On Shadow Beach (35 page)

“You’re spooked, aren’t you?” His sharp gaze didn’t miss a thing.

“It’s just the new house, new neighborhood. I’ll
feel better once I get unpacked and organized.”

“Looks like that might take some time.” His gaze drifted along the stack of boxes against the wall.

“Probably. I have more boxes coming on Friday from Derek’s place.” She stopped abruptly, realizing she’d just brought up the subject she’d been trying to avoid.

“Today must have been rough on you.”

“There have been a lot of rough days in the past five years.”

“I imagine so.”

“You
can’t
imagine,” she told him flatly. “You really can’t.”

His gaze grew wary as the tension between them returned. “Okay.” He took a breath. “Maybe you should have stayed with the Kanes tonight.”

“I’m used to being alone and taking care of myself. We might have buried Derek today, but he’s been gone a long time. And that’s because of you,” she finished, feeling a desperate need to remind both of them of that fact.

“Is it really that simple?” Jason challenged, his eyes darkening. “To blame me for everything that happened to Derek?”

His words hung in the air for a long moment. Logically she knew Jason hadn’t done it alone, but he was the face of her pain—at least, he had been.

“It was simpler when you weren’t standing in
front of me,” she admitted.

He drew in a sharp breath at her words. “I guess that’s a start.”

She immediately shook her head. “It’s not a start. I’m willing to concede that you were part of a larger investigation, but you led the charge, and you took the stand and testified against Derek. You were the last one to speak before the verdict came in. Even though you were his friend. That should have mattered.”

“If I could have taken myself off the case, I would have, but this is a small town with a small police department. I saw Jason on the museum grounds and talked to him just minutes after the guard was assaulted. I was subpoenaed to testify. I had no choice. I had to tell the truth.”

“You
shaped
the truth to fit the case—but I’m not going to argue with you. What was just a job to you was the end of my dreams. Derek and I had so many plans, and now none of them will come true. Lucas is going to grow up without a father.” A wave of anger ripped through her. “You ruined everything.”

“Derek ruined everything,” Jason said harshly. “Why don’t you blame
him
?”

“Because he’s dead.”

Her words brought a stark silence to the room.

She felt hot, dizzy. It was too much. All the emotions of the past years, months, days assaulted her at once. She started to sway, her knees beginning to
buckle.

Jason had her in his arms before she even realized he’d moved. His chest was solid, his body warm, his embrace secure. She wanted to sink into him, to lean on his strength and let him hold her up, because she’d been holding herself up for so long. But she couldn’t. This was so—so absolutely wrong.

She pushed him away and staggered to the kitchen table, sitting on a chair before she fell down. Drawing in several deep breaths, she forced herself not to look at Jason, acutely aware that his gaze was fixed on her.

“Please go,” she said, staring down at the table top.

“Are you all right?”

She had no idea how to answer that question. Finally, she lifted her gaze to his. “I will be.”

He moved toward her, his eyes concerned. “I’m sorry, Brianna. I never intended to have this conversation with you tonight.”

“I was hoping we wouldn’t have it at all. You have your opinion; I have mine. We’re never going to agree.”

“I wish you could see that I’m not your enemy.”

“I wish you could see that it doesn’t matter to me
what
you are.”

He gave a tight nod. “Got it.” Then he left, shutting the back door quietly behind him.

Click through
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of the next touching romance
by Barbara Freethy

THE WAY BACK HOME

Available July 2012 from Pocket Books

“We need to buy rafts, hire guides, and update the reservation software, and I have no idea where we’re getting the money to do any of that,” Alicia Hayden told her father, frustration overwhelming her as she walked across the back deck of Hayden River Adventures. The one-story building, set on the banks of Northern California’s Smoky River, was the launchpad for their world-class river-rafting adventures company. Next to the one-room office was the boatyard where they kept their rafting equipment. On the other side of the building, tucked behind the trees, was a dirt parking lot that was empty now. About a hundred yards away and up a grassy incline stood the family home.

In the spring and summer months, they rented rafts and launched day trips off the pier. For more adventurous white-water experiences, they bused their guests ten miles north for the higher-class guided rapids tours. They’d been in business for more than sixty years, and three generations of Haydens had run the company. But now their business was sinking fast, and Alicia wasn’t sure they could save it.

Her father, George Hayden, didn’t reply. Leaning heavily on his cane, he’d fixed his gaze on the wide, winding river that ran through the Sierra Nevada mountains. The late-afternoon foggy mist that had given the river its name was a little thicker than usual. While the winter rains had finally tapered off, the late-March air was cold, and luminous clouds shadowed the sun.

As a brisk wind lifted the hair off the back of her neck, Alicia shivered and wrapped her arms around her waist, wishing she’d thrown a jacket over her knit shirt and worn jeans. She’d been hunkered down in the office all afternoon, trying to find a way out of the mess they’d gotten themselves into, but there was no clear path. Rafting season would officially open in two weeks, and they weren’t even close to being ready. She needed her father to understand that, but he was living in a world of denial, believing that nothing had changed since the rafting accident six months before, since her brother’s death three weeks before. But
everything
had changed. Their world had turned completely upside down in less than a year.

Sadness, anger, and fear ran through her, but she couldn’t let her emotions take hold. This was the time for thinking, not feeling. She’d been trying to talk to her dad about the business since her brother’s funeral three weeks earlier, and he’d always managed to evade her. But not now, not today.

“Dad,” she prodded, stepping up to the railing next to him. “We need to talk about whether or not we can keep on going.”

He slowly turned his head. In his early sixties, her father had aged considerably in the last year. But while there was weariness in the weathered lines of his square face and more white than gray in his rapidly thinning hair, he still had some fight in his eyes.

“We’ve never missed an opening day, and we won’t start now, Alicia,” he said.

She sighed. “We need more than just a ‘can do’ attitude, Dad. We need money and manpower, and we don’t have either.”

“We’ll get the money, and we’ll find some guides. We have time.”

“Very little.”

“We’ll figure it out. This is our family business, a business that will one day go to Justin. You don’t want to jeopardize your son’s future, do you?”

“His future is exactly what I’m worried about. I’m afraid our family business will take every last penny we have and still fail, and then where will we be? I need to make sure I can send Justin to college.”

“He’s nine years old, Alicia.”

“Almost ten, and I should be saving now. I’m a single mother, so it’s up to me.”

“Being a single mother was your choice,” he said with a frown.

She wasn’t about to get into that old conversation. “We’re getting off track.”

“Bill already got us some rafts. We just have to pick them up tomorrow.”

Bill ran the local hardware store and was one of her father’s best friends, but he was also one of her father’s enablers, continuing to tell him that he would be back on the river any day now, when the doctors were saying the opposite.

“Dad, we need to face reality.” She drew in a deep breath, then plunged ahead with words that needed to be said. “People have to trust us to keep them safe, and they don’t anymore. They don’t want us to reopen. They want us to shut our doors for good.”

Her father’s face paled. “Once we get back on the river, the trust will come back. We’ve had one accident in fifty [WK1]years. It’s a damn good record. And it wasn’t our fault.”

Fault was debatable, but she wasn’t going to get into that. “Wild River Tours is breathing down our necks. They’re a national company with a sophisticated Web site, and they want our rivers, our runs. How will we compete with corporate money?”

“We’ll find a way. I’m not afraid of them. We know the river better than anyone, and we’ve always made our money on it. The river gives us life.”

“And sometimes it takes it away,” she reminded him.

It wasn’t only her father who had been hurt last year. A local man, twenty-nine-year-old Brian Farr, had lost his life when one of their rafts flipped over, and she’d come close to drowning herself. Another chill ran through her at the memory of those terrifying moments.

“Let’s go inside,” she said abruptly. “It’s getting cold.”

“In a minute.” He turned his gaze back to the water. “She tested us, that’s all, wanted to know if we were worthy.”

“We weren’t.”

“We will be next time.” Her father raised his fist to the river. “I’ll give you another run for your money. You can’t take me down.”

Her father often spoke of the river as if it were a woman. Her mother had complained on more than one occasion that her father was more married to the river than he was to her. It was probably why she’d left when Alicia was twelve years old; Margaret Hayden just couldn’t take coming in second.

Distracted by the sound of barking, Alicia turned her head as Justin, her nine-year-old son, came running up the steps of the back deck, followed by Sadie, their very excited golden retriever.

“Grandpa, look,” he said. “I finished Uncle Rob’s boat.”

Her son held up a model boat that he’d been working on. Her brother had sent Justin the kit a few months earlier. It was a project they’d planned to do together when Rob got out of the Marines. But Rob had been killed in action on the other side of the world six days before he would have completed his service. Just six days, and then he would have been safe. She couldn’t get the bitter taste of injustice out of her mouth.

They’d taken one hit after another in the past few months, and she couldn’t quite get her feet under her. But she pretended she was coping, because that’s what her family needed her to do. “I did it all by myself,” Justin added, as he let his grandfather inspect the boat.

With his sandy brown hair, freckled cheeks, and blue eyes beaming with pride, Justin looked a lot like her twin brother. She and Rob had shared blue eyes but not much else. Her hair was golden blond, her skin tanned instead of freckled, and she’d never made it past five foot five, while her brother had topped the family at six foot three. Her heart ached as Rob’s smiling face flashed through her mind. Whenever she thought of her brother, she thought of his big toothy grin, his goofy personality. He’d been the bright, shining light of their family, and now everything seemed darker.

“Good job,” her father told Justin.

“Can I try her out, Mom?” He turned to her with a plea in his eyes.

“It’s getting late. You have homework, and I have dinner to make,” she said. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

His face fell. “But Mom—”

“Why don’t you let him try it out?” her father cut in. “Homework can wait.”

It was difficult to face down the two of them, and she was reminded of many other times when her father had gotten Rob or Justin to side against her. It hadn’t been easy being the only female in a house full of males. Her dad was a guy’s guy, and Rob had been the same. While she’d grown up more tomboy than girlie girl, she was still a woman. Right now, she was a really annoyed, tired, frustrated, overwhelmed woman with a million things on her to-do list.

So why did she hear herself saying “Fine” when what she really wanted to say was no?

Justin led the charge to the edge of the riverbank, her father following far more slowly. As Justin knelt down to launch his boat, she heard the phone ring in the office.

“Go get it,” her father said. “I’ll watch Justin.”

She ran back into the office and grabbed the phone. It was Keith Andrews, the man she’d been seeing for the last few months. Keith and his ten-year-old son, David, had moved to town in September, just in time for the start of the school year. Keith was a history teacher and a soccer coach at the local high school, and David was in Justin’s grade. The two boys had become fast friends, and in turn, she and Keith had discovered a connection, too.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t been much of a girlfriend in the last few weeks.

“I finally tracked you down,” Keith said. “I’ve been trying your cell phone all day.”

“I forgot to charge it. Sorry.”

“You do that a lot lately, Alicia.”

She
did
do that a lot—maybe because there were very few people she actually wanted to talk to. And the people she wanted to talk to didn’t call. “What’s up?”

“I heard that it’s your birthday on Sunday. Something you neglected to mention. I’d like to take you out to dinner.”

Another reason she’d been lazy about recharging her phone. “I appreciate the thought, but I’m not up for celebrating.”

“Justin wants you to have a party.”

“I know, but the thought of celebrating my birthday without Rob is unthinkable. I’d like to skip the day entirely.”

“I understand. Here’s another thought. Why don’t I take Justin off your hands? The boys have been asking for a sleepover. Sunday night seems perfect.”

“Really? It is a school night.”

“I’ll get them to school, don’t worry. I want to do something for you, Alicia. And I can do that.”

It would be nice not to have to pretend to be happy in front of her son. “That does sound tempting. Why don’t you and David come over for dinner tonight? We’ll make plans for the weekend. The Spring Festival starts on Saturday, and I know Justin and David are interested in entering some of the contests.” The sound of barking and yelling drew her attention away from the phone. “I’ve got to go. We’ll talk later, okay?”