by Melissa Tagg
And who no longer released his every thought and emotion with such carefree abandon.
“Beck, about last night . . .”
There was the proof. The stiffening of his shoulders, the shade in his eyes. He started down the ladder. “Don’t want to talk about it.”
She shifted the bucket so she could follow him down. “It was Sam, wasn’t it? Willa told me he’s the police chief now. Do you have to go to court? It’s all because of my wedding night, isn’t it? I feel so responsible—”
He interrupted her before she was even halfway down the ladder. “Don’t. You’re not responsible. It has nothing to do with you, and I don’t want—”
“Of course it has something to do with me.” The bucket knocked against her hip as she climbed down. “You saved me from making one of the biggest mistakes of my life that night. But then we argued, you drove off—”
“I remember. I was there.”
Her feet landed in the grass. “So let’s talk. Finally, we’re both here, back in each other’s lives—”
He clamped the ladder closed. “We’re not back in each other’s lives, Kit. I’m here because I’ve always liked this place and because, yeah, you needed help. But that’s it. As soon as I can, I’m on a plane back to Boston and you’ll go back to London, unless by some miracle you actually stand up to your dad and do what you want for once—”
“Don’t tell me what I want, Beckett.”
“—instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you.”
The charge sliced through dense air and the heat of her own rising anger, landing with perfect, painful aim. It stole her breath and stung a wound as open as those marring the trees around her.
“I didn’t ask you to stop the wedding.” Barely a whisper. And as for what had happened after . . .
“You didn’t have to.”
Because he knew her. He knew her so very well—always had.
Only now, as he turned and walked away, ladder under one arm and chainsaw in the other, the truth swallowed any chance at a reply.
The truth that, anymore, she didn’t know him at all.
4
“Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?”
Dad matched Beckett’s hurried pace up the courthouse stairs. The red brick structure stretched to a peak, its massive clock over the main entrance glaring the time in oversized roman numerals. Barely ten minutes until he was due in front of the judge—and the court citation had said to arrive fifteen minutes early.
Why couldn’t he have been on time just this once?
“I’m sure, Dad.”
Beckett lugged the door open, the muscles in his arms and back protesting even the minor movement. From working under a blazing sun all day Saturday, no doubt. Inside, marble floors and matching columns ornamented a chasm of open space stippled with the occasional desk or office door. He’d only been in the historic courthouse twice, maybe three times growing up. A field trip here, a parking fine there.
Dad used the back of his palm to swipe away the beads of sweat on his forehead. Another August scorcher, but the walk from the car had been minimal.
“You all right, Dad?”
His father chased away a wince with a thin smile. “Just a headache.”
“You really didn’t have to come.”
“I’d feel better if you’d have some kind of legal counsel.”
“I am my legal counsel. I’ve spent the last three years working seventy-hour weeks for one of Boston’s oldest law firms.” Never mind he’d done more pencil pushing than actual courtroom arguing. Beckett skimmed the citation—second floor, Courtroom B. “Plus I did that internship my third year of law school, working for a public defender’s office.”
Which meant he could recite this process in his sleep. The judge would read the charges, ask if he understood, if he was ready to make a plea.
And yes, he was ready. He’d been an idiot not to get this taken care of before now.
“Isn’t there some old adage about a doctor being his own worst patient?” Dad strode beside him.
“Wrong profession. Anyway, I talked to the DA yesterday. Pretty sure he thinks this is as ridiculous as I do.”
No way he’d come out of this with anything worse than a fine, maybe a few hours of community service. He’d waive his right to a preliminary hearing, ask the judge to hand down an immediate sentence. Request, too, that his record be expunged upon completion of any sentencing requirements.
Meaning he could apply for the JAG Corps without worry over background checks or security clearance.
So why the niggling undercurrent of anxiety?
On the second floor, burgundy carpet stretched toward a row of closed mahogany doors. Beckett dropped onto the vinyl-cushioned bench lining the hallway outside Courtroom B. Muted voices drifted from inside the room, and down the corridor a woman paced, phone to her ear.
Beckett leaned his head against the wall, kneading the arm that’d taken the brunt of the weekend’s physical labor. That chainsaw had done a number on him. And if he was this sore, he could only imagine how Kit must be feeling.
Especially if she’d spent Sunday and Monday working as hard as she had Saturday, which wouldn’t surprise him in the least. Fire blight wasn’t something to mess with. They couldn’t possibly have gotten all of it on Saturday, and if she wasn’t diligent—
No. He wouldn’t think of her now. He was in this mess in the first place because of Kit.
Except that wasn’t entirely fair. It’d been his decision to stop by and see her the night before her wedding. His decision to interrupt the ceremony the next day. His decision to drive away in a car that wasn’t his own.
And after all that, his decision to let reckless emotion take over.
“How’s Kit?” Dad lowered next to him.
Were his thoughts that loud? “Fine.”
“Any idea what she’s going to do about the orchard?”
“She doesn’t think it’s her choice to make.” Never mind that she’d been in her element taking charge on Saturday. She loved the orchard and could do a fine job managing it if given a chance.
But it’d be a balmy day at the North Pole before Kit was ever honest with the father she barely knew. He’d only met the man twice himself. Mason Danby—Army to the core. Distanced, stern. His own father’s opposite in almost every way, which was strange considering Dad had once had a sterling military career of his own.
“Hey, Dad?”
His father leaned over, tying one of his shoes.
“I’m applying to the JAG Corps.”
Dad straightened up. “Say again?”
“Found out last week I landed an interview with a field screening officer. It’s set for September in Boston, and then the written application is due in November. But they’ll do some kind of security or background assessment. It’s why I came home. Arrest warrants don’t always show up, but I’m guessing for something like national security, they go a little deeper than your general check and—”
“Slow down, Beck. I’m still back at the JAG Corps.” Dad’s eyes were wide “Really? Military law?”
“I’m bored in Boston.” He shrugged and stood.
“You just said you work seventy-hour weeks. And you’re bored?”
“Hard work doesn’t always equate to meaningful work.” He combed his fingers through his hair as he paced. “Not that corporate law can’t be meaningful, but for me, it’s just . . . not.”
“And being a military lawyer will be more meaningful?”
“I think so.” And there was a certain merit to it, wasn’t there? It felt noble. Or at least respectable. Plus, he’d get to travel, see so much more of the world than he ever had. He’d actually get to litigate cases, argue in a courtroom rather than sit in a cramped office, buried under paperwork.
He just wished he could tell if Dad was pleased with the idea. Was it ridiculous to crave his father’s approval so strongly even at age twenty-nine?
“Mind if I ask what
gave you the idea?”
“You.” He sat once more, met his father’s eyes. “Once when I was teenager, you said I should consider joining the Army because I could stand to learn some self-discipline.”
“Son, I didn’t mean—”
“But it was Mom too,” he hastened to add. “We were working on her car one afternoon.” The silver 1969 convertible now sitting in his garage back in Boston. Man, he missed the days of tinkering under its hood, Mom at his side reading from a manual, both of them pretending like they had a clue what they were doing. “She’s the one who said I should consider going to law school. Said I could argue like nobody’s business. I told her it’d be too boring. Next day when I got home from school, there were all these printouts on my bed. She’d done a Google search: ‘Exciting jobs for lawyers.’ Top result was the JAG Corps.”
She’d marked up each page of her research—underlined and highlighted in a rainbow of colors. And on the top page in red ink, in the handwriting he knew so well, a note he’d memorized without even trying: This doesn’t look boring to me, Beck. It checks off all your boxes: Travel, excitement, variety. Something meaningful. And you’d be just as handsome in a uniform as your father.
“Smart woman, your mother.” And then, finally, a grin broke out over Dad’s face. “I always wondered if one of my kids would ever follow in my military footsteps. Of your own choosing, that is.”
Unlike Dad, who’d been drafted two weeks after turning eighteen. He’d served in Vietnam and then gone on to become a diplomat, though his career had been cut short when Mom got sick the first time. Beckett had been a toddler when Dad had made the decision to give up his illustrious position and move the family back to his hometown so he could focus on taking care of Mom.
“Well, you have my support, of course.” Dad rose. “Anything I can do to . . .” He broke off with a wince. He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed.
“Your headache’s that bad?”
“Might be bordering on a migraine, if I’m honest. This darn heat and humidity.” He lowered to his chair once more.
“You shouldn’t have bothered to come along. Head home. I can call Raegan for a ride later. Or if you don’t think you can drive—”
“Beckett Walker?”
A uniformed woman stood in the now-open courtroom door.
“Go on, son. I’ll just wait out here.”
“Maybe there’s a help desk or something where you can get some Tylenol or—”
“Mr. Walker.” The officer in the doorway tapped her foot.
Dad motioned him on.
The space on the other side of the door wasn’t so much courtroom as sparse meeting room. The judge sat behind a simple table. Two narrower tables faced the judge’s bench, a scattering of chairs dotting the area behind them.
Beckett ignored the glare of Sam Ross as he covered the distance to the table on the left. He nodded at the DA.
Please let this go well.
The next few minutes passed in a routine march. The judge listened to the DA’s scant explanation of the events that led to the charges. One count joyriding, one count damage to public property, both aggravated misdemeanors.
The judge looked to the file in front of her, glasses perched halfway down her nose. “This happened six years ago. We’re just now addressing it?”
Her skeptical question should buoy Beckett. And yet, he was beginning to empathize with Dad—his own headache forming as images of the accident curdled in his memory. Spinning out on Main Avenue, losing control, the squeal of tires. His head hitting the window as the car hopped the curb. His seatbelt lancing his chest. The tree, the crash, the shock.
“Mr. Walker has been out of state,” the DA’s explanation cut in. “There was damage to both private and public property. The car, but also a tree in the town square that was planted by one of the town founders. Historically significant. The damage was enough the tree had to be pulled out.”
The judge turned her gaze on him. “You don’t deny any of this.”
“I was stupid, but it was an accident.”
She consulted her notes again. “You drove away from a wedding with the bride in tow in a car belonging to her groom’s father. But she wasn’t with you when the accident occurred.”
He could hear the judge’s unspoken questions. What had happened in the two hours between the would-be wedding and his running the car into a tree?
That would be the part of the night he most despised reliving. If he’d have just quit while he was ahead—done the heroic thing, rescued Kit from her wedding and left it at that.
But no. Like a fool, he’d chosen that very night to tell Kit how he felt about her—or thought he felt, anyway. It’d seemed so clear the evening before as they’d walked through the orchard together, reconnecting after such busy semesters. He didn’t know why he’d never realized it before—how pretty his best friend was. How smart and winsome and kind. Well, and at the time, how unavailable.
But then just twenty-four hours later, the second she became available, he had to go and spill his entirely new, entirely irresponsible feelings. He’d stunned her, she’d wounded him, and next thing he knew, he was racing through town with an empty passenger seat, under the influence of red-hot emotion.
The judge nudged up her glasses with one finger before pinning him with an unreadable stare. “It’s not as if you intended to steal the car. No one was hurt. You could’ve stuck around, faced up to what you’d done, and this would’ve been long settled. Were you drinking?”
“I wasn’t, Your Honor. I simply wasn’t thinking straight.”
“You had six years to start thinking straight.”
“I had law school. I’d been accepted to Suffolk University in Boston. And then there was an internship and a job offer and—”
“But clearly you knew there was an arrest warrant waiting for you back at home and you were purposeful about evading it.”
The buzzing in the back of his head circled around to the front. He couldn’t argue that. At first he’d just wanted to get away from Kit. Prevent the humiliation of that night from going one step further with an arrest.
But somewhere along the way, impulse had morphed into intention. He’d known for something so slight law enforcement wouldn’t come after him. As long as he avoided town, he avoided his life being interrupted. Could’ve gone on indefinitely if not for his upcoming need to pass military security clearance.
The DA piped up then. “Your Honor, we realize this is an odd situation, but Mr. Walker has made it clear he regrets acting impetuously and means to make amends.”
“He was impetuous the night of the incident,” the judge cut in. “But six years of dodging an arrest warrant is willful.” She turned to Beckett, lips pressed into a thin line. She paused for a beat before speaking again. “Mr. Walker, you’re entitled to a preliminary hearing. You could hire counsel for plea bargain negotiating and if you choose to plead guilty, come back at a later date for sentencing—”
“I’d rather not, Your Honor.” The interruption slipped out before he could stop it. “I’m ready to face up to this right now. I need to. I’ve got things . . .” He shook his head, took a breath. “I’m ready to plead guilty and receive my sentence right now.”
The judge pulled off her glasses. “You’re certain?”
He nodded as the DA spoke again. “We’d be amenable to a fine and perhaps twenty-five, thirty hours of community—”
The judge lifted her gavel. “One-thousand-dollar fine and community service to be completed in state. Four hundred hours.”
Beckett’s stomach clenched. “What? Four hundred—?”
Her gavel hit the tabletop.
Beckett sent a panicked glance to the DA. The man only gave him an apologetic shrug.
Four hundred hours. There was no way he could get that done before his JAG interview and application, not while working full time in another state. “Your Honor—”
“That’ll be all, Mr. Walker.”
Kit read the apology in Eric Hampton’s sandy eyes. Eric leaned back in the leather chair behind the desk that filled most of the closet-sized office at the back of the Hampton House. It used to be his parents who alternately filled the seat, much like her own grandparents, partnering to operate what wasn’t so much a business as a mission.
In the Hamptons’ case, said mission was a transitional home for men coming out of prison or addiction rehabilitation programs.
“Sorry, Kit, he didn’t. All I know is, when I contacted him in early July like we always do to ask how many men he could take on for picking season, he said he wouldn’t be hiring anyone this year.” Eric combed his fingers through hair the same shade as his eyes. “I thought he meant he just wasn’t hiring our guys, so I pressed him on it. But no, he said he wasn’t hiring anyone.”
Kit slumped in the well-worn wingback chair opposite Eric. This had been her last idea for discovering Lucas’s whereabouts. Grandpa had always hired six or seven men from Hampton House to help during the fall season—his own way of making a difference, he’d often said. Somehow he’d always find time in the busyness of autumn to mentor the men, providing not just seasonal employment, something to stick on a résumé, but also validation, even friendship.
She’d assumed Lucas had continued the Hampton House hiring—which it sounded like he had up until this year. Too, he and Eric had been in the same graduating class. She’d hoped they might’ve picked back up their friendship—at least enough for Lucas to have confided in Eric his plans.
No such luck.
Which felt like the pattern of her last seventy-two hours. Three solid days of working in the orchard, fighting the blight that had sunk its teeth into her trees. Yes, with all the extra help, they’d made progress on Saturday. But Sunday and Monday had been slower going with only Willa and occasionally Nigel for help, though he’d spent most of his time working on his laptop.
