The thought of the latter caused his fingers to tighten on the steering wheel.
Beckett Caldwell.
It was a name to which he hadn’t given much thought since leaving Georgia – or at least, he’d tried not to. Of course, it wasn’t always easy to ignore the sonofabitch who’d tried to kill you.
Out of force of habit, Sutton ran his finger along the scar at the edge of his hairline. It had faded over time, but the memory of the night he’d acquired it remained vivid.
Reaching into his shirt pocket, Sutton pulled out the brochure he’d taken from the ones Adeline dropped.
Caldwell Premier Mountain Properties, Sales and Management.
The sneer came automatically, but he did manage to resist the urge to crumple the shiny, colorful paper into a ball, and chuck it out the window.
Beckett Caldwell had been the biggest narcissist at Rabun County High School. With his family’s wealth and his poster boy good looks, some people thought his arrogance was warranted. Whatever Beckett wanted, Beckett got.
And he’d wanted Sutton’s girlfriend.
It was all so stereotypical: the spoiled rich kid, the skinny nerd, the pretty and popular cheerleader. A classic coming of age film just waiting to be made.
Except this one hadn’t benefitted from a fairytale ending.
Thinking of how it had ended caused Sutton’s stomach to lurch. Beckett shouldn’t have even been at the public high school in the first place, but since he was asked to leave the expensive, exclusive boarding school in the next town over, that’s where he’d ended up. Rumors swirled about wild parties and illegal drugs, but Beckett never admitted what he’d done. Sutton knew it must have been pretty horrible if Beckett’s parents couldn’t throw enough money at the problem to make it go away.
Long-buried anger surged, and Sutton glanced at the brochure. He wasn’t sure if Beckett’s family company acted as the property manager for the fish camp where Adeline was staying, or whether one of them had tried to buy the land. Anything around the lake, even if it didn’t sit directly on the water, was valuable real estate, and those three old cabins occupied a sizable lot.
But the thought of Beckett around any woman, let alone one as currently isolated as Adeline?
Sutton’s blood ran cold.
So, he’d taken the brochure. Maybe it wasn’t his place, and maybe it was an overreaction. But he knew firsthand what Beckett was capable of. Hopefully, Adeline wouldn’t have any reason to contact him. He’d removed the paper with the phone numbers, just in case.
Driving around another bend, Sutton realized that he was approaching the heart of downtown Lakewood, if one could describe the handful of old buildings as such. A few of them had changed hands since his time here, including the bait shop. The quaint, musty antique store was still there – with the addition of a Little Free Library out front. Sutton smiled at the box overflowing with books, but that smile slipped when his gaze shifted to the two-story structure at the end of the row.
Currently painted a deep green, the building was still white in his memory, and he could all but picture Shannon pushing open the screened door, running out onto the porch whenever she spotted his car. First love was a unique and powerful magic, but for all its wonders, he hoped to never feel that sort of angst again.
The mental image faded, replaced by the reality in front of him. Instead of a bait shop, the place now housed a deli and small-scale market. Signs across the front advertised ice, locally-made cheese, and Coca-Cola, while a vintage neon sign incongruously promoted Standard Oil. He remembered that sign. It was left over from yet another incarnation, when the building had functioned as a hardware store and garage.
Filled with nostalgia, he pulled into the gravel parking lot on the opposite side of the street.
He’d lied when he told Adeline he’d had to come this direction anyway. In fact, he’d actively avoided it, but like ripping off a bandage so that a wound could get some air, it was time to expose himself to some of the more painful memories he’d been avoiding.
It was going on two o’clock, and he hadn’t yet eaten. He would treat himself to lunch at the deli.
Sutton checked both ways before he crossed the street, because cars sometimes whizzed through a lot faster than they should – as he knew from personal experience.
Young and dumb you were, Young Skywalker.
And also, intent on impressing the girl. Of course, the fact that Shannon Cagle had been the one to approach his gangly, studious, socially awkward self should have given him some indication that she wasn’t interested in stereotypical male bravado. It still baffled him to this day, but her attention and affection had boosted his confidence in ways that helped him become the man he was today.
He only wished he’d been better equipped to help her in return.
Because he didn’t want a wave of righteous anger to precede him as he walked into the store, Sutton took a deep breath before grabbing the handle of the familiar screen door. He pulled it just as the inner wooden door opened.
“Hey,” he said, surprise turning to recognition. “Who let you in here?”
“It’s the badge,” his older brother said. “They kinda have to.”
“You’re not in uniform,” Sutton pointed out.
“Huh.” Ethan glanced down. “I guess it was just my good looks.”
Because his brother was carrying a hat in one hand and a large thermal cup in the other, Sutton assumed he’d stopped for coffee. Ethan ran on coffee. But then, being both the recently elected sheriff and the father of a precocious preteen daughter, he could probably use all the caffeine he could get.
“What brings you out this way?”
“At the moment?” Sutton said. “Lunch.”
“Want some company?”
“If you have the time, then absolutely.”
He hadn’t spent nearly enough of it with Ethan since he’d been home, but they’d both been busy. That was something he was going to have to rectify soon.
Ethan stood back to let Sutton pass, and then tilted his dark head toward the chalkboard menu. “I recommend the BLT. And the oatmeal raisin cookies.”
Sutton gaped. “Since when do you eat oatmeal, let alone with raisins?”
“Since Harper learned to use the oven and started making oatmeal raisin cookies.”
“Wait.” He held up a hand. “My itty-bitty niece knows how to bake?”
“She’s not so itty-bitty anymore. She turned ten back in August.”
“I sent a card.” Hadn’t he? He’d been so caught up in his decision to quit his job, move back home and start over, that he wasn’t sure he was stating a fact.
“Yeah, she said you did.”
There was something in his brother’s voice, something off, but the woman at the counter was watching them with close attention, obviously waiting for Sutton to place his order. So, he did, going with his brother’s recommendation, with the addition of an old-fashioned sarsaparilla and an extra cookie. He handed the cookie to Ethan when they settled at one of the small tables in the corner of the store.
“Like I need more calories,” Ethan said, biting into it anyway.
Always the stockier of the two, he’d been a star football player in high school, while Sutton played basketball – although not very well. He’d come to his height late, and hadn’t seemed to master the coordination required to maneuver his long limbs until sometime during college. Ethan was more of a tank. Four inches shorter, several pounds heavier, he’d mowed down whatever and whoever stood in his path.
But he had put on some weight since Sutton had seen him last, and there was an air of… anger? Stress? in the way he devoured the cookie.
Being in law enforcement wasn’t the easiest job, as Sutton well knew from having grown up with their father. And no doubt Ethan felt like he had some big shoes to fill.
But there was something else eating him. They were only a little over a year apart in age, and while they’d been at each other’s throats often as
not growing up, they also knew how to read each other. The time they’d spent in different states, leading vastly different lives, didn’t seem to have changed that.
Sutton was considering asking what was up when Ethan brushed crumbs off his shirt.
“Tell me about this woman.”
“Woman?”
“The one you hauled out of the Driscoll cellar this morning?”
“Oh. Right.”
Sutton called his brother’s cell phone from the house, but hadn’t actually spoken with him, as the call had gone straight to voicemail. He’d ended up contacting the office directly, and Deputy Wiggins was the one to come out. But he should have known that Ethan would be in the loop.
“Ah, I just left her place, actually.”
Ethan looked up. “You what?”
“She left her hat behind this morning. I saw it down in the dirt when I went to clear out my ladder, and thought she’d probably like to have it back.”
His brother stared out of inscrutable dark eyes. “You are such a freaking Boy Scout.”
“Says the cop.”
“I get paid. You’re the one volunteering to put yourself in harm’s way.”
Sutton drew back. His brother was clearly in a foul mood, spoiling for a fight, and Sutton had been unfortunate enough to cross his path.
But because there was that… something he’d detected earlier, Sutton didn’t take the bait.
“You know why I volunteer.”
Frustration flashed across his brother’s face. “Damn you. I can’t say anything to that without being a total asshole.”
Sutton took a bite of his sandwich. “You’ll have to find another punching bag.”
Some of the anger seemed to drain from his brother, and then he leaned back in his seat. “But you’re so handy. And not as likely to sue me for police brutality.”
“That’s what you think.” But he smiled as he said it. It faded pretty quickly though, and he studied his brother. “If you feel like talking about whatever it is, you know where to find me.”
Ethan studied him back, and then sighed. “It’s bad enough having it on a loop in my own head.”
“That’s why you talk about it, you jackass. Break the loop.”
“So, you’re a psychologist now, too?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Ethan smiled, a real, genuine smile, and Sutton realized he hadn’t seen it in some time. “If I haven’t said it before, I’m proud of you, kid.”
Because he felt an unexpected tightness in his throat, Sutton covered it with a joke. “That’s Doctor McCloud to you.”
“All those brains, and you still got bested by an octogenarian.”
Obviously, Deputy Wiggins had filled Ethan in on the fact that Mary had run off with the dog. “Octogenarian or no, I wouldn’t want to go up against her. I had to bribe her to get that puppy back.”
“With?”
Sutton sighed. “She has a granddaughter…”
“Do not tell me that you agreed to a date with Jolinda.”
“No, not a date.”
“She just needs someone with a strong back and a pickup truck to help move a chest from Jolinda’s house to hers?”
Sutton winced. That was the story he’d gotten, almost verbatim. “I take it you know her?”
Ethan started to laugh, and laughed so hard that he had to rest his head on the table. The woman who’d waited on them stopped restocking the deli counter to stare.
“I take it I’ve been set up.”
Ethan lifted a hand. “Oh.” His face, when he sat back, was the color of the tomato on Sutton’s BLT. “Have you.”
He’d suffered some suspicion to that effect, but hoped the old woman was simply in the market for some free labor.
“She showed me Jolinda’s picture.” On her up to the minute smartphone. “She didn’t look like she needed her grandma to get her a date.”
“Son, that picture was two husbands and four kids ago. Mary’s hoping to help her land husband number three.”
Sutton sank down in his chair. That wily old coot. “She took the dog on purpose.”
“Oh yes.”
“I’ll give her a call and tell her I hurt my back.”
But Ethan was already shaking his head. “She’s not going to drop it. Do you have any idea how many times that chest has been moved? Jolinda knows what’s up, and just goes along with it to humor her grandma. Believe me, she’s not going to try to date you. She actually has a, um, girlfriend, which is the main reason Mary is so hellbent on finding her a new man.”
Sutton could only stare. “You know this sounds like a hillbilly soap opera, don’t you?”
Ethan grinned. “Welcome back.”
The sound of feminine voices filled the air, and Sutton looked up to see two thirty-something women coming down the stairs from what used to be the family living quarters. One of them had her hair wrapped up in some sort of turban, and the other wore what looked to be medical scrubs. Sutton didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t keep himself from staring. He only caught snippets of their conversation, but it sounded like the one wearing scrubs was giving the other instructions on applying something to her face, which currently resembled a freshly slapped baby’s bottom. After a few moments of animated discussion, the turban-wearer left and the other woman disappeared back upstairs.
Sutton looked at his brother.
“It’s some sort of day spa thing,” Ethan explained, seeing his visible confusion. “Caroline likes to come and get…” he waved his hand in front of his face “whatever it is that they do.”
Caroline was Ethan’s wife. “Why?”
“God knows. I just know that it makes her happy, so I don’t complain about paying the bill. Much, anyway.”
A spa. And here he was still trying to get used to the idea of a deli in the old bait shop.
“There’s a yoga studio on the next corner,” Ethan continued. “A new vineyard a ways further down, with a tasting room in a repurposed grain silo, of all things. And a modernized barn for special events. They’re pushing for the off-season tourists, people who want more than just the lakes and the nature and the camping.”
Sutton could understand it, but it still felt wrong. Or maybe he was wrong for expecting things to remain unchanged.
“I remember when you and I used to come here with Grandpa back in what, middle school? Buy worms and a couple of sarsaparillas,” he lifted his in the air. “Head out to the lake for the day.”
“And you’d go all googly-eyed over Shannon.”
He had, even back then.
“Kind of weird that Beckett owns this place now.”
Sutton put down the bottle, the sugary soda turning sour in his mouth. “You could have mentioned that before I ordered.”
“I thought you knew.”
“Why, or how, would I know that?”
Ethan shrugged. “I guess I thought someone would have told you.”
And maybe they would have, if Sutton had been willing to listen to anything regarding his ex-girlfriend and her new husband, after he left.
“Shannon’s parents got into some financial trouble around the time she married Beckett,” Ethan explained “and Beckett’s dad bought them out.”
“Where’d they go? Her parents?”
“They stayed on here for a few more years. Kind of a lease-back thing I gather, but then…” He moved his hands away from one another.
Beckett and Shannon split. And Daddy Warbucks, being the asshole that he was, had probably kicked her family out.
He looked at the uneaten second half of his sandwich, hating that he’d unwittingly contributed to Beckett’s financial gain. He was sure he acted as landlord, and the businesses in the building merely rented from him, but it still didn’t sit well with him. He couldn’t hold it against Ethan, of course, because avoiding all of the pies the Caldwells had their fingers in would make for a pretty limited social experience in Rabun County. Not to mention that his brother was the s
heriff, and was supposed to be above all that.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Ethan said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, wishing that were true. “Bygones and whatever.”
Ethan’s stare suggested that he didn’t quite believe him, but he didn’t push. Instead, he grabbed his hat – much like the one Sutton had worn that morning – and snugged it onto his head.
He looked remarkably like their father.
“Did Willow mention family dinner next Friday?”
Sutton shook his head. “No, but she knew I was on shift all weekend. And I think she said she had a guided hike, too.”
Their sister, whom they liked to joke would have been right at home being raised by wolves, ran an outdoor destination business called Wander Woman.
“She’ll probably get around to texting you soon, then. But in case she forgets, we’re doing a potluck at her place this time.”
Sutton’s stomach sank. “She doesn’t seriously expect me to cook.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been around firehouses all these years and still haven’t progressed beyond boiling water.”
“Most of the time they don’t even let me do that.”
“So buy something and stick it in one of mom’s containers.”
“You know Willow can…” he waved his hands in the air “sense the aura of store-bought food, or whatever.”
“I’m going to tell her you said that.”
“I’ll tell her you’re the one who broke her Lite Brite when we were kids by using it as a target for your BB gun.”
They stared at one another.
“So, I’ll see you Friday?” Ethan said.
“Yep.”
His brother was almost to the door when he turned around. “Sutton? It’s really good to have you home.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE loud crack caused Adeline to sit bolt upright in bed, hands coming to cover her ears. For a moment she was seven years old, standing on a beach in the summer sunshine.
Slow Burn (Rabun County Book 1) Page 7