She scowled back at him. “I’m not ignoring anything.”
“You’re here. Your problems are there.” He stabbed a finger behind him, in a direction that was roughly northwest.
She stood to face him, her eyes flashing. “They’re here, too. Let’s not forget that. And if Lance wants to move the vote up to next week, you tell him I said go ahead. I’ll have an injunction ready and waiting for him.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. What’s the point? Lance was determined to push her as hard as he could, and she was just as determined to push back. He ought to step back and let them fight it out. He had plenty of other work to do, and none of his other developments teetered on the edge of a legal sinkhole.
He ought to, but he couldn’t. The project meant too much to him to let Lance screw it up. And Maren…
Okay, so he might have been a little hard on her in high school. He hadn’t been enough to make her want to stay, but considering her past, no one would have been. Including Bill. Soon enough, she would get past his betrayal and those bad memories would push her away from here again. Could he convince Lance to wait her out? He would tell Lance what had happened and….
He grimaced. He couldn’t tell Lance. Lance would use her troubles as a bat to beat her with. No matter what had happened between them in high school, she didn’t deserve that. There had to be another way.
But what?
Jack turned toward the door. “Right. But do me a favor before you head off to the courthouse, would you?”
“What?”
He glanced over his shoulder and into glittering blue eyes that still tugged at his heart, even after all these years. “Be honest with yourself. The memories here aren’t any better than they were ten years ago. No matter what happens, you’ll go back. If the house is going to sit here empty for the next ten years, what have you done for yourself?”
He left without waiting for her to reply. He knew what she would say. She wouldn’t change her mind. Jack would have to change it for her.
And he had no idea how.
Chapter Seven
“Okay, Sam, what gives?” Maren asked. She flopped down on a stool behind the counter and sighed as the tension in her legs relaxed.
Sam locked the front door and turned to survey the room. Her gaze followed his, and she almost groaned out loud. After a hectic Friday afternoon, product sat in a jumbled array on the shelves and loose nails and screws scattered across the floor. A long soak in a hot bath called to her, but she couldn’t leave until she helped him clean up this mess.
“Nothing gives,” he said. “Just another busy day in paradise. Thanks for helping out today.”
“No problem.” She grinned back at him. “If you were a little nicer to the help, she wouldn’t have left you stranded like this.”
“The help is lucky she’s my cousin,” he grumbled. “Spontaneous is fine, but I wish she’d called me before she left for Vegas. Fridays are my busiest days. She knows that. Why couldn’t she have eloped on a Monday?”
“Because then it wouldn’t be spontaneous. Besides, I’m glad you called.” In truth, Sam’s frantic call that morning had delighted her. Sam’s cousin had called from Vegas just ten minutes before he was to open the store that morning, and he’d been desperate to have some help behind the counter. Maren had been happy to have a distraction from her problems and even happier to spend the day with her old friend. She let her feet fall to the floor and stood with a grunt, then grabbed the broom that leaned against the wall behind her. “Although, it would have been better if I knew something about hardware.”
The store had been in Sam’s family for twenty years. He had taken over for his father three years ago, but he’d been working in the store since he was a teenager. He knew the business inside and out.
But Maren? Lost cause.
He chuckled. “Yeah. Well, now you know what happens if you’re not careful with a loaded nail gun. You should have seen the look on your face when your finger hit that trigger. I thought you were going to faint.”
“It’s lucky Joe was wearing steel-toed boots.” Her smile widened. “Besides, I’ve never been near a nail gun before. If I need to nail something at my house, I use a shoe.”
“Don’t tell me that.” He gave a mock shudder.
She propped against the broom and fixed him with a steady gaze. “Now, back to my question the other day. What gives? You looked like you’d seen a ghost when I asked about Rita and Doug the other day.”
His smile dropped. He stepped up to a shelf and straightened the boxes of screws that sat in a jumbled disarray. “Would you drop it if I said I don’t want to talk about it?” he asked. She studied his profile and the determined set of his jaw. He clearly didn’t want to discuss it with her. Should she let him have his privacy?
“No. As many times as you’ve been there for me, I’m not going to pass up a chance to return the favor. Now out with it.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed, but he remained silent for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he finally said.
“You don’t know what?”
“I don’t know where they are,” he said. “That’s what you asked me, isn’t it?”
What? “Are they missing?” She glanced at his hand, still devoid of his wedding band. Not missing. Gone.
He nodded and pulled several paint brushes from a hook on the wall, then moved them to a different row. “I knew Rita wasn’t happy. I tried everything I knew to figure out what was wrong, but she shut me out, you know? I couldn’t get through to her.”
Maren set the broom aside and moved over to stand beside him. The slump in his shoulders and that horrible bleakness in his eyes broke her heart. She slid her arm around his shoulders. “What happened?”
“I wish I knew.” His eyes reddened, and her stomach twisted. “I came home one day, and she’d moved out. Served me with divorce papers a couple of days later. She wouldn’t even talk to me.” His mouth tightened into a grim line. “I signed the papers. What else could I do?”
He’d been so broken that he hadn’t even tried to fight for her. How long had he been suffering? A wave of guilt rushed through her. He’d been there for Maren, solid and steady, when she’d needed him. And she’d abandoned him, just like she had Hank, Alva and especially her grandfather. Tears stung her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Sam.”
“After I got over the shock, things got a little easier. I figured if she would do something like that to me, I was better off without her, you know?” His jaw hardened, and the muscles in his arm tensed under her fingers. “It was so hard on Doug, though. He cried every time I took him home.”
“How old is he now?” she asked.
“He turned four three months ago.” Sam’s voice cracked, and he ducked his head and pressed his palms against his eyes. “About three weeks ago, I went to pick up Doug and there was no one home. I called, but Rita had changed her number. I looked in the window and the apartment was empty. They were gone, Maren.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know.” He let out a ragged sigh. “I called her mother in Memphis. She knew where Rita was, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
A surge of cold anger shot through her. “That was it? You never heard anything else?”
“Oh, no. I heard from her. A few days later I got an email. She told me it would be better for Doug if he didn’t see me anymore. She said I was upsetting him.” Sam’s face crumpled, and Maren’s heart twisted again. “Seeing me didn’t upset him, Maren. It was leaving me that bothered him. But she took him anyway.”
She couldn’t believe Rita had stolen Sam’s child. How could she do that to her own son?
I can fix this. Maren might have let Sam down before, but she could make it up to him now. For once, he needed her. Her mind clicked down a list of options, then rearranged them in order of importance. “Okay. I’ve heard enough. You’re going to let me take care of this, right?”
“Take care…” He trailed off, then raised hopeful eyes
to hers. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I do. I’ll need a copy of the divorce papers you signed.” She frowned, thought a moment, then continued. “And a few other things. I’ll make you a list. We’ll get your son back, and we’ll make sure Rita never does this again.”
“You…you think you can find him?”
She would find him. A pang of regret settled into her stomach. She’d been fretting over an empty building while Sam wondered how he would ever see his young son again. “I’ll do everything I can.”
“Thanks, Maren.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I’m glad you’re home.”
“So am I.” She squeezed his shoulders, then stepped back with a frown as she realized she meant it. How strange. Considering all the trouble she’d faced since she got here, she had never been so happy to be in Shepherdsville.
“How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up the broom and shoved it along the floor.
Sam propped his arm against a shelf and fixed her with a steady gaze. “Why don’t you just stay here?”
Stay? As in, permanently? No way. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not? I never understood why you had to leave in the first place.”
She pushed a few nails into a pile, then pulled the broom back to make another pass. “I needed to make something of myself, and I couldn’t do that here. My mom…” She took a moment to steady her voice. “Mom waited tables after dad left. She struggled every day. I couldn’t let that be me.”
“Jack would never have run out on you and left you to raise a kid on your own.”
“My mom didn’t run out on me, either,” she reminded him. “But I lost her just the same. All it took was a delivery truck and some black ice.”
Sam was silent for a long moment. “So that’s it? You and Jack broke up because you were afraid you’d lose him, too?”
She flinched. Her outlook hadn’t been that bleak. Well, not really. “No. Jeez, Sam, you make it sound so bad. You were there. You know what happened.”
“I know Jack ended it because he thought you were leaving him.”
She straightened and met Sam’s gaze. Where is this coming from? He’d stood by her without question after the breakup. Why second guess her now? “I never wanted to leave him, Sam. But I couldn’t end up like my mom. If I’d stayed here, the best I could have hoped for was a job checking groceries at the supermarket.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “And you had to go all the way to Seattle to keep that from happening?”
She’d chosen Seattle after the breakup. The scholarship had been good, and the distance from Jack and Brenda had been even better. But why did it matter now? “We broke up ten years ago, and you never said any of this. Why the change of heart?”
He flashed her a smile and shoved away from the shelf. “No change of heart. You were emotional at the time, so I didn’t want you to think I didn’t support you.” He returned to straightening paintbrushes. “But I don’t want you using Jack as a reason to leave again. You’ve done what you set out to do. Why don’t you think about sticking around this time?”
She nodded and turned her attention back to the broom in her hand. Stay in Shepherdsville? She couldn’t do that.
No matter what happens, you’ll go back.
She disagreed with Jack about a lot of things, but he’d been right about that. Eventually, she would have to go back to her life—back to the firm and another small apartment in Green Lake. Back to days buried in contracts and nights curled up alone on the couch in front of the television. Back home.
She rejected the word as soon as it popped into her mind. Even after ten years, she’d never thought of Seattle as home. She lived in Seattle. Her professional life had been built there. But home would always be the farm. Even if Jack and Lance buried it under yards of concrete, steel and picture windows, that house would always hold her heart.
Jack had told her to be honest with herself. And when she was, she’d discovered Jack was right about something else, too. She had run away—from the memories of her lost mother, from her fear of ending up alone and struggling, and later, from the agony of having to face Jack when she could no longer have him. More honesty had convinced her that she had run away again as soon as the bottom fell out in Seattle.
She had to stop running. She had to stand and fight.
And she had to decide which to fight for—her life or her heart.
# # #
“Now there’s a face I haven’t seen in a while. I heard you were back in town.”
Lynn Cochran, Mel’s Diner’s head waitress and chief curmudgeon, wiped her hands on a dish cloth and gave Maren a warm, gapped-tooth smile as Maren came through the door.
Maren smiled back. “Hey, Lynn. Got any good Southern cooking tonight?”
“Nope. Just the usual heart attack on a plate. Pull up a stool.” Lynn had been Mel’s Diner’s head waitress since the Earth was formed, possibly even longer. Her voice had a harsh, gravelly rasp instilled by old age and heavy smoking. Maren found the sound of it oddly comforting.
Lynn reached for a pitcher of tea without asking Maren if she wanted any, then plucked a glass from a plastic crate near the service window that led to the kitchen. “It’s good to see you. I was telling someone the other day that I sure do miss your grandma. Dorothy could talk the bark off a tree, but she was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.”
Maren gave her a wistful smile and sank down onto one of the stools that lined a counter across from the service window. Lynn had always been blunt, but she had a jolly laugh and a self-deprecating manner that took the sting out of anything that resembled criticism. Maren had always adored her.
And, of course, Lynn was right. Maren’s Grandma had been a talker. Maren had sat on these stools with her grandma many times, eating mashed potatoes while Grandma talked to Lynn, the cook, and everyone else that walked through the door. At thirteen, she’d been a little sad to sit at the counter where her mom used to serve customers before she moved to Boston and fascinated that her grandma could find something to talk about with everyone who came within ten feet of her. “Yeah, I miss her, too.”
Lynn slid the glass in front of her and dumped in the tea, the ice splashing into the glass and spraying droplets over the side. “So I heard you almost nailed Joe Hardiman’s boot to the floor this morning.”
News travels fast. Maren gave her a sheepish grin. “Not one of my finer moments.”
“Don’t worry too much about it,” Lynn cackled. “He was laughing when he told me.” She frowned. “How’s Sam?”
“About like you’d expect.”
Lynn took a towel from her apron and mopped up the droplets on the counter. “That woman ought to be horse-whipped. It’s her mama’s fault. Always coddled that girl too much.” She lifted her gaze to the door and a speculative frown creased her brow. “Come on in here, hon,” she called over Maren’s shoulder. She pointed at the stool next to Maren. “Sit down and I’ll have you taken care of in just a sec.”
Maren turned to see who had caught Lynn’s attention, and nearly flinched when her gaze met a pair of clear green eyes.
Okay, so maybe she didn’t adore Lynn quite as much as she thought.
Jack smiled back at Lynn, his white teeth flashing in a boyish grin that melted Maren’s heart.
“You’re so good to me, Lynn.” Jack’s eyes danced with humor. “That marriage proposal is still open, you know.”
Maren fought off a smile, and Lynn’s laughter boomed. “Son, I have calluses that are older than you. Sit. I’ll go see if Mel’s got your order.”
Maren could feel curious eyes on her. Half the people in the room had watched her and Jack’s implosion in high school, and most of them would be aware of the battle going on over the industrial complex. She caught Eve Emerson’s curious gaze as she turned back towards the counter. At least Maren thought that was Eve. She and her twin sister Ellie had been impossible to tell apart i
n high school. Ellie and Eve had watched her with matching expressions of sympathy as she skulked away from prom ten years earlier. Maren gave her a polite smile, then turned back to face the kitchen, pulled a laminated menu from a metal clip on the counter, and pretended to study it. Eve had to be wondering what Jack would do. Lynn, too, considering she had sat Jack next to Maren on purpose.
Join the club, ladies. The last time she’d seen Jack, he’d decided she was a criminal. And now she had to sit next to him in a room full of ears and hope he didn’t spill her mistakes to the entire town.
She took a nervous sip of her tea. At least it didn’t make her teeth hurt.
Jack swung a long leg over the stool and dropped down next to her. “I hear you’ve given up law to sell hammers.”
She looked up from the menu. “Sell isn’t quite the right word. Assault is closer.”
His grin reappeared. “I heard about that.”
“Of course you did.” She rolled her eyes.
An odd expression flickered across his face, then disappeared. “Sam called you?” he asked, his voice turning harsh.
She studied him for a moment. Really? He and Sam had been estranged for a long time, but couldn’t he ease up on Sam a little? Jack and Maren’s problems had been far worse, and he’d managed a truce with her. A weird, uneasy truce that involved kissing, but still, a truce. Surely he could at least talk about Sam without looking like he’d swallowed something foul. “Yeah. His cousin decided to elope yesterday. He needed my help.”
He turned away and glared into the empty service window. “I see.”
Maren followed his gaze. A young man she’d never seen managed a bank of fryers along a side wall, but the kitchen was otherwise empty. Lynn had disappeared, probably on purpose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shook his head but still didn’t turn back to face her. “It means I bet his cousin changes her mind.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Did he tell you about Rita?”
She paused. Poor Sam. As far as she knew, Jack was the only person who knew what Bill had done to her. Sam’s marital problems were the talk of the town. “Yes. I’m going to help him find Doug.”
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