“Well that certainly makes things more perplexing.” Olivia chewed her lip in worry.
“I wish I hadn’t said anything.” Rick paused to take a bite of pie, swallowing with a groan. “It’s just… I thought he’d be over that by now. But he isn’t taking cases, and he won’t talk about it. He’s been taking a day off a week for almost nine months now, and I have no idea what he’s doing. I don’t think Mom knows. And Tara and I are overwhelmed with business and getting further behind.”
“Well, there’s one way to find out.” Tom took the last bite of his sandwich and pulled his plate of pie to him. “Chad should ask her.”
Chad groaned. “I knew you were going to say that.”
Tom rapidly sorted through the options, but didn’t come up with anything else. “Mom loves us all, but she talks to you, brother.”
“I agree,” Olivia said. “Chad should talk to her.”
The three of them looked at Chad, who shifted in his chair as if on a hot seat. He grimaced, opened his mouth to argue, then acquiesced. “All right. But I think Grandma should talk to Dad and find out what he’s up to. This is all probably nothing.”
The three men looked at Olivia. She shrugged. “Fine. I can do that.”
“Then it’s settled,” Tom said. “You’ll let us know?”
Chad and Olivia nodded.
“And when is Walter’s funeral?” Olivia stacked the sandwich plates from the table.
“As soon as Summer calls me back. Hopefully before the week is out.” Tom bit his lip, trying to stifle his irritation. He inhaled his pie, savoring the smooth sweetness and the chunks of banana. Not his favorite, yet not bad. He took the dishes from next to his grandmother and carried them to the sink.
Grief washed over him again—missing his friend, his surrogate grandfather. They’d fallen into a friendship at church. Tom had volunteered the next winter to help Walter with some house repairs, and they’d become solid friends, sharing a love for card games and books, politics, and public service. He’d helped Walter stay in his home for six years before his health forced him to move to the nursing home. The stroke he’d had two months ago robbed him of all resemblance to the Walter he’d known. It was a relief he was gone. He missed him, though. Missed their conversations, missed doing things for him, and grew more at odds with himself and his life as time passed.
His grandmother walked up behind Tom and rubbed his shoulder. “I know how hard this is for you.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held on for just a few moments, listening to the conversation at the table between Rick, Chad, and Bret about working Saturday at the farm. Chad was about to open the pumpkin market for the fall and needed help.
His cell phone rang, the distinctive notes of Steve Miller Band “Swingtown” blasting from the counter near the door. Releasing his grandmother, he went and picked it up, frowning at the screen. Not recognizing the number, he opened the back door and went out on the porch before answering.
“Applegate.” He listened to the silence for a moment. “Hello?”
“I’m here,” a quiet, melodic voice said. “Summer LeFey.”
Tom exhaled carefully. Finally.
She went on before he could reply. “You called a couple of days ago. I’m sorry I didn’t return your call sooner. What do you need?”
There was no easy way to tell a loved one someone had died. As a cop, he’d done it a time or two, but it wasn’t a job he relished or handled with any expertise. He figured she deserved to hear it from him, so he delivered the unvarnished news. “Summer, I’m sorry to tell you your grandfather died two days ago.” Tom tensed, not sure what he expected from a woman he’d talked to a few times, argued vehemently with once, but never really understood.
“He died?” Her voice wavered, seemed unsure.
“Yes. He’s been declining for several months, Summer. He went in his sleep.”
“He’s gone?”
“Yes.” He stayed motionless on the porch, listening intently for any clues as to her feelings. “I need to arrange the funeral. When do you think you can come?”
‘Tomorrow. I’ll be there tomorrow,” she whispered.
Before he could say anything else, she hung up, or he lost her, he wasn’t sure which.
He pulled the cell phone away from his ear to be sure it wasn’t dropped coverage. But he still had multiple bars. He frowned at the phone, debating whether to call her back to confirm they hadn’t been cut off. Considering it had taken her two days to call him back, he figured he wouldn’t get her again. And what did it matter. He imparted the necessary information to the prodigal granddaughter, and now he could get on with setting up Walter’s funeral.
The back door screen squeaked. Bret came out on the porch and stood there.
“Summer LeFey.” Tom answered the unspoken question.
Bret silently crossed the porch. “About time.
When is she coming?”
“Tomorrow. She’s coming tomorrow. Guess the funeral will be on Friday if I can set it up with Pastor Cale.”
Bret adjusted his duty belt. “I have to get back on patrol. I’ll be around if you need me.” He clasped a hand on Tom’s shoulder, and then disappeared around the side of the house.
Tom slid his cell phone in his pocket and went back inside. What he needed was to get Walter’s granddaughter back in town so he could bury his friend and then find a way to get back to normal. Or what would pass for normal without this dissatisfaction with his life eating at him.
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Numbness overtook Summer, a disbelief that squeezed the air from her chest, emotion clogging the back of her throat.
Her grandfather was dead.
She bent over, hardly able to breathe. For some unrealistic reason, she’d always thought of him as strong and indestructible. Maybe that had more to do with the anger and the memories of a seventeen-year-old bent on artistic freedom than truth. Maybe that’s why she’d never gone home, afraid his enduring judgment would be more than she could bear again, and she would crumble and give up in the face of it.
Instead, she appeased her conscience by calling Tom Applegate and sending money, but never actually visiting. Unfortunately, it never really worked. She was continually laden with fierce defensiveness about who had been right and who had been wrong. Now the reality of her stubbornness and petty refusal to see him permeated from skin to core, shredding her with both poignant memories and distressful retrospection.
She straightened and stared out the window, fiercely wiping at her blurred vision. She swiped away those tears before they could slide off her face, clamped her mouth shut before any sobs could escape. A futile attempt. They wouldn’t be denied.
“What have I done?” She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked.
The canvas across the room mocked her with its blankness.
In that moment of despair and grief, her grandfather won.
CHAPTER TWO
Summer stood on the front porch of her grandfather’s home, looking out over the neighborhood. A one-story house here and a two-story there, green yards with just so flower pots on porches and bicycles in the driveways. She’d been gone ten years, yet Mrs. Patch still lived across the street looking a hundred years old as she always did. The number of houses with children had increased, yet the flavor of the neighborhood remained the same, an aged constant that both comforted and pricked. The August afternoon burned hot, and it wasn’t even the peak of the afternoon yet.
Her rental car sat in the driveway, a sedate silver sedan. It fit the town, but was so far removed from the electric blue Jaguar she drove in San Francisco as to be like silk to denim. Dressed in navy Capri pants and a yellow silk camisole, she shivered—not from cold, but from memories surfacing like bubbles. Her grandfather’s judgments taunted her—especially given she hadn’t painted anything new in months.
It didn’t matter that her work was well known now. It didn’t matter that her paintings commanded tens of thousands of dollar
s in the free market. She’d reached a turning point. And this place was stopping her, stifling her—creeping into her creativity until she’d all but dried up. No brush strokes would come. She couldn’t run away this time. She had to shift those belittling memories to her advantage—become Summer LeFey, world-renowned artist, not an Echo Falls child misfit.
She sank into the porch rocking chair, positioned to overlook her grandmother’s garden, and kicked off her sandals. The colorful butterflies flitted among the riotous flowers. Her grandmother used to spend hours on her knees in the garden, pulling that weed, adding this plant, trimming that flower. She’d always been guided by some inner harmony, much as Summer was with her painting.
She listened to the chair rails creak against the porch as she rocked. The sprinkler swished through its circuit on the lawn next door. Kids shouted down the street. All was as it should be, yet not.
Her grandfather’s death shifted things, making her feel less and more all at once.
Yesterday, when she’d calmed from the news, she’d made a promise to herself. She would take four weeks. Four weeks to bury him and try to forgive. Four weeks to clean out and remember the good times with both him and her grandmother. Four weeks to clear the chaff.
Then she’d get the hell out of here and never come back.
The thought gave her a pang, but when she got back home to California, she could embrace normal. She would paint and then paint some more. There would be no more blocks, and she could finally produce the paintings she needed for her showing.
The sound of a vehicle pulling into the drive made her plant both feet to stop the chair. She twisted to see an Echo Falls Police Department car roll to a stop. What now? One of the neighbors must have called, not used to seeing anyone but Tom Applegate at the house.
Just thinking his name rattled her nerves. She’d had a crush on him in junior high before he’d graduated high school and gone to college. She talked to him on the phone many times since her grandfather had gone to the nursing home, even argued with him about coming home. Through it all, she doubted he remembered the girl who’d handed him her art.
She’d intended to seek him out later to get the key for the house, but the minute she got to town, she’d wanted to see the place she used to call home. It never occurred to her that it would be a problem.
She rose from the chair and leaned against the porch post, waiting to make explanations to the police officer.
The engine turned off and a long moment of silence settled in the yard.
A uniformed man with a long lean frame stepped from the car.
Tom Applegate.
He’d aged spectacularly.
Sturdy, muscular—his form made her mouth water, made her fingers itch for a pencil to sketch with once again. The feeling was enough of an anomaly of her talent of late, and she closed her eyes for a moment to savor. Then she opened her eyes and saw his face, close up and personal.
Her breath seized, pulling into a painful knot in her chest. Dark hair, cut short grazed his scalp. Sunglasses covered those knockout blue eyes, darn it! His nose, his cheekbones, his chin—sculpted, fascinating contours—as damn close to perfection as she’d ever seen. This was why she’d felt compelled to draw him the first time.
Now, however, his lips were turned down in a scowl. He looked like a thundercloud ready to drop rain.
She watched him walk to the front porch. He took his time—authority in measured steps, the blue of his uniform contrasting against tanned skin, his hands loose at his sides, but hovering near his weapon. His high school baseball uniform had been thrilling to an innocent young girl; this uniform devastated a grown woman.
He stopped mere inches from the porch and removed his sunglasses. He gave her the once over with mocking blue eyes. Her nipples peaked, the sudden rush of lust knocking her off balance.
“Summer,” her Michelangelo said.
“Tom.” She didn’t offer to shake his hand. Some feminine instinct warning her not to touch him. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“Educated guess when Mrs. Patch reported a woman intruder to the police department.” His rich, baritone voice stirred a fluttering inside that defied analysis.
Summer straightened her shoulders, feeling out of her element and not liking it. “House looks good. Seems like you helped a lot with that.”
He did another lazy sweep over her with his eyes, then returned to her face, disgust there. “Seems like,” he finally answered.
His reaction freeze-dried her lust.
“You don’t like me much, do you?” She didn’t know why she blurted that or why she cared. A muscle in his cheek twitched, his hand clenched and unclenched. Silence dragged. Then he said, “Walter had some problems in the last year. Could have used you around. Seems like you two should have made peace before he passed.”
She shrugged, feeling the censure like a blade. “Look, I appreciate everything you did for him, but it wasn’t that simple.” Summer winced, cursing herself for even starting a conversation that would put her on the defensive. She should have just asked for the damn key.
He raised a brow. His silence condemned, challenged, called her out. And she supposed he should. The man had been a good friend to her grandfather for ten years and had taken care of him while she’d been painting—absent from here. On purpose.
She crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing her hands up her arms to soothe her nerves. “I made something of myself away from here, away from him.”
“Yes, you did.” He put a booted foot on the first step.
Summer curled her toes into the cool planks of the front porch. He wasn’t moving, but she felt as if he’d invaded her space with his lean length, his muscled shoulders, and his dark handsome look. “It was time to come back, to settle some things.” Damn her mouth for not just shutting.
“After he’s dead? When there’s nothing left except to bury him and deal with the house?” His bitter tone was coated with disbelief and utter disgust. His mouth tightened into a hard line. “Hope it helps.”
He laid the key to the house on the railing, turned, and walked to his police vehicle. He didn’t look back. He didn’t so much as acknowledge that she still stood on the porch staring after him.
Anger and defiance rose to choke her. “He hated my guts,” she yelled at his back.
He froze with his hand on the door handle and twisted to stare at her. “He adored you. Talked about your art all over town. Loved you like only a grandfather could.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Too bad it’s too late to make amends.”
He got in the vehicle and pulled away from the driveway, leaving her tumbling into the staleness of what she just recognized as her life—with a deep oozing wound and conflicted memories.
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Summer was prettier than Tom had expected, more lush, with curves in all the right places. He’d seen her in everything from cherished family photos to glossy magazines, from grainy home movies to slick television documentaries. He remembered her from when she was younger. She’d been all legs with sad green eyes and a painful shyness. Now after only a five-minute conversation, her living, breathing being was under his skin like a bad heat rash.
Tom pulled into the police department parking lot and sat for a moment to catch his balance. She’d stood near the railing on the porch, curling her toes into the smooth, weathered pine boards. She stared out at the riotous colors in the overgrown garden, one Walter had insisted never be weeded—wild had been the way his wife had liked that particular garden. Her hair was as black as midnight and blew gently around her pale face in the heated afternoon breeze. Her navy pants and yellow tank top molded to a body curved to perfection.
He got out of his truck and slammed the door, pausing to watch the ambulance pull into the hospital lot across the street and to wave at Dana, their daytime dispatcher, as she left for the day. It took longer than he expected to shove that alluring shimmer of attraction back down in his gut and tie it off.
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br /> Damn, how was lust even possible? He didn’t like Summer.
Didn’t like her indifference to her grandfather and his troubles.
Didn’t like her avoidance of issues that would have been better off confronted and solved years ago. He might be male and have a healthy sex drive, but he was damn particular about who shared his bed and why. He hadn’t done lust since high school. He preferred relationships—friendships that bloomed into honest, caring emotions in the bedroom. He definitely didn’t qualify Summer LeFey as even a potential friend, let alone an intimate partner.
He hated what she’d done to Walter. Especially at the end. That shiny look in his eyes when he talked about her, how it always dulled when he remembered that she wouldn’t be coming to see him. The grip he kept on the picture album, almost sleeping with the blasted thing.
So even though she had tempting breasts that would mold into the palms of Tom’s hands, dark hair that would no doubt be a sweet sensation against his skin, and a nicely curved derriere he wanted to dig his fingers into, he couldn’t reconcile that desire…that driving lust with her actions over the last ten years. He wanted her gone, needed her to finish this and walk away.
The funeral was Friday. There were things in the will that would need to be dealt with—pieces of Walter’s life that were being doled out to friends. He’d have to help her with that. But as soon as that was finished, he would give her a police escort out of town.
He let that plan take over his gut—satisfied he could make that work and stave off the burning that had come with one look at her.
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The cloying smell of the yellow lilies draped across her grandfather’s casket was making her eyes water. At least that’s what she told herself. Summer sat alone in the front pew of the Methodist Church. The morning service for her grandfather had begun several minutes ago. Tom Applegate stood at the front of the church singing a moving rendition ofAmazing Grace in a deep baritone that twisted her fragile emotions. His parents and his grandmother sat behind Summer. The pews were filled with people, so many she recognized but their names eluded her.
Echo Falls, Texas Boxed Set Page 44
