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Without a word, the kid shoved the bike back into place, spun toward the rear of the house and vanished behind the junipers. Shoulders squared, she skipped a third look their way. Jon almost smiled. She had grit, this woman.
With her son. With him and Seth as an audience.
She hadn’t run off. That point alone was enough to jack up his admiration about two hundred notches. Offering the slightest of nods, he conveyed what he felt. Deference in the slant of her chin, she returned the gesture and walked out of sight.
Sparse drops of rain fell. Seth set down his empty soda can. “Well. This town hasn’t seen anything that pretty in a while.”
“That a fact?”
“Uh-huh.” A measured look at Jon. “You really don’t remember her, do you?”
“Should I?”
“Hell, I thought every guy from sixth grade up, living to a hundred, would remember the way that red hair used to hang past her—Hell,” he said again, clearly disconcerted about the direction of his musings.
Jon stared at the carport. “She’s…Rianne Worth?”
“Bingo.”
Clueless fool. She knew you. He took in the weathered little house. “Husband?”
“Dead, what I heard. She showed up one day early last summer from California somewhere, rented a motel for a week, then moved in there. She’s a part-time librarian or some such at Chinook Elementary. Hallie knows her. Says she subs now and then at the high school as well.”
Jon kept silent. He wondered what Seth’s daughter thought of Rianne Worth as a teacher. Jon knew what he used to think of her, as a teenager.
Too many years ago, way too many years.
The rain increased. Drops mottled the driveway. Seth got to his feet and pulled the bill of his cap low. “Okay, I’m off.”
“Yep.” Jon rose. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
Shoulders hunched against the rain, his brother headed for his green pickup. Moments later, Jon stood alone.
A steady drizzle pelted the earth like buckshot. Thunder tussled in the heavy, dismal sky. He made no move to go inside, instead allowed the storm to soak him. Harder, faster it came, collecting in puddles where the aged concrete had sunk over time. The budding trees fronting his yard glistened in a tangle of shiny, black prongs.
Since he was a kid, he’d enjoyed rain, would walk hours in it when his mother was on an extrarotten binge. When her drunken cursing defiled their home, and his father escaped out back to the shed and his brothers hid in their bedrooms or the basement.
Listening to the rain, feeling its blunt, wet needles cool his skin, helped him forget some of life’s uglies. Of course, no matter how hard it rained, how far he walked, one of those uglies would never fade.
A sound to the left drew him. Rianne Worth, still in heels, skirt and clingy top, was piloting a giant purple umbrella while lifting two bags of groceries from the trunk of her car. Success evaded her; the trunk was loaded. She, on the other hand, kept dodging a sheet of rain baling through the tattered roof of the carport directly above the bumper. She had to move the car forward another two feet, which was impossible, or back it up, which would put her smack into the rain.
He could help.
Don’t get involved.
She struggled another minute, gave up and carried a lone bag around back.
Ah, damn it.
Crossing his soggy mess of lawn, Jon stepped over the pruned shrub roses edging her drive. Behind the car, the cold stream from the roof caught him full across the neck and shoulders, drenching his ponytail and T-shirt. Five plastic bags in one hand, six in the other, he shook his head, blinked water from his eyes and rounded the rear bumper.
She stood ten feet away. A petite gold and black silhouette under a purple mushroom. Rianne.
Twenty-two years, and what could he say?
You’ve grown up damn pretty?
You’re someone I don’t recognize?
Hell, most days he barely knew himself.
“Shut the trunk,” he ordered, shouldering past her and heading for the back of the cottage. He bowed his head to the striking rain while her shoes clicked behind him.
Under the porch overhang, she flipped the umbrella closed, parked it against the wall, then held open the door, waiting for him to proceed into the warm house.
In a minuscule entryway, he stopped. “Where?”
“To the left.”
A whiff of her scent mingled with the damp air.
Rain on woman.
He turned into a kitchen about the size of his bedroom closet and set the bags in front of the stove and refrigerator. When he straightened, she stood near the door, hands clasped in front of her, little-girl fashion.
“Thank you,” she said in that same soft tone he remembered.
“You’re welcome.” He looked at his grubby harness boots. Sprigs of dead grass clung to the toes. “I’ve dirtied your kitchen.”
“Don’t worry about it. Would you like some coffee?”
He ran a hand down his dripping cheeks, scraped back his soggy hair. He could stay, get to know her as a neighbor—the five second Hi-how’s-it-going? type—or he could leave.
Seth’s comments pitched both options. “You remember me.”
Her eyes didn’t waver. “Yes. I do.”
He flinched. She would. Two decades ago, every kid from first grade up knew the Tuckers. Not hard in a town of a thousand souls. Not hard when, on any given day, the mother of those Tuckers stumbled down the sidewalk, drunk.
“Well,” he said, disgruntled she undoubtedly recalled those days. “I’ll go then.”
“Jon.” His name was a touch. “I’d really like you to stay for coffee. You were kind enough to help, and…” The half smile from yesterday returned. “I feel responsible for what Sweetpea did to your shirt.”
“Forget it. Cat needed a spot, shirt fit the bill.”
“I’ve washed it. Wait a second.” She disappeared down a short hallway.
He took a breath. Fine. He’d stay for a cup. He went to the door, took off his boots, set them on the outside mat with its white scripted Welcome to Our Home.
Her footsteps returned. “Jon?”
“Here.”
“Good. You stayed.” She smiled and placed his neatly folded shirt on the table, then began scooping coffee into a maker. He approached the end of the counter where she worked.
Abruptly, she faced him. “Are you a cop?”
“I was. I quit a month ago.”
He’d been asked to take stress leave and had opted for retirement. After Nicky’s death, his work had suffered. Hell, after the loss of his son life became an abyss—where he still floundered.
Rianne set the coffee on.
“Where are your kids?” he asked. The boy with the bike?
“Downstairs, watching TV.” She checked a sunflower clock on the wall above the stove. “It’ll be Emily’s bedtime in fifteen minutes. We’ll have time for one cup before the nightly whining begins.” She sported another of those sweet smiles. He sported fantasies that were way out of line.
Not wanting to hear about kids, tooth-brushing or bedtime rituals, he asked, “That decaf?”
“I’d be wide-eyed as an owl with the real stuff. Please. Sit.” She motioned to the table with four ladder-back chairs, then opened a tiny pantry to shelve the groceries.
He stepped beside her and placed three cans of spaghetti sauce on an upper shelf. Before he could reach for another tin, she said, “Would you please sit at the table?”
“I don’t mind a little kitchen duty.”
She took the tin from his hand. “I’d rather you sat.”
It took two seconds for irritation to plant itself. Good enough to play pack mule and carry groceries, but apparently lacking the aptitude to see where they belonged.
Just like Colleen. “Go do your man thing and stay out of my kitchen. I don’t need you here.”
In the end, had she needed him anywhere? As her husband? As the father of their kids?
“Thanks, but I really don’t have time for coffee,” he said, stepping over three bags. “Got a ton of work that needs doing.” Grabbing the shirt she’d laundered, he headed for the door and his boots. So much for neighborly ways.
“Jon. Don’t go. It’s…”
A sitcom’s cackle drifted up from below. Rain drummed on the roof above.
“It’s not you,” she went on, throat closing. “It’s me. I…” Her heart thrummed. Men in general make me edgy. Logically she knew Jon was not “men in general.” Still… He defeated her own height of five-four by almost a foot. And in that soaked navy T-shirt his chest appeared unforgiving.
She avoided looking at his arms, his hands. She’d seen them lift the groceries like a spoonful of granola. Powerful. Dusted with dark, masculine hair, right to the knuckles on his work-toughened fingers. A wolf tattoo prowled along rain-damp skin above his left wrist. Once the town rebel, now a man of dark secrets and possible danger.
But look at him, she did. Straight into eyes as indifferent as a tundra windchill. “I’m not used to having company.” Purposely, she kept her hands loose. “You took me off guard.” Because she hadn’t expected to see him again for at least another week or two, except maybe across the distance of their yards.
Then out of the wet, dark weather he’d loomed…black ponytail plastered to his neck…frown honing every determined angle of his face… And her breath…
She hadn’t breathed calmly since.
He said nothing, but neither did he leave. Just looked at her. Waiting.
“I’m sorry,” she offered finally.
“For what?”
“For how I must sound. As I said—”
“You’re not used to company or want it. That makes two of us.” The words were sensitive as winterkill.
He turned and stepped out onto the deck, pushing wool-socked feet into his boots. Without bothering with the laces, he walked down the steps, into the rain.
She wanted to call out. Invite him back. Wanted to explain it wasn’t him, but another that had her fluttering worse than a nervous house wren. Silent, she went to the edge of the porch. Self-control was difficult to teach, arduous to learn. At the moment, she needed strength. If it looked cowardly, she didn’t care. She clasped her hands in front of her.
Halfway across her lawn, he stopped. Rain lashed his heavy shoulders and skimmed from an implacable chin.
“Good-bye, Rianne.”
Securing the laundered shirt under an arm, he shoved his hands into his pockets and disappeared through the hole in the juniper hedge. He had known who she was. Why hadn’t he acknowledged her yesterday? Or had Seth sitting on those steps confirmed it today?
“You remember me.”
She’d never forgotten.
She listened to the downpour on the roof. Heard it gush in the eaves. Watched a mini waterfall at the side of the porch.
Chilled, she went back into the house, where she finished the groceries, working efficiently, rolling up the plastic bags and tucking them into a drawer. From the skinny broom closet, she hauled out the mop. After wetting the sponge under the tub tap in the bathroom down the hall, she set about tidying up puddles left by big, work-battered boots. He means nothing to me. Nothing.
Then why did you put him in your journal?
She clenched her jaw to an aching point.
God help me, I’ll erase it tonight.
But she heard again her name, submerged in a deep quiet timbre.
Chapter Two
Phone to his ear, Jon propped a hip on the counter in his spacious kitchen and stared absently at his reflection in the dark glass shielding the wet night. Three rings.
“Come on,” he muttered. “Pick up.”
Five rings. “Hi,” said a familiar, breathless voice.
“Hey, Colleen.”
A pause. “It’s you.”
Who were you expecting? “It’s me,” he acknowledged. “Brittany around?”
