Willowleaf Lane (15 page)

“I’m fine. Thanks.” He stood and kissed Mary Ella on the cheek. “You look stunning, as always.”

She smiled at him and then at Charlotte. “I don’t believe I’ve met your friend.”

Alex stepped in to make the introduction. “Oh, sorry. Mom, this is Garrett King. Garrett, this is my beautiful mother, Mary Ella McKnight. Garrett and Sam were in the same unit together. He’s going to be in town for a few months to help Sam catch up on all the work that’s been coming his way.”

“Lovely to meet you.” Mary Ella gave Garrett a welcoming smile. Charlotte so envied her the class and dignity that seemed as innate to her as her green eyes and dimples. “I hope you enjoy your stay in Hope’s Crossing. If you’ll all excuse me, I should probably return before Harry orders something completely outside his dietary restrictions.”

“Go. Save the man from himself,” Alex said.

After Mary Ella returned to her group, Sam and Alex started a rather intense conversation about escargots, which she adored and he apparently hated. While they were debating the wisdom of eating anything that left a trail of slime, Garrett leaned closer to Charlotte and spoke in a low voice.

“Okay, am I crazy or is that Smoke Gregory over there?”

The very last thing she wanted to do was talk about the man she had been making out with a few hours ago on her sofa but she couldn’t find a way to directly avoid the question.

“Yes. He’s a Hope’s Crossing native,” she said carefully.

Her date studied the other table out of the corner of his gaze, and she
really
hoped Spence didn’t notice and wonder if they were talking about him. “I saw him pitch a no-hitter against the Giants. Man, he had a hell of an arm. Shame about everything else.”

Why did everybody say it like that? “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, it was.”

“I mean, think about it. How weird would it be to be on top of the world one minute and in prison the next?”

“He never went to prison. The charges against him were dismissed.”

“But everybody knows that’s only because he had a team of high-priced attorneys. If there had been no evidence against him, he never would have been charged in the first place.”

She opened her mouth to argue that sometimes not every story was as clear-cut, good versus evil, black-and-white, as it appeared and that sometimes the reality was much more complicated. The words clogged in her throat, and she practically had to bite her tongue to keep them from bursting out.

What was wrong with her? She was on a date with a great-looking guy, the most interesting man she’d met in ages, and here she was wanting to hotly defend someone she still wasn’t entirely sure deserved it.

She really didn’t know anything about Spence’s case, other than her own gut instinct that he was hiding something. And just look how spot-on her gut had always been about him.

“What’s he doing in Hope’s Crossing? Does he have a house here or something?” Garrett asked, oblivious to her internal struggle.

“Who?” Alex asked. Apparently she and Sam had settled the great escargot conflict.

Garrett gave a slight head jerk toward the other group. “We were just talking about Spence Gregory, over there with your mother. I’m from Portland and have been a big Pioneers fan since the franchise started. Gregory won’t win any popularity contests around the City of Roses, I’ll tell you that. Plenty of people think he had something to do with his wife’s death. I was just wondering how a person comes back when his life turns into that kind of hot mess?”

Charlotte thought of his efforts to make a better life for him and his daughter, of the guilt he carried for not helping his troubled wife, of the hardworking boy he had been who had tried to take care of his mother despite her abysmal neglect of him.

“Inch by excruciating inch,” she answered softly. “You asked what he’s doing here. He’s the director of the community’s new recreation center. You might be interested to know, he’s working with veterans’ organizations to set up a recreational therapy program here for wounded soldiers.”

She wasn’t really surprised when Garrett’s hard features tightened. Like Dylan, he apparently had a cynical streak.

“So he’s just another do-gooder hoping for some positive press on the backs of the hardworking men and women of the military.”

“I don’t think so, actually,” Sam corrected mildly. “He came to talk to me about the project the other day, asking if I could help build some cabins up there. He seemed quite sincere when he talked about what he hopes to achieve and the financial commitments he’s already made. I think it sounds like a great idea. Hope’s Crossing has a lot to offer these guys who need a safe, warm place to heal. I say, if he can make it happen, more power to him.”

Charlotte wished Spence could have heard Sam defending him. He probably wouldn’t have believed it.

“I hope he’s successful,” she said. “My brother was severely wounded in an ambush in Afghanistan. He lost some good friends and came back without an arm and an eye. He’s had a tough road back. I guess the way I see it, it’s the outcome that matters in this case, not necessarily the motive.”

Their server approached their table to see if anyone wanted dessert. After she left, the conversation turned to lighter topics, a movie Sam and Alex wanted to see, Charlotte’s taste in music, Alex’s long, vastly entertaining treatise on how to make a perfect crème brûlée.

At one point, Garrett put his arm across the back of her seat while he emphasized something. She didn’t flinch away, but she did make the mistake of looking up at Spence’s table.

He was watching her, she saw with a little thrill of dismay, and the big tough ex-soldier she sat beside. She quickly jerked her gaze away but not before seeing a hot glittery light in his eyes.

He couldn’t be jealous. She would never believe it. It was probably only her fickle heart.

Though she was tempted to lean forward, away from even that slight physical contact, she forced herself to sit casually, to smile with bright enthusiasm at Garrett, to try her very best to fall for him—as hopeless as it might seem right now, when all she could think about was Spence’s arms around her that morning and the wild heat of his kiss.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“T
HAT
’
S
WHAT
I said. A million and some change, along with that strip of land you want along the river, as long as you agree to put your money where your mouth is and match it.”

With far more effort than it should take, Spence managed to wrench his attention away from a glowing pretty Charlotte and the hard guy she sat beside. He forced himself to focus on Harry Lange and the unbelievable donation he had just offered to A Warrior’s Hope.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Here’s where you say yes or no. Fish or cut bait, boy. Trust me, I’ve got plenty of other places to put my money if you’re not committed to your wounded warrior project.”

“No. I am. You just took me by surprise.”

“I read through everything you gave me. You’ve done your homework. I like that. The way I see it, this is just what I want for this town. Something that takes us out of ourselves to reach out to those who might not have it as well.”

“I agree.”

“That should give you enough to build the cabins you’re talking about. You can have Sam Delgado over there get started as soon as possible. Be up and running by Christmas.”

He blinked, not quite sure what just happened. Harry Lange had committed a substantial sum to make A Warrior’s Hope happen much faster than he expected.

“Thanks. This is...thank you.”

“You can thank my Mary Ella here. She’s the one who convinced me.”

He had a hard time calling his former English teacher by her first name. “Mrs. McKnight. Thank you.”

“I love the idea. From the moment Charlotte mentioned it to us the other day, my mind has been racing with possibilities. I’ll help you in any way I can.”

“Fantastic. I’ll definitely take you up on that.”

He wanted to celebrate. He wanted to order champagne for everybody in the place. He wanted to yank Charlotte away from the big granite-jawed asshole pawing her and kiss her until neither of them could think straight.

Instead, he sipped at his ginger ale. “Where do we go from here?”

“As soon as all the paperwork is in order for the charitable trust, my attorneys will make everything tight and legal with the land transfer. You do remember this is a matching grant, right? You’re good with that?”

“Absolutely,” he said promptly. “I was already planning on at least that, whether you matched or not.”

“Good man.” Harry gave him an approving smile. “Hard to believe you’re the same kid who used to deliver my newspaper.”

“I was probably the best carrier you ever had,” he countered.

Harry gave a raspy chuckle. “True enough. You never missed my front mat, not once in five years. Never met such a stubborn little punk. Why do you think I reached out to you to run my recreation center? I figure a kid who takes that much pride in doing the small jobs the right way won’t fail when it comes to the big ones.”

The man’s trust in him was humbling. All of them at the table knew he had failed quite spectacularly when it came to his baseball career. The injury hadn’t been under his control, no, but everything that came after was.

He refused to fail with A Warrior’s Hope.

* * *

A
S
HE
DROVE
through the streets of town after several hours at Harry Lange’s house working out details, he was aware of a strange unsettled restlessness simmering through him.

This late on an early August weekend evening, only the bars were still open and active. He wondered idly if going into one of those might ease this restlessness but the craving didn’t last long. He had never enjoyed alcohol much, not after seeing how the abuse of it could be so devastating. Having gone through rehab for his painkiller addiction, he was rarely even tempted to drink.

It wasn’t the alcohol that drew him to the bar, anyway, but the company. That was the one thing he missed about the Pioneers. His team had been his family. At times like this, when he truly had something to celebrate, he missed not having somebody he could call to share good news.

There were still players he considered brothers, guys who had stuck with him through the worst of everything, despite the evidence. He would never forget their loyalty, though something subtle yet powerful had changed between them. They were still in the game, their lives revolving around their statistics, their swing, their ERAs or RBIs.

As he turned onto Willowleaf Lane and drove past Charlotte’s little cottage, he was vaguely aware of slowing down. Her lights were on and, when he glanced up at her house, he saw the shadow of a figure move past the window.

He slowed down further, looking more closely to see if another shadow—maybe a tall muscled dude with a tattoo on his forearm—might join her. He couldn’t see anything but her. And, he noted quickly, her driveway was completely empty, the garage door closed tightly.

Apparently, her date had ended early.

The surge of relief was inappropriate and unwarranted but he couldn’t seem to tamp it back down. Some of his excitement from earlier in the evening returned.

Charlotte. Charlotte would understand, would be just as excited as he was that A Warrior’s Hope was actually coming together.

He suddenly wanted to share the news with her. Without thinking about how foolhardy it would be to stop at her house so late, he pulled into her driveway, shut off the engine and headed for her door. He didn’t give himself time to reconsider, he just rang the doorbell and stood inside the square of light spilling from her front window onto the porch.

Only after, while he waited for her to answer, did he start to second-guess the wisdom of coming here, especially given the awkward way they had left things that morning.

The moment she answered the door, looking graceful and lovely in the tailored white blouse and slim pencil skirt she had worn to dinner but with a red frilly apron over both, his doubts subsided. Just the sight of her seemed to ease his restlessness, though it was replaced by an entirely different kind of tension.

“Spence! Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all. I just saw your light and figured you were still up. May I come in?”

She glanced behind her and he saw indecision flicker across her expressive features but she finally stepped aside. “You had to have seen at the restaurant that I was on a date. What if I were...entertaining?”

He pointed to the empty driveway. “No other car. The guy could have walked, I guess, or parachuted in, but I took a chance.”

“Is there something you needed at—” she glanced at a clock above her small white mantel “—ten after eleven?”

With the low heat thrumming through him as he was surrounded by the enticing citrus and vanilla scent of her, he could think of plenty of things he needed but this didn’t seem the appropriate time to mention them.

“I had news. I thought you might want to hear it.”

“You could have waited until tomorrow.”

“Yeah. You’re right. But what’s the fun in that? By then it will be old news.”

“Not to me,” she pointed out.

“True. But I was excited and I didn’t really have anybody else to tell. Peyton is probably in bed and the housekeeper barely knows me.”

She studied him for a long moment and he wondered what she was thinking.

“I’m assuming this has to do with Harry and your dinner.”

“Yes. And A Warrior’s Hope. Since you’ve been in on the planning from the beginning, you deserve to be the first to hear.”

Finally she held the door open. “Come on in to the kitchen. I was just cutting up some fruit.”

This struck him as odd but he wasn’t about to question fate when she led the way through her house. He could smell the sweet-tart scent of pineapple when he walked into the cozy little kitchen.

He eased onto one of the high chairs around her breakfast bar. “If you’re making piña coladas, I’ll have a virgin.”

She looked down at the cutting board and he had to wonder what had turned her cheeks pink. “No piña coladas here, I’m afraid, but I can maybe find you a beer or something.”

“Water is fine. So what’s with the pineapple?”

“I like fresh fruit in the morning for breakfast, either alone or in a quick yogurt smoothie. If I don’t prep as much as I can the night before, I’m usually too rushed on my way to the candy store and end up grabbing something full of carbs and sugar deliciousness.”

“Makes sense. Need a hand?”

“No. I’ve got it.” She went back to wielding a knife expertly. In a few slices, she finished with the pineapple and pulled out a cantaloupe from the refrigerator.

He enjoyed watching her and felt more of his tension seep away. Who would have guessed he could find fruit slicing so relaxing?

It wasn’t the fruit, he knew. It was Charlotte. She just had this calming way about her, and he discovered he was beginning to crave it worse than any little pill.

“How did your date go?”

Her hands paused their slicing briefly and she raised an eyebrow. “Do you want a play-by-play? I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of keeping track.”

He waved a hand. “Just the highlights are fine.”

“He was...nice. He served in the Army Rangers with Sam Delgado, who is dating Alex McKnight.”

“I’ve met Sam. He seems like a good guy.”

“I think so.”

Again her color seemed rosy and he wondered why.

“Anyway, Garrett is in town for a few months, helping Sam with his construction company. Alex has been trying to set us up for a couple weeks. Our schedules finally meshed tonight.”

He didn’t want to think of any
meshing
going on. Could he take a trained Army Ranger? He figured he could, if he had to.

“So what happened with Harry?” she asked.

Oh, right. The reason he had stopped at her house after eleven. “Good news. Great news, actually. He’s agreed to donate a cool million to A Warrior’s Hope, for starters.”

She stared at him. “Dollars?”

He laughed. “No. Toothpicks. What did you think?”

She set down her knife. “Let me get this straight. Over dinner, Harry Lange—the most notorious tightwad in the county—agreed to give that kind of gift to an organization that hasn’t even really taken off yet?”

“Yes. In addition to the land we wanted for the cabins. I’m thinking we can break ground within the month.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“It’s a good cause. He had to see that. I told him I feel like we can really make a difference here. There’s something almost
healing
about Hope’s Crossing. Harry agreed with me that it’s past time to bring that healing to others.”

“You said all that?”

He shifted his weight on the chair, uncomfortable with the soft note in her voice, for reasons he couldn’t have explained. “I don’t know what I said, if you want the truth. I had a nice spiel prepared but ended up just talking about your brother and how much he had sacrificed. We owe Dylan and others like him more than just empty platitudes and Veterans Day programs at the elementary school.”

She resumed slicing the cantaloupe, but he was almost certain she looked at him with a different light in her eyes, something almost like...approval.

“It sounds stupid, I know.”

She shook her head. “Not stupid.” Her smile was sweet, and her watery eyes glistened. “Perfect.”

“Well, whatever I said must have worked. Harry pulled out his checkbook on the spot.”

He didn’t mention Harry’s condition was a matching grant from his own foundation. She didn’t need to know that part.

“You know,” she said, “I may just have to reconsider my general philosophy that Mary Ella has gone a little crazy this past year while she’s been dating Harry Lange.”

Spence had to smile. He had wanted to share his news with someone and now he realized Charlotte was exactly the person he had needed to tell. Her reaction was just as he hoped. He wanted to bask in it, just sit here in her kitchen amid the glow of knowing he had finally done something right.

Now that he had told her the news, however, he realized he had no real excuse for sticking around, other than the simple fact that he couldn’t imagine another place he would rather find himself right at this moment.

“Are you sure there’s not something I can do to help you here?” he asked, before she thought to throw him out.

Her mouth twisted into a little smile. “You mean you don’t have some philanthropist to meet for drinks somewhere? Surely you could use another million in seed money.”

“No. And besides, I don’t drink anymore.”

Curiosity danced across her features but she said nothing, only reached into a drawer and emerged with a melon baller she held out to him.

He washed his hands and then joined her at the work island. She pulled out a watermelon and handed it to him, and for a few moments they worked in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Her sweet scent teased his senses along with the intoxicating scents of the fruit and every once in a while her shoulder brushed his.

This was nice. Soothing.

He hadn’t spent much time in a kitchen as an adult. He always figured he had done his time washing dishes and busing tables at the café but maybe he had missed out on something peaceful.

“You really don’t drink at all?” she asked after a moment, the question not unexpected.

“I quit everything. Rehab, remember?”

She sent him a glance under her eyelids then turned back to the fruit. “I thought celebrities generally only went through the motions to keep the tabloids off their backs.”

“Not this one. I’ve been clean since I walked through the doors of the rehab facility.”

“But you still had no problem supplying the little happy pills to others.”

The enjoyment of the moment dissipated on a breath and something hard and cold lodged under his breastbone. He didn’t want to talk about this. What he really wanted to do was kiss her, distract her from this topic he abhorred, but he had told her that morning it was a mistake. Nothing had changed.

He remained silent and didn’t look at her, though he could feel the weight of her stare for several long moments. Finally, he heard the clatter of a metal knife on the wooden cutting board.