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As her car sped north out of town, she thought about what she’d say. Riley’s return couldn’t be good for anyone but his grandmother, Lydia, and even that was questionable. He had a right to visit Lydia, of course, but he should have no reason to stay. Riley didn’t belong here anymore. Tracy had to make sure he knew that.
But when she rang the doorbell at the old house a few minutes later, no one answered. The ugly beige curtains that had always hung over the large front window were open. Tracy would be able to see movement inside, if there was any.
She pressed the bell again. Still receiving no answer, she stepped off the porch to peek through the garage window. The glass was filthy, but she could see there wasn’t a car inside. Good. If he’d been here, he was gone now.
Tracy jogged back to her car and grabbed the carafe of green tea she’d left in her cup holder. She’d give herself a few minutes to look around. If she wore an old suit to work on Monday, she could scratch the dry cleaning off today’s list and grocery-shop tomorrow.
Hitching up a pant leg, Tracy stepped over the sagging fence to Riley’s backyard. It was hard to believe the child’s swing set was still back here. The primary stripes that had once painted a falsely optimistic picture of children soaring to the sky had long since mutated to flaking paint and rust. She crossed the lawn quickly and set her drink on the seat of the middle swing. Turning to face the hazy blue hills north of town, she grasped the chains of the swing farthest from the house—always her favorite—and wriggled onto the seat.
The plastic was cold. The weatherman had said it would be warm for late April, but even sixty degrees felt cold through her well-worn “Saturday jeans”. The swing seemed solid enough to hold her weight, so she pushed off with her feet and swung forward, toward the hills.
“You’re trespassing.”
Tracy knew the strange flip of her stomach had nothing to do with the motion of the swing. She skidded to a stop and jumped off the seat, then turned around with her heart in her throat.
It was Riley, standing inside the open storm door at the rear of the house holding a coffee cup. It had to be him. Other men may share a similar combination of smoke-gray eyes and dirty-blond hair, but when you added the teasing smile and dare-me-to-care expression, you had to be looking at Riley.
“Riley?” she called, in case her thoughts were somehow affecting her eyesight.
“I’m flattered you remember me,” he said as stepped out and let the door slam behind him.
As if she could have forgotten.
He set his cup on top of a wood box near the door and started across the lawn toward her. As he neared, her throat went dry. Riley had always had a certain heart-wrenching appeal, but he’d improved with age. The eighteen-year-old boy had transformed into every woman’s fantasy of confident good looks and muscular build. His hair was longer now, but rather than shaggy and unkempt, it lay smooth, catching the sunlight and making him look sexy. Dangerously so.
Tracy’s early-morning stint on her exercise bike had been unnecessary. Her heart had been getting a rather rousing workout ever since her shower. She picked up her tea and took a long swig.
When he reached the swing set, Riley looped an arm over the top beam and ogled her with one side of his mouth tilted up. “Criminy. You’ve grown up, little girl.”
“Guess that happens to everyone.” She drank again to wet her throat with the warm liquid, then clutched the carafe against her pounding chest. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”
His gaze shot down her body, and back up. “I’ll say. What’s it been, about a million years?”
The man was too hunky for his own good, and she was tempted to mimic the obvious way he’d checked her out. Instead, she trained her eyes on a lock of hair falling across his forehead. “I was almost sixteen when you left, and I’m twenty-nine now. You were the math whiz.”
“My question was purely rhetorical,” he said. “I’m perfectly aware of how long it’s been. I was the one banished from town, remember?”
“What brings you back now?”
He squinted toward the hills. “There’s no reason to stay away now that Otto is gone.”
“Are you visiting your grandma?”
“Not exactly.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m renovating her house. I’ve just come back from the hardware store.”
Tracy studied the dilapidated two-story he’d grown up in. For at least half a century, that house had sat next to her parents’ limestone cottage. The proximity of the two adjacent, tree-lined lots in the country had fostered strong friendships—and stronger feuds.
For years, Tracy’s mom and stepdad had tried to help Otto and Vanessa Collins aspire to better living. Until the night their son had lured Tracy’s underage sister away from home, and changed everyone’s lives in the process.
“I don’t think it’ll take too much to make it livable,” Riley said, turning around again.
Tracy drank her tea and kept her eyes on the house. It definitely needed work, but she’d thought the Collins family would try to sell it as a fixer upper.
When she realized the significance of what Riley had said, Tracy’s tea seemed to curdle in her throat. She choked out, “You aren’t planning to live out here, are you?”
Riley’s eyes turned dark before he averted them. He began to peel flakes of paint from the top beam. “That makes the most sense to me,” he said as he flicked a piece off his thumbnail. “I can work on the place easier if I’m living in it.”
“And then?”
At her question, the gaze he aimed in her direction was so intense that she turned her eyes away, pretending interest in a pudgy robin hopping across the yard. In her peripheral vision, Tracy noted that he had crossed his arms over his chest. The seeming force of his will eventually caused her to look up. “And then I’ll stop working on it.”
“And keep living here?”
He shrugged.
Tracy shook her head. “You think you can waltz back into Kirkwood now and stay?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Tracy sipped her tea once more and realized the last of it was bitter. She unscrewed the thermos lid and poured the liquid onto the grass, then set the container back on the swing seat. Lifting a hand to her mouth, she clamped the nail of her pinkie finger between her teeth.
When he reached out his hand to pull hers from her mouth, she jerked away.
“Don’t get all bent out of shape,” he said. “I was only trying to stop you from biting your nails.”
“Just don’t touch me,” she said, and her loss of composure sent her eyes careering down his body, over the ribbed white undershirt that clung to a muscled chest and revealed, when his arms were raised to the cross-beam, an inch of enticing bare skin at his flat abdomen, just above the low-slung jeans.
She pulled her shocked eyes up to his glittering ones. The realization that she was drooling over her family’s nemesis didn’t help at all. Clenching her hands into fists, Tracy said, “Otto wasn’t the only one who wanted you gone.”
“Oh, really?”
She held his gaze.
“Did you want me gone?” This was said in the same patient voice he’d used when she was a scrawny girl and he was her not-so-secret crush.
“I was a kid. What did I know?”
“You knew me. Did you try to stand up for me?”
She started picking the paint off the swing set, too, thinking back to the day she’d found out Riley was gone. The phone calls had come first. The high school geometry teacher had called the Gilbert house, looking for Tracy’s older sister, Karen. Riley’s basketball coach had called his house. Neither teenager had made it to school that day, the teachers reported. And in retrospect, no one in either family could remember seeing them the night before.
Within a half hour, the two families had discovered empty closets, missing personal items and not a word of explanation.
Everyone had looked to Tracy then, of course. Karen had been seeing Riley for a couple of months, but Tracy had been his buddy since days of training wheels and tree houses. None of the parents seemed to know how hurt Tracy had been by the first betrayal—when Karen had sought Riley’s attention and he had all too willingly given it.
They didn’t know how left out Tracy had felt every time her best friend parked near the train trestle to do who-knew-what with her sister.
They’d expected Tracy to know everything.
She hadn’t known anything.
Somehow, that seemed to be the biggest betrayal of all.
“Did you defend me?” Riley prompted, grabbing her hand.
She probably would have if she hadn’t been nursing a broken heart. She tried to release her hand again, but he held it firmly, confiscating her attention at the same time.
“How could I?” she asked. “You left with Karen before she finished high school. Otto said—”
“Since when would you believe anything my father said?”
Being close to Riley tangled Tracy’s insides like one of Claus’s pilfered balls of yarn. She needed to escape. Wiggling her hand loose, she said, “Since you proved him right.”
“The people of this never-never land sent me out on the plank before they heard a single word in my defense.”
Tracy edged past him, toward the fence. “You had no business taking my sister to California with you.”
“Maybe she was ready to leave,” Riley said from behind her. “And maybe I was a convenient ticket out.”
“People haven’t forgotten.”
“Then people need to enrich their lives.”
He sounded closer. Tracy turned her head and saw that he was following her across the grass with her forgotten thermos. She scrambled over the fence and turned around. “My mom’s health has been fragile,” she said. “I don’t want her to be upset.”
“Don’t worry,” Riley said with a smile that seemed too sincere to be believable. “I was planning to walk over and visit your mom and stepdad later this afternoon.”
“You can’t.”
He shifted his weight. “I’ve been gone for over thirteen years and I haven’t seen your sister in just as long. Your parents will listen to reason.”
“No, I mean they’re not there,” Tracy said. “They’re on vacation. Dad took Mom to visit relatives.”
Riley gave her a long assessing look, followed by a nod. “Gran said your mom had been in the hospital. Is she okay?”
Tracy felt comfort touch her heart as Riley seemed to slide back into his old role as friend. Until she watched him step closer and recognized how easily he could hop the fence and catch her waist between his potent-looking hands.
The thought was provocative in more ways than one.
She stepped back. “Mom had a scare with pneumonia, but she’s better now.”
“That’s good.” Riley’s crooked smile seemed too open, and he was cupping her tea thermos between his hands with a disturbing familiarity. The last thing she needed was to tie herself up with him again, in friendship or anything else.
He was a stranger now. She wanted him to remain one.
Tracy stared at her thermos, willing him to hand it across so she could leave and sort out her thoughts.
A little more than a year ago, Riley’s father had been caught embezzling funds from the company where he worked. Although that particular news hadn’t been shocking, other things had been.
For one thing, Vanessa had seemed unaffected by her husband’s troubles. She’d filed for divorce and headed south to a friend’s house in Oklahoma City just two days after Otto’s prison term began. For another, Tracy’s parents had learned that Riley’s grandmother actually owned the house.
Lydia Stephenson was quirky but harmless. Since she was content in her retirement-village apartment, the house had been left vacant. Tracy’s mother claimed that sometimes she heard the old place sighing in relief. She’d been looking forward to welcoming new neighbors. It was a good thing she wasn’t home this weekend. Tracy could break the news gently.
Riley rested her thermos on top of the fence post and shot a glance down Tracy’s body again. “Are you going to tell me why you’re hanging out in my backyard?”
“I came to see you,” Tracy said. “I rang the doorbell and—”
“It’s busted. My father was a slob.”
Tracy bit back a retort about Riley having faults of his own. “—And when no one answered, I came back to admire the view. It’s better from your yard.”
Riley grinned. “You can swing on my swing set anytime, little girl.”
Tracy’s regard touched on his mouth and dropped down his torso again. When the blood circled back round to her brain and she homed in on his gleaming eyes, she sighed, resisting another urge to chomp her nails.
“What do you want?” he asked in a voice that was in no way like the one he’d used when she was a child. This voice was soft, all right, but it was rich with suggestion.
She frowned.
“You said you came to see me.”
She gazed at the hair that moved around his head as he shook it. She’d driven all the way over here to ask him to leave, but now the words seemed harsh. “Don’t get comfortable here,” she said as she reached up to snatch her thermos from the post. “And I’m saying that for your sake. You won’t fit in.”
His eyes darkened ominously. “You don’t think I will?”
“No.”
“Then watch me.”
Chapter Two
Riley stood at the fence and watched as Tracy maneuvered her way around the overgrown cedar and across to her parents’ driveway. The lady was worth watching. Her faded jeans emphasized a pair of curvy hips and a small waist. She was so feminine now. So alluring. Deep-chestnut hair bounced around her shoulders as she opened the door of a white sedan and folded her trim body inside. Within seconds, she started the car and roared off down the road.
His attraction to her wasn’t a complete surprise—he’d always found her enchanting. Full lips and expressive eyes on a well-proportioned face made her classically pretty, but he was charmed by more than her looks. She’d always seemed comfortable with her choices and her world. He’d been pleased that a girl with such winning ways had found something about him to admire. But not anymore. His departure all those years ago had taken care of that.
He returned to the back door and grabbed his coffee cup on the way inside. If he’d learned anything from his reckless youth, it was that running away rarely solved a problem. Way back when, Tracy had been one of few who’d believed in him. Her distrust now was only part of the price he’d paid.
Deciding he didn’t need the caffeine, Riley left his full cup of coffee near the kitchen sink and walked through the empty living room. His mother had taken the furniture when she’d moved. She hadn’t wanted to live in a house full of bad memories, but she’d wanted her things. And Riley had left his junk in a storage unit out in California. It was hardly worth the cost of moving it, and for now he was content with necessities. He could always send for his things later. If he decided to stay.
When Grandma Lydia had called to request his help, she’d offered to sell him the place—something she’d never done for his parents. And until Riley’s arrival yesterday afternoon, he’d laughed heartily at the idea.
It was funny, the way he felt about the old house now. He and his parents had moved here from Topeka when he was six, and he’d always hated the place. For one thing, it was too isolated. The only neighbors within walking distance were Tracy’s family. It was said that a community tried to spring to life out here a century ago, but progress had stunted its growth. The dusty rural route in front of the houses had been bisected by a highway curving lazily toward the lake, leaving room for only two.
A bigger factor was the loud and constant criticism he’d received here. Now that his father was gone, the place seemed peaceful. For the first time, it actually seemed like a haven. Maybe he would stay.
He entered the back bedroom, reopened the pail of creamy yellow paint and climbed the ladder to grab his paintbrush. After loosening its bristles against the cleanup rag, he dipped the brush into the pail.
And grinned out the window at the swing. Seeing Tracy there had erased a whole mess of years and as many bad decisions. It returned Riley to days when he’d come flying out of the house, angry at his father for some cruel taunt, and Tracy would chatter innocently from her perch on that same swing. She’d always manage to cheer him up.
