The Stranger's Sin (11 page)

“Y
OUR HEART’S FINE
,” Dr. Ryan Whitmore told Charlie at the conclusion of his Monday-morning appointment, wheeling back his chair and making some notations in a chart. “You’ll be fine, too, as long as you stay away from spicy foods.”

Charlie felt so weak with relief at the doctor’s pronouncement he doubted his legs would carry him off the examining table and out the door.

He’d kept up an act all day Sunday, which he’d spent around the house with Kelly and Toby while Chase put in a very long day of work. He’d told Kelly so many of his jokes, he’d nearly exhausted his repertoire.

“I knew it all along.” Charlie stalled for time to regain his equilibrium. “But wouldn’t you know it? The bachelor doctor is the first one to believe me.”

“Bachelor doctor?” The young man looked up from the chart, discontent marring his handsome features. Charlie had heard Dr. Whitmore had been a three-sport athlete in high school and he still had the body to prove it. “Where’d you hear that?”

“About a dozen places. So many I was hoping for advice on how to handle the ladies.”

“Then you’ve come to the wrong place,” he doctor said. “I haven’t had a relationship that’s lasted more than two months since high school.”

“Sounds like you let someone get away,” Charlie quipped.

“You can’t lose someone you never had,” the doctor said, a wistful look touching his face. “But don’t ask me for advice. I can’t even handle it when my own sister lays a guilt trip on me. How do you think she got me to fill in for her?”

“Good for her,” Charlie said. “If you can’t take advantage of a family member, who can you take advantage of?”

Charlie left the examination room with the doctor’s soft chuckles sounding behind him, his legs having stopped trembling enough for him to check out at the reception desk.

“Heard you gave everyone quite a scare, Mr. Bradford.” Missy Cromartie, the ultrayoung receptionist, handed Charlie his receipt. “You stay out of the emergency room, you hear.”

“I only went because I heard they had some good-looking nurses, but not one was as pretty as you.” He winked at her. “So I’m giving up the place.”

Missy smiled, twin dimples appearing in her cheeks. “You stay out of our office, too. We don’t want to see you until next year at your physical.”

“As much as I like looking at your face, Missy, I’m in favor of that.” He gave her a mock salute, then surveyed the empty waiting room. That was strange. Chase had driven him to his appointment so that Kelly would
have a car since she was watching Toby, then insisted upon waiting. So where was he?

Charlie turned back to Missy. “Do you know where my son is?”

Her hands flew to her face. “Oh, yes, I forgot. He had some sort of work problem to deal with. I was supposed to tell you Mrs. Jessup will be here any minute to take you home.”

Teresa?

Charlie had barely processed the thought when Teresa entered the waiting room, dressed in another one of her summery business suits. Only someone who knew her well would be able to tell she wasn’t as cool and collected as she looked.

“Hello, be—” He remembered in time that he couldn’t announce in public how beautiful he found her. “I mean, Te-resa.”

She hurried over to him, placing a hand on his arm, appearing not even to notice his verbal slip. “What did the doctor say?”

She was worried, he realized. Really worried even though he’d reassured her days ago that the appointment was nothing more than a precaution. The spat they’d had at the restaurant dimmed to nothing.

He held his hands out at his sides, showman style. “The doc says I’m fine, the perfect specimen of health. How’s your granddaughter?”

“She’s fine, too,” Teresa said. “Thankfully it was just a bump and not a concussion. But she’s so little, I can understand why Andrea panicked and called me.”

Andrea, the younger of Teresa’s two adult daughters,
had two daughters of her own, both of them under three. Her husband, a pilot for American Airlines, was frequently out of town.

“Good thing she has you to call,” Charlie said. “I can’t think of a better person to turn to.”

Missy got Teresa’s attention to tell her the blood work from her recent physical had come back and everything was fine. The interruption reminded Charlie their conversation wasn’t private. He waited while Teresa got a printout of her lab results, absurdly glad she wasn’t angry with him anymore.

After they were in her car and she asked if he minded if she stopped by her house to let out the dog, his spirits rose even higher. They had to drive by her place en route to his, but he preferred to think that Teresa wanted to prolong their time together before she drove him home.

“Fine by me,” he said. “Kelly’s with Toby.”

“That’s what Chase said.” She drove as competently as she did everything else, her slim hands at the recommended position on the steering wheel, her eyes on the road. “How much longer will she be in town?”

“At least for a few more days.”

“I think Chase likes her,” Teresa said.

“I think it’s more than that,” Charlie said. His son had been working around the clock since the festival, but Charlie had seen the two of them together enough to notice the attraction between them. “Hell, we’re all a little in love with her. Even Toby. We’ll be sad to see her go.”

It didn’t take Teresa long to reach the spacious four-bedroom house where she’d raised her family and now lived alone. The interior was spotless but welcoming,
the warm colors of the furniture and the walls creating a homey feel.

“Thanks for coming to the doctor’s office to get me, by the way,” Charlie said when they were standing on her back porch, waiting for her dog to do his business.

“You’re welcome.” She quirked an eyebrow. “But I couldn’t exactly say no when Chase called.”

“You didn’t want to say no,” he said confidently. “I saw how worried you were at the doctor’s office.”

She watched the dog instead of him. “You’re an old friend. Of course I don’t want anything less for you than perfect health.”

She walked closer to the edge of the porch, calling out, “Come here, Sweet Thing.”

It was a silly name for a dog, especially one that might do well in an ugly-dog competition. Part pug and part something else, Sweet Thing had a compact body and a wrinkled face complete with a short, squat nose.

The dog waddled up the steps, its tongue lolling and tail wagging. Teresa crouched down and petted the dog, cooing, “You’re a good girl, Sweet Thing. Yes, you are.”

Just like that, Charlie was transported ten years into the past. He vividly remembered Teresa flinging open the door, her red dress slightly soiled, her face flushed, her arms full of a funny-looking dog he’d never seen before.

“Do you remember how Sweet Thing got her name?” Charlie asked.

Teresa looked up, the present colliding with the past. “Of course I do. Bill and I had you and Emily over for dinner that night. That was the night I finally admitted I had a pet.”

“That’s what happens when you keep feeding a stray.”

“She knew she was mine before I did.” Teresa scratched the dog behind her ear. “You and Emily sure were surprised when I answered the door, holding a dog.”

“Only because—no offense meant, Sweet Thing—she’ll never be offered a canine modeling contract.”

“Emily was way more cool about it than you. She fell in love with her right away. Remember what she said?”

Charlie nodded, then they both said in unison, “Where’d you find that sweet thing?”

The two of them smiled at the shared memory, and in that moment Charlie felt as close to Teresa as he ever had. Then she broke eye contact, went into the house and the moment was gone.

“Charlie, would you lock the sliding door for me?” She’d adopted a brisk tone. His guess was that she was trying to reestablish distance between them, and he couldn’t let that happen.

He put the security bar in place and locked the door, then trailed her into the kitchen, where he planned to suggest she put on a pot of coffee so he could linger for a while.

On the table was a community phone book opened to the Realtor section of the yellow pages. Red marker ink circled a display ad listing a popular real estate firm.

The breath left his body, freezing his limbs. He was jumping to conclusions. Even if Teresa was selling her house, it didn’t necessarily mean she was leaving Indigo Springs. She could be downsizing. A four-bedroom house was far too large for one person.

He made himself breathe again, determined to ask Teresa about the phone book in a calm, rational manner.

She’d left her purse and keys on the kitchen counter. She picked them up, slung the purse strap over her shoulder and turned around. Her gaze ping-ponged from Charlie to the phone book and back again.

“I wasn’t ready for you to see that,” she said.

A chill settled over him. “Then you
are
selling your house?”

“I’m thinking about it.” She inhaled as if the next words were hard for her to say. “Andrea wants me to move to Philadelphia to be closer to her and the kids. It makes sense. If I sell the house, I’ll be able to retire.”

He felt like he’d been broadsided by a linebacker. “But what about us?”

Her expression looked unutterably sad. “There is no us anymore, Charlie.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I couldn’t tell Chase we’d been seeing each other when he asked if I knew where you were spending your time.”

He tensed. Neither one of them had brought up Chase the other times they’d discussed the secrecy surrounding their relationship.

“He’s the main reason you don’t want anyone to see us together, right?” Teresa asked.

“Yes.” Charlie was relieved to have it out in the open finally. “You know what Chase is like. You know how much he loved his mother.”

Teresa nodded. “I know.”

“Then you understand why I can’t tell him?”

“I do,” she said. “So I expect you to understand why I’m considering moving. I’m too old to sneak around, Charlie. Maybe it’s time we both accepted that a romance between us isn’t meant to be.”

“But we won’t have to sneak around forever,” he argued, “just until more time passes.”

“How much time? Three months? Nine months? A year?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said helplessly.

“I know you don’t.”

They stood facing each other, barely three feet apart, but it felt as if an invisible wall was between them, signaling that they’d reached an impasse.

“We’d better go,” Teresa said.

Charlie nodded and accompanied her in silence to the car while he tried to think of an argument that would get her to reconsider moving.

During the drive back to his house, though, for once he could think of absolutely nothing else to say.

O
NE YEAR IN PRISON
. Eighteen months probation. Psychological counseling.

Kelly disconnected her cell phone, the message Spencer Yates had left on her home answering machine still ringing in her ears. She hadn’t checked her messages in days, irrationally afraid Yates had somehow figured out she was missing and had violated attorney-client privilege by reporting her to the police.

But as Saturday night blended into Sunday and then Monday with no word from Helene Heffinger, Kelly thought it best she know where her case stood.

Yates might not know she’d left town, but he had sounded mightily annoyed that she hadn’t returned any of his phone calls. He demanded that she call him at once to talk about the plea bargain he’d worked out.

Good news,
he’d called it.

“I managed to convince the DA you took the baby because you’re having trouble dealing with your infertility,” Yates said. “Luckily for you, he went for it.”

That’s where the counseling came in. Both her lawyer and the DA obviously thought she had a mental problem and couldn’t be trusted around children.

Her prospects of ever being hired to teach again, already dim, grew bleaker.

She gasped aloud as something else occurred to her.

Because of her infertility, she’d always assumed she’d adopt a child someday. With a conviction and her questionable mental health as black marks against her, what reputable agency would approve her to be an adoptive mother?

“Kelly!”

Charlie’s voice penetrated the closed door of the second-floor bedroom where Kelly had retreated to make her phone call. She got unsteadily to her feet, put her cell phone back inside her purse and opened the door.

Chase had left at dawn to patrol his territory for illegal hunting and fishing activity, and she and Charlie were alone in the house with Toby. Charlie didn’t sound particularly distressed, but he could need her.

“Kelly!” Charlie called again when she reached the top of the stairs.

She cleared the thickness from her throat.

“I’m coming, Charlie,” she called.

He appeared at the bottom of the steps before she completed her descent. “Oh, good. There you are,” he said.

“What do you need?”

“A loaf of bread and some gravy mix. I put on that roast for dinner before I checked if we had everything.” Charlie had started defrosting the roast yesterday, claiming it was coming to the end of its freezer life.

It was the kind of easily solved problem that popped up in the course of a day. In a microcosm, it represented the reason Kelly found living with the Brad-fords so alluring.

Life here was just so darn normal.

For a woman facing a prison sentence that would strip her of her career and possibly the chance to be a mother, normal was intoxicating.

“I’d be happy to go to the grocery store for you,” Kelly offered.

“I’d rather you keep an eye on Toby and the roast, if that’s okay. He’s in the family room.”

It was more than okay, she thought a few minutes later while she was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Toby and his building blocks.

She loved spending time with him. The only thing better would be if Chase could join them.

His work schedule had been so full they’d barely spent any time together since the fireworks display Saturday night, but she liked what she had seen of him.