“It’s okay.” A warm shoulder pressed into Summer’s leg.
Joyce set the clipboard aside. For a minute she said nothing. Then, tucking her hair behind her ears, she smiled—too brightly, Summer thought—and approached them. “I’m not really supposed to let her leave with anyone except her brother or her mother.”
Summer slid an arm around Dinah. “I understand. But it’s sort of an emergency—Damian’s car wouldn’t start, and he—”
“Yes, I heard you.” Joyce nodded and frowned. “Still…”
Oh, come on, Summer wanted to say. This is Pine Point. You know me, for God’s sake. Everyone knows everyone.
“I guess it’s all right.” Joyce kneeled and smiled up at Dinah. “Just this once, okay? But make sure and tell your brother that he should call me if he has to change his plans, all right?”
Dinah nodded.
“As a matter of fact, why don’t you have him call me anyway?”
Summer lifted one eyebrow. Joyce Hadley fishing for a guy? Some things in Pine Point really did stay exactly the same.
Dinah tugged on her hand. “Okay. Bye, Coach Joyce.”
“Did you have fun today?” Summer helped Dinah fasten her seatbelt.
“I guess. Mallory Hawkins hogs the ball so I don’t get to score very much. She and Taylor Boone think they’re the best players on the team. They’re not very nice sometimes.”
“Hmm.” Summer had known a few Mallorys and Taylors in her time. Back then, though, the snippy attitudes and cruel slights had taken place in the hallways and classrooms of Pine Point High rather than on the soccer fields. Different year, different place, same story.
She found a jazz station and adjusted the volume.
“I like this,” Dinah said after a minute.
“The music, hon?”
Dinah traced the stitching on her seat. “Yes. And you picking me up from practice.” Her dimples popped as she turned to face Summer. “I’m glad you moved here. I’m glad you own that house.” The wind caught her hair and blew it into her eyes, and she laughed.
Summer said nothing as they eased to a stop back at the house. I’m glad too. The words flashed into her mind. But was she really? Or had everything become much more complicated since she’d stepped off the plane just days ago? Questions with no answers. Beginnings and middles and ends of relationships, all looped together and choking the sense out of her. She wasn’t sure that coming back to Pine Point, even to collect her father’s ashes and sell a rundown, mammoth house, had been a good idea at all.
“Summer?” A cool washcloth on her forehead. The sterile smell of antiseptic. An ache along the entire left side of her body. She moaned.
“Don’t move.” The voice soothed her, rocked her back toward deep slumber, and she welcomed it. But on the edge of sleep, right before she fell, she heard words she didn’t understand.
“…can’t give a statement to the police. She doesn’t even know where she is… Yes, it’s possible. Injuries look like she might have been. But until she regains consciousness, we won’t know. The boy’s confessed, hasn’t he?”
Summer gave herself up to the waves of unconsciousness that pulled her in. It didn’t matter, anyway.
Again. Always when she least expected it. Summer dropped her forehead to the steering wheel and squeezed her eyes shut. By now she was used to the flashbacks, though they still made no sense. She had to see Gabe again. She had to fit everything together inside her head before she went officially insane and they committed her to Silver Valley Hospital’s mental ward.
Talk to him. That will clear things up. Make things easier. With a heavy heart, Summer climbed from the car. She could tell herself that all she wanted, but she had a sinking feeling that talking to Gabe wasn’t going to make things easier.
Instead, she suspected it would only make things much more complicated.
Chapter Fourteen
Summer hung up with Gabe and tore a round loaf of rye bread into pieces.
“Coffee? Sure,” he’d said. “How’s tomorrow afternoon sound?”
So tomorrow it would be—her day of reckoning, of finding out once and for all what had happened to them that night so long ago. She took a long breath and tried not to think about how that would change things. How it would change everything.
She eyed the array of breads and vegetables spread across the counter, pulled a new serrated knife from its wrapping and began to slice off the top of another loaf. Damian, Mac and the extra hires had finished the kitchen—cabinets, appliances and all—the day before, and she was throwing a dinner party for Rachael and Cat to celebrate.
Hammering sounds came from somewhere above her, and she smiled and sliced a brick of sharp cheddar. Maybe the guys would want to stay for dinner. Her cheeks warmed. Maybe Damian would want to stay longer than dinner, even.
She placed the bread bowl and two plates of cheese in the fridge to chill, then unwrapped a container of fresh strawberries. She was about to set a pan on the stove to melt chocolate when her cell phone rang.
“Listen, Summer,” Rachael chattered before she could say hello, “I totally forgot I promised Mom and Dad we’d do the family thing tonight. Cat got roped into it too. Can we come over for dinner tomorrow? I’ll bake a cake, bring some balloons, make it a real celebration.”
“Oh. Um, okay.” Summer stared at the food and tried to hide her disappointment. “Have fun. Tell your parents I said hi.”
“I’m really sorry.” Rachael feigned disappointment, but Summer knew what family dinners were like at the Hunter home. Stories shouted one over the other, food passed around the table, followed by card games and Monopoly and backgammon. Mr. Hunter took his backgammon very seriously; she’d lost her fair share of quarters to him back in middle school. What she wouldn’t give to join in some of their raucous entertainment, even for a night.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“’Kay.” Summer slipped her cell phone into her pocket and reached across the counter, preoccupied. She wondered if the bread dip would keep. She wondered if she should open the big bottle of Merlot and celebrate anyway. Distracted, she closed her hand on the knife blade by mistake. “Ow! Dammit.” Ruby drops seeped from between her fingers, and she reached for a paper towel and tried to stem the flow.
Too late. Memories came wheeling in before she could stop them.
“Summer?” Gabe lifted her chin. “Don’t look down. Don’t look anywhere but right here.” He forced her to meet his gaze.
Her ankle hurt. Her face hurt, and every time she touched her forehead, her hand came away red.
She looked back at the car, but the windows were red too. And broken. She realized after a moment that the dark puddle at her feet wasn’t water or engine oil. It was blood.
Summer fought for breath. It’s okay, she tried to tell herself as the walls spun. You are standing in a kitchen, not looking at your brother’s broken body or a flashing red stoplight. Didn’t matter. The visions locked up her brain and she couldn’t escape. Blood dripped from her palm, and her face flushed. A moment before she lost consciousness, she stumbled against the counter and tipped over the bowl of strawberries. Red drops fell to the floor all around her.
“Summer?” The voice came from far away. “Hey. Can you hear me?”
She struggled to sit up. Strong arms held her but she pushed them away. She blinked and tried to breathe. An instant later, Damian’s face sharpened into view. Her tongue caught in her mouth, and she struggled to find words. “Wh-what happened?”
He brushed the hair from her eyes. “You tell me. I was working in the other room and heard you hit the ground.”
She’d fainted? “How long was I out?”
“Couple minutes, maybe. Not long.” He leaned close and she wondered if he meant to kiss her again.
She touched the back of her head. “Ouch.” Suddenly, s
he noticed the strong smell that surrounded them. She pulled her hand away and examined the red color staining her fingers. Not blood. Thank God. “Just strawberries.”
Damian glanced around. “Yeah, I guess you dumped them. No big deal. I can pick up more at the farm stand if you want.”
To her surprise, Summer burst into tears.
“Hey.” He pulled her to his chest and she let herself fall into the comfort of it. “It’s okay.” He murmured the words into her hair. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay. She wasn’t sure it ever would be. The sobs came from deep inside her chest and made her throat hurt. “I’m sorry. I just—”
“Don’t be.” He laced his fingers through hers. “You’ve got a hell of a lot going on these days. You’re entitled to a minor breakdown.”
She nodded into his chest. He smelled good, like sawdust and soap. After a few minutes, her sobs subsided. She loosened her grip on his shirt and ran one hand through her hair. “God, I’m sorry.” She wondered if she would ever feel normal in this place. She doubted it.
He glanced around and began to collect stray strawberries, tossing them one by one into the nearby garbage can. “Were you making something?”
“Trying to. Rachael and Cat are coming over for dinner.” Then she remembered Rachael’s call. “They were supposed to, anyway. She just canceled.” She reached for a towel and scrubbed away the red spots that seemed to cover the new floor.
“Hey.” Damian held out a hand and lifted her to her feet. “Leave it. I’ll bring in some cleaner tomorrow.”
“Oh. Okay.” Summer abandoned the towel, now stained pink, and leaned against the counter. She still felt unsteady. Maybe this had been the wrong idea, moving into the house. Staying here at all. Every step seemed wrong.
Damian scratched his face and left a streak of dust from temple to jaw. When he grabbed the edge of his T-shirt to wipe his brow, Summer glimpsed rock-hard abs, slick with sweat. Just like that, her mind wheeled again, and doubt vanished, replaced by desire.
She took a deep breath. “Hey…would you like to stay for dinner, instead? I mean, I already have all this food and everything…”
“Ah, so I’m your second choice?” He propped an elbow against the new stainless steel refrigerator and grinned.
If you knew what my choice really was, I wouldn’t be standing here talking about dinner, and you wouldn’t have any clothes on. “Ah, no. Definitely not. I just figured you already had plans.” She ignored the headache that was beginning to squeeze her temples.
“Nope. And I’d love to.” He glanced down at himself. “I gotta run home and take a shower, though.”
“Sure.” She busied herself with wrapping a fresh paper towel around her hand. The image of Damian standing naked under a stream of water was threatening to shred away her last bit of self-control. “No rush.”
“You sure you’re all right? You hit the ground pretty hard. Don’t want to have someone look at that bump on your head?”
Only you, she almost said. You can look all you want. At whatever you want. She bit her lip to keep from uttering the words out loud. Maybe she’d suffered some head trauma after all.
“No, it’s fine. Thanks for rescuing, me, though.”
“Anytime.” He loped into the foyer and disappeared from view.
Anytime? Hope you mean that. Actually, she could probably use a shower of her own. A good cold one to shock the indiscreet thoughts from her mind once and for all.
* * * * *
“Hey there.” A hour later Damian pulled open the back screen door.
“Hey yourself.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Okay.” Two Tylenol and a glass of wine had chased away her headache. The embarrassment of fainting in the kitchen might last a little longer, but he’d come back for dinner. That meant he didn’t think she was a complete idiot, right?
Damian stopped on the threshold, inches away, and her gaze traveled downward before she could stop it. Faded jeans hugged muscular thighs. The brilliant white of a fresh polo shirt contrasted with his tanned arms. Faint scents of soap and deodorant mingled above the hint of sawdust and paint she’d come to associate with the house. With him.
“Looks great out here.”
“Thanks.” Summer had dragged the folding table from the kitchen onto the porch and tossed on a new checked cloth. No chairs, but she’d guessed they could sit on the steps. Better view of the yard and the setting sun, anyway. “Help yourself.” Settling herself on the top step, she nibbled and sipped and waited to see where he would sit. How close.
“Heard my mom spent a lot of your money the other day.” Damian sank onto the step beside her, his own plate piled high. Their legs brushed, and he didn’t move away. Neither did she.
“Yeah, probably more than I wanted to, but that’s okay. She was right about everything.”
He cleaned the nachos from his plate. “She’s good at that. Has a really keen eye.”
“No kidding.” Summer chased a stray strawberry around her plate. “You’re lucky,” she added. “My mom died when I was born.”
Damian whistled. “Haven’t had it easy, have you?”
“Stuff happens. I never knew it any other way.”
“It’s still a lousy break.”
Summer studied her wineglass. A few feet away, she saw a braided rope of flowers Dinah had made for her earlier. The wildflowers twined around the railing, a little faded in the afternoon heat but still fragrant. “Your sister’s adorable.”
He popped two stuffed mushrooms into his mouth. “Yeah, she is.” He paused. “Tries to set me up with all the wrong women, but she means well.”
“Ah…like Joyce Hadley?” Summer recalled the look on Joyce’s face when she’d picked up Dinah from practice.
He shrugged. “Dinah doesn’t know too many women my age. She thinks we’d make a good couple, mostly because Joyce is blonde and has pretty fingernails. Oh, and makes a mean chocolate chip cookie.”
Summer laughed. “That’s not what does it for you?”
He glanced over. “What do you think?”
Her stomach tightened in desire, and a thrill of something unknown and desperately wanted spiraled down her spine. “Well, I do think Dinah has good taste,” she joked. “All the Hadleys are beautiful. You might be missing your chance. Most of the guys in this town would give anything to go out with one of them.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not most of the guys in this town.” His gaze steadied on her mouth. Shifting his weight on the step, he moved an inch or two closer and shaded his eyes against the sun. “So what was this place like years ago, anyway? When you and Mac were kids.”
“The house? Or the town?”
“Both, I guess.”
Summer didn’t answer for a moment. Ask me about San Francisco, and I’ll give you a history lesson. I can tell you which restaurants have the best pasta or where to buy designer shoes at half the price. But Pine Point? It’s too colored, too shaded, too jaded—or maybe I am—by everything that’s happened in its shadows. What was this place like? I can’t answer that without remembering what I was like. And I’m not sure I want to do that.
She took a deep breath. “Well, this house was always a mess. Run-down for as long as I can remember. The story goes that a big steel family from New York City built it as a getaway sometime in the 1800s. Your house—the rental—was the caretaker’s place. But when the only son died, the daughter who inherited it didn’t want it, so I guess no one lived here after about 1920 or so. Weather and local kids took their toll on it after that. After a while, people just avoided it.”
“The haunted house of Pine Point, huh?”
“It really was. In middle school, kids used to dare each other to come up on the porch and look in the windows. In high school, they’d sneak in and drink until the cops came by and threw them
out.” She remembered something else. “And sometimes couples came here. You could see the entire sky at night from one of the bedrooms upstairs.”
“Can you see the Big Dipper?” Gabe ran his fingers along her bare collarbone.
Summer nodded, her palms damp with nerves and newfound love. The moonlight spilled through the cracked circular window and landed on the blanket they’d laid across the dusty floor. Two empty wine cooler bottles rolled at their feet. But it wasn’t the sticky-sweet cherry alcohol that made her head spin. She was sure of that.
Gabe kissed her just below the ear, in the spot that always made her squirm, and then lower, along the curve of her shoulder. She stopped looking at the stars.
Summer’s knee jittered with the memory, and she twisted her fingers together. Her gaze traveled upward to the window they’d lain beneath. Wow. She’d forgotten that night. How ironic. The very house she now owned she’d christened with teenage hormones years before. Maybe destiny had a stronger hand in things than she wanted to admit.
Damian rested his head against the porch railing and closed his eyes. The early evening sun played across the bridge of his nose, where a few freckles sketched a connect-the-dots from cheek to cheek. With his eyes shut and his mouth relaxed, he looked young, almost boyish. A sudden urge to reach over and kiss him seized her, and she sat on her hands to keep them where they belonged.
Behave yourself, Summer. At least for a little while longer.
He blinked and caught her looking. “Did you like going to school here? Knowing everything about everyone else?”
Summer propped her chin in one palm. “It was tolerable. Same as any other small town, I guess. Lots of stories and rumors, but most people had your back when you needed them to. What was it like growing up in Poisonwood?”
“Pretty damn boring.”
They both laughed.
“You like working in construction?”
“It’s a job.” He shrugged. “I went to the junior college up north, got a degree in marketing. I’d like to use that someday.”
“Yeah? Adirondack Community?”
Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1 Page 12
