Nothing but Trouble (4 page)

Hoffman must have read her face. “I mean that he doesn’t give up.” He clamped his hand on her shoulder, warm, welcoming. “Glad you’re back. I hope you’re sticking around.”

PJ had no words as Davy finally struggled out of her arms, landed on the pool deck, and raced for the ice-cream stand. She collapsed into a deck chair.

“Ernie
 
—I need to talk to you.”

PJ looked up, and everything stilled as she watched Ben Murphy stride across the lawn toward the pool area.
Oh no, oh no . . . former math teacher and prom chaperone at ten o’clock.

Really, she had to stop thinking that the past happened yesterday. These people had moved on, and so must she.

“Say hi to PJ,” Hoffman said to Murphy, digging out his wallet. He wore a dangerous smile that PJ could have done without.

Murphy stopped as if running into plate glass. “PJ . . . Sugar?”

PJ lifted her hand, waved it like a leaf in the wind. But the scene resonated in his eyes
 
—the fire lashing the dark sky,
the scream of the sirens, Boone’s breath on her skin a second before Mr. Murphy and company motored up on a golf cart.

She dropped her hand back into her lap.

Murphy had recovered his gait and gave her a small shake of his head as he passed her and joined Hoffman at the ice-cream stand.

PJ sat there tasting yesterday like tar in her mouth.

Davy returned, slurping a single dip chocolate ice-cream cone. Chocolate dripped from his chin. Hoffman followed, having dispensed with Murphy, and lifted Davy onto a chair next to PJ. He pressed his hands against the small of his back and stretched.

“How’d you do that?”

He winked. “Sometimes you just got to give ’em a little sugar.”

PJ wasn’t sure Kellogg could handle any more Sugar.

“You!” The voice came from the wraparound veranda overlooking the patio. Hoffman looked up and PJ jerked, turning. She’d known her luck wouldn’t hold. But no, a man she didn’t recognize leaped the banister, landing hard on the cement, right beside a row of teakwood deck chairs.

She stood and backed away as he strode toward her.

“Where’ve you been?” Tall, with the build of a sailor, he wore the white uniform of one of the waiters or maybe a spa attendant, anger riddling his face. “You don’t return phone calls anymore?” His glare landed beyond her.

Oh. He was after
Hoffman
. PJ glanced back at her history teacher and could have sworn he’d turned a little pale. Chatter poolside stopped, all eyes on the ruckus.

A morbid relief that she wasn’t the cause of the commotion
rooted her to her spot, one hand reaching out for Davy as the man advanced on Hoffman.

“Where’s my money, huh? She’s going to find out; you know that, right?”

Hoffman raised his hands, surrender-like.

PJ rounded. “Hey!” she yelled.

But the man never slowed, pushing past the deck chairs and arrowing straight for Hoffman, palm out, and thumping Hoffman hard in the center of the chest.

The history teacher flew back into the pool. Water bulleted PJ and Davy and splattered the deck like gunfire.

Davy dropped his cone and wailed.

PJ stood stock-still as the man dove in after Hoffman.

She’d just known, if she returned to Kellogg, she wouldn’t escape the bright lights and sirens.

“Well, if it isn’t NBT. I should have figured I’d find you here.”

PJ didn’t have to turn from her crouched position on the wet deck around the pool to recognize Director Buckam’s voice. She heard the derision in the nickname he’d bestowed upon her
 
—Nothing but Trouble
 
—as if he’d sworn out the restraining order yesterday.

She finished wiping Davy’s face, sighing. “Hey, I’m just here because my sister got married. I’m leaving right now. And I really don’t think that’s fair
 
—”

“Sure it is. Because whenever there’s trouble, you’re not far away,” Buckam said, apparently not pulling any punches.

Davy wiggled away from her grasp and she took another swipe at him, hoping to vanquish one foe before she faced another.

“I think that you should check your facts because it was
your
son
 
—”

But it wasn’t Director Buckam. And it seemed cosmically unfair that she might be in Kellogg only five hours and thirty-six minutes before Daniel “Boone” Buckam walked back into her life.

He stood over her, hands on his narrow hips, the dark silhouette of a superhero, complete with broad shoulders framed against the late afternoon sun and the barest hint of a smug smile on his clean-shaven face. Probably she should be glad she couldn’t see his eyes behind those dark sunglasses. Her gaze dropped to the dark weapon slung in an arm holster under his suit coat and the shiny silver badge on his belt.

Look who’d cleaned up his act.

“Boone.”

“Oh, PJ.” He said it softly, like he’d been holding his breath for years and only her name came out on exhale. He shook his head, taking off his sunglasses, unleashing now the full power of those pale blue eyes on her. “PJ Sugar.” This time her name emerged with a singsong lilt, flecked with danger, the same tone he used when she’d met him behind the garage after sneaking out of the house years ago. “I knew you’d come back.”

“You knew nothing of the sort.” The edge in her voice, laced with more desperation than she would have liked, surprised even her as she shot to her feet. She reached for Davy, who twisted away from her, licking his hands. “I . . . My sister got married and I’m watching Davy while she’s on her honeymoon. Otherwise, I’d be back in . . . where I lived.
Live
.”

Boone’s eyes connected with hers with the power to part her lies and zero in on the truth, and for a long moment he just grinned.

Then he laughed low, and she felt it rumbling right below her breastbone.

Until that very moment, she’d thought she might someday be able to find a cure for this dark hold he had on her heart. To inoculate herself from his charm and expunge the memories of being the center of his world.

Apparently, however, there was no Boone antidote. Every cell in her body revived, alive, tingling, remembering his smell on a crisp fall day as she dug herself into the cleft of his embrace, his leather jacket cool against her cheek, his arms the one safe place to hide.

And to prove it, her gaze went straight to his left hand. His
ringless
left hand.

Her hands shook as she reached out to grab Davy’s before he could flee. “I’m not back for you,” she said, wishing her voice could work with her a little. “In fact I’m hoping that maybe we could just ignore each other.”

“You’ve always been a little tough to ignore, Peej.”

“Don’t
Peej
me. I’ve moved on. I mean, it’s been ten years, Boone. Good grief, don’t look at me like you’ve been staring at the horizon all this time, waiting for me to appear.”

“Feels like it.” But he continued to smile, unfazed.

“I’m serious.” She put everything she hoped she believed in her expression. “I’m just here to babysit. I don’t want any . . . trouble.” She managed to avoid Davy’s kick, all the while staring at Boone.

Stop staring at Boone.

“NBT, I think you need to wake up and smell the chlorine.” His smile broadened, teased, as he glanced at a sopping wet Hoffman and his assailant, now subdued by a couple of Connie’s
lawyer pals who had taken to the pool after the duo, pulling them out before Hoffman got more than a mouthful of water. Another cop, one PJ didn’t recognize, was cuffing the attacker. “What do you know about Jack Wilkes going after Ernie?”

PJ’s mouth opened. “You aren’t seriously blaming me for this. I don’t even know Jack . . .”

“Wilkes. Really? You’ve never met Trudi’s husband?”

Trudi . . . her best friend from school, cohort in the Great Shaving Cream Incident? The one PJ left crying on her front steps, afraid she might be pregnant with Greg Morris’s baby? “Trudi is still around?”

“And married to Slugger over there.” Boone twirled his sunglasses between two fingers. “Haven’t you kept in touch with anyone?”

PJ had no words for that. She’d been . . . Well, after being the girl whose reputation preceded her, it didn’t take much to find a delicious freedom in reinventing herself all over the globe. Or at least North America.

“No one I wanted to keep in touch with,” she said tightly.

“Hmm . . . maybe there were people who wanted to keep in touch with you.” He gave her a look up and down that left no question as to his meaning.

He hadn’t changed one arrogant bit.

Except for the suit coat. And his freshly barbered dark blond hair, so short she had the urge to touch it, compare it to the long curls that once ran through her fingers like ribbons. The slightest fragrance of cologne lifted off him, evidencing a man instead of a ruddy high school boy. Okay, so he’d changed
a lot
.

But only in a way that could mean trouble. For she knew
what Boone did to her. She had the scars
 
—and a tattoo
 
—to prove it.

“Boone, I’m not the same person who left Kellogg. I’m . . . different.”

“I’m sure you are.” He gave her a look that, in a different time and place, would turn her common sense to a puddle of desire, and shortly thereafter, she’d be climbing onto the back of his motorcycle.

Run.
The smart side of her brain fairly screamed it.

No. She wasn’t going to leave town because of Boone
 
—or his lies
 
—again. Ever.

“Since when did you become a cop
 
—if that’s what you are?” It seemed that Connie or even her mother might have given her the slightest heads-up on that piece of trivia.

His face shadowed, a darkness that she didn’t recognize, but he chased it away with a shrug. “Decided it was time to pick a side.”

“You look good in a suit. What are you, undercover?”

“Detective.” But her words seemed to rock him for just a second, as if he hadn’t expected anything but claws from her. His smile dimmed, his voice low. “Okay, I just need to know. Not a Christmas card, not a birthday greeting
 
—you erased yourself off the planet and out of . . . everyone’s life. And now you’re here, as if blown in by the wind. Why, PJ,
why
didn’t you come back sooner?”

Like on strings, PJ’s eyes traveled to the tenth green, reviving a memory that produced some heat against her cheeks. “You know why.”

He looked away, and in the silence that stretched between them, she heard the regrets that neither wanted to voice.

Finally Boone said, “Time heals all wounds.” It came out softly and with what sounded like hope in his tone.

“Some wounds can never heal.” PJ pulled Davy across the patio toward the country club.

She hadn’t expected Boone to follow her to the gate. He stood there, catching it as it swung shut behind her. “It’ll be different this time, Peej. I promise.”

She didn’t turn at his words and managed to coerce Davy up the stairs and into the building before her vision glossed over.

Her mother sat in her wheelchair, saying good-bye to the last of the guests.

“I don’t know where Connie lives. Can you give me directions?” PJ said, steeling her voice as she freed Davy to scavenge the debris of the mint table. The last thing she needed was for her mother to see her with Boone.

Besides, she hadn’t returned for Boone. And there would be no “this time.”

Elizabeth said nothing, her brow puckered, her eyes searching. Then, “You can follow me.”

“You’re driving, Mom? Are you sure
 
—?”

“My Mercedes can practically drive itself. And my doctor said I could. You don’t expect me to sit at home for six weeks, do you?”

Clearly PJ had lost her mind. She opened her mouth to admit this.

“Besides, it’s my left ankle, and I don’t have a . . .
manual
. I suppose you still have a Volkswagen?”

She said it like she always had . . . as if PJ had brought home a mule to park in their driveway.

“I’ve upgraded, but I’ll always be a Bug girl.” PJ didn’t exactly mean it like that, but still, she didn’t appreciate her mother’s expression.

“I’m sure you will.” Elizabeth rolled away.

PJ retrieved her traveling clothes and cornered Davy, then followed her mother from the building. Elizabeth ditched the wheelchair for a set of crutches, and by the time PJ strapped Davy into the car seat Connie had transferred to her backseat, her mother had pulled up in her silver Mercedes.

It was then that Boone turned from the crime scene, his pale gaze on PJ.

She didn’t look back as she peeled away, even when his words rebounded in her head:
“It’ll be different this time, Peej. I promise.”

* * *

PJ glanced at Davy in the rearview mirror. He’d flattened his hands over his ears, his eyes clenched tight, his breath ballooning his cheeks as his face reddened.

“Davy, are you okay? Davy?”

He didn’t react, as if he’d gone deaf also.

Could a child self-suffocate? “Stop it, Davy!”

He let his breath go and gulped in another.

“Don’t die on me, okay?”

He stuck out his tongue at her.

She ignored him, following her mother through town, passing the old neighborhoods. Trudi had lived on the “other” side of town
 
—near the high school. So Trudi had married after all. To a man with self-control issues, no less.
PJ’s first clear impression of Jack
 
—in his sopping wet uniform, water turning his black shoes squeaky, his blond hair standing in spikes
 
—dredged up memories of Trudi’s high school squeeze, a wide receiver who’d caught passes from more than just the quarterback. How many times had Trudi ended up on PJ’s back porch, her face in her hands, swearing to dump Greg?

If anyone could convict PJ for not keeping in touch, it might be Trudi. She dearly hoped that the behavior she’d seen didn’t follow Jack home.

PJ wondered where Trudi lived now as she followed her mother’s shiny sedan up a curve of shoreline that rose to a bluff overlooking Kellogg.

They veered west into the Chapel Hills neighborhood, and PJ tapped her brakes as they passed her old house. She noted a fresh coat of paint on the front porch columns, the hydrangeas grown halfway to her old bedroom window. The trellis had vanished
 
—better late than never. Still, the house looked unaged, a time capsule for everything she’d thought she’d be as she lay huddled under the floral sheets, watching the fingers of the oak tree in the front yard reach past the eyelet curtains into her bedroom, crawl along her baby blue carpet, up the cotton candy pink walls. She’d watched the shadows, longing for daylight and to be the princess that belonged in such a room.

Elizabeth had probably long since redecorated.

They wound through elegant neighborhoods. PJ riffled through her sister’s history, remembering how, shortly after Connie found Burke in that compromising embrace with his law clerk, she’d dumped her condo overlooking downtown
Minneapolis’s Loring Park. She’d cashed Burke’s life insurance check as well as his parents’ inheritance and moved the thirty miles back to Kellogg, settling in a fifty-three-hundred-square-foot Craftsman home, built at the height of the roaring twenties, with ten-foot ceilings and a maid’s quarters.

Connie had written to her, sent her pictures. Still, PJ hadn’t expected this much grandeur. The house, situated on nearly a half acre of groomed landscape, sat back from the street, an island of grace with its dark cream siding, milky white porch columns, and rich mahogany door. Three floors, two chimneys, and a third-story dormer window overlooked a front walk lined with hostas. Two lilac trees, heavy with flowers, flanked the row of purple viburnum and dwarfed cedar trees on either side of the wide steps. They led to a porch adorned with potted impatiens and a white rocking chair.

If PJ had a choice, she would have picked exactly the same house. She and Connie at least shared tastes, if not incomes.

PJ tapped her brakes as she pulled into Connie’s driveway. She half expected to see the Great Gatsby stroll out on the porch, lean against the white columns, and stare down at her with prejudice.

For a second, she longed for her floral sheets.

Davy was out of his car seat before she could put the car in park. She reached over and released the door, and he pitched out.

While he ran up the steps, PJ retrieved her duffel bag from the trunk. She stopped for a moment, watching her mother pry herself out of her car, hopping to grab her crutches from the backseat. “You need some help, Mom?”

Elizabeth ignored her.

PJ wondered if her mother would start holding her breath too.

She climbed the stairs, old phone conversations playing in her mind
 
—Connie’s rants as she supervised a battalion of subcontractors who restored the home to its natural hand-scrolled oak trim and wood floors, installed replica period light fixtures, and turned the tiled fireplaces to gas.

PJ opened the door to the scent of lemony wax and oil, the floor groaning as she stepped inside, cutting into the hushed reverence.

All her earthly belongings made a thump as she dropped the bag.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay here?” her mother said, clunking up the steps.

“I think I’ll manage.”