Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3

Home > Romance > Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 > Page 2
Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 Page 2

by Allie Boniface


  “You too.” Sienna finished her smoothie and slid the glass back across the counter. “I guess I should go,” she said. “I still have to unpack. I haven’t even been to my apartment yet.”

  “Sure. Thanks for stopping in.” He cleared his throat. “Good to see you again.”

  She bit her lip. “Listen, about before,” she said. “When I was in town before, I mean. I’m sorry I didn’t call or text you after I left. I thought…”

  “You thought you wouldn’t see me again,” he finished for her. “You didn’t plan on coming back to Pine Point.” He got off his stool and walked behind the counter to rinse their glasses.

  “You have to admit, the long-distance thing doesn’t usually work,” she said. “And we only went out a couple of times.”

  “True.” He busied himself with the faucet and with soaping up and rinsing out the glasses twice more than they needed.

  “I just wanted to clear the air. And apologize.”

  “Apology accepted.” He set the glasses in the drainer to dry. Then, against his better judgment, he said, “Let me walk you to your car.”

  She smiled, and her cheeks pinked.

  He held up her coat and waited as she slipped first one slender arm and then the other inside. A touch closer and he could wrap her in his arms. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from growing hard again. Then he pulled on his own coat and followed Sienna to the door. Their breath came in long white streams the moment they stepped outside.

  “I forgot how miserable this weather can be.” She unlocked her car, shivering.

  He glanced up. “But take a look at that view.” Above them, a few stars studded the early evening sky.

  “It’s pretty, I’ll give you that.” She blinked and looked upward as well, and her long lashes fell to her cheeks before rising again. Everything in Mike turned white-hot with desire. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  This was the moment she would turn and say goodbye, duck into her car, and leave him standing in the falling snow. Except she didn’t. She stood with her back against her cute little sports car, not moving, her chest lifting and falling, the breath still streaming from between her cherry lips, until on impulse, he leaned forward and kissed her.

  He meant to kiss her once, fast and hard, but the moment he tasted her again, his hands went to her waist and pulled her tightly against him. His tongue teased her lips open, and she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She smelled like something spicy and forbidden, and despite the cold, she was fire under his touch. Her cheeks and neck and every place he could feel sizzled with sexuality.

  I want you. Now. Naked. Anywhere. Here. The crazy thoughts flashed in and out of his head, and suddenly he was twenty-three again and kissing someone else who’d turned him head over heels with lust.

  Mike stopped. He dropped his hands from Sienna’s face and stepped back. “Ah, sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She touched his cheek with the gloved fingers of one hand. “It’s really good to see you again.”

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

  This time, she did leave. She slipped inside the car, buckled her seat belt, and drove toward the center of town. Mike laced his hands behind his head and watched her go. She hadn’t told him where she was renting an apartment. She hadn’t told him much of anything.

  Damn mistake. He had no intention of falling for a woman. He would not, could not, let a woman mess up his head or his heart again. He’d kissed her, okay, but that was the last time. He shook his head and forced himself to turn away from Sienna’s vanishing taillights. He’d vowed eighteen months ago to focus on his mom, then his business, then his friends, in that order. Not women. Not relationships. Sienna Cruz was only in town until June anyway. They had absolutely no reason to get involved.

  The next time he saw her, he’d tell her exactly that.

  Chapter Three

  Sienna thought about that kiss the entire way to her new apartment on the opposite end of town. She thought about it as she carried boxes and luggage up three flights of stairs and when she finally peeled off her clothes and took a long, hot shower. She could still feel Mike’s mouth on hers, his hands pulling her close in the biting winter air. All muscle. All confidence. She had no intention of getting seriously involved with anyone while she was in town, but damn. A guy like that might almost make her change her mind.

  As she wrapped a towel around her head and pulled on a robe and fuzzy socks, she surveyed her new living room. Couch in one corner, recliner across from it, and a brand new flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. A fireplace with a gas insert burned brightly and did a decent job of keeping the January chill at bay. Small kitchen to her left, bathroom and two small bedrooms down the hall. All furnished as well. A place like this, even unfurnished, would cost well over a thousand dollars back in Chapel Hill. Here, two floors above a diner, she’d be paying six-fifty a month. Including all utilities.

  Sienna walked to the wide window that overlooked Main Street. From here, she could see one long block in each direction. Two floors below her sat Zeb’s Diner, a fixture in town for as long as she could remember. Directly across the street was Bernie’s Barber Shop, with what looked like apartments on its second and third floor. She could see a pet store, some kind of clothing boutique, and a hardware store to the left. St. Mary’s Church sat on her right. Beyond that, if she remembered correctly, was the entrance to a small local park. A few streetlights twinkled in the dark. A car, then two pickup trucks, then a snowmobile, drove down the street and north toward County Route 78 and Red Barn Road, which eventually led out of town and over the hills to Silver Valley.

  Sienna sank into the recliner and tucked her feet beneath her. Three bulging boxes of books and papers sat under the front window. For the first time, a squiggle of doubt moved through her. Was it wrong not to tell anyone the real reason she’d come to Pine Point? Did someone besides her dissertation advisor need to know she was analyzing the behavior of the people who lived here? She loosened the towel, raked her fingers through her long curls, and shook her head. She wouldn’t use identifying information. It would all be kept confidential and anonymous.

  She reached into a brown leather backpack and pulled out a new, sealed stack of yellow notepads. Twenty-first-century technology might be great in a lot of ways, but she still preferred taking notes longhand and then transferring them to her computer. Map out Main Street, she jotted on the top page of her notepad She needed to get a feel for the town again, see who spent time where and what they did. As a kid, even as a teenager, she hadn’t paid attention to much of that. Their rundown apartment, the school, and the streets and shops between them had been all she knew until the day she left.

  Local residents, she wrote below her Main Street note. She thought a minute, then added blue-collar workers in parentheses.

  Mac Herbert

  Damian Knight

  Mike Springer

  She stopped. Small-business owners weren’t really considered blue-collar workers, were they? She drew a line through Mike’s name and flipped to the next page. Local professionals, she wrote instead.

  A car horn beeped outside, and Sienna leaned over to see a bulky black SUV pull into the parking spot behind her car. Matching blond twenty-somethings emerged from the vehicle, one dressed in a red parka, jeans, and work boots, the other in a slimming blue ski jacket and what looked like black leggings and stiletto heels.

  Sienna added the names of Ella and Becca Ericksen to her second list. They must have been out for a late supper at Zeb’s. But to her surprise, they unlocked the door beside the diner entrance. A moment later, she heard footsteps on the stairs and then the door below her open and shut. She scrawled sisters sharing an apartment? next to their names and wondered how difficult it was to have a social life when your sister slept in the bedroom next to you. She knew Becca was dating Zane Andrews. From what she reca
lled, Ella was dating half of Pine Point.

  She stared at the notepad. Ella had been one grade above Sienna back in high school, one of the Queen Bees and the center of everything social. Sienna knew because she’d watched from far outside the center. Tears stung her eyes, and though she did her best to wipe them away, they slipped down her cheeks. Things have changed since you were fifteen. You’re not a lost, lonely teenager with a name and a face that doesn’t fit in.

  True. She’d chalked up eleven years of living somewhere else, three years of therapy, a wide circle of friends, two serious boyfriends, a slew of jobs, and two college degrees. You’ve done okay since leaving Pine Point. She pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d done better than okay, her therapist would tell her, though she didn’t always believe him. The scar on her wrist served as evidence of that. So did the scars inside, cut more deeply into her soul and impossible to see. Returning to a place where she’d never felt at ease, and where she’d lost the one person she loved in life, set all those old wounds to aching again.

  Finally, she blew her nose and ran a hand over her face. Time for bed. Time for a fresh start in the morning. Sienna hadn’t come back to Pine Point to mourn her mother or relive her childhood. She’d come back to finish her dissertation. Prove to the world she could do it, she could earn the highest college degree despite all the shit she’d lived through. If she had to do it by watching and recording the lives of the people who still lived here, then so be it.

  * * * * *

  Long after nightfall, Mike headed for the parking lot behind the gym and climbed into his jacked-up red pickup truck.

  Zane had asked him once why he didn’t put the name of his business on his truck. But which business? The gym, or towing and plowing? He figured it didn’t matter either way.

  Everyone in Pine Point knew where to find him when they needed him. He kept some business cards for the gym over in his towing garage outside of town, and he kept some business cards for the garage on the front desk of his gym, but other than that, he didn’t do much advertising.

  He passed the entrance to the interstate and then a few residential streets. Finally, he turned onto Cornwall Road and followed it out of town. Here on the south side of Pine Point, squat one-story homes alternated with rundown trailers and empty lots. After a mile, he turned into the driveway of the only two-story house on the road and parked in front of the garage. A single light burned in the living room.

  He didn’t bother to lock his truck. He never left anything inside it. He climbed the front steps and opened the door. Inside, his mother slept in front of the television tuned to a reality show. She wore a blue bathrobe and matching slippers and snored softly.

  “Ma.” He shook her shoulder. “Ma? I’m home.”

  Loretta Springer’s eyes opened, and she blinked in confusion. “Mikey?” She sat up. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eight thirty.”

  She yawned. “Oh.” She reached for the half-empty cup of tea on the coffee table. “Did you have a good day at work?”

  She always asked him the same thing, and he always answered the same way. “I did, yes. How was your day?”

  “Busy.” She turned off the television. “Martha came over for lunch.” She gestured around the room. “I’m thinking about repainting in here. Maybe blue. It’s been green for too long.”

  Mike dug a beer out of the fridge and joined her on the couch. “I think blue sounds nice. I can do it next weekend if you want. I’ll ask Mac or Damian to come over and help.”

  “You don’t have to. Martha’s twin nephews are looking for some extra money. I told her I’d hire them.”

  Mike leaned his head against the couch and closed his eyes. Good ol’ Ma. “That’s nice of you.”

  “Nice, schmice,” she said. “It’s what you do for other people.”

  He patted her leg and let the cool beer slide down his throat. “You’ll never believe who came into the gym tonight.”

  “No? Who?”

  He sat up and opened his eyes. “Sienna Cruz.”

  She paused, not long enough to make him worry, but long enough to make him wonder. “Oh?”

  He hadn’t bothered to tell his mother he’d gone out with Sienna before. He didn’t now. “She’s filling in over at the school. Teaching Lucy Foster’s class.”

  “Well, good for her. She was a smart girl.” Loretta looked into the darkness. “I always wondered what happened to her after she left Pine Point.”

  “You remember when she lived here as a kid? And her mother?”

  “Of course.” Loretta finished her tea and set the cup aside. “Elenita and I worked together that summer cleaning houses.” She stood and reached for his empty bottle. “Terrible, terrible thing when she passed. No child should lose a mother that young.”

  The tone of her voice struck Mike as odd, but before he could ask her about it, she walked into the kitchen. “Think I’ll go to bed and read for a bit,” she said over her shoulder.

  Mike followed her to the small bedroom at the back of the tidy house. The only other bedroom, long since turned into her sewing room, still had pencil marks on one wall measuring his height, scratched there each September from first to twelfth grade. He’d had to make the marks himself when he’d outgrown her at fourteen.

  He turned on the bedside light and illuminated a large crucifix on the wall above her bed. A Bible lay on the table next to her reading glasses. “Need anything?”

  “No.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and patted his arm as if he were still a boy. “You be nice to Sienna. She’s had a hard life.”

  And he hadn’t? “Of course, Ma. I’m nice to everyone.”

  “Get some sleep tonight,” she added. “You work hard. All the time. Too hard.”

  “I don’t. But, yes, I’ll get some sleep. And I’ll see you in the morning.” Although he had no idea how he might find sleep easily tonight, with the smell of Sienna still in his mind and the feel of her skin still on his hands. He climbed the back stairs to his apartment over the garage and wondered what she’d think if she knew he still lived at home. Of course, lots of people did in Pine Point, for various reasons. He hadn’t thought twice about moving back in after returning from California. He’d needed a place to stay, his mother had needed a helping hand, and it had worked out well all the way around

  Mike turned on the light over his small kitchen table and went to the bathroom to run a hot shower. Be nice to Sienna? He wondered what his mother would say if he told her he’d kissed Sienna. If he told her he’d spent the rest of tonight trying not to think about her and failing. He dropped his clothes to the floor. One tattoo above his right elbow stood out in stark contrast to the others, with a single date and the words Never Again inked above it.

  He stared at the letters and the numbers until they were burned into his mind’s eye. The memory of Edie mocked him all these years later, and his stomach clenched. He’d thought she’d had a hard life too, when they’d first met. He thought that was the reason fate had brought them together, so they could ease each other’s hurt and build a life together. He’d realized only too late that Edie was more interested in setting him up and stealing every last dime to ease her own hurt and build her life with someone else.

  Mike tightened his hand into a fist. You put that tattoo there for a reason. Don’t let a woman mess up your head again. With that, he stepped under the spray and let the hot water ease the tension from his muscles and drive all thoughts of Sienna from his mind.

  Chapter Four

  “Who is that?” A thin boy with brown hair pointed at Sienna, his dark brows drawn together in concern. “Mrs. James, that is not our substitute teacher. Nor is it Mrs. Foster.” His words, prim and proper, sounded funny coming from the lips of an eight-year-old.

  “You’re right, Caleb, this is someone brand new.” Jenny James, the principal of Pine Point Elementary Sch
ool, smiled at the boy. She and Sienna stood in the doorway of Room Eighteen. Jenny dropped her voice. “I didn’t tell the class they might have a new teacher until I was sure you’d take the job. They were with a substitute last week.” She gestured across the room. “Loni is one of our floating aides. She’s available first thing in the morning and then after lunch, if you need an extra pair of hands.”

  Sienna nodded and looked around the classroom. Two wide-eyed boys with chubby cheeks sat on the rug while Loni, a matronly woman with a double chin, read them a book. Another boy, with the telltale upward eye slant of Down syndrome, rocked in a chair near the window. The only girl in the room, her hair pulled into two tight braids, walked a careful circle around the rug. Heel touched toe in careful, mincing steps, and her fingers tapped together in a rhythmic cadence. She kept her eyes on the floor.

  “Dawn has OCD, anxiety, and selective mutism,” the principal said as the girl walked by. “Billy and Bailey are twins and both developmentally delayed.” She nodded at the aide, who continued to read. “Eight years old but at kindergarten levels for reading.” She pointed at the boy standing in the middle of the room. “Caleb is on the autistic spectrum, as far as we can tell. Asperger’s, I suspect, but his parents refuse to have him formally tested.”

  “At all?”

  “At all.” Finally, Jenny walked to the child in the chair and patted his head. “And Silas is the lover boy of the class.” As if on cue, he jumped from the chair and ran to Sienna. He wrapped his arms around her legs and grinned up at her. Sienna grinned back and tried not to lose her balance.

  Jenny clapped her hands together three times. “Room Eighteen, all eyes on me, please. This is Miss Cruz.” Jenny waited until they gathered around her in a haphazard semi-circle. “She’s going to be your teacher for the rest of the year.”

  All the boys stared. Dawn continued to circle the room. “The whole year?” one of the twins asked.

 

‹ Prev