Without another word, he turned and walked away.
Sienna followed him as he traced the same paths she’d been over five times, from the restrooms to the seats and back. She watched Darryl do the same on the other side of the stadium. A moment later, Dawn’s picture flashed onto the scoreboard with another announcement.
Mike stared at it, then at Sienna. “Wow, how’d you get that up there so fast?”
“A guy I don’t know. He and his girlfriend stopped to help.”
He turned in a slow circle. “If I were Dawn, where would I go?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know why she disappeared in the first place.”
“Too loud? Too many screaming fans? The world can be a scary place to regular people, let alone an eight-year-old girl who thinks she can’t trust it.” He caught her gaze. “Sometimes it’s easier to just disappear and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”
The words fell heavy on her heart. Tell me about it.
The eighth inning finished with another run scored by the Panthers, and Sienna walked to the top of the stairs. The teams switched sides, and a few spectators began filing out, apparently confident in their home team’s four-run advantage. Sienna flattened herself against the wall to let them pass and suddenly saw a small door marked Private she hadn’t seen before. Its seams blended into the concrete blocks painted in the Panthers’ team colors of red and blue.
“Where does that go?” She pointed.
Mike tried the handle. To her surprise, it creaked open. “I have no idea.” He stuck his head inside. “Up to the next deck?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Are you sure? Must be access to the roof then.”
The roof? Visions of baseball fans falling to their deaths filled her head. Her heart thumped an awful patter. “Do you think she went up there?”
“Dawn?” Mike said into the dark stairwell.
She isn’t going to answer, Sienna almost said, but he already knew that. She wiped her forehead and realized she smelled of perspiration. Wonderful. She hadn’t washed her hair in two days, she’d ripped out the bottom hem of her shirt, and she was dissolving into a certifiable wreck with every passing minute. She bit her bottom lip and walked over to the door.
“Yes, I know it is,” he was saying.
Sienna froze. Is he talking to her?
“Miss Cruz is awfully worried about you. We need you to come down so we can all go back to school together.”
In disbelief, Sienna stuck her head under his arm and looked up. Far at the top of the dark stairwell, a pair of eyes blinked down at them.
“Mr. Mike?” came Dawn’s plaintive voice. It was the sweetest sound Sienna had ever heard.
“Yes, sweetheart. I’m right here.” He glanced at Sienna. “And I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe with me.”
“Mr. Mike, I think I’m ready to go home now.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Loretta Springer hobbled out to the covered back porch, holding a bottle of champagne and four plastic glasses.
“Ma, what did I say? Sit down and let me get the rest.” Mike jumped up from his seat next to Sienna on the porch swing. Doc Halloran sat in one of two cushioned chairs across from them. A spread of cheese and crackers, fruit, veggies and dip, and different kinds of breads and jams covered a glass-topped table.
“What? I’ve been keeping this bottle for years, waiting for the right time to open it.” She lifted the champagne in the air. “Seems to me this is as good a night as any.”
Sienna had to agree. As Mike popped the cork and filled the glasses, she watched his deft hands and imagined them feeling their way along her body. They hadn’t talked much since the baseball game. But he hadn’t left her side the whole way back to the school. He’d even parked his truck at the stadium and taken the bus with them. The boys had been thrilled to see him. Silas had practically climbed into his lap, and for one whole second, Caleb had let Mike drop one hand onto his shoulder as they watched the final out together.
“Dawn didn’t stop talking after we found her,” Mike was telling Doc. “It was like the dam finally burst or something.”
Sienna welled up again at the thought. She’d met Dawn’s foster parents for the first time at the school, and when she’d told them what had happened, both had choked out emotional thank yous as they’d taken Dawn in their arms. Good people. Reserved but caring. She rubbed her arms in the cool evening air. I still can’t believe she spoke.
Mike rejoined her on the swing and looped one arm around her shoulders. “Maybe she was just waiting for the right person to come along,” he said into her ear. “I know what that feels like.”
Happiness and hope washed over Sienna. “I’m sorry about what happened between us,” she murmured.
He moved her hair from her face. “Me too. We should talk about it.”
She nodded. She had to talk about something else first. “I wanted to ask you all something.” She glanced at Loretta and Doc, and nerves built in her stomach. “It’s about my mom.”
Loretta stopped arranging cheese and crackers and stole a quick glance at Doc. Suddenly Sienna knew. “It’s true, isn’t it? What Mike told me?” She felt as though all breath had left her body. “My mom overdosed the day she died.” Saying it out loud sounded worse than inside her head. Raw sadness, anger, and disbelief washed over her. She felt turned upside down, unsteady, betrayed. Broken-hearted.
Doc coughed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She dropped her gaze and focused on Mike’s shirtfront. “I should have known.”
“Wasn’t something a fifteen-year-old needed to know,” Loretta said, her voice firm. “You’d just lost your mother. Didn’t matter how it happened.”
Sienna shook her head. “I feel like a fool.”
Mike took her hand and ran his thumb over her knuckles. “It doesn’t make her a bad person.”
“It doesn’t make her a good one either.” Why, Mom? Tears pricked her eyes. If not for some stupid pain pills, her mom might still be alive. They might still be living together in Pine Point, and everything from the last ten years would be different.
She looked at Mike’s hand in hers. Including this.
Loretta leaned over the table and pointed at Sienna. “You listen to me. Your mother was a good woman, a hard worker who put her daughter first no matter what. She made a bad decision. So do we all. I don’t want you to think on her memory for one minute with anything but happiness.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sienna asked Doc. “I’m sure it was in whatever report you had to make.”
He nodded, his gnarled fingers tight around the stem of his glass. “Like Loretta said, I didn’t want to hurt you. None of us did. Thought the best thing was to protect your memory of your mother.” He fixed his gaze on Sienna. “Her heart gave out at the end. That was the primary cause of death. The drugs?” He shrugged. “Did they contribute? Maybe. Probably. But the only thing you needed to know was that she loved you. She was working hard for you and a better life.”
Sienna blinked away tears. I can’t believe this. She’d spent so much time looking for other people’s secrets, she hadn’t even stopped to think she might discover some of her own.
“It’s getting a little chilly out here,” Loretta said, even though the temperature hadn’t dropped a single degree. With a knowing look at Doc, she limped to the sliding door and waited for him to follow.
Sienna and Mike sat in silence for a few minutes. She sipped her champagne and watched the sun settle into the hills. What comes next? Where do we go from here? “I’ve been thinking,” she finally began.
“Mmm?”
“I might change the focus of my research.” Especially now, knowing the truth and trying to understand her place in it.
Mike’s hand stopped moving along the back of her hair. “To wh
at?”
She turned to look at him. “I always thought I wanted to prove that small towns had secrets.”
“Yes, so you’ve said. Many times.”
She elbowed him. “But I think I’ve had a change of heart. Or mind. Or something. It’s not that I don’t believe that anymore.” She cocked her head. “It’s true. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But I don’t think secrets necessarily tear a place apart. I think in a weird way, they might tie a place tighter together. If people know secrets about each other, maybe it makes them more likely to have each other’s backs.”
“You mean like blackmail? I’ll keep your secret if you’ll keep mine?”
“No. Well, not really. Not in a bad way. Just…” She sighed and leaned against him, loving the warmth of his chest that cradled her. “What your mom and Doc said. They kept my mother’s secret to protect me, didn’t they? They didn’t judge my mom as this horrible person because of what she’d done. And when all those people helped me look for Dawn today, I don’t think any of them judged me for losing track of her. They just wanted to help me find her.”
He chuckled, and she could feel the vibrations. “There’s judgment in small towns, don’t get that wrong.”
“But there’s kindness too. And forgiveness, I think.”
He kissed her temple.
“I understand why you came back here,” she went on. “It feels safe, doesn’t it? It’s a place you can start over.”
“Yes.”
People make mistakes. Her mom’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, young and smiling. Sienna looked down at her own wrist, at the thin white line marking a mistake she’d almost made years ago. It doesn’t have to change everything good about them. She turned and took Mike’s face in her hands. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She ran her fingers over the faint stubble on his jaw. “I never wanted to. You were always more than a research subject. You have to know that.”
“Ah, sweetheart, I do know that now. But it feels so good to hear you say it.” He kissed her, and the kindness in his touch almost undid her. One hand went to the back of her head. The other slid down her arm, brushing her breast, and turning her skin to fire.
When he pulled back, the corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned. “In the name of research, what do you say we take this celebration upstairs and do a little scientific experimentation? I think there’s a position or two we haven’t tried yet.”
She smiled, and her sadness faded. “I hope there’s more than one or two.” She ran her hand up his thigh. “Because I have a feeling this experiment could take a long time.”
“Maybe even past June?” He quirked a brow.
“I think almost definitely past June.” She’d already thought about asking Jenny if her teaching position could continue into next year. She could write her dissertation anywhere in the country. Home seemed as good a place as any.
“I’m glad to hear that. Otherwise I was going to move Springer Fitness to North Carolina.” He kissed her again, not slow nor gentle, and promising all kinds of wicked things. Then he took her hand and led her upstairs. At the top, he swept her into his arms and carried her inside his apartment.
I didn’t know what I’d find here, she thought with wonder as Mike laid her on the bed and rained kisses on her neck. He took his time peeling off her shirt and stroking her bare skin, and she arched into his touch. I thought I was doing a job. Finishing my studies. I didn’t know I was coming home. She hadn’t had any inkling that the town where she’d grown up, the town she’d left with such heartache years ago, would be the same town to save her. To heal her.
To make her fall in love.
About the Author
Allie Boniface is a romance novelist and high school English teacher living with her husband in the northern New York City suburbs. She’s had a soft spot for love stories and happy endings since the time she could read, and she’s been caught scribbling story ideas on scrap paper (when she should have been paying attention to something else) too many times to count. When she’s not writing, shoveling snow, or grading papers, she’s traveling the United States and Europe in search of sunshine, back roads, and the perfect little pub.
Visit Allie’s website at www.allieboniface.com to sign up for her newsletter, where you’ll be the first to know about upcoming releases, giveaway and contests, review opportunities, in-person appearances, and more!
Look for these titles by Allie Boniface
Now Available:
Pine Point series
Summer’s Song
Winter’s Wonder
Don’t miss the other titles in Allie Boniface’s Pine Point series!
When a bad boy falls for an angel, the sparks could set the coldest season on fire.
Pine Point, Book 2
Pine Point hasn’t changed much in the eight years Zane Andrews has been away. But Zane sure has. These days, this reformed bad boy has no problem resisting the bored housewives who flirt shamelessly with their gated community’s security guard.
The only thorn in his side is the stray dog that keeps overturning the neighborhood’s garbage cans, and the cute, crusading do-gooder who barks at him for trying to chase it off.
Becca Ericksen knows Zane is just doing his job, but his tactics are making her job—to rescue strays and bring them to Pine Point Paws—much harder. Clearly, they have nothing in common, yet when the legendary playboy asks her out, she finds herself saying yes.
With a sizzling kiss, something warm and unexpected beings to grow between them. Opposites can attract, but is attraction enough?
Warning: Contains a bad boy gone good, and a woman who’s one good deed away from disaster. Cold noses and warm kisses—and that’s just from the canines.
What if everything you knew about your past turns out to be…wrong?
Pine Point, Book 1
Ten years after leaving home, the last thing Summer Thompson expects is to inherit her estranged father’s half-renovated mansion. And the last thing she wants is to face the memories of the night her brother died—sketchy as they may be. Now a San Francisco museum curator, she plans to stay east just long enough to settle the estate and get rid of the house. Until she finds it occupied by a hunky handyman who’s strangely reluctant to talk about his past.
Damian Knight has something to hide: his mother and sister from a brutal stalker. They’ve found a measure of peace and carefully guarded safety in Pine Point. Yet when the lonely, haunted Summer steals his heart, he finds himself opening up to her in ways he should never risk. Especially to a woman who’s planning to return to the west coast—after selling their refuge out from under them.
Summer’s mounting flashbacks leave her confused—and more determined than ever to find out the truth behind her brother’s death. But in a small town full of powerful secrets, confronting the past could cost her the man she loves. Even her life.
Warning: This title contains a hunky hero who can do anything with his hands, a heroine desperate to discover the truth, tons of summer heat, and a small town with so much charm you’ll want to move there.
Don’t miss these other titles by Allie Boniface
Can anything really change in 24 hours? Can everything?
A One Night Story
Journalist Grant Walker has one chance to salvage his job and his relationship with his domineering father. Terrorists have kidnapped a fading film star’s son, and Grant has scored the first interview with the grieving mother. Even better, a new twist has just arrived on the scene—an illegitimate granddaughter who hasn’t been heard from in seven long years.
It’s the story of a lifetime, and all Grant has to do is deliver.
After discovering a terrible secret about her birth, Kira March left home vowing never to return. With her father kidnapped and her grandmother cracking under
media pressure, it’s up to her to find and destroy all evidence of that secret. Trouble is, a reporter has weaseled his way into the house looking for answers—and he isn’t leaving until he gets them.
Yet as the hours pass, Kira finds herself falling for the very man who could destroy her. And when Grant comforts her in the wake of a midnight tragedy, he remembers why it’s a bad idea to get emotionally involved with an interview subject. Especially when the family name is on the line.
Warning: This title contains a hunky hero who thinks he knows it all, an unconventional heroine who’s out to prove him wrong, a ticking clock, family secrets, and enough sexual tension to heat every corner of an enormous mansion…especially when the power goes out.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Spring Secrets
Copyright © 2016 by Allie Boniface
ISBN: 978-1-61923-490-1
Edited by Heidi Moore
Cover by Syd Gill Designs
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: May 2016
www.samhainpublishing.com
Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 Page 21
