by Shirley Jump
Then she remembered what Abby had said when they’d talked a few months ago. That Harris was now a custom builder and he’d been hired to build a house for a baseball player or something in North Carolina. But that had been last year, right?
“Holy hell. Melanie Cooper?” Harris grinned. “Damn. How long has it been?”
“A while.” Eleven years, three months and two days. But who counted that kind of thing? Certainly not her, even though the day he’d broken her heart had left her thinking she’d never recover, never move on. “My sister said you were in town building a house or something.”
“I was, last year. That project went so well, I’ve...uh, had some people asking me to give them quotes, too. So I’m back and making a pit stop for beer.” He grinned again, and the part of Melanie that wanted to ignore the past melted a little.
He had a nice smile—always had. The kind that slid across his face as easy as drizzling chocolate on ice cream. He’d been a charmer, class president and captain of the football team and all that, but underneath it all, the Harris she knew was a little shy, introverted. Much happier with a pencil and sketch pad in his hands than a football.
“I’m surprised you became a builder. I thought you were going to be a CPA.”
“That was my father’s dream, not mine.” Harris paused a second. His gaze cut to the beer in his hand. “Turns out I’m happier when I’m working for myself.”
Why was she even still talking to him? And what did she care about his career choices? Though she had to admit, builder made better sense than CPA for Harris, who looked nothing like what she pictured when someone said accountant. Harris stood just a couple inches over six feet, with straight dark brown hair that had a tendency to sweep against his brow. He’d maintained that quarterback body, all lean and defined and tempting in a dark green V-neck sweater and a pair of worn jeans that whispered comfort and familiarity.
“You down here for Abby’s wedding?” Harris asked.
She cocked her head and studied his face. Not the way his chest filled out the sweater and the jeans hugged his legs. “How’d you know my sister’s getting married?”
“Harris here knows ’bout everyone in Stone Gap.” Al plopped a second paper coaster in front of Harris. “And after Tuesday night, ’bout everyone knows his name, too.”
Harris’s features shifted from friendly and open to distant and closed. “Al, can I get one of the lagers?”
“Sure.” Al turned, filled another glass and handed it to Harris. “Here you go. On the house, considering. You should tell her your story, Harris. What you did—”
“—is over and done, and not up for discussion.” Harris raised the beer in Al’s direction. “Thanks for the beer, and I am paying for it.”
Whatever Harris had done that had turned him into a hero in Al’s mind was clearly something he didn’t want to talk about. That intrigued the reporter in Melanie. She sensed a story underneath the surface, the kind that editors would rush to have.
The kind that could maybe, just maybe, get an unemployed magazine writer a fresh new start.
“I’d love to hear the story,” Melanie said, gesturing toward the stool beside her. “If you want to talk about it.”
“No, I really don’t. But I’ll talk about anything else.” He nodded at her sweater. “Aren’t you expecting someone?”
A part of her had sort of hoped to see a flicker of jealousy on Harris’s face, but all she saw was a plain old question. Why did she care what he thought about whether she was alone or waiting for her now-pretend husband? She was over him. So over him.
“There’s no one sitting there now,” she said, pitching her answer into a vague left field. Let him make of that what he wanted. She picked up her sweater and draped it over her lap.
He sat down and spun the stool a little toward her. “It’s sure nice to see you here. So, where have you been for the last decade, Mellie?”
Harris was the only human being on the planet who could call her Mellie. He’d done it almost from their first date, and the nickname had stuck. He’d whispered it in her ear when they’d made love for the first time, and she’d heard him say it for the last time, with a hitch in his throat, when he’d told her it was over. Mellie rocketed her mind and heart back to stolen kisses in the science hallway, skipping school together once on a lazy spring afternoon and late nights on a blanket under the stars.
She took a sip of her beer, delaying her answer until the memories flitted away and she could draw herself back to the present. To a band singing about a lost love and a man who was no longer part of her world. “I’ve been working at a magazine in New York.”
“A writer? That’s great.” He gave her a satisfied nod. “And a perfect career for you. You always blew me away with your essays in English. And remember that paper you wrote on the Civil War? The one that told the story of the war from the perspective of a divided family? That was amazing.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember a lot of things from those years, Mellie.”
She retreated to the beer again, but this time the sip didn’t have the same magic. Her heart fluttered a bit, her pulse raced and she wondered vaguely if Harris kissed the same as he had in high school, or if the years between had made his kisses hotter, deeper, sweeter. What was wrong with her? The man had destroyed her heart that summer. Stop talking to him. “And you? What have you been up to?”
“Did the college thing, got that degree in accounting my dad wanted me to get and went to work at the headquarters for PMA in Greenwich.”
Melanie nodded her understanding. It was the life she’d expected him to have—chugging away at the massively successful firm his father had grown from a one-man CPA office to a nationwide enterprise. “Did you do taxes or something else?”
“I worked in business consulting,” Harris continued. “Really code for helping big companies devour little companies, eliminating competition and driving profits higher. I hated every single second I worked there.” He chuckled, but there was a hint of bitterness in his tone. “I started working part-time after hours for a builder, doing manual labor, and found I loved working with my hands. The guy I worked for encouraged me to get my contractor’s license, and the day I did, I went into my father’s office, quit my job and leaped into the unknown.”
“Wow. That’s a pretty gutsy move.” Though not a big surprise from the football player who had carried the team through two winning years. The same boy who had had a contentious relationship with his father.
“I figured I didn’t want to live a life of regrets,” Harris said. “After I started working for my father, I became even more certain that I didn’t want to end up like him, bitter and angry at the world. He’s still so pissed I did it, I think he took me off his Christmas card list.” He shook his head, as if that was no big deal, but Melanie remembered Harris’s father and knew that when Phillip McCarthy held a grudge, he held it forever. She also detected a note of sadness in Harris’s voice. “Anyway, that’s pretty much me in a nutshell. These days, I figure I’m blessed to be making decent money at something I love.”
“That’s great. Really. I’m happy for you.” Walk away from him. Stop asking questions. And don’t look at his left hand.
“Thanks.” He set his glass on the polished surface. “Did you get married? Have kids?”
“No kids. And yes, I got married.”
Harris’s gaze flicked to her empty left hand. “And got unmarried, I presume?”
She could lie. Make up some big story about Adam getting her a new band or something that would explain the lack of a ring on her finger. But Melanie was tired of lying. It had been hard enough to do with her sister, and now, with Harris, whom she probably wouldn’t see again anyway and who had no reason to talk to her sister, lying seemed pointless. “Yeah, a year ago, but I haven’t really uh...talked about it with my family. You kn
ow, not wanting to distract from Abby’s happiness and all.” Yep, that was her reason for lying to her sister’s face. “What about you?”
His left hand was also empty. So, no woman living in some palatial estate with Harris?
“Came close once,” he said. “But no wife, no kids.”
Came close once. What woman had nearly captured his heart forever? And why did Melanie care? “How long are you in Stone Gap?”
“Until my latest...project is done, which should be...a few weeks or so. That’s the great part about my job. Flexibility in hours and location.” He took a sip of beer, then put the glass down again and leaned an elbow on the bar. “You know, I’d love to show you the town. It’s a great little place. I loved it here the first time and love it just as much now.”
“Oh, I’m fine, thanks.” She turned back to her beer and took a big gulp. The sooner she finished it, the sooner she could leave. “I’m pretty busy the next week or so anyway. Helping Abby finish up the wedding details and working. You know how it is with deadlines. Always under the gun.”
Okay, so she wasn’t exactly done lying.
Harris slid a card across the bar to her. “Here’s my cell. Call me or text me if you have a little time between cake tastings and headband weaving or whatever bridesmaids do. I really would love to see you again, Mellie.”
She pocketed the card, then got to her feet. If she stayed here any longer, the alcohol that was already buzzing her head a bit would lead her to a bad decision. She’d made plenty of those with Harris. “Enjoy your beer. Maybe I’ll see you around town.”
He grinned. “I’m sure we will see each other again, really soon.”
Melanie shook her head. “I’m pretty busy, Harris, I don’t think so.”
“Like Al said, there’s only one place to stay in Stone Gap.” He paused, waited for that sentence to sink in, then finished, “Which means you and I are both at the inn.”
Damn this small town. Why couldn’t it have a seedy motel or a second B&B? What kind of bad luck did a girl have to have to lose her marriage and her job, and then end up stuck in the same cozy inn as her ex-boyfriend?
With Harris at the Stone Gap Inn, they’d undoubtedly run into each other in the halls or at breakfast. Well, she could handle that. This was the man who had broken her heart, after all. She wasn’t going to get wrapped up in his Mellie spell, not again. “Maybe we’ll see each other in passing. Have a good night, Harris.”
She turned to go, but then he reached out and touched her. In an instant, all those pretty little resolutions she’d just made disappeared. Her pulse tripped, and her mind rocketed back to the science hall and the moonlight.
“Don’t leave, not yet, Mellie.” Her name slid through his voice on a soft note. “Have another beer. We can talk, like old times.”
She hesitated, then came back to real life and the present day. “I’m not here to reminisce, Harris. And the old times weren’t always as good as you think they were.”
She shrugged into her coat, which forced his hand to drop away, then she turned on her heel and headed out into a warm night that seemed ten degrees colder and darker.
* * *
The clock on Harris’s bedside table ticked past midnight. The numbers on the screen before him blurred. He rubbed his temples. Too many hours sitting at this desk on his laptop, trying to work out some estimates for an upcoming project, when his mind was anywhere but on the palatial house he’d been hired to build back in Connecticut. He kept thinking of Mellie, of how amazing she looked, of how much he’d wanted to kiss her.
And of how uninterested she’d seemed in being with him, talking to him, being near him. Of course, they had broken up a long time ago and in a terrible way, but still, for a moment he’d thought he’d seen a flicker of something in her eyes. The same something that had run through him when he recognized her. The same something that had never really died.
It might have been almost a decade since they’d dated, but the second he saw Mellie, it was as if no time at all had passed. Back in high school in Connecticut, where they’d both grown up, they’d been inseparable. Two peas, one pod, her grandmother had called them. He’d started his days back then walking her to school and ended them with long phone calls that would last until one of their parents yelled at them to get to bed.
Now, knowing she was sleeping just down the hall, his concentration had fled. He’d hoped that he’d see her at the inn when he got in from the Comeback, but she had already gone to bed, her door shut, no light shining beneath it. Mavis, the gregarious African American woman who covered the night shift at the inn, had told Harris that Melanie’s room was two doors away from his. She was staying in Charleston, and he was in Asheville, as the rooms were named. Close geographically, but given the way she’d walked away from him without a backward glance a couple hours ago, miles apart in every other respect.
He got up, stretched his back, gave the computer one last glance, then shut the lid. Trying to work was a waste of time—and seeing Mellie again was only part of the reason why. He had more on his mind than a woman he’d once loved. And more wrongs to right than the ones from his teenage years. In the morning he’d try again. Maybe by then he’d have chased Mellie from his mind.
He headed downstairs for a snack, something to fill the hours until he got sleepy. And until he could usher that crowd of regrets out of his thoughts.
A single light burned over the kitchen sink, casting the space in a soft golden glow. The rest of the world seemed still and dark, quiet, magical. Harris loved this time of night, with its promise of something new in a few hours. Fresh beginnings and clean slates and all that. Harris believed in those kinds of things—because someone in his family had to.
He grabbed a beer out of the fridge, then headed out to the back deck. Two Adirondack chairs faced the lush landscaping, the deep green hills that rolled down the back and opened to a partial view of Stone Gap Lake. The dark turned the land into a set of unrecognizable shapes, except for the moon winking at the wide oval of the lake.
In the air, he could still catch the scent of smoke, of charred wood, of lives destroyed from just a few days earlier—the so-called heroic event Al had wanted to praise him for. If he closed his eyes, he was back there, in that two-story house, blinded by smoke, deafened by the roar of the flames and the splintering of the beams above his head. He could hear the screams that ebbed by the second, caught in coughs and despair as the house began to crumble around them all. If he’d been two minutes later—
He hadn’t been, and for that he was grateful. The Kingston family was grateful, too. Colton Barlow, one of the first on the scene with the Stone Gap Fire Department, had told Harris the entire family—and the nearby homes—were damned lucky that Harris had gotten there so quickly. Harris didn’t mention the slurred phone call from John that had set off alarm bells in Harris’s head and had him flying across town in the middle of the night.
What neither the Kingstons nor Harris wanted was the story splashed in the media, for that night to be talked about and analyzed and poked at by strangers. Harris had promised John Kingston that he would do whatever he could to keep the family’s private struggles out of the public eye. If the news got ahold of John Kingston’s story, they would undoubtedly put the pieces together, and that was something Harris couldn’t afford. It would ruin everything Harris had tried to accomplish, and everything he had yet to do.
John and his family were now safely settled at a relative’s house. John’s wife, Catherine, and their three kids had been through enough, so Harris had fended off the media and downplayed the whole event as much as he could. Protecting them. And protecting the truth. Harris’s father would have called it painting the walls to cover up the scars, but to Harris, the stakes were much higher than that.
He’d met John when he was down here for another building job last year, and had stopped in at John’s barbershop for a h
aircut. They got to talking, and a friendship had grown between them, which was something Harris hadn’t had in a long time. They’d hung out several times over the weeks Harris was supervising the building project.
John had also been there for Harris when he got the news that his mother had died—alone, because his father was off at another public event—and had been the one to drag Harris out of his room at the inn when he’d wanted to stay there and drink his days away. Harris owed John for that and for many more things that John didn’t know about.
Those secrets were there for a reason, to protect other people who didn’t deserve to be swept up into the McCarthy family drama again. Thankfully, it was easy for Harris to stay out of the media. Most of his work stayed under the radar, because he worked for clients with the money to keep their lives private. Every once in a while, though, his company was mentioned in the papers. Some reporters made the connection to his father, and some didn’t, since McCarthy wasn’t exactly an unusual last name. Either way, the less he was associated with his father, the better—the more peace he had in his life, and in his head. For too long, his father had tried to control Harris’s every decision, from what time he went to bed to where he went for school, and all Harris wanted was a lot of distance between those days and now.
Except a reminder of those days had just walked back into his life.
As if on cue, the door behind him opened, and Melanie stepped onto the porch. She was wearing a pair of blue plaid flannel pants and a soft gray T-shirt that ended just above the drawstring of the pants, exposing a tiny sliver of her belly. Nice. Very nice.
“Couldn’t sleep, either?” he said.
She jumped. “Harris. I didn’t see you out here.”
After he left the Comeback, he’d vowed to give Mellie space. They were done, after all, and there was no reason to keep trying to get her to spend time with him. But he was curious about her life, about her, and that was why he pointed to the second chair. “Join me. It’s a gorgeous night.”
