scary enough to find sleep hard after,” he said smugly. “Legend has it that the property used to belong to this convent. There are all these no-trespassing signs. Electric fence that no longer works. Great stuff.”
“And, naturally, the no-trespassing signs didn’t stop you?”
He squeezed her shoulder. It felt like a pity squeeze, or a poor you, you naïve little thing squeeze. “All comes down to a matter of interpretation.”
She gave him a side-eye worthy of an award. “How the hell do you interpret no-trespassing signs?”
“Easy.” He stepped close, fitting a hand around her waist, and lowered his mouth to her ear. “I ignore them.”
Before she had the chance to even issue a reprimand, he was strolling off toward the house, all long, easy strides and sexy masculinity. Lizzie skipped a step to catch up, calling out to his back, “You think you’re such a badass!”
His laughter curled around her like a wisp of smoke. “Thanks, princess.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
This time, he didn’t respond. With a flat palm to the entryway door, he shoved it open and stepped inside. Lizzie had planned to take photos of the exterior, but it’d have to wait. No way was she letting Gage Harvey explore Mayberry without her.
She followed a few paces behind him, drawing to a stop when she entered what was clearly once the parlor. From what information she’d found online, construction on Mayberry had begun just a year after the Civil War had come to a close. The original owner, one Martin Rechibleaux, had hoped to bring back the sophistication of the Antebellum era. Sweeping galleries, oversized columns, and tall ceilings were the staple of the period, and Mayberry was no different.
Her gaze tracked the worn-down stairwell that didn’t look fit for a mouse to climb, never mind an adult. The windows were easily six feet tall; although she used the term “window” loosely. Glass lay scattered on the dusty oak floors. The entryway sat absent of all furniture but a long mirror strung up on the wall. Cracked and foggy, Lizzie stepped in front of it and lifted her camera.
She rarely allowed herself a spot in her photographs, but she felt called to do so now, as though the house wanted her the chance to capture the memories through the looking glass. Just before her finger inched down, Gage stepped into the frame.
Click-click.
“Sorry,” he murmured, “didn’t mean to get in the way.”
Those photos were for her, to remember their trip. “You’re fine,” she said, grabbing two more stills from the same spot when he moved off to the side. “Did you ever hear about this place growing up?”
Blunt-tipped fingers traced a tear in wallpaper. “Never. Owen and I . . . Houses weren’t our thing.”
“Even abandoned ones?” she teased, stepp
ing up next to him. “I can’t help but imagine y’all sneaking into everywhere.” She dropped her voice to a lower octave. “Hello,” she growled in a poor imitation of him, “my name is Gage and I like to jump fences, drink protein shakes, and mingle with the creepiest stuff Louisiana has ever seen.”
He chuckled, and the sound made her feel ten feet tall. “Trust me, it was my job with S.O.D that kicked off my interest in weird-ass places.”
“Do I even want to know?” She so wanted to know, and she waited, breath held, in the hope that he might open up, just a little.
“Probably not.” He stepped away from the wall, trailing a hand down her back in a soothing gesture, as though it were second nature, and moved toward the open doorway to the next room. “But I can tell you’re curious.”
“I’m always curious,” she said, following him into a former dining room. “It’s part of my charm.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” He gave her a small grin. “But really, you think you know a city, and then you do what I do. Did you know there’s an old orphanage up near the river, and that it has a basement?” At her furrowed brow, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. N’Orleans is beneath sea level, and I’ve never seen a basement at all except for the casino and One Shell Square. Anyway, we got a call about a possible threat. It’s me and my boys—before O’Connor got on the job—and we’re staring at this doorway leading to a basement, and it’s so damned small, none of us can fit through.”
Lizzie gave him a slow once-over. “You are a pretty big boy,” she teased. “What did y’all do?”
“Squeezed, princess. Sucked it all in like we’d skipped out on a week’s worth of dinner. My buddy, Cardeaux—you met him—holy shit, I wish you could have seen him.” Gage moved, shifting back to the doorway. At first she thought Gage had decided to quit the room, but when he pivoted and mimicked shoving his bulk through the door, she burst out laughing.
Unable to stop herself, she raised her camera and caught him in action, snapping photo after photo as he retold his story with gusto.
“So there we are,” he said, hands up on an imaginary door, “I’ve just gotten through, right? Pretty sure I left skin behind, and I say so. But then I look back, and Cardeaux is stuck. Stuck! I’m looking at him, he’s looking at me, and we’ve got a dude running around the basement of this abandoned orphanage with a gun. It was like something out of a horror movie.” He swept his LSU hat off his head, flipping it around in that way of his that made her stomach all fluttery, exposing his rugged face to the soft light streaming in through the cracked windows.
Another photo.
And another.
She fiddled with the exposure, getting it just right, and then captured another of him looking off, mouth firm with the memory.
“That night I realized what a lucky son of a gun Cardeaux is. The damn bastard couldn’t get out of that tight doorway, and who’s the one who got shot? Me, that’s who.”
The air rattled in her lungs. “You were . . .” She licked her suddenly dry lips. “You were shot?”
He ran a hand over his thigh. “Right here.”
“Oh my God.”
“I’m all good, princess.” The smile he sent her was obviously intended to soothe her nerves, but there was no soothing them.
Lizzie strode toward him, camera clutched in her left hand. “How are you so casual about it? You could have died!”
“I didn’t.”
Why was he being so reasonable about this? She thought of her stepfather, who’d spent the last ten years as a white shirt. Her mother rarely had to worry about her husband when he generally found himself seated at a desk. For as long as she could remember, Danny, too, had worked in various positions that didn’t make him a direct target. First as a homicide detective, and now as one of two K-9 officers for the department.
No one crossed Rocky unless they wanted a missing limb.
But Gage, as a member of S.O.D., he put his life at risk every day he went to work. She knew that. She’d known that, of course, but hearing how close he’d come to—
“Lizzie, sweetheart, you have to breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
A familiar hand closed over her shoulder, then slid down to the center of her back where it rubbed in circles. “You’re hyperventilating, and as much as I’d like to do mouth to mouth on you, I’m worried we might inhale all the mothballs in here. Guess my adventurous streak has a boundary, and that’s it.”
In a whisper, she said, “You always say the sweetest things.”
“Only for you.” More gentle circles on her back, followed by the brush of his firm lips against her hairline. “Touch my chest, my arms. I’m good, all good. I have a buddy—he’s been shot three times. Damn unlucky fellow. He goes out, and the rest of us all steer clear. We tempt fate enough times as it is every day.”
She knew he’d said it to make her laugh, but it just . . . Well, it wasn’t funny. He’d said that he had a morbid sense of humor, and generally she did as well, but she couldn’t scrub away the visual of him bleeding, clutching his leg, begging for help in some dark and dingy basement.
“How in the world does your mom put up with the worry?” she asked, wanting to burrow into his chest. “My mom, she worries about Danny. We all do. But I think him having Rocky makes her feel better, for what it’s worth. Like he’s not alone when he goes out on shift.”
When she heard his jaw audibly clamp shut, she lifted her gaze from his chest to his face. “Gage?”
He didn’t meet her eyes, though his throat worked with emotion. “My mom passed.” The words were hollow, a cut of his soul offered on a broken platter. “But I imagine if she were still alive, she’d have something to say about it.”
And with that bomb, he whirled away, muttered something about needing air, and stormed back out the way they’d come in.
Leaving Lizzie in the dining room alone.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the emptiness of Mayberry, to Gage, who no longer stood in front of her. No wonder he’d looked all shaken up when she’d mentioned visiting Hackberry. He’d told her that he’d spent his teenage years here in west Louisiana, the weekdays with his mom and the weekends with his father.
Lizzie understood all too well the feeling of being blindsided by the memories. Danny’s house did that to her, although not so much recently. Still, a death was a death. Her father’s drunk driving accident had floored her when she’d been twelve.
She hadn’t missed the man when he’d left them.
You couldn’t miss an abuser, no matter what people said.
But Lizzie suspected that Gage’s mother’s death was not the sort of unwanted reprieve that her father’s death had offered.
She wanted to wrap her arms around Gage, hug him close. To offer comfort in any way that he’d accept.
You are in way too deep.
She knew that full and well.
With a heavy sigh, she hooked her camera strap around her neck and let it hang between her breasts. She’d come back later, maybe when the sun had started to set. Danny had once called her a sunset chaser, and it was true.
Right now, it was Gage’s well-being that mattered most, and she didn’t care whether he wanted the comfort or not.
Lizzie sidestepped a break in the wood floor, and stuttered to a halt.
The dust on the floor had settled, outlining the shape of two large-sized tennis shoes. Gage’s shoes.
They looked like a ghost had stepped through, like a moment captured in time, and it seemed just a little ironic to her that Gage had stood tall and strong in this historical house, and yet his heart was firmly lodged in the past.
Chapter Twenty-Four
God, he was a mess.
As Gage sat in his truck, eyes on Mayberry, he realized it to be true. What thirty-four-year old hauled ass during an adult conversation?
Obviously, you’re the winner on this one. Congrats, man.
Gage snapped his palm against the steer
ing wheel, threw his hat onto the dashboard, and focused on evening out his breath. Get a grip.
Over the years, he’d come to accept that there were a few topics that succeeded in clamming him up. Michelle. His father. His mother. Owen preferred to talk about them now—he’d sung a different tune during his early years in and out of jail—but that wasn’t Gage’s style.
He didn’t want to discuss Ben and Bethany’s deaths, and he sure as hell didn’t want to think about Michelle walking out on him—after he’d proposed to her, no less.
The passenger’s side door creaked open, the hinges rusty and in desperate need of oil. Quietly, Lizzie took her seat, set her camera in her lap, and flicked the AC vents away from her face.
“I don’t know what happened to your mom,” she said after a moment, eyes straight ahead on the Greek Revival mansion, “but I’m glad you loved her. I can tell.”
What did that have to do with anything? Of course he loved his mother. He’d loved her, even when she’d made a decision that tore his and Owen’s lives apart by the seams.
In a wry tone, she continued, “Not everyone’s so lucky, you know. My dad? The biggest prick you’d ever meet. Think city-slicker with a penchant for booze, and you’ve got him to a T. He, uh”—her fingers flew into an uneven tap-tap-tap on her thighs—“he used to beat my mom and Danny.”
Gage saw red at that, and he found it hard to breathe. “Tell me that he didn’t touch you,” he growled, “Lizzie, tell me that he didn’t—”
“Not once.” A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Danny always cut him off. Told me to go play with my dolls upstairs. Sometimes, he pretended that my friends were at the back door, begging me to come out and play—only, I didn’t have any friends back then.”
His heart ached with the image she painted of her as a little girl, both for her and for Danvers. He’d known the guy for years now, and never once had he suspected what lay beneath his affable, relaxed exterior. “It’s good he protected you. That’s what big brothers do, sweetheart, they protect their little sisters.”
