Just a Wish Away (8 page)

"Well, it's been a long time since I saw him, so it's difficult for me to judge whether he's changed since he went to war or if he's different because it has been fifteen years since we hung out together. I would agree, however, that he seems a little dark. I'm sure he needs time to work things through."

"Maybe it's good for him to reconnect with you. Perhaps you'll remind him of who he used to be. Hold on a sec," Evie added.

Alexa could hear her cousin yelling to her kid to brush his teeth. Then Evie came back on the line.

"I have to run. It's story time here. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Sure. Good-night," Alexa said.

She ended the call, set her phone on the bed, then glanced back at the computer. Instead of searching for Shayla again, she typed in Braden's name. She wondered if there was any information about what he'd gone through on the other side of the world. Ten minutes later, she shut off the computer with a frustrated sigh. If she was going to find out what had happened to Braden, he would have to tell her. She doubted that would happen any time soon, and with her aunt on the way to recovery, how long would she even be in town? The police were investigating. She could leave them to it.

But she knew if she walked away now, she'd regret it.

For fifteen years she'd been haunted by Braden and her very first kiss. She'd always felt like their relationship had been ripped away, that they had unfinished business. It was time to finish it. She needed closure, and she wasn't going to get that if she left now.

* * *

Braden dragged his old bike down the stairs of his apartment building early Thursday morning. It was one of the few items he'd retrieved from the house he'd shared with his soon-to-be ex-wife on the other side of town. He'd always loved to ride, but it had been a long time since he'd been on his bike, probably since before he'd enlisted.

When he reached the parking lot behind his building, he hopped on, hoping the tires would make it to the nearest gas station where he could put in some air. His right thigh protested as he started to pedal, the muscles still painful from the recent tear in his quad muscle. But it felt good to ride, the wind in his face, the sun on his head, the smell of salt water in the air. It was springtime in Sand Harbor, a new beginning for nature and maybe for him, too.

The last few months had been brutal. He hadn't handled his injuries, his marriage, or his discharge from the Army at all well. It had been too much to deal with at one time. But he was tired of feeling out of it, of sitting in his apartment all day long, drifting aimlessly... He'd always been active. He'd always had goals.

Unfortunately, all of his early goals had been about following in his dad's very impressive footsteps. Now, he didn't know what he wanted to do.

As he rode toward the downtown area, he couldn't help thinking about Alexa. Bike riding had been their thing. From June to August, he'd gotten up every morning and met Alexa on the corner by her aunt's house. They'd taken off together each day on a new adventure. Even when they didn't do more than just ride around, their days were full, fun. They connected on so many levels. They didn't even have to talk to understand each other.

At first, it had just been a friendship. They'd met when they were ten, but by the time they were twelve, he'd definitely started noticing how pretty she was, how much he wanted to put his arm around her, hold her hand, maybe even kiss her. He'd finally gotten his courage up that last day, that last moment.

One kiss, that's all they'd had.

He'd kissed a lot of other girls since then. He'd even married one. But Alexa had never completely left his mind. She'd always been there, somewhere in the background, an unrealized dream.

His friends from school had been happy when Alexa stopped coming around. When she was in town, he'd ditched them to spend time with her. He couldn't help himself. Her beautiful smile had literally lit up his world. And then she was gone. It wasn't her fault. She'd been a kid, and her parents had made her leave, but he'd never imagined that that last day on the beach would be the last day he'd see her for many, many years. He'd never considered that she wouldn't write, wouldn't call him every other second. For years, he'd thought they'd meet up again, but when he had finally gone to see her in high school, she'd been with someone else. It hadn't really surprised him. Why wouldn't she have moved on from the childhood crush they'd had on each other? It had been years.

He was a little surprised that Alexa had come back to Sand Harbor after college. He couldn't believe it was to see him, although part of him wanted to think that way. But it had probably been more of a desire to reconnect with her aunt and maybe check in on him at the same time. He'd been married by then. Married and in the Army. He'd rushed into both.

But all that was in the past. Alexa was here now. He was here, too. For the first time in a long time they were in the same physical space. But mentally, they were no doubt miles apart.

He was still reeling from the events of the past few months, and he had way too much emotional baggage to even think of dumping it on someone else. Alexa would press him to talk. She'd already started asking questions, and he knew that wasn't going to stop any time soon, but he didn't want to tell her about his past. Not just because he didn't want to share the horrific details, but also because he didn't really want her to look at him differently. And she would.

Kinley had
.

The thought of his soon-to-be ex-wife made him pedal harder – faster.

Kinley had been a huge mistake. They'd met three months before they married. It had been fast and fun and completely foolish. They'd been twenty years old, old enough to know better, but young enough to still be stupid. Kinley hadn't known what she was getting herself into, and he hadn't either. He'd believed they'd be like his parents, who had married young and been incredibly happy. When he'd thought of the Army, he'd seen in his head the picture of his father in his uniform, the photo that had sat on the mantel in his mother's living room for his entire life. That picture had shown a man who was perfect and proud, one objective in his eyes, to serve his country and protect his family, not a hint of doubt about his career choice. The war Braden had gotten himself into had had very few clear objectives. It had been chaotic and bloody, one win turning into two losses, a never-ending fight that he doubted could ever be won. His marriage had turned out to be just as messy.

It was over now – all of it. He needed to move on.

He stopped at the gas station and filled up his tires, and then headed toward the harbor. It was only a few miles and mostly flat, so not a difficult ride. It was a beautiful day, with only a few white clouds to mar the vast blue sky. When he'd been overseas, he'd carried this picture in his head: the picturesque downtown streets with the open air cafés and boutiques, the boats gently swaying in the harbor, and the fishermen selling the day's catch every afternoon. Sand Harbor was what the world should be, he thought -- peaceful, calm, pretty. But the rest of the world wasn't like that at all, at least not the places he'd traveled the past few years.

When he reached the antique store, he felt a surge of anticipation. He parked his bike by the tree in front of the store and was just about to knock when Alexa opened the door.

"Hi," she said, her smile a bit tentative. "I saw you through the window."

"I figured you'd be in here early. You always liked a treasure hunt."

"I wish we were just looking for treasure." She stepped back and waved him inside, locking the door behind him.

"Any news on your aunt?"

"Yes, she woke up last night, and the doctor thinks she's going to make a full recovery. I stopped in early this morning, but she was still asleep. I'm going to go back later."

"I'm glad," he said, seeing the relief in her eyes.

"Me, too. So after I left you last night, I did a little research on Ariel, otherwise known as Shayla Cummings."

"What did you find out?"

"That Shayla was a model turned actress, whose first movie bombed, but she was comforted by quite a lineup of attractive men and power players. Unfortunately, I couldn't tie any of those men to Sand Harbor," Alexa added. "And what also disturbs me is that the local news coverage was so skimpy in regards to her death. This town never has anything newsworthy to report, yet the drowning of a beautiful actress only gets a couple of paragraphs? I don't get it."

"I noticed that, too."

She gave him a knowing smile. "So I wasn't the only one who was curious."

"I couldn't stop thinking about that fight we witnessed," he admitted.

"Exactly. What if we saw something, and we didn't realize it at the time," she said, an excited note in her voice. "We didn't know she was going to die a short while later, so we weren't paying attention in any particular way. But we were the only ones on the beach that night. We could have been the only witnesses."

"But we don't know what we witnessed," he said, trying to dampen her enthusiasm. He could feel himself getting caught up in her story the way he always had. He tried to tell himself to keep it real, get a grip, but then he thought what the hell – it had been months since he'd been interested in anything. Pondering a fifteen-year-old mystery wasn't the worst thing he could be thinking about. "I do have a theory on the lack of newspaper coverage. Jack Wellbourne owned the building where the newspaper was housed back then."

"You think he had some influence over the newspaper coverage?"

Braden shrugged. "It's possible. He was their landlord, and he owned a lot of buildings in town. It might have been difficult for them to move or to ignore him."

"It always comes back to the Wellbournes," she mused. "Shayla was living in their house, the newspaper was owned by Jack Wellbourne, and these boxes came from the Wellbourne estate."

"Three for three," he muttered.

"Exactly."

"But it's not a good idea to get so focused on one possibility that we overlook everything else," he warned. "We need to keep an open mind."

"So what do we do next? I've looked through all the boxes. I still need to do a detailed inventory, but nothing jumped out at me. I also don't know what I'm looking for, something valuable, something sentimental, something damaging?" She gave a helpless shrug. "Or maybe whatever the thief wanted, they already got. Who knows?"

"Well, if the boxes haven't provided any clues, maybe we should look at where they came from."

"The house on the beach?"

"Exactly."

"Isn't it empty? And isn't it also probably locked?"

"Only one way to find out," he replied.

"It could be a wild goose chase, Braden."

"Your favorite kind as I recall."

She smiled. "True. However, the practical thing to do would be to stay here and take inventory."

"When did you get so practical?"

"The day I left here -- fifteen years ago."

He could see her wrestle with the tug from the past, the same tug he felt. "The boxes aren't going anywhere," he said.

"Do you really want to go back to the beach?" she asked.

He could tell by the look in her eyes that her question had more to do with their past than Shayla's. Maybe it was a mistake, but God help him, he did want to see her on the beach again.

"Okay," she said suddenly, obviously deciding not to wait for his answer. "We'll go to the beach. But first I want to stop by the hospital."

"Sounds good. I'd like to see your aunt, too."

"Maybe she'll be able to tell us who assaulted her and then this will also be over," Alexa added.

"Maybe," he said, feeling a little guilty for not wanting it to be over just yet. He wanted to spend more time with Alexa before she went back to her real life, and before he went back to his life -- whatever that was going to be.

Chapter Five

Braden stashed his bike inside the store, and then Alexa drove them both to the hospital. She was acutely conscious of his presence in her compact rental car. She still hadn't quite reconciled the man he was now with the boy she remembered. And Braden wasn't opening up that much. While he was chatty enough about the Wellbournes and Shayla, most of his personal life appeared to be off limits.

She was dying to find out more about the woman he'd married. What had driven him to marry so young? Was he simply following in his father's footsteps again? His father had asked his mother to marry him after their high school graduation. They'd waited a year to tie the knot, but they still hadn't been out of their teens when they'd said
I do
. As a child, she'd thought his parents had the most romantic love story. But sadly their story had ended in tragedy.

Cynically, she wondered if anyone ever lived happily ever after. She certainly hadn't had much experience with long married couples.

Her aunt had supposedly been happy in her marriage, but her husband had also died young. He'd been a fisherman, and he hadn't made it back from a deadly storm. Her aunt had been single ever since, saying she'd already had the love of her life.

As her thoughts turned to her aunt, she said a silent prayer for a quick recovery. Phoebe was a strong woman, and she was going to need that strength now to recover fully from her injuries and the trauma she must have suffered when she realized her store was being robbed.