Second Chances (Nugget Romance 3) (25 page)

“Tell me in front of the fire. It’s damned cold.” He waited for Max to do his business and whistled for the dog to come inside the house.

“Did you just get home?” She kissed him, inching her hands under his shirt to feel his damp skin.

“About forty minutes ago. I thought we’d do something different tonight,” Colin said.

“What’s that?” They’d already had sex in every room in the house, including the wood shop.

“You go first.” He patted a place next to him on the couch.

She told him about the email she’d gotten from Bix Dearling, how he owned a national private investigation agency and that he wanted to discuss a possible business deal regarding DataDate, in person.

“You think the guy is serious?” Colin asked.

Harlee lifted her hands up. “He wants to fly here all the way from Dallas. What I don’t get is why he doesn’t just steal my idea, do it bigger and better. I presume his company already does background checks. What I do is essentially the same thing, except I’m probably way cheaper.”

“I agree that it sounds a little odd.” He got up, went to the hearth, and pushed a few logs around with a poker, trying to extinguish the flames. “But there’s only one way to find out—listen to what the guy has to say. I can come with you to meet with him if you want.”

“Don’t you think that would look lame, like I’m not leaning in?”

“Leaning in?” Colin looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language.

“You know, the book by Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook. It says women need to be more aggressive—become leaders and not let men take all the credit.”

“Whatever.” Colin all but rolled his eyes. “I just don’t like the idea of you meeting some strange dude by yourself. If I go with you, I could, you know, recline. Hell, I could just lie on my back; that way he wouldn’t think I was trying to out lean you.”

Harlee tried to hide her amusement. “I’ll have Bix meet me in a public place.”

“Just don’t give him too much information in case the guy is on a fact-finding mission.”

“Duh,” Harlee said, and kissed him.

“You want to go out to dinner?” He reached around her waist and slid his hands down to cup her butt.

She stopped kissing him and stared. “Like . . . to a restaurant?”

“Today, while installing bathroom fixtures, this plumber told me about this new Italian place in Blairsden. It’s mostly takeout, but has about six tables. I called and made a reservation, thinking we could try. Worse comes to worse, we’ll take the food to go. What do you think?”

“I think this is good. Wow, Colin, you sure you want to do this?”

“What I think, Harlee Roberts, is that you deserve a real date.”

“Colin, we have good dates at home. I have never felt deprived.”

“We should have a real date,” he said softly. “At least once before you leave.”

He just threw those words around like they were nothing. Like they weren’t even worth a conversation. It shouldn’t hurt like it did, because she had made it crystal clear from the get-go that Nugget was a temporary stopping place until she found another newspaper job. But now her feelings had changed. Couldn’t he see that, or did he just not care?

 

The restaurant was even smaller than Colin had expected. There were only two other couples in the place. Still, he asked if they could be seated close to the door in case the walls started moving in on him and he had to make a run for it.

Despite its hole-in-the-wall appearance from the outside, inside the place had white linen tablecloths, little candles on every table, and a small stone fireplace in the corner. Classy.

Harlee’s face lit with delight, which made him even more determined to endure the fear that had gripped him ever since he walked in the door. She’d even changed into a dress and high-heeled boots for the outing.

“Colin, this place is perfect.” She took off her coat while he pulled out her chair.

“Yeah, not bad.” He focused on his breathing, slowly inhaling through his nose and exhaling through his mouth.

Harlee flipped through the menu. “What are you getting?”

“What looks good to you?” Too busy watching a family of four come through the door, Colin hadn’t so much as glanced at the long list of entrées.

“Want to share the grilled polenta for the antipasto?”

“Sure,” Colin said, trying to regulate his heartbeat while the little restaurant continued to fill up.

“Then I’m going with a salad and the scaloppini.”

“Yeah. I’ll do the same.” Colin undid the top button of his shirt and pulled his sleeves up.

“Wouldn’t you rather have the chicken?” Harlee reached across the table and grabbed his hand, fixing on his tattoo for a second. Sometimes, during sex, she’d trace it with her finger. “We could take it to go, Colin. You don’t have to prove anything.”

“I’m good,” he said, trying to smile as a trickle of sweat ran down his back. “It’s just hot in here.”

She pinned him with a look. “You seem on the verge of a panic attack.”

Before he could say anything, a waitress came and took their order. Colin got a bottle of Chianti, deciding that a little alcohol might calm his nerves. Plus, he knew Harlee would like it. Their server returned quickly with the wine, poured, and moved on, much to Colin’s relief. Having her hover wasn’t helping the situation.

He clinked his glass to Harlee’s and took a sip. “Good.”

“Ah, Colin. I don’t want you to do this if you’re uncomfortable.”

“Just talk to me and I’ll be fine. Promise.” Two men came in and were seated next to the fireplace. That made ten people, not counting him and Harlee or the staff.

“Okay,” Harlee said. “Tell me about the tattoo on your arm. I’ve never seen anything like it. What’s its significance?”

Colin glanced down at the black dots that peeked out under his rolled-up cuff. That was the last thing he wanted to talk about. “It was a youthful indiscretion.”

“But it must mean something. Why else would you have chosen it?”

Their polenta came, and Colin was thankful for the reprieve. “It looks great,” he told the waitress. He served Harlee a portion, then tried to swallow a bite, but it felt like sawdust in his mouth.

“This is really good,” Harlee said. “As good as anything in San Francisco. So tell me about the tattoo.”

Colin made the mistake of glancing around the room. Nearly every table was full. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Harlee.” From the look on her face, he knew he’d said it too sharply. “Ah jeez, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, probably noticing the way he used his linen napkin to blot the sheen of sweat that covered his face. “Would you like to go outside and get some air?”

If he went outside, he’d never come back in. “No. I can do this.”

He could tell Harlee wanted to argue, but she bit her tongue. “Have another sip of your wine.”

Colin felt his hand tremble as he lifted the glass to his lips. “If I didn’t tell you before, you look really fantastic tonight. The dress is . . . just wow.” It was blue to match her eyes and mouthwateringly clingy.

“Thank you.” She smiled, but her eyes remained worried.

The salads came and Colin did his best to get a few pieces of lettuce down. One of the original couples got up to leave, taking so long to put on their coats that Colin thought he’d suffocate from having them linger so close.

“The dressing on this salad is fantastic,” Harlee said, clearly trying to make small talk while Colin broke out in a sweat.

Finally the couple left and Colin tried to take solace in the fact that the restaurant now had two fewer people. But then another family—husband, wife, and two little kids—came in and Colin thought he’d hyperventilate. He saw Harlee’s lips moving but couldn’t hear a word she said. Just white noise.

The waitress came to take their salad plates away and the motion of her clearing the table made him nauseous, like he was in the cabin of a rocking boat and couldn’t see the horizon. By the time their entrées came, his chest felt so constricted that he thought he’d pass out from lack of air.

“I can’t do this.” He fished his wallet from his pocket, put it down on the table, and staggered outside.

When Harlee found him fifteen minutes later, he was crouched next to his truck, his head between his knees. “I’m sorry.”

She touched his back and he flinched. “Should I take you somewhere?”

Colin knew she meant the hospital. Hell, probably the psychiatric ward. “No. It’ll be okay in a few minutes. Wait in the truck, it’s cold.”

But she sat in the dirt in her pretty blue dress, looking so achingly beautiful that he wanted to grab on to her and never let her go.

“Colin, it was too much, too soon. Next time we’ll start small, like—”

“Not now, Harlee.” He hadn’t meant to bark at her, but the humiliation was more than a man could take. Thrusting his keys at her, he told her to get inside the cab and turn on the heat.

When he finally pulled himself together, he found her behind the wheel with the seat pulled up enough for her to reach the pedals.

“I’ll drive,” she told him.

“The hell you will.” He motioned for her to climb into the passenger seat, and to her credit she didn’t argue.

They drove in silence with only the sound of the heater humming. Colin would have preferred to open his window and let the frigid air blast his face, but he didn’t want Harlee to catch a chill. A full moon illuminated the winding road; miles of freshly plowed snow berms shimmered white in the light. A big buck danced across the lane, stopping to stare into Colin’s headlights. Good thing he’d been driving slow. He and Harlee watched the animal lift its antlers and leap off into the distance.

Although the food Harlee had carted away from the restaurant in to-go bags filled the front of the truck with tantalizing smells, Colin had no appetite. The meal would likely taste as bitter as his mood. The night had been an absolute disaster and he’d behaved like a goddamned pussy.

A woman like Harlee deserved better than that. She deserved better than him.

He took the turn to Nugget and climbed the steep grade up Grizzly Peak, careful to keep a watch out for more deer, or even bear. The lumbering creatures weren’t hibernating as long as they used to and often roamed the road, looking for food.

At the bottom of Harlee’s driveway, he parked and walked her to the cabin. She unlocked her door and he handed her the to-go sacks.

“Aren’t you coming in?” she asked.

“Not tonight.”

“Colin,” she called to him as he started to walk away. “Why are you doing this? Why are you being so ridiculously hard on yourself? Come in. Please.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Harlee.” He made a beeline for his truck, but she came after him.

“You should be proud that you tried. That you made it as far as you did.”

Made it as far as he did? From the second they’d arrived at the restaurant he’d been tied up in knots.

“Leave it alone, Harlee. All I’m asking for is a little distance here. Can you just give me that much, please.”

“No!” she yelled. “I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

She grabbed him by his down jacket. “Because I love you. Can’t you see how much I love you?”

God, he didn’t want her pronouncement of love. He wasn’t the least bit worthy of it.

Anyway, what she thought she felt for him had nothing to do with love. What she felt was pity. And he needed her pity like he needed a hole in the head.

“I’m going,” he said, and turned away, peeling off in his truck.

H
arlee knew it probably hadn’t been the best time to drop the L-word.

For a proud man like Colin, dinner had to have been mortifying. Harlee got that. But she couldn’t help how she felt, and watching him suffer had undone her.

After shoving their leftovers in the refrigerator, she grabbed the phone and plopped down on the couch. Maybe, once he got inside his lonely house, he would change his mind and come back to the cabin.

Ha, who was she kidding? Colin liked lonely. He goddamned loved it. Did he ever think that maybe he was demophobic because it gave him an excuse to avoid civilization?

She halfheartedly sorted through the mail on the coffee table, thinking that she’d spent a lot of time on this sofa giving Colin “space” and “distance.” They’d also made love on the plaid foldout a time or two. She tried to focus on the good times, because for all his faults he was the best man—the best person—she’d ever met. Honest and hardworking. Still, she wondered whether it was finally time to hit up Jerry and move on.

The phone rang, startling her out of her thoughts. She looked at caller ID and picked up with a slight smile in her voice. “Hello.”

“I’m sorry,” Colin blurted. Besides remorseful, he sounded sad and embarrassed.

“It was a milestone, Colin. What you did took guts.”

“Yeah, I’m not really into talking about it, but I feel shitty about how we left things.”

“You were disappointed,” Harlee told him, knowing disappointment was a mild way to describe it. “Look, I know you think you had a climbing-the-walls freak-out. But the strides you made tonight were huge, Colin. I’m serious, you’re on your way to kicking—”

“Not tonight, Harlee. Okay?”

“Okay,” she reluctantly agreed.

“Thank you,” he said. “And Harlee?” Long pause. Then his voice went low and raspy. “I’m really sorry I ruined our first real date.”

“We’ve had lots of real dates, Colin. We don’t need restaurants to make them real. You do get that, right?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he said, avoidance being his middle name. “I’ve got to get up early, so I’m turning in. Goodnight, Harlee. I . . . I . . . look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

“’Night, Colin.” She thought that maybe he’d been about to say those three little words and felt a little more optimistic than she had an hour ago. She stuck the phone on its charger stand and got ready for bed.

 

The next morning, she noodled around on the Internet, first sending Bix information about Nervino Airport, a small runway just a few miles from Nugget. Then she ran a partial background check she’d been hired to do.

She was about to make herself some lunch when she decided to research Colin’s tattoo. The five-dot geometric symbol intrigued her, mostly because Colin had been so resistant to talking about it. Maybe the quincunx represented a lost lover he didn’t want her to know about. Or maybe it stood for a religion that he no longer believed in.

She punched in a few search terms and pages upon pages came up. According to the World Wide Web, the ancient pattern represented everything from fertility to close friendship. Crazy enough, even Thomas Edison had had one tattooed on his forearm.

But what made the hairs on the back of Harlee’s neck stand up was that lots of inmates wore the tattoo to represent time in prison.

The outer four dots denoted the prison walls and the inner dot symbolized the prisoner. Years of honing a sixth sense as a reporter told Harlee that she was on to something.

And then suddenly she knew.

As fast as her fingers could move she began scrolling through databases, starting with Los Angeles County Superior Court criminal records. Colin Burke was a fairly common name, but from her time working on his furniture books while he’d been sick, she’d memorized his social security number. Pages and pages of court transcripts came up. By the time Harlee finished reading them all, she’d gone through an entire box of tissues. Nearly a third of his life had been spent in prison for a liquor store robbery in which three people were killed.

When she finished with the court records, she Googled every newspaper article she could get her hands on. And there were plenty. Although Colin had been a minor during the shootings, he’d been tried as an adult. And the media had had a field day.

Reading the articles gave her perspective, but in no way allowed her to understand how he could’ve deceived her.

She grabbed her jacket, purse, and keys and headed for the only person who could help her make sense of this horrible revelation.

 

By the time she sat in Rhys Shepard’s office, Harlee was pretty sure she’d gone into shock. She couldn’t even remember making the drive, her head too filled with the stories she’d read about Colin.

“You talk to Bix? What did he have to say?” Rhys asked, his feet propped up on the big oak desk.

“You knew, didn’t you?”

“Harlee?” Rhys sat up straight and assessed her. “You’re not talking about Bix, are you?”

“No, I’m not. I just got done reading the transcripts from Colin’s triple-murder trial.”

Rhys sat quiet, contemplating. “This is something you ought to talk to Colin about, Harlee. Not me.”

“I would’ve, if he’d told me. But he didn’t. Not one word. But you knew. Police chiefs know their resident parolees, don’t they?” It was a rhetorical question. Of course he’d known.

Rhys let out a breath. “Talk to Colin, Harlee.”

“Do you believe his defense . . . that he didn’t know? That he was merely the unwitting driver?”

“You know him better than I do, Harlee. What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. Three people . . . dead . . . a baby, for God’s sake . . . all because two rich boys wanted beer without having to pay for it. Three, if you count Colin.”

“Are you counting Colin?” Rhys cocked his head to the side.

“A jury did.”

“Juries are sometimes wrong—unless you believe O. J. Simpson was innocent,” Rhys challenged. “No one ever accused Colin of being inside that liquor store or pulling the trigger on that poor family. But under California’s felony murder law he was held accountable for driving the car.”

“Because the prosecution said Colin was part of the plot to hold up the store,” she said, trying to keep from getting hysterical.

“Harlee?” Rhys said. “I’m asking you again. Knowing what you know about Colin, do you think he was in on the robbery or that he conspired to kill the bodega owner and his family?”

“No,” she said softly, embarrassed that tears had started trickling down her face, but powerless to stop them. “I think he was the awful casualty of politics. A drunken boy, hoodwinked by his so-called friends into believing that he was going on an ordinary beer run, only to be caught up in what was to become a major murder case. Jeez, the case had as many racial overtones as Rodney King’s.”

Harlee had read how the owner of the liquor store was a revered leader in the black community. The killers, spoiled Hollywood brats.

“What I think,” Rhys said, “is that the justice system needed to make examples of these kids and that Colin was doomed before he ever walked into the courtroom.”

Harlee agreed. It was a travesty for Colin, for his family, and for the family that had died. At least the two boys, the shooters, had gotten life in prison without the possibility of parole. But how could Colin have lied to her? She was angry with him, but even angrier with herself. She’d let herself believe that he was honorable, so much better than the cheaters and deceivers that she investigated every day.

“Harlee,” Rhys said, reading her face as easily as a newspaper, “give Colin a chance to explain.”

“Do other people know?” Translation: Was she the last one in Nugget to know that Colin was an ex-con?

“I don’t know what other people know.”

“Does Maddy know?” Harlee asked a little more forcefully than she had meant to, but he was purposely being elusive.

“No. I don’t think she does.” Which more than likely meant that it wasn’t common knowledge. But this was Nugget, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. “What I do know is that people here admire and trust Colin. I don’t think this would change their opinion. But clearly”—he looked at her pointedly—“this is very private to him.”

What, did he think she’d sell the story to the
Nugget Tribune
? She loved the man. “It shouldn’t have been private to me.”

“That’s between you two,” he said, but not unkindly. “All I’m saying, Harlee, is you can see why something like this would be a man’s deepest and darkest secret.”

Well, she uncovered secrets for a living. Apparently, she wasn’t as good at it as she had thought. “Thank you, Chief, for taking the time.”

He stood up, walked around the desk, and gave her an awkward pat.

 

Three hours later, she found Colin in his wood shop. Harlee found it appropriate that he had Lucinda Williams’s “Ugly Truth” playing on his iPod. He turned it off when he saw her come in.

“Hey, I’ve been looking for you.” He regarded her tearstained face, puffy from crying. “What’s wrong?”

“I know, Colin.”

He stood there for a few seconds, weighing what she’d just said, then closed his eyes, resigned. “A dozen times I wanted to tell you.”

“And a dozen times you didn’t.”

“No,” he said in a voice so low Harlee could barely hear him. “I should have, but I knew I’d lose you. And I wanted you more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. More than freedom from that goddamned cage I lived in. More than—”

“Stop!” She held up her hand. “Just stop. You lied, Colin. I trusted you and you lied.”

He staggered back a little. “I kept it from you, Harlee. But I didn’t lie.”

“And you think there’s a difference?” she shouted. “Do you know how stupid I feel? You were convicted of murdering three people, Colin. Don’t you think I deserved to know that before you let me fall in love with you?”

“God, Harlee. . . . Oh Jesus.” He leaned against the wall like he needed it to hold him up. “I didn’t know. I swear to you, if I had known what they had planned . . . It wasn’t until they got back in the car, their clothes covered in blood. You’ve got to believe me, Harlee . . . I didn’t know.”

“I believe you.” She started to cry, for him, for her, for a situation that was more tragic than any story she’d ever written. “I read the transcripts and the news accounts, Colin.”

He slid down the wall and sat on the cold concrete floor. “The kid was only two,” Colin said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Skip shot him because he was crying. That’s what Ari told the police, trying to get himself a deal. Who knows what really happened. But the bullet matched the gun with Skip’s fingerprints, at least that’s what my lawyer told me.”

“Your lawyer sucked,” Harlee scoffed. As far as she was concerned, someone better, a big name like Thomas Mesereau, would’ve proven Colin’s innocence.

“Harlee, Perry Mason couldn’t have helped me. You weren’t there, you don’t know what it was like. Threats of riots and TV commentators calling for our heads. Sure I didn’t have a family with the kind of money that Skip and Ari’s did. I got a public defender, but she was good, Harlee. Despite the lynch-mob atmosphere, she managed to get me fifteen years to life. I got out in ten with good-time credits.”

She sank into one of Colin’s newly finished chairs, the thought of him in prison making her physically ill. “It must have been horrific.”

His eyes downcast, Colin said, “It wasn’t the death sentence that the Weaver family got.”

No. But Colin’s only offense had been partying with the wrong people. Sitting behind the wheel, thinking that his friends had gone inside the store to buy liquor.

And lying. To her.

“Did you have the demophobia in prison?” The notion of how difficult that would’ve been made her sick to her stomach.

“Not until I got out,” he said.

Thank God
. “But it’s related, isn’t it?”

He simply shrugged. “Come here, Harlee.” Colin motioned for her to join him on the floor.

“Why?” She stayed put.

“You can’t, can you, Harlee? Not now that you know what I am. Do you see why I didn’t tell you?”

“Precisely the reason you should’ve told me.” Her voice hitched. “You spent a third of your life in prison . . . It’s the reason why you’re afraid of crowds and small spaces. My God, Colin, don’t you think it would’ve been helpful for me to understand the hell you’ve lived through?”

She held up her hands to keep him from interrupting. “I know you had nothing to do with killing those poor people and never would have.” Harlee swiped at the tears stinging her eyes, trying hard to keep it together. But she felt eviscerated, like her insides were ravaged and raw. “But I can’t get beyond the fact that you took my heart without giving me your trust. You should’ve believed in me, Colin. God knows I believed in you.”

A sob bubbled out of her like a hiccup and Colin quickly got to his feet. She expected him to come to her. To hold her. But he walked to the other side of the room and stared out the window.

She wanted comfort and a guarantee that from here on in he would trust her. Confide his secrets to her, like he’d done with the demophobia. But neither came. Instead, he’d emotionally pulled away, leaving her aching, confused, and wondering how she’d ever been so blind, trusting, and stupid in the first place.

 

Colin wanted to touch her. But he fought the impulse with every ounce of willpower he had. He’d become so complacent in their relationship that he’d stopped planning for this day. But here it was, in all its Technicolor horror. One look at Harlee’s face and he could see her disgust. How could he blame her? He was an ex-con on parole, only four years out of prison. The kind of guy she would only write about—not sleep with, let alone give her heart to.