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“Yep.” Under a Red Sox ball cap, the boy—no more than eighteen—grinned. “Bill opens at seven.”
Breena studied the truck. “Does he always deliver?”
“It’s policy,” Tristan said with pride, “if we can’t give the owner a courtesy vehicle.”
Possibly it was more Seth Tucker’s policy, but she wasn’t about to argue the fact. She took the clipboard the boy offered. “What was wrong with it?”
“Busted fanbelt.”
She checked the total at the bottom of the page and her mouth opened, then closed. In the city, the tow alone would cost triple. “Did Mr. Tucker have anything to do with this?”
“Uh…which Mr. Tucker?”
“Seth. Seth Tucker.” She held out the form, pointed to the low figure. “Did he have anything to do with this?”
“Don’t think so, ma’am.” Tristan’s forehead scrunched. “Bill’s the one did the tallying. Is there a mistake?”
None. None at all. “I haven’t had such—” Generosity? Decency? “—a nice surprise in a while.”
The teenager spruced his shoulders. “Glad we were of service.”
“Would you like to come in while I write out a check?”
“Hey, sure.” A wide grin.
Inside, she offered him coffee. He declined the brew but chose one of her home-baked sugar cookies sitting in a pretty clothed basket beside the till. One of her alms to the store.
“Nice place,” he called when she hurried to the back room for her checkbook.
“This your first time here?”
“Yep. Never had the need before.”
She signed the order copy and the check while Tristan remained rooted to the welcome mat as if walking across the floor in workboots would sully the varnish on the planks. She returned his clipboard. “Can I give you a lift back to the shop?”
“Nah. We’re just around the corner a ways. I’ll jog.”
Just around the corner. In a town of a thousand, a forty-minute walk encompassed the entire municipality. Friends and neighbors, greeting each other at every corner.
They stepped back into the sunshine.
“It was nice meeting you Miss—”
“Hey, there, Tristan.”
The boy turned. His smile faded. “Hi, Mr. Owens.”
Pot belly leading the way, Delwood Owens swaggered across the street. “Truck’s all fixed, I see.” Pursing his lips, he sized up the vehicle. Eyed Breena. “Saw Seth bring you home last night.”
What else is new? Old turd likely had an astronomy telescope on his bedroom balcony. “Yes,” she said. “He did.”
“Know him well, do you?”
She clamped her tongue.
Owens went on, “Upstandin’ citizen, Seth is. Damn hard worker. Has a wife.”
A wife. Of course he has a wife.
“Wouldn’t want people getting the wrong idea, know what I mean?”
“No, Mr. Owens, I don’t know what you mean.” He knew she lived in the rear rooms of the shop, had seen her coming and going for over three weeks. If he wanted to mark her as Misty River’s streetwalker, she’d deal with it. But he had no right to smear Seth in the process. “My truck broke down and Seth was the gentleman who saw me home safely. That’s all.”
Owens thrust out thick lips. “Wanted to make sure you knew.”
Liar. You thought I’d gasp and sputter at your news.
So Seth Tucker had given her a ride home. So he had a wife. He and every man on the planet did not interest her. In the least. “Would you excuse me, I have a shop to open. Take care, Tristan.” Careful of the walkway’s heaves and gouges, she headed for the porch.
“Um, Miss?” Behind her, the gate creaked. “You forgot your keys.” Tristan trotted back up the walk.
“Oh.” She felt like an idiot.
Owens walked around her truck, the veritable car dealer he was. Tristan glowered at the man. “Don’t pay him no mind, ma’am,” he murmured. “He used to be Seth’s father-in-law. Guess he figures he’s still got a say in his life.”
Used to be. “Thanks, Tristan. Seth seems like an honorable man. He doesn’t need to be humiliated by gossip because of me.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Never, ma’am. You’re like—you’re a lady.” He blushed. “And the gossip, well, it’s ’cause you’re new and—-and sort of a hottie. For an older woman. I mean…” Deeper blushing. “Oh, hell.”
“An old hottie, huh?”
“Sorry. Junk tends to come out of my mouth.”
“No,” she said, grinning. “I like it.”
“You do?”
“Hey, I’d rather be an old hottie than an old hag.” She patted his shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Tristan.”
“Same here, Ms. Quinlan.” He secured the cap on his head, nodded. “You take care now.”
“I will.”
Humming, she went up the porch steps. The morning held favor after all.
With a Cape Cod roofline, the small house Delwood Owens had bought for his daughter when she’d married Seth—then had rented out when she moved to Eugene—appeared the same. Tiny yard, overgrown shrubs, flowers that needed winterizing. Melody was no gardener. That chore she’d left up to Seth in those early years.
Turning the pickup into the driveway Saturday morning, he said to Hallie, “Looks like your mother’s home.” Under the yellow maple guarding the left corner of the house, Melody had parked her sleek silver Mazda Miata. Delwood still came through when his daughter wanted new wheels. Too bad he didn’t hire her a gardener.
Hallie grunted. “Usually she doesn’t get home before lunch the next day when she’s with Roy-Dean.”
Anger sucked away his breath. Melody would consider Hallie old enough to stay alone for a night and half a day, but not old enough to go to a movie with a boy her own age.
He climbed out of the truck. “Want me to come in?”
Her head jerked around in surprise. The last time he’d stepped inside this house had been shortly after their divorce, when Melody complained about the living room TV going wonky and begged him to fix it after he dropped Hallie off.
“That’s okay.” She slipped from the seat. “I can handle it.”
He believed she could. She’d been “handling” it since she’d been five, since he’d moved out, since Melody had relocated them to Eugene. The anger dissipated and guilt claimed its stake.
“You should go, Dad,” Hallie said when he simply stood between the two vehicles, mulling over his conscience. “Mom’ll be anxious. She always is after visits. It’ll be worse this time because I went without her permission.”
Anxious? He wanted to ask what that meant, but Hallie headed up the drive, toward the backyard. She disappeared around the corner of the house, to the rear entrance.
For a moment, he debated whether to leave or follow. With visitations, he always stopped at the curb to pick up or drop Hallie off, the chronic delivery man, then drove away with his heart bumping along behind.
Yesterday, she’d changed that. Yesterday hadn’t been a court-assigned day. Hallie had come on her own.
Anxious. The word spurred him into the small rear yard.
For the first time since his divorce, he saw what years could do to a plot of ground. The old pine that had towered above the single-car garage in his day was gone, a two-foot stump in its place. Along the back, the wooden fence tipped and heeled in a patch of fireweed. Once the place had been home—small-scaled, but neat and tidy and wholesome.
The ideal place to raise a little girl.
Dispirited, Seth turned from the deterioration and started for his truck.
The back door squeaked. Melody stepped barefoot onto the cracked cement stoop. She hooked the screen with one hip, then let it whap closed.
Had he caught her in the guise of sleep? Or…in the guise?
A faded red robe matching her dyed hair skimmed the base of her butt. He wondered if she wore underwear. Knowing his ex, he figured not. Where was Roy-Dean, boy wonder? Behind the door? Ready to stumble out, frown matching hers on his Brad Pitt face?
Melody plucked a lighter and cigarette from one big pocket; lit up. Seth’s brows jammed together. Lunn’s influence?
“Well, now.” Her mouth spoke clouds of smoke. “Look what the puppy hauled home. Fixing to leave already?”
“’Lo, Mel.”
She jacked an elbow on her folded arm, gusted a blue ring. His stomach clenched.
“Whaddya want?”
He thought of the Quinlan woman. Gentle, easy on the eyes. Damned easy. A thousand-light-year gap separated her from this woman who’d once been his wife. Tough as a pavement compactor, that was Melody. A toughness, he knew, that in the past few years had begun stifling Hallie. “When’d you start smoking?”
“A while ago. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“What affects my daughter is my business.”
“Don’t worry.” Melody cocked a hip, levered the robe higher. “I don’t smoke inside. Kid won’t let me.” She eyed him. “So. What is it you want?” she repeated.
His pulse kicked hard. Some role models they were for their child. Him a taciturn father who worked 24/7; her a… What had Hallie said? A bar tramp? He wouldn’t go that far, but in this second he half agreed with his daughter.
“Am I making you anxious, Mel?” he asked, vocalizing Hallie’s term.
“You?” She laughed, but her hand shook when she brought the cigarette to her lips. “Why on earth would I be anxious?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Maybe because last winter when you forgot to give Hallie lunch money for a week,” he enunciated forgot, “I meant what I said.”
Melody scoffed. “Right. You’d take me to court and get back those custody rights you signed away ten years ago.”
“Not by choice.” Your old man took me to the cleaners.
“Whatever.”
“It would be a different story this time, Mel. I’m not scraping the bottom of the bucket anymore.”
“No, but you’re still working forever and a day. The judge would put her in foster care before he’d give her to you.”
He let the words settle and brand. Melody was good at branding. Foster care. Where he’d spent three long, lonely years bouncing around, after his mother burned his father to death in the shed behind his family’s home. He’d had enough of foster care and social workers to last ten lifetimes. They’d have to kill him before he’d let one near Hallie or have her humiliated by a court battle that could see her carted off to some unknown pair deemed “caring and responsible” by The System.
“You know damned well,” his ex was saying, “she’s better off with me than in one of those places.”
He did know. That was the crux of this whole situation. Had been for years. But he also knew her words were a lot of hot air. If Hallie moved anywhere, it would be into his house. He’d see to that.
“Anyway, if Hallie’d told me,” Melody went on, “you know I would’ve left her the money.”
His jaw ached from clenching. “Actually I don’t. But I do know this. Leaving our daughter alone overnight is wrong. She’s not all grown-up. If you can’t be there for her, I will.”
“Big talk from a guy who’s never home himself. Least I work a nine to five most days.”
Only because your daddy bought you Cut ’n’ Class hair salon.
He ignored his thumping blood, zeroed in on the reason he’d come to this door. “Hallie wants to go to a movie this afternoon without a chaperone. I don’t see it as a problem.”
“Sure you don’t. You’re a man. Men think—”
“Jeez, Mel, it’s an afternoon movie, not an orgy. What can it hurt?”
Melody flicked ashes into the flower bed beside the stoop. “Orgy. Now there’s a word and a half. For your information, a helluva lot can hurt if that boy starts pawing her.”
“No one’s going to paw her. They’ll go to the movie, watch it and she’ll come home. End of story.”
“Ha. I was fifteen once. I know what goes on in those back rows, in the dark.”
“Don’t judge our daughter by your standards.”
“Oh, aren’t we all righteous? Like you never copped a feel in the back of a theater, you and those bad boy brothers of yours.”
