Redemption Road (Jackson Falls #5) (8 page)

Colleen

Her Ferragamos tucked under her arm and her feet tucked into warm
boots, Colleen stood with Harley Atkins on her sister’s front steps as the snow
fell, silent and lovely, around them. There was something magical about this
kind of snow, with the world all soft and dark and muffled. Living in Florida,
she’d forgotten about that magic, but tonight brought it rushing back to her.

He tucked his hands into his pockets and teetered on the balls of
his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About the meatloaf.”

She shrugged. Said, “Kids and dogs. They have no filters, but they
certainly have minds of their own. What can you do?”

He had a nice smile, this annoying man who’d stolen her childhood
right out from under her. Beneath the porch light, crystalline flakes swirled
around his head, sending flashes of fire through his thick mop of brown hair. “Glad
you can look at it that way,” he said.

There was something about him. That face that could have been
chiseled out of New Hampshire granite, dusted with the faint shadow of dark
beard. The soft Georgia drawl, and those blue eyes that seemed to see right
through her. She didn’t want to like him, but somehow, during the course of the
evening, he’d grown on her. Not in a romantic way, of course. She wasn’t at
that place in her life, might never be again. It was way too soon. Irv had been
dead for just six months, and she was nowhere near done grieving. She didn’t
want to mislead him, didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. Didn’t want
to forge any connections that would make leaving difficult when the time came
to go.

But right now, she could really use a friend.

It was still early, not yet ten, and she had another long, lonely
night ahead of her. He was childless tonight, thanks to an impromptu sleepover
for Annabel and that thieving canine of hers. Colleen was dreading spending the
next hour or two in her apartment alone, with nothing but a clock radio for
company. Being alone like that gave her too much time to think, too much time
to ponder what might have been, too much time to fall back into old habits that
were best forgotten.

“I imagine,” she said, “that you have to be up at the crack of
dawn.”

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t.”

“Oh?”

“Billy does the milking on weekends. I get to sleep in until six.”

Surprised, she said, “My nephew Billy?”

“One and the same. I guess you could say I inherited him when I
bought the farm from your daddy. Billy’s been working there since he was a kid.
Without him, I’d be clueless. I grew up on a farm, but it was nothin’ like this
one. We had twelve cows. Meadowbrook has a herd of almost a hundred.”

She debated her next words, decided what the hell, she might as
well go for it. “I have a proposition for you. I need a picture hung, and I
figure you owe me. I washed your dishes. And your dog. You hang my picture, we’ll
call it even. As an added bonus, I’ll throw in a cup of hot cocoa. I’d offer
beer, but I don’t have any alcohol in the house.”  She shoved her fists into the
pockets of her new winter coat. “I don’t drink.”

“On a night like this, hot cocoa will hit the spot. I’d be happy
to oblige.”

He followed her up the stairs to her apartment, waited while she
unlocked the door. Inside the kitchen, she slipped out of her coat and hung it
over the back of a chair. “The picture’s on the couch,” she said. “The hammer
and nails are on the coffee table. I want it hung on the wall behind the couch,
a little above eye level.
My
eye level. I trust your judgment. I’ll
start the cocoa.”

Harley removed his coat, kicked off his snowy shoes, and disappeared
into the living room. Colleen took out a saucepan, poured in a little water
from the tap, and set it on the burner. She took two mugs from the cupboard and
found the box of instant cocoa mix she’d bought earlier, then tore open a pair
of foil packets, poured the contents into the mugs, and waited for the water to
boil.

From the living room came the tap of the hammer she’d borrowed
from her brother-in-law. Harley cussed once, a muffled oath, and she wondered,
belatedly, just how much he knew about swinging a hammer. He probably hadn’t
learned much about hammers in law school. “You all right in there?” she said.

“Fine. I just had a slight difference of opinion with your hammer,
that’s all.”

“And the hammer won?”

“I plead the Fifth.”

The water in the saucepan was boiling. Colleen switched off the
burner, picked up the pan with a pot holder, and carefully poured boiling water
into each mug. With a teaspoon, she stirred both until the chocolate powder was
thoroughly dissolved.

Harley shouted,  “You’ll have to come check, see if you’re happy
with where it ended up.”

“Be right there. The cocoa’s too hot to drink right now, anyway.”

The piece of artwork she’d bought at the five-and-ten was kitschy
and homey, not at all her style, a happy little house and barn made from pieces
of brightly-colored calico fabric, collaged over a white background and framed
under glass. She wasn’t even sure why she’d bought it. Usually, her tastes ran
to minimalist pen-and-ink drawings and the occasional piece of abstract art. She
would have been mortified to hang something like this in her home in Palm Beach.
But there was something about it that drew her, and here, in Jackson Falls, it
felt right.

“This look okay to you?” he said.

She critically eyed the piece, the placement. “As okay as it’s
going to get.”

“It’s cute.”

“Cute. That’s a good word for it.”

“Okay, so it’s not exactly gallery quality. But the pickings are
pretty slim at the only department store in town.”

She glanced at him, but he was focused on the artwork. If you
could call it that. “Have you visited a lot of galleries?”

“In New York, yes. My ex-wife was a collector.”

“Of what?”

Still focusing on the piece of homespun art, he said, “There was
this up-and-coming young expressionist painter named Jaime Vasquez. She really
liked his work, and she spent a chunk of money buying up his pieces as soon as
they came off the easel.”

“Why’d you get divorced?”

He swung around to look at her, eyebrows raised, perhaps surprised
by the audacity she displayed, asking such a personal question. “We didn’t agree
on what we wanted from life.”

“Such as?”

“She wanted to sleep with my senior law partner. I disagreed.”

“Ouch. How’d you end up with Annabel?”

“You’re just full of nosy questions, aren’t you?”

Unfazed, she said, “Mama always told me I didn’t know where to
draw the line.”

“Your Mama was a smart woman. And I have Annabel because Amy
didn’t want her. In addition to the sleeping-with-the-boss thing, she was a
barracuda. A greedy, driven workaholic with psychopathic tendencies. She didn’t
have time to be a mother.”

“Ah,” she said, instantly understanding. “Another lawyer.”

“I did the corporate thing for as long as I could take it. But my
heart was never in it. I’ve been happier these last six months than I ever was
in the ten years I spent in Manhattan.”

She crossed her arms. “My husband died,” she said. “Six months
ago.”

“I heard that. I’m sorry.”

Studying the ridiculously tacky calico collage, she wet her lips. “I
don’t know what the hell to do with myself now.”

Hands in the pockets of his jeans, he said darkly, “There are
times when I wish my ex-wife would just up and die.”

A tear, salty and humiliating, flooded her right eye and trickled
down her cheek. “No,” she said. “You don’t wish that. Not for Annabel, not even
for you, not if you dig deep enough to reach the place where the hurt still
lives.”

“Shit. You’re right, and I’m sorry. I had no business saying that,
especially to you.” Glancing once more at the artistic masterpiece on her
living room wall, he blew out a breath. “You’re right about something else, too.
That kind of hostility comes directly from the place you’re talking about. Where
the hurt still lives.”

“You still love her.”

He considered her words. “I don’t think I’d go that far. But I’m
still hurt. We built a life together, and she walked away from it. Away from
me, away from Annabel, away from the future we’d envisioned as a young married
couple. It appears I haven’t gotten past that yet.”

She wondered if he’d heard the stories. From her family. The
neighbors. Hell, everybody in Jackson Falls knew that Colleen Lindstrom had
walked out on her husband and her son. “You have to give it time,” she said.

“What about you? Did you have a good marriage?”

“Irv was the only person who ever understood me. Really, truly
understood who I was. And who I wasn’t.” She swiped at another maddening tear. “And
he loved me anyway.”

“Sounds like you had something not all of us find.”

“Maybe, but it took me three tries before I found it. And then, it
turned out to be so fleeting that it was gone almost before I realized what I
had.”

“My Great Aunt Lila had this philosophy she once shared with me: 
Grab happiness wherever and whenever you find it. Don’t worry about what
anybody else will think, and don’t let it pass you by, no matter what. Because
tomorrow, it might not be there.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better, Atkins?”

Those blue eyes studied her somberly. And then he smiled. “Just an
observation. Come on, let’s go see if that hot cocoa’s cooled off any.”

Casey

She was standing in front of the bedroom mirror, brushing her
hair, when Rob came into the room. Casey set down the brush, turned into his
arms and kissed him, sweetly, tenderly, breathlessly. They broke the kiss, and
she brushed her lips along the solid line of his jaw, bristly with its evening
growth of beard. Near her ear, he said, “I read ‘em the riot act.”

“Oh?”

“I laid down the law. No running up and down the stairs to the
kitchen. No tee-heeing and giggling and keeping us awake. No loud music, no barking
dogs, no pillow fights, no jumping on the beds, and if they wake up the baby,
there’ll be hell to pay.”

“I’m impressed, Flash. You put the fear of God into them.”

He let out a breath, shrugged his shoulders. “Probably not, but at
least I made the attempt. I remember sleepovers. I had five sisters. Meg was
the worst. Her best friend had this god-awful, high-pitched giggle. Dad would
be up three or four times in the night, threatening them both with bodily harm.
Not that it ever did much good. They didn’t listen to him any better than Paige
and Annabel will listen to me.”

She leaned into him, touched her nose to his warm skin, pressed a
kiss to his Adam’s apple. “Hi,” she said.

He dipped his head down, rubbed his cheek against hers. “Hi,
yourself. Sheep? Seriously?”

“Yes. Seriously.” She moved her lips along the tendon that ran from
his neck to his shoulder. Reached up to unfasten the top button of his shirt,
shoved the material aside, and took a half-dozen tiny, gentle love bites from
his shoulder.

“Are you trying to manipulate me, Fiore?”

“That depends, MacKenzie. Is it working?”

He let out a soft snort of laughter, and she continued on, plying stubborn
shirt buttons, one at a time, beseeching them to open and reveal that lovely hard
chest beneath, with its dark triangle of hair.

“Where would we even put sheep?” he argued, trying to win her over
with logic. He should know better. She could out-logic him any day of the week.

“They’re generally kept in a barn.” With her tongue, she traced a
line down the center of his chest, felt him shudder, and smiled to herself.

“Babe? We don’t have a barn.”

“So? We’ll build one. We’ll fence off a section of the field that
runs alongside the road for pasture, and we’ll build a little barn, with an
attached facility for the shearing and dyeing and spinning.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. You really are serious.”

Her searching mouth reached it at last, that sweet little
indentation at the center of his chest where ribs met breastbone, where all
that wonderful hair swirled and narrowed into a deep vee before plunging southward
past his navel. That spot always made her go weak in the knees. Every damn time.
She nuzzled it with her nose, tasted it with the tip of her tongue. He inhaled
sharply, tangled the fingers of both hands in her hair and said in resignation,
“This is going to cost me a fortune, isn’t it?”

She continued southward, inch by delicious inch. “But just think,
Flash. Now you’ll be able to add
sheep farmer
to your resume.”

“I suppose it’ll be good to have something to fall back on. Just
in case.”

Against hard, warm skin, she smiled. She took a playful nip, then
traced her tongue down the narrow vee of hair, past his navel, until she
reached worn denim. Pausing, she looked up and into eyes that had gone a soft,
smoky gray. “It’s always nice,” she said, freeing the button to his jeans, “to
have something to fall back on.”

“Right. Hah.”

After that, neither of them said anything for a very long time.