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“Amen to that,” Mitch answered. Keeping the town budget balanced while juggling the needs and wishes of a population bordering on nine thousand was quite a job. Mitch enjoyed being on the council, but he also had his own business to run.
He glanced at his watch.
Ethan noticed. “I’ll have you back at the lumberyard before three,” he said.
“It’s Granddad’s first day back since his hip replacement,” Mitch reminded his friend. “I don’t want him to overdo it.”
“Sam going to the store after school?”
“He’s got an art lesson with Lily Mazerik after school. I told him he could go home from there if I didn’t come to pick him up. He’s at the age where he thinks he should be able to stay alone.”
“He’s what? Ten? Eleven?” Ethan asked.
“Ten going on forty,” Mitch replied. Sam was growing up fast, too fast, Mitch thought some days.
“How’s he doing in school this year?” Ethan wanted to know. Sam was hearing-impaired. He attended regular classes and got good grades, but he worked hard at it. And so did Mitch. He spent a lot of time with Sam’s teachers and his math tutor, trying to stay ahead of any problems.
“He’s off to a good start. But he was really disappointed not making the Mini-Rivermen football team. He had his heart set on the starting-linebacker position.”
“He’s pretty small to be a linebacker.”
“Yeah. And football is one sport where his handicap really holds him back.” Even with his hearing aid Sam couldn’t hear the play calls or the coaches’ instructions. There was no getting around it.
Sam had done pretty well in Coach Mazerik’s summer sports camp, Mitch had to admit, especially at swimming. And he’d played Little League baseball. The trouble was, as Ethan had just pointed out, Sam was small for his age. In football and basketball, his two favorite sports, that was as much of a handicap as his hearing impairment.
“He’ll have a growth spurt in the next year or two, and then watch out,” Ethan said.
That was probably true. Mitch himself had been something of a runt, the shortest in his group of friends until nearly eighth grade. And then he’d shot up six inches in a year. Maybe it would be that way for Sam, too. He wanted to see his son get as much fun and satisfaction out of playing school sports as he had.
Ethan’s scanner squawked into life, interrupting Mitch’s thoughts.
They both listened for a moment or two as the dispatcher and another disembodied voice discussed the status of the jackknifed rig ahead of them on the highway. “Sounds like the state boys are handling it just fine,” Ethan said. “No need for me to get involved.” He flipped on the cruiser’s turn signal and headed off onto a county road that ran into the outskirts of Riverbend near the golf course. “We’ll make better time this way.”
Five minutes later they topped a low rise that brought a fleeting view of the Wabash winding away toward the west. The sky was blue, darkening to almost black on the horizon. The trees were shades of gold and yellow and brown, with a splash of maple red and the near purple of sumac here and there. Mitch could see tractors and combines working in half-a-dozen fields before they disappeared behind rows of unharvested corn.
Ahead of them a small red car was parked on the side of the road. A woman was standing outside it, looking at something spread out on the hood. She was wearing a long denim jumper and a pink blouse. Her hair was blond and shoulder-length, but since her back was to them, it was hard to pick out any further details.
“That’s an out-of-state plate—can’t quite make it out, though,” Mitch commented.
“California,” Ethan replied tersely. His eyesight was evidently sharper than Mitch’s.
“Suppose her car’s broken down?”
“Could be.” Ethan turned on his emergency lights, but not the siren, and slowed as he approached the car.
Mitch saw his friend’s lips tighten. He couldn’t see Ethan’s eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses, but he knew they would be steady and gray. Ethan was an ex-army Green Beret and all cop. The woman standing beside her car was probably perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing. But until Ethan proved that for himself, he wouldn’t let down his guard.
The chief got out of the cruiser, his hand resting on the holster of his service revolver. The woman turned, surprise and wariness widening her eyes as she swung around, a crumpled road map held in front of her like a shield.
She was pretty, in a bland sort of way, Mitch noticed from his seat inside the police cruiser. Not too short, not too tall and very pregnant. Six months or so, at least, he estimated. She looked downright fearful as Ethan approached, his black police uniform, military haircut, and sidearm making him more than a little intimidating. She shrank back against the door of her car and swallowed hard. Mitch could see the muscles in her throat working from where he sat.
Ethan probably didn’t mean to scare the living daylights out of a pregnant woman, but he was doing just that.
Mitch undid his seat belt and climbed out of the car. Ethan asked to see the woman’s license as Mitch walked up. She cast him a harried glance and leaned into the back seat of the red compact to fumble in a pack that looked as if it had seen better days.
Come to think of it, the car had seen better days, too. The dust and grime of a lot of miles coated the bumper and partially obscured the numbers on the California plate. But the windshield was clean. And so was the back seat. Or what he could see of it, covered as it was with boxes and neatly tied plastic bags. Mitch would bet a week’s profits from the lumberyard that everything she owned was in that car.
Ethan motioned Mitch to move behind him. His hand remained on his weapon, even though the woman he was confronting didn’t quite come up to the level of his chin. She turned back, wallet in hand. A few freckles stood out on her cheeks and across her nose, and her eyes were big and blue and ringed with dark shadows.
Kara had been emotional when she was pregnant with Sam. She would have been sobbing openly by now. But not this woman. She was made of sterner stuff than his ex-wife, pregnant or not. She opened the wallet and offered it to Ethan.
“Here you are, Officer,” she said, only the faintest hint of a quaver in her voice.
“Is this your current address?” Ethan asked, handing it back to her after a few moments’ study.
“I…it was.” She lifted her chin. “I’m moving back to New York. I was detoured off the highway by an accident and I’ve lost my way.” She gestured to her car, the movements of her hands graceful and feminine. “I’m almost out of gas. Can you direct me to the nearest filling station?” She turned her head slightly to include Mitch in the query. “And I do mean the nearest.”
“Riverbend’s about two miles straight ahead,” Ethan said in a friendlier tone, evidently satisfied they hadn’t stumbled on some hardened criminal masquerading as a pregnant woman. “You can get your tank filled there.”
“Thank goodness. Much farther and I’d have to push my car the rest of the way.”
“I don’t think you’re in any condition to push a car, ma’am,” Ethan said, hands on hips.
“I don’t think I’d get very far trying,” she admitted, the tiniest hint of a smile curving her lips.
“I would have offered my friend Mitch Sterling here to do it for you.”
She turned to Mitch. She smiled just a little more, her eyes crinkling around the edges, and Mitch felt a surprising jolt of awareness. “That would make you a really good Samaritan, Mr. Sterling. But I’ve got enough gas to make it two more miles—I hope,” she added under her breath.
“I can ride into town with you if you’d like,” Mitch heard himself offer.
The wariness came back into her big eyes. “No thank you.”
Mitch felt like an idiot. Where she came from, women did not accept rides with strange men. They didn’t much around Riverbend, either, come to think of it. But he’d been brought up to offer his assistance to people in distress. “No problem,” he said to fill the awkward silence that followed her words.
“The first gas station is just three blocks inside the town limits,” Ethan told her. “You follow us and we’ll have you there in no time.”
“Thank you.” She got into her car and fastened the seat belt over her distended middle. “I’m ready when you are.”
Ethan nodded, tipped the bill of his hat and walked back to the cruiser, Mitch behind him.
“She’s pretty far along to be making a cross-country jaunt,” Mitch said as they passed the little red compact and its occupant. Mitch watched in the side mirror as she followed them onto the road.
“Yeah, she is pretty big,” Ethan agreed. He picked up the receiver of his radio and pushed the toggle switch. “We’ll just run a routine search on her license plate and ID.”
“Jeez, Ethan. You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“Nope. Ain’t that why you hired me?” Ethan retorted with a grin.
Mitch shook his head and settled back in his seat for the rest of the trip into town. Ethan was a damned good cop. And good cops were suspicious cops. Yet anyone with half a brain and one good eye could tell that the woman in the car behind them wasn’t a threat to anyone.
Except maybe a man’s heart, with those big blue eyes and that lost-little-girl smile.
Mitch caught himself looking in the side mirror again, wondering what she’d look like if she smiled fully and without restraint. She’d be a real beauty.
Where the hell had that thought come from? He hadn’t had the energy or inclination to look at another woman in a long, long time. He sure wasn’t about to start now. She was a perfect stranger. She was pregnant. She was just passing through. In an hour she’d be gone from his life.
He leaned his head against the back of the seat and watched the clock tower on the Sycamore County Courthouse come into view, then the water tower and the elevator rising above the trees and the flat Indiana farmland he loved. The three tallest points in Riverbend.
This was the place where his roots went deep into the dark fertile soil. This was home. But his mind wasn’t interested in the familiar view. It was still focused on the pregnant woman in the red compact.
He turned his head enough to bring Ethan’s profile into view. “What did you say her name was again?”
CHAPTER TWO
TESSA LEANED BACK in the wooden glider located in the center of the little park and set it swinging with a push of her feet. She looked out over the Sycamore River to the far shore. It wasn’t that far away, maybe a few hundred yards? She’d never been a very good judge of distance. The water was a mixture of shades, blue and green and brown, deep and slow-moving. It seemed tamer, more sedate, than its famous neighbor, the Wabash, of which she’d caught glimpses from the car.
A rowboat with a small outboard motor putt-putted its way to a landing across the river where houses lined the bank. Some were older and looked as if they could use a little loving care. Some were new, a few large and substantial, with landscaped lawns and big wooden docks jutting out into the river. But beyond the manicured lawns the land was claimed by cornfields. Two-story white farmhouses and red-and-white barns stood in tree-filled yards as big as city parks. Cylindrical blue silos dotted the cloudy sky above pastures of black-and-white cows. For a moment Tessa wondered if she’d landed in her own private version of Oz. The town behind her looked like a Norman Rockwell painting. A town of her dreams.
She settled back in the swing and kept it going with a gentle push now and then. As she watched the reflections of clouds and trees in the water, she felt her eyes grow heavy. She wished she could stay here for the night. Catch up on her sleep, get her hair and her clothes really clean. It would be heaven. Certainly this little town, with the river at its feet and the late-afternoon sun and the scent of a few fading roses in a nearby flower bed, seemed about as close as you could get.
Her quiet reverie was broken by the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot behind her swing. She didn’t turn around to see who it was. She didn’t know a soul in Riverbend.
No one but the cop who’d eyed her so suspiciously and then escorted her into town. And the man who’d been riding with him. The one with eyes the same rich brown as the plowed earth and a smile that lifted the left corner of his mouth a littler higher than the right. Mitch Sterling, the cop had said his name was. She wondered if he had anything to do with the big hardware and lumberyard she’d passed on her way down to the river. It had looked like a going concern. Not as big as the Home-Mart she’d worked for in Albany, but impressive for an independent in this age of mega-chain stores.
“Hi there. Remember me?”
She turned her head to find the man she’d been thinking about smiling down at her. His voice was low-pitched and a little rough around the edges, but as warm as his smile.
She didn’t smile back, although she was tempted. You didn’t smile at strange men in California. Or in New York, for that matter.
“Are you enjoying the view?”
“Yes,” she said. This time she did smile. She wasn’t in L.A. anymore. She was in God’s country. Or so one or two signs she’d seen along the roadside had proclaimed. “It’s very peaceful here.”
“It’s one of my favorite views.”
“You come here often?”
He propped one foot on the rose bed’s border, which was made of railroad ties stacked three deep. Real railroad ties, she’d noticed. Not those anemic landscape ties they’d sold at Home-Mart. This rose bed was going to be here for a long, long time. That was the way you built things in a place you never intended to leave.
“Most everyone in town does. But it’s the same view I get from my kitchen window.” He pointed down the way to a wide stream that emptied into the river. “I live in the yellow house over there.”
Tessa turned to follow his pointing finger, but she already knew what she would see. The house wasn’t yellow. It was cream-colored. Craftsman-styled, foursquare and solid with a stone foundation and big square porch posts. Roses grew on trellises on either side of the wide front steps. Pink roses, with several still blooming, like those in the park.
She loved history. Not so long ago it had been her intention to share that love of history by teaching. Not ancient history, or Colonial history. Not even Civil War history. But the history of the century just past. The enthusiasm and hubris of the early decades. The heartbreak of the Great Depression and the sheer determination required to survive those years. The heroism and sacrifice of the Second World War. The optimism and opportunism of the fifties. Even the strife and intergenerational warfare of the sixties.
The house Mitch Sterling indicated had seen it all. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find it had always been in his family. Riverbend seemed that kind of place, a town where families passed down houses and businesses and recipes from generation to generation. “It’s a great house,” she said. “How long has it been in your family?” The words had jumped off her tongue before she could discipline her thoughts.
“About ten years,” Mitch said, not looking at her but at the house. “I bought it when my son was born.”
“Oh.” She tried hard to keep the disappointment out of her voice. Such a little thing, the house not being in his family for a hundred years.
“I bought it from the family my granddad sold it to in ’74. My grandmother wanted something all on one floor, so he built her a ranch-style out by the golf course. But his grandfather built this house in 1902.”
“Your great-great-grandfather built the house?” She didn’t even know her great-great-grandfather’s name. And she envied him the luxury of knowing who had owned this house, when, and for how long. It meant he had ties here, roots that went deep.
“Yup. I thought it should stay in the family.”
“When I was growing up, I never lived more than three years in one place.” What in heaven’s name had possessed her to tell such a thing to a total stranger? She must be more tired than she thought. She stood up, levering herself off the swing with one hand on the thick chain that held it to the wooden frame.
Mitch Sterling leaned forward to steady the swing, but he didn’t try to touch her. She was oddly disappointed that he didn’t put his hand on her arm. She had the feeling his touch would have been as warm and strong as his voice and his smiling brown eyes.
She smoothed her hand over her stomach. The baby was sleeping, hadn’t made a move in an hour. Perhaps she’d been lulled by the sound of the river and the rustle of the wind through the trees along the bank. Tessa hadn’t let the doctor back in California tell her the sex of her baby. But she knew in her heart it was a girl. A daughter. Hers and hers alone. She raised her eyes to find Mitch watching her with the same quiet intensity she’d noticed the first time she’d seen him on the road outside town.
The silence was stretching out too long. “I have to be on my way. I want to make it to Ohio by tonight,” she blurted.
“You’ve got a long way to go.”
“I’ve come even farther.” All the way from Albany and back again, with a detour through Southern California. But Albany was home, because that was where she and Callie had settled after their mother died. It was where she’d worked days at the Home-Mart and gone to school at night to get her history degree. Until she’d met Brian Delaney, a high-school friend of her brother-in-law’s, and fallen head over heels in love with him, giving up everything she had to follow him to California.
She blinked. Lord, she’d been close to saying all that aloud to this stranger. It must be something in the clean clear air, too much oxygen maybe, and not enough smog. She took a step away from the swing, trod on a stone and stumbled a little.
This time he didn’t hesitate. He reached out and steadied her with a hand under her elbow. She was right. His touch was as warm and strong as the rest of him. “Are you sure you should be driving any more today? You look pretty done in to me.”
He didn’t mince words, obviously. Nothing like Brian, who tap-danced his way around everything—until it came time to tell her he was leaving her and the baby to follow his dream and play winter baseball in Central America.
“I’m fine, really,” she assured Mitch.
He didn’t look convinced. “It’s going to be dark in an hour. It’ll take you another hour after that to make it to the interstate. Why don’t you stay the night here? The hotel on Main Street was restored just a couple of years ago. The rates are reasonable. And it’s clean. It’s even supposed to be haunted. And the restaurant’s not half-bad, either,” he added, deadpan.
“I don’t believe you.”
He made an exaggerated X on his chest. “Cross my heart, the food’s good.”
A chuckle escaped her. “I mean, I don’t believe the hotel’s haunted. I always thought ghosts were unhappy spirits doomed to wander the earth until they were set free. What could have happened in a town like this to cause a ghost?”
His face clouded slightly. She felt the same chill she had when the sun dipped behind a cloud a few minutes before he showed up. “Riverbend’s not paradise,” he said. “Most small towns aren’t.” Tessa waited, wondering what he would say next. He was silent a moment, glancing out over the river. Then his frown cleared and the sunshine came back into his face. “But this place is probably as close as you’ll come to it. And as a member of the town council and the Chamber of Commerce, it’s my duty to roll out the welcome mat. Get in your car and I’ll show you the way to the hotel.”
“That’s not necessary.” She had no intention of spending the night in Riverbend or anywhere else. She couldn’t afford it even if the hotel rates were more than reasonable. They’d have to be giving the rooms away free.
She had no health insurance and less than two hundred dollars to her name. One hundred and seventy-nine dollars, to be exact. And her credit card. It was paid off, thank goodness, but she’d have to live on the credit line, and it was by no means a large one. It scared her to death to think about how nearly penniless she was.
But she wasn’t about to tell Mitch Sterling any of that, no matter how warm his eyes and his touch. How could he know how truly desperate she was? And how determined she was not to be beholden to a man to whom she and their baby were just an afterthought? Mitch Sterling was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the town council. He lived in the sort of storybook house she had yearned for all her life, in a town that was the embodiment of the American dream. In a place like Riverbend, a man didn’t make a woman he professed to love pregnant and then leave her to follow his own dreams.
She had her pride left, even if she’d lost most everything else. And her pride wouldn’t let her tell this confident, self-assured man that she had no intention of sleeping anywhere but in her car. So she let him walk beside her the short distance to the parking lot. She followed him out, onto Main Street, and then, after he waited for her to park her car, into the high-ceilinged, spotlessly clean lobby of the River View Hotel. She smiled when he introduced her to the clerk, a gray-haired woman standing behind an antique partners desk that served as a reception counter. He told the clerk that Tessa was a stranded traveler and to give her the best room in the house.
Then he had shaken her hand and said goodbye. “I’m late picking up my son from his art lesson. It’s been nice meeting you.”
