“So much for the rule against exotic dancers fraternizing with the customers,” Sam mumbled.
“I know, right?” She giggled. “Kind of sleazy.” More soberly, she added, “But fascinating, from a purely behavioral standpoint.”
“Don’t worry so much, Doc. It’ll all fall into place.” Sam wiped his mouth, crossed his arms, and sat back against the padded booth. “Live in the present. Isn’t that what all those self-help books say? Speaking of which, what are you doing the next couple hours?”
His eyes glittered with meaning.
“Looking for that house again.” Don’t cave. She might be putty in Sam’s hands, but she wouldn’t be sidetracked today, on her day off.
He smirked. “Again? You’re obsessed.”
“Maybe it has something to do with growing up in trailer parks,” she said.
Their eyes flirted in a mirror memory of harder times, hers of free school lunches and thrift store clothes, and Sam’s of somewhat murkier origin.
“You may be happy to go on living in your old office forever, Owens. But I want a real house. And I’m not stopping till I find it.”
“Go on.” He cocked his head, humoring her. “Tell me what it is about this one that’s got you so fired up.”
“I’ve been doing some research,” she said eagerly, “and I think there’s a good chance it might be the only surviving saltbox in Yamhill County.”
“Saltbox?” Sam’s eyes grew guarded.
“A style of architecture that’s two stories in the front and one in the back,” she said, sketching a rectangle in the air with her finger. “It got its name from the lidded boxes the early New England settlers kept salt in. A few of the original Oregon pioneers built them, but overall, they’re scarce. They’re easy to spot, though, from the central chimney and the long, low rear roofline.”
“How do you know about this place?”
A small part of her took note of Sam’s knuckles, white around his balled up napkin. But her fascination with the house eclipsed all else.
“Back when I was living with my mom, she used to drive way out past Meadowlake Road to one of those U-pick places to pick strawberries. I made her take a picture of it. Still have it. Want to see?” She brought up the photo on her phone and turned it his way. “It was different from all the other houses. It’s been stuck in my mind all this time.”
He looked at the image and though his fingers barely brushed against hers, his touch reverberated throughout her body.
An untrained observer never would have caught Sam’s face falling for that split second. Maybe not even another PhD in Psychology—if she didn’t also happen to be attuned to his every nuance.
Red frowned at him. “What’s the matter?”
His face returned to normal with a speed that had her not trusting her own eyes. Then his gaze darted around the room and circled back to her. When he leaned in, she fell into their depths, trying for the umpteenth time to put a name on their color. Hazel. No, Amber. No—
“Brought the extra helmet and the blanket roll on the back,” he said in a whisky-smooth voice. “Weather’s perfect. Forget the house. Let me take you for a ride.”
An expanse of azure blue filled the front windows of the café. She pictured herself on the back of his Harley, wind whipping through her hair.
She knew what would happen if she said yes…the same thing that always happened when she and Sam went riding.
She bit her lip.
“I’ve been looking for that saltbox for weeks, and I’m getting close. I can feel it. Maybe we can do something else together later. Like, see a movie or something.”
She held her breath. Sam didn’t do movies, or romantic dinners for two, or any of the other things official couples did—like go to weddings together.
True to form, he didn’t get sucked in. Just gave her that sideways grin that made her insides go gooey. “What’s better? Some old, run-down house? Or you and me and a bottle of Montinore 2014 Reserve out on Ribbon Ridge? We’ll stop and get some good bread and cheese. Have a picnic.”
Under the table, Sam’s foot rubbed against hers. She felt like there was an invisible string attached to her core, pulling her toward him. It was all she could do not to slide out of her seat and into his, wrap herself around him, and confess her infatuation for the whole town to hear.
But that would send him running for the hills, not to mention scandalize Poppy’s breakfast crowd and jeopardize Red’s reputation as a mental health professional.
She shivered. How did he get to her? Make her put aside her priorities for him?
She knew how. As pragmatic as he was in public, the real Sam was the most loving, giving man imaginable. And not just because he’d volunteered space in his new consortium building for her favorite fashion show charity. When they were alone, he knew exactly how to please her. How to coax her along…draw out her pleasure at his own expense until the look of raw need in his eyes alone was almost enough to send her over the edge. Finally, when she was beyond ready, he unleashed a passion that had her moaning, clawing his blanket, and thrashing around in ways that never failed to leave her limp as a noodle, her cheeks burning with the memory.
Sam grabbed both their checks and got to his feet. “Meet you in the usual spot in five.”
And Red knew she would be there, back behind her office a few doors down from the café, waiting.
Chapter 2
After his rendezvous with Red, Sam dropped her off in the alley behind her office and waited to make sure she got safely inside.
He should run over to the consortium before it closed. When you had your own business, Saturdays were no different than any other day. There were always a million and one things that needed doing. But ever since Red had opened up that can of worms about the saltbox, he couldn’t push it out of his mind.
Instead of going to work, he steered the bike back out of town in the opposite direction from where he had taken Red. Out onto Meadowlake Road.
When he was growing up, Sam thought the only good thing about his house was that it was the last stop on the school bus route. None of the other kids saw him get on or off. That meant he didn’t have to worry about any of them coming over unexpectedly, witnessing what passed for normal in his family.
Not that his formative years were all bad. In the summer, he and the O’Brien brothers down the road had the freedom to do anything they wanted. Looking back on those times, he, Jeff, and Derek lived their lives the way boys should live everywhere, in every age. Hunting small game, fishing Walker Creek for cutthroats, camping out in the woods for days. Happily subsisting on a diet of cereal and candy bars and the occasional coho salmon roasted over a campfire.
And there was Sam’s dog, Riggley, never far from his side.
All of that was before Mom left and Dad hooked up with that woman from Tualatin. Penny was her name. But Sam and his brother and sister refused to honor her with it. Any woman dumb enough to hook up with Psychodad didn’t deserve their respect.
Although Sam could see the O’Brien house from his bedroom window in the winter when the leaves were off the trees, it sat across some invisible line in the McMinnville School District. Instead of Clarkston Elementary, Jeff and Derek went to Memorial.
It was the first of many divisions in Sam’s life.
Past the reservoir, Sam hung a left on the lake access road. His body leaned easily into the curves, at one with his bike. He knew where the hairpin turns hid at the bottom of hills, where the stretches of road were that remained in shadow on the brightest July day, marking the distance to his destination.
Twenty minutes later he came to the remnants of the lean-to he’d jerry-rigged out of a couple sheets of corrugated tin scrounged from Dad’s junkyard, the summer between fifth and sixth grades. The previous winter they’d gotten slammed with rain. Day after day, Sam had shown up at school soake
d. The bus stopped a quarter mile away. But standing in the freezing rain waiting was better than missing it, then having to stay home all day. Dad worked the opposite way from school, in McMinnville. He would never have gone out of his way to drive Sam in.
He hung a right and then a left, expertly centering the bike in the ridge between the ruts, and finally pulled up to the front door of the mud brown house and climbed off his bike.
As always, his eye went first to the little white cross planted in the earth beneath his bedroom window.
He went over and squatted next to it before yanking out the relentless dandelions and snakeweed that would have obscured it by now, if not for his regular attention.
Sam’s face softened, remembering the day one of Mom’s strawberry customers carried a cardboard box from her car into the yard. She sat it down, tipped it on its side, and onto the grass spilled a white puppy with splotches of black, ears flopping forward in little triangles.
The puppy immediately went exploring, tail wagging double time, making his mother’s chickens cluck and dart out of her way.
“She’s the runt of the litter. I thought Sam might like to have a dog. Give him some company out here,” said the customer, with a glance at Sam’s house—the only house for miles.
Sam squatted and the dog trotted straight into his arms. She was stronger than she looked. Sam fell backward and the puppy climbed onto his chest, tickling his stomach.
“She likes you,” said the lady with a smile, pleased with herself.
“She’s all wriggly.” Sam laughed, squinting against the dog’s pink tongue licking his face.
From that day on, Sam and Riggley were a pair.
Sam rose from where he knelt and went to the door. He inserted his key in the padlock, released the shank, and let himself in, looking around the kitchen, trying to see it through the eyes of Red McDonald.
The house had to be a hundred years old. The smell of smoke from the recent chimney fire still hung in the air. He looked up at the water-stained ceiling. If he ever wanted to try to sell it, the least it would need was a new roof.
But Sam had no plans to sell.
Dad wasn’t quite as ancient, but he was getting up there. There’d been some worrisome incidents. Last spring, a bar owner had repaid a favor and called Sam instead of the cops when Dad had had one too many Hood River Vodkas. Sam walked into the bar to catch Dad moving in on the young wife of a grizzled motorcycle enthusiast flying the colors of a well-known outlaw gang. Sam had had to do some fancy footwork to get them out of that one unscathed.
And in May, a mysteriously torn tire wall on Dad’s truck had left him stranded. When Sam arrived less than an hour later, Dad was still shaken up. He didn’t even object when Sam took charge of calling AAA to arrange for the tow.
Just last week, Sam left work mid-day on a hunch to check on things. He walked in just as Dad tossed a match to a fresh stack of split wood on top of the gas fireplace “logs.”
Sam could still hear Dad giving him hell for saving his hide.
Maybe he was right. Maybe he should’ve let him be. Everyone would be happier right now. Instead, Dad was cussing and screaming at the nurses over at the assisted living place. Making them miserable the same way he made every person he ever came in contact with miserable, his whole life long.
Sam’s thoughts went back to Red and her obsession with old houses. He wandered through the first floor, trying to understand the attraction. But all he saw was conflict in every corner.
All of his problems originated here, in this house.
He trudged upstairs, accurately predicting which steps would creak beneath his feet, and peered into what had been his bedroom.
He looked at the empty space where his narrow brass bed used to be. He’d spent many a winter night shivering in that bed when that corner took the brunt of the northwest winds. Dad had permanently banned Riggley to the back porch. But sometimes, on the very coldest nights, he managed to sneak him onto the bed with him.
There had never been any question of Sam moving back into this place two years ago when he’d come back to Oregon to stay. Instead, he’d hauled the few childhood possessions he still wanted over to his room in the old consortium in Clarkston.
In his whole life, Sam rarely spent time in this house without his dad lurking nearby. Now that Dad was stuck in Woodcrest without the keys to his truck, Sam should feel better about it. More at peace. Yet all he felt was the same old sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.
He couldn’t stop wondering if maybe, when he had saved his dad at the last second, he had interrupted a brilliant plan. Suicide by fireplace. Had to give Psychodad credit—it wasn’t a bad one. Given his recent spates of bad judgment plus the deteriorating condition of the house, it might easily have been dismissed as an accident.
Sam could never wish his own father dead. But to watch this house and all its painful childhood memories go up in flames? The idea was dangerously tempting.
Chapter 3
Red cast an analytical eye at the couch against the window where twelve-year-old Cassadee Berg slouched with one cleated sneaker tucked under her, nervously fingering the hem of her soccer shirt.
Red insisted that all her patients deposit their cell phones in a basket by the door during session. Out of sight, out of mind. Deprived of their devices, kids were lost as to what to do with their hands.
“Tell me about your mom.”
“She’s great,” said Cassadee in the resigned tone that said she’d rather be anywhere but a therapist’s office on a sunny, summer afternoon. Yesterday’s showers had tapered off, and the playing fields at Clarkston Middle School were finally drying out. “A saint, almost.”
Red smiled sympathetically. “It can’t be easy, living with a saint.”
Fiery brown eyes looked up from her lap. “It’s not like that.”
Defensive, Red jotted on her pad.
“Okay. How ’bout your dad?”
“He’s great too.”
Red summoned patience and tried to ignore her rumbling stomach. At Pat Berg’s frantic phone call, she had agreed to fit her daughter in after her full day of clients and a half-eaten apple for lunch. She was going to be late for supper—again. Grandma was going to be fit to be tied.
Note to self: Start setting boundaries. But she already had made that note, more times than she cared to recall.
They’d already gone over Cassadee’s school life, siblings, and friends. Something must be awry at home, or the girl wouldn’t be plagued with nightmares. She’d have to dig a little deeper.
“Anything make your dad mad?” she asked conspiratorially.
But Cassadee wasn’t taking the bait. “No.”
“Never?”
“Not really,” she replied sullenly.
“Nothing makes him mad. He’s always in a good mood,” opined Red, challenging her young client to refute her.
Cassadee sighed, sat on her hands, and gave Red a stony look.
Red had been well versed in the theory and techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy at Oregon State. But since opening her own practice, she’d found that sometimes, to speed up the process, it helped to put your personal spin on things. Share something of your own experience in exchange for getting the client to talk.
She turned her head to the side, parting her hair over her right temple. “See this? Scar from the time my stepdad threw a beer bottle at my head for talking back. Four stitches. Well, technically, he was my second stepdad.”
For the first time, Cassadee looked interested. “What happened to the first one?”
To tell her that her first stepfather had left after her mother slashed his truck tires for coming home drunk one too many times would be overkill. Save the big guns for later, if needed.
Instead, she just shrugged. “One day he was there; the next, he wasn’t.”
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Cassadee’s head jerked up, remembering. “Well. There is something.”
Finally.
“Something that makes Dad, really, really mad. So mad, he rants and raves and gets in a bad mood for like a whole week.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Red pictured James Berg, down at the gas station and convenience store he owned on 99. James had been pumping Red’s gas since she got her first car. He appeared to be well adjusted, but you never knew what went on behind closed doors. Did he have hidden anger issues that he took out on his daughter? Was that what was causing Cassadee’s night terrors?
“What’s that?” Red cocked her pen above her notepad and leaned in, preparing to write fast.
“Taxes. He hates taxes more than anything.”
Red sighed back into her seat again and clicked off her pen. If James’s taxes were anywhere near as complicated as hers, no wonder he got mad when April came around.
To a yawning noise from her belly, she clicked her pen back on and scribbled a note as to where they’d left off.
“We’ll pick up from here next week.”
Cassadee sprang toward the phone basket as if shot from a sling and immediately began trolling for missed messages, while behind her, Red stood and stretched out her lower back muscles, stiff from sitting all day with barely a bathroom break. She took no offense. When it came to adolescents, self-absorption was the norm, not an aberration.
* * * *
Red breezed into the trailer she shared with her grandmother. “Sorry I’m late for dinner, but I got a call about a girl who’s been having trouble sleeping and I didn’t want to make her wait until next week.”
“The baked potatoes have been done an hour. They’re all shriveled up by now, but I suppose they’ll taste the same.”
Kisses Sweeter Than Wine Page 2
