Authors: Kris Fletcher
“Mommy, can we go? I’m bored.”
“No, Tish. Not yet.” There. On the other side of an ostentatious marble angel, there was Harley Prestwick, town historian. He’d lived in Comeback Cove forever. Surely he would have a tale or two.
“Wait here,” she ordered the kids. “I’ll be right back.”
Gravel flew from beneath her sensible pumps as she walked double-time down the path. For a man in his seventies, Harley could move. It wasn’t until she reached out to tap his shoulder that she realized her request might seem a bit bizarre, or that Harley might not be up for company at the moment. But Harley had never been known to suffer in silence. And surely the needs of three children couldn’t be ignored.
“I have a favor to ask,” she began, and explained her request as quickly as possible, stopping a couple of times to catch her breath. She really had to make time to exercise.
Luckily, Harley was not only agreeable, but he also seemed eager to have someone to talk to on this sunny afternoon. Lyddie walked beside him back to the kids and sent up a prayer of thanks.
Within minutes, Harley was seated on a granite bench, Tish beside him, Ben and Sara leaning against a pair of flowering crabs.
“Well,” the old man began, “your father was a couple of years behind my boys in school. But I remember him well. Always a nice fellow, even back then, you know. Polite. And good-hearted, too, looking out for the little kids...”
Harley droned on. Lyddie checked the kids’ faces and saw what she feared: the initial curiosity had dwindled to bored endurance. Once again, they were only hearing what they’d heard a hundred times before. Glenn the saint, Glenn the selfless one, Glenn the hero.
Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all.
She turned to see if there were any other possibilities wandering the cemetery and found herself almost face-to-face with J. T. Delaney.
“Oh!” She stepped back, flushing at the realization that her breasts had been about two inches from his chest. Memories of the boathouse engulfed her. She looked away, fast, before she could start blushing. Or worse—imagining.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay. You just caught me by surprise.”
“I cut across the grass.” He grinned. “Years of practice playing graveyard tag.”
“What a lovely pastime.” He looked rather lovely, too, she had to admit. The tight shorts and chest-hugging shirts had been abandoned today in favor of a yellow-striped short-sleeved shirt and gray cargo pants. Not exactly Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, but it gave him a far more respectable air. Almost like an adult.
Which made her wonder...
“How old are you?”
“How old am I?” His eyes sparked with familiar mischief when he grinned. “To borrow a line from the song, old enough to know better, but still too young to care.”
Lyddie felt the heat rise to her face once again. She must be as pink as the blossoms on the crab tree. At this rate, she could pose for the “before” pictures in an ad for sunscreen.
“I’m sorry. That was incredibly rude. It’s just, I was wondering—did you know Glenn? My husband? Back in school, I mean.”
He seemed to tense for a second, though so quickly that Lyddie was sure she had imagined it. “Sure I did. Not really well—he was a year ahead of me—but we were in the church senior-high group together for a while.”
Two facts registered at the same time: if he’d been a year behind Glenn, then she and J.T. were probably the same age. And the thought of the Comeback Cove hellion in a church youth group was almost enough to make her snort with laughter.
“I have a favor to ask.” She spoke quickly to cover her giggles. Once again she outlined her request. Surely even a church group had to have had some wild times with J.T. involved.
* * *
S
HE
SPOKE
SO
QUIETLY
that he had to lean close to catch all her words. Not that he minded. The nearer he drew to her skin, the more aware he was of a subtle perfume even more alluring than the crab apple scent filling the air. There was a warmth that surrounded her. Maybe it was all that pink—the faint rose that washed her cheeks, the deeper hue of her dress.
He’d never seen her in anything but work clothes. The long shorts she usually wore were definitely all business. But this skirt that kind of drifted around her shins, well, that lent a whole different interpretation to the bit of leg visible below. The pant things said
go no further.
The dress—
“So do you think you could help me out?”
Damn. She’d caught him unprepared. “Sorry?”
“Okay, I guess I garbled that. I need a story or two. About Glenn. One in which he’s something less than a saint.”
Could he tell tales on Glenn? Hell, yeah. Including at least one that he could guarantee she had no desire to hear.
The irony of her request made him look away. He could well understand her desire to have her kids learn some new things about their father, but cripes, Glenn had died saving this town. Nothing would be served by telling them things that would minimize what he had done, what they had lost.
But surely he could come up with something. And to tell the truth, he was feeling a bit lost himself after paying his respects to his own father. He would be grateful for the chance to make some kids smile.
“Lead the way.”
He followed her to the group beneath the tree. Harley Prestwick wouldn’t take kindly to being replaced, but tough. If the kids’ slumped shoulders and glazed eyes were any indication, this crowd had checked out a long time ago. He was pretty sure the only things holding them in place were inertia and good manners.
“...and I looked at my boy Jeff and I said to him, yes sir, you watch that Brewster boy and you’ll be in great shape.” Harley beamed at his audience, then caught sight of J.T. His mouth twisted as if he’d tasted something sour. “Hello, J.T.”
“Afternoon, Harley. Hi, guys. I’m J. T. Delaney, and I know you’ve all heard about me so you can stop pretending to be polite when I know you want to stare.” That got him a grin from the boy, who said his name was Ben. The oldest girl, Sara, blushed as she introduced herself and stared off in the distance, just like her mother. The little girl eyed him up and down.
“I’m Tish. What’s J.T. mean?”
“It’s my initials. Justin Tanner. But around here it means Just Trouble.”
Well, that certainly wiped the smile from Lydia’s face.
Tish studied him again, then propped her hands on her hips. “I don’t believe you. You’re too nice for that name.”
Damn. Outed by a kid. Did she get that ability to see beyond the surface from her mother?
“So I hear you guys want to hear about your dad when he was a kid.”
Harley stirred from the turtle-in-the-shell pose he’d taken up when J.T. started talking. “We’re fine here, J.T. I told them all they need to know.”
More like he’d turned a good but human man into a candidate for sainthood, from what J.T. had seen.
“I’m sure you told them all the important stuff, Harley, about what a great guy Glenn was. But with all due respect—”
Harley snorted. Behind him, Lydia slapped her hand over her mouth as if to suppress a sudden urge to break into laughter.
God, she was cute.
“With all due respect, I think I knew a side of Glenn that you never saw. Did you guys ever hear about the time he almost poisoned the science teacher?”
“No way!”
That got them. All three kids inched closer. Even Lydia seemed surprised.
All of a sudden, J.T. wished he’d spent more time with Glenn Brewster. Not just because he’d been a great guy, but so that J.T. could keep spinning stories to bring that soft glow to Lydia’s eyes.
“Okay. This was way back. I was going into grade twelve, so your dad would have been heading into grade thirteen.”
“Grade thirteen?” Ben gave him a dubious look.
“Uh-huh. Back then, we could finish up after grade twelve, or stick around for an extra year. It was supposed to get us ready for university.” He winked at the kid. “’Course, I never got to do that year, but your dad did. Anyway, it was just before school started. Your dad was helping out down at the coffee shop and...”
In the middle of the tale, J.T. realized that Harley had disappeared. By the end of the saga of Glenn’s adventures in trail riding, he noticed that Lydia had joined Tish on the grass, pulling the little one onto her lap and sharing in the laughter. She had a great laugh. It was full and throaty and brimming with life, and he’d lay money that she didn’t get to use it nearly as often as she should.
He wished he could do something about that.
Somewhere around the fourth account, right around the time he noticed that Sara was casting some mighty curious glances between him and her mom, he stumbled over an unexpected truth.
“...so Glenn gave the guy the coffee, never even asked who he was even though this crowd had followed him in, and then—”
And then, he got it. It was so clear that he wondered how the hell he’d missed it before.
He didn’t realize he’d stopped talking until Ben scrunched up his nose and shoved his glasses higher up the bridge.
“J.T.? Is something wrong?” Lydia’s laughter was gone. The frown lines between her eyebrows were back, and he gave himself a mental kick.
“Sorry.” He pulled himself together. “I, uh, just remembered something. Anyway, the guy went to pay and he pulled out his credit card and then...”
Lydia didn’t care about the location of her business. Well, maybe she did—she wasn’t dumb, she knew what a prize spot she had—but that wasn’t it. She wanted the building itself. Lydia Brewster wanted to hold on to the building because her husband used to work there and she was trying to keep it for her kids. Just like she wanted stories that would make him seem real. She wanted to make sure her kids—Glenn’s kids—would have every chance to know the person he had been. Not just from pictures and memories, but by walking the floors he’d walked and doing the things he’d done.
At that moment he vowed that he would do whatever it took to make sure Lydia got to keep her building. After what she and her kids had gone through, they deserved that much. After all, a hero should be remembered. Not sainted, not idolized, but remembered.
Even if that hero had been part of the group that had almost destroyed the town twenty-five years ago.
CHAPTER FIVE
A
COUPLE
OF
DAYS
LATER
,
Lyddie stood dumbfounded in front of the bank manager’s desk and tried to make sense of what he was telling her.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Ted McFarlane—sometimes known irreverently as the First Man, in reference to him being married to Mayor Jillian—shifted in his chair. It was obvious that he didn’t like being the bearer of bad news.
Tough.
“Lyddie, if it were up to me I’d approve the loan. I know you’re good for the money. But I have other people to answer to, and they don’t understand—”
She huffed out her disbelief. “Spare me the song and dance, Ted. Jillian doesn’t want me to buy the building, does she?”
He tugged at the tie that always seemed out of place around his thick jock neck. “Jillian has nothing to do with bank business.”
“Really. So it’s just a coincidence that my request was turned down two days after I heard that the potato-chip guy from Brockville was dropping hints about a major donation to the school upgrade fund if he got the building?”
“You heard that?”
“Loud and clear.”
“It’s merely a rumor at this point. And as I said, that has nothing to do with your loan.”
Like hell it didn’t. Nadine had been a steady source of reliable gossip. She’d dropped a couple of hints over the past few days that Jillian wasn’t happy about the possibility of Lyddie buying the buildings. Her Worship wanted River Joe’s to continue, but she wasn’t averse to a move if it meant stable jobs.
In all honesty, Lyddie couldn’t blame Jillian. The mayor had to put the good of the town first. But no one else knew what that building meant to her. There were mornings when she could still picture Glenn’s head popping around the door after they stopped in to see his dad, days when she could still see him lounging in the chairs by the fireplace. He
lived
in that building. Letting it go wasn’t an option.
“You know, Lyddie, the only problem is the amount of the loan. If you were to ask for less—say, enough to buy just one building that isn’t on the waterfront—I’m sure we could work something out.”
Of course he could. Jillian would approve of that.
“No, thanks.”
“I am sorry about this. You know how much the town appreciates all you’ve done over the years.”
There it was—the opening she needed. It was impossible to miss the guilt in Ted’s voice. He was being manipulated by Jillian, no doubt, and Lyddie would bet her last dollar that he was looking for an excuse to reverse his decision. Ted wasn’t a bad guy. One mention of Glenn’s name, one tear down her cheek, and the money would be hers.
Do you really want to tie yourself so permanently to a town where they call you the Young Widow Brewster?
Enough. She would find another way—one that didn’t involve losing her self-respect.
“Goodbye, Ted. I’ll see you around.”
“I...uh... Will you be okay, Lyddie? Can we talk about a smaller loan?”
“No, thanks. Rumor has it there are other banks. Even some that aren’t in Comeback Cove.”
* * *
J.T.
TURNED
OFF
the highway onto the road to the Cove after a long day in Cornwall taking care of assorted business matters. All he wanted was to go home, get something to eat and avoid getting suckered into watching another episode of
Downton Abbey
with his mother.
Then he realized what he’d been thinking, and had to laugh. When was the last time he’d thought of this place as home?
He cranked some classic Guess Who and slowed for the infamous Maple Road Bend in front of the high school, checking twice to make sure no idiots were out to prove their manhood by flying through with their lights—
“What the hell?”
He jammed on the brakes, sending the car swerving. Something had just raced across the shadows of the school lawn.
Probably a deer. But as he switched off the engine and opened the door, he knew there was nothing doe-like about what he’d seen.
He stood silent with his hands braced on the car roof, peering into the darkness. The sky was clear but moonless—great for stargazing, not so good for picking out activity. He forced himself to be patient, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Soon, he knew, whatever was hiding would move again.
There! Beside the row of oaks that marked the property line, a burst of movement and an abbreviated gust of laughter gave him his answer. Kids. At least three of them. Given the time of night and the speed with which they were fleeing, they were undoubtedly up to no good. The question was, had he spotted them before or after it was mission accomplished?
If he had half a brain, he would get back in the car and drive straight home. Pulling over in the lot and walking around the school in search of damage was nothing short of idiocy. If there were damage, and if he were found at the scene—highly likely, given his history—then he’d be looking at a hefty fine, minimum, for destroying public property. The town would finally get the chance to pin something on him.
Another movement caught his eye. Something was in the bushes by the flagpole.
Walk away, Delaney.
He meant to. He did. But a low sound drifted toward him, like a muffled moan of pain, and in a second he was sprinting across the grass. If some little jackass had got himself hurt—
But it wasn’t
any
little jackass, as he saw the minute he pushed aside the fragrant cedar branches and took in the frightened face before him.
“Ben?”
The kid bit his lip in a gesture that seemed all too familiar. His eyes were bigger than J.T. remembered. And he was crouching, as if he couldn’t quite bear his own weight.
“Come on, Ben. I know it’s you. J. T. Delaney, remember? I talked to you guys at the cemetery the other day.”
Ben’s brave expression did a slow crumple.
“You hurt yourself?”
A nod. At least it was a response.
“Okay. Let’s call your mom and get you home. Think you can walk?”
There was a crackle of twigs and dry leaves as the boy moved—then a small yip as he lurched forward and landed heavily against J.T.’s side.
“Whoa, buddy. Is it your ankle?”
“Yeah.”
All of a sudden,
Downton Abbey
was looking a lot more appealing.
Ten minutes later, J.T. pulled into the Brewster driveway. Ben spoke only to give directions that J.T. didn’t need, but pretended otherwise just to haul a few words out of the kid. There was a story here and he was pretty sure he understood it. Too bad he couldn’t get a little corroboration.
As he killed the engine he saw a figure hurrying down the porch steps. Lydia probably started watching out the window the minute he called. The leap of pleasure he felt when he saw her was a welcome surprise. The fact that she smelled like vanilla and made his heart beat a little faster was a bonus.
She beat him to the passenger side of the car.
“Oh, Benjie. What happened?”
The boy mumbled halfheartedly. “Nothing.”
She frowned. J.T. felt oddly jubilant, glad that she wasn’t taking the attitude in stride.
“Let’s get you inside and have a look at the ankle.” Her tone shifted. “Then we’ll talk.”
He helped Ben out of the car. Lydia braced the boy on the other side. It seemed like a good system until their hands met somewhere in the middle of Ben’s rigid back, sending a
zing
straight down his arm.
“Sorry.” Lydia curled her fingers away from his, but he wasn’t ready to lose that touch yet.
“Actually, it will probably work better if we hold hands. Or at least grab wrists. We’ll be more stable that way.”
“Oh. Okay.” She extended her hand and he circled her wrist with his fingers.
She felt... He wasn’t sure how to describe her. Soft, but strong. Pliant, but not something he could shove around.
Holding Lydia’s wrist, he decided, was probably a sneak preview of how it would be to hold her in his arms.
“Ready?” She sounded slightly breathy, the way she had in the boathouse. Damn. Did she feel it, too?
Good.
Soon they deposited the boy on a sofa in an exceedingly cluttered family room. Here in the light, J.T. could clearly see the paleness of Ben’s face. He was one hurting puppy.
“Let’s have a look.” Lydia kneeled on the floor and tugged on the lace of Ben’s sneaker.
The slump of her shoulders made him frown. It must get damned tiring, being the only parent 24/7.
“Here. Let me have a look.” He moved in and probed the ankle with experienced fingers. “How’s it feel here? How about here?”
“You sound like you know what you’re doing.”
“I ran cross-country in school. I’ve dealt with a few ankles in my time.” Her vanilla scent was making it damned difficult for him to think clearly. “I bet that if you ice it and keep it elevated overnight, it should be a lot better by morning.”
“Sounds good.” Lydia was back to her usual brisk efficiency. “We’ll deal with the ankle tonight. The rest will wait.”
J.T. hid a grin as he straightened. He wouldn’t want to be in Ben’s half-laced sneaker in the morning.
“Need me to get him up the stairs?”
The look she sent him was so filled with gratitude, he felt like he’d just rescued a drowning kitten. “That would be wonderful. My mother-in-law is at bingo tonight, and this lug is getting too big for me to manage on my own.”
“My pleasure.”
And it was, even though the presence of a banister for Ben to lean on meant there was no excuse to touch Lydia. By the time he got Ben to his room—one so filled with geek apparatus that it could have been his own at that age—Lydia had joined them with ice packs and extra pillows. He headed back down, listening to the soft rise and fall of their voices while he waited for Lydia. Only because he needed to tell her about the circumstances surrounding Ben’s injury, of course. When she crept down the stairs, her smile was weary but still welcoming.
“Let me guess,” she said softly. “He didn’t get injured while helping a little old lady cross the street.”
“Only if she’s a hell of a runner.”
“Okay. You’d better give me the whole story.” She nodded toward the door. “Let’s go out on the porch so I don’t wake anybody when I start to fume. Can I get you anything? Some coffee, or a beer, or—”
“I’m good, thanks.”
And he was. Despite the fatigue creeping in after a long day of driving and meetings, despite the dread he felt at needing to give her news she didn’t want to hear, just the thought of spending a half hour on a secluded porch with Lydia made him feel inordinately cheerful.
Once outside, he settled himself in the rocking chair she indicated. She sat in the chair beside his, kicked off her flip-flops and propped bare feet on the railing, sighing as she leaned back. He was tempted to throw off his sandals and follow suit. The question was, would he be able to resist a game of footsie?
“Okay.” She spoke without looking at him, head tilted back, eyes closed. “Give it to me straight.”
He summarized the events and his suspicions, stressing that Ben had not acted alone. He didn’t want her to think that her kid was the only budding juvenile delinquent in town. Especially when he mentioned the cans of spray paint he’d spied in the bushes.
When he finished, she sat in silence. She was so quiet, her breathing so steady, that for a moment he thought she might have fallen asleep. He watched the rise and fall of her breasts and felt an unexpected contentment creep over him. What was it about this woman that felt so damned right?
At last she spoke. “I’m glad you were the one to catch him. Someone else might not have been so willing to give him a second chance.”
Did she mean that only someone with his history would be willing to cut the kid some slack? Honor among thieves, and all that? He hoped not. He wanted her to see that there was more to him than a lousy reputation.
But they weren’t talking about him, and neither did he want to go down that road at the moment. So he settled for saying, “Yeah, well, they get kind of protective about old Maple Road School here in—”
She made a strange sound, like a smothered cough.
“What did I say?”
“It’s not Maple Road School anymore.”
“It isn’t? When did they—oh. Right.” He remembered now. The school had been rechristened a couple years ago. It was now known as Brewster Memorial.
So not only was the kid out to vandalize public property, but he was also going after something dedicated to his father and grandfather. Wouldn’t Freud have a field day with that one?
“You can tell me to take a hike,” he said, eyes firmly fixed upward on the stars that he’d been watching since he was Ben’s age, “but I remember summers around here when I was a kid. Boring as hell. Still the same?”
“Afraid so. There’s day camp, but he’s too old for that, and he’s too young for a job.”
“So he spends his day plotting trouble with his friends?”
“It sure looks that way.” She sighed. “I didn’t think... Not to sound like a bragging mom, but he’s smart. Really smart. Which is great except that he’s kind of outgrowing everyone around him, so when he started hanging out with those kids, I hoped...well...” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “He’s not a bad kid. Really. He’s just... It’s a hard age, I guess.”
If she hadn’t said that, he might have been able to say good-night and walk away. Might have. But how many times had he overheard his mother defend him to his father using those same words?
“Is he any good with his hands?”
With that, she finally stirred, lifting her head to face him. “Excuse me?”
“Can he hammer a nail and handle a paintbrush?”
“Sure, but—”
“I have three cottages to fix up before I can sell them. I could use a set of extra hands.” Yeah, like a hole in the head.
She sat upright, staring at him with a gleam in her eyes visible even in the darkness of the night. “You want to hire Ben?”
“If he’s interested. I’d pay him a few bucks a day and work him hard.”
“Hard enough that he’d be too tired to go out and make trouble at night?”