The House On The Creek (17 page)

Her mouth twitched. “I’ve got to get back to the boat. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“You forgotten how to have fun, Abby?”

“Ev.”

But he couldn’t resist. “When’s the last time you dipped your feet in anything deeper than a bath tub?”

“Everett.” He watched temper cloud her eyes, and thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. “Shut up while you’re ahead.”

He arched one brow. “I’m ahead, am I?”

“Lunch was nice,” she admitted gruffly. “Dessert was a low blow. And you get extra credit for making Chris laugh.”

“I try.” He leaned forward, and brushed her sun burnt nose with a gentle thumb. “How about a kiss for gratitude?”

“Everett.” But her eyes were laughing. “How about I say thank you instead?”

“You’re welcome.” He made himself pick up the empty cooler, and climb to his feet. “Tell Chris I’ll pick him up Friday.”

To his immense surprise, her smile blossomed to brilliant and knocked the air from his lungs.

“What?” He asked when he could breathe again.

“Nothing.” But she set her hand over his fingers where they gripped the edge of the cooler. “I’ll walk you up.”

He didn’t argue. He watched her as they crossed the Pier, noting how she split her attention between the dry land ahead and the splash of Chris in the river.

He knew, all at once, that she was in her element and, despite a mother’s natural tendency to worry over her son, happy. With her life, her family, with her growing business.

And on the tail of that thought came a twinge of guilt. He didn’t want to be the one to dull the sheen of her joy.

She stood silently as he unlocked the Spyder and set the cooler on the floor.

“I’ll swing by Friday evening, then. Soon as my clients are out the door.”

“Come when you like,” he said, succinct, and slid into the front seat.

“Save me a taco,” she said. And waved.

He almost reached out to grab those fingers and pull her close, almost kissed her again and again until the taste of her soothed the tumult in his soul.

Instead, he pulled the car door shut, and jammed the key into the ignition. He gunned the engine, childishly. And then he watched through the rear view mirror as Abby hopped back onto the pier. In another few steps she would be back on the house boat, back at work, back in the world she had made without him.

Happy.

“Hell,” he spat between his teeth.

He set his foot down, hard, on the accelerator. The car bucked and growled, and then raced back over the bumpy road. Everett kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the rear view mirror until the grey glitter of the James disappeared.

His temper only burned hotter when he rounded the corner of the drive to find his front steps occupied. He’d been expecting the visit. Truth was, he’d been considering a little reconnaissance of his own.

And maybe, Everett thought as he parked his car alongside the Chevy hulking in front of his garage, maybe a nice tangle was just what he wanted.

“Afternoon,” the man on his steps offered without rising. “Pretty ride.”

“Does the job.” He wouldn’t admit the Porsche looked a little frivolous next to his visitor’s battered truck.

“Got half the town talking. Rich tourists usually come in on buses.”

“I’m not a tourist.”

“Some might argue.” The man rose, then, and kept unfolding. Everett resisted the urge to crane his neck. He hadn’t remembered the man being quite so tall. Damn if he didn’t top six feet. “Jack Pierce.”

“I know who you are.” Windsor hadn’t been able to dig up much of interest about the itinerant carpenter who’d finally decided to settle in southern Virginia. The man, sadly, seemed squeaky clean. “What do you want?”

“Well, then, I’m supposing you know that, too.”

“You’re blocking my steps.”

The giant shrugged, but didn’t move. “You’re troubling my sleep.”

Everett took a slow breath. “Get off of my porch.”

“Stay away from my family.”

Everett hit him then, a quick jab to the ribs. He figured he was being more than fair, as the bastard’s balls were an easier target. His knuckles crunched nicely against the man’s ribs.

His visitor took a deep breath, sighed it out. “Sure that’s the way you want to handle it?” The fellow managed to look regretful as a puppy.

“Get off my porch.”

“Stay away from my family.”

Everett hit him again. This time he heard the man grunt, which was satisfying. His left hand went numb on impact, which was less so.

Jack Pierce knocked him down. Everett rolled off the walk, and fetched up in the daffodils. Pierce followed him into the flower beds.

“I don’t generally kick a man when he’s eating dirt. But your car just makes me mad. So I’m thinking you should lie there nice and still, and listen.”

Lie still and listen, boy.

Everett saw white and tasted blood. He rolled to his feet and flung himself forward. It wasn’t Abby’s partner he took down. Everett pummeled his past with all of the fierce concentration he’d spent a decade learning in a Seattle gym.

Unfortunately, his past didn’t fight fair.

Pierce rolled, and twisted, and broke something heavy over Everett’s head, and the lights went out.

Chapter Eleven

HE WOKE TO A THROBBING SKULL
and blue sky overhead. Groaning, he rolled onto his side in the dirt, and then managed to sit up. A hand to his head came away clean, but he was pretty sure the lump over his ear was already the size of Mount Rainier.

Pierce squatted not three feet away, enjoying what was obviously one of Everett’s own microbrews as he picked shards of terra-cotta from the flower bed.

“Shame about the pot,” he said. “Had a mate who used to do that. Easiest way to end it was knock the sense back into him.”

Everett decided he wasn’t ready to stand.

“Was the war that made him fight berserk.” Pierce watched Everett from under lowered brows. “You do that often?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Just another good reason I don’t want you sniffing around Abby and Christopher. They don’t need a man’s demons derailing the life they’ve made.”

“You’re mistaken.” He wanted to hit the bastard again, but once he made it to his feet the world tilted. He had to gag lunch back to keep from puking on the daffodils.

Silently, Pierce passed over his beer. Everett took a swallow, rinsed, and spat. He set the bottle at his feet.

“You two go way back, and maybe she thinks she still loves you. Could be she just likes the way you play in bed. Either or, she’s back soft on you and I don’t like it.”

“You’re not sleeping with her.” He’d known it, because she would have told him, but now he was sure. Something that had been pulling on his heart eased.

“No.” Pierce laughed. “I’m not her brother, either. But I’ll still warn you off.”

Everett climbed his steps and found the front door cracked open, his keys hanging from the lock.

“Doesn’t matter.” He turned and faced Pierce down. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“We’ll see,” the other man turned on his heel and walked away. “We’ll just see.”

Fall hit all at once with a whoop and a holler. Humid summer breezes turned to driving blusters, snatching leaves from trees, and stripping faded summer blossoms from the wild flowers that grew up along every roadway.

Overnight new colors ripened. The yellows, oranges, and reds of the season tinted myrtle and maple. The air smelled of woodsmoke and spice. In Colonial Williamsburg tourists jammed the roadways, marveling at the seasonal decorations, sampling spiced cider and mulled wines.

Even Jefferson School was done up for the season. Dried corn husks rattled in the wind over the front doors. Bales of hay alternated with pumpkins up and down cracked concrete steps.

Everett, remembering similar decorations from his own school days, knew that the gourds wouldn’t last more than a week. Pumpkin smashing had been a favorite past time, and he supposed it still was.

What kid in his right mind could resist the resounding
crump
of a detonated gourd?

As he pulled into a turn around outside the school, Everett saw that the profusion of fall decorations wasn’t the only tradition remaining in place.

Students sat in clumps on the concrete steps, divided into groups by boundaries as simple as dress and hairstyle, as complicated as economic class and academic standing. The jocks and cheerleaders ruled the top steps, the band club the bottom, and a handful of tiny synthetic worlds rotated between.

Everett remembered the cliques well. Fifteen years past the trend in dress and hairstyle might have been slightly more conservative, but apparently little else had changed. He had spent his afternoon hours behind the gym with a pack of stolen cigarettes and borrowed comic books. He’d never bothered to find a place on the school’s front steps, but even from a distance he had been aware of the unspoken rules and the inner workings.

Abby’s son, Everett was mildly surprised to see, had a place on the steps closer to the top than the bottom. Not bad for a skinny kid. And the boy’s crowd looked wholesome enough. Dockers and jeans and one pair of fatigues, and not a stolen smoke anywhere in evidence.

No girls, either, Everett noticed with amusement. Six gawky boys, too old for the playground, too young yet to bother with the promise of a short skirt or tight sweater.

But not too young to appreciate a flashy car. As one the six boys trooped down the stairs, eddying to avoid huddled classmates, and then log jammed against the Spyder.

Everett lowered the window as curious eyes admired hood and rims and tail fin. Only the kid in the fatigues seemed to have any real courage. Narrowing watery brown eyes, he peered over Chris’s shoulder and into the car, studying Everett with undisguised curiosity.

“Ready?” Everett asked Abby’s son, ignoring the cocky brown eyed stare.

“Yeah.” Chris Ross wore jeans and a rugby shirt. His sneakers were fashionably dirty, his backpack casually torn, and his hair flopping in the wind. He looked average and middle class and wise with it, exactly the type of kid Everett had once envied.

Everett felt an unexpected jolt of pride and relief. The emotion made him frown, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Christ shift uneasily.

Affection curled to embarrassed irritation. He popped the lock and waved a hand. “Get in.” He knew he sounded gruff but he didn’t care.

Chris tossed his backpack into the care, and slid into the passenger seat. Fatigues leaned through the open door, and stroked one freckled hand over the dash.

“What’s she like on the straight aways?”

“Like lightning.” Everett noticed the nicotine stains on the boy’s blunt fingers, and revised his opinion of Chris’s crowd one notch lower. Any punk who smoked enough to stain his fingers and still knew better than to light up on the school’s front steps would grow into trouble.

“Pick her up in Richmond?” Fatigues pressed, sounding skeptical.

“Alexandria.” Everett turned to Chris. “Ready?” He repeated.

Chris nodded and grabbed the door. Fatigues retreated, smirking. The door slammed to with a satisfying crack. Undeterred, the brown eyed boy leaned forward again until his breath smeared the window.

Everett knew better. He was a grown man, and he’d long ago left the tangled emotions of junior high behind. But the watery-eyed snot with his boastful grin wanted to be taken down a peg.

He knew better. But he couldn’t help himself. Everett gunned the Spyder’s sweet engine until she growled, and then he sent her screaming from the curb.

“Cool.” Chris gasped.

The reek of smoked tires enveloped the cab. Everett glanced in the rear view, and was inordinately pleased to see Jefferson shrink into the distance. With a snap of his wrist and a flick of a button he lowered every window in the car, and then breathed a sigh of relief as cool, fresh air chased away the stink of burnt rubber.

“Your mother would kill me.” He stabbed a finger at the radio until the Beatles sang through hidden speakers.

“Yeah.” Unconcerned, Chris squirmed in his seat. He peeked out the back window, and then ran his hand over the glove compartment. His own fingers, Everett was relieved to see, were free of cigarette stains.

“Take you long to learn how to drive a stick?” The boy asked after a moment, eyeing the gear box with interest.

“Learned first on a stick,” Everett replied. “My old man had a pick up. A Ford. Around here, in those days, manual was pretty much standard.”

Chris nodded. “I’m gonna get a manual, soon as I turn fifteen and can get my learner’s. Roddy Green says his dad will sell me a second hand Nissan, cheap.”