Her silence was a living, breathing thing. A trickle of cold sweat ran down his side.
“I’m not the guy I was before this happened. I probably never will be.” Why he was telling her all this, he didn’t know. It simply felt right. “I have night terrors. Killer nightmares. Phantom pain so bad that—” He stopped, shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that when you started treating me like somebody who needed help, it made me feel small. My ego’s taken enough of a bruising, and I overreacted.”
She snorted, dabbed at her face with a tissue. “You think?” But she didn’t tell him to leave.
“I’ve been through hell. It’s taken a toll on me. I’m telling you things I’ve never told anyone.”
“I feel so special.”
“Shut up and listen to me. I’m broken, Paige. I can’t believe I’m admitting this to you, but it’s the truth. I can go from zero to rage in about ten seconds. I lash out at people for no reason. People I care about. I’m an equal opportunity offender.” He paused, looked inside his head, fearful of what he might see there. “I’m trying. I’m working on it. But, honestly—I don’t think it’ll make a difference. This is who I am now, and there’s no going back. I’m sorry I said rotten, hurtful things to you. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He handed her the Sam Adams again. She took a sip and handed it back.
“I just fired someone,” she said. “Someone I was close to. Someone I would have trusted with my life. Hell, I did trust him with my life, for four years. But he betrayed me, in a painful and unforgivable way.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s been a rough day. Before I fired Tim, I got more bad news. It seems that Vanessa’s pregnant. And she’s six months along.” Paige paused, combed her hair back from her face with slender fingers. The minute she withdrew those fingers, the hair sprang back into glorious disarray. “God knows how many others there were. Now I have to be tested to make sure Ryan didn’t give me some horrific disease.”
Without speaking, they passed the bottle back and forth again. Casually, he said, “I know how to take down a man at four hundred yards with a single shot.”
Silence. It stretched out for long seconds. Then she let out a soft snort, and the tension between them deflated like air from a burst balloon. "That probably won’t be necessary,” she said, “but I like to keep my options open.”
Finally, he dared to really look at her. “Am I forgiven?” he asked.
Something flickered in her eyes, something indecipherable and so brief he wasn’t sure he’d really seen it. “I don’t believe for a minute,” she said, “that you’re beyond repair. You just have to want it bad enough.”
It wasn’t an answer. At least not the one he was looking for. “How many shrinks does it take to change a light bulb?”
“Just one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.”
He picked at a loose thread on the knee of his pants. “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”
The back door opened, spilling music and laughter into the cool quiet of the house. “Mike?” Amy called, closing the door behind her. “Are you in here?”
The inexplicable feeling of intimacy that had sprung up between them flatlined. Paige swiped ineffectually at the mascara trail on her cheeks, while Mikey scooted closer to the wall, leaving several inches of space between them. “On the stairs,” he said.
Amy peeked around the corner. When she saw them sitting side by side, her eyebrows went sky-high. “Hi,” she said, her gaze flitting from him to Paige and then back to him. “What’s going on?”
“We were just talking,” he said smoothly. “Paige is having a bad day.”
“I can see that.” Clearly curious, just as clearly trying to keep her curiosity hidden, Amy said to Paige, “That phone call you got must have been bad news.”
Paige acknowledged her words with a nod.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Hope everything will be okay.” She focused on Mikey again. “You coming back out? I thought we’d eat dinner together. Casey made her famous meatballs. Your favorite.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He stood, beer bottle in hand, careful not to allow any part of him to touch any part of Paige, and descended the last couple of steps. Amy reached out and took his hand, in a declaration of ownership so obvious that even a toddler would have recognized it. “See you around,” he said to Paige.
“See you around. And thanks.” She held up the tissue box. “For the tissues. And the talk.”
He saluted her with his beer bottle and followed Amy back outside.
“What was that all about?” Amy said.
“I already told you.” He reached the food table, snagged a paper plate, and began dishing up meatballs. “She’s having a bad day. I went in for a beer and found her crying on the stairs.”
“And your white knight syndrome kicked in.”
He moved on to Trish’s carrot cake, helped himself to a big square. “I had to do something. I couldn’t just leave her there like that.”
“I know. It’s just that you have a history with her.”
For an instant, he froze. Then he forced the tension from his shoulders. “Ancient history,” he clarified. “We’re nothing more than friends. Not really even that.” He met Amy’s eyes, saw the uncertainty there. And softened. “We barely know each other. Until she came home, we hadn’t spoken in twelve years.”
“You looked pretty cozy, sitting together on the stairs.”
“Just talking.” He scooped up a big spoonful of macaroni salad and deposited it on her plate, scooped up a second and plopped it onto his. “Stop worrying.” He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss. She tasted like cherry lip gloss. “You’re the only woman I’m interested in.”
“Well, since you put it that way.” With a dazzling smile, Amy stretched up and kissed him again, fingers of one hand curled behind his neck and tangled in his hair. Running a single, long fingernail down the back of his neck, she said into his ear, “Let’s eat, then find an excuse to leave early. I’m sure we can find something better to do with our time.”
This was the Amy he liked spending time with. Tender, teasing, coquettish. That Amy got to him every time. “It might be a hardship,” he said, “but I think I could live with it.”
PAIGE
ON SATURDAY SHE took Emma, Davey, and Beth hiking at Mount Blue State Park so they could all enjoy a little fresh air and exercise. It was one of those wonderful dry New England summer days, warm sun on her shoulders, a few puffy white clouds drifting in a sea of brilliant blue. Birds flitted from tree to tree, and chipmunks darted across the trail in front of them.
For Paige, a city girl at heart, the williwacks were still a little foreign. Although coyotes and other wild creatures roamed the hills behind her Hollywood home, she seldom got out to enjoy nature. Ryan was not an outdoorsy guy, and when they were home together, she gravitated toward his couch potato interests. She gardened, of course. Yard work, she’d discovered, was good for the soul. It had taken her years to understand her stepmother’s fondness for pulling weeds and raking leaves. Ry thought she was crazy to do her own yard work when she could easily afford to pay a professional. So she’d done most of her gardening when he wasn’t around.
But she never ventured past the perimeter of her own property in search of nature. Life was different in Southern California, where the pace was hurry-hurry-hurry and the automobile was god.
Here in rural Maine, where her siblings and her cousin had been born and raised, life was slower, more attuned to nature. This was their territory, their world, the great outdoors a big part of who they were. And while they good-naturedly grumbled about the difficulty of the trail, about climbing over rocks, about dealing with thistles and garden spiders and black flies, these were only token protests. The truth was that they loved every minute of it. Getting away from their parents for a few hours, with their “cool” older relative, was worth the hardships they had to endure.
<
br /> Paige adored the kids, loved spending time with them. She’d gone off to college while Emma and Beth were just toddlers, before Davey was even born. Sometimes, she felt as though she barely knew them. Any time she got an opportunity to hang out with them, she took advantage.
Up ahead, Davey crouched at the side of the trail, bony knees sticking out at awkward angles as he studied something he’d found. “It’s an ant hill,” he told the girls as they approached.
“Bugs.” Emma grimaced. “I should’ve known. You’re such a geek.”
“Am not. Ants are fascinating.” They all leaned closer to peer at his discovery. “They’re like, the most amazing engineers. They build these little cities, all kinds of complex tunnels and stuff. And they have this whole social structure thing going on. They’re really hard workers. That’s pretty much all they do. They live in colonies, and everybody has their own job to perform. It’s pretty awesome.” He glanced up at Paige, his narrow face open and trusting, his tangled blond curls softening the square jaw that made him look so much like Dad. “I did a paper on ants for science class,” he explained to her.
“Well,” Paige said. “I guess that makes you an expert, then.”
His entire face reddened. “I wouldn’t say I’m an expert.”
“Are you kidding? Among this group of insect non-enthusiasts, you are the Lord of the Ants.”
Before he could respond, the sound of male voices, youthful and boisterous, snagged their attention. Paige raised her head as the voices, drawing near, grew louder. There was a burst of raucous laughter, and then two teenage boys rounded the corner.
The boys stopped short at sight of them huddled together at the trailside. Beside her, Beth froze, her face pale and still. The taller of the two boys studied each of them in turn, his eyes lingering a bit longer on Beth than Paige would have liked. “Hi, Beth,” he said. “Emma. What are you doing here?”
Beth seemed struck dumb, which was so unlike her normal self that Paige did a double-take. Beth was a talker. She talked so much that when she was little, Grandma MacKenzie used to say she’d been vaccinated with a phonograph needle.
Emma piped up, “We’re hiking with my sister.”
Paige looked from her dumbstruck cousin to the tall kid, then back. And said, “How about an introduction?”
Beth seemed to come back to life. Flushing prettily, she said, “This is my cousin, Paige. Paige, this is Alex Washburn and his brother, Nicky.”
Paige stepped forward and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Both boys shook her hand and mumbled a greeting, then the older brother clapped Davey on the shoulder as though they were old pals and said, “Hey, kid, how you doing?”
Kicking at a rock with the toe of his sneaker, Davey didn’t respond.
Alex Washburn’s gaze returned to Beth. “I never took you for the outdoorsy type,” he said.
“Surprise,” Beth said in a squeaky, Minnie Mouse voice.
This was getting awkward. It was time to intervene. “So,” Paige said pointedly, “are you two here with someone?”
“No,” Alex Washburn said. “We’re on our own.”
Which meant that at least one of them had his license. She estimated Alex to be two years older than Beth. Maybe more. Dark-haired, good-looking in a bad-boy way, with a smile that skirted the boundaries of arrogance, Alex Washburn had Paige’s antennae on red alert. He was looking at Beth like the Big Bad Wolf looked at Little Red Riding Hood. With her well-developed figure, Beth could easily pass for eighteen, but she was still fourteen years old emotionally. If this kid had any ideas about her, he was delusional. Her father, her brothers, and various uncles would wipe up the floor with him if he laid a finger on her.
Eventually, spurred by Paige’s cool glare, Alex Washburn took the hint and said, “Well, we gotta get going.” He gave Paige the once-over—arrogant little prick! And grinned. “It was nice meeting you,” he said, a gleam in his eye. “See you around, Beth.”
The boys continued on down the trail, their muted voices drifting back. A single, abrupt laugh erupted, and then they disappeared out of range.
And all the oxygen that had been sucked out of the day returned.
“Oh, my God,” Beth said. “Oh, my God.”
“Friends of yours?” Paige asked dryly.
“Just the hottest guy in school. I didn’t think he even knew my name!”
“He’s a player,” Emma said, lips pursed in a prim line. “His reputation precedes him.” Emma had a great deal of her mother in her. Like Casey, she was calm and unflappable, had more than a nodding acquaintance with logic and reason, and possessed a quiet certitude, a maturity and wisdom far beyond her years.
On the other hand, at the age of eighteen, Casey had left Mikey’s dad pretty much at the altar to run off and marry a wannabe rock star named Danny Fiore, whom she’d known for three days. So it was entirely possible that, unlike Emma, who appeared to have been born with it, Casey’s wisdom had been acquired with age.
Beth, caught up in the rapturous wonder of the fact that Alex Washburn knew her—actually knew her name!—was beyond listening. “Did you see those blue eyes of his?” she said with a sigh. “I could get lost in them.”
Oh, boy.
Paige had never gone through a boy-crazy stage herself, although there’d been a spell when she’d worn too much make-up and dressed a little too provocatively. At least, Dad had thought so. But that had been exploration, experimentation, a way of trying to find herself, to figure out exactly who Paige MacKenzie was. Not a desire to attract the attention of some boy who would use her and then cast her aside to move on to his next conquest.
But she’d had friends who went into giggling fits every time a cute boy walked by, and spasms of ecstasy if one actually spoke to them. They were dangerous, these teenage girls pumped up on raging hormones and damn little common sense. They did stupid things. Usually, the stupid things they did were harmless. But sometimes, they ended up paying. And payment could be staggering.
She didn’t want to alienate either of the girls. Nobody liked a tattle-tale, and if they found out she’d said something, she would lose their trust forever. But it wouldn’t hurt to put a bug in somebody’s ear. Uncle Jesse. Aunt Rose. Maybe even Mikey. Just to make sure that somebody was keeping an eye on her cousin.
“Okay, guys, let’s keep moving,” she said. “We still have a lot to see.”
Sometimes, it sucked to be an adult.
* * *
THE PUBLIC SAFETY building, modern and airy and gleaming, was a huge step up from the tiny cottage that had housed the post office and the police department back when she and Lissa had spent a month of Saturdays scrubbing bird shit off cop cars and dog shit off sidewalks. Nasty work, and sufficient to convince her that a life of crime was not a good fit for her temperament. As an ESFP, she was much better suited to the entertainment industry, and once penance for her crime had been paid, she’d focused her energies on following the career path she’d carved out for herself at the age of twelve.
The dispatcher pointed her in the direction of Officer Lindstrom’s desk, and she studied him covertly as she approached. His fingers rapidly tapping computer keys and his lips pursed in a small frown of concentration, Mikey sat erect, his bearing clearly reflecting his years of military training. This was the first time she’d seen him in uniform, and it was a little disconcerting. He needed a trim; his hair just touched his shirt collar in the back. Cousin Teddy, she thought wryly, must love that. The police chief had a reputation as a hard-ass. Working for Teddy had to be a challenge.
Mikey looked up, dark eyes widening at the sight of her. He rolled his chair away from the desk, swiveled it around, and watched her approach, his face still and somber. Always so damn serious, even back in high school. But killer handsome. She’d forgotten how handsome he was. Movie star handsome, although more rugged than pretty. Mikey was all man, long and lean and muscled, his dark eyes and strong facial features inherited from his Pa
ssamaquoddy grandmother. The blond hair, which right now looked as though he’d been running his fingers through it, had come from the Lindstrom side.
“Afternoon, Lindstrom,” she said.
“MacKenzie. What’s up?”
“Do you have a few free minutes so we can talk? In private?”
One eyebrow lifted. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just wanted to run something by you, and I don’t want the whole world listening in.”
Mikey glanced at his watch and said, “I can take a break. Let’s walk across the street to Dunk’s. I could use a cup of coffee.”
They waited for a couple of cars to pass—the equivalent of a traffic jam in Jackson Falls—and crossed the street to Dunkin’ Donuts. A couple of old-timers sat at the counter, trading gossip. After ordering their coffee, Paige and Mikey moved to a corner table, away from prying eyes and ears.
“So,” Mikey said, and took a sip of hot coffee.
“I’m probably just being paranoid. But I thought you should know about this.” She told him about the incident with his sister and the Washburn brothers. “Maybe it means nothing,” she finished. “I don’t even know the kid. And I don’t know Beth all that well any more, either. I haven’t seen her in a couple of years. But I know what I saw, and I didn’t like the vibe I was getting. Or the way Alex was looking at her, like she was a piece of steak on his dinner plate. If any guy had looked at me like that when I was her age, I would’ve bloodied his nose.”
His expression indecipherable, he said, “You were a feisty one, MacKenzie.”
“Damn straight. I still am.”
Mikey leaned back in his seat. “I do know him. Both of them. Not well, mostly by reputation. Let’s just say that—” He lowered his voice. “They’re known to the Department. And I don’t want Beth within a country mile of those two.”
“So I’m not overreacting?”
“No. Let’s go back outside.”
Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1 Page 10
