The House On The Creek (15 page)

It was a low blow, and Abby supposed he knew it. She had always trusted him. Trusted him to keep her secrets, trusted him to shield her from trouble, trusted him to save her when she foundered.

Us against the world, she’d accused him, but once it had been true.

She let him take her hand.

He walked her across the back lawn like a soldier marching his troops. Abby had to stretch her legs to keep up. The grass was still wet and cold, and water dripped slowly from the roof, collecting in the flower beds around the house.

“You’re making me ruin a pair of your socks.” She glanced down at the mush on her feet.

Everett didn’t break stride. “I’ve got others.”

His own feet, Abby noticed, were bare and tan against the lawn.

“Where are we going?”

“The gazebo.”

That surprised her. “Why?”

He shot her an exasperated glance. It was the first evidence of emotion she’d seen on his face since they’d left the kitchen. “You’ll see.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

Everett made an inelegant sound. “You love surprises. Stop complaining. It will only take a minute.”

Abby considered indulging in a good sulk. The man pushed her buttons like a pianist doodling a symphony, and it drove her mad.

He made her feel fourteen again, and young Everett Anderson the center of her universe. She wanted to rail at him, to accuse him of purposefully misleading her heart. She wanted to cry, she wanted him to kiss her until she couldn’t stand.

And he was right. Abby loved surprises. Anticipation could almost make her forget the bruise on her heart.

By the time they reached the gazebo she had outpaced him by four steps.

“This?”

She peered doubtfully at the pile of tools and the heap of white canvas tarp. The roof of the gazebo shielded the clutter from rain, but only barely. She wondered if he knew how quickly those shiny new tools might rust.

“This,” he said, and pulled at the canvas.

She drew a breath and held it until her lungs began to protest. Then she let it out in a slow puff, and watched him from the corner of her eye. “You’ve been working hard.”

“Off and on.” He pulled more of the tarp back, revealing all of the skiff.

Everett spoke casually, but Abby could tell how much time and effort had gone into the little boat. He’d sanded it down, removing old paint and mildew. Several new boards gleamed among the old, and Abby knew as well as anyone how much care it took to work wood around the skeleton of a boat.

He’d torn out the original anchor. A newer version lay against the gazebo, waiting.

“It’s wonderful.”

He didn’t seem to hear. “I’ve ordered up new oars. And I thought I’d put in a small bench seat. And paint her. Something bright. Blue, maybe.”

“Blue would be perfect.” She bent over and picked up a hammer, turning it in her hand.

“I found her in the weeds. More than half buried. At first I thought I’d just patch her up, wait until next summer to really work on the job.” He ran long brown fingers over sanded boards, and his thumb paused on a knot in the wood, rubbing gently. “I guess I changed my mind.”

“Because you just couldn’t wait to get back out on the water and search for pirate treasure?” She set the hammer on the gazebo, out of the damp.

He smiled, wry. “Tempting as it sounds, no. I was thinking of your boy.”

“Chris.”

“I got to thinking. A boy that age has energy, and time to waste. He needs something to do, to keep his hands busy. To keep him from thinking too hard. I know I did.”

She couldn’t help herself, she softened. “He’d go mad over it.”

“He and I put our mind to it, we could get her out on the water before summer’s over.” As though following Abby’s lead, Everett began stacking tools alongside the hammer. “I’m handy enough with the basics, but if we run into any trouble, well. I’m sure you’ve free advice to give.”

“I’ve always plenty of free advice.”

He turned from the gazebo, surprised. “Are you crying?”

“Of course not.”

But he turned her to face him, and scowled when she snuffled. “I never thought to see you cry, Abby. A childhood of scrapes and bruises and never one tear shed.”

She pulled away, and crossed her arms. “Woman’s prerogative.”

Everett directed his frown at the skiff. “I thought it would be a good thing.”

“It is a good thing, Ev.” She didn’t let herself reach for him. “It’s a very good thing. Chris will be crazy about the idea.”

“And you?” Without looking away from the skiff, Everett spread canvas back over the wood.

“I think it’s a lovely idea.” She swiped at tears, and let her heart warm at the thought of her son and this man working together beneath the stretching shade. “Chris always asked to swim in the Creek.”

“He can swim all he wants.”

“Good. But it doesn’t change my mind, Everett.” She spoke to the back of his head. A trickle of sweat marred the nape of his neck. Abby squashed a fierce urge to stroke it away. “We won’t move into your house, and I won’t be asking Jack to stay overnight again.”

Everett tucked the last of the canvas around his boat, and stood up.

“I need you, Abby.” He said, simply and quietly.

She looked up at the woods so she wouldn’t have to see his eyes. “You’re still running, Everett. Last night was a mistake.”

“Don’t lie to me, Abby. It doesn’t do any good. I can see right through to your heart.”

Chapter Ten

RAIN CAME AGAIN IN THE NIGHT,
rushed by the wind into slanting showers. Everett stood in front of the windows in his spacious new living room, and watched streams waterfall from the edge of the roof. Clouds obscured the moon, and only the deck lights kept back the dark. In their yellow fluorescence the storm appeared eerie, unnatural, and angry.

Once the house had leaked like a sieve. Everett remembered damp patches on the ceiling and the steady ooze of wet along the window sills. In the basement, during the worst of the summer monsoons, water had run through cinder block, and made tiny rivers on the floor.

The house had always rattled against even the lightest wind gusts.

It still rattled. Even Abby’s talented hands couldn’t make old bones into new. But somehow the vibrations seemed more cozy than desperate. And as far as Everett could tell, Chesapeake Renovations had managed to banish every drip and leak.

Twelve years gone and she still had the power to lighten the darkest patches of his life.

Everett rubbed his hand over his face, trying to chase the headache from his temples. In the windows his reflection mirrored the action.

He leaned closer. The face in the window was his own. No matter how many times he searched his reflection still he could see nothing of Edward. He often wondered if the years would bring lines and the lines would carve his features into his old man’s.

Blue lightning flickered in the distance, above the grey hump of the woods. It lit the inside of the house like the flash of a camera, and Everett’s reflection vanished.

Narrowing his eyes against the pain in his skull, Everett left the living room and climbed the staircase to the second floor. He didn’t bother to turn on lights. Even restored, the house was still his own and he knew it from floor to ceiling, could probably walk it from front to back with his eyes closed and never stumble or stub a toe.

He paused on the threshold of the master bedroom. The porch light suffused the windows from below, and illuminated the bed at the center of the room. Smooth, carved oak rose in swirls and knobs over a high mattress. The edges of the headboard had been worked to resemble climbing ivy. More carved vines spread their leaves up four tall posts.

Abby had chosen white sheets and a white duvet. Even in the dim light the bed looked far too tempting.

For a second, leaning against the door frame, Everett allowed himself to imagine Abby on the mattress. Abby naked in the sunlight, dark hair spread across white sheets, pale skin flushed in the aftermath of passion.

Abby languid beneath him, open and welcoming. Abby wild, hot and wet as a summer storm, hips working to meet every thrust as he took her again and again. Until he exhausted them both, and she found sleep curled in his arms.

Everett tore his eyes from the bed. Just the thought of her made him hard and ready. He could almost feel the fire of her mouth across his bare flesh. The tight, liquid fit of her body to his. Hear her low moans and husky whispers as he teased her to completion.

Swallowing a groan, Everett closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead against the door frame, willing the urgent, heavy throb of his blood to ease.

He reminded himself that the room had once been Edward’s, dingy and musty, and rank with the stink of beer and smoke and sweat. The carpet had been grey and worn with age. The old man had slept on a sagging mattress, under a soiled wool blanket, year round, summer or winter.

Now, as the house rattled against the wind, Everett inhaled only the lingering scent of gardenias and honeysuckle, and imagined that he could hear Abby’s laughter, easy and free, sharing a secret joy.

She was wrong. There were no ghosts left behind to haunt him. She had chased them all away.

Heat and humidity struck again just before lunch. Bouncing along a rutted road toward the James, Everett kept the air conditioning at full blast, and said a vicious prayer every time the car hit a pothole.

If he’d known he would be chasing away his vacation on Virginia’s back roads, he would have ignored the Spyder’s sexy temptation and picked up a used truck instead. It would have been more practical, and cheaper to boot.

Weeds scraped the underside of the car as Everett turned off dirt and onto gravel. Battery Pier might be the ‘in’ place of the decade, but nobody had thought to pave the road.

Then again, maybe that was supposed to be part of the charm.

He gunned the Spyder up over a steep rise. Gravel splattered. The rise turned into a plateau, flat and brown, weeds and marshland to either side. Further along the road he saw a sign for Battery, and even through the rush of the air conditioning he could smell the James.

James River was, in places, the widest stretch of flowing water on US soil. Wider even than the famous Mississippi, or so the old man had claimed when Everett was a child.

Sluggish and never clear, the muddy river water was almost as full of salt as the ocean it flowed into. The Navy used the river to ferry carriers and destroyers. Beyond one of the deepest bends, just off Carter’s Grove, the government kept a graveyard of military ships, anchored and forgotten.

Along Battery Pier the James was little more than a deep marsh. The pier itself was lopsided, old logs sinking here and there into the water. The boats in their slips were varied and colorful.

Everett parked his car in a turn around near the back of the pier, and climbed out. Heat struck, a weight across his shoulders. Squinting even through his shades, he crossed gravel, and stepped onto waterlogged cedar.

Battery Pier rocked on the water, but Everett found his balance easily. He increased his pace as a flash of neon swim trunks caught his eye at the end of the pier.

Jamming both hands into his pockets, jingling change, he watched as the boy dove off the edge of the pier. The kid was pale as milk, and his legs were skinnier than a girl’s, but his form was good.

A lazy breeze blew off the water, drying some of the sweat on Everett’s brow. He reached the last square of cedar logs just as the boy cannoned into the water. He stood waiting until the brown head resurfaced.

“Water cold?” He asked, as the kid snorted river from his nose and mouth, and brushed hair out of his eyes.

The boy looked up at him, treading water, blue eyes hooded against sloppy waves or bright sunlight. Everett tried to ignore the shock he felt as those familiar eyes studied him suspiciously.

“Not so much,” Chris Ross said, and spat more water into the James.

“Need a hand up?”

“No.” Chris eeled out of the water and up over logs until he sat on the pier. His wet flesh goose bumped even in the heat.

“Deep enough for safe diving, there?”

“Yes.” Chris eyed Everett with reluctant curiosity. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” Everett sat on his heels. “I need an extra pair of hands to help me with a project.”

“Mom mentioned it.” Chris said slowly, “She said you’d an old boat you wanted to fix up, and that if I helped you I could borrow it sometimes.”

“She’s only a skiff. But if you help me fix her up, she’s yours any time you want her.”

“Why?”

The poignant mix of disdain and hope in that one word made Everett want to reach out and squeeze the boy’s shoulder in reassurance.