The Orchard at the Edge of Town

by Shirlee McCoy

  “I hate horror movies,” Adeline replied.

  “I hate standing around when I could be getting something done,” Sinclair murmured, running his hand along the wall until he found a light switch. He flicked it on. Nothing. Not a footprint on the dusty floor. Two doors flanked each wall and a small cushioned bench sat under the window.

  He opened the closest door, peered into a tiny office. No one there, but the room was clean and didn’t smell like dog.

  His opinion of the place was definitely going up.

  He opened the next door and the next. A bathroom. A nice-sized bedroom. No one in either. The last door opened into the largest room. The master bedroom, he’d guess, the furniture heavy nineteenth century. There were two doors on the far wall. One opened into a small closet filled with suits, dress shirts and polished shoes. The other door was locked. He turned the knob twice. Just to be sure.

  “That goes into the building next door,” Janelle said as she swiped her hand over the antique dresser and frowned at the layer of dust on her palm. “May Reynolds had a fabric store there up until a month ago. I’m sure you remember that.”

  Maybe. He hadn’t spent much time in town when he was a kid. He’d been too busy trying to keep the farmhouse from falling down around his ears.

  “Is it locked on the other side?” Not that it mattered. He’d done two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He’d slept in dugouts and under the stars. This place, locked door or not, was way safer than those had been.

  “Of course. Byron made sure of that when he moved in. If I remember correctly, he installed a new metal door. We can go over and take a look at it if you want. The property is for sale, and I’m the Realtor.”

  “I’d like to take a look. If it’s not, maybe that’s the door I heard slamming,” Adeline said, reaching past him to turn the door handle. She smelled like chocolate and berries, and something that reminded him of home.

  Or what he’d always imagined home should be like.

  Home growing up had been a house filled with junk, a grandfather who drank himself into a stupor every night and cold soup served in chipped white mugs. Home now was his high-rise apartment overlooking Puget Sound. Clean lines. Modern. Dinner out most nights because he didn’t like to cook.

  “Adeline, really,” Janelle sighed. “Let it go. No one is in the apartment. No one was in the apartment. The door on this side and the other both need keys. Byron and May are the only people who have them.”

  “I know that, and I also know what I heard.” Adeline’s hands settled on her hips, the clothes she’d picked up hanging limply, the gap in her dress revealing that sliver of creamy flesh again. His gaze dropped to the spot. How could it not? The woman had curves. Nice ones. And the kind of smooth, silky skin that begged to be touched.

  “For God’s sake, Adeline! Put your shirt on,” Janelle snapped. That got Adeline moving.

  She pulled the clothes back over her stomach, her entire face the color of overripe tomatoes.

  She had freckles.

  He hadn’t noticed that before.

  And eyes that might have been violet.

  She left the room too quickly for him to see.

  “I’m sorry about that, Sinclair. Adeline has always been very imaginative.” Janelle ran a hand over her perfectly styled, perfectly highlighted hair. She had to be in her fifties. She looked a couple of decades younger.

  He knew how much time and money it took to achieve that.

  Kendra had been thirty and hell-bent on looking twenty-one. He’d put up with her obsession because she’d been smart and driven. They’d been a good match. Until they weren’t.

  Then they’d both walked away without a second glance.

  Just the way he wanted it.

  No months of back and forth sparring. No breaking up and getting back together. None of the overly emotional stuff Gavin was going through with his wife. Just—this isn’t working out anymore. It’s time to move on.

  “How do you know she was imagining things?”

  Janelle raised a razor-thin brow. “Sinclair, this is Benevolence, Washington. The crime rate is so low we barely need a sheriff’s department.”

  That wasn’t quite true, and they both knew it. There’d been a murder when Sinclair was a kid. Quite a few petty crimes. Vandalism. Drug use. Domestic violence. Those things existed in every town. Even ones that seemed as perfect as Benevolence.

  He didn’t bother correcting her. He wanted to sign the lease and get on with things. He had an overnight bag in his truck, a six-pack of Pepsi and enough paperwork to catch up on to keep him busy until dawn. “I’m not concerned about the crime rate. As long as I can have the place for the next couple of weeks, we’re good.”

  “The lease is for a month,” she reminded him as if they hadn’t spent the better part of the afternoon hashing out the terms of his rental agreement. He’d pay for a full month. He had no intention of being there that long.

  “With the option of extending for a second month,” she continued. “You never know. You might decide Benevolence is the place for you. You won’t believe how many people come here for a visit and end up staying.”

  He’d believe it.

  The place had plenty of small-town charm, lots of interesting architecture and enough appeal to attract people from all over the country.

  What it didn’t have was enough appeal to keep him there for any longer than necessary. He’d seen the beauty of Benevolence when he was a kid. He’d seen the ugliness too. The gossip, the whispers. The pointed fingers. His family had always been on the wrong side of those fingers. He and his brother had been the topic of one too many whispered conversations, the focus of too many sad shakes of the head.

  They’d grown up in the shadow of the tragedy that had taken their parents. Sinclair had no intention of living there again.

  He followed Janelle into the living room.

  Adeline was there, a gray T-shirt pulled over the dress, her long braid tucked into its collar.

  She had freckles.

  A lot of them.

  And eyes that were such a deep blue they looked purple.

  “I’m going to get the rental agreement. Why don’t you come with me, Adeline?” Janelle hooked her arm through her daughter’s and tried to tug her to the door, but Adeline seemed as determined to stay as Janelle was to make her leave.

  She pulled away, dropped down onto the plaid sofa. “I’ll just look around. Make sure there’s nothing here that Granddad might need.”

  “I already packed up most of Byron’s things.” Janelle frowned, glancing at her watch impatiently.

  “All his old suits are hanging in the closet. His church clothes. Did you clean out the guest room? I bet there are a couple boxes’ worth of stuff in there.”

  “I’m not worried about the clothes or the stuff,” Sinclair cut in. He’d been in town nearly a week and hadn’t completely unpacked his suitcase. That would feel too much like a long-term commitment. “I just need a place to sleep.”

  “You won’t like it here, then. I’m running the chocolate shop for my grandfather while he recovers, and I work pretty late. I also make a lot of noise,” Adeline said, pulling her braid out from the collar of her shirt and flicking it over her shoulder.

  “Adeline!” Janelle nearly shouted. “Please, will you just leave well enough alone! Byron agreed that a short-term rental while he was recuperating was a good idea.”

  “He’s on morphine, Mom. He’d agree to anything.”

  “For God sake! The man knows his own mind. No matter how much morphine he’s been given. I’m getting the lease!” Janelle stalked from the apartment, her high-heeled boots clicking against the metal stairs.

  “That went well,” Adeline said, standing and stretching, the shiny orange fabric shimmying up her thighs.

  “What? Pissing your mother off?” he responded, and she met his eyes, offered a smile that had him smiling in return.

  He didn’t know why.

  There
wasn’t all that much to smile about.

  He was in a hometown he hated, working to restore a house that should have been condemned years ago. He’d spent five days listening to his brother complaining while he hauled debris from the home they’d once shared with their grandfather.

  “I do that without any effort at all,” she replied. “What I was really trying to do was get her out of here so I could find some scissors and cut myself out of this,” She plucked at the dress. “Thing.”

  “You don’t want her to know you’re stuck in it?” he asked, following her as she ran down the hall and into the office.

  “I don’t want her to know I’m taking scissors to it. If she finds out, she’ll tell May. If she tells May, May could very well die of heart failure before the wedding.”

  “May?”

  “The bride. She’s seventy-six. Seventy-two if you ask her fiancé.” She opened a drawer in a rolltop desk that sat against the wall, rifled through it and pulled out a pair of scissors. “Not that that will matter if she dies before her big day.”

  She hurried from the room, the scent of chocolate and berries filling the air as she moved.

  And he realized he was smiling again.

  He didn’t want to be amused by her.

  He didn’t want to be amused by anything in Benevolence.

  He’d spent most of his childhood planning his escape.

  He’d wanted to put it all behind him—every moment of living in that house on that property in a town where perfection was the chosen sport and people competed for the honor of having the best garden, the best Christmas decorations, the most well-kept yard.

  The only thing his family had ever competed for was the title of laziest homeowner.

  They’d won hands-down every day of every year for as long as there’d been Jeffersons in Benevolence. That had been nearly as long as the town had been a town.

  Not that that mattered to Sinclair. Not the way it had when he’d been the kid that teachers pitied, the one who received hand-me-down clothes from well-meaning church ladies every Christmas.

  They hadn’t understood the truth.

  He hadn’t wanted slightly used mittens, boots, coats. Hadn’t really needed faded jeans and cotton T-shirts. Grandpa was pretty adept at picking those things out of trash cans and Dumpsters.

  What he’d wanted, what he’d longed for, what he’d needed about as desperately as he’d needed air to breathe and water to drink, was a home. The kind that friends could visit. The kind that smelled like good food and furniture polish. The kind his friends lived in.

  No church lady could have brought him that.

  So, he hadn’t really wanted anything at all.

  Except to escape. Which he had. Thank you Uncle Sam and the good old Marine Corps! Seven years. Three tours. A bum knee and an honorable discharge, and he’d taken the money he’d saved, put it into restoring a row of painted ladies in San Francisco. He’d turned those around for a profit and continued on, building the kind of business his grandfather had always talked about having—using reclaimed materials from condemned buildings to bring at-risk properties back from the brink.

  That was the difference between Sinclair and most of the men in his family. He didn’t just dream. He did.

  Maybe he could teach Gavin to do the same before he left Benevolence.

  He doubted it, but he’d give it as good a try as he’d given his relationship with Kendra. He’d put his all in it. If it didn’t work out, he’d walk away with a clear conscience and no regrets, go back to his life and his business and his clean, quiet apartment.

  The empty one.

  Which hadn’t ever bothered him before.

  The last couple of days, he’d been thinking about all those old childhood dreams. The ones where he’d come home and smell cookies in the oven- or fresh-baked bread. Where there was someone waiting for him with a smile and a “how was your day?”

  Maybe it was coming back to Benevolence that had made him think about those youthful fantasies. Probably it was.

  All the more reason to get out of Dodge as soon as humanly possible.

  “Sinclair?!” Janelle called, her high heels tapping on the wood floor. “I’ve got the agreement.”

  Good. He was ready to sign it.

  He might have to be in a town he hated, but he didn’t have to spend his nights in a cluttered and dirty single-wide trailer listening to his brother complain.

  That was the beauty of working hard.

  It paid off. Gave a man the ability to do what he wanted when he wanted. Gave him the freedom to make decisions about where he wanted to be and when.

  It couldn’t warm his bed at night, couldn’t fill a house with warmth and make it a home, but Sinclair would be happy for what he had.

  That was part of his life plan. Contentment. Something his father hadn’t had, his grandfather had never found, his brother longed for.

  Elusive as mist on the water.

  As difficult to find as water in the desert.

  After Sinclair had nearly been blown to bits in Iraq, he’d realized that was all he really wanted. To be content with his life. He was, and when he wasn’t, he found a way to make himself be.

  Right now, that way was this apartment over a chocolate shop. Not one of the posh hotel suites he was used to staying in when clients flew him in to oversee restoration projects, but it was quiet, clean and close enough to the homestead to make for an easy commute.

  “Good enough,” he muttered as he walked out into the hall and went to sign the rental agreement.

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

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  Copyright © 2015 by Shirlee McCoy

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  ISBN: 978-1-4201-3240-3

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3240-3

  eISBN-10: 1-4201-3240-7