Second Time's the Charm

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Illeee,” the boy said with another, harder kick.

  Abe had it bad for Lillie.

  Bending down again to the yellow “on sale” ticket sticking out from the empty shelf space, Jon continued, “Let’s just hope there’s some farina hidden in the back.”

  Abe had had two tantrums at day care that week. Jon wasn’t going to risk having the boy be upset before he even left the house in the morning.

  Even if it meant he was coping, rather than teaching his son to cope. A guy walking a tightrope could only do so much teaching.

  Score. One lone box of farina lay on its side in the very back of the bottom shelf, one corner of the box a little bashed in. He’d take it.

  “Good news, buddy.” He talked to his son as the top half of his body disappeared under the shelf above the cereal. “Daddy found a box of cerea―”

  “Nooooo!” The shriek was unmistakable. Jon still had a foot in front of the cart. He knew it hadn’t moved. No one had come near his son.

  Hitting his head as he jerked out from underneath the shelf, he stood in one motion, reaching for Abe with both hands. “It’s okay, Abraham,” he said firmly, right in the boy’s face, as Lillie had taught him to do. Get Abe’s attention, she’d told him that morning when, after dropping Abe off for day care, the boy had lost it in the reception room again.

  Lillie had been in the back room, waiting for a little girl whose father had just left her mother and would be attending day care for the first time.

  “Nooo!” Abe’s screams pierced the entire store as the boy expressed his displeasure, apparently because he’d been unable to reach the box of breakfast cereal. A woman at the end of the aisle stood, cart in front of her, staring at them. People wheeled past the aisle, no doubt on purpose, just so they could see what was going on.

  He recognized a girl from one of his classes.

  He leaned down to stick his face nose to nose with his screaming toddler. “Abe, use your words,” he said, enunciating clearly.

  It’s my fault, he wanted to announce over the store’s loudspeaker. His son had a problem because he had avoided exposing Abraham to crowds. Too many people around meant too many opportunities for someone to snatch, or otherwise hurt, his son.

  People equaled danger.

  “Abraham, Daddy can’t help you if you don’t speak to me.”

  Maybe this was a normal temper tantrum. He was in his terrible twos, after all. “Use your words, son,” he said, touching his nose to Abraham’s.

  The boy stopped crying and gave Jon a wet-eyed stare. “Use your words.” Jon took the opportunity to remind Abe before the child started to scream again. “Daddy can’t help you if he doesn’t know what’s wrong.”

  “Daddeee.” Abe’s voice wavered, as though he was about to cry again. “Daddee, go.”

  “You want to go?”

  Abe nodded.

  “Tell me.”

  “Go.” The word shot out.

  “Okay, we can go, but Daddy has to reach under that shelf and get our box of cereal first, okay?” he said, praying that they wouldn’t be putting on another show for the citizens of Shelter Valley. “Okay?”

  Abe nodded, his chin still quivering. Those big brown eyes watched him as he bent down—he knew because he kept eye contact as long as he could. And his heart broke a little bit as a leftover tear dropped off one of those baby-long lashes.

  His son was not a bad or spoiled kid. He just had some things to learn.

  And so did his dad.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “CAN WE GO somewhere we can talk?” Kirk had walked with her to her car. Lillie wanted him to leave. Jon and Abe were due at her house soon, and though she’d lent Jon a key to her place, she still wanted to be there when they arrived.

  She wanted to see them.

  Just to make certain that Abe had fully recovered from his upset that morning.

  Or so she told herself.

  “We have nothing to talk about.”

  “How about we go to that little pub on campus? Remember all the nights we hung out there? In that little booth in the back? I stole my first kiss from you there on our second date.”

  She tried not to think about such things, thinking instead about having dinner with Jon in that very same booth.

  Jon. A client. Because her life was about work.

  “I’m tired, Kirk. I just want to go home, get out of these clothes and relax.”

  She recognized her mistake the second she saw the slow sexy grin begin to cross his face. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Fine, we’ll go to the pub.” She had to eat. And it wasn’t as if she was apt to see anyone she knew there. The class she’d graduated with had all moved on to the rest of their lives.

  But Lillie gave the room a once-over, anyway, before she took a seat at a table around the corner from the booths when she arrived there a minute or two ahead of Kirk. She’d told him she had an errand to run and that she’d meet him at the pub. And then she’d swung by her house, just in case Jon and Abe were early, but Jon’s truck wasn’t in her driveway. Or parked out front, either.

  “What, our booth wasn’t empty?” Kirk asked as he slid into the seat across from her, bumping his knees with hers under the table.

  “Can it, Kirk, or I’m leaving.”

  “Sorry.”

  Lillie glanced up from the menu she’d once known by heart. “What did you say?”

  “I’m sorry, Lil. So sorry. About everything.”

  Her throat tight, Lillie tried to swallow. And to look away. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that.”

  “I was a damned fool,” he said now. “So full of myself.”

  It was a line. Had to be. He’d matured, she’d give him that. He’d learned humility—or at least how to feign it. But...

  Kirk was looking her straight in the eye. His blue gaze was open in a way she’d never seen before.

  She didn’t want to care.

  About him. Or Jon. Or the fact that Papa and Gayle thought that something was wrong with her because she was too closed off.

  “I agreed to have dinner with you,” she said. Because she hadn’t wanted to take a chance that he’d follow her home, or show up five minutes after she got there, and see Jon or Abe.

  More to the point, she didn’t want Jon to see him.

  There was no way she was going to let the past taint her life in Shelter Valley. She’d healed. Moved on.

  Even if Kirk’s parents didn’t think so.

  “I didn’t agree to revisit the past.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Tell me why you’re really here.”

  “You just said you didn’t want to revisit the past.”

  “If that’s why you’re here then...” She gathered her purse.

  Holding up his hand, Kirk said, “No, please, stay, Lil. That can wait. I really was concerned about you. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to make the drive out here to see you, and when I read about the break-ins I knew that I couldn’t put it off any longer.”

  Because he couldn’t call.

  If he’d been anyone else, if she hadn’t seen him in action so many times, manipulating people, saying just the right things so they’d think he was giving them what they needed rather than getting them to buy what he wanted them to have, she might have softened.

  But she doubted it.

  “I’m sorry, but I find it hard to believe that you’re suddenly so concerned about my safety.”

  “My concern isn’t sudden.” He didn’t back down. Or look away.

  “What can I get you two to drink?” The server’s arrival startled her. Lil hadn’t seen the girl approaching. Still, she welcomed her. And, when Kirk deferred to her first, she ordered a sod
a and the same type of salad she’d had the week before with Jon.

  “Make that two.” Kirk smiled at the girl. When Lillie and Kirk had been in college, dating, inseparable, they’d eaten off the same plate.

  “I’m serious, Lil,” Kirk said as soon as the girl turned away. “I’ve always thanked God that you moved back to Shelter Valley. I lived here, too, remember? If there’s a town in this country that’s safe for a young woman to live in alone, it’s this place. Not only because everyone here knows everyone, but the people in this town are rabid about their public safety.”

  It was true. And a big part of the reason she’d chosen to settle in the town where she’d met the man who’d crushed her heart. That, and the fact that the job offer had been perfect—and that Shelter Valley was close enough for her to still see Papa and Gayle on a regular basis.

  And visit Bray’s grave when she needed to.

  “But these break-ins...” Leaning forward, he lowered his voice as he moved his face closer to hers. “From what I heard, they’ve been going on for a couple of weeks and the sheriff is no closer to finding out who’s behind them.”

  Lillie didn’t say a word. Didn’t acknowledge the fact that he was right.

  “You aren’t safe here by yourself, Lillie.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! You think I’m the only single woman in this town?”

  “Of course not, but―”

  “I’m perfectly safe,” she said, although, if she was honest, she had to admit that she was a bit uneasy about facing the night alone.

  “Tell me you don’t have a sliding glass door.”

  “I do. But it’s got a safety catch on it that prevents it from being lifted off the tracks.”

  Thanks to Jon.

  Who was probably at her house right now.

  And Abraham, too.

  A little boy in her home.

  She wanted to be there....

  “That’s good, at least.”

  “Sheriff Richards has increased night patrol,” she said. “He’s got a posse of volunteers, and they have a list of streets to pay extra attention to. My street is on that list.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Bonnie had told her. Having the inside scoop was one of the perks of working part-time for the sheriff’s sister.

  Their waitress returned, placing their food and drinks in front of them. Feeling hungrier than she’d realized, Lillie started right in on her salad, paying more attention to the vegetables in her bowl than to her dinner companion.

  Kirk asked her about her job. She gave him a brief rundown. He wanted to know if she was happy.

  She assured him she was. Unequivocally.

  “You practically radiate when you talk about what you do,” he said, watching her cut a cucumber in half.

  “I told you how much I loved it when I first started working in the field,” she reminded him.

  “I know. But a lot of jobs seem great in the beginning. To still love your career almost seven years into it—you’re lucky, Lil.”

  Had he lost interest in advertising? She didn’t care one way or the other.

  Kirk was her past. Period. “So, now that you’ve satisfied yourself that I’m safe, you can go back to Phoenix with a clear conscience,” she said as they finished their salads almost simultaneously.

  “I’m clearly being put in my place,” he said, his gaze serious.

  “You have no place in my life.”

  “That’s the problem.”

  He hadn’t just said that. He wasn’t looking at her like that.

  Lillie’s heart sped up. And stopped. Sped up. And stopped.

  She couldn’t do this again.

  He was the father of her precious, precious boy. The other half of Braydon.

  With a lump in her throat, she asked one more time, “What do you want, Kirk?”

  “Just to have a chance to be in touch with you,” he said. “Take my calls, Lil. That’s all I ask.”

  She didn’t believe him.

  “I won’t call often,” he said. “Once a week if you’ll let me.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then...who knows? I swear to you. I know what I want, but I also know that I can’t make it happen.”

  Wow. He had changed.

  “I need your help, Lil. Just until I can get my footing again. You understood me like no one ever had. I know I blew it with you. I understand that you hate me. If it’s any consolation, I hate me, too. But I’m lost here. I want to make my life right. Just talk to me now and then.”

  There were parts of Lillie that were dead forever. But not as dead as she’d thought.

  “I need you to understand, in no uncertain terms, that there is no hope for us as a couple. Ever.”

  His nostrils flared and he sucked in his lip, as though he was physically preventing himself from saying whatever sprang to his lips. And still, he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever known.

  But not the manliest. Or the sexiest.

  A picture of Jon in her house, among her things, with Abraham on his hip, sprang to mind. She’d have liked to have been there with them.

  She pushed the thought away.

  “I understand,” Kirk said. “And I want you to know that if you ever change your mind―”

  “I won’t. And if you think you’re going to convince me otherwise, then this conversation is over.” She picked up her purse and stood, thought about digging for money to pay the bill and decided against it.

  Let Kirk pay.

  “I swear, Lil...” He hurriedly stood beside her, pulling a wad of bills from his pocket, rolling off a few and dropping them to the table as though if he didn’t pay fast enough she’d get out the door ahead of him. “I won’t bring it up again. Not unless you do, first.”

  Without saying a word, Lillie made her way to the door and out into the cool October darkness. Kirk kept up.

  “I am not out to convince you of anything, Lil,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t know what I hope to achieve by talking with you. I just...I have a feeling that what I need to know can only be found in you. And that if I don’t find it, I’m never going to amount to anything.”

  He was Papa’s son.

  And Papa was one of the greatest men she’d ever known. Some of that had to have rubbed off on Kirk.

  “Okay,” she said. For Papa’s and Gayle’s sake. They still cared about Kirk—needed him to amount to something. “Phone calls. Once a week. Nothing more. And when I say the conversation is over, it’s over.”

  “Okay.”

  He was quiet as he walked her to her car and waited for her to unlock the door and climb inside.

  With one hand on top of the frame, he closed the door behind her. But not before she heard his final words.

  “Thank you, Lil.”

  After watching him in the rearview mirror as she pulled away, she cried all the way home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HE’D BEEN LOOKING forward to seeing her all day. With Abe sound asleep in the next room, Jon lay in bed Thursday night with pillows propped up behind him and his laptop computer across his thighs.

  He had a paper due the following Wednesday in his freshman English class. A five-hundred-word “how to” piece. He’d been halfway through detailing a French door installation before he admitted that he was working up a plan specific to Lillie’s kitchen—in effect, killing two birds with one stone. She hadn’t called. He’d left a note—had even had Abraham scribble a few marks at the bottom of it. And while he hadn’t specifically asked for a callback, he’d kind of expected one. They’d talked a couple of times since their trip to the zoo the previous weekend. She’d called him on Monday to discuss Abe’s first day care tantr
um of the week and he’d called her Wednesday night to arrange a time to measure her countertop.

  And then there’d been the second day care tantrum of the week. Just that morning. They’d both been there when it happened and had dealt with it as a team. Like coworkers. Or parents.

  Looking down at his computer, Jon reassessed his situation. According to his word-processing program he’d used up 248 of his 500 words. He still didn’t have the sliding glass door frame removed and disposed of. Hadn’t even placed the frame for the French doors, let alone leveled, squared and shimmed it.

  His mind kept going back to Lillie. He wondered if she was at home. Lillie worked all hours of the day and night, which was why he hadn’t been surprised when he and Abe had shown up to an empty house earlier that evening. She’d told him she’d be there unless she got called in to work. Had told him to use his key if she didn’t answer his knock.

  He pushed the backspace key, deleting the notation about reciprocating-saw safety. If the existing sliding glass door was affixed with nails instead of screws, the job would require the use of a reciprocating saw to cut through the metal. This was a French door installation how-to paper, not an essay on tool safety.

  Abe coughed—the sound traveling through the speaker on his nightstand as clearly as if the toddler was in the room with him. Jon got out of bed to check on him and—satisfied that his son was doing fine—wandered out to the kitchen for a glass of milk. Finishing it in one chug, he rinsed the cup and returned to bed. To his paper.

  There had been another break-in the night before. Everyone had been talking about it at the plant that morning. And at school, too. Each time it happened, Jon started to sweat more. He had nothing to do with the crimes, but he knew damned well that if anyone found out about his past... His lungs tightened inside his chest.

  His records were sealed.

  But they could be viewed by law enforcement in the investigation of a crime.

  Clara Abrams knew about his past. Kate had made certain of that. Back before she’d become pregnant with Abe. Back when the only reason she’d started dating Jon was to convince her parents she’d be better off living somewhere else. To convince them to let her move to New York.