by Anne Calhoun
“Well, hey,” Zach said, and held out his hand. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks,” he said over the chorus of glad you made it back safely and good to see you again. He’d grown up with these guys but hadn’t seen them much since boot camp. This crowd didn’t mix much with the Herndon/Walker crowd, where he’d ended up spending his time at home.
“You in town for a while?” Billy asked. He stood closer to Marissa, a little protective, a little possessive, but she neither acknowledged him nor moved away. A slight quirk in one eyebrow transmitted good question loud and clear. He tried to get a read on her mood. She didn’t seem upset or hurt or angry. If anything, she looked almost amused.
Almost.
“Until the wedding,” Adam said.
“You looking for a job?” Zach asked.
“I’m starting grad school in Brookings in January,” he said.
One of the kids he didn’t recognize eyed him. “You went to college and were in the Marines?”
“Yes,” he said. It wasn’t easy, but it was doable. San Diego State faculty went out of their way to help active duty, reservists, and veterans get their degrees.
There the conversation halted until Billy turned to Marissa. “Guess you finally have to finish the place.”
“Guess so,” she said noncommittally.
“Come on, Billy,” Zach said. “Grandma’s roof won’t shingle itself.”
The group slowly broke up in twos and threes, leaving Marissa leaning against the truck’s tailgate and Adam braced up in the parking lot, arms folded across his chest. She looked at him again. “What?”
“You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Because despite the tough-girl boots, truck, and attitude, she was eight inches shorter than him, and a good seventy pounds of bone and muscle lighter. Because he’d been anything but gentle, or a gentleman. But the unreadable little smile never left her face. She sipped from the travel mug and looked him over. “It’s forty degrees out, and raining. Aren’t you cold?”
He hadn’t noticed. The Corps taught him to respect the elements, no more. No grunt allowed the weather to impact him. “I’m fine.”
“So we’re both fine,” she said. Her gaze flicked past his shoulder to the diner’s door. He recognized Lucas Ridgeway, the Chief of Police, and Alana. She smiled and waved at Marissa, then she and Lucas crossed the street together.
Lucas held out his hand to Adam. “Welcome home,” he said.
“Thanks.” Originally from Denver, Lucas had spent summers in Walkers Ford with his grandparents. He’d left the Denver PD to take the job as chief of police in Walkers Ford a couple of years ago. The next time Ris told Adam he didn’t belong in Walkers Ford anymore, he’d point to Lucas as an example of someone else who’d downshifted and come home.
“Marissa, I’m so glad I caught you,” Alana said. “The interlibrary loan books are on their way. I should have them by the middle of the week.”
“I may just have you send them back,” Marissa said. “I won’t have time to read them.”
Alana’s gaze sharpened. Adam felt his spine straighten under the woman’s alert gaze, telegraphing something he didn’t understand. Marissa caught the nuances, though, because she continued before Alana could speak.
“Do you know Adam Collins? Alana’s the contract librarian the council hired while they decide what to do with the library.”
“I didn’t get a chance to say hello yesterday, Mr. Collins,” Alana said, holding out her hand. “Welcome home, and thank you.”
With wide-open spaces diluting Marissa’s impact on his senses, he could see the new librarian for what she was: young, her blond hair caught up in a blue scarf wrapped around her neck, with blue eyes and a good grip. She looked more sophisticated than the librarians he remembered from school, and she clearly hadn’t missed their sudden absence from the group last night. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
“Please stop by the library,” she said, hoisting her bag a little higher on her shoulder. “Are you connected with the Veterans Affairs department to help with a job search or your educational benefits?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m all set to start at SDSU in January.”
Her eyes lit up. “And your program of study?”
Definitely not from around here. No one in Walkers Ford said things like program of study.
“Architecture,” he said.
“Oh, congratulations,” she said, then turned to Marissa. “Are you working today?”
“On Brookhaven,” she said. “Not much time left.”
“You could save those books for when the house is done,” Alana said.
“I won’t need them when the house is done.”
Alana’s brow furrowed slightly. “We should go,” Lucas said.
“I’m renting a house from him,” Alana explained to Adam. “Plumbing problems.”
“Call me,” Lucas said to Adam. “We should get a beer and catch up.”
The offer sounded good. Adam nodded. “Where’s she from?” he asked as they left.
“Chicago,” Marissa said, and opened the truck’s door.
He flattened his palm against the window and closed the door again. Her mouth was natural pink today, and she looked eighteen again, right down to the daring glare. “About the paneling,” he said.
“What about it?” she asked as she tugged an escapist strand of hair free from her mouth.
“You need to replace it because I destroyed the original. That’s on me. I’ll help fix it, replace it, whatever.”
“Brookhaven is my responsibility, not yours.” She looked away, the fingers gripping her silver travel mug of coffee white in the cool air. “No one mentioned our little interlude in the pantry. I figured the point of that was for word to get back to Delaney, which won’t happen if you don’t talk about it.”
“That had nothing to do with Delaney,” he said.
Her bottomless brown eyes glanced past him again. “Your mom’s looking for you.”
He looked over his shoulders to find his mother standing under the roof overhang, and just like that, Marissa was in the cab. The door slammed, then the engine turned over with a gruff roar. No girly Ford Ranger for Walkers Ford’s tough girl. She was driving a two-ton diesel dualie, and the truck’s momentum displaced the air millimeters from his ear as she cruised out of the lot. Hands on his hips, he watched her drive away, like the conversation was over.
It wasn’t.
5
NIGHT HAD FALLEN by the time Marissa gunned her truck up the semicircular driveway and into her customary parking spot under the oak tree sheltering Brookhaven’s north side. Prickles of pain bloomed in her back when she jogged through the rain that lashed the back meadow to the servants’ quarters’ tiny entryway. She’d driven through the mist and rain to the house with the paneling, then sat at the end of the driveway for another two hours, trying to force herself to get out of the truck. She couldn’t do it.
Oncoming darkness drove her to turn around and return to Brookhaven, letting the whap of the windshield wipers and the patter of rain on the truck’s roof dissolve all thought from her brain. The end was in sight, a century of Brooks dreams fulfilled. Even with time allowed for courtesies, the transaction should have taken just a couple of hours, but she couldn’t get out of the truck.
Inside her tiny apartment, cold settled into her bones, and another shiver rippled through her. The prohibitive cost of heating the main house wasn’t the only reason she stayed in the tiny servants’ quarters; the first summer she began renovations she’d slept in the great room, drawn to the spectacular view of rolling prairie and Dakota sunsets, but as the work progressed, the big space created odd resonances of her emotions, distorting what felt true and real outside the house, giving it back to her with sharp edges and eerie echoes. Lately her ears rang even in the snug, shiplike apartment.
The galley kitchen held a dorm-sized refrigerator, a two-burner stove, and a half-sized o
ven. She’d bought the appliances from sailing outfitters catering to boatbuilders and renovators who felt that smaller, not bigger, was better. She heated a can of soup on the stove, ate while sorting her mail into bills and non-bills, then went into the bathroom and ran hot water into the tub. Steam rose into the cool air while she flicked on the light, turned her back to the full-length mirror on the back of the door, and pulled three layers of shirts free from her pants. Her plain white bra strap bisected her back just under her shoulder blades, and what she saw reflected in the mirror made her blow out her breath in disgust.
The hard rap on her door came unexpectedly. She let her shirts fall back around her waist as she walked into the kitchen, pulled back the curtain, and saw heavy shoulders that could only belong to Adam. Clouds scudded across the sky behind him, and a steady breeze bent the leafless branches of the trees lining the creek at the bottom of the meadow. Anger flared, sweeping through her, making her movements jerky as she flipped on the porch light and opened the door.
He stood on the painted wood porch, wearing a three-button henley shirt loose over a pair of jeans and motorcycle boots; his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans were the only hint he found it cold. Round dark spots dotted his shoulders, and drops gleamed on his bristling jarhead haircut. As she watched, he wiped his hand over his skull and flung the collected water to the side. The open collar of his shirt exposed his throat and nape, the tanned smooth skin oddly vulnerable compared to the braced stance.
“I’m not in the mood to be your unannounced booty call,” she said. She’d never quite settled on a reason for having sex with him twenty minutes after he walked into Brookhaven, but his reason came to her in the middle of a sleepless night. There was no love lost between Walkers and Brooks, and while Delaney would never stoop so low as to feud with Marissa, Adam would know that sleeping with Marissa could hurt Delaney.
God knew his sleeping with Delaney hurt Marissa.
It was the only reason she could come up with for him to finally say yes, after he’d refused time and again that summer twelve years ago. If that was his reason, once was enough.
Except he said it had nothing to do with Delaney.
His expression didn’t change. “What’s with the tweezers?”
“I have a splinter,” she said, because she didn’t want him in her living space, her bedroom, seeing things he shouldn’t see. “No big deal. Go home.”
He stuck his foot between the closing door and the jamb. She banged the door against the thick lug sole.
“Goddammit, Ris,” he said, turning his shoulder into the closing door. Her stocking feet skidded on the wood floor, so without warning she stepped back. Resistance gone, he lurched into the kitchen, sending the door sharply against the kitchen wall. Her father’s favorite old photographs of Brookhaven in vintage frames jumped on the nails. She flashed back to that summer, to the water fight along the creek, the way she’d attack him just to feel his body against hers, feel him restrain her and kiss her until she was helpless and pleading with sound and body.
Based on the look on his face, he was remembering the same thing. It was the first flash of real emotion she’d seen on his face in twelve years.
“Just like old times,” she said. He was wet, she was wet, and the sudden sexual charge in the air heated the room to summer temperatures.
He closed the door. “Let me help.”
She folded her arms and glared at him. “I don’t need your help.”
In response he held out a hand and glanced at the tweezers.
“It’s a splinter, not a compound fracture.”
He made a small beckoning motion, sheer size and presence giving the gesture a hint of imperiousness that sparked heat low in her belly.
“I’m fine.”
It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “It’ll get infected if you don’t get it out.”
“I’ve been removing my own splinters since Chris died,” she snapped. Adam’s abrupt departure for boot camp hadn’t ended her longing for guys going nowhere at a hundred miles an hour. She’d met, fallen for, and married Chris Larson within six months of graduating from high school, a bad decision that only got worse when married life didn’t end his drinking and driving. He’d died shortly after her twenty-second birthday. The tragedy didn’t end her taste for adrenaline junkies, but she had stopped falling in love with them. Improvement, of a sort.
The reminder of her husband made him blink, and some of the edge softened from his jaw. “But tonight you don’t have to remove your own splinter,” he said more softly, making the give-it-up gesture again.
“You promise you’ll leave after?” she asked.
“If that’s what you want,” he said.
She slapped the tweezers into his palm, turned, and strode through the darkened bedroom into the bathroom to turn off the water. The huge, old-fashioned white tub dominated the room. A book holder crafted out of scrap oak, stained the same gleaming shade as the floors and sealed with two coats of clear, leaned in the corner by the shelving unit holding towels and toiletries. She shoved her current choice in reading material behind the towels, then glanced around the room for anything else that might give him ideas.
The room’s details distracted him from his courtly quest to fix her ailment. “Mom said you did her bathroom earlier this year. You’re really good,” he said, eyeing the pale gray subway tiles covering the lower portion of the walls. The upper sections were painted in shifting shades of blue, white, and gray. Two dark gray towels hung from heated towel racks.
Pride wouldn’t allow her to make light of her accomplishments. “She was fun to work with. She’s got a great eye for color and lines.”
When he leaned toward the door to get a better look at the bedroom, she turned away from him and pulled up the hems of her long-underwear shirt, turtleneck, and sweatshirt, shrugging them over her shoulders to expose her back.
Mission accomplished. He stared at her bared back, gaze flicking from one reddened spot to the next between her bunched shirts and the waistband of her flannel-lined jeans. While the flush on his face outside might have been due to the cold, this time it was all embarrassment, and that gave her pause.
“I fucked splinters into your back,” he said.
“Pretty much,” she said. “Most of the woodwork in the house is smooth as silk, but I didn’t anticipate repeated, forceful, bare-skin contact with the pantry shelves.”
Expecting ice cold fingers like her own, she sucked in air when he lifted his hand to her back, but his palm was blessedly warm between her shoulder blades. His touch bent her forward a little more. The contact of rough palm to her back tipped her ass toward him, and the look in his eyes went heated, dark, dangerous. Oh yes. She looked down at the faucet and broke the connection.
He touched a finger to a spot just below her left shoulder blade, gently pushing the skin up a little. “Here?”
In her mind’s eye she saw the tiny, enflamed circle. “Yes.”
A moment of concentration, then a slight tug under her skin’s surface. The tiny sliver of wood dropped into the sink in front of her, and a long moment passed before another gentle stroke, higher up and just to the left of her spine. “Here.”
This time she just nodded. The air in the room was quiet, close, his breathing even and regular while hers sounded shallow and erratic. It was as hot as sex, but in a different way. It was . . . intimate. Sex didn’t have to be intimate. It could be emotionless, almost animal. Like it was last night.
This time he gently pinched to force out enough wood to grasp with the tweezers before dropping the splinter in the sink. “I hurt you,” he said.
“It’s not the first time,” she replied.
His gaze flicked up to meet hers in the mirror. After a pause she pulled her shirt over her head and held it to her breasts with one hand while with the other reaching around to indicate a spot on her upper shoulder blade, maddeningly just beyond the reach of the tweezers. He cupped her shoulder and turned
her back into the light to remove the last splinter. Without asking, he reached past her and opened the medicine cabinet, found a tube of antibacterial ointment, and dabbed a bit on the tip of his index finger. When he laid the side of his pinky at the nape of her neck to steady his hand, goose bumps rose along her shoulders.
His finger dabbed the ointment on a splinter spot. “You’re pretty quick with a door, tough girl,” he said.
“It’s easier to keep someone out than get them out once they’re in,” she said.
His glaze flicked up to hers in the mirror, but she didn’t add anything. Chris was an unpredictable drunk, with good nights and bad nights, but if he wasn’t discussing Delaney, she wasn’t dragging her marriage into the ring.
“You’re a menace with that truck, too.”
“I knew exactly where the mirror was in relation to your head,” she said, stung by the slight to her driving ability.
“I don’t doubt it.” He didn’t add anything, and this time when she looked up at the mirror he kept his gaze focused on her back. Heat radiated from his body to her bare back, one hand rested loosely on her shoulder as he dabbed a little more ointment on the last splinter site.
“There were no girls between Delaney and you,” he replied without meeting her eyes.
The low-voiced words, so calm and remote and utterly unexpected, stopped her heart in her chest. She watched him trace the length of her spine to avoid looking at her. A drop of steam condensed into water and traveled down the mirror while she processed that detail. “Just me?”
He made a noncommittal noise, but hazel eyes darkened to green around the pupil as the seconds passed, and chemistry, coupled with the touch of his index finger along the edge of her hair where it swept across her nape and over her opposite shoulder, raised goose bumps and pebbled her nipples. He shook his head, and a delicate little quiver rippled low in her belly. To even the ground between them she turned around, dislodging his hands from her body.
