The memories weren’t happy ones, so he shoved them aside and hauled himself out of bed. He had stuff to do and, more important, coffee to find.
Hope hadn’t been lying about the room being the honeymoon suite. It was large—though in Deep River size was relative—with a table to do work at if you felt so inclined and a couch to sit on. There was also a balcony that looked out over the river and an en suite bathroom that, given the rest of the rooms at the Moose had a shared bathroom, was the very height of luxury.
He’d spent most of last evening battling the crappy cell phone reception as he gave Damon an update on the situation, all the while listening to complaints about how little there was to do in Juneau. Complaints which he ignored. Damon was a city boy whose plans for returning to LA had been disrupted by Cal’s will, and he wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t want anything to do with Deep River and had been more than okay with staying in Juneau to keep things ticking over with Wild Alaska, leaving Si to handle breaking the news to the town.
Maybe a week max, he’d told Damon. Because he wanted to do this right. He couldn’t simply lob the oil news into the middle of a town meeting like a grenade, then walk away as it blew everything sky high. He wasn’t that much of an asshole. He needed to check out the town first, break the news in a way that wouldn’t cause too much disruption, and then stick around to make sure any issues were handled.
It doesn’t matter how you handle it. This news is going to cause problems.
The thought echoed the doubt sitting in his gut, but he ignored it. He had to. He had a business to get back to, a life he’d managed to build, and that didn’t include staying in his old hometown. He’d spent most of his childhood years looking after one old man and getting absolutely no thanks for it, and then more years in the army looking after a platoon. He was done with responsibility. All he wanted to manage now was the business and himself.
He didn’t need a whole damn town to look after.
Eventually, Si hauled himself out of bed, and since he’d showered the night before, he didn’t bother now, pulling on fresh jeans and a tee before making his way downstairs in search of coffee.
Daylight wasn’t the Moose’s most flattering angle. What was cozy and warm at night turned dark and poky in the daytime, the animal heads on the walls looking moth-eaten and shabby. The place smelled of spilled beer and wet oilskins and—yes, thank you, God—freshly brewed coffee.
Hope was up, moving around the bar area with a broom, shifting chairs to get under tables, sweeping up after the previous night’s revelries.
He watched her silently, his heartbeat accelerating the way it had the night before the moment he’d seen her. She was in jeans and a tee too, her hair in that severe braid down her back, though now it slid over one shoulder as she shoved a table to the side so she could get her broom underneath it.
Her movements were competent, practical, as if she’d swept this floor a thousand times before. Which she probably had. He hadn’t asked her about what she’d been doing with her life last night, not when the news he’d had to break had taken up most of the time they’d had together. And after…well, after, he’d had to get away. He’d told himself at the time it was to do with updating Damon, but it wasn’t. The effect Hope had had on him once before was there still, and he didn’t like it. Not one damn bit.
He was older now, wiser. And he didn’t have the time, or room in his life, to get tangled up with an old friend. Because that’s what she was and always had been: a friend. And a friend she needed to stay, no matter that his body was trying to tell him otherwise.
Hope was bent over, her back to him, and even though he shouldn’t, he couldn’t stop his gaze from following the delicious curve of her rear, because he was a man, not a statue, and she was a fine-looking woman.
“You better not be checking me out, Silas Quinn,” Hope said without turning around. “Not if you don’t want this broom handle planted somewhere painful.”
Amusement flickered through him, and it had been so long since he’d felt it, he almost didn’t recognize the feeling.
He shifted against the doorframe. “What can I say? You’ve got a cute butt.”
She straightened and turned, giving him one enigmatic glance as she moved back toward the bar, grabbing a dustpan and brush that were sitting on the bar top. Without a word, she went back to the table she’d been sweeping under and crouched, sweeping up whatever was on the floor into the dustpan.
So, no small talk then? Fair enough. He didn’t do small talk himself, especially not when there was so much other important stuff to say.
He could feel the weight of that important stuff between them, hanging heavy in the early morning air. Hope was angry at him, he knew that, and eventually he was going to have to address it—or not. He could simply deal with the town stuff and not say a word about anything else.
But that was a coward’s way out, and he’d never been a coward.
Seriously? Wasn’t running away from here the first time taking the coward’s way out?
Si shoved that uncomfortable thought away and moved over to the bar. There was a coffee maker behind it, the glass carafe full of fresh coffee, and it made the bar smell like one of the fancy new coffee places in Juneau.
“There are mugs under the bar,” Hope said from behind him. “Though you might want to get a cup from April’s if it’s really strong you’re after.”
“Nothing to say I can’t have both.” He found himself a mug and poured a coffee. Then, after a moment, he found a second mug and poured some more coffee into that one too.
He preferred his coffee black, but Hope had always had a sweet tooth, and after a brief look around, he found cream in the bar fridge and some sugar beside the mugs. Doctoring her coffee the way she liked it—if she still liked it that way—he then put it on the bar top and shoved it in her direction. Then he leaned back against the counter behind him, holding his mug in his hands.
She was standing there holding her dustpan and brush, staring at him. “Just make yourself right at home.”
“Thanks. I did.”
An expression he couldn’t read flickered over her face and then it was gone. She let out a breath, shook her head for some reason, then came over to the bar, dumping the contents of the dustpan into a wastebasket under the bar before putting the implements away tidily.
“That for me?” She straightened up, looking at the steaming coffee mug.
“No. It’s for Steve out back.”
She snorted. “Find a sense of humor while you were away, did you? I’d get it replaced, because it looks like it’s broken.”
Si ignored that, watching as she picked up her mug and took a sip. And since she didn’t make a face, it appeared that some things hadn’t changed. Hope still liked three sugars and a lot of cream in her coffee.
“Why are you still here?” he asked, because if he was going to be in Deep River anyway, he might as well catch up on what she’d been doing. Except as soon as he’d said it, he could hear the demand in his voice. Not to mention the accusation.
Strange. He hadn’t thought he’d feel anything at all about her choice to stay, not after all these years. Though it was only now that he realized that he did, in fact, feel something. He was vaguely pissed, even. Cal had told him that she was running the Moose now, even though Si hadn’t asked him about her, and that she was happy.
But he knew what a happy Hope looked like, and it wasn’t this guarded woman sipping her coffee and looking at him over the rim of her mug with wary, dark eyes.
“What kind of a question is that?” she asked.
Si lifted one shoulder. “It’s not an accusation.” Liar. “I was just curious.”
“Why? Because I was always the one who wanted to leave?”
He didn’t answer that. He didn’t need to.
When he didn’t say anything, Hope shifted on her
feet in a way he recognized from years ago; she could never keep still when she was uncomfortable. “You know why I stayed, Silas.” There was a touch of impatience in her voice. “Do we really have to go into this now?”
Of course he knew why she’d stayed. Her grandfather’s death.
A thread of old shame wound through him, because her grandfather would never have died if Si’s own father hadn’t been drinking so heavily that night. And Joshua mightn’t have been drinking so heavily if Si had been around to keep an eye on him. But Si hadn’t been around. He’d been down at the river, drinking beer with Hope, because she’d asked him to. Because Caleb was away in Juneau with his father, and she wanted some company. And he’d never been able to say no to her.
“I’m not talking about that,” Si said, both to her and to the memories in his head. “I meant, what kept you here?”
He shouldn’t ask. He really shouldn’t. And he couldn’t think why he was.
Another flicker of impatience passed over Hope’s strong, angular features. “Why would I leave? When I have this paradise to manage?” She glanced around said “paradise,” shabby and worn in the early-morning light filtering through the windows. Then again, he didn’t know a bar that didn’t look shabby and worn in the morning.
“You could have sold,” he pointed out, not really knowing why he was pushing this. “No one forced you to keep it.”
“Yeah, and no one forced you to stay away.”
He let out a breath. That had been crappy of him, not to even visit, and she had a right to be angry with him. But it had been years. He’d have thought that after so long, she would have forgotten about him.
Seriously?
Si let the thought dissipate, silence falling, tension settling in the space between them.
“You want to talk about that?” he asked after a moment, feeling the need to address it at least, because having her angry with him wasn’t going to make this situation any easier.
She looked away, her cheeks pink, and he knew she hadn’t meant to snap at him. That she’d given something away and was annoyed about it.
A beam of early morning sunlight fell over her features, highlighting the curve of her cheek and the fine grain of her olive skin. She was looking at the floor, her lashes swept down, dark and silky, with auburn undertones.
His chest ached all of a sudden, the ghost of an old longing gripping tight. He’d felt it that night beside the river—the night his father had drowned—sitting on the rocks near the bank, listening to her talk. Her hair had been a blaze of auburn in the sunset, her dark eyes full of light, and he’d ached and ached and ached. Because that night, she’d told him that she liked Caleb West a hell of a lot, and what did he think about that? What should she do about it?
She hadn’t known how he’d felt about her, and he hadn’t told her. Couldn’t. He had a strong loyalty to Caleb and to the friendship between the three of them—it was the only thing he had that was wholly for him—and he didn’t want to do anything that would put that at risk. Especially not when Hope clearly didn’t feel the same way about him as he did about her.
So he’d stayed silent and let her chatter on about Cal, his chest aching, disappointment heavy and cold in his gut.
Are you sure the past is truly gone?
Sure it was. A ghost of a feeling was just that—a ghost. It didn’t affect him anymore. He had another life now. A life where he had everything he’d wanted for himself. A home. A challenging business. A couple of planes and the wide-open sky. Friends…
“No,” Hope said definitively, taking one last sip of her coffee before putting it down on the bar. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He should let it go, really he should.
“Seems like you do,” he said, apparently unable to help himself. “Seems like you have some very definite feelings about it.”
“Well, my feelings aren’t your business anymore.” She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, the movement pulling her red T-shirt tight across her chest, highlighting the soft curves of her breasts.
Which he shouldn’t be noticing. Just like he shouldn’t have been noticing her ass.
You sure those old feelings are just ghosts?
Oh, he was sure. This was only detached male appreciation now.
She gave him a distinctly cool look. “You want breakfast or what?”
He did want breakfast. But he also didn’t want to let the subject go, and he couldn’t figure out why because she was right—her feelings weren’t his business. Hell, she wasn’t his business, no matter the realization that had hit him the night before.
Maybe once he’d wanted her so desperately he thought it would kill him, but that was when he’d been eighteen, and he hadn’t been eighteen for a long time. And okay, he hadn’t been back to Deep River because of her. But she wasn’t the teenager she’d once been either, and it was clear she’d moved on. They both had. So what was the point stirring up the past?
Anyway, he wasn’t here to build bridges and mend fences. He was here to break the news to the town, then hand over responsibility for all of it to someone else, so he could go back to the life he’d made for himself.
So he put his mug down on the bar top. “Sure, breakfast would be good. You going to make it for me?”
She snorted. “You have two choices. You can go get some breakfast at April’s, or you can go to hell, because I’m not cooking for you.”
Definitely, she’d moved on. Or maybe she’d forgotten that she used to cook breakfasts for him and his dad on occasion, when Joshua was hungover and in one of his usual foul tempers. Not that it was the time to remind her.
“Been to hell,” he said shortly. “Didn’t like it. Looks like it’s April’s instead.”
Hope gave him a wary look, as if she didn’t know quite how to take that, but he didn’t elaborate. No point getting into the specifics of his military experiences.
“You coming?” he went on. “We still need to talk.”
She leaned against the bar and folded her arms, a crease between her brows. “Believe it or not, I have a job and things to—”
“This needs to be handled, Hope. And the quicker it is, the quicker I can go back to Juneau and get out of your hair.”
The crease between her brows deepened. “What?”
And that was another thing he needed to tell her. If she thought he was back for good, then she was wrong.
“I’ll tell you over breakfast,” he muttered as his stomach reminded him that it had been hours since he’d last eaten. “Come on. My treat.”
April’s was renowned in Deep River for the kind of coffee strong enough to strip an engine. It was also the only diner in town, and as usual, when Si and Hope pushed open the door, it was full, even at this hour of the morning.
Burly fishermen in parkas sat at the tiny Formica tables downing mugs of the infamous coffee and inhaling April’s big breakfasts before they went out in their trawlers for a day on the water. A damp fug lingered in the atmosphere, a combination of early-morning chill meeting the heat of the warm bodies and hot food, the smell of oilskins and coffee in the air, along with the clatter of silverware on plates and the buzz of conversation.
A wave of nostalgia washed over Si as the door closed behind them. He used to come here in the early mornings to get himself and his father coffee, because nothing else but a cup of April’s joe would wake Joshua up sometimes. And then there were the dates he’d had here on occasion. There wasn’t anywhere else to take a date in town but April’s, and she used to make a mean milkshake. The fries weren’t bad either.
As they approached the counter, a group of guys got up and several shouted greetings at Hope as they shouldered past, their gazes narrowing suspiciously on Si, giving him the stranger stare.
Typical but not unsurprising. What was surprising was his own reaction, which was
irritation, because he wasn’t exactly a stranger, was he? He stared back, the nostalgia fading as the men moved past him, leaving room for another realization to hit.
There was a time when he’d come into April’s and know every person sitting there. But he didn’t today. He didn’t know the fishermen glaring at him or the group by the door. Or the three guys sitting at the counter on barstools.
He didn’t know anyone except Hope. The whole diner was full of strangers.
It’s not your town anymore.
He shouldn’t have felt that so sharply, almost like pain, not when it hadn’t been his town for years. He’d left and hadn’t missed it and didn’t regret it, not once. So why he should feel a sharp, hollow sensation in his gut, he had no idea.
Dismissing the feeling, he and Hope took the vacated table by the window with its view over the boardwalk outside and, beyond that, the river. There was a line of trawlers already motoring in the direction of the bay, the morning sunlight glinting off the water.
It was going to be a beautiful day. The kind of day he’d once lived for as a kid because it meant joining Caleb and Hope in the bush near Caleb’s house, where they’d play for hours, building fortresses and defending each other from dragon attacks until it was dusk.
“Silas?”
Realizing he was staring out the window like an idiot, Si dragged his gaze from the scenery back to where Hope was sitting across the table from him.
“You okay?” she asked, frowning slightly.
Get it together, asshole.
Si shoved away the past and focused all his attention on the future sitting opposite him. “How quickly can we organize a town meeting?”
* * *
There had been a strange, faraway look on Silas’s face just before, but now his green-gold eyes had narrowed on her so intently she felt like an elk in the sights of a hunter.
Come Home to Deep River Page 4
