And next to Jayne.
Everyone else talked so much that he didn't have to. Instead he ate and tried to remember a Lewis family meal that had been filled with easy conversation and laughter. There had always been the fear that something would set Del off—he wouldn't like Carrie's choice of dishes, one of the kids would spill something, Carrie would cower too much or not enough. Del had liked her scared but not too scared. Tyler supposed that might have pricked at the bastard's conscience—if he had one.
"So, Tyler…" Mrs. Jones's voice broke into his thoughts. "We know you have a sister. What other family do you have here?"
He blinked. "My grandparents. My mother. Three brothers. A few aunts and uncles and some cousins."
"What about your father?"
His hand cramped, and he looked down to see that he had a death grip on his fork. He forced his fingers to unclench and laid it on his plate, then lowered his hands to his lap. "He died a long time ago."
"I'm sorry. He must have been fairly young. An accident?"
"Yeah," he lied.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "That must have been tough on you and your brothers and sister."
"Yeah," he lied again.
What would they think—this nice, normal, average family—if he told them his father's death had been the best thing to happen to his family? If he told them that his mother had killed his father after a particularly brutal beating? That she'd waited until he'd fallen asleep and then she'd stabbed him twice in the chest with a butcher knife?
They would be shocked. Everyone was.
And they would wonder whether he had the same violent tendencies. Everyone did.
Everyone around him had become experts on domestic abuse, had spouted the statistics regarding the sons of abusive fathers who grew up to become abusive themselves and the daughters who entered into their own abusive relationships. They'd talked about the unbroken cycle and they'd watched him, because he was, after all, most like his father. He was the angry one, the hot-tempered one, the one in trouble in school. They'd pegged him for the one most likely to follow in his father's footsteps.
And though they didn't know it, he hadn't disappointed them.
Revulsion shuddered through him, masking the beep-beep of the timer. He shook his head to clear it, jerkily scraped his chair legs across the wood floor and went to take the pie from the oven and the ice cream from the freezer. When he turned, he almost bumped into Jayne carrying a handful of dishes to the sink. "I can do that."
"I know you can. And I can help."
She stood there, refusing to back off, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her, could smell the flowers and spice of her perfume. That scent had lingered in the house after her brief visit last Saturday and in the truck when they'd returned from Daniel's on Monday. After he'd dropped them off, he'd pulled around back and just sat there, breathing deeply, wishing … just wishing.
The next day, despite the morning chill, he'd driven to work with both windows down, letting the wind chase away the last whiff of the fragrance.
If she was challenging him to see who was more stubborn, she would lose. But who said it was a challenge? He hated being in debt to anyone. If he was going to take, then he damn well wanted to give, too. Wasn't it possible she felt the same way?
With a shrug, he stepped aside. While he dished up the pie and ice cream, she cleared the rest of the dishes from the table and left the leftover lasagna on the stove. She carried Lucy's dessert to the table, then came back to pick up two more plates while he reached for the last two.
"See?" she murmured in a voice meant for him alone. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
If she only knew.
* * *
Chapter 6
« ^ »
The first thought in Jayne's mind Saturday morning was, Please, God, another hour's sleep. But she knew it wasn't going to happen. The rental truck's engine was rumbling out front, nearly blocking out Tyler's and her father's voices, Cameron and Diaz were barking and her mother was in the kitchen making too much noise.
A moment later the smell of freshly brewed coffee filtered through the sheet that covered Jayne's nose. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she pulled the cover down and peeked to find Clarice holding a mug over her, fanning the steam her way.
"Life's tough when you have to make your bed on the living room sofa, isn't it?" Clarice asked, sitting on the coffee table.
Jayne sipped the coffee and sighed. She loved real coffee, but almost always resorted to instant. As if the extra few minutes the brewed stuff would take was too much to spare? "Mmm. Give me enough of this, and I can get some real work done. I haven't written a word since we got here."
"You've had other things that needed doing. Once you're all unpacked and settled in, you'll write."
Jayne knew she was right. She was already feeling the pull. As she'd set up her desk in the corner of the living room the day before, she'd wanted to sit down, boot up the computer and dive right into the current manuscript. She always felt that need whenever she was away from it for too long.
"Your father and Tyler are going to take all that junk to the dump," Clarice said. "Lucy has reminded me no fewer than seven times that we're supposed to drop her off at the Ryan house for her first horseback-riding lesson. Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"What's the worst that could happen?"
"She could get thrown or stepped on."
"I'm sure Sarah and Daniel Ryan wouldn't let their six-year-old or her five-year-old friend ride a horse that's prone to throwing or stepping on its riders." Truth was, Jayne wasn't wild about the idea of Lucy on an animal that outweighed her so tremendously, but she was trying not to be overprotective. She'd accepted Cameron and Diaz; she was thinking about getting Lucy a dog of her own; she'd even let her climb up into the Ryan kids' tree house—though she was drawing the line at letting her sleep there.
"Well, come on," Clarice said as she stood. "It's time to rise and shine."
Jayne groaned and sank deeper against the sofa cushions. "Here come your dad and Tyler."
Gulping the coffee she'd just taken in her mouth, Jayne held out the mug to her mother, threw back the covers and made a hasty retreat to the bedroom her parents were using. Her mother's laugh followed her, because she'd fibbed. There was no squeak of the screen door, no creaking floorboards, no deep voices. When Jayne returned to the living room, both men were still outside, still heaving Edna's discards into the back of the rental truck.
"He's a nice boy," Clarice said when Jayne joined her at the open door after retrieving her coffee. "Troubled, though."
Nice, yes. Boy, absolutely not … and thank heavens for that. Jayne would feel way too guilty if she was this preoccupied with a boy.
The troubled part was also accurate. Troubled pasts were much easier to deal with in a book than in real life. On paper, she could always strip traumatic events of their lasting effects. She could provide the love, acceptance and healing that a character needed to find his or her happily ever after. She could guarantee them that.
Real life held no such guarantees.
"I imagine it goes back to his father," Clarice continued. "Losing your dad at a young age can be so hard for a boy."
"Depends on what kind of father he was." When Clarice looked at her, Jayne shrugged. "You taught school for thirty-five years, Mom. You had plenty of students whose lives would have been better without their fathers in them. His father could have been abusive. Neglectful. Indifferent. He just might not have given a—"
"Damn," Clarice finished when she didn't. "I've heard the word before."
"Not from me, you haven't."
"I've read it in your books—along with a whole lot of other things. I don't even want to know where you learned all that."
"Oh, come on. I've never written anything that you and Dad haven't done." Yes, there were love scenes in her books, described as "explicit" in the mail-order book club guidelines but deemed "warm" by the review Web sit
es that rated such things.
"You're right," Clarice said as she pushed open the screen. She stepped outside, closed the door, then gave a wicked grin. "But you didn't hear about it from me."
Shaking her head, Jayne finished her coffee, then went to fold the sheets on the couch. She was holding one above her head, trying to line up the edges, when the screen door bumped quietly. "Hey, Mom, why don't we have breakfast in town…" Lowering the sheet, she saw Tyler. He wore his usual outfit—snug-fitting T-shirt, faded jeans, work boots and a lack of expression—and he was much better than a cup of steaming caffeine for getting her heart pumping. "Oh. You're not Mom."
"Nice of you to notice," he said drily. His gaze dropped to read her shirt—Everyone has a book inside them. I just fed mine a box of chocolate. "How many of those do you have?"
"T-shirts with sayings? I never counted." She shrugged. "A lot of writers' groups sell them to raise money."
His gaze slid down again, this time going past her white denim shorts to her sandals before coming back up. Suddenly the morning felt about ten degrees warmer than it had. "As soon as we get Edna's refrigerator, we'll be ready to go."
She nodded, then picked up the sheets and her pillow, clutching them to her. "What are the odds of all your family and friends being at Rebecca's again this morning?"
"I don't know. The odds of me being in town two Saturdays in a row are pretty slim."
"Do you want to chance it and have breakfast? Or should I wait until you and Dad are gone to suggest it?"
He thought about it a moment, then shrugged.
"Is that a yes-I-want-to or no-I-don't?"
"It'd be okay."
"So enthusiastic," she teased, but inside she was delighted that he'd said yes without looking as if every minute would be torture. "Why don't we meet you there? Then when we're done, you guys can go to the dump and we'll take Lucy to Jordan's."
He shrugged again before heading into the kitchen. Rolling her gaze heavenward, Jayne took her bedding into the bedroom. The hallway that had seemed more than spacious when she'd painted it a few days earlier was now cramped with floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining one side. Another bookcase took up most of one living room wall, and another left precious little space to maneuver around the bed in her bedroom. She could have put one or two of them in storage, but then where would her books go? She wouldn't know how to live without them around her.
Their stuff had certainly made the house … cozy, she decided—sounded so much better than cluttered or crowded—but she didn't mind. It was now officially home. That made up for a lot.
As Bill came in, Jayne went outside. She stood next to her mother and Lucy while Tyler and Bill wrestled the old refrigerator out the door and onto the truck. For its compact size, it weighed a lot, and she couldn't help admiring the muscles flexing and bunching in Tyler's arms and across his back as he worked.
With a start, she realized her mother was enjoying the same view of her father.
She would have that someday, she promised herself. Mutual love, admiration, respect … and lust. Not temporarily, not for a few months or a few years, but lasting a lifetime. She would still get as tingly looking at him in thirty years as she did the first time she laid eyes on him. The bonds between them wouldn't grow old and dull but would strengthen with time. They would love each other forever.
Starting someday.
* * *
"You want to drive?" Mr. Jones asked, holding out the keys to the truck.
Tyler had started driving when he was fourteen—his granddad's tractor or the old farm truck. He'd never driven anything as big as the moving van—or as lumbering, he discovered in the first few minutes. It was like a turtle on wheels and kicked up enough dust that Jayne, in the Tahoe, went around them after less than a quarter mile.
"I appreciate you being so much help to my daughter—and to me," Mr. Jones said. "I forget I'm not as young as I used to be. This whole process would have been quite a job without you."
"It's not a problem," Tyler murmured.
"Clarice worried about them moving here. Jayne's lived in Chicago all her life. Her mother just couldn't understand why she'd suddenly pack up and move south—and to a place where she doesn't know anyone. I told her, maybe she just needed a change of scene—someplace that didn't remind her so much of Greg."
Then moving into his grandmother's house didn't seem the best choice. But Tyler didn't think Greg had anything to do with Jayne's decision to move. She didn't act at all regretful, bitter or even disappointed over the end of her marriage.
Or was that just what he wanted to think?
His jaw tightened. He didn't care if Jayne was brokenhearted. If she'd loved Greg Miller with every fiber of her being. If she'd been devastated by the divorce. She was his neighbor—not his friend, not a potential girlfriend, not a potential anything. She was no different than Edna.
Right. And when was the last time he'd admired the way Edna's jeans fit? Found himself looking at her legs? Noticed how she smelled? Remembered how she smelled days later?
After a time, Mr. Jones asked, "Have you always lived in Sweetwater?"
Tyler slowed to a stop at the highway, looked both ways, then pulled out. "No. We lived in Nashville until I was fourteen."
"Tough age to move. Have to adjust to a new school, new kids, a small town after a big city."
Had to adjust to the fact that his mother was on trial and, later, in prison for killing his father. Had to know that he and his brothers and Rebecca were a burden his grandparents couldn't afford. Had to listen to the teasing of the other kids and endure the curious stares and whispers everywhere he went. Had to bear the watching—by his grandparents, his shrink, his teachers, the school counselor, hell, everyone—as if he were a bomb about to go off.
"It wasn't so bad," he said at last, and it wasn't even a total lie. He and the kids had been a burden in Nashville, too—God knows, Del had told them so often enough. There had been teasing, curious stares and whispers there, too. Though most kids in their schools had been poor, the Lewises had been the poorest. Del hadn't made a lot of money, and every penny he'd spent on them was one less he could spend on booze.
The simple fact was life had never been easy. His grandmother said some people were just meant to have more than their share of trials and tribulations. It seemed the whole damn Morris/Lewis family was included in that group.
"Would you leave Sweetwater if the chance arose?" Mr. Jones asked.
Ten years ago, that had been Tyler's dearest dream—graduate from high school and leave Tennessee forever. Go someplace where no one had ever heard of his parents, where he could make up any kind of background he wanted.
But taking care of his family was a habit he couldn't walk away from, and if he'd left the few friends he had, who knew if he ever would have made more. At least here he wasn't totally alone, as he would almost certainly be anywhere else.
He shrugged as the outskirts of Sweetwater came into sight ahead. A little shabby, a little down on its luck, but… "It's home."
And he knew better than most that "home" could be good or bad. Sweetwater, for the most part, had been pretty good.
By the time they reached downtown, Jayne, her mother and Lucy were window-shopping along Main Street
. "Clarice's favorite pastime," Mr. Jones remarked. "She's a world-class shopper."
"A person's got to have a hobby," Tyler remarked as he turned into the empty parking lot that backed the bank, where he could take as many parking spaces as he needed.
They locked up the truck and walked back to Main. Jayne, Lucy and Mrs. Jones were waiting on the corner near the diner.
As soon as she saw them, Lucy charged inside, no doubt, Tyler thought drily, to claim a booth that would put him in too close proximity to her mother.
But he was wrong, he saw when he followed the others inside. Lucy was sitting on a stool at the counter, swiveling from side to side and talking animatedly—as if she had any other way—to Rebecca. She b
roke off and patted first the stool on her right, then the one on her left. "Sit here, Grandpa. Grandma, you sit here."
The Joneses exchanged looks. Clearly sitting on a bar stool wasn't their idea of comfort, but they wouldn't refuse her. What was a little discomfort when you got an ear-to-ear grin in return?
Jayne sat next to her mother, which left Tyler with the stool on the end. Sitting at the counter had the added benefit of keeping his back to the rest of the diners. They could talk or look if they wanted, but he didn't have to know it.
"So you're Lucy's grandma and grandpa," Rebecca said as she passed out menus. "She was telling me how much fun she's had since you got here. I'm Rebecca Lewis."
"Oh, Tyler's sister," Mrs. Jones said, leaning forward to look at him. "You don't look a thing alike."
"No," Rebecca agreed, giving him a wink on the side. "But we're so much alike inside that it's scary. Can I start you off with coffee?"
"Do you see yourself as a lot like Rebecca?" Jayne asked quietly while the others debated decaf and the real stuff.
He knew she disliked his shrugs—he'd seen the eye-roll—but he gave one anyway. He and Rebecca had both suffered at their father's hand. They both had scars inside where no one could see them. Where he avoided relationships altogether, she went through men like water through a sieve. He was antisocial while she was very social—but even her friendships were only surface-deep. He kept to himself physically as well as emotionally, while she kept herself hidden, even from him. "We probably have more in common than not."
She nodded as if that answer had told her something she wanted to know. Her next words gave no hint of it, though. "My parents are leaving tomorrow. Lucy will be so sad."
"Then maybe you should move back to Chicago, where she doesn't have to be sad."
She gave him a sidelong look. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
The question didn't require an answer. That was what he'd wanted from the beginning and still did. He wanted his privacy back. Wanted to believe that he was in control. Wanted his life the way it was before she'd intruded.
SOMEBODY'S HERO Page 9
