When Snow Falls (12 page)

“So what were you doing there?”

Cheyenne took out a boiled egg and cracked it, using a paper towel to catch the shell, since she didn’t want to risk clogging up the garbage disposal. “I stopped by to get a dress I lent her, turned on the TV for a few minutes and fell asleep.”

“Oh.” With a yawn, Presley collapsed into a seat. “You really had me going there for a while. I searched all over for you.”

Fortunately, she didn’t ask to see the dress, because it was already hanging in Cheyenne’s closet. “You didn’t bother Sophia, did you?” She added salt to her egg. “She had an early flight to Hawaii.”

“When I couldn’t find you, I called over there, but no one answered. So I drove by and, of course, your car wasn’t parked out front. It wasn’t at Riley’s, either.”

Cheyenne looked up. “You left Mom alone?”

“I had to. I was afraid something had happened to you.”

Breathing a sigh of relief that Presley hadn’t managed to find her, Cheyenne took a seat at the table. There was just one more thing that concerned her.... “You didn’t call the police or anything, did you?”

“No.” Presley frowned, watching her eat. “I don’t like involving the police in our business, so I thought I’d wait a little longer. I was actually wondering if maybe you ran away.” She laughed uncomfortably. “Lord knows I’ve been tempted on occasion.”

“I wouldn’t leave you, Pres.”

“Really?”
she said.

Surprised by her insecurity, Cheyenne reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “Of course not. We’re sisters, right? We stick together.”

“Yeah, sisters.”

Cheyenne could barely hear her. She leaned closer. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Just don’t scare me like that again, okay? I was so worried.”

Cheyenne gave her a pointed look. “Now you know how
I
feel when
you
don’t come home.”

“That’s usual behavior for me. I work nights. I go out often. It’s not usual behavior for you.”

“There’s no excuse for being inconsiderate.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes and stood up to get a drink. “By the way, Joe DeMarco came by last night.”

Cheyenne twisted around to see her. “He did?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he want?”

“He asked for you.”

“And you told him…”

“That you were probably at Sophia’s.”

Her stomach knotted but she forced herself to swallow what was in her mouth. “What time was that?”

“Almost nine.”

Cheyenne
had
been at Sophia’s then. Thank God. “Did he say what he wanted?”

Presley returned with a glass of milk. “No, but he seemed disappointed you weren’t here.” She gave Cheyenne a suspicious grin. “You’re not seeing Gail’s brother, are you?”

“No.” Cheyenne shook her head. “Eve’s dating him. We’re just friends.”

She grinned. “Lucky Eve. He’s
cute.
”

Cheyenne didn’t want to be reminded of that. “He’s a nice guy.”

“He told me to have you call him.”

“I will. How was Mom last night?” Cheyenne held her breath, hoping Presley would take the bait, and felt another wave of relief when she allowed her to change the subject.

“Fine. She woke up for a few minutes and we chatted. But mostly she slept.”

Nothing new there. Cheyenne was about to throw away the paper towel she’d been using so she could take a shower and head over to the B and B when she noticed a shard of glass on the floor. “Did something get broken?”

“Oh!” Presley’s expression turned sheepish. “I was going to tell you about that.”

“What?”

“You know the picture of you, Eve, Gail and some of your other friends in Tahoe? The one you had on the mantel?”

“Yes…”

“I accidentally dropped it. But don’t worry. I’ll get you another frame.”

Cheyenne glanced at the fireplace. Sure enough, her picture was missing. But everything else was there, even some Christmas ornaments that were far more fragile. “What made you pick it up in the first place?”

“I was…dusting. What else?”

Rocking back, Cheyenne blinked at her. “Wow, what got into you?” she said with a laugh.

“I dust. Sometimes.”

“No, you don’t.” She laughed harder. “And you never offer to stay with Mom.”

Presley stared down at her hands, which were busy digging at her cuticles. “I guess I just realized how much you mean to me, and that I haven’t been the kind of help I should’ve been. I want to do more. I want to give you a reason to love me.”

Apparently, Presley was in a much more serious mood than Cheyenne had realized. “Stop. I do love you and I always will.”

Her sister smiled but, for some reason, it didn’t reach her eyes.

14

S
team was beginning to fill the bathroom, but Cheyenne let the shower run and stood in front of the mirror. She hadn’t inspected her body in a long while. There hadn’t been any point. She was the only one to ever see it. But now…now she wanted to put herself in Dylan’s shoes, to determine whether or not she was really as attractive as he made her feel.

She wasn’t too impressed with her own assets. In her opinion, several of her friends were prettier. But she wasn’t bad. At five foot nine, she was fairly tall—long and lean. Since Anita was the opposite, she assumed this genetic endowment came from her father, whoever he was. Or her old memories were what she feared. Her breasts were a C, the size most women seemed to want, or not far from it. And she’d been told through the years that she had nice legs.

She could use a tan, she decided, but it was the middle of winter so a guy couldn’t expect too much there.

Maybe she should cut her hair. Or start lifting weights. Dylan was certainly toned.

She could get a tattoo....

Suddenly, she wanted a drastic change, wanted to break out of the constraints that held her back, try new things, take a few risks.

But she wasn’t sure how to do that. She had her mother and sister to worry about, and would need to help her sister even after her mother died. She didn’t earn a lot of money. She lived in a small town and couldn’t see herself leaving the friends she’d made. Not only that, but her reputation would probably always mean a great deal to her. So how would she ever step away from being dutiful and responsible and…boring?

Apparently,
part
of her wanted to break out of her cocoon, and part was afraid to emerge as anything other than what she’d been.

“Chey?”

Presley was calling her.

Grabbing a towel, she wrapped it around herself and opened the door to find her sister standing on the other side. “Yes?”

“Mom and I figured out what that P.I. wanted.”

“You did?” Because of her involvement with Dylan, she’d all but forgotten about the man who’d approached Presley, looking for Anita.

“Remember that hit-and-run in New Mexico?”

“How could I forget it?” she said with a grimace. She was eleven when her mother had mowed down that cyclist, old enough to understand the terrible ramifications of Anita’s actions but not old enough to do anything about it. After that day, she’d had nightmares, could still remember the sound of their car hitting the metal of that man’s bike. But she’d never spoken of it. She didn’t want to speak of it now.

“They want to charge her with vehicular manslaughter.”

Cheyenne sagged against the door. “He
died?
”

“So it seems. They’ve been looking for her ever since.”

“We should turn her in.”

Presley’s chin snapped up.
“What?”

“I mean it.” Their mother had skated out of every mistake. Anita always ran, pointed a finger at someone else or manipulated the system. She’d been conning others her whole life, wreaking havoc and never cleaning up the messes she created, and Cheyenne was sick of it. She’d been sick of it for as long as she could remember.

“What good will
that
do?” Presley asked.

“It’ll give the victim’s family some closure. She should’ve called the police that day.”

“She was drunk! They would’ve taken her to jail. And then what? What would’ve happened to
us?
”

Cheyenne had no answer. Anita was all they’d ever had. Even the few friends Anita had made passed in and out of their lives very quickly. And she had no roots. What she did have, always, was a reason she couldn’t do the right thing, why she was justified in doing the opposite.

“She’s
dying,
Chey,” Presley said.

“Exactly.” Cheyenne hitched her towel higher. “We need to hurry.”

“I can’t believe you! That would affect us more than her. Do you really want to deal with something so negative? To live in the shadow of it? We had nothing to do with her drinking and driving. Anyway, Mom’s last days are hard enough. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s in horrible pain. If you want her to suffer, you can feel confident that she is.”

Want
her to suffer? Cheyenne didn’t want anyone to suffer. But sometimes she did crave justice, just as her mother’s victim probably did.

She pressed her forehead to the wall as her sister walked away. Why couldn’t Anita have been someone she could be proud of?

* * *

Presley stood inside Anita’s bedroom, listening to Cheyenne’s shower. She should’ve left the Eugene Crouch issue alone. She’d already sent him off with a story he seemed to accept, hopefully never to return. Why had she decided it would be so smart to put Cheyenne’s curiosity to rest, as well?

“What…are you doing?”

She turned to see that Anita was awake. “Kicking myself.”

“Why?”

Because she’d gone one step too far. “I made a stupid miscalculation where Cheyenne’s concerned.”

There was a long silence, but when she looked up, she saw that Anita was still watching her closely. “What…does that mean?”

“It means she’s angrier than I realized. And one day…” She wiped her sweaty palms on her sweats.

“One day?”

“I’m afraid of where it’ll lead.”

Anita’s eyes closed but reopened a second later. “She doesn’t know…about Crouch.”

“No.” Presley didn’t want to share with her mother what she’d just told Cheyenne. She and Anita had never spoken of the hit-and-run. It was something she preferred to forget; she wished she hadn’t brought it up to her sister.

“You’d better…hope she never learns.”

“Whatever happened in the past is over,” she insisted, and prayed to God it was true.

* * *

Before dialing Joe’s number, Cheyenne locked the door to her office. She could hear Riley and Jacob working upstairs. She doubted they’d come down, but didn’t want to be interrupted if they did. She preferred a few minutes of privacy to tell the man she’d wanted since she was fourteen that she couldn’t see him again, even while Eve was out of town.

Especially
while Eve was out of town.

His cell rang three times before he picked up.

“Finally,” he teased. “I thought maybe you weren’t going to allow me to apologize.”

She could hear sounds from the service station in the background. Obviously, he was at work. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I understand how seeing that guy would throw you. It’s fine.”

“He took me by surprise, but that’s no excuse.”

“Considering what you told me in your message, he had a lot of nerve, expecting you to greet him like a friend.”

“We
were
friends, once. That’s what makes it hard. But it’s been years. I shouldn’t have let him get to me.”

“Seeing him was a shock.”

“Thanks for being so understanding.” He covered the phone to tell someone he’d be just a minute. Then his voice deepened. “Does that mean you’ll give me another chance?”

She hauled in a deep breath. “I wish I could, Joe. I—I’ve had a crush on you for years,” she said with a weak laugh. “I’m sure you’re aware of that.”

“No, I wasn’t,” he said in astonishment.

“I guess I’m better at keeping a secret than I thought.”

“You’re certainly better at it than Eve.”

He was joking again, trying to ease the awkwardness, and that offered the perfect segue. “Speaking of Eve. She’s…great.”

Silence, then, “She
is
great.”

“She’s also my best friend,” Cheyenne continued. “And now that she’s interested in you, my hands are tied. I don’t…I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

“I admire your loyalty. That’s rare these days. But—”

“And I definitely don’t want to be the person to hurt her,” she broke in.

There was another long pause. “You’re saying even if I’m not interested in Eve, you don’t want to get involved with me.”

That was really her only choice. And yet, she knew it would be so much easier to forget her dark, sexy neighbor if she could throw herself into a relationship with Prince Charming instead.

Too bad it wasn’t possible. She’d been unsure and overwhelmed when Joe showed up with that bottle of wine—unsure and overwhelmed enough to let him in—but since then she’d received an education. Thanks to Dylan, she now understood how quickly attraction could ignite. “I can’t.”

Her honesty seemed to take him off guard. No doubt he’d been expecting a simple “no problem,” and a commitment to have dinner with him. Instead, she’d told him how long she’d yearned for his attention—and then refused to see him.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

“I’m sorry to say it,” she responded. “You’re one in a million.” With a wince, she hit the end button. Then she sat in her chair and stared at the picture of her and Eve taken while they were visiting Baxter in San Francisco earlier in the year.

“Friendship means a lot,” she reminded herself. Ignoring the sadness she felt for what might’ve been
at last,
she finished booking the internet reservations that had come in over the past couple of days.

* * *

Since his divorce, Joe hadn’t been eager to jump back into the dating pool. Bumping into the person he suspected to be the father of his youngest daughter, just as he was starting to feel that secret was safe, hadn’t helped. It’d reminded him why he’d sworn off women to begin with, how complicated and painful romantic relationships could get, especially when there were children involved.

But spending the rest of his life alone wouldn’t be much of an improvement. And Chey seemed like a woman he could trust. The telephone call he’d just had with her confirmed it. Suzie would’ve put herself above her friend without thinking twice. He had no doubt of that. Suzie believed she was the only one who had a right to be happy.

“Hey!”

Joe turned to see his father holding open the door between the minimart, where Martin had been working the register, and the auto-repair bays, where Joe had been overseeing the automotive end.

“We’ve hit a lull in here,” Martin said. “Can you watch the store while I grab us a sandwich at Stacked?”

“Sure.”

“What do you want?”

“Hot pastrami.”

“You got it.”

Grateful to know he had a few minutes to himself, without worrying about being interrupted or overheard by his father, Joe called his sister in L.A. Since he was interested in one of her friends, he figured he should probably get her permission and maybe a little advice.

“Don’t tell me this is my big brother, whom I rarely hear from unless
I
call,” Gail said when she came on the line.

Slightly embarrassed, he passed into the store. She was right; she was better at staying in touch. “I hope you’re not holding a grudge.”

“And I hope that one day you’ll start doing your part. What’s up? I might hear from you occasionally, but
never
in the middle of the day, which makes this call a bit suspect.”

“I must want something, huh?”

“Exactly. Is everything okay? Is it Dad? Are you two getting along?”

“Everything’s fine. How’s Simon?”

“Simon’s a handful. But I knew he’d be a handful when I married him.”

She sounded happy, and that made him feel optimistic, as if some marriages, even a high-risk marriage, could work. “I bet he’s busy.”

“Actually, he’s so excited about the baby he hardly leaves my side.”

Joe reorganized the candy near the register and threw away an empty box. “What’s the latest?”

“We still don’t know whether we’re having a boy or girl and we don’t want to find out until the baby’s born.”

“Only two more months to wait. What does Ty think of having a brother or sister?”

“He’s as excited as his daddy. He wants to name the baby Elmo.”

“Yikes.”

“Nothing could be worse.”

“Hard to believe you’re almost at the naming point. You were barely showing when I saw you last.”

She laughed. “I’m definitely poking out now.”

He asked about her PR company. She said it was thriving. He asked about Simon’s latest film. She said he’d insisted on a hiatus until their Lamaze classes ended. He asked when they might come to Whiskey Creek. She said they were hoping to visit soon. Then the conversation slowed, and her tone took on a playful note. “Okay, enough chitchat. You had a reason for calling me. What is it?”

Dexter Jones, a locksmith who lived in town, pulled up to get gas. Joe kept an eye out in case he needed help, but Dexter was paying at the pump.

“There’s a woman,” Joe said.

“A woman,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“Someone you like?”

“I think so.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” she said gleefully. “Where’d you meet her?”

“Right here in Whiskey Creek.” He wiped down the coffee area. “You know her, too. Quite well.”

“I know almost everyone in Whiskey Creek. Who is she?”

He stopped cleaning up. “One of your closest friends.”

Her silence seemed to come from surprise more than anything else. “Which one? You’ve never shown much interest in my friends, not romantically.”

“Because they were too young for me.”

“They haven’t closed the gap, Joe,” she said with a laugh.

“You know how it is. Now that we’re older…somehow those years don’t matter like they used to.”

“I see.” She sounded excited. “So are you going to tell me who we’re talking about?”

He was about to, but she cut him off before he could.

“Wait—let me can guess. You like Eve, right? Callie mentioned that she’s been talking about you lately—”

“It’s not Eve. But you’re getting close.”

“Callie?”

He watched Dexter fiddle with his phone while waiting for the pump to fill his tank. “Cheyenne.”

“That’s wonderful! There’s no one better than Chey. She’s more reserved than the others, which is why I didn’t think of her right away. She’s
definitely
different from your ex.”

“That might be the attraction,” he said dryly.

“I approve. Wholeheartedly.”

“You don’t mind?”