Red frowned. “No one hates strawberries.”
She flitted from one corner of the yard to another, plucking yellow dandelions and purple violets while Sam stood in the center of the boardwalk and watched. She looked almost like a teenager in her white sundress that draped and billowed around her curves when she walked. He couldn’t bear the thought of robbing her of her youthful enthusiasm…her fondest dream.
She looked up from her tiny bouquet. “Isn’t this exciting? Don’t you love it?”
Like a Bagram POW camp.
She ducked beneath the clothesline and ran over to the cistern.
“Look at this. It’s for catching rainwater. In the old days, girls used to wash their hair in it.”
Girls like Cindy and his mother.
“Now, watering your plants with rainwater is the height of chic.” She laughed. “It’s like chickens. There used to be chickens running around here, and now the hipsters in Portland are showing off their designer hen houses in their front yards. Everything old is new again.”
Little did she know.
She eyed the shiny white, hundred-gallon gas tank up and down critically. “What’s this? It looks out of place.”
“Propane tank.”
“A blight on the property if you ask me. Kind of ruins the whole rustic effect, don’t you think?”
Sam looked around, suddenly anxious that someone might show up and blow his cover, unlikely as that was.
“No utilities this far out. If you want gas for a fireplace or a stove or something, you got to bring it in.”
“At least it’s somewhat hidden, here in the back.”
She went up to the door, knocked, and rattled the knob despite the padlock.
“We’re trespassing. Someone could come down the road any minute.”
Not exactly a lie.
“I told you,” she said without a care. “No one lives here. It may even be abandoned. I’ll find out for sure as soon as I get a break in my schedule long enough to run down to the courthouse.”
Sam pointed to his watch. “Let’s pop smoke. I’d like to stop and get some decent snacks to go with the wine so we don’t have to settle for Sweetarts and popcorn from the concession stand.”
She turned from where her nose was pressed to a windowpane and frowned. “I like popcorn. You didn’t say anything about wanting to stop for food before.”
“I was waiting to see where you were taking me. For all I knew, we were going out to eat. Didn’t want to ruin it.”
Subdued, she left the window and followed him back toward the car.
“What are you planning to do when you find out who owns this? Put it on some historical listing?” Anything was better than her taking up residence here, in his childhood hell.
“Haven’t you been listening? I want to buy it,” she said, her eyes filled with hope. “To live in. This is my dream house.”
“You can’t live here.” He couldn’t imagine coming here to visit her, eating in the same kitchen, making love to her in his boyhood bedroom.
Her face fell, just as he had known it would.
“Why not?” she said, scampering to keep up with his long strides. “I probably have enough money saved for a down payment.”
“It’s way too much house for you,” he said, feeling like his heart was full of dirty socks.
“I know it needs work, but as long as it’s livable, what’s the hurry? Part of the fun will be in fixing it up.”
“It’s too far out, for one thing. You don’t want to be a woman alone all the way out there, far away from the police and the fire department.”
She snorted. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? You sound like Grandma.”
“You should listen to your elders.”
“How’d you get so bossy, Owens?”
“Not bossing you. Just telling you the way it is.”
“I’m not scared.” She raised her chin. “This is what I want. I’ve wanted it for a long time, and no one’s going to talk me out of it.”
Chapter 12
A couple hours later at the drive-in, Sam glanced at Red, engrossed in the film.
Even before the house incident, he had had zero hopes of being able to get lost in a chick flick. He’d agreed to come here purely to comply with Red’s “terms.”
His dad’s mental status was still being evaluated. So far, Sam had stayed on the periphery of things, figuring if anything important happened, the facility would let him know. But it might be time for him to get more involved.
A burst of laughter came from the driver’s side and he glanced over at Red munching popcorn, unaware of the fact that the man next to her was not the hometown hero she thought he was, but a dirty, rotten liar whose heart was an empty, black hole.
He would talk to Dad’s doctor, see what he could extract from him. If Dad was as far gone as he thought, the next step was a lawyer. The only lawyer he knew was the one who had helped him establish the consortium. Gary Russo.
He exhaled. Now that he had the beginnings of a plan, he could set this evening’s house incident on one of the many shelves he’d constructed in his brain in order to maintain his sanity.
He glanced out the windshield at the big screen, automatically reckoning the distance at twenty-four yards, which was seventy-two feet or 21.946 meters.
That done, he was able to relax into the plot a little. The lead actress wasn’t hard to look at. And he picked up a couple of decent jokes to add to his repertoire.
Halfway through the movie came the first bedroom scene. Stealthily, he reached for Red’s thigh, but she blocked him with an arm.
His head fell back. The woman frustrated him like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
In the movie, the hero who had brought the heroine a bouquet that made Sam’s limp daisies pale in comparison was now grilling her a five-course meal. And doing it in an apron that showed off his ripped obliques.
Sam took Red’s hand, hoping she might do that tickly thing she did last week up on Ribbon Ridge. Hey, beggars and guys who brought grocery store daisies couldn’t be choosy.
Let the magic begin.
But Red’s fingers didn’t budge. In fact, she seemed to be so taken with the actor, she’d forgotten there was a real, live guy right beside her.
Sam studied the hero pouring wine for the heroine. What was so great about him? In real life, he was probably one of those guys who actually wore the safety harness when he jogged on the treadmill.
* * * *
“Awwwww.” Red sighed with satisfaction.
Sam’s eyes opened to the credits rolling.
“You fell asleep.”
“No I didn’t. Just resting my eyes.”
“Yes, you did. You didn’t like it?”
“No, it was awesome. Let’s come back and see it again tomorrow night.”
Red pursed her lips, while in the field surrounding them, cars rumbled to life and maneuvered into the line snaking toward the drive-in’s exit. If Sam were behind the wheel, he’d be doing the same, but it was Red tonight, and she was apparently in no hurry.
“If you were watching, then you know what Matthew’s job was.”
“Who’s Matthew?”
“The guy in the film. What did he do for a living?”
“He was a—” A cheesedick. “A whaddayacallit. Guy who owns a flower shop.”
Red smirked. “No, not a florist.”
“A chef.”
“Wrong again. He was a professor.”
“That’s what I said. A professor who’s into flowers and nude grilling.”
“Humph. That’s about the extent of what I know about your old job.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His heart squeezed. Couldn’t she see the obvious—that his soul was filled with spiders?
“Don’t act like you don’t know. You promised to tell me more about what you did in the service.”
“Nothing as sexy as the nudist, grilling professor. Like I said, I analyzed the demand for supplies, forecasted future needs, negotiated bids.”
“That sounds like a script you memorized out of some recruiter’s catalog.”
How’d she know? “I can’t help it. It is what it is.”
“What was that big, shiny medal on your chest the night of your homecoming?”
“What medal?”
“The star-shaped one hanging from the red, white, and blue ribbon.”
He looked away. “It’s like kids’ sports nowadays. Everybody’s a winner.”
“Come on, Sam. Tell me something.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“How about why you came home before your commitment was up?”
His head whipped around. “It was only a couple of weeks shy.”
“Three weeks. I looked up when you left and then I counted backward.”
She was an aggravating little minx and she wasn’t going to stop. He scrubbed his chin. Time for a diversionary tactic.
“I put a Kawasaki Z750 through the front window of the Hotel Sofitel in Luxembourg.”
Inside the Impala, all was quiet. The occasional bursts of conversation from open windows of other cars, the kids running pell-mell toward the snack bar clenching dollar bills in grubby fists were gone now. Only a few other cars remained in their slots by the speakers facing the dark screen, waiting for the line of red taillights to dissipate.
“Why?”
“Why’s anyone ride their bike through a plate glass window? I was drunk out of my mind.”
She considered that. “I’ve never once seen you get drunk. Even though you’re around wine all day.”
“I don’t make a habit of it.”
“So why then? What stressed you out so badly that you felt like you had to get that hammered? And what did that have to do with ending your career?”
His mouth clamped shut. He’d already said too much.
“Were you hurt?”
He laughed. “Ironic thing is, the booze probably protected me. Kept me from stiffening up on impact.”
Red trailed her finger across the scar on his forehead. “Is that where this came from?”
“It’s a scratch. A few stitches. That’s all.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me how you got it when I asked before?”
“I said, it’s nothing. Forgot all about it.”
“Did they arrest you?”
He gazed out at the night sky and nodded. “That’s what usually happens.”
“Handcuffs and all?”
He shifted his weight, uncomfortable with being questioned.
“I can’t imagine what sitting in the back of a cop car with my wrists bound would feel like,” she murmured.
There are a lot of things you can’t imagine.
“So it was enough to get you sent home, but your discharge must’ve been an honorable one or Senator Hollins wouldn’t have been there taking advantage of the photo op.”
“I told you more than I’ve told anyone else. Can’t you just take that and be happy with it?”
“The Army let you go because the pressure was too much. You were a good soldier, so they cut you a break, but you’d had as much as you could take.”
I snapped, all right? “That’s right. You figured it out. Congratulations, Doc. Happy now?”
It was Red’s turn to be silent.
After a moment, he looked over at her. “So,” he said, back in control of his voice, “you done?” She’d dredged up a lot of old dirt. All he wanted was to get going, to be alone until it settled again.
“No. Not yet.”
Out of the blue, she reached over and put her arms around his neck until her face was inches from his. “I’m sorry for the pain you went through.”
And then her mouth was on his, soft and consoling.
He wasn’t ready for it. Was still wallowing in his past. He was stiff in her arms.
Red’s tongue prodded and probed, urging him to not just passively accept her empathy but to embrace it, to immerse himself in her compassion…her unquestioning belief in him as something whole, something good.
He began to relax.
Like the tide washing broken shells out to sea, her kisses washed away fragments of his past. It had been weeks since they’d made love, weeks of learning to live with the frustration of having her whenever he wanted and then, suddenly, not having her.
His need for her overwhelmed him. He craved her mouth, her hair, every inch of her skin, the entire measure of her. He wanted to take refuge inside her, to merge completely until there was no more him and her, only them.
“Doc.”
Had he said that out loud? Usually, she was the vocal one.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except having her. He scooped up handfuls of her bottom and slid it toward him, blessing the guy who had designed the Impala’s bench front seat.
“We’re never trading this in,” he rasped.
“We?”
Immediately, he reverted to form. “You, I meant. You’re never trading it in.”
She gazed unsmiling into his eyes, her breath coming in gasps, her lips wet in the moonlight. They shared a look that transcended time and space…a look he wouldn’t forget if he lived another hundred years. But his hunger was a raging river and she’d let him get this far. He ruched her lower until he was lying fully across her. But when he parted her legs, she went limp.
“Tonight’s just for kissing,” she panted.
Sam looked down at her intact clothes, shocked to realize that kissing was all they had accomplished. He hadn’t once fingered the silken skin that lay beneath her shirt.
Slowly, reluctantly, he sat up, freeing her to do the same.
But instead of getting back behind the wheel, she turned and burrowed her back up to his chest, drawing her knees up under her chin.
Sam reached out to pet her calf on top of her jeans before he realized that might be breaking one of her arbitrary rules, and instead settled for simply cupping her elbow.
“Thank you for sharing that story with me,” she said. “I’m not doing this to hurt you. Just the opposite. I want to help you get free of whatever it is that’s haunting you.”
He stroked the crease in her elbow with his thumb. It wasn’t as if he had bought into her plan lock, stock, and barrel. He was biding his time until he came up with a solution to this dilemma of his own making, without losing the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Chapter 13
Sam dropped off Red, drove to the first stop sign, and pulled out his phone, even though it was pushing midnight.
“Woodcrest Assisted Living and Memory Care.”
“This is Sam Owens. I’m calling to see where things stand with my father. George Owens.”
“George Owens?”
Sam forced himself to be patient. If he wanted to get information, he needed to stay in the nursing staff’s good graces. “That’s right,” he said in a level voice.
“Let me see….”
Seconds ticked by with maddening slowness.
“Are you on record as someone we can talk to?”
“I should be.” I’m the only one stupid enough to care. “He was admitted last week for evaluation. Was acting a little strange.”
“And this is the first you’re checking on him?”
Until tonight, there was no pressure to hide the house.
“I’ve been tied up at work. Figured if there was news, you’d get ahold of me.”
“What was your name again?”
“First name Sam. Sierra Alpha Mike. Last name Owens.”
“I’m
sorry, Mr. Sierra, but I don’t see your name here on the chart.”
Jesu— He bit his tongue. “It’s Owens, same as him. I should be on there. I’m the one who brought him in in the first place.” Should have just let him blow himself up like he wanted.
“I’m sorry, Owens.” There was another pause. “I don’t see that on here, either.”
Sam gritted his teeth. “Is the night manager there?”
“She is, but she’s with a resident and I’m not sure how long she’ll be. Can I have the director call you tomorrow?”
“Could you? Here’s my number.” He punched end and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. He could call the doctor, but the office wouldn’t be open until Monday.
* * * *
Sam was seated in his office late Sunday morning when his phone rang. It was the director from Woodcrest. Sam grabbed it and leaped to his feet.
Following the preliminaries, she said, “We’re still waiting to hear from his doctor. If Mr. Owens is deemed unable to take care of himself, the doctor has the power to declare a 302, meaning he requires professional care. At that point, your father can fill out the forms to apply for formal admission with Medicare paying for the first—”
“My father can’t even fill out a freaking grocery list.” He should know. He’d given him a pre-printed pad months ago. All Dad had to do was check off what he needed, milk, bread, whatever, and Sam would pick it up and bring it on his weekly visits to check on him. Yet he never filled it out once.
There was a pause. “Obviously, I was speaking rhetorically,” she said coolly. “The patient doesn’t have to fill out the forms himself. He can do it with the assistance of you or another authorized signatory.”
“But what you’re saying is that we’re not anywhere near there yet.”
“Correct.”
“How long does it usually take to get a definitive answer?”
“It’s different in every case.”
“Can you at least give me an estimate so I know what we’re dealing with here?”
Kisses Sweeter Than Wine Page 8
