Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

He almost told her. Two or three times, Mike almost opened his mouth and told Sienna about the eight months he’d spent in prison. In the end though, he couldn’t find the words. It was a leap to go from discussing the reasons behind his divorce to confessing he’d stolen enough money from his ex-wife to land a felony sentence. She’d never understand. The way Sienna looked at him, playful and sexy, put him over the moon. He didn’t want that to change. Besides, he rationalized, she’d told him only to reveal any skeletons the Hadleys might tell her first, and no one knew about his prison sentence except Zane, Ma, Doc, and Al. The first three would never tell a soul. The last, he hoped, would be gone from Pine Point soon enough.

They went to dinner at a new Mexican place over in Silver Valley. He couldn’t stop touching her over the table, under the table, any place he could get his hands on her.

“You’re going to get us thrown out of here for indecent behavior,” she said across a plate of nachos.

“I don’t care.” He just wanted to get as close to her as he could.

Later that night, they made love twice and then fell asleep until dawn. When the sun woke Mike, he wrapped one arm around Sienna and tucked his chin into the warmth of her neck.

“Is that a throw pillow, or are you happy to see me?” she said with a laugh. Her voice, low and sexy in the silence, turned him on all over again.

“What do you think?” He traced the length of her torso, from shoulder to hip. So gorgeous. So smart and put together. Never in his wildest dreams would he have thought someone like Sienna might wind up in his bed. In his life. Maybe the good was finally balancing out the bad after all.

I can’t tell her about prison,
he thought again as he snaked his arm between her legs. She moved against him and murmured. It would ruin everything. His lips went to her ear, then to her neck. He flipped her over and moved above her, sliding down the bed in slow degrees until he reached her belly. Then the soft skin inside her thigh. He ran one thumb along the crease of her leg, and her laughter turned to a quiet moan. His hands went to her thighs, pinning her against the sheets, and when she wriggled and cried out in pleasure, he smiled and took his time. This amazing experience, tasting her and feeling her come against him, he could do forever.

* * * * *

The guy’s insatiable,
Sienna thought as she waved goodbye to Mike and walked upstairs to her apartment. She ran her fingers over a raw spot on her neck. Not like that was a bad thing, but she hadn’t come home with a hickey since college.

She unlocked her door and kicked off her boots. Then she frowned.

“This place is a disaster.” Notepads, crumpled pieces of paper, jeans, socks, and scarves covered the floor. Her dirty coffee pot sat in the sink, and two towels in desperate need of washing hung over the shower rod. She’d spent so little time here the last couple of weeks, it looked like a neglected college dorm room. Sienna changed into sweats and a T-shirt, put up her hair, and spent the next hour cleaning.

Finally, she sat back on her heels and surveyed the apartment. Much better. She’d forgotten how the distraction of a new boyfriend could push everything else to the side.

Boyfriend.

Sienna stripped down and ran a hot shower. Is that what she was calling him now? She let her head fall back under the spray. They came from the same town, yes, but they lived in different worlds now. She wasn’t staying in Pine Point, while he was putting down roots here. Still, the idea of having someone to call every night, to laugh with and have dinner with and, yes, have down-and-dirty, amazing sex with, came pretty close to the definition of a boyfriend.
I’ll just be careful
, she decided as she toweled off and rubbed steam from the mirror. For both their sakes, she needed to.

She walked into the living room and glanced out the front window. Most weekends, you could throw a stone down the center of Main Street and not hit a thing. Pine Point residents apparently stayed tucked inside their homes on chilly weekends, not that she could blame them. She finger-combed her damp hair and considered her options for lunch. She did have some cold cuts in the fridge. She could order delivery from Gino’s Pizzeria, two blocks down. Or she could venture downstairs to Zeb’s.

As she weighed the pros and cons of putting on real clothes or enjoying pajamas for the rest of the day, a small red car drove into town. It slowed in front of the diner, but rather than park, the driver put on the flashers and pulled haphazardly to the curb. Sienna leaned closer to the window, but she couldn’t make out the faces of the couple inside. The car looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it either. A half-dozen people in town probably drove the same one. She was about to turn away when the passenger door opened, and a man stepped out. He said something to the driver, pounded a fist on the side of the door, and then scowled and walked into the diner. Sienna’s eyes widened as he turned back to say something else, and she recognized the distinct face of Mac Herbert.
Wow. Really?
She couldn’t imagine the laidback construction worker fighting with anyone. The car did a U-turn and pulled away, but not before she caught sight of a sticker on its back bumper.

Whoa.

Now she knew why the vehicle looked familiar. Sienna parked next to Polly Preston, and her
Vegan and Proud Of It
stickered red sedan, almost every day at work. She flattened one palm against the window.
Huh.
Mac and Polly. Driving together on a Saturday morning. Having some kind of quarrel, if Sienna had to put money on it. With a burst of new energy, she pulled on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and headed downstairs. This looked like exactly the kind of juicy secret she’d been looking for.

“Morning, Josie,” Sienna said as she walked into Zeb’s a few minutes later. She pulled up a stool next to Mac. “Hi, Mac.”

“Hey, Sienna.” He didn’t smile. Instead, he stared into his coffee.

“Surprised to see you here,” Josie said as she poured a cup of decaf for Sienna. “You’re not a lunch regular.” She gave Mac a pointed look. “Neither are you, now that I think of it.” She folded her arms on the counter. “There a full moon or something I don’t know about?”

Sienna shrugged. “Just an empty refrigerator for me.” She waited to hear what Mac’s excuse might be.

But he didn’t say anything. The only other person in the diner, one of Pine Point’s local cops, sat at a table near the front door.

“I’ll have a spinach and cheese omelet,” Sienna said.

“BLT for me,” Mac said. He hadn’t looked up from his coffee.

“Hey, are you all right?” Sienna asked as Josie disappeared into the kitchen.

He shrugged.

Sienna elbowed him. “C’mon. What’s going on?”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “Women.”

Josie returned from the kitchen. “What about women?”

Mac looked up. “What d’ya got super-sonic hearing or something?”

“Of course. How else do you think I manage in this place? I got fourteen different people hollering at me they need water or a menu or some napkins or their burger isn’t cooked right or where’s the bathroom…” She stopped for a breath. “Of course I gotta hear ’em all.” She folded her arms on the counter. “So what’s your problem? This have anything to do with that woman who didn’t want to see ya in public?”

The pieces fell together for Sienna before Mac answered.
He’s been dating Polly. Or sleeping with Polly. And she doesn’t want to give him the time of day or risk being seen together because she and Harmony are holding out for Mr. Rich and Right.

Mac nodded, a forlorn expression on his face. “Guess I gotta break it off, huh?” He spun his mug in a slow circle. “Thought she’d come around. Thought maybe—” He sneezed. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’m good enough for her.”

Josie’s hand snaked across the counter. “You listen to me,” she said as she squeezed his calloused palm. “You’re a good man, Mac Herbert. Any woman who doesn’t see that is a purebred idiot. She sounds like she’s messed up in the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has that mental illness after all. What’s it called again?” she asked Sienna.

“Agoraphobia.”

“Yep. That’s the one.” She patted Mac on the shoulder. “You keep your chin up. There’s other women out there.”

“Not in Pine Point,” he grumbled.

She swatted him with a towel. “Ah, now you’re just bein’ fresh. There’s plenty of women here.” She walked back to the kitchen.

They sat in silence for a minute. “I’m sorry,” Sienna said.

“Guess it’s okay. I just really liked her, you know?”

Sienna thought of the look on Polly’s face as she bent over her phone and the brusque retorts she gave Harmony from time to time. “I think she likes you too.”

Mac looked over. “How do you know?”

Her face flushed. “I didn’t mean…just like what Josie said. How could anyone not like you? Maybe there’s more going on in her head than she’s telling you.”

“Why are all women like that? Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind, instead of making us try to figure it out?”

“I don’t know,” Sienna admitted. “I think men and women are wired differently, that’s all.”

“Well, it makes it damn hard to have a relationship.”

They didn’t say anything else. Mac ate his sandwich in about three bites, paid his bill, and left. The cop got an extra-large coffee to go and followed a few minutes later, and then Sienna sat alone in the diner. She pulled out her phone and made a few notes to transfer to her research, but the thrill of discovering Mac and Polly’s secret had faded.

Josie scooped up Sienna’s plate and empty coffee mug. “Anything else for ya?”

“No, thanks.” She paused in her typing. “Do you know anything about Jenny James?” she asked on impulse. She’d written down the elementary school principal’s name on her list weeks ago, but she’d added little since.

Josie unwrapped a stick of gum. “I know the family, sure. Been around Pine Point for generations.”

“I just wondered how Jenny ended up working at the school. Because the rest of her family is in business, I mean.”

Josie chewed with a thoughtful expression. “Well, she was the youngest of six, right?”

“That many?”

“Oh, yeah. And there was one after her that died young. Of that SIDS disease, I think. Where the baby just doesn’t wake up? That happened when Jenny was five or six.”

Sadness washed over Sienna. She’d had a professor in college lose a three-month-old baby girl the same way, and the grief on the man’s face when he’d told the class had knifed through her.

“She was a few years behind me in school, but she always loved kids. If anyone needed a babysitter, they hired Jenny.” Josie chewed some more. “She got married young, twenty-one or something like that.”

“Does she have any children of her own?” Sienna realized she had no idea.

“Ah, that’s the sad thing,” Josie said. “She and her husband tried for years.” Josie shook her head. “There’s women gettin’ pregnant left and right, can’t even afford to feed ’em, but they got a pack of kids running along behind ’em at church or the grocery store or wherever. Then ya got someone like Jenny, who’d give her right arm to have just one, and she can’t. Life ain’t fair sometimes, that’s for sure.”

Sienna thought of Jenny’s self-imposed sequestering each day at three o’clock. Did it have anything to do with her personal grief? With the ache of seeing kids run through her school each day and not having any of her own to go home to?

“The worst thing happened about a year ago,” Josie went on.

“There’s something worse?”

“She finally got pregnant. With twins. They’d done that fertilization thing, ya know. What’s it called, where they put the fertilized egg right in ya?”

“In vitro?”

“Yeah. They went to doctors down in Albany, the whole nine yards. The day she walked in here and told me she was carryin’ twins, I’d never seen her so happy. She was glowin’.” Josie’s face fell. “She carried ’em all the way to five months. She was at work an’ miscarried. Ambulance had to come right to the school an’ take her to the hospital.” Josie lifted her shoulders. “Wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”

“That’s terrible.” Sienna reached for her wallet and pulled out a few bills as her omelet churned in her stomach. The principal’s afternoon sadness and red eyes made sense now.

It’s odd
, Sienna thought as she flipped through her yellow notepads later that night. She’d never stopped to consider what turning up secrets might mean outside her dissertation. Ella feeding stray cats. Josie writing love poems. Mac and Polly sneaking around behind closed doors. Jenny mourning the loss of her unborn children. Mike marrying, divorcing, and building a new life.
There are people attached to secrets.
It seemed ludicrous she hadn’t realized that before, but she hadn’t.
People and feelings and motives we don’t always understand from the outside.

She put her notepad aside, curled up in the recliner, and watched as fresh snow began to fall outside.

Chapter Twenty-Six

For almost two weeks, Sienna didn’t do one ounce of research. She set her notepads on the floor beside her recliner and focused instead on school. Her students. And Mike. He came to class each Friday at two, so punctual Caleb waited for him at the door and Billy and Bailey had his books picked out and waiting by the rocker.

“You’re good with them,” she said one Friday in early March. “They like you.”

“I like them,” he said as they watched the students prepare for dismissal. Silas trotted over with papers falling out of his backpack, and Mike straightened them and zipped up the pack before helping Silas slip the straps over his shoulders. “I didn’t think I would,” he added.

“Really? What’s not to like about a bunch of eight-year-olds?”

“It’s not them.” He gestured at the chalkboard and her bulletin board. “It’s school. I was never much good at it.”

“You’re good now.”

“Reading picture books to kids who can’t? I hope I am.”

“They can read. Caleb and Dawn can anyway.”

He caught her hand in his, behind the desk so the kids wouldn’t see. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Good.” Together they walked the class out to the buses and ignored Eva Hadley’s stare as they passed the visitors’ desk.

“See you tonight at six?” Sienna asked.

“Can’t wait.” He kissed her on the cheek, and she floated into the office six inches above the ground.

“He’s been spending a lot of time here,” Hillary said.

“Mike? Yes.” She fished out a stack of progress reports she needed to complete over the weekend. “That isn’t a problem, I hope?”

“It’s no problem at all.” Jenny James stood in her open office doorway. Her eyes watered, but she smiled. “It’s nice to have people from the outside come and visit, especially our special needs kids.”

Funny. Sienna hadn’t thought about them that way in a while. Everyone had special needs of some kind, didn’t they? “Oh, I wanted to ask you about taking them to the town park later on, when the weather warms up. Can we walk there?” she asked Jenny. “It’s only a couple of blocks.”

“As long as you get permission slips from all the parents, then, yes. I think that would be wonderful.”

Sienna thought so too.

* * * * *

The following week, March surprised everyone with near-record temperatures. Mike checked the weather report three times before leaving the gym, and when it still predicted a high of sixty-five with zero precipitation, he grabbed two gloves and baseballs from his office before driving to Pine Point Elementary.

“Thought we might do a little preseason training,” he said when he walked into Room Eighteen. He held up the gloves. Silas almost fell out of the rocking chair, and his eyes lit up. He ran to Mike and took one of the gloves, stroking the soft leather, and laying it next to his cheek.

“Mr. Mike, we always do read-alongs on Fridays at two o’clock,” Caleb informed him with a worried expression. He turned to Sienna. “Miss Cruz, we always—”

“I know,” she said. She put one hand on his shoulder and steered him to a seat at the table. “But since the weather’s so nice today, how about we read two books instead of three, and then if there’s time, we’ll go outside and play catch.”

Caleb eyed her with doubt, but he didn’t say anything else. After Mike had finished
Where the Wild Things Are
and
I’m Going to the World Series!
, he picked up a glove again. “Who can tell me what this part is?” he asked as he ran his fingers over the inside.

“Pocket!” Silas called out. He clapped and beamed.

“You’re right. That’s where we always want to catch the ball.” Mike picked up a ball in his other hand. “Now, does anyone know why baseballs have stitches on them?”

Silas grew sober. Caleb’s face screwed up in concentration. No one answered.

“Well, one thing the stitches do is keep the inside part where it’s supposed to be. There’s a center of rubber inside this leather, but the rubber has to stay on the inside.”

“Can you imagine if our insides were on the outside?” Sienna asked the class.

“Ewww!” said one of the twins.

“We don’t have stitches, but what do we have?” she asked.

“Skin,” Caleb answered. “Lots of it.”

“Right.” Mike said with a grin and tried not to think about Sienna’s perfect skin, or how it tasted after a shower. “The second thing the stitches do is give the pitcher control when he’s throwing the ball. He can hold the ball a certain way, and spin the ball a certain way, to make the stitches catch the air and move.”

The boys stared without speaking.

“Too much?” Mike asked in a low voice.

Sienna smiled. “Maybe. Let’s skip the mechanics for today and just take advantage of this sunshine.” She clapped her hands three times. “I want everyone to put on their coats and line up at the door. We have fifteen minutes before dismissal, and Mr. Mike is going to go outside with us and show us how to throw and catch a baseball.”

The boys tumbled over each other in their eagerness. Dawn moved at a slower pace. By the time she joined them at the door, the others had already inched their way into the hall and toward the back door.

They were the only ones on the playground, which made it easy to pair up and practice throwing. Silas took one glove, Mike kept the other, and the twins and Caleb took turns throwing the ball to them both.

“Not bad,” Mike said. He struggled to keep from laughing every time a toss went wild. Billy had the least control of them all. Most of his throws ended up in the weeds or under a tree ten feet behind Mike. But no one seemed to care. Bailey retrieved them, and sometimes Caleb measured the distance of the errant throw by striding to the tree and back, doing calculations in his head.

“They’re a funny bunch, aren’t they?” he said to Sienna as she reined them in after ten minutes. “I don’t mean funny bad.” He wasn’t sure what he meant.

“Yes, they are,” she agreed. “But they’re my funny bunch.” She took his arm. “And yours too, now that you’re spending so much time with them.”

He smiled, the sun warm on his face. The boys lined up at the back door, waiting for Sienna to let them back inside. “Where’s Dawn?” he asked suddenly. He looked around, but she’d disappeared.

Sienna puffed out a breath. “She does this a lot.” She shaded her eyes. “Dawn! Honey, it’s time for dismissal. Time to come inside.”

Mike scanned the edge of the playground, the swings, the slides, the thick trees at the border. A chain-link fence circled the whole space, so she couldn’t have wandered off completely. He stuck the gloves under one arm and dropped the balls to his feet. “Go ahead,” he said to Sienna. “I’ll look for her.”

Sienna hesitated, but when Caleb tugged at her sleeve to inform her they had two minutes until dismissal, she hurried the boys inside.

“Dawn?” He traced a path from the open grassy area where they’d been playing to the edge of the school building. When he turned the corner, he saw her. “Hey, buddy.”

She looked at him with huge brown eyes and said nothing.

“Whatcha doing over here?” Inside, the bell rang, and he could hear the roar of bus engines on the other side of the building. Dawn’s gaze cut to the driveway, and fear flicked across her face.

Mike settled himself on the ground, thinking six feet of adult male might be a little intimidating for the little girl. “Ah, don’t worry about the buses. You know Miss Cruz will make sure they wait for you.” He had no idea if that was true. He hoped it was.

She dragged her fingers along the side of the brick building.

“You ever play baseball before?” he asked, more to hear himself talk than anything. “Or go to a baseball game? They’re a lot of fun.” An idea struck him. “Maybe we could all go to a game in the spring. There’s a minor league team over in Silver Valley. The Panthers.”

The back door opened, and Sienna stepped outside. She lifted her brows in a silent question, and Mike nodded. Sienna walked over to join them.

“Dawn, your bus driver is waiting for you. Are you ready to go home?”

Her gaze slid over Mike before she looked at Sienna and nodded. Sienna held out her hand, but the little girl didn’t take it. She took a wide berth past both of them and walked back to the school on her own.

“Boy, she’s a tough one, isn’t she?” Mike said as he hauled himself up to stand.

“You have no idea. My biggest fear is she’s going to do that, just disappear one day, and I won’t be able to find her.”

“You know why she does it?”

Sienna shook her head as they followed Dawn to Room Eighteen and watched her pack her backpack. “Maybe a safety thing? If no one can see her, no one can hurt her? It’s my best guess. I have a meeting scheduled with her foster parents next week, but to be honest, they haven’t shed much light on anything so far.”

Mike rubbed the back of his neck. It made sense. He knew as well as anyone that trusting people could end in a world of hurt. It was just too bad an eight-year-old felt the same way. Dawn walked to the door and stopped.

“Honey, your bus is waiting,” Sienna said. She gave Dawn a gentle nudge.

The little girl stood in the hallway for a long moment, studying Mike. She didn’t say a word. Her expression didn’t change. But she lifted a hand and waved at him in a stiff, awkward motion.

Then she was gone.