Jaded (28 page)

Her gaze didn’t flinch. “No. I don’t think you should have to do this on your own.”

“I’m never alone,” he said again. The ghosts of failures past stayed with him every minute of every day.

She didn’t bother to respond, just opened the passenger door to the truck. Duke scrabbled out of the doggie door and hurtled into the backseat. Alana got in and closed the door. That left him with three choices: physically hauling her out, making a huge scene in front of the neighbors until she got out under her own power, or taking her along.

He’d never laid hands on a woman in anger, and Alana wouldn’t appreciate being a spectacle in front of the neighbors. He got in and slammed his door.

 • • • 

THE DRIVE OUT
to Tanya’s cabin passed in silence. He could hear his blood rushing in his ears, and some observing part of him noted his white knuckles on the steering wheel.

“Breathe,” Alana said quietly when he turned down the rutted lane leading down to the creek.

“I am breathing.”

“You aren’t. Exhale.”

He did, and realized when he exhaled that he had been all but holding his breath. Nature took over and he drew a full breath at the bottom of the exhale. The fury simmering in his veins dialed down to the upper edge of the red zone. He braked to a halt by the cabin and got out, leaving his door open for Duke to follow.

The cabin had the vast silence of an uninhabited building. The door was locked, but Lucas knew the trick for getting in, a specific twist, jerk, and hoist of the handle that released the aging lock. He pushed the door open and stalked inside.

The main room was empty. Dishes crusted with the remnants of heated-up canned spaghetti sat in the sink. He crouched by the hearth and held his hand over the charred logs and ashes. Stone cold, not even lingering heat held in the rack. Through the back windows he saw Alana walking around the house, the late afternoon sunlight gleaming off her caramel leather jacket, then head down the path to the creek.

She was almost as good as a deputy, he thought, then strode to the closed bedroom door. He stopped with his hand around but not touching the knob, listening for signs of life. Snoring, sheets rustling. Anything could be on the other side of this door. Tanya, fast asleep as her toxin of choice worked its way out of her system. Tanya and a bedmate.

He opened the door. The bed was unmade and empty. The room smelled of stale dirty laundry scattered on the floor, alcohol sweat, and the underlying sweet scent of pot.

“Fuck.”

Alana’s flats slapped against the floorboard behind him. “I didn’t see her out back,” she said. “Duke chased a rabbit into the trees.”

He blew out his breath. “She’s not here. I’d guess she hasn’t been here for a couple of days, which means she’s partying somewhere.”

“Do you want to go get her?” He looked at her, hands on his hips. “I assume you have a pretty good idea where she is.”

He did. He knew three or four likely spots in Chatham County alone. “If I go get her, I’m going to have to arrest her and whoever she’s with,” he said. “She knows that, and she knows I won’t do it.”

“All right,” she said, accepting his answer without questioning it. “Now what?”

“Now I call the station and ask Mary to let the guys know they should watch out for her truck. Then I wait. I’ll go get Duke.”

He went outside and made the call, then whistled. Duke came trotting out of the tall grass around the creek, tail high, ears perked, gaze alert. When he peered back inside the cabin, he found Alana in the kitchen nook, running water into the spaghetti pot to soak off the crusted sauce and noodles.

“It’s a waste of time.”

“It’s my time to waste,” she replied, then dried her hands.

San Diego felt like a lifetime away.

They pulled into his driveway after dark. She stopped with her hand on the door handle. “Come over for dinner?”

The idea sounded so good. He could sit in her kitchen and watch her cook, find some of the ease and comfort he felt with her. But the reality was that before she kissed him, he hadn’t needed any of what she offered. Being with her made him need to be with her, and there was only one solution to that: cold turkey. They’d said their good-byes in San Diego. Mitch’s phone call might keep her in town for a couple of weeks, but it didn’t change things between them.

But cold turkey was coming in a couple of weeks, when she went home to her life in Chicago. He’d never binged on anything before, but if all he could get of Alana was the next two weeks, he’d take it.

“Yeah,” he said.

And if after dinner he took her to bed and made her shudder and clutch him and beg, well, that was just grabbing what he had left in great big, greedy, dripping handfuls.

12

A
T SUNSET THE
next evening, Alana’s house was near to bursting at the seams with the Walkers Ford library board, and a few more “interested parties” who stopped by to listen in and offer opinions.

Mrs. Battle, Mrs. Walker, and Delaney Walker-Herndon sat on the sofa, a laptop open on Mrs. Walker’s lap as they browsed industrial furnishings websites and considered seating arrangements for the children’s section as well as tables already wired for laptops. Alana sat on a folding chair in a small group focusing on the specifics of the interior renovation. The request for bids had to be as detailed as possible to ensure the project didn’t encounter lengthy delays and cost overruns. So far the document ran thirty-eight pages and counting, and they hadn’t even gotten to the electrical and fiber-optics requirements, much less the diagrams. Alana’s laptop rested on her knees, heating her legs while the fan whirred. They’d opened the windows and the doors to get a cross breeze two hours ago, when people started showing up with food and drinks, and a hundred competing ideas. The sheer number of bodies strained the tiny house’s capacity, and an infectious energy surged in the room.

“I’m listening, Billy,” she said absently as she entered the details for the high-speed Internet connection.

Billy Olson had enough construction experience to help her with the details, but wouldn’t be bidding on the job. “Once that’s done, they’ll sand and stain the floors. Keep your fingers crossed for a dry stretch. If we get one, they can open the windows. That’ll clear out the stink and the plaster, and the polyurethane will dry that much faster.”

Alana worked all of this into the calendar and added the tasks to the action plan, then took the pieces of wood stained to different darknesses from Billy and considered them. “What do you think, Mrs. Battle?” she asked as she offered them across the room.

“I like a natural look myself,” she said, looking to Mrs. Walker for confirmation. “Stain might make the room darker and smaller.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Walker said. “Let’s keep it as bright and clean as possible.”

She had the right people, the decision makers in the room. There were a dozen other people, including Pastor Theresa who appeared to be Mrs. Battle’s and Gunther’s pastor. In addition to making decisions rapid-fire for the library, a fair bit of gossip was being traded.

“Alyssa’s planning to go to the summer program. Her scholarship won’t cover it, but her father insisted—”

“Jeannie’s pregnant again. Fourteen weeks. Little Evan’s only ten months old, but she wanted to keep them close—”

“—Thought he got snipped, but I guess it didn’t take—”

“—Hired me to build four one-room cabins in the meadow behind Brookhaven, and a shelter. I guess she wants to hold yoga classes out there. The cabins are for people who want to do longer, private retreats.”

“That sounds interesting,” Alana said.

“I never thought she’d get enough business to make a go of it,” Billy said. “But Lester down at the market says her grocery orders have doubled since she opened in November. That’s a good sign. Lucky for us I helped Marissa when she redid the plaster out at Brookhaven. I didn’t know I’d get a chance to use the skills again so soon.”

The room went a little bit quiet at Marissa’s name. Delaney Walker-Herndon covered smoothly. “Mom, can I get you some more coffee? Lucinda? Anyone else?”

Alana set her laptop aside and stretched, then gathered plates and napkins. In the kitchen, Delaney poured out the old coffee, then started making another pot. Every available inch of counter space was crowded with veggie trays and ranch dressing, a coffee cake, and cookies. Alana looked around for a place to set the plates and silverware. Delaney combined two half-empty plates of cookies, giving Alana the space she needed.

“Have you heard from Marissa lately?” Delaney inquired. She ran water into the sink and added dish soap.

Alana crumpled the napkins in her fist and tossed them in the trash can. She didn’t know the whole history between Adam, Marissa, and Delaney, but keeping Marissa’s location a secret was one thing. Outright lying to Delaney’s face was something else entirely. “I saw her last weekend. She and Adam got married.”

Delaney was too composed, too self-assured to show much reaction. “That’s good,” she said simply. “I wondered when both you and Mrs. Collins were gone. Was it a nice ceremony?”

“It was beautiful,” Alana said. “They got married on the beach. It was a really small ceremony, very informal. Darla made her dress. Adam’s friends and their girlfriends and wives from the Marine Corps were there, and me, and Darla, and Lucas.”

She said his name as casually as she could, as if it were no big deal that she and Lucas spent the weekend together at Marissa and Adam’s wedding. As if she had every right to call him Lucas, not Chief Ridgeway. As if she were a part of the community.

“I thought Adam and Lucas fell out of touch while Adam was in the Marines,” Delaney mused
.
“Maybe he was there because he was close to Marissa. Still, that’s nice for Chief Ridgeway. He hasn’t taken a vacation the entire time he’s been chief here.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Alana said absently. In hindsight, it was a bit odd that he didn’t do the kinds of things other men in town did, like take a few days for ice fishing, or to go hunting, or simply disappear somewhere warm in the long stretch between Christmas and the crocuses poking up in late March.

Delaney smiled and shook her head. “I’m happy for them. So they don’t plan to come home soon.”

“I don’t know,” Alana replied truthfully. No one needed to know the newlyweds were likely somewhere in the Pacific again by now. “Adam talked about opening a bike shop in San Diego.”

“Ah,” Delaney said.

The kitchen door opened to admit first Duke, then Lucas. Tail wagging, the dog trotted over to Alana and sniffed her jeans, then her fist. Lucas called him with a soft click, then gave a hand signal. Duke curled up by the back door and tucked his nose between his front paws.

“Impressive. I forget he was a working dog,” Alana said.

The coffee had finished brewing. Delaney poured two cups and took them back into the living room.

“What brings you by?” she asked Lucas, trying for the kind of casual conversation that wouldn’t alert anyone to their relationship.

“I thought I’d take off the counters tonight,” he said wryly.

She looked at the food-laden counter. “Maybe later?”

“I have to be up early. We’re doing a burn.”

“A what?”

“After the court case clears, we burn any illegal substances no longer needed as evidence.”

“Really? Where?” she asked.

“The crematorium in Brookings.”

“Oh.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “You didn’t think we took it upwind outside the city limits and held a big bonfire, did you?”

“No,” she said indignantly, then added, “Fine, I did, but not for long.”

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the conversation in the living room continued without her, then crossed the kitchen to give him a quick kiss. But Delaney’s random comment sparked a heated little flare in her chest.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Were you and Marissa ever dating?”

He cut her a glance, one dark eyebrow slightly lifted. “No. Why?”

Her heart did a funny little thing in her chest. “I’ve heard the gossip. You’ve been divorced for a couple of years. You’re . . .”

“A man?”

Gorgeous.
“Delaney asked if I’d heard from Marissa lately, and I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her face. I told her about the wedding and that you were there. She said she didn’t think you and Adam were close enough friends that he’d invite you to the wedding. Then she said maybe you and Marissa . . . had a thing. Mrs. Battle said you weren’t seeing anyone in town. I know you’re good at keeping secrets, even if Marissa wouldn’t have cared.”

There was a funny little silence between them, one she recognized from conversations between her mother and Freddie. “You think Marissa wouldn’t have mentioned if we’d dated? Or hooked up?”

“We mostly talked about Adam.”

“You think I wouldn’t have told you if I’d dated Marissa?”

“You haven’t told me you dated anyone since your divorce.”

“Because I haven’t.”

“You’ve been divorced for almost three years,” she said. “I just didn’t think about it, but in hindsight, of course you’d need . . . anyway, it’s none of my business.”

“A flight attendant who works the Sioux Falls–to-Chicago trip texts when she’s got an overnight.”

Jealousy seared Alana’s skin. “It’s
really
none of my business.”

Lucas kept his face turned to the crowd in his living room. “You’re not the only cliché in this . . . thing,” he said. “Cops are dogs, on the lookout to score. Marissa Brooks, however, would cross the street rather than talk to a cop.”

“Why?”

“The former chief of police was a right bastard with kids. Hard on them if they made mistakes. Marissa made a really big mistake, and so did Adam. He hauled her down to the station in the backseat of a cruiser, locked her in an interrogation room, and read her the riot act, without her father there, or an attorney.”

She thought about Marissa, her dreamer’s soul, about family obligations. “Dear God.”

“I was there when she came out, and she was white as a sheet, shaking. Some women have a thing for uniforms, but Marissa’s not one of them.” He gave a small chuckle. “One, I was married when I came back. Two, after the divorce, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to start up with someone in town. And three, Marissa Brooks has been in love with Adam Collins since she was seventeen years old, something even an outsider summer kid like me knew. Relationships are hard enough if both people are committed to them. I try not to get involved with women who have divided loyalties.”