But he couldn’t think about that. Right now, he had a float to drive.
After he successfully navigated the first turn and the bank, his shoulders relaxed a bit. To think he’d been worried about this. Piece of cake.
Now came the longest stretch, the main route.
It actually got a little boring. Going slow was exactly what seventeen-year-olds with a massive crush on each other didn’t want to do. They wanted to floor it, go full speed ahead.
Jack could feel Harley’s body heat, inches away. He thought of those first exploratory kisses behind the garage. Those kisses had starting something, something fascinating and powerful that couldn’t be undone.
“Tongues’ll be wagging around dinner tables tonight,” said Jack.
Harley’s head spun in a tangle of emotions. She was relieved and grateful at getting the Victorian, yet confused and suspicious over the way it had come about. Now, this. How could she have forgotten? To her hometown, she was still just a waitress with an art hobby.
She picked up her bag from its spot at her feet and half rose to leave. “If you’ve changed your mind about the coffee—”
Like a shot, Jack leaned across the table and dropped his voice to an octave she’d never heard from his mouth when he was a boy—a man’s voice that brooked no argument and had her sinking back into her seat. “I spent the past ten years getting up before dawn and working till I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Then I sat down with my kids for dinner, fell into bed, and did it all over again the next day. Seven days a week, fifty weeks a year. Only break was at Christmas, when the wine’s finally resting on its lees and the vines are dormant.” He sat back then, eyes determined, muscles in his face still taut, nostrils flaring as his breath rushed in and out. “Let ’em stare.”
Harley’s bag dropped to the floor. She realized she knew nothing about this new, grown-up Jack. She’d only been thinking about everything that had happened to her in the interval they’d been apart. Now it occurred to her that just as much had happened to him.
She folded her hands on the table. “Tell me how you’re really doing.”
Jack ripped open a packet of sugar, stirred it into his coffee, and fought for calm.
“Are you still grieving?” she prompted him.
“It’s never easy losing someone. But it’s the girls I’m worried about. Tell me something. Is it normal for eleven-year-old girls to be so—bonkers? Then again, you were—”
Harley elevated a brow almost imperceptibly.
“No offense. Especially Freddie. She’s driving me up a wall. I wish I knew what to do for her.”
“I remember that age. That’s when the girl wars start. The teasing, the gossip . . . and your girls are navigating it without a mother. Maybe that’s why they’re a little bonkers, as you call it. But then, when it comes to losing a parent, you’re the expert.”
The minute he could following his dad’s funeral services, Jack had snuck out of the house and run the three miles down Ribbon Ridge Road to Harley’s house. When he saw her face behind the screen door, the dam of emotion he’d been holding back broke. He didn’t have to act like a man around Harley. He could be himself, a thirteen-year-old boy.
“I was gutted when my dad died. But I got past it. Had to. As for the twins, their grades have been slipping. They’ve been trying to get out of things they never balked at before, like sports. Refusing to eat right.”
“I can’t say I ever went through that.”
“No. I guess not.” Harley had been raised in a world of her own design, unencumbered by rules. A world without uniforms and structured play dates and expectations to be followed without question. Even when she was a teenager, she still sang to herself and hung upside down on the monkey bars like a little kid, not caring if her hair got woodchips in it. Behind her back people called her a flower child.
With not a penny to her name, no legacy to uphold, she made life up as she went. She hadn’t thought twice about throwing everything she owned into a backpack and taking off for Seattle. In essence, she was everything Jack wasn’t.
“What’s your mother say about it?”
“You know my mother. She always did have lofty expectations.”
Harley cradled her mug between her hands. “The tree that won’t bend doesn’t last with the storm.”
He chuckled humorlessly. “Then again, how could I complain about my life? Ski vacations. A new truck when I turned sixteen. Me moaning about my childhood would be like someone complaining the AC was too cold in their beach house in Cabo.”
Harley smiled. “That truck—someone sure got their money’s worth there.”
“Whereas you . . . you followed your own drummer. Hanging out after school in the art room, just you and the teacher. Climbing up the hill to draw that Victorian. Even cutting school if you felt like it.”
For the first time that day, she laughed, too. “Thing is, I hardly ever felt like it.”
“What I’m trying to say is, you were free to do whatever you wanted with your life. No one had any preconceived ideas of how you’d turn out.”
“It’s not like my parents didn’t take care of me. They had steady jobs and a house, and they were involved in my life, but as a support system. They didn’t believe in orchestrating my every move.”
Jack took a slug of his coffee.
“It wasn’t like I had total carte blanche, you know,” said Harley, going back to that time when their futures still dangled before them, full of potential, like a wrapped gift. “There was that one time I crossed the line.”
Jack pictured that summer evening when her dad caught them kissing behind the garage and he laughed. “I had just finished asking you what you would do if your dad came out there, and you said you’d tell him to mind his own business. And then he did come around the corner and told you to get in the house, and you took off like a shot.”
Harley laughed again, eliciting a wry smile from Jack and nosy stares from those nearby. “I think it was the first time I’d ever been reprimanded.”
“It was far from funny when he narced to my mother.”
“He wouldn’t have said a thing to this day if not for us having tipped over your minibike a couple of weeks earlier. He just saw her at the market and asked her how your knee was doing.”
Later, Mother had railed at Jack, berating Harley in the process.
“What are you doing, spending time with that girl?
“Nothing! We’re just friends.”
“She got you to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night!”
Harley didn’t have to sneak to do anything. Sneaking out was all Jack’s idea. But it was embarrassing enough at that age that his mother had found out he’d kissed someone . . . anyone.
“Harley isn’t the right young lady for you. She has nothing to offer you.”
“I told you, we’re just friends!” Guilt stung him for his betrayal of Harley, but his true feelings for her were powerful and dangerously delicious, and even if he could have described them, he was too immature to stand up to Mother.
“That’s how it all starts. What would your father say? It would kill him to see you throw your life away with a girl like her. With privilege comes responsibility. You can’t see it now, but our actions have far-reaching effects. You’re special. You have to think about the future.”
Jack had never told Harley all the hurtful things Mother said. But it got to him.
“At least my dad didn’t threaten me with military school,” said Harley. When Dad told her he didn’t approve of her sneaking around, making out behind buildings, they’d had their one and only fight. Harley told him if he and her mother weren’t so weird, maybe Melinda would be more accepting of her. Dad might be tough, but he was sensitive. She could tell that demeaning his lifestyle had hurt his feelings.
But even that wasn’t enough to keep Harley and Jack apart.
“Your mother never thought I was good enough for you.”
Jack ducked
his head and scratched the nape of his neck. “Let’s not go there. Not today.” His hand returned to his coffee cup, and he lifted his eyes to meet hers. “In any event, I don’t blame your old man, now that I have girls of my own. I catch one of them swapping saliva with some little twerp, I’ll probably do the exact same thing. Wait till you have kids.” He looked up with a start. “Or maybe you already do.”
Now Harley was the one who looked away. It was a logical question. She used to talk about having children all the time.
“Not yet.”
His eyes flew to Harley’s left hand.
“Still Miller-Jones,” she sang, slipping her hand into her lap. God forbid she give him the impression she was lonesome. The last thing she wanted was his pity.
“Not that I haven’t dated . . .” She tilted her head as she fingered the edge of her napkin. “It’s just that . . . well. You know.
“How about you? Do you have a girlfriend Down Under?”
He shook his head.
A tiny, foolish spark ignited inside her.
“So,” said Jack. “Tell me what you’ve been up to. Whatever it is, it’s working for you.”
“I’ve been doing a little designing.”
“It’s cool that you kept up with your hobby.”
“My designs have kind of taken off.” She pulled out her phone, scrolled, then handed it to him.
“That’s—” Speechless, Jack pointed to the screen and then looked up at her in a new light.
Harley smiled proudly. “My dishware, on my website. Go ahead. Keep scrolling through.”
“Your drawings, on dishes? I remember looking over your shoulder in art class. Everyone thought you were talented, but . . .” No one ever thought that funky, free-spirited Harley would one day turn her doodles into something viable, something concrete.
“The china’s just the beginning. I’m branching out into other forms of home décor. Bed linens. Ceramics. Who knows? Maybe even furniture.”
“Props to you.” That explained the down payment on the Victorian. But he still couldn’t believe she’d have an easy time making the mortgage payments. Oh well. None of his business.
She slipped her phone back into her bag. “I’m still going to need other sources of income until the new merch starts selling. That’s why I wanted the house. I’ve decided to open a bed-and-breakfast.”
Jack bit his tongue. He could almost accept Harley’s drawings finding a market. What did he know about art? But the Harley he knew was a stargazer. Not a businesswoman.
“How long are you here?” she asked.
“Here?” The jet lag had started to kick in.
“Here. In Newberry.”
“I’m staying.”
She frowned. “What do you mean? You live in New Zealand now. Everyone knows that.”
“Not as of yesterday. I accomplished what I went there to do. The new vineyard’s up and running. We’re back.”
She froze, her eyes round. “But—” She set down her cup and reached for her bag. “I should be going.”
“Where’re you off to?”
She dumped a few crumpled bills onto the table and rose. “Just . . . going.”
Some ideas for cross-promotion had already popped into his head. His winery, her B and B. But she was already headed toward the door.
He rose, reaching for his wallet. “Harley, wait.”
By the time he made it outside she was skipping down the sidewalk, climbing into her old car, parked nearby.
Jack stood there on Main Street and watched Harley drive away, feeling inexplicably as if his heart was attached to it by a rubber band. The farther she got, the tauter it stretched, until he was sure it would snap.
Talking with her was so easy . . . like picking up the thread of a conversation from yesterday instead of ten years ago. She still had that natural ease about her. Just sitting next to her today at the café, he’d felt himself begin to thaw from the outside in.
Chapter Ten
Harley’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. If only she hadn’t made such a snap decision to buy the Victorian! But she’d always had an impulsive streak. She should have taken the time to find out about Jack’s situation. Now she was stuck here with him again. How was she going to handle that?
As kids, they’d been the proverbial peas in a pod. Growing up, there were the inevitable hurdles to climb. Each found new friends and discovered new interests. But they couldn’t stay away from each other.
Teenage Harley had nurtured a pipe dream that one day Jack would take care of his winery and she would do her art and have a passel of kids. And then came the day right before graduation, when Jack came to her gray-faced and blurted out that Emily Redmond was pregnant, and that the baby was his.
The next time she saw Jack was also the last time.
It was late that June night. Harley was slumped in the backseat of a car full of chattering kids on their way to a party. Whose party and where it was, she couldn’t care less—as long as it was as far away from Jack Friestatt as possible.
When the car stopped and she realized that they were at the Friestatt estate, it took her friends forever to coax her to go in. No one knew what she knew—that Emily was pregnant, and that her pregnancy had shattered whatever dreams she’d had for Jack and her. To think that Jack Friestatt could ever really care for her! She’d been so naïve.
But what else could she do? It was one a.m. and she was three miles up Ribbon Ridge. Her options were to sit in the car and wait, walk home in the pitch black—there were no streetlights on the ridge—or wake her hardworking parents needlessly for a ride.
The party was in full swing. Harley tried her best to blend into the crowd. She didn’t see Jack sitting at the bar until his arm shot out and caught hers. Judging by how he swayed on his barstool, his groomsmen had done a commendable job of getting him wasted.
“All I ever wanted was you.”
Alcohol goes in, truth comes out. Wasn’t that the old adage? Adage or not, no sense trying to figure out a drunken groom at his bachelor party. She slipped through Jack’s fingers and into the crowd, frantically searching for the nearest exit. When she finally made it outside, she ran the three miles across the ridge in the dark, cougars and coyotes be damned. As she ran, the cold night air-dried the hot tears streaming down her face. When she reached her little house, she tiptoed inside and collapsed, covered in sweat, onto her narrow bed.
The next morning was Jack’s wedding day. Harley packed up her old hooptie, leaving her tearful parents standing in the driveway, Mom’s head leaning on Dad’s shoulder, her hand clenching a balled-up Kleenex, and headed north in a cloud of exhaust fumes until she ran out of gas. She swore she was never coming back.
If only Jack’s mother hadn’t had so many expectations. If only Jack had loved Harley more than Emily. But you couldn’t turn back time. Jack had made his choice, and Harley had learned that giving away your heart only leads to it getting broken.
* * *
She grabbed her sketchbook and an old beach towel from the stack in the mudroom of her parents’ house, went outside, and crossed the street to where Ribbon Ridge Road rose abruptly, wound along the backbone of the long hill, then fell and ended a few miles beyond. The road was narrow, without much of a shoulder. While traffic was sparse, curves and blind spots made walking along it risky. It made sense to walk the paths between the vines up the hill to where the Victorian sat. Back when she was little, the people who lived and worked on Ribbon Ridge got used to seeing her up there.
The early fall afternoon was pleasantly warm. A kestrel flew overhead. She strode between rows of vines studded with amethyst clusters and then cut into the meadow through knee-high fescue and oat grass. Come spring, this would be dotted with blue lupine and orange poppies. And she would be here to witness it! The thought gave her energy to push on.
When she got to her favorite spot, the sun was already behind the Victorian’s roofline. She spread her towel on the grass, crushin
g it and releasing an herbal scent.
Out here in the fields, without the constant distraction of airliners taking off and landing nearby at Sea-Tac or the pungent cooking odors from the apartment next door, Harley became engrossed in her work.
“Is that who I think it is?”
A wiry man in a driving cap came panting up the hill toward her. He had a silver mustache and wore his shirtsleeves rolled up.
Harley set her tablet aside and scrambled to her feet. “Alfred!”
“Don’t get up,” Alfred scolded in a voice that sounded like gargling gravel.
Too late. Harley threw herself at him. “It’s so good to see you again.” Her eyes squeezed shut, taking in the comforting scent of pipe smoke and leather.
Withdrawing from her, he held her at arm’s length, examining her like a favorite niece.
“Still acting like ‘No Trespassing’ signs don’t apply to you. I swear, if a fence had a ‘Wet Paint’ sign, you’d be the first one to touch it.”
Too bad Jack wasn’t more like Harley, thought Alfred. But it wasn’t Jack’s fault he’d grown up with a father kicking his rear-end to get out there and take chances, experience what life had to offer, instead of just his mother conditioning him to believe that appearances and propriety trumped everything else.
Losing his father had been Jack’s second stroke of bad luck. The first was being born in an era when kids started having their lives planned down to the microsecond. Jack was a prime example of that. Melinda immersed herself in every hour of the boy’s day. She had him taking every possible lesson you could take. Golf... saxophone . . . martial arts. There was nothing wrong with music lessons or organized sports, except that all Jack ever wanted to do was follow Alfred around and play outside.
Back when Alfred was a kid, your mother swooped your bowl of Frosted Flakes out of your hands while you were still slurping down the milk, hollered at you not to slam the screen door on your way out, and that she didn’t want to see you again until dinner, and don’t be late.
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