Welcome Home, Bobby Winslow

by Christyne Butler

  “There you are.” Zip interrupted his thoughts as he walked into the office. “Jeez, we walked around this castle of yours three times last night and I’m still lost. I think you need to print some maps. I can’t even find my dog.”

  “Daisy was sunning herself in the family room the last time I saw her. And you know this place like the back of your hand.” Bobby swung around to face his friend. “You should, you studied the floor plans as much as I did this summer.”

  “As long as I can figure out how to find the kitchen, I’m golden.” His buddy took a large bite from the apple in his hand. “So what’s on the agenda today? Maybe bring a little life to this place?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bobby put down his mug. “The house is perfect.”

  “Yeah, it’s got more flat-screen televisions than a sports bar and the ‘I love me’ wall downstairs is cute, but it still looks like something out of a magazine.”

  “Displaying all those awards and honors wasn’t my idea. Blame the decorators.”

  “Yeah, they did such a great job this place looks more like a museum than a—wait, what the heck is that?”

  A red light recessed into the top of Bobby’s desk flashed. He pressed his thumb over the glass and it went out.

  Reaching for the handmade cane his mother had given him in the hospital when he’d first started walking again, Bobby heaved himself up. “Come on, I think you’re going to like this.”

  At the far wall, he ran one hand along the edge of the commissioned oil painting of his race car until he found a hidden button.

  A door-size portion of log wall slid silently to the left, disappearing into a hollow opening in the wall. Bobby entered the room on the other side, his buddy tight on his heels.

  “Okay, that was a little James Bondish.” Zip stopped next to him. “What is all this?”

  A double row of monitors lined the far wall, eight in total, which flashed live images of Bobby’s home and land. “This is my security center. I can see what’s going on 24/7 from the driveway to the ends of my property.”

  “Other than that fancy wood-and-iron gate we passed through, I didn’t see any fencing. Jeez, I never even noticed the cameras.”

  “That ‘fancy’ gate is actually high-strength aluminum made to look like wood. The fencing is electronic, and the cameras wireless and well hidden. This is a state-of-the-art system Devlin Murphy put together.”

  “Is he part of Murphy Mountain Log Homes that built this place?”

  Bobby nodded. “Same company. Dev heads the home security side of things.”

  “I know you had some troubles with that nutty fangirl last year, but still, isn’t this a bit much?”

  “That wasn’t just a fangirl. I went downstairs one morning and found her fixing breakfast…after she broke in.”

  “And your overnight companion wasn’t too happy to find another female in the house, if I remember the news reports correctly.” Zip smiled. “Or was the catfight just a nasty rumor?”

  It wasn’t. Despite his fame and sometimes overzealous fans, it was Bobby’s first brush with someone who’d broken the law to get close to him. “Let’s just say I’m a bit more cautious nowadays.”

  “Even up here in the backwoods?”

  Bobby nodded as he moved in to read the monitor on the desk. “Especially with the phase two I have planned.”

  “As curious as I am about this ‘phase two’ of yours, why exactly did that red light go off on your desk?” Zip walked to the wall of monitors and peered closely at them. “All I see out there is trees.”

  Remembering the instructions Dev had emailed him, Bobby pressed a key to move the update backward until he saw the half-dozen screen captures. He leaned in close, then closer still, his eyes fixed on images taken of the driveway, outside the main gate but definitely on his land.

  “I’m going to go out and get some fresh air.” Bobby left the room, closing the door behind his friend who’d followed him.

  “I worked you over pretty good this morning. You’re not walking so well, even with that cane,” Zip said. “You plan on sticking to the deck?”

  “Actually I’m going for a quick drive.” Leaving his study, Bobby headed for the main hall, the tap of his cane echoing off the stone floor.

  “Ace, you can’t—”

  “It’s a four by four utility, Zip.” He stopped and turned to his buddy, recognizing the man’s serious professional-therapist face. “Nothing more than a tricked-out golf cart. Standard issue, no modifications done.”

  “I’ll come with you. Let me get Daisy. She’d love to ride.”

  “I think I can handle this—the cart by myself.”

  Zip folded his arms and stared at him, but Bobby just returned his steady gaze. No way was he bringing his friend along. Not this time. This was something he wanted—no, something he needed to face on his own.

  “Take your cell and call if you need…anything.”

  Bobby nodded and headed for the mudroom that led to the attached four-bay garage. Soon he was mobile, pleased he was able to handle the electric utility vehicle. He’d convinced a nurse at the rehab center to let him get behind the wheel of a cart used by the facility, but the results hadn’t been so good.

  Steering the machine to the far end of the barn, he slowed to a stop, his focus on the opening between the two oak trees no one else would notice.

  No one but him and Leeann.

  Leeann prided herself on not making bad decisions. Not anymore. Goodness knows she’d made more than her share in her lifetime, but for the past six years she’d worked hard not to repeat them.

  Then this morning she’d made a doozy.

  Maybe because she’d overslept, something she never did. Or it could be because she left the house for her morning run without something in her stomach.

  She refused to consider that last night’s decision to crack open her old cedar chest filled with long-forgotten mementos and memories could have anything to do with her heading for the pond.

  Her pond.

  She ran into the clearing at the water’s edge, which offered some relief considering the rocky terrain she’d just covered. Gasping, she slowed to a walk. Deep breaths pulled in the familiar piney and earth scents as the fresh mountain air invaded her lungs and cooled her heated skin.

  Pulling off her ball cap, she shook her hair loose and then peeled off her nylon windbreaker, dropping it to a natural bench formed from a pair of felled trees.

  The same bench she’d been coming to since she was a little girl. First alone when she needed a place of her own where she could think, dream or just get away from her mother and her beauty pageant obsession. Then one day she’d noticed a scruffy-looking boy on a secondhand bike staring at her from the other side of her pond. She’d been thirteen and within an hour she’d fallen in love with Bobby Winslow.

  Leeann willed away the memory, knowing it was crazy to come here now that Bobby was living just down the road, the road that technically belonged to him, but was her only access to this section of woodland.

  Her daily runs didn’t always bring her here, but she’d fallen into her runner zone quickly. Her feet had a mind of their own, easily eating up the miles, drawing her to the peace and comfort she’d always found here.

  Until now.

  Until Bobby came back to town.

  She stopped her pacing, slapped her cap back on and rubbed at the ache in the center of her chest. Lacing her fingers behind her head and planting her feet shoulders-width apart, she pressed her elbows outward and stretched, staring at the thick grove of multicolored trees surrounding the still blue waters.

  Despite all the craziness that was her life, this calm oasis was still hers and she’d be damned if anyone was going to keep her away.

  Dropping her arms, she stepped her feet together and bent at the waist. Hands curled around her ankles, she touched her forehead to her knees.

  Deep breath in, deep breath out.

  Eyes closed, she thought ag
ain about the events of yesterday afternoon, after she said goodbye to Bobby and his friend.

  She’d finished her shift without writing up the verbal warning she’d handed out. It wasn’t a requirement and fielding the inevitable questions was something she wanted to avoid. It wouldn’t take long for the news to spread that the hometown hero really was back in town, but she wasn’t going to be the one to herald Bobby’s arrival.

  Instead she offered quick goodbyes and walked out of the sheriff’s office for the last time with the contents of her locker in a box, including the card she’d found wedged into the metal latch of the locker door, signed by everyone in the department. That was a nice surprise considering she’d refused the goodbye potluck dinner they’d wanted to throw for her.

  Of course, tonight she had plans to meet up with Maggie and Racy at the Blue Creek Saloon, for her official “turning the page” party. Seeing how the next chapter in her life was nothing but a blank slate, Leeann didn’t really feel like celebrating.

  She wasn’t worried about her lack of income despite the devastating loss of her inheritance and model earnings thanks to a Ponzi scheme a couple of years ago.

  She still had enough money in the bank thanks to the sale of the land to pay the bills for a while, but her aunt’s last round of cancer treatments had eaten up most of it. Thankfully, Ursula’s latest medical checkup had come back negative and she was already back to work at her hair salon, but that still didn’t explain the restlessness Leeann had been feeling for the past week.

  Heck, for the past month. The past few months.

  A restlessness that came to fruition this morning when—for the first time in a long time—she’d awakened without a plan.

  Leeann always had a plan.

  Most times in writing, sometimes only in her head. Knowing how her day was laid out—hour by hour, step by step—helped her to maintain balance and purpose for her life.

  The last time she’d been without a plan had been thanks to a police investigation that came to an abrupt end with the decision there hadn’t been enough evidence to go forward.

  A decision that had reduced her to being a prisoner in her penthouse apartment in the heart of Manhattan. Rarely bothering to shower or get out of her pajamas, she’d had all her food delivered to her front door, her only contact with the outside world via her computer.

  She hadn’t even answered her cell phone, blessedly silent for weeks thanks to the press of a button. Not that she’d let that stop her from smashing it into a million confetti-like pieces one night with a hammer—

  “Stop!”

  She jerked upright, her voice echoing in the quiet morning, bouncing off the water and causing her to blink.

  She’d almost done it. She’d almost gotten sucked back into the nightmare that had been her life six years ago. A nightmare she hadn’t thought about for a very long time.

  No, that’s not true.

  Three months ago she, Racy and Maggie had gone away for a girls’ weekend at a spa in Jackson Hole. After a day filled with massages, facials and body wraps and a couple shared bottles of wine later by the fire, she’d finally disclosed to her best friends in the world her deepest secret.

  Telling them hadn’t been as hard as she’d thought it would be. They were very sweet and supportive, and Leeann now realized the restlessness she’d been feeling had started after that trip, despite her believing she’d truly moved on from the past.

  Until last night.

  Until Bobby had come back to town.

  “Don’t blame him. Your thoughts are your own. Your actions are your own.” She spoke aloud her familiar mantra while dropping into a deep lunging stretch. Planting her hands midthigh, she lowered her forehead to her knee. “Your decisions are you own.”

  “Words to live by.”

  Chapter Three

  The male voice caused Leeann to jerk upright; the sudden movement sent her stumbling backward. She lost her balance and ended up on her backside in the damp grass.

  “Jeez, me and my big mouth.” Bobby made his way toward her, leaning heavily on a cane. “Here, let me help—”

  “Stop.” Leeann scrambled to her feet, holding out one hand. “I’m up. I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”

  Bobby slowed but continued walking. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Conscious of her bare arms and abs thanks to the cropped tank top she wore that was nothing more than a fancy sports bra, Leeann moved past him to grab her jacket and yank it on. “What are you doing down here?”

  He faced her. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  She righted her ball cap without removing it, but still met his gaze. “I own this land.”

  “And I own the road you used to get to this land.”

  Leeann tried not to stare as Bobby leaned slightly to his left, obviously favoring one leg as he gripped the carved head of his cane. Something he hadn’t used yesterday when she’d ordered him out of his camper. “How did you even know I was—wait, you have a security system.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  No, it didn’t. Not with the multimillion-dollar home he had built on the land adjacent to hers.

  “There isn’t an access road from the main highway to the pond,” she explained. “I used your driveway, but I turned off just before the gate.”

  “Yeah, I saw the images.”

  This had to have been less than fifteen minutes ago.

  Then he’d come here, using the path only the two of them had known about, the path she’d used all those years ago when she’d lived in a big house up on that same hill.

  Memories of the times the two of them spent here together rushed back to her. Times they shrieked with laughter while splashing around in the icy water on a hot summer day, when she’d helped him understand the complexity of calculus, or the many times he’d held her close as she cried over yet another fight with her mother.

  The time they’d fumbled through the unknown yet passion-filled moments of making love for the first time in a sleeping bag beneath a star-filled sky.

  Leeann forced herself back to the present. She and Bobby were strangers to each other now.

  “What are you thinking about?” He leaned forward, his gaze roaming from her head to her toes.

  Just like he’d done yesterday. And like yesterday, her body responded with a heated flush she quickly blamed on her run.

  “What—nothing.” She took another step backward, an automatic reaction she had drilled into her head whenever anyone invaded her physical space.

  “You do realize your face still gives away your thoughts?”

  Only with him.

  She’d learned over the years, first with her parents and then in New York, how to put on a false face, to pretend an emotion that didn’t exist. Then later, she’d used that same skill at the police academy to prove to her instructors and fellow cadets she was more than just her looks.

  Even here in Destiny among her former coworkers and friends, she worked hard to earn a reputation for having unflappable composure.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pulled the brim of her cap lower over her eyes and turned away, her gaze on the still waters of her pond.

  “Why’d you cut your hair?”

  His simple question had her spinning back to look at him. The sun on his face made it hard for her to see his eyes. Was he laughing at her?

  “I think that’s why it took me so long to recognize you yesterday, that and the uniform.” Bobby switched his cane from one hand to the other. “You always vowed you’d never cut your hair. Was it because of your job?”

  “Huh?”

  “Were you required to cut it when you became a cop?”

  Dull kitchen scissors. Piles of knotted and tangled unwashed hair littering her lap and the gleaming hardwood floor beneath her. Frantic pounding on the door. Loud clicks of the locks releasing. The shock on her aunt’s face when she found her sitti
ng there—

  Years of practice allowed her to shut down the memory.

  “A deputy sheriff—” she corrected him, her voice barely a whisper. Pulling in a deep breath, she cleared her throat and answered his question. “And no, I cut my hair long before I went to the police academy.”

  “After you up and disappeared from your glamorous life in New York?”

  He knew about that? Not that her career in high fashion was a secret, nor was her sudden retirement.

  At one time she’d been one of the highest-paid models on the circuit with either her face or body gracing a different magazine every month. She’d split her time between New York, Paris and Milan, walking more than a million miles on the runway and posing for a hundred different shots in the quest for the perfect angle, the perfect composition, until that one day when she’d been too perfect and paid a horrible price.

  Bobby tilted his head to one side and Leeann realized he was waiting for an answer. “What was your question?”

  “Did you cut your hair after you left New York?”

  Technically, no, but thanks to her aunt she’d left the city the same night she’d hacked off the horrific reminder of what that maniac had done—

  “Yes.”

  “So…” He dragged out the word, and tilted his head in the other direction. “How long have you been deputy sheriff?”

  “Three years.”

  Bobby sighed. “You know, this would go a lot better if you gave me more than one-or two-word answers.”

  Crossing her arms over her chest was a purely defensive move, but she did it anyway. “What would?”

  “Catching up. Getting to know each other again. It has been a few years since we’ve talked.”

  Fourteen years to be exact, but between the memories and his cutting remark from yesterday, she was quickly turning into a swirling mass of hurt and confusion, and she hated that. “Funny, I was under the impression you’re not interested in anything I have to say.”

  That shut him up.

  “What? No quick comeback?” She dropped her arms, suddenly very tired. “You didn’t seem to have a problem putting me in my place yesterday. You must be losing your touch.”