by Robert Hass
Annie sighed, a long-suffering huff of air. “You have in-school suspension for the rest of the week. I suppose that’s enough, if you promise to control your temper and stay out of trouble.” Tiredly, she rubbed two fingers over her forehead. “Now go finish your homework.”
The kid pivoted to leave the room. Sloan stopped him. “Wait a minute.”
Eyes rolling, body cocked to one side in an expression of annoyance, Justin said, “What?”
“Don’t you have something to say to your mother?”
Justin squirmed, clearly not wanting to lose face, but when neither adult relented, he muttered, “Sorry, Mom.”
Sloan narrowed his eyes and studied the lanky boy. Something about his stance was uncannily familiar. “How old are you, kid?”
Annie shot him a long look.
“Eleven. What’s it to you?”
Maybe more than either of us knows.
Eleven. Justin was eleven. With that worrisome little tidbit eating into his brain like a woodworm, Sloan did the math and considered the possibilities.
Nah, he couldn’t be.
Could he?
Chapter Three
Bluetooth headset attached to his ear like an oversize cockroach, Sloan exited his bedroom with an armload of clothes to toss in the washer.
“Yeah, send Blake and Griffith with the ambassador’s family. Some segments of Manila aren’t excited about his mission. We may encounter problems there. Tell the team to be on their toes.” As head of Worldwide Security Solutions, he contracted with the government and military on a regular basis. This latest assignment in the Philippines had him worried. Muslim extremists had infiltrated the area. “Sure, no problem. How’s the issue in Afghanistan we discussed yesterday?”
Listening intently, he rounded the top of the stairs…and slammed into Annie. The bundle of clothes went flying. Annie stumbled back and started to fall. Instinctively, Sloan reached out, grasped her upper arms and yanked forward. Annie ended up cradled in his arms, against his chest.
His first sensation, besides the adrenaline pumping like pistons through his bloodstream, was the smell of her hair. He’d teased her in high school about washing her hair in apple juice. Apparently, she still did.
The second thought was of how she fit against him, curved in all the right places and softer than silk. She must have been stunned, too, because she didn’t move for several seconds. Several torturous seconds while he flashed back to age nineteen and the wild, desperate love he’d felt for Annie Crawford.
His throat went dry. This was not good, not good at all.
He told his arms to release her. He told his legs to step back one stair step. His well-trained body, capable of taking out an enemy in three-point-six seconds, would not obey.
The voice in his ear said his name. Once. Twice.
“Later,” he muttered, too distracted to remember the business conversation.
While he battled inwardly, both reveling in the touch and dismayed at the yearning, Annie stiffened.
“Excuse me,” she said, voice muffled against his Harley T-shirt. When he didn’t move, she wiggled away, retreating one step so that he was looking down into her upturned face.
She wasn’t happy about the unexpected contact either. Above the blush cresting on her cheekbones, her big green eyes looked even bigger. Her chest rose and fell like an escapee, and her mouth was pinched tight and tilted down. She looked repulsed.
His touch repulsed her.
Grinding his molars, Sloan gave a short nod he hoped passed for an apology and bent to retrieve his laundry. Silently, Annie gathered a shirt and a pair of jeans from the banister. As Sloan reached for the items, she held one end and he the other. Their eyes met and held, as well. A feeling rose between them that he did not want to identify. A feeling more dangerous and disturbing to his peace of mind than the work in Afghanistan.
Finally, he grumbled, “Thanks,” and bounded down the stairs like a man running from his past.
Sloan and Annie tiptoed around each other for another three days before the ice began to thaw. He didn’t know why that mattered except being in the same house all day with a silent frozen woman was pure discomfort.
He was plagued by memories of the way they’d been in high school, made worse by that moment on the stairs.
The day after school dismissed, Annie brought both her kids to the house because of sitter problems.
“Never mind about your work rules,” his aunt had said to Annie. “This is my house and if I want to invite those children, I will. Tell your boss I said so.”
It was not yet seven o’clock when they arrived, and Sloan sat at the kitchen table, draped over a copy of USA TODAY and a fragrant cup of extra-sweet coffee.
“Morning,” he mumbled, determined to be civil. “I made coffee.”
“Thank you.” If she got any stiffer, she’d be cardboard.
Justin slouched in, all arms and legs and loose ends, looking like trouble but saying nothing. The kid had an attitude as bad as Sloan’s.
Sloan studied the kid with interest. After fiddling with the dates until he had brain lock, he had concluded that Justin was not his son. Annie had married the summer after Sloan’s departure—which allowed time for Joey to be Justin’s father. Sloan considered asking Annie straight out, but figured he was wrong anyway, and she already thought he was pond scum. The boy looked nothing like him. Their only similarity was a bad attitude which Sloan was fairly certain was not genetic. No use starting trouble. He had enough of that without trying.
Last night, he’d ridden his motorcycle into town to pick up Lydia’s prescriptions and could feel the stares burning a hole in his back. He’d no more than given the Hawkins name to the pharmacist when a woman approached him. Sloan hack-led. His memories of Roberta Prine were not fond ones.
“Say, you’re Sloan Hawkins, aren’t you? Clayton Hawkins’s son.” She’d snapped her fingers as if trying to remember something. “And his wife—what was her name? Worked over at the diner? Janie?”
Sloan skewered her with a dark glance. If she was trying to get a rise out of him by pretending ignorance, she was succeeding.
“Joni,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“That’s right. Now I remember.” Right. As if she’d actually forgotten. “She’s the one that run off with a trucker, wasn’t she? Sure was a crazy thing to do, leaving you behind and all. Did you ever hear from her again?”
Never let ’em see you sweat.
With a cocky grin he didn’t feel, Sloan leaned in and imitated her tone. “Say, aren’t you the mom of that mean little creep, Ronnie? And isn’t that your broom parked by the curb outside?”
Roberta jerked back, face flushing bright red. “Well, I never!”
Sloan showed his teeth in a feral smile. “Now you have.”
Taking the white sack from the stunned pharmacist, Sloan spun on his boot heels. A titter of conversation followed him.
“That’s the thanks I get for being neighborly.”
“Never was much good.”
Sloan had clenched his fists and kept moving, exactly as he’d learned to do as a boy.
Well, he wasn’t a boy anymore. He would handle the Redemption gossip for Lydia’s sake. What he wasn’t handling particularly well was the tension between him and Annie.
Lifting his coffee cup, he watched her move around the kitchen to prepare Lydia’s breakfast. If any woman could look good in nurse’s scrubs, Annie did. This morning her hair was on her shoulders, held back from her forehead by a brown clip of some kind. Wispy little curls flirted around her cheekbones.
Ah, those cheekbones. He remembered the feel of her silky skin beneath his thumbs, the salty taste of her tears when he’d butted heads with her father.
Sloan slid his gaze away from Annie and the torrent of reminders. Why couldn’t he get his brain under control?
Justin slouched into the room across from Sloan. His dark blond hair was still damp, as if his mother had forced him
to water it down. Sloan had done the same thing when he was a kid. Splash with water, hit it once with a comb and call it done. The teenage years and girls would change Justin’s grooming habits.
“Morning,” Sloan said.
Justin gave him one of those looks that said he’d rather die than be awake this early. Sloan grinned against his coffee cup.
Annie walked by and stroked a hand lovingly over the boy’s messy hair.
That quick, Sloan was tossed back a dozen years. He had been hanging out at the river with a bunch of other kids. Some guy had called him the son of a slut and a jailbird. Naturally, he’d punched the goon in the face. This hadn’t gone over well with the goon’s friends and before he could make an escape, Sloan had six guys kicking his ribs in. Annie had come flying to his defense, screaming her head off that she was going to tell her father on them. They’d backed off, and she’d knelt beside him on the ground, cradled his head and stroked his hair.
That was the day he’d fallen in love with Annie.
He closed his eyes against the memory, and when he opened them again, a dimpled darling with big brown eyes, a hot pink headband, and a nearly white ponytail stood at his side.
“You’re Sloan. Justin told me about you.” She frowned up at him with interest. “You don’t look that mean.”
A pitcher of juice in one hand and a glass in the other, Annie looked aghast. “Delaney!”
Sloan chuckled, glad for the distraction. His head was giving him fits. “I’m never mean to little girls with ponytails.”
She climbed up on the chair beside him. Her swaying ponytail brushed his arm. “I drew you a picture.”
“Yeah?” He knew next to nothing about kids, but this one charmed him.
She displayed a neatly colored, crudely drawn playground, complete with the smiley-faced sun. “You can hang it on the refrigerator. That’s what Mom does. Have you got any Scotch tape? I’ll hang it for you.”
“Why don’t you show your drawing to Miss Lydia first?” Annie said. “Ask her if she feels up to coming to the table this morning.”
More and more of Lydia’s time was spent inside the garden room.
“Okay.” Delaney hopped down and bounced out of the kitchen, taking a ray of sunshine with her.
“Cute kid.” he said. “How old is she?”
“Nine.” Annie’s whole face softened with love. “Delaney is a blessing, has been from the moment she was born.”
Unlike the churlish boy? he wanted to ask, but didn’t. Justin was sitting right across the table, wolfing down half a box of Cheerios.
Almost immediately, Delaney skipped back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Miss Lydia liked my picture.”
“I knew she would. Is she up to sitting with us for breakfast?”
“Not this morning, she said. Maybe tomorrow.”
Annie and Sloan exchanged unhappy glances.
“That’s what I figured, but I wanted to ask.” She slid Lydia’s breakfast plate onto a tray, added a tiny cup of pills and started toward the doorway.
“I’ll take that,” Sloan said and swallowed the last of his coffee. The fresh-ground brew went down smooth and warm.
“Thanks.” She smiled. And that simple little action made his belly flip-flop. He wanted to blame the caffeine, but he was a realist. Annie was getting to him big time.
He reached for the tray. Their hands touched. He grunted and made his escape.
Frankly, after a week he needed something better to do than to stare at Annie and relive memories of a painful past. A man of action, he was accustomed to fourteen-hour days and frequent trips all over the globe. Here in Redemption his smart phone kept him busy but not busy enough to keep his eyes and mind off Annie. Not being a man who particularly enjoyed suffering, he didn’t want to notice her. She obviously didn’t want to be around him, either.
He spent as much time with Lydia as her health allowed, but his sick aunt slept more than she was awake. When she felt up to it, he carried her to the veranda for some fresh air. Yesterday, he’d found the weed-whacker and gone to work on the fast-growing weeds around the porches. Today he’d find a lawnmower if he had to buy a new one. Anything to stay clear of Annie and those troubling memories.
Annie watched Sloan all the way down the hallway, walking in a loose-limbed strut exactly like Justin’s. She’d been terrified when he’d roared in on his Harley and intruded on her safe world. People in town were already talking, speculating on where he’d been and what he’d been doing. Most remembered him with sympathy as that poor little Hawkins boy whose mother ran off and whose father died in prison. But not everyone had been as kind. Some said he was a drug dealer. She’d done her best to squelch that rumor. Not that she had a clue what his life was like, but the Sloan she remembered was scared of anything addictive. He’d said his life was out of control enough. He wasn’t about to let drugs take over.
“Mom, can I go to Brett’s and play video games?”
She turned to find her son at her elbow. “Maybe later. I’ll have to call his mother.”
Justin’s gaze followed Sloan down the hallway. “You like that guy?”
The question came out of nowhere. Annie turned to study her son’s expression. “I don’t even know him.”
“That’s not what Ronnie says.”
Ah. So that was it. She should have known someone like Roberta Prine would resurrect the past relationship between her and Sloan. “What exactly did he say to you?”
“Nothing. Just stuff. He’s a loser.”
“Was that why the two of you got in a fight?”
Avoiding her eyes, he hitched a shoulder. “Maybe.”
Lord, forgive me for not believing in him.
She hooked an elbow around his neck and bumped his head with hers. He was nearly as tall as her now. By summer’s end, he would likely surpass her. Someday he’d be as tall as his father.
“Rumors hurt people, Justin. You have to learn to ignore them. Okay?”
One bony shoulder hitched. “I guess.”
Being a single mother was the most difficult job she’d ever tried to do. Justin had never been an easy child, but pre-adolescence was doing a number on him—and her.
“Mom?” He stared at his sneakers. The strings were untied, but she knew better than to get into an argument over that. She was learning to choose her battles.
“What, son?”
He fidgeted another moment. “I love you.”
Annie’s throat thickened with emotion. “Oh, baby, I love you, too. You’re my heart, my life.”
She kissed his cheek, something he rarely allowed these days and was gratified when he grinned and didn’t yank away.
Delaney bounced into the room, her usual sunshiny self, with the handheld video game she’d gotten last Christmas. “Justin, will you play Pretty Miss Dress-Up with me?”
Annie could see how much her son did not want to play the girly game, but he stepped away from her and said, “Sure.”
From the time Delaney had been born, Justin had doted on his baby sister. Regardless of his attitude in other areas, he was a gentle, loving brother. The knowledge gave her hope that beneath the sometimes sullen boy was a good man waiting to bloom. At least, that was what she prayed for.
She left her children side by side on the couch, heads bent over the electronic game, and headed to Lydia’s room to begin their morning routine. When she reached the doorway, Sloan was standing next to the bed, his side angled away from Annie so he didn’t know she was watching him. Lydia was propped up on a mile-high stack of pillows with the hospital table alongside, her oxygen cannula making its monotone hiss. Sloan’s big, manly hands held a hairbrush which he was gently drawing through Lydia’s white hair, over and over again.
Annie’s chest constricted.
She didn’t want to think of Sloan as tender. She wanted to think of him as a user, a troublemaker, a jerk of the highest magnitude.
But he wasn’t always, a voice whispered.
She batted away the thought like a pesky fly and hurried back to the kitchen.
Company arrived at ten.
Sloan was behind the push-style lawnmower, sweating buckets, his T-shirt soaked when Annie stepped outside and asked him to help Lydia to the veranda.
“She prefers you to the wheelchair.” Annie seemed irked to involve him, as if she could have done the job just fine alone. She likely could have.
Wiping sweat, he went into the kitchen, stuck his over-heated head under the faucet for a long, refreshing minute. When he came up, water sluicing, Annie stood next to him, a towel in hand. “Don’t drip everywhere.”
She sounded like a mother. Or a wife.
He clenched his teeth. Why did she have to be underfoot every day? Why couldn’t someone besides Annie serve as Lydia’s nurse? He would have taken a room at Redemption Motel, but what good was coming home if he didn’t spend every spare moment with Lydia?
With an annoyed grunt, he grabbed the towel and scrubbed his face and head with more vigor than was needed, then went to do his aunt’s bidding. With Annie handling the portable oxygen bottle, Sloan scooped Lydia into his arms. She felt frail and fragile, skin over bones, and Sloan’s chest ached with sorrow. Before his very eyes, his aunt was fading away.
Out on the long, shady porch, Sloan encountered the man who’d telephoned him two weeks ago with the news that Lydia was unwell. Over the phone, Ulysses Jones sounded educated and well-to-do, but as Sloan recollected, Popbottle Jones didn’t look a thing like his voice.
“Sit with us, Mr. Hawkins. I doubt you remember me, but I recall your mother very well.”
Sloan stiffened. Lots of men had known his mother. “Yes, I remember you.”
Who could forget the local Dumpster divers, Popbottle Jones and his quirky partner, G.I. Jack? They were notorious for their “recycling business” as well as for knowing pretty much everything in town.
“Your mother was a kind and generous heart.”
Sloan relaxed onto a metal chair opposite his aunt, pathetically grateful to hear the compliment. “Yes, she was.”