The Pursuit of Jesse (11 page)

“Oh, oh, oh!” Hannah said, pulling a small notebook from her purse. “A list. The everything-I-want-in-a-man list.”

“That’s easy,” Sarah said. “Financially secure, good listener, responsible, consistent.” She ticked the attributes off on her fingers. “A man who wants to be a father, doesn’t drink or do drugs, has never had a one-night stand, has never been to prison, doesn’t own a sports car—or a yacht—and above all else, is absolutely no fun.”

“You’ve thought about this before,” Missy said, chuckling.

“Only a few times.” Sarah glanced up and froze the moment she caught sight of a man coming into Duffy’s. Although his features were shadowed, she instantly knew him. Already the shape of Jesse—his short haircut, the breadth of his shoulders, the way he carried himself—was familiar.

As he moved into the dim light of the pub, she saw his features more clearly. He might’ve been smiling as he headed toward the group of men by the bar, but that jovial expression didn’t come close to making it to his eyes. This was not good.

Garrett slapped Jesse on the back and pulled him into the midst of the group, introducing him to a couple of islanders who didn’t often venture out to socialize. Among the men was Al Richter, the new postmaster, who was twice as grumpy and half as lovable as his predecessor, Sally McGregor.

All the while he seemed to be chatting it up, Jesse seemed to be surveying the Duffy’s crowd, looking for something. Or someone. He certainly couldn’t have missed the new bank manager and his wife sitting near him at the bar, eyeing him warily. When the man threw a twenty down on the bar and they got up and left, Sarah couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of satisfaction. But then Jesse’s gaze landed on her, and she knew he’d been looking for her. He was angry. At her. His gaze seemed to travel all over her at once as if he couldn’t decide what to do with her.

Then he shrugged out of his winter coat, dragging the collar of his sweater down his shoulder and baring another edge of that mysterious, very large black tattoo, and all Sarah could think about was the other day at her house when he’d gotten his shirt wet. His bare chest.
That tattoo. She took a gulp of white wine and willed her breathing to remain steady.

“What’s the matter?” Missy said, following Sarah’s gaze. “Oh. Garrett’s brother is here.”

“Is he?” Hannah spun around. “Is that him? Next to Garrett?”

“Yeah,” Sarah whispered, her throat suddenly dry.

“I thought you said he wasn’t at all attractive,” Hannah muttered.

“I guess dark and rugged isn’t my cup of tea.” Sarah took a sip of wine.

“Oh, sure.” Missy laughed, turning back around. “And I don’t go for FBI agents.”

“He’s not as handsome as Garrett, but he’s okay. So what?”

“So you have first dibs is what,” Hannah said. “With him working on your house 24/7, the other single women on this island don’t stand a chance.”

“Jesse fails every item on my list but one,” Sarah said. “He doesn’t own a sports car.”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Missy took a sip of her drink.

“Why?”

“For starters,” Missy said, “you said yourself that he’s been doing a great job on your house.”

“All right, I’ll give him consistent.”

“And responsible,” Missy added, clearly defending Jesse.

“That remains to be seen.”

“He doesn’t drink or do drugs.”

“Not anymore, but I’ll bet he used to,” Sarah said. “You want him, Hannah, you can have him.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“Wait a minute.” Hannah glanced from Sarah to Missy and back again. “You two have talked about this before, haven’t you?”

Jesse took a swig from a bottle of water and chuckled at something Garrett said. Then he made a comment that got the whole group of guys bellowing with laughter. There he was. The life of the party. The man everyone wanted to be with. Even her.

“Sarah?” Hannah looked confused. “What’s going on?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. Sarah had told Missy about a big chunk of her past. She might as well spill an abbreviated version to Hannah. After she’d finished, she took another big gulp of wine and glanced at her friends.

“Now I get your list,” Hannah said.

“I could be wrong,” Missy said. “But from everything I’ve heard and seen there’s not a lot about that story that sounds like Jesse.”

Jesse had set down his bottle of water and, with hands moving this way and that, he was clearly telling a story. The men beside him seemed spellbound. She knew the feeling.

“Bobby and Jesse are more alike than you know.”

“Maybe. But he sure has an interesting aura,” Missy said. “There’s a lot of red.”

Normally, Sarah would’ve found Missy’s woo-woo mumbo jumbo interesting, but this time she wasn’t buying it.

“Red is emotion,” Missy went on. “Raw passion. Determination. He’s very sexual.”

“Ooooh,” Hannah murmured.

“Missy—”

“The best of man, the worst of man.”

That piqued Sarah’s curiosity. “What does that mean?”

“He has amazing abilities inside him. As long as he puts his efforts to good use, he can do incredible things.”

“But there’s a dark side, isn’t there?” Sarah asked.

“There usually is,” Hannah muttered.

“I don’t see one, Sarah. His color is clear.”

His color could be perfect and he would still scare the hell out of her. That smile. That voice. Those eyes, looking at her as if he was thinking of undressing her. “I thought I was all over bad boys,” she said, groaning. “After all the things Bobby said and did. I thought I was finished with them.”

“We’ve all lived here for years,” Hannah said, her voice laced with more than a little disappointment. “It’s not as if Mirabelle offers much in the way of temptation.”

“You got that right.” Until Jesse.

“Maybe the man isn’t as bad as you think.”

Sarah shook her head. “He’s the epitome of a bad boy.”

She glanced up and saw Jonas coming into the bar, one bundled-up baby boy in each arm. He nodded to the men at the bar and proceeded toward their table. Before Sarah could tell Missy that her husband had arrived, Missy spun around as if she could sense his presence.

“There are my boys,” she said with a smile.

“And there’s Mommy,” Jonas said, bending to let Missy plant a kiss on each child’s cheek. “Sarah. Hannah,” Jonas said, nodding to each of them in turn.

“Are you hungry?” Missy asked.

“That can wait.” Jonas grinned at her. “First, I want a dance.”

“I’ll watch the babies,” Sarah offered.

“Thanks, Sarah, but there’s no need,” Jonas said. “I hold the boys and…Missy can hold me.
Real
close.” Then he bent down to kiss his wife’s head before whispering something in her ear. Her face beaming with a satisfied smile, Missy stood, threw her arms around Jonas’s waist and tugged them all out onto the dance floor, where they proceeded to dance much too slowly to the beat of the fast rock song.

“That’s it,” Hannah muttered, turning back toward Sarah. “I’m going to Madison for Valentine’s Day.”

Sarah laughed out loud, and then immediately sobered when she noticed Jesse had broken away from the group of men at the bar and was coming right toward their table. “Hello, ladies.” He smiled at Hannah. “You must be Hannah Johnson, the best teacher in the world if what Brian and Zach say is true.”

Hannah actually blushed. Blushed. “Well, on an island as small as Mirabelle,” she said, “the kids don’t have much by way of comparison.”

“I’m sure you’d hold your own in any big city.” He turned to Sarah. “Can I talk to you?” His grin belied the intensity in his eyes. “Alone.”

H
ANNAH RAISED HER EYEBROWS
in surprise at Jesse’s request, but a slight smile tugged at her lips. “Go ahead. I’ll watch your wine for you.”

Sarah glared at her friend. She was oblivious to Jesse’s true mood. Was Sarah the only one who could see there was a boiling tempest beneath his jovial exterior?

Then again, this was a small island. You could try running from conflict, but sooner or later it was bound to catch up to you. Except that maybe conflict wasn’t what she was worried about in this situation. The last time Sarah had been alone with Jesse, the attraction she’d felt toward him had been worse than an argument could ever be. Still, she’d confronted him and he’d taken it. Felon or not, didn’t he deserve the same from her? She stood and followed him.

A few steps away from Hannah, he asked, “Is there somewhere we can go that’s quiet?”

She hesitated. Being with him here in the bar surrounded by other islanders was one thing. Being alone with him was an entirely different matter.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he murmured. “I just want to talk.”

“The restaurant. It’s closed this time of night.” She led him across the bar and through a large set of double
doors. He closed the doors behind him and leaned against the wall.

The long, narrow room that looked out over Mirabelle’s empty marina was relatively quiet and dark but for the moon shining through the large windows facing the white expanse of a frozen Lake Superior. There was a distinct chill in the air.

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Is there something wrong at the hous—”

“You got a problem with me, that’s fine.” Jesse spun around and glared at her. “Don’t take your issues with me out on Zach.”

She stiffened. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Like hell. You wouldn’t let Brian have a sleepover at Zach’s house tonight. Why?”

She wished she could say she’d labored over the decision, that she’d spent hours pondering the implications of the influence Jesse might have or not have on Brian. The fact was her decision tonight had been a knee-jerk reaction to what had happened in her house the other day. Jesse had frightened her.

“I don’t know much about you,” she said. “And what I do know makes me wonder what kind of influence you’d have on Brian.”

Silent, he walked toward the windows. Stood there, looking out.

“Tell me,” she whispered, “why you went to prison.”

J
ESSE’S THROAT WENT DRY
and he couldn’t seem to push out a single word. He’d known this moment would eventually come. He’d known that at some point he was
going to have to spill his guts to someone on this island. He just hadn’t wanted that first someone to be Sarah.

“I need to know,” she whispered.

“I’m no threat to Brian. Or you. Isn’t knowing that enough?”

“Going to prison…had to have a big impact on you. I need to know what you did. I need to know who you are before I can let my son be alone with you.”

“You said you know who I am. Remember?” He turned away, anger building inside him. What right did she have to intrude? What right—

But the truth was that his shame wasn’t her problem. He’d been working for her for weeks now and, for the most part, she’d let it lie. She was Brian’s mother and she had a right to limit his involvement with a felon. She was being a good mother. She deserved to know the truth.

“Jesse, tell m—”

“I’ve always worked construction,” he said, not really sure how to begin. “Usually followed the weather. In the winters I went south. In the summers I came north. Late one summer, I was working outside of Milwaukee. A housing development. I was in charge of two of the projects. This was years back. During a peak in new building.”

He started pacing in front of the windows and refused to look at her, knowing that the mere sight of Sarah’s eyes might cause him to freeze up.

“We’d all been working God-awful hours,” he went on. “Trying to complete the houses before the snow started flying. Seventy-hour weeks for more than a month. Finally, we got to a point where we could relax. It was a Saturday night. The heat was off and all the crews were celebrating.”

“You mean at a bar?” she asked.

Jesse nodded. He could almost hear the music playing in the background, the voices in his head as if it was yesterday.

Come on, Jesse. Bottoms up.

Happy hour ain’t happy without the life of the party.

You’re empty, man. That’s no good.

One more. It’s just beer. It’s not like you’re doing shots, right?

On and on and on, that night’s dialogue had been running through his mind for years. Though the lines might change from one time to the next, one thing remained constant. He was always left with the desperate longing to go back in time and do it all over again. Do it right this time.

“The bottom line is that I drank one beer too many and then got behind the wheel of my truck.” He stopped and stared out into the bitterly cold night. There was no way he could look at Sarah. “I was on my way home when I fell asleep. Next thing I knew, my horn was blaring and the air bag had smacked me in the face. I don’t know how long it took to get that thing out of the way, but by the time I climbed out of the truck, sirens were wailing toward me. I’d run my truck right up onto the sidewalk and smashed into the corner of a drugstore.”

“So you got a DWI. That doesn’t explain—”

“I hit a man, Sarah.” His hands trembled and his heart raced. He turned then, knowing he had to face her. He had to face what he’d done.

She stared at him, her eyes wide.

“I ran into a human being with my truck,” he whispered, the truth spilling from him like bile. “One min
ute the man was at one of those video machines outside a drugstore picking out a movie. And the next minute he was pinned between the front of my truck and the brick building.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Was he still alive?”

“Unconscious, but alive.” Jesse nodded, forcing himself to hold her gaze. “I ran back to the truck, threw her in Reverse, but she wouldn’t budge.” He swallowed. “My truck had somehow gotten wedged between that building and a corner streetlight.”

She put her hand to her mouth and her eyes watered, but she didn’t turn away from him as he’d expected. She didn’t look away as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him. The way he often couldn’t stand the sight of himself.

“Seconds later, an ambulance arrived and the EMTs pushed me aside. Then the cops came.”

“How did they get the man free?”

“The cops drove gently into the side of my truck, dislodging it.”

“Did the man die?”

“No. And the man’s name is Hank Bowman.” A husband, son and brother. “He ended up with head injuries and internal bruising. He was in a coma for about a month. But the worst thing…” he said, pausing. “He’s now paralyzed from the waist down. Hank hadn’t even turned thirty years old yet when I ruined his life. He may never walk again.”

For Jesse, one of the worst parts about it all was that he couldn’t remember a thing about hitting Hank with his truck. Jesse had been asleep at the time he’d gone off the road and that wasn’t right, that he had no memory of the moment of impact. By rights, he should
be haunted by that instant every day, day in and day out for the rest of his life. The look of Hank’s face as the grille of Jesse’s truck hit the man’s body should cause restless nights and plague his nightmares. Nothing else seemed like justice.

“And don’t go off saying things like at least he didn’t die. At least you didn’t kill him. At least he didn’t…” Jesse groaned and spun away from her. Jesse’s family, his mother and brothers and sister-in-law had tried to help him cope, tried to help him feel better. “There’s no way to make this okay. No way to diminish the wrong I did.”

He’d had almost four years to think about this. Justify. Minimize. Rationalize. Hell, all he’d had were a couple of beers that night. His only problem had been drinking on an empty stomach. People drove drunk all the time and never got caught. Never caused an accident. Here he was, with his first DWI, and this is what happened. All he’d done was fall asleep. Such a simple thing. It wasn’t his fault the guy had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, in the end, he knew in his heart. There was no excuse for what he’d done. No excuse.

“So you went to trial and were convicted—”

“I waived my right to a trial and pled guilty. With my clean record, Garrett said that a good attorney could’ve gotten me off without any prison time, but that didn’t seem right. Hank lost his ability to walk as a direct result of me slamming my truck into him,” Jesse whispered. “I broke the law and deserved to go to jail.”

Sarah looked back at him, but he couldn’t for the life of him venture a guess as to what she was thinking.

“That’s the only time. The only time I’ve ever hurt anyone,” he offered. “There are no cars on Mirabelle,
and I won’t ever touch a drop of alcohol so long as I live. So you go ahead and hate me all you want, Sarah. I won’t blame you. But don’t punish Zach, or Brian, because of what I did. I would never, ever hurt either one of those boys.”

There. It was done.

Jesse spun away from the look on Sarah’s face and stalked through the double door and out of Duffy’s dining room. Keeping his head down, he went directly toward the pub’s side exit, effectively evading anyone he might’ve met in the short time he’d been on the island. Then he ran down the alley, crossed Main and took off up the hill to Garrett’s house as fast as his legs would carry him.

Now that it was out of him, now that Sarah knew, he should’ve felt relieved, free. Instead, shame overwhelmed him. The freezing air numbed his cheeks and stung his lungs, but still he couldn’t erase the look on Sarah’s face from his mind. Part anger, part sympathy, part pity, and all disgust. He couldn’t take it anymore.

On reaching the house, he nodded at the boys and their babysitter watching a movie in the family room and headed directly back to the spare bedroom, grabbed his duffel bag from under the bed and started throwing things inside. The new clothing he’d bought. The books. A few new toiletries. If he had to cross Chequamegon Bay’s ice pack on foot, he was getting the hell off this island tonight.

The front door opened and closed. A moment later footsteps pounded down the hall and a big shadow appeared in the doorway. Garrett. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Jesse said. “I’ve overstayed my welcome. That’s all.”

“I saw you leaving Duffy’s. I saw the look on your face. And I saw Sarah coming out of the dining room a moment later.”

Jesse continued throwing things in his pack.

“You told her, didn’t you?”

Jesse paused, but he kept his back to his brother and his mouth closed, not trusting himself to speak in that instant.

“Jesse, listen to me,” Garrett said. “I know I played a bit of a hard-ass when you first got to Mirabelle, but I was worried you might slip back into some old bad patterns. You haven’t. You’ve changed. You’ve grown. You’ve done your time. You deserve to move on.”

“Do I?”

“You paid your debt to society.”

“What about my debt to Hank? He’s in a wheelchair, for God’s sake. May never walk again. He had to sell his house and move because he couldn’t go up stairs. He can only enter buildings that are handicapped accessible. He lost his job because of me. His life. Even his marriage is on the rocks.”

“You’ve kept in touch with him?”

“He’s kept in touch with me. God only knows why, but he visited me a couple times in prison. Sent emails.” Jesse put his head down. “I took everything away from Hank. He won’t ever be able to move on, Garrett. Why should I have that luxury?”

“So that’s it?” Garrett said. “One sign of trouble and it’s hit the road again.”

Garrett paced behind him. “Dammit, Jesse! I thought things would be different this time. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you haven’t changed.”

Jesse spun around ready to defend himself. “You don’t understand—”

“You can’t face what you did.”

“That’s not entirely true,” he murmured. “I can’t face…Sarah.”

Garrett held his gaze.

“People I don’t know. I can stand their disapproval. Jonas. Sean. That couple at the pub tonight. They don’t know me. They don’t know what’s inside. They don’t know what I’ve been through. But there’s something about Sarah.” He threw a balled-up T-shirt into his pack. “I don’t know how to live with the way she looked at me.”

“You live with it by staying and fighting it. You follow through on a job you committed to finishing. Sarah doesn’t need to like you for you to get the job done. And you don’t need to like her. She’s your boss.”

Garrett didn’t understand.

“Maybe…just maybe…if you show Sarah the man you’ve become, she’ll come around. With any luck, she’ll eventually accept and possibly even respect the brother I know regrets with his whole heart and soul what happened that night four years ago. Stay, Jesse. Face it.”

Zach appeared in the doorway. He glanced down at the bag on the bed and pushed his way into the room. “You’re not leaving, are you, Uncle Jesse? You can’t leave. You just got to Mirabelle.”

Everything in Jesse was ready to bolt and run. He wanted to be anyplace but here. Someplace he wouldn’t know anyone. Someplace no one knew him. Someplace—

Then what? Some other town? Some other job? If not Sarah, it’d be someone else he was starting to care about who would look at him the way she had tonight.
That was the real problem. He’d started to care for Sarah. Zach, Brian and Erica, too. Jesse glanced from the boy’s face to his brother’s. He’d missed Garrett much more than he’d realized all these years.

“Uncle Jesse? Are you really leaving?”

He’d planned on staying on the island only long enough to stash away some traveling cash, but is that really what he wanted? Was the man who’d walked out of prison really no different than the man they’d locked up four years ago?

Maybe it was time this rolling stone settled for a while, at least until this frozen rock of an island thawed a bit. Maybe it was time to prove to himself he’d changed, regardless of Sarah. “No, Zach, I’m not going anywhere,” Jesse said, giving his nephew a half smile. “Had some dirty clothes to carry down to the washing machine.” He glanced at Garrett. “I’ll be staying on Mirabelle for a little while yet.”