Love Rebuilt

by Stewart, Delancey

  I leaned back and fixed her with my no-bullshit look. “Okay, you’re dancing around something. What do you know about this guy?” I tried not to let thoughts of his dark auburn hair or movie-star stubble enter my mind. Maybe I should sell the house to him. It wasn’t like anyone else was offering. Was I really going to finish building it anyway?

  “You know how town is,” she said. “People talk.”

  “And what do they say about Connor Charles?”

  “Well, you’ve read the tabloid stuff about him, obviously.”

  “Miranda, I’d never heard of the guy before this week.” I thought about what she’d said. “He’s famous enough to be covered in the tabloids?”

  She nodded, her eyes widening. “Maybe he wasn’t that famous before, but then he beat his girlfriend up. They got pictures of her with a black eye, but she wouldn’t press charges.”

  I took a bite of my pasta and let that roll around in my mind for a minute. “Okay, what else?”

  “I already told you about the woman he’s keeping captive up there.”

  “You seriously believe that?”

  She looked down at her plate and shrugged. “Probably not.” She raised her eyes to mine. “But then, where’d she go?”

  “They broke up and she left at night when no one was around to see. Or she’s his cousin and was just in town for a visit. Or she’s just a friend and she drove out the back way. Why do you think she just disappeared?”

  “She looked terrible, too. Like a starving animal, all shaggy and bruised.”

  “She was bruised?”

  Miranda nodded.

  “Her face?”

  “Her arms. Every time I saw her.”

  It was my turn to shrug.

  “That was in the tabloids, too. Some tourist or someone snapped some photos while they were walking in the parking lot. He hasn’t come into town to eat since.”

  “I’m not surprised. So he’s a famous guy whose privacy has been compromised in really malicious ways. He’s been accused of terrible things…” I let my mind wander through the landscape Miranda had just painted. “I think I’d avoid people, too.”

  “But there’s something else,” she said. She leaned so far over the table that her shirt nearly drooped into her pasta sauce. “He dated a girl I went to school with. Someone younger than me. And I guess when they broke up, he didn’t handle it well. Isn’t handling it well, I mean.”

  “Is this girl a minor?”

  “She was when they started dating, I guess. She’s eighteen now. She got a restraining order against him.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Miranda was enjoying this guy’s misfortune a little too much. “So what is she accusing him of, exactly?”

  “Stalking.”

  “Huh.” I’d have to think about that later. And I wanted to do a Google search and see what I could turn up. Miranda’s intention might have been to warn me off of Connor Charles, but all she’d really done was make me curious about him. He didn’t strike me as dangerous in any way.

  I didn’t know Connor Charles. But I didn’t like people jumping to conclusions about someone based on scant evidence and outward appearances. I’d gotten enough of that myself. I certainly wouldn’t defend someone who was a legitimate stalker, but it didn’t sound like there was much actual evidence. “Sounds like the police will figure it out. I think you might be leaping to conclusions though.” I trailed off, realizing that I was defending a man who I didn’t know at all. He could be the next Charles Manson for all I knew. “I don’t know. I just don’t like to judge people.”

  “Well, then maybe you should call him. See how much he’ll give you.”

  Her unintended double-entendre was not lost on me, but she didn’t seem to catch the way my smile widened as she said it. I shook my head. “See what he’ll give me for the only family legacy I have…”

  The thought of selling a place where my family had been happy together felt like selling part of me. And there were blessed few parts of me intact after my marriage to Jack. I didn’t know if I could do it. The thought of Cam’s reaction made me want to climb under the covers with a bottle of red and a plate of brownies, though it would be nice to be able to afford to leave the trailer behind.

  Chapter 5

  I dropped Miranda at home after a long afternoon spent in the valley, hugging her goodbye. Hugging was not normally in my nature, but Miranda took my awkward gesture in stride and hugged me back. The wonderful weather and sense of friendship had gotten the better of me.

  During our outing, we’d stopped into a salon and I’d found myself feeling as if I’d come home. I got my hair highlighted and my nails done. There was a time when hours spent in the stylist’s chair were a bi-monthly part of my life. But the mass of curls on my head hadn’t been cared for since I’d moved to the mountains permanently, and the process of foiling and painting sections felt almost ludicrously self-indulgent now. Especially on a more modest budget than I’d had in recent years. Miranda had also convinced me to throw a few pink streaks in through the bottom layer. An indulgent little defiance. Jack would have hated it. Maybe that was why I liked it. Miranda had gotten her hair and nails done too, and I’d promised to think about our first lesson in flirtation.

  Back in the trailer with the heavy isolation of the mountains pressing down on me again, I stared at myself in the mirror. There was a glimmer there of a girl I’d known once. But most of what I saw looked foreign to me. I still wore too much eye makeup—Jack liked a heavy eye. And I dressed in black and white, the colors he’d said I looked best in. I was Jack’s creation, wasn’t I? And now I lived in the land of misfit ex-wives, unsure how to move on. But the pink strands blazing beneath the newly two-toned brown curls were one step back toward me. I was in there somewhere. I needed to figure out how to throw off the weight of the illusion I’d carried for Jack all these years.

  I stepped out of the trailer with a glass of wine and my camera, lifting my nose to the breeze that was singing through the trees. Something was different, a smell, or a feeling. I gazed around, squinting in the darkness, as the pillars of half-finished walls looked back at me, and tried to understand the sense of anticipation I felt in the air as my eyes grew used to the dark.

  I put the wine glass down on the picnic table, pulling the lens cap off my neglected camera and sliding it into my back pocket. I turned the camera on and made a few adjustments before holding it to my eye. Through the viewfinder, I swept across the horizon of my property slowly. As I panned across the half-built house, something was not right.

  A cold shock ran through me as my eyes adjusted and settled on a silhouette standing still within the frame of the house. Human, definitely. Not feminine. Not moving.

  I’d walked blithely out of the trailer, a good fifty feet from the door. And this man had evidently been standing there the whole time, watching me. Fear crept up my arms, leaving a trail of goose bumps as adrenaline began to beat a rhythm in my chest. The man was as far from me as I was from the door. If he moved quicker than I could, he’d be on me before I could get inside. And that joke of a lock wasn’t going to keep him out.

  The neighbors may as well have been a state away. The Trenches were closest at half mile down the hill. I was frozen, staring at the faceless intruder. At first I assumed it was Jack, but this man was taller, broader—even in the dim light I could see that he would’ve beaten Jack’s pansy ass in a bar fight in one punch. Part of my mind was trying to see how maybe he was actually only a couple of beams, forming themselves into the shape of a man in the darkness. But I put the camera back to my eye and zoomed the focus, and I knew with a certainty that he was there. His silence and stillness were threatening, and the dusky twilight offered me no details about who the man might be.

  I considered pretending that I was not alone, calling to someone inside the trailer. But that farce would be discovered pretty quickly when no one answered. And it was possible that this man had been watching me since I’d arrived home. I could run for
the car, but the keys were inside the trailer. The best I could do there would be to set off the car’s alarm and hope it would scare him away.

  I grasped at the only thing I could think of. “I don’t leave the house without a gun.” I said it loudly, aiming my words in his direction and hoping my voice didn’t shake. I took a couple steps toward the door as I said it.

  He didn’t move. But a deep voice rolled back to me through the darkness. “Probably a good idea. But you can’t shoot anything up here. National Park.” He still didn’t move. “They’d throw you in jail for killing a bear.”

  “You’re not a bear,” I said, taking a few more slow steps. I was closer to the door now than he was to me. I could probably run and make it inside.

  “That’s a good point. I’m pretty sure it’s also illegal to shoot people though.”

  “Not if they’re trespassing.”

  “Wouldn’t count on that. This is California.” He chuckled.

  He was chuckling? My would-be attacker was now chuckling about the idea of me shooting him with my non-existent gun. It was pissing me off.

  “You’d be wise to get off my property.” I said it as I reached the door, and the man still hadn’t moved.

  “Don’t shoot me. I’ll go.” The man began to move, putting his hands up and walking toward me through the darkness. His boots scuffed loudly against the concrete foundation as he drew near and I realized he was carrying some kind of pack on one shoulder. I opened the door and stood inside the screen. I flicked on the outdoor light, illuminating a wide circle around the trailer and capturing the stranger in its glow.

  Connor Charles stood at the edge of the light, a backpack hanging on his right side and his hair lit gloriously in the bright light. He was unfairly good-looking for someone with such a worrisome reputation. “Sorry if I scared you.”

  I stood inside the screen, peering out at him through the flimsy material as if it would protect me if he were actually a murderer, as Miranda seemed to believe he could be. I reached behind me for my phone at the edge of the counter. My brain hummed as adrenaline spiked through me. A large part of me wanted to talk to this man, but I wanted to do it in the light of day. Not on my isolated property. I decided not to admit to a potential stalker-slash-murderer that he’d scared me. I decided to stick with the gun idea. “I’m still considering shooting you.”

  “I hoped you might reconsider selling the property instead.”

  “I don’t think I’m interested.” I stared through the screen at him, wishing he would turn and go. The dark night hummed around us beyond the halo of light. Connor’s face was scruffy and tan, but there was a slight smile on those sculpted lips and something about his easy stance was anything but scary. He looked like a catalog model, posed with the backpack hanging casually from one muscled arm, his strong legs wrapped in khakis. I stayed where I was, behind my security screen.

  Connor tilted his head to one side, the light catching shades of gold and red in his hair. “Well, maybe you will be interested,” he said, and he stepped forward, a wide smile on his face. His bright blue eyes sparkled above that rough-stubbled jaw in the trailer’s glaring light. “Maybe I can convince you somehow.”

  Was that a threat? Those words, coming from this particular man, should have been frightening after what I’d learned today. But nothing about Connor Charles was scary to me. Still, it was dark, and he was a stranger. Whoever he was, I was vulnerable, and the sooner he left, the better I’d feel about it. “I doubt it,” I told him. “Anyway, I’d rather talk about it in the daylight.”

  Connor looked around, as if he was surprised to find it dark. “Of course. Yeah. I was hiking, and came back by this way. I kind of got stuck here, and I didn’t realize how late it was. There’s a perfect spot between the trees over there where the moon was rising tonight. This is one of my favorite spots in the park.”

  I glanced beyond to see where he was pointing, and noticed a break in the tree line behind the half-erect house. It would be a great shot, to capture the moon hanging full between those dark tall trees. I nodded, lifting the camera slightly before realizing that I shouldn’t let myself become distracted while he was still near. I could not trust this man, thanks to Miranda’s voice swirling in my head. Thanks to the fact that he was a stranger. And thanks to the fact that men in general were not my favorite gender at the moment, after my experiences with a certain Scotsman.

  “It’s a compelling view. This is part of why I asked about the house. It’d be so nice to have a house right here, to see that view in the evenings, to hear the water down there.” There was a glint in his eye as he stared off toward the moon. He turned back toward me, an apologetic half-smile on the handsome face, as if he’d just remembered that I was still standing here. “I get distracted sometimes. I shouldn’t have scared you, Ms. Turner. I’m really sorry.”

  I listened, but the stream was only a trickle now. Very few people even knew there was water on this side of the park; it so rarely showed itself in its fullest form. I felt protective, and thought of it as my stream. Mine and Cam’s. It bordered our property and then veered down into the park. I doubted if even my nearest neighbors really thought of that crawling trickle very often. But this guy knew about it. “There’s no real water down there,” I told him.

  “There is in the springtime,” he said. He stared off toward the drop off that led down the ravine. “And there’s one pool that gets deep.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. Had he been lurking around the edges of my property much longer than I’d known? “I think you’d better go, Mr. Charles.” Something about the way his eyes had snapped back to my face made my skin heat. His gaze wasn’t predatory, but it was intent. And the heat in my cheeks, coupled with the fear that Miranda’s ideas about Connor had inspired, combined to make me wish for some time on the other side of my door to think.

  Connor reached up a big hand and rubbed the back of his neck, dropping the searing eyes to the ground as he did it. His feet shuffled in the dust. “This is really not going the way I’d hoped. I had meant to stop by a lot earlier. I didn’t mean to scare you, I just really didn’t think about the hour.”

  He looked apologetic, standing there shuffling his big leather-booted feet. But he was still here. And it was still dark, and the whole situation still felt foreboding.

  “Okay, well…” I took a step back, holding the edge of the heavier door behind the screen, swinging it slightly closed.

  “Right. Okay. Maybe we could talk about the house again at some point? If you change your mind? You know, in daylight.” He said. The bright eyes captured mine again, their gaze piercing, even at a distance. He looked hopeful. “Could I buy you coffee tomorrow?”

  There was something about Connor Charles that had the potential to draw me in. Something that inspired some part of me to want to hear him out, help him, even. But I was willing to bet that every psychopath in history could turn on the charm when he needed to. Being attractive didn’t make him trustworthy. I closed the door a bit more. “I have to work.” The door was a crack now.

  “Okay then. Well, maybe another time. Good night.” He turned and walked down the dark road toward the village.

  I found myself standing at the window watching him go. I even shot a few frames of him walking away from me, red hair still catching glints of the light coming from the trailer. When he’d rounded the curve into the trees, I moved away from the window and settled myself inside. I decided that leaving the light outside on at night might be a good idea.

  * * *

  I awoke groggy the next morning, and stepped out with my coffee, pulling my robe tight around me against the vague chill in the air. Could this creeping hint of cold mean that winter was really on its way? My La Bruna teddy might have been the problem. The sheer lace wasn’t really meant for outdoor wear. I think it was actually one of those things meant only for momentary wear, mostly intended to be tossed to the floor in the heat of passion. The most heat I could hope for lately was from t
he sun, and that was fading too quickly for my liking. It shouldn’t be cold yet. It was only August!

  I stood, gazing out at the sky as it brightened, and the scent of some kind of sugary baked bread hung in the air. I had to be imagining it—I hadn’t even tried the oven in the trailer yet and couldn’t remember the last time I’d baked anything. Ever. I’d never really been the domestic type. I breathed in the aroma of my coffee, and it smelled like it usually did: strong and nutty, decidedly not like pastries.

  Squinting, I scanned the area around the trailer. The scent of fresh-baked muffins was hardly a typical harbinger of bad things to come, but my life was full of atypical warning signs. Behind my car, at the periphery of my lot, sat a familiar white Land Rover. The passenger window was down, and inside sat a certain auburn-haired man, who seemed unable to avoid my personal space. The heavenly scent was coming from over there. Crap.

  I slipped back into the cabin, since Connor seemed to be distracted by something inside the car and hadn’t noticed me yet. The man didn’t seem to have a very sensitive take-a-hint meter. And I was none-too-pleased with myself because there was a little spark of excitement jumping around in my stomach. Why was any part of me excited to see him? Shouldn’t I be calling the cops about now? If stalking was his M.O., he did seem to have a knack for it. Maybe the post office hadn’t been a coincidence. And the fact that he knew about the stream beyond my property unsettled me, since I’d been pretty sure that was knowledge limited to myself and the band of ragged kids that traipsed through my lot most days.

  I stared into the bathroom mirror trying to decide what to do. I could pretend not to be home, but my car was parked out front. And if Connor glanced in the windows, he’d certainly see me. Living in a trailer didn’t afford a lot of good hiding places. I’d have to face him. But I was not going to give in to the little flame flickering inside my chest, the one that had ignited the first time I’d met Jack. That flicker of interest was a terrible guide, and I didn’t trust it any more than I trusted the man in the car outside.