Shelter Me Home (11 page)

“I was actually bumped up to manage a high-end bar about four months before I left. It’s what I’d been working for.” She shrugged. “My timing isn’t the best.”

“Yeah, but you practically manage Briney’s now. I know it’s not the same as a fancy city bar, but I’ve never seen the old man let anyone else behind his bar in all the years I’ve been going there. You wiggled your way behind it within the first couple of hours you were in town. We’ve been telling him he needs to slow down for years, and you’re giving him a break. Maybe you are right where you are supposed to be. Maybe,” he said, dropping his gaze to Dodge who sat contently coloring in her lap, “your timing was perfect this time.”

The look in her eyes was bottomless, and his breath caught at the sudden feeling like he was falling. A blush the color of rose petals bloomed in her cheek, and his fingers itched to touch it, just to see if it was as warm as it looked.

“What’s Briney?” Dodger, the professional moment-squasher, asked.

“You remember Mr. Briney. He was the one who gave you a peppermint when we were shopping at the general store last time you visited.”

“Oh,” he said. He grabbed three crayons and scribbled them across the coloring paper the waiter had plopped in front of him. Huh. He’d figured out how to make the color brown.

“It is definitely a big change from where I used to work,” she said, seeming to recover. “I made a thousand dollars in one night once. It was at the second to last bar I tended. But here, I don’t get stressed. I can hear the customers. I can have conversations with them, and I’m not just go go go all the time. It’s been a nice change of pace. Thankfully, the cost of living is different here, too. I wouldn’t survive on what I make otherwise.”

“You made a thousand dollars in one night? Like, an actual grand?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “It was surreal taking the subway back to my little apartment with that much cash in my pocket.”

“I bet. Did you leave friends behind?”

“Yeah.” Sadness tugged at the corners of her mouth just before she looked away. “My best friend, Avery, I met through Miles. We were inseparable. But then this happened,” she said, pointing to her stomach. “I can’t tell her without the fear of the news making its way to Miles. So Miles got New York and Avery, and I got a heap of big decisions to make. I talked to her once on the phone to say goodbye and cut ties right before I hopped on the plane. The Landing has to be a brand new beginning. Dwelling in the past will get me hurt even worse.”

He shook his head slowly and fingered the napkin he’d been shredding. How hard it must have been to leave the life she’d spent years building to start over with nothing in a place that hadn’t been kind to her. The more he learned about her, the more questions he had. He wanted to know everything. The reason for each smile, every story from the last time he’d seen her at high school graduation until now, every hurt and triumph she’d endured in her childhood—everything.

Her work ethic around the homestead and at her job already proved she was a strong woman, but hearing a taste of what her life had really been like made him think she was made of steel. She wasn’t a sniveling person who complained about the unfairness of the world or dwelled on her mistakes. She took responsibility for her decisions and reinvented her life when she couldn’t salvage the old one. He’d never met anyone like her.

The food arrived, and he leaned back as the waiter set a plate of grilled halibut and clam chowder in front of him.

Farrah leaned forward staring at his chowder as she forked seafood fettuccini onto a smaller plate for Dodge. “That looks good.”

He pushed the bowl of soup toward her with “Eat as much as you want,” and then cut a piece of the halibut and set it on the side of her plate.

Without a word, she spooned creamy noodles and shrimp onto his, then began to eat the food they were sharing in comfortable silence.

God, he could watch her the rest of the night. She cut up the noodles for Dodge in between bites, and even though it was his place to do it, she never looked at him as if she was annoyed or put out. She just saw a need and filled it.

Dodge chattered happily on, urging smiles and laughter from Farrah. The boy was well on his way to earning griddle cakes again in the morning.

Determined to draw out the night, Aanon asked, “Do you want to order desert?”

His cell phone vibrated in his back pocket, still on silent from the movie theater, but he ignored it. Work came a really distant second to the beaming look in Farrah’s eyes right now.

“They’re kind of expensive.”

His phone vibrated again. “It’s the last time we’ll be doing anything like this before the snow hits us like a brick. Better enjoy it now.” At her hesitant nod, he said, “We can all share one if it really bothers you.”

“Okay.”

She had said it so quietly, he almost missed it. But maybe that was because of the incessant buzzing in his pocket. Geez, his boss must be hard up for laborers if he was calling him twice in a row.

“What sounds good to you?” she asked, eying the dessert menu.

Apologizing, he yanked the phone from his pocket. His heart sank to his toes as he read Erin’s name across the caller ID. He’d seen one of her friends, Carrie, sitting at the café earlier, but he could’ve sworn she hadn’t seen them before they’d ducked into the movie theater. Of course, Erin had spies. The temptation to ignore the call was so great it stopped ringing before he answered. Today had been perfect, better than perfect, and Erin’s phone calls brought nothing but destruction.

It vibrated again against the palm of his hands.

“Do you need to answer that?” Farrah said, worry streaking through the forest green of her eyes.

“Yeah,” he said in a strangled-sounding voice. “I’m not picky on deserts. Order whatever you and Dodge want, and I’ll be right back. I have to take this.” Snatching his jacket from the back of the chair, he accepted the call and blasted through the front door of Captain Pattie’s.

“Dodge is fine,” he said.

Sobbing filled the other line.

Shit. This was going to suck.

Lowering the tailgate of his old Chevy, he sat with a perfect view of Farrah and Dodge through the restaurant window. Balls, it was cold, and he pulled his jacket on as best he could without dropping the phone in the mud.

He counted fifteen steamy breaths into the autumn air before Erin calmed enough to speak coherently. “You’re with h-her, aren’t you?”

“Yes. She needed to come into town for some shopping, and she doesn’t have a car.”

“I told you I don’t want you spending time with her,” she wailed. Classic Erin.

“Erin,” he said, lowering his voice and praying for patience. “If Farrah bothers you so much, why did you drop our son off with her? You just dumped your kid onto a stranger, and then you can’t handle it when he spends time with her? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I t-told you I’m not ready for you to move on yet. I love you, Aanon. You made this decision, not me. We were supposed to be married. A family, living in Anchorage in the house we found, and now my life is ruined. I’m stuck living in Homer now. Homer! This is never, ever where I saw my life going. I’m a single mom, and now the insensitive prick who left me is judging my parenting?”

Aanon pressed thumb and forefinger to his nose in an attempt to relieve the headache building behind his eyes. “I didn’t leave you. My dad died, and I took over the homestead I inherited. I wanted you and Dodge there with me. I understand it’s hard to watch me move on, but you have to understand, I’ve been watching you move on since the week after you left. You can’t date other people and forbid me to get on with my life at the same time.”

The beat of silence was so foreboding. “That’s exactly what I can do, Aanon.” She spat his name like a curse. “You don’t move on until I am good and ready for you to, or you don’t see your son. We’ve gone over this ten times. I swear you’re so fucking stupid. Am I really having this discussion with you again? I will not have my son around whatever red-necked rebound whore you decide to stick your dick in. I won’t!”

“But he can be around the men you date? And Farrah’s not a whore. Call me names all you want to, Erin. Farrah’s done nothing wrong.”

“She’s knocked up, you idiot. And I talked to her mother. The poor sap she trapped is unaware, sitting in New York probably pining away for his mistress.”

Dread choked him, rendering him mute as he watched Farrah load up a spoon of pie for Dodge. “How? How did you know she was anyone’s mistress?”

“Because I talked to Miles Anderson. And if you don’t play your cards right, Aanon Daniel Falk, I’m going to fuck up both of your lives beyond recognition. I’ll tell him. I’ll even pay for his plane ticket out here and you—you’ll never see Dodge again.”

“You can’t do that,” he said in a ragged whisper.

“Can and will. Put your dick away and think about your family. Don’t give me a reason to talk to Miles again because I will spill the dirty little secret you two are sharing, and you’ll spend the rest of your days miserable and alone in that wilderness hellhole you call home. You pushed me into this.” She sniffed. “I’m coming home from my weekend trip early. Have Dodge ready by ten tomorrow morning.”

“You don’t have to do that. I just got him, and he’s having fun. He’s happy. Just give me the full weekend with him, please. Erin, please.”

“Sorry Aanon. I can’t trust you not to expose him to bad influences.”

She didn’t care. Not at all. If she cared about Dodge like a mother should, she’d never use him as a pawn or keep him from his father. His gut clenched, and he leaned forward to relieve the ache. It made him sick to play these games. Just sick. He always lost. Dodge always lost. He dragged his eyes to Farrah, who laughed easily as his son made goofy faces. Farrah would lose in the wake of Erin’s destruction. In the wake of his.

“All right,” he said on an exhale.

“Can’t hear you,” Erin said in a voice as cold as winter.

“All right,” he said, louder. “I’ll have him ready to go in the morning, and I’ll stay away from Farrah. You have my word.”

Her voice dripped with smug satisfaction when she said, “Good.”

The phone went dead as she hung up.

“I’m full,” Dodge said around a yawn.

“Me too, buckaroo,” Farrah said with a frown at the door. Aanon had been on his call for a while. She and Dodge had polished off two thirds of the dessert and packed leftover seafood fettuccini into an oversized Styrofoam box the server had dropped off with the check. And Dodge was starting to fidget.

Frigid air blasted through the restaurant as Aanon blew in on the chilly wind. His eyes were downcast, but he couldn’t hide the green pallor of his skin. His hands shook as he pulled them from winter gloves, and a grimace tugged at the sensual corners of his mouth.

He sat without a word and plucked at a thread that dangled from his glove.

“We saved the last part of the pie for you,” she said.

Abruptly, he asked, “Are you ready to go?”

“Was it work?” she asked, leaning forward. “Is everything all right?”

“No.” He dragged emotionless eyes to her. “And it’s none of your concern.”

The syllables reached across the space between them, farther and farther as the distance seemed to expand, until it felt like a slap of frost against her skin.

Embarrassed by the tables quieting around them, she shrugged into her jacket and helped Dodge into his. She looked anywhere but at Aanon, who busied himself with paying the bill.

Dodge teetered over to Aanon and crawled into his lap. Farrah shifted her weight from side to side, desperate for escape from the eyes upon her. Maybe she should just go out to the truck.

He signed for the tip and hoisted Dodge, then followed her out the front door and to the parking lot. The passenger door was unlocked, so she climbed in and waited for him to finish buckling his son into the car seat.

When the truck rocked under his weight and the door slammed, he blared an oldies station, successfully snuffing out any potential conversation.

His jaw was clenched, hands on the wheel in a grip that made her pity the steering wheel. His eyes were a careful mask of aloofness that cut an Aanon-sized hole into her heart. What had she done to deserve his anger? Maybe he didn’t like that Dodge had chosen to sit by her during dinner. Or maybe he had gotten fired from his job. Perhaps, he’d simply changed his mind now that the night had come to an end. She really was as uninteresting as she’d been in high school, but that wasn’t her fault. He was the one who hugged her and showed her what it could be like with a caring man.

Gritting her teeth, she leaned against the window and watched the blur of Homer whiz by. She’d warned him of the danger of pretending they were normal and free. His not listening was on him.

The little boy fell asleep after an hour, and the second hour was doused in uncomfortable silence that seemed to thicken like yeasty dough until the entire cab was suffocating. When finally he pulled the Chevy in front of the big house, she couldn’t open the door fast enough.

“Wait,” he growled.

With one foot in the mud and one planted on the dusty floorboard, she hunched her shoulders under the fire in his voice.

“I was wrong today at the theater. That’s not what I want at all. I got swept up in the moment and shouldn’t have led you on.” He ripped his gaze away from the windshield, and the empty glare he bestowed upon her singed. “I have a family. Erin and Dodge are it for me.” He swallowed hard and looked sick. “You’re letting me make you a mistress, just like you did with Miles. You’re stronger than that.”

“But, it’s not the same. You aren’t really with Erin. I don’t have feelings for a married man or even a taken man. You’re single. Don’t you dare pin weakness on me, Aanon.” Her voice shook. “I didn’t even want to go with you today, but you pushed it.”

“I support Erin and Dodge. All of my paycheck goes to them. It’s why I have to work so much. She can put whatever price she wants on me seeing my son because she knows I can’t afford the fees to take her to court. She keeps child support high enough through our mediation that I can’t ever save enough to fight for joint custody.” His hands relaxed on the wheel, and he leveled her with a devastatingly sad look. “This is my present and my future. Begging for time with my son, appeasing his mother. You don’t fit into my life.”

The worst part was she got it. His words cut like a gut hook, but she understood. He was trapped in a life completely out of his control, just like she was.

“You don’t have to explain to me,” she said. Mortified her voice cracked, she squeezed her eyes closed until she thought she could keep the moisture soaking her lashes from spilling onto her cheek. “I completely understand.” Biting her lip against the traitorous tremble, she slid out of the truck.

“Farrah.”

God, just the sound of her name on his lips was so beautiful it hurt.

Slowly, she turned. The paper bag with the trio of mugs was held tight in his hands, an offering. “You forgot this.”

She tried to smile. “Keep it. I bought them for you and Dodge.”

His intense gaze dipped to the crackling bag, and she bolted for the cabin before he could say anything else to shred her.

The lock clicked behind her, and she slumped onto her bed as an anguished sob left her lips. Miles’s smiling face taunted her from the picture lying on the pillow. Crumpling the evidence of her naivety, she threw the hurtful paper against the wall. Miles, that son of a bitch, had made her into a weak woman. He’d ruined her from every relationship. She couldn’t be trusted to choose a decent man. Miles had tricked that ability from her.

The empty look in Aanon’s eyes had made her insides feel like a pin cushion. She’d never shake that vision of him as long as she breathed. How many times had Erin forced him to shut down?

It wasn’t fair. The woman used Dodge as leverage, and Aanon would always be on the losing end of it until he found a way to take her to court and iron out his custody in front of a judge. She wanted to laugh at Erin’s cruelty. Clever woman. She could do whatever she wanted, with whomever, and Aanon would be forced to live the way she dictated until she tired of the game. Which could be never.

None of this was her business.

Wasn’t that what Aanon said in Captain Pattie’s? It wasn’t her concern. Even if he were free to choose who he dated, it likely wouldn’t be a girl like her. She couldn’t be farther from Erin’s likeness if she morphed into a swamp rat. She wasn’t even circling the outermost edges of Aanon’s type.

Everything was better this way. She was pregnant and still reeling from Miles’s betrayal. And Aanon was about as unavailable as he could get. Neither one of them would be worth their weight in brine in a relationship. A union between them would have been twisted and wrong in its beginnings, and how could they ever come back from a relationship tainted with the murk of their current situations? Really, she should thank Aanon. He’d just saved them both from a boatload of heartache.

She stood and moved the curtain aside with the tip of her finger, ripped the cardboard down until it was a pathetic pile on the floor. The light in the uppermost room of the big house was the only one on. He might as well be a thousand miles away.

Dropping the fabric, she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. Okay, what had changed?
Everything.
No! Nothing had changed. Erin ran this place from her throne in Homer, and Farrah and Aanon could never be together. Same as yesterday. She’d just go back to keeping her head down. Who needed trouble when she had the fate of an unborn baby to decide? Her plate was utterly full, anyway, so tomorrow morning she would wake and act as if he’d never hugged her and set her heart aflame with sweet admissions.

Miles hadn’t made her weak. He’d forced her to realize her strength. If that douche ball couldn’t break her, Aanon Falk and his psychotic baby momma wouldn’t achieve it either. She was The Dweeb. Nobody could maim The Dweeb. After chores were done in the morning, she’d beg a day shift from Briney or find something to do in town to give Aanon and his son plenty of space to spend time together without her.

****

Chopping wood with an ax might never be her thing, but Billy had showed her how to use the chainsaw, and she was kind of awesome at it. Plus, nothing vented frustration better than slicing wood into splinters.

Donning sunglasses to protect her eyes, she ripped the tiny chainsaw motor and cut dry branches from an old log until it was smooth and ready to section. No way in molasses would she ever ask Aanon to supply the wood for her stove. He’d gotten her started fine with stacks of it on the front porch, but she needed enough for five to six months to be safe.

Calculating again how much she would need, she cut the log into manageable pieces. Kicking each piece upright, she cut them into quarters and turned off the saw. When the newly cut log was stacked neatly against the side of the house, she loaded the chainsaw to a four-wheeler and took off to find more wood.

A black SUV pulled in just as she was about to round the cattle enclosure, so she pumped the brake and clenched her jaw until it hurt. Erin was supposed to be gone the entire weekend, so why was she sitting in the passenger seat with that stupid smirk on her face, pageant show-waving like she’d just won Ms. Teen Cooper Landing?

“Hi,” Farrah called, waving back with an empty grin. “Cow,” she grumbled as she pulled the four-wheeler toward the barn to escape the crap storm that was about to hit the homestead. Her new mantra was the one Aanon had gifted her last night. It was none of her concern.

Luna bounded alongside her ATV, barking and yipping at the tires, and a smile tugged Farrah’s lips. Just a pregnant lady, her chainsaw, and her pet wolf. If her friends back in New York could see her now, they’d choke on their cosmopolitans.

Careful not to jostle her stomach, she stood while she drove to better pad the swell of her belly. She stopped when she came to a cluster of trees that had been ransacked by the beetle infestation a few years back. Two of them had already toppled, so she looped the chain around the trunk of the smallest and slowly eased it out of the brush with the four-wheeler. “Come on, Luna,” she called, but the pup was staring off in the distance.

Braking, she tried again. “Luna, come!” Squinting over the dog’s still body, she could just make out movement and gray fur. “Shit,” she muttered. In a rush, she yanked the oversized pup onto the ATV with her and roared down the tracks she’d made getting there. Panting against the adrenaline, and imagining the predator chasing her, she struggled to keep the wiggling dog steady while trying not to lose the log tied to the metal bars of her ride. She and Luna would make an easy meal if the wolf so wished it.

Spinning out around the cattle pen, Luna leaped off and ran for Aanon, who stood with his arms crossed, talking to Erin on the big house’s front porch. He bent at the waist and petted Luna’s head but never took his eyes from Erin.

Okay, now what? She couldn’t exactly let the wolf roam so close to the cattle. She wasn’t a professional on predator behavior, but it was odd that it was out in the middle of the day. The situation reeked of desperation, and the wolf was dangerously close to the spring calves. They had no shot against the animal. But Erin was glaring death missiles her way, and she couldn’t exactly raise the alarm that there was a predator without putting Dodge right in the middle of another fight over the homestead.

“Hey, Aanon?” she called.

He turned and opened his mouth to say something but Erin called “No!” and held her perfectly manicured nail into the air like she was a child. Right.

“What do you need?” Aanon asked with a sideways glare at Erin.

“Uh, can I talk to you in private?”

“You have some nerve,” Erin said.

“I just need the key to the root cellar.”

Aanon’s brows drew down, heavy over the bright hues of his eyes. “No. If you need something, you okay it with me first.”

“All righty then.” Pursing her lips, she turned and strode to the barn. She didn’t know the combination to the gun safe, but she’d seen a .22 caliber rifle on a shelf in there. Although it was on the small side for defense against a wolf, this was as good as she was going to get.

It had been years since she’d loaded a gun, and she fumbled with the lever to check if it had any bullets in the chamber. Empty.

“Where would ammo be?” she muttered, rifling through boxes on the shelf near where she’d found the weapon. Ah-ha. She checked the label twice and pulled three bullets from the box.

“Hey, what happened?” Aanon said, jogging toward her. “You already have the key to the root cellar, so what gives?

“Wolf.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure, and it’s less than a quarter mile from the edge of the fence line.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say that out there?”

She slid the first bullet in and held it down with her fingers to make room for the next. The satisfying click of metal on metal echoed through the lofty barn. “Because Erin was already squawking about Luna being a wolf and dangerous to Dodge the other day, and I didn’t want to give her any more ammo against this place.”

Intense blue eyes froze her in place.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, ticking his head to the side. “It’s just that’s the nicest thing a girl has ever done for me.”

Arching her eyebrow, she shook her head. “That’s really sad, Falk.”