The Promise of Paradise

by Allie Boniface

  The Promise of Paradise

  by

  Allie Boniface

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  The Promise of Paradise

  COPYRIGHT © 2013 by Allie Boniface

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author. Note: this book was previously released as Lost in Paradise with The Wild Rose Press (publication date 2007). Changes in scene and character accompany this re-released version.

  Cover Art by Renee Rocco

  Visit the author at www.allieboniface.com

  Contact the author at allieb@allieboniface.com

  Published in the United States of America

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  About the Author

  Dedication

  For all my writing friends, who've supported me through thick and thin in this unpredictable business of story-telling. Follow your dreams, believe that you can, and never stop re-inventing yourselves!

  Chapter One

  “Is this it?” Jen craned her neck and stared at the street sign.

  Ashton wiped one damp palm on her thigh and tried to will away the knots in her stomach. “I don’t know.” She pulled her Volkswagen to the curb and dug in her pocket for the email print-out with directions. “Next right after the town green.” She looked across the street. Don’s Convenience Store waved a limp awning in the afternoon heat. “Across from Don's. Yeah, this is it. It’s gotta be.”

  Already out of the car, Jen walked to the corner. Pulling her platinum blonde hair into a ponytail, she checked the crooked street sign and nodded at her best friend.

  Ash made the turn and parked. “First house on the right,” she read aloud. “Number two.”

  She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. Deciding not to take the job at Deacon and Mathers was one thing. Moving to an unknown town a hundred miles from her parents, fleeing the scandal that now appeared in every Boston newspaper, was something else altogether. The knots in her stomach multiplied and stretched fingers of steel that began to strangle her heart.

  “Ash?” Jen poked her through the open window. “You okay?”

  She raised her head and forced herself to take a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

  Jen pulled open the car door. “Come on. Let’s look at the place.”

  Shoving dark blonde curls from her forehead, Ash got out of the car and stopped. “What if I’ve made a mistake? Like the biggest possible mistake in the world?” She stared up at the house, a nondescript two-story with dusty windows. It didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen before. Well, that’s the point, right? I wanted something completely different. I wanted to start fresh, someplace where no one knew me.

  Willing her feet to step one in front of the other, she followed Jen to the front porch. “What if I’m really supposed to open my own law practice, go into politics, like Jess and Anne? Like Dad?” She sank onto the bottom porch step.

  Jen tried the door. “You’re not,” she said over her shoulder.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you spent the last two months of law school miserable and because you need a change.”

  “My parents are going to kill me.”

  Jen joined her on the step. “To tell you the truth, I think your parents have other things on their minds these days.”

  Like explaining to the press why my father was caught with drugs and a nineteen-year-old prostitute in his car? Two months before he was about to receive the Democratic vice-presidential nomination? Ash dug her toe into the pavement, tracing cracks and watching ants scurry. “I guess you’re right.” Suddenly, her decision to leave Boston and the center of the Kirk family scandal didn’t seem like the worst decision in the world. In fact, when she thought about it, it seemed downright practical.

  She eyed the car and wondered how long it would take her to unpack. Not that long. The apartment was supposed to be furnished, and she’d brought only a few clothes and books. Most of the memories she’d put into storage or burned.

  Jen worked her fingernail beneath some peeling paint on the porch railing. “You need this, Ash, a summer to yourself. You need to be…” She stopped for a moment, as if searching for the right word. “…away.”

  “Away from the media circus? Or away from Colin?”

  Jen didn’t answer, and for just a moment, Ash let herself ache with the memory of Colin Parker, her love all through law school. She’d planned to accompany him to Europe and then move in with him at the end of the summer. Hell, she’d planned on marrying him. But Colin had dumped Ash thirty-seven days earlier with a note tucked into her planner.

  I need some time and space to think… it began and ended with his scrawled signature minus Love or any other word that suggested he’d shared her bed and her heart for the last three years.

  One month before graduation, and three weeks after the debacle with her father, he’d dumped her. A tear snuck its way down her cheek, and Ash dropped her head to hide it. The breakup hadn’t been the worst of it. Colin hadn’t needed time. He’d lied about that part. He had needed space, though, space in which to date Callie Halliway, president of the Student Activities Council and Colin’s co-author on a half-dozen journal articles. Beautiful and well-pedigreed, Callie partnered him perfectly, both on his arm and his resume. Ash had been replaced just like that, one day there and the next day gone, as if she’d never even existed in Colin’s life.

  Jen elbowed her. “Take a look at this.”

  With effort, Ash raised her head. Emerging from the cornflower blue house across the street was a short, stocky woman. White hair sprang out from her head in every direction, and she wore bright yellow gardening gloves. Without slowing, she marched down her walk and across the street. Up their crooked pavement she came, until she stopped in front of them. Though barely five feet tall, she towered over Ash and Jen sitting on the step, and Ash felt suddenly as if she were back in second grade, with an angry Miss Howard staring at her across a cluttered room. A frown carved the woman’s wrinkled face into disapproving lines, and beady brown eyes examined them. Ash wasn’t sure whether to laugh or run and hide.

  The woman propped both hands on her hips and said nothing. Jen stood, and Ash followed. “Hi there. I’m Asht-Ashley Kirtland.” She corrected herself, changing her name at the last minute. With the Kirk name splashed across every paper in the Northeast, she didn't need anyone connecting her to it.

  The woman nodded. “Helen Parker.” She pointed across the street. “Lived there for thirty-two years, this spring. I tak
e care of this place and the one next door. You have any problems, come see me.” She paused and massaged one temple with a gnarled hand. “Up the block there, in the white house near the end, live the MacGregors. Hiram drinks too much, but his wife Sadie’s a doll, so no one says too much about it. He’s harmless, anyway.”

  Ash slid a glance toward Jen. No secrets here. That didn’t bode well.

  “Two houses down from that is Lanie Johnson’s. Used to be a Rockette, or some such thing, ‘til she busted her hip and ended up back here in Paradise. Had a man at one point, a while back, but he ran off two or three years ago.”

  Helen paused to draw a breath. White flecks of spittle marked the edges of her mouth. “The rest of these homes are rentals, mostly to college kids during the year.” She narrowed her eyes, and Ash read the woman’s message loud and clear.

  “I just graduated,” she explained, leaving off the bit about Harvard and law school. “I’m subletting for the next three months.”

  Helen’s mouth relaxed a fraction. “Well, the other places are empty now.” Her gaze moved from the girls to the door behind them. “You’re the only ones living here this summer, far as I know.”

  “Really?” Loneliness dropped a curtain over Ash’s hopes of finding new friends. Well, solitude was probably better if she hoped to figure out what direction her life was supposed to take now.

  Helen reached into her front pocket and pulled out a key ring. Dangling it from two fingers, as if it were a dirty tissue, she held it out. “Square one’s for the front door. Smaller one’s for your door upstairs. And the silver one opens your mailbox.” She glanced at the solitary car by the curb. “Where’s the other one?”

  Ash looked up from the keys, confused at the question. “I’m sorry?”

  Helen puffed out a long breath of air. “The other tenant.” She rubbed her forehead with one hand, as if trying to pull the name from memory. “Edward something. Your downstairs housemate.”

  “I have a housemate?” Ash looked at Jen, who grinned.

  Helen had already headed down the front walk, but at the question, she turned back. “Of course. I thought you’d be arriving together.” She eyed the porch for a moment, and Ash read the look in her watery blue eyes: You better behave.

  She stifled a laugh. “Thank you, Helen. Nice meeting you.”

  The woman turned without replying and shuffled across the street, where she vanished beyond the sunflowers cloaking her front door.

  “Cool. A housemate,” Jen said. “A male housemate.”

  “Just what I need,” Ash said as she tried the key in the door. “Come on. We’ve got stuff to unpack.”

  Chapter Two

  “I wonder what he looks like,” Jen said as they pulled sheets and pillowcases from a cardboard box.

  “He’s probably seventy-five years old, newly widowed, and blind in one eye.” Ash stood on the bed and stretched to hang a curtain over the back window.

  Jen collapsed onto paisley-patterned pillows. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Find the worst in everything. He could be young and single, you know. Why not?”

  Ash sat too. “Because if he’s really young and single, why would he be living here?”

  Jen turned to Ash, lips still but eyes sending the message.

  “Yeah, I know.” Ash shrugged. “But I’m a special case. A nut case. I’m sure most people in this town aren’t from screwed up families like I am.”

  “You never know.” Jen bounced off the bed and changed the subject. “Hey, let’s check out the porch roof. That’s the best part about this place. I saw it online, in the pictures. Come on.”

  Ash followed Jen into the kitchen and leaned against the refrigerator. “It’s probably unsafe.”

  Her friend tugged at the oversized window beside the sink. “It’s not unsafe. If it was, they couldn’t rent the house.” The window pulled free, and in another minute she had climbed through onto the second-floor rooftop that stretched across the front of the house.

  “Be careful.” Ash edged closer and peeked outside.

  “Oh, please. Stop being such a worrier. It’s safe.” Jen walked the perimeter of the roof and peered over to the street below. “This railing is brand new. Look.” She turned at Ash’s silence. “Get your ass out here right now and look at this view.”

  Ash propped her elbows on the sill and shook her head. “I’m afraid of heights.”

  “Not anymore you’re not. Not with this roof.” Jen slid to a seat and crossed her legs. “You could have one heck of a party out here.”

  Ash stayed where she was. She wasn’t really afraid of heights. She was more afraid of not knowing what lay out there, of the too-wide sky that stung her eyes with its brightness and threatened to swallow her up. Right this moment, she didn’t feel like taking new steps anywhere, not even ten feet outside her kitchen window.

  Jen began to drum her heels against the roof. Sighing, Ash pulled herself up and over the window sill. One deep breath. Then another. Okay. Not so bad after all. With careful steps, she walked from one end of the roof to the other. Beyond the back lawn of her rental house, the center of Paradise, New Hampshire, rose to greet her, a picturesque town with an old-fashioned Main Street and two stone churches squatting on the town green. To her left, Lycian Street meandered below. In the distance she could make out the tops of red brick buildings over at the town’s junior college. She took a deep breath and peeked over to the sidewalk.

  “Wow.” From here she could see all the way to the street’s end in both directions. Maybe this hadn’t been the wrong decision after all. Standing close enough to reach the leaves that swayed above her, Ash felt peaceful for the first time in months. She closed her eyes and drew it all in, the quiet street, the sleepy town. Somehow, it felt right. It felt like a good place to spend a summer. It felt like a good place to escape the mudslinging, a good place to figure out how to tell her parents she wanted a different life than the one they’d sketched out for her from birth.

  Most of all, it seemed like a good place to forget her heartache, to try and flee the ghosts of Colin and Callie that reappeared every time she turned a corner.

  Ash slid to a seat beside her friend. “Okay, maybe you’re right. Might not be a bad place for a party.” If I’m ever in the partying mood again.

  “Told you.” Jen glanced at her watch. “What else do you need me to do? I’m going down to visit the family this weekend. Gotta help my little brother mend a broken heart.”

  “Lucas? What happened? ”

  “Dumped his fiancée. He found her in bed with someone else.” Jen’s face went dark.

  “Aw, poor guy. That stinks.” She'd always had a soft spot for Jen's little brother – not that little was the right word, since the guy towered over both of them. “When?”

  “Last month.” Jen pulled her hair onto the top of her head before letting it fall again. “It's okay. He's better off without her.”

  Ash rested one cheek in her hand. Looked as though it had been a rough spring for break-ups. Maybe Lucas needed to find a Paradise of his own to escape to for a little while.

  “Anyway, I think the last train back to the city leaves in an hour or so,” Jen went on. “So you need anything? Want to make a run to the grocery store before I go?”

  “Nah. I’ll find one tomorrow.”

  “You sure? I can just hang out for a while if you want.”

  The thought tempted her. Despite her need to be alone and sort through the snarl of feelings around her heart, despite the funny, run-down house that was already starting to seem like home, part of her wanted Jen to stay. Ash opened her mouth to answer, but a roar from below drowned out her words.

  “What the hell is that?” Jen turned to peer through the slats in the railing. A second later, she pulled herself to her feet and leaned over as far as she could. A grin spread itself across her face. “Whoa. Take a look at this.”

  “What?”

  But Jen didn�
�t answer and instead just stared.

  Curious, Ash joined Jen at the railing and looked down. Near the curb, engine still running and rock music bellowing from the speakers, idled a red pickup truck. White and yellow flames danced along both sides. Bending over the tailgate was a broad, bare, definitely male back. Yow. No wonder Jen looked like she was about to start drooling. Even one floor up, Ash could trace the outline of nearly every muscle in his arms and back. A bright red and yellow king cobra tattoo curled around his left triceps. Wavy brown hair fell across the sides of his face. His jeans, faded in all the right places, sat low on his hips. Ash squinted harder and ran a hand over her hair.

  Oh God. They still make men who look like that?

  “Turn around, please,” Jen commanded under her breath. As if he’d heard her, he straightened, biceps flexing as he hauled two large boxes from the back of the truck and turned into the sidewalk. Her sidewalk. He looked up, and Ash’s heart dove into her stomach. A neatly trimmed goatee underscored a crooked nose. He flashed a smile and winked.

  “Hey,” he called. “You live here?”

  Jen nodded and jabbed a thumb in Ash’s direction. “She does.”

  “I’m Eddie West. Movin’ in today.” It was hard to hear him over the noise of the truck’s humming engine and the music. Ash watched his mouth move instead.

  “Need any help?” Jen asked.

  Eddie shook his head. “Nah. I’ve just got a couple of boxes to bring in. The rest is coming tomorrow. But thanks.” He continued up the sidewalk.

  Jen cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled down. “Come up later if you want.”

  Ash elbowed her. “What are you doing?”

  Eddie backpedaled and nodded, grinning wider. As he disappeared from their view, the heavy front door creaked open and, after a few seconds, thudded shut behind him.

  Jen straightened. “See? I told you he’d be good-looking.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s beyond good-looking, Ash.” She fell back against the railing, hands to heart in a dramatic pantomime. “He’s perfect.”