Copyright 2018 by Hazel Redgate
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced
in any form, in whole or in part, without written
permission from the author.
Other books from Hazel Redgate:
Love at Christmas
Not Just For Christmas
White Christmas
Last Christmas
Home For Christmas
Love at Christmas: Four Holiday Romances
Bad Boy Musicians
Reckless
Smooth – Coming 2018
Find more at hazelredgate.com
Reckless
Chapter One
‘So that’s a ham and Swiss on rye, side of slaw and a coke for Jerry, and… Al?’
Al looks over his newspaper, squinting at me through bottle-bottom lenses like a character from an old comic strip. ‘Hmm?’
‘What’ll it be?’
‘The usual.’
‘The specials are good today,’ I say. ‘Tomato soup and a grilled cheese?’
‘Nope.’
‘Chili? You know… get a bit of fire in you? Muy picante?’
He sighs a good-natured sigh. ‘Carrie, honey,’ he says. ‘Look at me. I’m sixty-eight years old. The next time I get some fire in me, it’d damn well better be at a crematorium.’
‘The usual, then?’
‘The usual.’
‘Got it.’
I scribble the order down on my pad – cheeseburger with an extra egg, hold the onion (it gives him heartburn), and a dill pickle on the side, all to be washed down with at least three cups of coffee over the course of the next hour – and send it through to Pete in the back. It’s his turn with control of the radio, and I watch him through the hatch for a moment, killing time by dancing along to some godawful new country band while he thinks no one can see.
‘Alright, twinkletoes,’ I say, grinning as I hand him the paper. ‘Time to hit the grill.’
‘Buzzkill,’ he replies, and I half expect him to stick his tongue out at me. Pete’s almost as old as the two men at the counter if he’s a day, but he’s got the sense of humour of an eight-year-old boy and the enthusiasm to match. He looks the sheet over, recognising the order. It’s not difficult; the Red Rose Diner might not get many customers, but they’re a loyal bunch, and they go for the same food time and time again. ‘The lunch rush is here already?’
‘Yep. And starving, so if you want to wrap up your little recital…?’
Pete smiles and throws up a mock salute. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says as he slaps a patty down onto the griddle. It hisses at him in response. ‘Can’t leave the masses waiting, can we?’
Not if we want to keep this place afloat, I think. I know he’s just being a smartass the same way he always is – anything for a joke, anything to raise a smile – but I’m not sure he sees just how bad things have got recently. The lunch rush, as he put it, really is sometimes just Al and Jerry, who’ve been coming here for so long that I’m not even sure they could find the kitchens in their own homes anymore. Even when I was a kid, back when Jerry had hair growing on top of his head and not just out of his ears and Al’s eyes were good enough to see further than the end of his nose, they were there no matter what, propped up at the counter like statues come rain or shine. When I was out in the corner booth, struggling with my math homework, they’d be there laughing and joking with Dad. Even when the place was packed – which it always seemed to be back then – Dad made time for his regulars. Even Mom, who on the surface always did her best to look like she was disapproving of ‘those two old coots’, could be caught smiling from time to time.
I liked those days. No, more than that. I loved them. If I could go back to them – if I could step into a time machine and walk back out in the summer of 1997, if I could see my Mom and Dad so happy, if I could look into a full cash register and a sea of well-fed customers… God, I wouldn’t have to think about it for a second. Even with everything that came afterwards. All the hurt. All the grief. All the sadness. It wouldn’t make any difference.
Because of course, I have to deal with all of that anyway.
I tell myself I’m worrying over nothing, but… well, I tell myself that nearly every day, and that nothing only seems to be getting bigger and bigger. Someday soon that nothing is going to turn into a big ol’ something, and that something is going to swallow me – and the restaurant – whole.
‘Carrie?’
Al’s soft-spoken drawl pulls me out of my daydreams. I look across to him and see him holding his cup, tilted gently to the right. He doesn’t need to say anything for me to recognise what he wants. It’s time for a refill.
‘You OK, honey?’ he asks as I pour his coffee. He folds up his newspaper and places it down on the counter next to him, so I know he means business; Al has a better relationship with the Eden Enquirer than he ever did with his wife. ‘It’s like you’re off at space camp today. You got something on your mind?’
‘Me?’ I pssh at him, waving away his concerns with the coffee pot; the thick black liquid sloshes almost to the rim. ‘I’m fine. Really.’
‘Sure?’
No, Al, I want to say to him. No, I’m not sure I’m fine at all. Because I don’t think I am. I mean, I’m sure I’m still here, working the same job I had when I was sixteen. I’m sure I’m not cut out to be managing a diner. I’m sure that if Dad were still here he’d be looking at me like I was nuts. But sure I’m fine? No, Al. I’m not sure. Not even close.
‘Yeah,’ I say, and smile my best twenty-percent-tip smile. ‘Everything’s great.’
He picks up his newspaper and busies himself with the sports section. ‘Goddamn Cowboys,’ he says to himself, or to Jerry, or to whoever else might be listening. ‘I swear, it’s like getting a kick in the head once a week, five months out of the year.’ Nobody else pays him any mind, but I’m happy with his grumbling. Apparently my answer was good enough to put his worries to rest.
Good enough.
Because in a place like Eden, Texas, ‘good enough’ is all that matters.
~~~
‘I’m going to head off, OK?’
I look up from the super-important work with which I’ve been keeping myself busy – namely tracing a looped series of infinity symbols in the grains of salt that have spilled onto the counter – and give Pete a wordless nod of approval. Jerry and Al left two hours earlier, and we’ve had barely a handful of customers since. Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t ask if he could leave early – but even if he did, where would he go? Back to his drafty little one-bedroom apartment on Sycamore, where there’s nothing for him to do for an hour in the afternoons except maybe watch a Quincy rerun and wait for the diner to open up again? For that, he might as well stay at the Red Rose with me and Mom, when she’s around. At least here he has some company. Usually, that’s exactly what he does, of course. He’ll help me bus the tables down, loading the plates into the dishwasher alongside me, or he’ll just stay and chat. And why wouldn’t he? He’s been here for over five years now. The Red Rose is practically his home as much as it is mine.
But not today. Today, apparently, he’s got somewhere else to be.
I feel a slight twinge of resentment as he gives me a quick shoulder-squeeze and then walks out of glass-fronted door onto the main street. I watch him through the window as he disappears, and then I’m alone.
What would happen if we didn’t open up again at all?
Would that really be the end of the world? It seems like a heresy to admit it, but… no. Probably not. Almost certainly not, in fact. What if I just didn’t set out the cutlery for th
e time the early-bird special was due to start? What if I didn’t bother to unlock the doors at all?
Not today.
Not tomorrow morning.
Not for the rest of the week.
Or the month.
Or…
I could probably be gone by the time anyone realised it wasn’t some sort of family emergency. I could just pack a bag, get myself a bus ticket and ride right out of town, straight to who-knows-where.
You’re only twenty-six, I tell myself. Who cares if you never made it to college? You’re smart. There’s time. You’d just have to figure it out, that’s all. Plan your own future for a change, somewhere far away from Eden. Far away from anywhere.
It’s tempting. Jesus Christ, how tempting it is…
I mean, Jerry and Al would have to find somewhere else to eat, unless someone else bought the place. They wouldn’t like that.
And Pete would have to find somewhere else to work, of course. Not that that would be easy for a man of his age. Who else in town would need a short order cook?
And then there’s Mom. Mom, whose savings might last her for a few years, if she lived even more frugally than she does now. Mom, who’d have to see the last little bit of my father – his pride and joy – sold off to the highest bidder. Maybe turned into a Denny’s, if we were lucky.
But I’d be free. Yes, I’d be free.
Suddenly the thought doesn’t seem quite so enticing. I hate how selfish I feel just entertaining the idea, and I hate how I can’t quite get rid of it completely.
No.
I’m here. That’s all that matters. Why even think about what might have been? There’s no way that leads to anything but misery. I mean, I have a good life. I’m comfortable. Happy, ish.
Good enough.
I sigh deeply. The restaurant isn’t going to clean itself.
I pull myself away from the counter and smooth down my apron. It’s not a big job – we didn’t have enough customers for it to get out of control, after all – but it feels as though someone just told me I needed to strap on my hiking boots and go for a quick jaunt up Mount Everest.
Something jostles against my elbow, but I don’t see the coffee cup spiral downward off the countertop. It’s not until I hear the crack of ceramic echo through the empty diner that I jump backwards, hoping to avoid the splash of what’s left in it before it hits my shoes. No such luck.
Shit.
I grab a rag from under the counter and duck down to wipe up the mess before it leaves yet another stain on the linoleum I know we won’t be able to afford to replace any time soon. The shards of the white ceramic cup have spread out across the floor like prisoners scattering during a prison break, each of them making a run for freedom, but piece by piece I pick them up and scoop them into the trash. As each one clangs against the metallic base of the bin, I feel the prickly heat of annoyance begin to spread out across the back of my neck. It’s just a cup, I try to tell myself, but what’s the use in that? It’s not just a cup. It’s the latest – but I’m sure not the last – in a long series of minor upsets in a life that feels like it should have been smoother than it has.
The chimes above the door jingle as a customer walks through the door. ‘We’re closed,’ I shout up from the floor. ‘Come back in an hour.’
I hear the latch click into place as the door falls shut, but rather than the eerie silence of the diner at rest there’s a steady beat of noise: footsteps, and they’re coming towards me. Great, I think. Someone here for the early bird special who managed to leave their hearing aid at home. Just what I need.
Unless it’s not, of course.
Unless it’s someone about to rob the place.
Stranger things have happened, that's for sure. A man walks by, sees the place empty, and finds the door open, decides to make a run at the cash register and grab what he can – and here I am, all alone. Mom isn’t much of a fan of guns – which in Texas is like saying you’re not a fan of oxygen – and there’s not much of anything I could use to defend myself if it came down to it.
Oh, for God’s sake, Carrie…
No one’s robbing us. Eden isn’t that kind of town – and even if it was, anyone with any sense would know there’s nothing in here worth stealing. Who’s going to risk jail for a measly eighty dollars? Especially when there’s no way of keeping their identity hidden in a place where everyone knows everyone else and their mother to boot.
Crazy talk. That’s what it is.
And yet whoever walked through the door is still here, and he hasn’t made a sound.
‘I said, we’re –’ I begin, but that’s as far as I get. Even before the recollection swims into my memory, even before I manage to put a name to the face I’m seeing before me for the first time in – God, how long is it? Eight years? Nine? A decade? – I pause, stock-still on my hands and knees, just a head sticking up above the counter.
It’s his eyes that do it: two deep blue pools that I wouldn’t want to see my reflection in, not looking like this. They’re set deep into a face I spent so many months kissing and even more crying over, believing I’d never see it again – but the face is different now. Older. More rugged. More… confident, somehow.
As if that were even possible. Hale never cared enough about anyone else’s opinion for his confidence to matter. That was what had drawn me to him, just as it had pushed everyone else away.
‘Carrie,’ he says slowly.
Hale is back. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but he’s here. With me, in my diner. Just the two of us.
Just like old times.
2006
The plink of hard gravel against my window pulls me out of my doze. I’m not asleep – not quite, at least, although my eyes have been drooping for God knows how long and the words in the book I’ve been working through for McGraw’s assigned summer reading swim around the page, refusing to stay in the neat little lines that might help me make some sense of them all – but it still takes me a little while to realise what’s going on.
Plink.
Plink.
And then a hissed whisper, barely audible: ‘Hey. Carrie. Carrie.’
It might be faint, but I’d know that voice anywhere. It’s a voice I hear so often in my dreams that I can barely believe it’s real, but just as I’m beginning to doubt my own ears, I’m faced with the unassailable proof: a tiny pebble, no bigger than my fingernail, comes sailing through my open window in a wide arc and skitters across the floor.
‘Carrie!’ the voice hisses again. ‘I know you’re awake. I can see your lamp. Carrie!’
I can’t run to the window fast enough. The book is cast down to the floor – sorry, Zora Neale Hurston, but I’ve got bigger things on my mind now – and lean out as far as I can, pressing my stomach hard up against the sill.
And there he is, staring up at me. He casts his arms out wide like a bird trying to take flight, and grins.
‘Finally,’ he says.
‘You missed,’ I reply, holding up the rock.
‘Got your attention, didn’t it? I’m going to call that a win.’
I can’t argue with that. It’s hard to argue with anything Hale says. He’s got a way of steamrolling you with charm that makes everything he comes out with seem almost painfully reasonable. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Come down.’
‘What?’
He stops the whispering now, and clears his throat. ‘I said, come down. You. Down here. With me.’
‘Shh,’ I say. ‘You’ll wake my parents.’
He smiles, and I can see the sharpness of his teeth even in the moonlight. ‘Maybe if you were down here with me I wouldn’t have to talk so loud.’
I check the pink plastic alarm clock on my bedside cabinet, a remnant of a childhood that isn’t all that long ago no matter how womanly I might feel. ‘It’s past midnight, Hale,’ I say. ‘I can’t come down. I’m in my pyjamas.’
That grin again
. ‘Doesn’t bother me none,’ he says. ‘It’s not like I dressed up or anything.’
It’s hard to tell with Hale. I’ve never seen him in anything but his leather jacket, scuffed to hell and back and covered in patches where the damage became too much for even him to bear. He wears it even in the middle of a Texas summer, too stubborn to admit that one of these days it’s going to give him a heat stroke – and then let’s see how cool he seems. When I tell him this – which I have, repeatedly – he just laughs. ‘Damn, Nurse Carrie,’ he says. ‘Always looking out for me. What did I ever do to deserve you?’
At first it used to piss me off, the way he was so glib about my concern, the way he seemed to be mocking me about the whole nurse thing, but then I realised that wasn’t it at all. He didn’t mean it maliciously. It’s just that it’s been so long since anyone has shown Hale anything approaching genuine consideration that he doesn’t quite know how to deal with it, and so he does what he always does. Jokes. False modesty. And then, finally, if I push too hard, he pushes back.
Some days he feels less like a boyfriend and more like a stray dog I’m having to teach to trust people again, but I don’t mind that. I don’t mind that at all.
‘So what are you waiting for?’ he says, making no effort to keep his voice down now. ‘You want me to put up a ladder or something?’
I can’t go out.
Well, no. I could. I just shouldn’t.
Mom and Dad are asleep, ready for an early start at the Red Rose in the morning. They probably wouldn’t even realise I was gone. Suddenly Hale’s steamroller looms large in front of me, pressing my concerns flat.
Sneaking out with a boy in the middle of the night. What’s the worst that could happen?
‘Give me five minutes,’ I say.
~~~
I close the door behind me as quietly as I can, convinced that my parents will both have just sat bolt upright in bed, turned to each other and said, in perfect unison, ‘Let’s ground Caroline until she’s in her thirties.’
Reckless: A Bad Boy Musicians Romance Page 1
