Going Home (Nugget Romance 1)

by Stacy Finz

  “Are you sure you’ll even be able to open?” Sandy asked, her eyes growing wide with feigned concern.

  “You mean the paraphernalia we found in the Lumber Baron’s basement?” Maddy tried to slough it off. “Just a minor setback.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the meth lab.” Sandy flashed Maddy a malicious smile, tugged on Cal’s arm, and they left.

  “What do you think she meant by that?”

  “Who knows.” Nate landed his chair on all four legs again. “The woman’s on crack.

  “And there is no way they’re booked solid. Have you seen that place? Chain-saw bears all over the place. Bear cozies on the toilet seats. Serious Bates Motel shit going on there. I don’t want us aligning ourselves with those people.”

  “They do not have bear cozies on the toilet seats.”

  “Swear to God,” Nate said. “Hey, don’t look now, but your police chief boyfriend’s checking you out.”

  “Is he really looking over here?”

  “He’s looking . . . and he’s headed our way,” Nate said.

  Rhys lifted his chin in greeting, while his eyes examined Maddy with open male appreciation. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks.” He looked better than nice in a waffle Henley that hung loose over his jeans. The shirt concealed the top of his gun holster, but did nothing to conceal the man’s sinewy chest. Maddy could make out every muscle. Like a twit, she reached into one of the boxes. “Want a cookie?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s nice that you brought Shep and the kids. They seem to be having a nice time. Is everyone settling in?”

  Rhys drew in a breath. “I suppose. Look, I’m sorry about all the extra noise; about you having to park your car at the top of the driveway until I can get a bulldozer in there to clear more yard; about the fact that you now have a monster camper outside your window. I know this isn’t what—”

  “Rhys, are you serious? Those kids lost everything. I can walk a few extra feet to my car. But I know how horribly cramped you all must be and I just want you to know that as soon as the innkeeper’s quarters are ready at the Lumber Baron, you’ll have my side of the duplex back.”

  “Actually, that’s what I came over to talk to you guys about.” He waved Nate over. “I wanted to let you know that we’re done processing the Lumber Baron. It’s all yours starting tomorrow.”

  “You have any leads?” Nate asked.

  “Not yet. These folks tend to be nomadic. Eventually I’ll get something. But in the meantime, you and your workers need to keep your eyes open, no one should be there alone after dark. I was serious when I said these guys might come back for their stash. As for you moving in there, Maddy . . . Bad idea. Hold off on that. At least for a few weeks.”

  “Okay,” Maddy said. “Do we need to fumigate?”

  “Nope. Those drums were sealed tight. Hazmat didn’t find any leakage.”

  That seemed to make Nate happy. They hadn’t budgeted for chemical decontamination.

  “Should we remove the yellow crime tape, or do the police have to do that?” She wanted it gone as soon as possible. “The tape’s not so good from a marketing standpoint.”

  “I’ve got you covered.” He winked at her, making her insides slam. She really needed to get a grip where he was concerned. Like maybe getting over the last man who screwed her over, before moving on to the next one.

  When he walked away, she found Nate grinning at her obnoxiously.

  “You’re an imbecile,” she said, and took off across the square to get her cards read.

  Pam waited for Maddy to grab a seat at the table they’d draped with a fringed velvet shawl and took her palm in her hand.

  “This is so cool, Pam.” Maddy peeked out through the tent’s opening and everywhere she looked people, young and old, were enjoying themselves. At night, with only the glow of the string lights, a few jack-o’-lanterns, and the moon, the place actually looked magical.

  “We did pull it together rather nicely, didn’t we?” Pam leaned across the crystal ball. “I know things have been rough-going with the inn. But it’ll work out, you’ll see.”

  “Chief Shepard said we can go back in, that there was no contamination.”

  “That’s gotta be a relief.”

  “It is,” Maddy said. “But the Addisons sort of put a crimp in my night. I had high hopes that we could work together making this a tourist town. But they came over to our table and made it very clear they weren’t interested.”

  “I’m not too surprised. They were the big game in town until you came along. It’s pretty silly of them, but they’ve been known to be petty. Give them some time, maybe they’ll come around.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” But Maddy didn’t think so.

  Fred, Pam’s husband, popped his head inside the tent. “Hello in there. Half the town’s lined up outside.”

  “If you want a break I could take over for you,” Maddy said. “I don’t know how to read palms or tarot cards, but I could fake it.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay, then I’ll see you at yoga on Monday.”

  On Maddy’s way out, Pam called, “Your heart line ends at your second finger. That means you’re a generous soul—a giver. But most of the time it’s at your own expense.”

  She considered Pam’s fortune as she returned to the Lumber Baron table. It was true; she’d made a lot of concessions in her marriage, like quitting her career, spending time with people she didn’t particularly like because Dave thought of them as “good connections.” Performing the part of a perfect Wellmont for so long, she’d forgotten what it was like to be good old Maddy Breyer. At least here, she could be whoever she wanted.

  Back at the table, Nate was going stir-crazy. “I think I’ll hit Soph and Mariah’s. You okay here for a while?”

  “Sure,” Maddy said.

  As he started across the square, she called, “You staying with me tonight?”

  He shook his head. “Sophie and Mariah offered me unlimited use of their guest room. And they have running water. But let’s do breakfast. Unless you and the cop have plans?”

  Before she could fire off a snide remark she backed up into something expansive and granite-hard.

  Strong arms reached out to steady her and a pair of warm lips landed next to her ear. “I presume he’s talking about me. Wasn’t aware we had plans?”

  She turned to face him, fairly sure that her face had turned various shades of red. For some reason she couldn’t stop staring at his chest. And, as if her eyes had a will of their own—lower. “Uh . . . Nate was being an idiot . . . I’m sorry, Rhys, but I’m really in no shape to date.”

  “Okay.” His mouth quirked teasingly. “Good to know, since I don’t recall having asked you out.”

  Then he walked away, leaving her more than a little mortified.

  As he made his way across the square, Rhys shook his head. He’d never had a woman rebuff him while looking at him like he was a giant lollipop. No doubt about it, Maddy wanted to lick him from head to toe. And for more than a minute there, he’d been tempted to press her up against the nearest building.

  The woman was making him crazy. Sometimes he swore he could smell her perfume through their connecting walls. Rhys had idled on the porch in the cold more times than he could count, just so he could “accidentally” bump into her. Like a freaking eighth grader.

  When he wasn’t loitering on the deck, he was lying in the trailer, visualizing her naked. Or visualizing them both naked. Together. In bed. On the hood of his truck. Over his desk. Behind the Bun Boy. There should be laws against the places his mind went.

  Although she’d smacked him down pretty hard a few minutes ago, she wasn’t immune to him, either. Not by the looks she’d been giving him. The question was what did he do about it?

  Maddy was mending a broken heart. And Rhys only had 152 more days—not that he was counting—to go until freedom. Texas. Away from here. Ordinarily, it would’ve been the perfect setup for a li
ght, no-strings-attached friends-with-benefits type of situation. But Maddy didn’t strike him as doing light or no-strings-attached.

  No, she was hearth and home and apple pie. And his gut told him she was the kind of woman who gave bad husbands a second chance because she believed in the institution of marriage.

  It was probably for the best. Keep things simple.

  Rhys was just about to head across the square when Owen called to him, “Hey Chief, what’s going on with the Lumber Baron?”

  He stopped so Owen could catch up. As a kid, Rhys had always wanted the barber to cut his hair. All the other boys in town went to him. But Shep had complained that it cost too much and used to trim both his and Rhys’s hair on the porch, like they were fucking hillbillies.

  He’d already briefed Owen and the other merchants about the status of the investigation. Now he apparently wanted hourly updates. “I still don’t have any suspects, Owen,” Rhys said testily. “But Maddy and her brother are free to go back in.” He started to walk away.

  “I guess that’s good,” Owen said, scratching his head. “Heard you went off to Houston and made captain in the police force over there.”

  Rhys hid a smile. “Not quite captain, just detective-sergeant.” Although he’d passed the lieutenant’s exam and was waiting for a bump in rank. Unfortunately, those jobs came up as often as the Astros won a Series.

  “Well, we’re all real proud of you, son. The way you’ve come back to handle Shep’s situation . . . We’re all just real proud.”

  Taken by surprise, Rhys just nodded. The fact that anyone here was keeping track of his accomplishments since he’d left town came as a revelation.

  He was about to call it a night, when Clay pulled up to the square in a flatbed strewn with hay and a dozen or so costumed kids. Rhys walked over to give his friend a hand lifting the little ones off the truck. Some of the adults he recognized from his elementary school days, back when he wore the same pair of dirty Toughskins to class and suffered pitying looks from their parents. Even then, he’d vowed to bust out of this nothing town the first chance he got. But here he was. Stuck in Nugget again.

  “Hey Chief, any luck catching those meth cookers?” asked Gavin Becker, his eleven-year-old arch-nemesis all grown up. When he thought no one could hear him, Gavin used to taunt Rhys by singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” He used to lord it over the other Union Pacific kids that his dad managed the Silver Legacy casino—like that was some big deal.

  “Not yet,” Rhys said.

  Gavin hoisted a little girl dressed as a butterfly into the air and gave her a kiss. “Glad to have you back, Rhys. Sorry about your dad, man. But I gotta tell you, it’s a comfort knowing you’re running the police department here. Now Duff . . .” Gavin shook his head. “Let’s just say that was a different era. But I’m raising kids now and knowing that you have all that experience . . . it helps me sleep at night.”

  He slapped Rhys on the back and invited him to stop by the house for a beer anytime.

  First Owen, now Gavin.

  “What crawled up his ass?” Rhys asked Clay when everyone left.

  “He’s still a dick. But he finally found a woman who’d actually have sex with him.”

  Clay waited for Rhys to stop laughing. “Speaking of, I’m seeing that woman I told you about in Reno this weekend. She’s got a friend. You interested?”

  Rhys wasn’t. He was much more interested in Maddy. But since that wasn’t happening, he found himself saying yes.

  Chapter 9

  Monday dawned cold and gloomy. Rhys thought the weather mirrored Sam’s mood.

  “Eat your oatmeal,” Lina cajoled as she sipped coffee at Shep’s old Formica kitchen table. “You have a big day ahead of you, mijo.”

  “I don’t want to go to school,” Sam whined.

  Rhys was sorely ready to tell him he didn’t have to go. The only thing worse than attending Nugget Elementary School had been Rhys’s days at Nugget Middle School. Both, he was positive, had scarred him for life. The kids mocked his junky clothes, they teased him incessantly about his weird father, and generally made his life a living hell. If he hadn’t buddied up with Clay in the second grade, he might’ve been an elementary school dropout. It’s not like anyone, including his dad, would’ve noticed if he’d just quit going.

  At least in high school he had been able to play up the story he’d invented about being emancipated from his father and living in Shep’s apartment as a fifteen-year-old bachelor—free to carouse as much as he wanted. The latter part had been mostly true. The lie had sufficiently impressed the dumber desperate girls enough to have them sneaking over to his place on the nights Rhys knew his dad would be away, traveling with the railroad.

  “What are you worried about?” Although he didn’t want to get involved any more than he had to, Rhys asked anyway.

  “I don’t know.” Sam played with his food and Lina scolded him to eat. “What if the other kids don’t like me?”

  “Why wouldn’t they like you? From what I can tell you’re a pretty likable guy,” Rhys said.

  But from what Rhys knew about fifth graders there was a distinct possibility that the kids would be mean just for the hell of it. Unfortunately, there was no putting it off. The boy living with the police chief couldn’t be a truant.

  Both kids had gone to a year-round Catholic school in Stockton, which shockingly Shep had paid for. Rosa had worked in an almond processing plant on an assembly line. Rhys doubted she made more than minimum wage. Still, the only demand she’d made of the old man was that he pay the tuition. She’d been smart to insist on it. Stockton had a gang problem and the public schools could be rough.

  Not for the first time, he wondered what Lina and Sam’s lives had been like there. Had they left a lot of friends? Did they miss their home? According to their transcripts, they’d both been good students.

  Lina was so good that she’d completed all her requirements early and should have been college bound. But that plan got blown to hell when her mother was killed. Until they could come up with a new plan, she would help take care of Shep while his nurse, Betty, was gone. Lina spent most nights on Rhys’s laptop, researching Alzheimer’s, coming up with specialists they should contact, finding trials in which Shep could participate. Rhys mostly just humored her.

  “Let’s go, Sam,” he said, looking at his watch.

  “Thank you, Rhys,” Lina said, her face wreathed in gratitude.

  He and Sam grabbed their jackets and headed up the driveway. The boy scrambled into the truck and Rhys made sure he was buckled in. Ten minutes later, Rhys queued up in the school’s crescent-shaped drop-off behind a trail of parents.

  “Let’s do this,” Rhys said eagerly, sensing that Sam’s feet were getting colder with each passing second.

  Sam hesitated, pressing his face against the window and staring out at the cliques of boys and girls assembling in front of the gray building. Rhys scanned the crowd, feeling satisfied that Sam was dressed like all the other boys—jeans, sweatshirt, and Converse high- tops.

  Rhys got out of the truck and opened the passenger door. “What do you say we find your classroom?”

  “Hi, Uncle Rhys.”

  Rhys turned around to find Cody McCreedy standing there. He’d had so much to occupy him these last couple of days, he’d forgotten that Cody and Sam were about the same age.

  “Hey, Code.”

  “This your brother?”

  Rhys stiffened. “This is Sam.” He watched the boys size each other up. “How would you feel about showing him around on his first day—maybe introduce him to a few of the other kids?”

  “Who’s your teacher?” Cody asked Sam.

  “Mrs. DeLeo.”

  “That’s my teacher, too.” Cody smiled and looked up at Rhys. “Okay, I’ll take him to class.”

  When Rhys tried to follow, Cody stuck out his hand. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Uncle Rhys, but it would be better if you didn’t come.”

>   “Why’s that?”

  “It’ll make Sam look like a loser.”

  “Got it,” Rhys said. “I’ll just head over to the main office to sign some enrollment papers. You guys can pretend you don’t know me.”

  He watched the boys’ backs disappear behind the school’s double doors and ambled into the administration office. A stick-thin woman with curly gray hair greeted him from behind the counter.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to enroll Samuel . . . Samuel . . . Shepard.”

  “Ah, Chief Shepard. Principal Rice said you’d be stopping by.” She leaned over the counter and pursed her lips in a straight line. “Where’s the young man?”

  “We ran into Cody McCreedy on the way. They both have Mrs. DeLeo, so Cody took him to class.”

  “Oh,” she said stiffly, her face puckering like she’d sucked on a mouthful of Lemonheads. “Sign in, please.” She pointed to a sheet on the counter and with an efficiency of movement that belied the stick up her ass, grabbed a stack of forms, a clipboard, and a pen from various desks. “You’ll need to fill these out.”

  The smell of the building hadn’t changed—a combination of ammonia, must, and old gym shoes. There was an earthquake preparedness poster on the wall and student drawings of the food pyramid.

  With some effort, Rhys managed to fold himself into a combination chair-desk and cursing the trolls who’d invented the unholy furniture combo, he sifted through the forms. A lot of the questions he couldn’t answer. He’d brought the transcript so he knew the basics—Sam’s birth date, the name of his old school, his academic record. But as far as whether the boy had any allergies, or whether he had a seizure disorder, Rhys didn’t have the first clue.

  “Some of these his sister will have to fill out,” he told the woman. “I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “As long as we have them by the end of the week.”

  He placed the completed forms on the counter and made to leave.

  “Chief Shepard?”