Under the Lights (2 page)

She'd moved the bulk of her stuff out already, but as he'd packed his own belongings over the last few weeks, he kept finding things of hers. He'd tossed those items in separate boxes and then, when he was sure he'd gotten everything, he texted her to come and get them. She'd come up with a lame excuse and sent Donny, her new boyfriend, instead.

Nothing soured a day like having to play nice with the guy who'd been banging his girlfriend.

“That's the last one?” Donny asked after Chase tossed the box into the back of the guy's truck.

“Yeah.” He was about to walk away, when Donny stuck his hand out. Chase stared at it for a few seconds, debating on punching the guy in the face, but he'd been raised better than that and shook his hand.

“No hard feelings,” Donny said.

Chase squeezed, tightening his grip until the man Rina had chosen over him winced. Then he turned and went inside, slamming the door a little harder than was necessary. That was enough playing nice.

With the exception of the duffel bags by the door and a few odds and ends on the kitchen counter, almost everything he owned was in boxes in a storage locker, waiting to be moved to a new, much smaller apartment the weekend after he returned from Stewart Mills.

By downsizing his life, groveling and bargaining, he'd managed to clear up most of his business woes. And, most importantly, he'd sold the engagement ring he'd bought Rina back when times were good and he was feeling flush. Every time he'd thought he was ready to pop the question, though, something had held him back, and the ring had stayed hidden in the bottom of a beer stein from college, under miscellaneous guy debris she had no interest in sifting through.

He wasn't sure why he'd never asked her to be his wife, yet considering she was living with Donny and the ring was paying not only for his trip to Stewart Mills but also the first and last month's rent on a new place once he found one, it was a damn good thing he hadn't.

After one final look around, Chase tossed his stuff into his truck and hit the road. It was a nine-hour drive, so if he pushed straight through, he'd get into Stewart Mills early evening. If he was going to be any later than that, he'd spend the night in a motel and arrive in the morning.

He had one quick stop to make before he left town. When he'd told his parents he was going back to Stewart Mills and why, his old man had called him an idiot, and his mom had told him to swing by and pick up a pie. It was intended as a hostess gift for Mrs. McDonnell, but Chase was afraid if Coach's wife had ever had his mom's pie and remembered the experience, she might not let him in the door with it.

His parents' home was in a small neighborhood made up
mostly of retirees, though his mother still worked. She claimed she enjoyed doing insurance claim work for a large auto body shop, but Chase suspected she couldn't handle her husband 24/7. Nobody could. Today she was home, though, her shiny compact car squeezed into the driveway alongside the massive Cadillac that Bob Sanders had bought back during Clinton's first term in the Oval Office.

His mom was on the sofa when he walked in, watching some kind of cooking show. “Hi, honey. Your father's out back.”

It was the standard greeting, but he stopped and kissed her cheek on his way through the house. “Hi, Ma.”

His old man was on the tiny dock that matched all the other tiny docks up and down the canal that ran through the neighborhood. He had a bulk package of cheap chicken drumsticks and was shoving a couple of pieces of raw poultry into each of his wire traps. Ma would be making fresh crabmeat-salad sandwiches for lunch.

Chase hated seafood. Especially crab.

“You heading north today?” Bob asked when Chase reached the dock.

“In a few minutes. Ma made a pie for Mrs. McDonnell.”

“Lucky her.”

Chase grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets, but the smile faded as the silence stretched toward awkward. They'd never had a lot to say to each other, but their relationship was particularly strained at the moment.

Bob Sanders made no bones about being disappointed—and maybe a little embarrassed—by the failure of Chase's business, no matter how much of it was due to the economy and Seth's financial shenanigans rather than mismanagement
on Chase's part. Chase's impending return to Stewart Mills had also dredged up his buried resentment that his father had written him off as stupid, and it had taken Coach McDonnell to show him he wasn't.

Bob lowered the last trap into the water, shoved the empty chicken packaging back into the plastic shopping bag and turned to face Chase. “Get everything straightened out?”

“More or less. Got most people willing to wait for pay until the lawyers catch up with Seth. Scraped together enough to stay out of bankruptcy court, and managed to find contractors to handle the jobs I can't afford to do now. Things are tight, but I'll probably get to keep my shirt.”

“And you think it's a good idea to go to New Hampshire right now?”

Yeah, he did, because Coach needed him. “Probably not, but I'm going anyway. This mess will still be here when I get back.”

Chase followed his dad back to the house and, since the conversation seemed to have run its course, he got the pie and got the hell out of there. He thought about ditching the hostess gift in a rest area trash can, but if his mother tried to call him at the McDonnells' and the pie—or lack of one—came up in conversation, he'd never hear the end of it.

He turned the music up too loud, drove a little too fast and drank way too much coffee, but he pulled into Stewart Mills a little past six. A perfectly respectable time to show up on Coach's doorstep.

As he drove through Stewart Mills, though, he noticed the town had changed a lot, and not necessarily for the better. A lot of For Sale signs. A few bank auction signs. They'd obviously done some restoration work on the historic
covered bridge, but it didn't distract from the dark, silent shell of the paper mill looming behind it that used to be the lifeblood of the town.

There was also a new stop sign, he realized
as
he went through the intersection. Without stopping.

And the Stewart Mills Police Department had a fairly new four-wheel-drive SUV, too.

There hadn't been a stop sign at that intersection fourteen years ago, Chase thought as he pulled off to the side of the road, making sure there was plenty of room for both his truck and the SUV with the flashing blue lights.

It was one hell of a welcome home.

K
elly untethered her weapon and approached the pickup truck with her hand on the butt of the gun. It wasn't because of the out-of-state license plates—those were common enough due to tourists having to pass through Stewart Mills to get to the four-wheeling and snowmobiling playgrounds farther north—but because it was protocol. The simplest of traffic stops could turn ugly fast if the idiot behind the wheel had something to hide.

She stopped a little behind the driver's window so she could see him, but he would only be able to catch glimpses of her uniform in his mirror. As she opened her mouth to ask for his license and registration, the pieces clicked in her overworked mind and she shut it again. New Jersey plates. The timing. The profile she used to moon over.

Chase Sanders was back in town, and blowing a stop sign was one hell of an entrance.

“License and registration, please.”

His head tilted just a little and Kelly rolled her eyes. Here it came—all the cheesy charm men shoveled out when the badge was pinned to a female breast. If he didn't at least make a comment about the handcuffs, she'd do an extra mile on the treadmill.

“Here you go, Officer.” He handed the stuff out the window. “How did such a pretty lady end up in law enforcement?”

Gee, that was original. And since he could only see her from neck to waist, and her vest didn't do much for the girls, the fake flattery was wasted. “A guy with no respect for traffic laws broke my heart in high school and this is how I get my revenge.”

“Did he have no respect for frisking, too, because I wouldn't mind taking the payback for that one.”

Running her hands up and down Chase Sanders's tall, broad body? Maybe burying her fingers in that thick, dark hair? Sure beat the hell out of scrubbing Albert Hough's vomit off her backseat when she didn't get him to the drunk tank fast enough.

He leaned his elbow on his door, craning his head around in an obvious attempt to see her. “If you do need to frisk me, feel free to handcuff me first. I won't struggle . . . much.”

Ha! No extra treadmill time. “I don't think handcuffs will be necessary.”

“That's too bad, Officer . . .” He was trying to read her name tag, so she stepped forward. “McDonnell?”

She pushed her hat back so he could see her face. “Welcome home, Chase.”

“Holy sh— Coach's daughter. Just so you know, I'm not usually this cheesy.”

“I'm flattered you dusted it off just for me.”

He smiled at her and she remembered the look well from the countless times he'd used it in high school to get his way with teachers, parents and pretty girls. “Flattered enough to skip the ticket?”

She couldn't issue a citation for one of their guests of honor two minutes after he rolled into town. “Just this once.”

After he tucked his license back into his wallet and tossed the registration in the glove box, he leaned on the top of the door and looked her over. “So, a cop, huh?”

“A police officer, yes.”

“A woman who likes to be in control.”

She slapped the side of his truck before handcuffs came up again. “How about if I give you an escort to my parents' house? There's a new stop sign on Dearborn Street I don't want you to miss.”

“With lights and sirens?”

“No.” Kelly went back to the SUV, wondering if Chase was watching her walk away in the mirror, and feeling like an idiot for caring.

Once she'd buckled up, she steered out around his truck and drove across town. She might have paused a few extra seconds at each of the stop signs, just to be a smart-ass, but he deserved it for the cheesy—and wholly unoriginal—lines.

When they got to the end of Eagles Lane, which had been renamed the year Chase and his teammates won the championship, Kelly flipped on the light bar. No siren, but the flashing blue added a little splash to his arrival.

By the time she'd pulled to the curb and waved Chase
around so he could park in the driveway, her parents were standing on the front porch of the old New Englander–style farmhouse she'd grown up in. Walt, who hadn't been called anything but Coach for as long as Kelly could remember, and Helen McDonnell were healthy and happy as they headed toward their midfifties, but she could see the signs of strain around their eyes.

Coach was trying to keep his spirits up, especially around his team, but his faith in Kelly's Hail Mary plan was shaky.

“Sanders!” Her dad met their guest at the halfway point of the walkway and enveloped him in a hug. “How the hell are you, boy?”

“Good to see you, Coach.”

There was some manly back-thumping, and then Chase moved to her mother. “Thank you for inviting me to stay with you, Mrs. McDonnell.”

“It means so much that you came.” She accepted his hug and kissed his cheek. “And don't you think it's time you call me Helen?”

“Not quite yet, Mrs. McDonnell.”

“Well, grab your things and we'll get you settled in.”

“I should warn you, my mother sent a pie.”

Kelly admired the way her mother didn't grimace, though she'd probably cringed on the inside. Kelly remembered the pies Mrs. Sanders had contributed to the football team's bake sale fund-raisers back in high school. She was pretty sure some generous supporter had paid to make those pies disappear, leaving filling-smeared empty pans behind to save Mrs. Sanders's feelings.

“You coming in for a while?” Coach asked her.

“Can't. I'm on duty until eleven and I have to be in for
eight tomorrow morning. In between, I have to shower, eat and hopefully sleep.” She wasn't complaining, though. She'd been lucky enough to keep her job when budget cuts downsized the department.

“O'Rourke's at nine?”

“If nothing comes up.” She let Coach kiss her cheek, then waved to her mom. “I'll call you when I get a chance.”

“Nice to see you again, Kelly,” Chase said.

She faced him, fixing on her “work” smile. “You, too. We really appreciate you coming back, and Coach can give you my cell number if you don't have it. If you need anything, just call.”

“And somebody will tell me what I'm supposed to be doing?”

“You're a couple of days early so, for now, just relax and make yourself at home.”

She got out of there before any of them got the idea to twist her arm into eating her share of the pie Mrs. Sanders had sent.

The rest of her shift was quiet, which was good. A call after regular business hours usually meant the teens were up to no good, or a domestic situation had gone bad.

The downside was how much time her mind had to wander, and the way it kept wandering to Chase Sanders. Until the idea for the fund-raiser had come to her, she hadn't really thought about him in years. But she'd thought about him in high school. A lot.

She'd been around the team all the time, helping Coach however she could—being water girl or equipment manager or keeping stats—despite his desire that she shake her pom-poms for the Eagles. Once the nurses had confirmed his
wife hadn't given birth to a future quarterback, Coach gave his newborn daughter the most cheerleader-like name he could think of.

Kelly wasn't the pom-pom type, though, so she'd divided her time between the library and hanging around the fringes of the team. Since Chase never seemed to notice her, she'd pretended to dislike him so nobody would ever guess how she felt about him. As far as she knew, nobody had ever figured it out, except her closest friends.

She was a lot older and wiser now, and no longer the type to fall for a pretty face and cheesy lines. She'd done it once, falling for a guy who was a lot like Chase Sanders, and the crashing and burning of her marriage had taught her a thing or two about relationships. Think first, then think again, and
then
consider sexual chemistry.

So far, only one of the guys had gotten past thinking first, and that one didn't get past the thinking again. Even if her body waxed nostalgic about her long-ago yearnings for Chase, she had no doubt any lingering attraction wouldn't survive a liberal dose of logic.

—

W
alking into Coach's house took Chase back fourteen years to his senior year of high school.

The décor had changed. Rich cream-colored paint had replaced the floral wallpaper, and the furniture was different, even if no longer new. The picture of Kelly in her police uniform, standing between Coach and her mother at what appeared to be some kind of graduation, was definitely a new addition. Just as it had been tonight, her blond hair was in one of those fancy braids that ended below her collar, and
her legs still went on forever. Since she wasn't wearing the boob-smashing vest in the picture, he could see she'd blossomed a little in that department while he'd been ignoring her, too.

But the warm, welcoming feel of the McDonnell home wasn't new, enveloping him just as it had the first time Coach dragged teen Chase home with him.

Since he was carrying a pie, it made sense for him to follow Mrs. McDonnell into the kitchen, and that's where the memories really reared up in his mind. The old, sturdy oak table was still there. He couldn't even count the number of hours he'd spent at that table, doing his homework. Whenever he got confused and frustrated, Coach or Mrs. McDonnell would pull out the chair next to his and talk him through the problem, no matter how long it took. Sometimes Kelly would come downstairs when she was done with her own homework and help him, though not often. He always suspected the McDonnells knew his academic struggles would be more embarrassing with her around to watch.

He had no idea how he would have turned out if not for the two people currently dishing up his mother's pie. He wouldn't have gone to college, that was for damn sure. Maybe he never would have left Stewart Mills, and his sister would never have visited him on campus and fallen in love—and pregnancy—with a local boy, which had led to his parents' move and the entire family ending up in New Jersey.

His life may be in chaos, but it beat a dead-end job in a dead-end town.

“We turned the guest room into Coach's office years ago,” Mrs. McDonnell was saying. “I hope you won't mind staying in Kelly's old room.”

“Of course not.” He really hoped Kelly hadn't been a frilly and pink kind of girl. Spooning with stuffed unicorns wasn't his thing.

“I was going to turn it into a craft room—”

“You mean a room with your own TV,” Coach interrupted.

“But before I made up my mind, Kelly was going through the divorce, and she moved back in for a while.”

So Kelly had been married? He wasn't sure why that piqued his interest, but he was smart enough not to ask any questions about it. Looking like he was trying to hook up with Coach's daughter would be even worse than running a stop sign, as far as being welcomed back went.

“How are your parents?” Coach asked as they pulled out chairs to sit in front of the pie slices his wife set on the table.

“Good.” He flailed around in his head, trying to come up with more to say. “They're good.”

“And your sister?” Mrs. McDonnell added. “Kathleen, right?”

“Kathy's good, too. She and her husband own a secondhand furniture store and have three daughters.”

“No kids for you yet?”

Chase shrugged. “Not yet. Almost had a wife, but it didn't work out.”

They caught up a little over his mother's pie, all of them going a little heavy on the milk to wash it down, and Chase noticed that not only did he skirt around the issue of his company's woes, but Coach didn't seem too inclined to delve into the town's problems, either, or his own.

After pie, he grabbed his bag and followed Mrs. McDonnell up the stairs to the small bedroom at the back of the
house. No pink, thankfully, or boy band posters on the wall. The room was mostly creams and whites, with a funky, homemade-looking quilt on the twin bed and a rag rug in the middle of the hardwood floor. Either Kelly had been a neat freak in her teens, or most of her childhood history had been boxed up.

A few hours later, when he'd gone to bed simply because it was obvious the McDonnells were already up past their bedtime, he stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about Kelly McDonnell. Actually, thinking about Kelly wasn't the problem. It was trying not to think about her handcuffs that was causing him problems. He couldn't figure out what it was about her that had him tossing and turning, so he chalked it up to his body looking for some stress relief. He wasn't comfortable with relieving that stress by hand, so to speak, under Coach's roof, so he gritted his teeth and suffered.

Chase woke up the next morning, disoriented and with a heaviness in his gut he suspected might be his mother's pie. Light on the breakfast
,
he told himself as he pulled on some clothes to walk down the hall to the bathroom. When he got downstairs, Mrs. McDonnell shoved a full coffee mug into his hand, and he struggled to wake up while his hosts went through their morning routine.

“I'm heading to O'Rourke's in a few minutes,” Coach told him. “The missus doesn't make breakfast on days I go there, so if you're hungry, you'd best come along.”

Not nearly enough minutes later, and still suffering a caffeine shortage, Chase slid into a booth across from Coach and tried to decide what his stomach was up to dealing with. He would have thought the laminated menu was the same
one he'd looked at the last time he'd been in O'Rourke's, except the prices were higher.

Don and Cassandra Jones had opened the restaurant in 1984 and, according to the anecdotal history of Stewart Mills, they were going to use their own last name. After half the town got sucked into a two-week-long battle over apostrophe placement, Cassandra had gotten mad and ordered a sign with her maiden name, so O'Rourke's Family Restaurant was born in a town that didn't have a single O'Rourke in the telephone book.