He said, “You can wait for the insurance people, let them tell you what can be saved. I can turn this truck around and get us the hell outta here. You don’t have to try and go in there.”
She gripped his hand tighter. “What was that you said last night? About not wasting any part of your life doing what you think you have to do?”
“So don’t. We’ll go.” He tried to pull his hand from hers.
She held on. “I mean, I want to go in. I...need to go in, Collin.”
“Look at that porch roof. It could be dangerous. Someone on one of the county crews should have roped it off.”
“I’m going in.”
“Willa, it’s not safe.”
She hitched up her chin and stared straight in his eyes. “I have to. I do. I don’t agree with what you said last night. Some things, well, a person does just have to do.”
* * *
Collin tried to think of a way to talk her out of it. But she had that look—so solemn and determined. When Willa got that look, there was no changing her mind.
Maybe he could bargain with her a little. “Just let me go in first, okay? Let me make sure that it’s safe.”
She still had his hand in a death grip. “Great idea. You can get killed instead of me.”
“Willa. I’m not going to get killed—and if you think that it’s too dangerous, well, why are we even talking about going in?”
“It was a figure of speech, that’s all. I’m sure it’s all right. We can go in together. But you’re not leading the way. I won’t have it. Do you understand?”
In spite of the very real danger in the situation, he wanted to smile. “You know you sound like an angry schoolmarm, don’t you?”
“Well, I am an angry schoolmarm. And you’d better not cross me right now, Collin Traub.”
He put on his most solemn expression. “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t dare.”
She let go of his hand and he wished that she hadn’t. “Here.” She passed him his heavy black rubber gloves. He put them on and she put on hers. They were both still wearing their waterproof search-and-rescue boots. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get it over with.”
They got out and picked their way through the piles of broken, muddy junk in the yard. The smell was pretty bad—like spoiled food and smelly socks and other things he decided not to concentrate too hard on.
“Look,” she said, and pointed. “One of my wicker porch chairs. Right there—and look over there. Isn’t that a slow cooker?”
He only shrugged. The things she pointed to were unrecognizable to him.
The mud-caked porch creaked in an ominous way when they went up the steps. But it held. One front window was busted out, the other crisscrossed with cracks.
She reached for the door—and then she dropped her hand and laughed. “The key...”
For a moment, he knew relief. She’d forgotten the key. Good. But then she reached into her pocket and came out with it. She stuck it in the lock and gave it a turn.
The door swung inward.
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t expected. Mud everywhere and water wicking halfway up the walls. The same rotting, moldy smell as in the yard.
They went through the small entry hall and into the living room, where he doubted that any of the furniture could be saved. The large picture window on the side wall had cracked from corner to corner. The fireplace was full of mud.
“My grandmother’s clock,” Willa said in a tone of hope and wonder. It was on the mantel, a brass carriage clock, untouched. She went over to it, and gathered it into her arms. “It’s an antique. A mercury pendulum clock.” She glanced up and met his eyes. Hers were suspiciously misty. “Hey. It’s something....”
They moved on, first to the kitchen and then down the short hallway to the bedrooms and the single bath. It was bad, all of it, every room full of mud. There wasn’t much worth saving.
But there were some pictures on the walls that were good as new, and some stuff in the kitchen, dishes and such in the higher-up cabinets. And the things on the counter, too: a red toaster, cutting boards, some glass figurines on the windowsill. He suggested that they try and see if they could scare up some boxes to put the stuff in.
Willa shook her head. “And put the boxes where?”
He wanted to offer his house, but he hadn’t made it up the mountain yet, and he knew she’d only argue that she couldn’t impose on him. He thought of Paige. He didn’t like what had gone down with Paige and his brother Sutter, but he knew Paige was a good woman at heart and a true friend to Willa. She would store Willa’s stuff for her in a heartbeat. But then Willa would only give him some other excuse as to why that wouldn’t work. “We’ll haul them out to your parents’ place. How’s that?”
She clutched the brass clock like a lifeline and said primly, “That would take the rest of the day. And they are just things, after all.”
“They’re your things. And you need to get them out of here.” He asked gently, “And what else are we gonna do with the rest of the day?”
“Other people might need our help and we should—”
He didn’t let her get rolling. “Need our help doing what? Saving their things? We’re doing this. Deal with it.”
Her lower lip was trembling and her eyes were more than misty now. “I can’t... I don’t...” He felt a tightness in his chest at seeing her cry. She sniffed and turned her head away. “Oh, this is ridiculous. I have so much to be grateful for. There is no point in my crying over this. My crying will not change a thing....” A tight little sob escaped her.
“Come on. Come here.” He reached out his rubber-gloved hands and pulled her close. “It’s all right.”
“No. No, it’s not. I loved this house. I loved my little red Subaru.”
“I know,” he soothed. “I understand.”
“I...I keep telling myself how it doesn’t matter, that what matters is I’m alive and in one piece and so is most everyone else in town. But then I think of my...my treasures. My fairy-tale books, my favorite velvet pillow...I want them back, Collin. I want my things back.”
“Shh, now. I know you do. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s natural. Don’t be so hard on yourself....”
“Oh, I am being such a big baby....” Sobs shook her slim frame.
He held her. He stroked her back. She curved into him, fitting against him as though she was made to be in his arms. For that moment, he forgot about everything. It all just...receded: her ruined house, the smell of mud and mildew, her grandmother’s clock poking into his belly. There was only the woman in his arms. He held her and rested his cheek on her soft hair and waited.
Eventually, she pulled back enough to gaze up at him. Her nose was red and her eyes were puffy and she was so beautiful that his chest got tight all over again. He wished that...
But no. It was never happening. He wasn’t going there. No way.
She sniffed. “Well. This is embarrassing.”
He took her lightly by the upper arms. “You okay now?”
She sniffed again. “My nose is red, isn’t it?”
“Your nose is beautiful.”
“Liar.”
It all seemed...strange and scary, suddenly. For a moment there...no. Uh-uh. Not going there, he reminded himself for the second time. He put on a big, fake smile and asked, “What do you say we go find those boxes?”
* * *
It took the rest of the day to scare up the crates and boxes, pack up what was salvageable and drive it out to the Christensen place. Her dad had a storage area off his work shed. They put it all in there.
By then, it was past time for the community meal back in town. They’d planned ahead and brought clean clothes with them so they could take advantage of the chance for hot showers. As before, he took the hall bath and she took the one off her parents’ room.
She came out of her parents’ bathroom, her brown hair still wet, smoothed back into a knot at the nape of her neck, smelling like flowers and rain and l
emons, better than any woman he’d ever known.
And he’d known a lot of them—well, not in the past couple of years. After he hit twenty-five or so, all that chasing around had begun to seem kind of pointless. But back when he was younger, he’d lived up to his rep as a player. Then he’d been out to have himself a good time every night of the week.
And not one other woman back in the day had ever smelled as good as Willa did right then.
They raided the pantry. As they ate canned stew, crackers and peaches, Willa said how happy she was with the cleanup around the ranch.
“They’ve done a lot,” she said, “in just a couple of days.”
Her car was still out there on its side in the pasture and probably would be until she could call her insurance guy or the FEMA people and have it towed away, but the animals were back in their proper pastures and pens. The neighbors were making sure the stock got fed.
They headed back to town at a little after eight, stopping off at the Triple T for a few minutes on the way, just to check on things. In Rust Creek Falls, they went to Thelma’s to get Buster, and then they returned to the town hall for the night. There were several empty cots. Some people had found neighbors to stay with and some had gone to live with out-of-town relatives for a while.
Marjorie Hanke turned out the lights at eleven. Collin still felt wide-awake, so he got up and went outside to sit on the steps under the sliver of moon.
What do you know? He wasn’t out there five minutes before Buster was nudging up against him on one side and Willa was dropping to the steps on the other.
He almost teased her about how he wasn’t having sex with her. But no. Sex seemed a little dangerous to speak of now, something he couldn’t afford to joke about.
And then she kind of leaned against him and said, “Aren’t you going to tell me to keep my hot little hands to myself?”
There was nothing he would like better than her hot little hands all over him. However, that was not going to happen, as he knew damn well and kept constantly reminding himself.
He kept it light, meeting her eyes, teasing, “I know I can count on you to do the right thing.”
She didn’t reply. There was one of those moments. They looked at each other and neither looked away. He would only have to lean in a few inches to capture that mouth of hers, to feel her lips against his.
Finally.
At last.
But he didn’t. Apparently, he had some small amount of self-control left.
He thought of the boyfriend, the one who had asked her to marry him. He reminded himself that it was only an accident of fate that had her sitting next to him on the town hall steps at a quarter of midnight on July 6. And somehow, he managed to turn his head and stare at the moon again.
She said, very softly, “Remember when we were kids? You used to spy on me....”
He chuckled. “I had a lot of free time on my hands. And I never thought of it as spying.”
“You would watch me when I had no idea you were there. That’s spying, Collin Traub. I would look up—and there you would be, staring at me.”
He gave her a grin. “You’re getting mad about it all over again.”
She frowned—and then her brow smoothed out. “You’re right. I am. And that’s silly. It was years ago. It’s like that night at the Ace in the Hole. Better to just let it go.” She tipped her head sideways and studied him. “You were so different from your brothers....”
“Yeah, well. My mom was tired when I came along. She had five boys already. Boys are exhausting. They need discipline and supervision. Mom did a good job of that with the rest of them. But she kind of gave up on me. I ran wild.”
“I remember,” she said wryly.
He elaborated with some pride, “I broke every rule and climbed every fence and spied on you when I knew it would freak you out. I also used to like to tease the bulls.”
“Well, that’s just plain asking for it.”
“Yeah, it is. I guess I had an angel on my shoulder, though. Because somehow, every time I got in the pasture with one of the bulls and danced around shouting and waving my arms, I managed to jump the fence before I got gored.”
She was shaking her head. “What were you thinking?”
“That it was fun! I mean, I liked it, being known as big trouble just waiting to happen. I got blamed for everything, sometimes for things I didn’t even do. And it kind of got to be a point of pride for me that not a day went by I didn’t get grief for some crazy, dumb-ass behavior or other.”
She was looking at him again, her eyes shining brighter than the stars in the clear night sky overhead. “So you became known as the family troublemaker, the one no one could ever depend on.”
“Because I am the family troublemaker that no one could depend on.”
“But you’re not,” she argued. “Just look at you lately, standing up for what’s right in the town meeting, getting a couple of kids to make sure the mayor’s car was towed off Main Street the day after he died, saving Barton Derby from under the wreckage of his barn....”
“My team saved Bart Derby, the mayor’s car was not a big thing—and you stood up in that meeting, too.”
“What about rescuing me when I would have drowned, and then looking after me during the storm? And what about afterwards, too? What about today, at my house, when you held me while I cried and promised me it was going to be all right?”
“It was what you needed to hear right then.”
“Exactly. Honestly, Collin. I don’t know what I would have done without you since the flood.” She’d better stop looking at him like that. If she didn’t, well, he was going to grab her and plant one on her.
“Don’t make a big thing out of it, okay?” he heard himself mutter.
“But it is a big thing.”
“No, it’s not....”
“Yes, it is!” She got that bossy schoolteacher look. “And that does it. I’m not sitting still while you minimize all the good you’ve done. I’m going to tell you how I see it.”
“Uh-oh.”
“You listen to me, now....”
He tried not to groan. “What will you do if I don’t?”
She put her hand on his arm, apparently to hold him there by force. He felt that touch from the top of his head to the tips of his toes—and everywhere in between. “You are a born leader, Collin. This town is going to need a new mayor and I keep thinking that you could be the right man for that job.”
Mayor? She thought he should be mayor? He couldn’t help it. He threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Willa, okay. We’re friends now and everything. But you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I am onto you, in a big way.”
He grunted. “No, you’re not. You’re making something out of nothing.”
She pursed up her mouth at him. “When you’re finished blowing me off, you just tell me. And then I will share my insights with you.”
There were a whole bunch of sarcastic comebacks to that one. But for some unknown reason, he didn’t use any of them. Probably because he did kind of want to hear what she had to say. “Okay, fair enough. Hit me with it.”
“I will. Ahem. So you grew up a wild child, undependable. And as it so often happens in a small town like ours, people get it in their heads what a person is like and that’s it, that’s just the way it is. No one ever thinks to look at that person differently, to take a chance on depending on him, to expect more than misbehavior. There’s a local perception and no one ever tests it. The perception becomes the reality.”
“Took psychology at UI, did you, Willa?”
She gave him her sweetest smile. “And I’m not even at the good part yet.... Where was I? Oh, yes. So in the meantime, you’re keeping busy fulfilling everyone’s low expectations of you. And, as you said yourself, you find that not having anyone expect much of you is actually kind of fun. Because you can do what you want. You’re not stuck like all your brothers, bearing up under the weight
of everyone’s high estimation of your sterling character. You actually have the freedom to live exactly as you please and you never have to worry about letting anyone down.”
He could easily become annoyed with her. “Think you got me all figured out, don’t you, Willa?”
She didn’t back off. “To a degree, yes. You are adventurous and bold, with no desire to settle down. So naturally, in your teens, you become the town heartbreaker. You do a lot of experimenting with women. Because, as you said, it’s fun.”
He’d heard about enough. “Come on. You’re getting into dangerous territory here. You know that, right? Next you’ll be digging up that night at the Ace again, getting all up in my face for not taking you up on what you were offering.”
She put her hand on his arm again. He wanted to jerk away—and also to grab her and kiss her senseless. “No. Honestly. I’m over that.” And then she smiled. So sweet and open, that smile. He realized that he definitely wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to get away from her. “Even if I am probably the only woman you ever turned down.”
He almost told her that wasn’t true, but then she’d just say he was bragging. “Seriously. Where are you going with this?”
She tipped her head to the side, frowning a little the way she did when she was thinking something over. “Hmm. I guess I’m just trying to make you see that being defined by other people’s low expectations of you isn’t really working for you anymore.”
“And you know this, how?”
“I’m not blind, you know. I’ve been around you a lot the past few days. And what has been a tragedy for Rust Creek Falls has brought out the best in you. After all that’s happened and all the good you’ve done—all the good you will do in the coming days, you’re not going to be able to go back.”
“Go back where?”
“To the way things were before the levee broke.”
“Believe it or not, I happen to like the way things were.”
“Maybe you did. Before. But it won’t be enough for you now.”
“You have no idea what’s enough for me, Willa.” He ached to reach for her. Reach for her and pull her close and kiss her until her head spun and she let him do whatever he wanted with her, until he finally got a taste of what she’d been tempting him with since before he was even old enough to know what temptation was.
Harlequin Special Edition July 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Marooned with the MaverickHer McKnight in Shining ArmorCelebration's Bride Page 8
