Born in the Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “It’s not quitting time for you yet, is it? You’ve still got your own work to do,” she said, her brows knitting together as she watched him.

  “I got it done.” So that he’d have this time with her. He’d come in early, rearranged the order of a couple of jobs to be more efficient. He’d figured that out on his own and was really proud of himself that it had worked.

  He might be an idiot now, but he could still plan things if he concentrated really hard.

  And left himself notes. He’d written at least ten of them since yesterday afternoon, reminding himself about today’s events.

  The doctor who’d told him about his neck injury, about the severing of receptors that used to allow him to process his thoughts in logical order, had suggested the notes.

  Shane continued to remove books and pile them in the box she was filling, glad that most of the jobs Bonnie did after the day care closed were easy. There wasn’t a lot of figuring out to do about moving shelves. Mostly what Bonnie needed when she was here alone was muscle, and that was something he had plenty of. And she didn’t.

  He had something of value to offer her.

  Feeling happy, Shane stepped up to the shelf a little faster, grabbing more books than he had the first time. And stumbled.

  Hot with embarrassment, he froze. Why didn’t I die on that ski slope?

  He just couldn’t get used to this big, unwieldy frame he carried around. He kept forgetting how long it took for his body to do the things he told it to.

  Remembering details was confusing.

  “I had the strangest urge to drive to Phoenix today,” Bonnie said, her back to him as she continued to collect books as if she didn’t care at all that he was a bumbling idiot.

  “Why? Did you need to buy something?” His voice faltered; he was upset now. They’d told him at the hospital that when he got this way, he just had to calm down and the feeling would leave.

  It was hard, sometimes, to be calm around Bonnie. Even though he felt better around her than anywhere else.

  “No, I wasn’t thinking about shopping,” she said. “Though I should make a trip to my favorite linen shop to replace the throw rugs that got ruined in the flood last Friday. I can’t believe it’s been a week already.”

  He nodded. He was sorry her rugs had been ruined.

  He’d cleared the top shelves of both cases. Bonnie had finished all the lower shelves. She was doing the videos now.

  And the job was going really fast. Shane would rather it went slowly.

  “There wasn’t anything in Phoenix I wanted,” Bonnie said. Shane frowned, confused for the minute it took him to remember that she’d been talking about wanting to drive to the city.

  “Then why go?”

  “That’s just it,” she said with a little laugh that didn’t sound amused. “I have no idea. I think because there’s a freeway to L.A. there.”

  Shane’s heart started to pound. “You’re going to L.A.?”

  “Noooo. No, I’m not.”

  His shelves were empty, but hers weren’t. So Shane started gathering videos, hating that his hands were shaking and worrying she’d notice.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Okay. Because he wanted her to be happy in Shelter Valley.

  “It’s just weird, you know?” she asked. They were both bending toward the same shelf and she turned her head and looked at him.

  Shane felt as if he’d just dived into a swimming pool. Shocked. Invigorated. And feeling like he wanted to get out and do it all over again.

  “I just keep thinking about the people there who need me. The jobs I want to do.”

  “In Chicago I was the boss and the work was good.” Kneeling, Shane frowned, concentrating so he could connect all the pieces of the thought he was trying to express. “But I had to go ski.”

  “You had what you wanted, but you still felt the need to escape.”

  Wiping the sweat off his upper lip, Shane neatly stacked a row of videos in a box in the same order they’d been on the shelf. “Yes,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think maybe you didn’t really love what you were doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kneeling beside him, Bonnie watched as he finished the last shelf. She was rubbing her hands up and down her legs.

  Without warning he was in high school again. She had on a short skirt and he wanted to touch her legs.

  “Little Spirits has been my dream since I was a little spirit,” she said.

  Confused, Shane looked at her. Her eyes were big and green and gave him that feeling in his gut he couldn’t do anything about. “I love these kids so much,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “The kids love you, too, Bonnie,” he said, his conviction so strong that the words came out faster than usual. He was always surprised when he heard himself sound like the man who’d once run a successful business.

  “I know,” Bonnie said, still kneeling there beside him. She was so beautiful Shane’s midsection started to hurt. “Is it selfish of me to want to do more with my life than be here with them?”

  He panicked when she waited for him to answer. His mind went blank.

  “I wish I didn’t feel this…this drive,” she said.

  If she cried, he was going to have to put his arms around her. And he was pretty sure that was something he couldn’t let himself do.

  “I’m scared I might lose everything that means the most to me.”

  And suddenly Shane knew what he could say. “I get scared, too, Bonnie.” The words were slow, but he had a complete awareness of the importance of this thought. “Since I came back to Shelter Valley,” he felt compelled to add. “Because, you see, I’m not the boss anymore.”

  “Of the business in Chicago?” Last she’d heard, he’d been in top management at a large financial firm.

  “No.” He shook his head and stood up to carry a couple of the boxes they’d filled across the room. “I’m not the boss of me.”

  Which reminded him of something. He just couldn’t remember what. He’d heard something that day, something he needed to tell Bonnie. He made a couple of trips with boxes and tried until he was sweating to remember what he’d heard.

  Back and forth across the room and he couldn’t focus. Too many thoughts vying for limited capacity. His mind went blank again. Blank and helpless.

  Just like Shane.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “HEY!” KEITH SAID, looking up from the table in surprise when Bonnie walked in half an hour later. “I didn’t expect you so soon.” He was eating store-bought pudding from a plastic cup—and supervising Katie while she had some of her own.

  “Packing the books went much faster than I expected,” Bonnie said, giving Katie a noisy kiss on the cheek, one that made the little girl laugh with a mouth full of butterscotch.

  Bonnie savored the sight, the sound.

  “As a matter of fact,” she continued, dropping her things on the counter and pulling out a chair to join her family while they finished the snack that would tide them over until dinner. She’d suggested it earlier when Keith came to the day care to get Katie.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said again, “we don’t need to go back tonight to move the reading center. Shane brought in his dolly and the whole thing’s done, shelves and all.”

  Cup tilted in one hand while he reached his spoon in with the other, Keith said, “He sure seems to be spending a lot of time at Little Spirits.”

  “I’m sure he spends equal time everywhere on the property.” She took the bite of pudding Katie offered, smacking her lips as she swallowed. “It’s not like he has a life to go home to,” she added. “He lives alone, except for the housekeeper who takes care of things for him. But I don’t even think she shares his meals. Just prepares them and leaves him there to eat by himself.”

  Katie started to sing a song from her current favorite video—the fifth in the Baby Shakespeare series. Bonn
ie smiled her encouragement, bobbing her head to the beat.

  “It’s good that he can live alone,” Keith said over the noise. He stood, tossing his pudding container in the trash and then throwing out Katie’s. “I just think you should be careful. With you spending all that time with him, he could get the wrong idea.”

  Bonnie jumped up to grab a cloth and wipe pudding off the little girl’s face and curls before setting her loose on her toys in the family room.

  “Don’t be silly, Keith. Shane can’t even remember half our conversations ten minutes later. I don’t think he’d remember an idea if he had one.”

  “His mind was injured, Bonnie, not his emotions or his desires.” Keith was at the sink with her, dropping spoons in the dishwasher as she rinsed the cloth she’d used on Katie.

  “Don’t worry, Keith,” Bonnie said, trying not to feel defensive. “I’d know if Shane was getting any ideas.”

  She couldn’t let Keith get in the way of her relationship with Shane. He was alone and he needed her.

  But neither did she want to fight with her husband. Raising her face, she invited his kiss, opening her mouth to deepen the caress.

  Sex wasn’t an answer.

  But it helped.

  NOT QUITE THE EVENING he had planned, but as Keith sat with Bonnie at Rustler’s Roost Saturday night, he was optimistic.

  Bonnie had been tired last night after moving the reading center. That was on top of a busy week at the day care, parent-teacher conferences and a visit with her accountant in preparation for filing taxes.

  And she’d been visiting some of Grandma’s friends, lightening Grandma’s load where she could.

  Even Bonnie’s need to jog the night before, right after Katie’s bath, had been easy to understand. She’d missed a couple of times earlier in the week due to the meetings with her accountant, and that regular exercise had become vital to his wife’s mental and emotional equilibrium.

  And he’d known they had tonight. Greg and Beth were keeping Katie—much to Ryan and Katie’s delight—and Keith had made plans to surprise his wife with a picnic in the desert, something they hadn’t done since before Katie was born.

  She’d surprised him, instead, with dinner at Rustler’s Roost in Phoenix, a meal made all the more delicious by the fact that dinner came with a room for the night at the resort where the famous restaurant was located.

  “More wine?” he asked, lifting the bottle over the glass she held.

  “Yes, please.” The black dress she was wearing, one he’d never seen before, added to the night’s fantasy. Demure with its high neck and long sleeves, the figure-hugging dress outlined in tantalizing detail a figure that couldn’t have been more perfect and when Bonnie stood, sported a slit all the way up her thigh.

  He felt grossly underdressed in his black Dockers and white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He poured the wine.

  It was her second glass, and they’d just finished their salad course.

  He hoped the cooks were particularly efficient that night, as he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to stand sharing his wife with a room full of people.

  “Cassie called,” Bonnie said.

  “Cassie Montford? When did she call?” Keith wasn’t sure he cared at the moment—in fact, he was sure he didn’t—but he applauded Bonnie’s attempt to turn down the steam long enough for them to get through dinner.

  “This afternoon while I was at Little Spirits. She’s finally ready to put Brian in day care.”

  “Getting a bit difficult to keep up with him at the clinic now that he’s walking, eh?” Keith asked.

  Taking a sip of her wine, Bonnie chuckled, infectious mirth in her eyes. “Apparently he decided that taking the temperature of one of the clinic cats was more interesting than the video Cassie thought he was watching.”

  “Ouch!” Keith’s guffaw of laughter earned him curious glances from several of the other patrons.

  “Yeah, well, as it turned out he’d only been missing for about sixty seconds before Cassie noticed, so he didn’t have time to do more than formulate the plan.”

  “Lucky cat.”

  Bonnie shrugged. “He’s fourteen months old. He should start interacting with other kids.”

  Keith grinned at the woman he’d adored since he’d first set eyes on her. Mother to all. Sex goddess to him. “And you’ve been dying to get him into your clutches,” he teased.

  “I…” Bonnie started to protest and then smiled. “You’re right. Bethany and Katie are in the same class, and it’s so great to see them growing up together. Tori’s little Phyllis and Randi and Zack’s son are both in the one-year-old class, which is where Brian belongs. I’d like him to be a part of things from the very beginning.”

  “I doubt he’ll remember, hon.”

  “It makes a difference, Keith, whether he has specific memories or not. You know that. Part of Shelter Valley’s magic is that those of us who grew up here have been part of each other’s lives since the day we were born. That’s how we’ve all become a family. We stick together through whatever crisis life might bring us.”

  He did know that. He’d been born and raised in Shelter Valley, too, just a few years ahead of Bonnie. But it was damn good to hear Bonnie standing up so adamantly for the town they both loved.

  “Like when Beth was in trouble last year…”

  “Yeah.” Bonnie’s voice grew soft. “I’ll love the people of Shelter Valley forever because of what they did for Greg, risking their own lives to save Beth’s, even knowing that she was wanted by the law.”

  The relief her words instilled was somehow more potent than the wine he was drinking.

  They came straight from the heart of the woman he’d fallen in love with.

  He hadn’t realized how afraid he’d become that Bonnie wasn’t happy in Shelter Valley.

  Two waiters arrived with their steaks, more bread and another bottle of wine. The meat was succulent, decadent, teasing senses that were already heightened beyond anything Keith had experienced in years.

  “Remember John Strickland?” Bonnie asked as she raised her fork and poked a chunk of meat between lips he couldn’t wait to kiss.

  Only because Martha had mentioned him. Keith’s program director had dated the architect for a while, shortly after her husband left.

  “Will Parsons’s friend, right?”

  “Yeah,” Bonnie nodded. “Cassie told me today that he and Lauren Randall are getting married.”

  “No kidding!” Keith was happy for the Montford women’s softball coach. He’d worked with Lauren a few times, filming games, and liked her a lot. He also wondered if Martha knew. And what the news had done to his friend, who continually found herself alone.

  “So you got the reading corner the way you want it?” Keith asked as the waiter cleared away their half-empty plates.

  Bonnie didn’t usually work on Saturdays but had gone in that day just to take in some rugs and rearrange the books Shane Bellows had put on shelves the night before.

  She nodded. “Everything’s ready to go.”

  “Was Shane there?” he couldn’t help asking. The guy bothered him.

  And he wasn’t the jealous sort.

  “No.” She sipped her wine. “And I’m telling you, Keith, you’re worrying over nothing. You don’t know Shane. He’s just struggling to cope with day-to-day living. There’s no way he’d be thinking about trying anything with me.”

  He didn’t want to argue with her. Especially not tonight.

  And maybe she was right. Bonnie was a good judge of people.

  And he was, admittedly, a little oversensitive where she was concerned.

  He tried to let months of tension slide from his shoulders as he walked with his lover through the beautiful grounds of the South Mountain resort to their condo-style room.

  “You want to take a dip in the Jacuzzi?” Bonnie asked as, with a not quite steady hand, he slid the card key into its slot and pulled it back out.

 
; He would if she really wanted to, but…

  “This time of night, there might be kids using it,” he ventured.

  “Uh-uh.” Bonnie shook her head. “I guarantee not.”

  They entered their unit. “You have your suit?” He made a last-ditch effort to keep her there. Could he hope that she’d forgotten to pack it?

  “Uh-uh,” she said again, turning her back as she slipped off her dress. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You don’t want to join me?”

  Keith’s throat was dry. He looked in the duffel she’d pulled from the trunk of the car when they’d arrived at the hotel just before their dinner reservation that evening. They’d barely had time to drop the bag in their room before heading out to Rustler’s Roost.

  “I don’t see my suit,” he said, trying not to sound too happy about that.

  “That’s because it’s not there.”

  Bonnie turned, wearing only a black thong and the new high heels she’d bought to go with the dress she’d worn to dinner.

  His eyes met hers and his fingers moved to the buttons on his shirt, slowly undoing them.

  He knew Bonnie couldn’t possibly expect them to traipse naked out to the hot tub in the enclosure they’d passed just a few steps from their room. Still, he was intrigued enough to play along.

  Her gaze still holding his, she slipped off the panties.

  Keith was only minimally disappointed that he didn’t get to do that himself. There was nothing demure about those green eyes now.

  “Come on,” she said. Still wearing her heels, she moved to the sliding glass door in the back of their room.

  Losing his pants on the way out, briefs and all, Keith followed her.

  And found himself standing beside a bubbling tub on the patio of their suite. The night air was cool, the dark sky filled with a million twinkling stars, and Bonnie was naked, stepping down into their own private hot tub.

  She’d gone to one hell of a lot of trouble.

  Dared he hope this was a new beginning for them?

  “Coming in?” she asked, her voice as sultry as the look in her eye.