Once settled, he brought his lips to my ear and said, “Smooth.”
“What?” I feigned ignorance as I shook off the raised gooseflesh.
“I can see what you’re doing there with Rob and Bri.”
I smiled. “She likes him. Did you know that?”
William had placed a citronella candle between us, pulled a lighter from his Western-wear shirt pocket, and lit it. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter-of-fact I did know that.”
“How?”
“I’ve suspected for some time.”
“Does Rob know? Or suspect?” I didn’t want my new young friend to be embarrassed.
“Clueless.” He eyed me. “Don’t you think she’s a tad young for Rob?”
“After what I learned in the past couple of days, no.”
His brow furrowed. “What does that mean?” He reached into the basket and brought out a bottle of Coke and a bottle opener.
“I’ll tell you later.”
He opened the soft drink and handed it to me. “Got a little surprise for you,” he said, winking. Shivers skipped down my arms in the warm night air. Good heavens, wouldn’t Gram be amused? And Leigh. Leigh would roll on the floor when—if—I told her.
“It’s a cola,” I said, trying to regain my composure. Reminding myself of the objective. That this man may very well have been guilty of unethical journalism.
And that I was leaving in about twenty-four weeks. Or was it twenty-three and change?
He reached into the basket again “Not quite,” he said pulling out a packet of peanuts. “Remember?” He tore the top corner from the packet.
“The first day in your truck,” I said so quietly I wasn’t sure he heard me.
“Yep.” He picked up my Coke.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you really going to . . .” He fashioned his left hand like funnel and poured nuts into the drink. “Oh my.”
“It’s good.” He repeated the action with his own drink.
I peered into the narrow opening of the bottle. The peanuts floated near the top.
“The secret is in the glass bottle,” Will said. “Not plastic and for heaven’s sake not a can.” He tilted his bottle toward mine in a mock toast. “And roasted, salted nuts. Never raw, boiled, or unsalted.”
Our bottles clinked together.
“Take a swig,” Will said, “get a nut and be sure to chew on it.”
I did, following his lead.
“Salty and sweet,” I said. “Not bad.”
The building in front of us flickered to life with color. Voices died down, people who stood, sat. Those who sat, settled. And I leaned back on my hands and extended both legs. I had chosen a simple pair of denim jeans and a North Face tie-dyed tee, one multicolored Ked and one thick sock. “What are we watching?” I leaned over and whispered.
“The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.”
I sat a tad straighter. “Cary Grant and Shirley Temple?” Talk about your “young girl crush on an older man” story.
Will grinned back at me. “Cary Grant fan?”
“Yes, you?”
“He was the best at what he did. But truth is, I’m crazy about Myrna Loy.”
“So you have a thing for redheads?”
He made a face. “No, I have a thing for actresses who began as silent-film stars. Now shhh . . .”
“Bet I can guess your favorite scene,” William said on the way home. His hat rested on the console between us.
“Oh?” I asked, as though I couldn’t care less. I glanced out my window and peered up at the inky sky. To the stars that glinted like diamonds.
“Yoogie-doogie,” he repeated the Cary Grant line.
I looked at him. Watched his slow smile. His silly words and sweet smile disconcerted me so, I turned my attention to the navigation system built into the faux-woodgrain panel, and focused on the “car” displayed on its screen.
“You remind me of a man,” I said, mimicking the movie’s memorable line, spoken by Cary Grant in an effort to one-up Myrna Loy.
“What man?” Will asked, playing along.
“The man with the power.”
“What power?”
“The power of hoodoo.”
“Hoodoo?”
“You do.”
“Do what?”
“Remind me of a man.”
“What man?” he asked. His laughter filled the car. Mine joined with it. This was fun. It felt good to let loose. To not think about Chicago or Winter Park, the Star or Parks & Avenues.
“What I really appreciate,” I said, swallowing the amusement, “is how she uses the same words to tell him she loves him at the end of the movie. Class-A writing, I think.”
Will turned the car into the Decker Ranch drive. “You’re nearly home, Miss Ashlynne,” he said, drawling his words as if he were a fine gentleman and we were in the mid-1800s.
My breath caught. “Speaking of which, there’s something I need to discuss with you.”
“About?”
“I’ve been doing a little research while recuperating.”
“On?”
The car rocked back and forth, more gently than any other vehicle I’d traversed this road in since arriving in Testament.
“The graves on Rob’s property.”
His eyes jerked to me, then back to the driveway shrouded in shadows. “Really? You didn’t tell me.”
“Uh-huh. Surprised?”
“A little.”
“What’d you think I was doing with myself all day since you chased me with a snake and threw me down the hill?”
“It wasn’t a snake,” he said. “It was a . . . a . . .” He looked at me. “I can’t come up with anything worse than a snake.”
I could think of a few things. We could have been walking along the wooded trail, hand in hand. We could have stopped to look down the ravine, to scope out the Revolutionary road. He could have turned to me, and then, taking me by my shoulder, eased me to face him. He could have drawn me close . . . closer . . . he could have kissed me . . . my knees could have buckled and . . . the next day the word would be all over Testament that Will Decker—catch of the county—and the stranger from Winter Park were making out in the woods when God pushed her down the cliff to prevent sullying Prince Charming’s reputation.
No . . . no . . . no!
When I didn’t respond, he said, “I thought you were working on the magazine.”
“A little.” I linked my arms as he brought the car to a stop. “But, I’ve also been at the county records office, scanning books, taking notes, and looking at microfiche until my eyes have nearly crossed. Permanently, I might add.”
He unbuckled his seat belt and leaned toward me, slipping his hat from the console to the back floorboard, and leaning his elbows onto the console. The light from the outside lamp I’d left on shone onto his features, angular and handsome. I inhaled slowly through my nose.
“Let me see those eyes,” he said. “In case you need a doctor, or something.”
I chuckled, crossed my eyes, and inched my face closer to his. His became shadowy, but I could see his thick lashes as he blinked and drew back. His hands came up as though they had a mind of their own, rested tenderly on both sides of my face. The thumb pads caressed my cheeks and my eyes fluttered shut, even as not the objective became nothing more than a pitiful whimper.
The kiss was warm—his lips soft—and over too soon. When the gentle pressure from his fingertips released, he kissed the tip of my nose, and sat back. We stared at each other for a long moment before he said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” I managed around the knot in my throat.
“You all right with that?”
I could hardly speak. No. I wasn’t “all right with that.” But I couldn’t let him know that. Not now. Not ever. I had a job to do here so I could have a job in Winter Park. Kissing William Decker less than two weeks after arriving in Testament could easily usurp years of hard work toward my father’s office at Parks & Avenues. Then again, it
was just a kiss. A simple kiss on the lips.
And the tip of my nose.
Oh how adorable was that?
I raised my chin a fraction of an inch. “Sure. I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be? We’re adults, after all.”
He didn’t answer with words. His eyes traveled over my face until he cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, well, I’d best walk you to the door.”
I didn’t want to walk to the door. I wanted to stay inside the car, to breathe in the scent of his cologne I knew lingered on my face, and to simply be with him. I wanted to throw my original objective for being there into the ravine I’d fallen down a few days earlier and to dare it—dare it—to try to crawl its way out. I wanted to keep talking. To bring him up to speed on what I knew so we would be on the same page. So I said, “Don’t you want to know about the graves? Who they belong to?”
I waited while he appeared to ponder my question. “Not tonight. Not right now.”
“When, then? Tomorrow?”
“Sure.” His voice remained whisper-soft.
“Can you pick me up in the morning? The doctor said I’m okay to work, just not to drive.”
He nodded. “Sure.” He opened the car door, came around to my side while I unbuckled the seat belt tethering me to my seat. He opened the back door, pulled out my crutches, then opened mine. “Your walking apparatus, m’dear.”
I sighed as I slid toward them and guided my good foot to the ground. “Got it.” I pulled one of my new purses from where it had rested on the seat beside me and onto my shoulder.
William closed the doors.
“There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” I said as we made our way to the front of the cottage, with me using the large stepping-stones that curved to the stoop. “And I really shouldn’t wait any longer.”
His hand rested, once again, on the small of my back. Protective. Guiding. “What’s that?”
“I have to show you . . .” I hobbled onto the narrow pine boards, rested my back against the storm door and the crutches against the wall. Opening my purse, I said, “Brianna came over the other day, hysterical. She’d been out at the Flannerys’ and”—I extended the vial—“she found this in Sean’s bedroom when she was cleaning the day before.” I extended the vial.
He took it, studied it, then brought his eyes to mine. “Am I looking at what I think I’m looking at?”
“Steroids. Yes.”
“And you’ve been walking around with this since . . . ?”
“Tuesday.”
Fire blazed in the amber of his brown eyes. He took a step back, tightened his fist around the tiny vial of death. The air stretched thin between us. “What are you?” he asked. “Crazy?”
Crazy. Yeah, I must have been. Crazy to have trusted him. Crazy to have thought we could be friends. Friendly—or some faraway day, more.
Crazy to have thought another journalist, even one with an ethically shadowed past, might be interested enough in the vial of steroids from a local high school star athlete’s room to be concerned. Not just about the name of his supplier.
But about Sean Flannery’s life.
I’d misjudged people before. I’d let hopes and expectations soar so high that when I fell, I fell hard. But never, in all my life, had I ever been as wrong about someone as I was about Will Decker.
31
What is wrong with you?” I reached for my crutches, in need of support. “Do you not understand the implications here?”
He extended the vial toward me. “What I understand is that Brianna stole from the Flannery home.”
“Technically, yes . . .” Technically. Wasn’t that my father’s word?
William’s boots clomped against the pine boards as he paced. “And you don’t see a problem with that?”
I looked into the darkness down the hill, to the U-shaped brick house below, the single light shining on the back patio and the dim illumination from a small window. “Sean Flannery—your golden boy—has been using steroids, for pity’s sake. Aren’t you more interested in that than how I came about the evidence?”
“No.” He pointed a finger at me, leaving the rest of his fingers wrapped around the vial. “And you should know better. You’re not new to journalism, Ashlynne. You studied ethics.” Ethics. There it was. The word suspended between us, whether he realized it or not. And he was using it against me.
Against me.
He returned his hand to a fist. “Not to mention—”
I waited for the rest of what he had to say, studying his face in the interim. His jaw had set. A slight quiver of his head, almost imperceptible in the dark. But in the illumination of the porch light, I could see. I could tell. So I pressed on, speaking between clenched teeth. “Not to mention what?”
He flung the vial toward a nearby tree, the one I sat under peacefully every morning, reading the devotional book I’d come to cherish. The vial struck it, hit the ground, and rolled no more than an inch. Will raked his fingers through his hair. “I cannot believe this.” He continued to pace. “No worries. No crises. No scandals.”
And there it was. I no longer had to wonder. Now I knew. Will Decker was no longer speaking about Sean Flannery, but about whatever had happened in Chicago. Whatever it had been that caused him to return to North Carolina. To Testament. And to a tiny newspaper that wouldn’t garner him any claim to fame, but where he’d be safe from disgrace.
Safe. I understood that. I’d done it, too, but as a seventh grader. Running home . . .
“Does . . .” My voice caught in my throat. “Does this have something to do with Chicago?” I needed to hear the answer. From his lips. Right now.
The fire in his eyes returned in full measure. He spun and took a wide step toward me. “What do you know about Chicago?”
I pressed back against the glass, but I met his anger with doggedness. Tears of fury threatened my eyes, causing them to burn. “I know you left because of controversy. And something to do with a man named Eric Boscano.”
He scoffed. Slammed his hand against the glass of the storm door, but not hard enough to break it. “You couldn’t stand it, could you? Last week? When I was a bit of a horse’s butt.”
“A bit? I couldn’t even inhale without you criticizing the amount of oxygen I took into my lungs. As if your precious Testament couldn’t stand to share the tiniest molecule of air with a stranger from Winter Park.”
His eyes bored into mine, but his voice quieted as he said, “Forgo the hyperbole, if you don’t mind.” He walked off the landing to the grouping of Adirondack furniture.
My shoulders relaxed. I pressed against the hand grips of the crutches. Looked at the vial lying on the ground. “Yeah,” I said, lowering my voice as well. “I’ll forgo the hyperbole when you forgo the drama.”
Will walked to the vial, picked it up, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.
I hobbled forward. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Never you mind.”
I swung toward him. “Give it back to me.”
“For what?”
“Because . . . you—you have to—at least give Bri a chance to return it.”
His nose came dangerously close to mine. “Bri should have never taken it.”
The image of Brianna’s face—wet and swollen from crying—came to view. “You have no idea how this pained her,” I said. I leaned into my right crutch and pointed to my chest. “And you have no idea what it means to me.”
“Means to you? What do you think? That you’re going to get some big story out of it?” He glanced over his shoulder toward his grandparents’ home, then lowered his voice as though we might be overheard. “You’re going to bring some high school kid to ruin so you can pat yourself on the back, run back to Daddy, and say, ‘Lookie what I accomplished? Let me have that corner office now, if you please?’ ”
Had I been able, I would have slapped him. Hard. Instead, I asked the insufferable age-old declaration of damsels who have been verbally w
ronged: “How dare you.” I hobbled closer to him, released the right-hand grip, and poked him in the chest with my index finger. “You thought you were something, didn’t you? Telling me what you thought I was all about—my ‘type’—that day in front of the school. Well, you don’t know me at all, William Alexander Decker.”
He threw his head back and barked a laugh. “So you know my full name. Want my social? Or do you have that, too?”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
He came within a breath of me again. I gripped both crutches and hobbled one step back. “Good,” he said. “Because you aren’t going to get it. Nothing from me.” He turned and strode a few feet to his father’s car, turned and stomped back. “You almost had me, you know that? Almost made me forget. Well, I haven’t forgotten. I remember it all very well.” He walked away and, again, returned. “Stay out of the affairs of Testament, North Carolina, Ashlynne Paige Rothschild.”
I gasped.
“Yeah,” he said. “Two can play that game.”
I cried most of the night. Not only for the sole kiss I’d experienced—one of the few of my lifetime that had come from somewhere sweet and tender—but for Brianna. For her disappointment in me when I had to tell her that, not only had Will not promised to help us, but that he’d taken the vial. Then I cried for Leigh. For Lawson. For the entire cemetery-flanking group of mourners who’d laid him to rest on a humid, misty day when even heaven seemed sad at our loss. Finally, I cried for Gram. For her trust in my ability to come to Testament, to work well with people I had little in common with, and return to Winter Park a better person for it.
Morning had nearly broken when I realized that, unlike the crying jag after my failed attempt at being normal in junior high, not once had I shed a single tear for myself.
And so, I did.
A little after 7:00, with about forty-five minutes of a solid nap behind me, I got up, showered, changed into the same jeans I’d worn the night before and a clean top. I climbed onto the bed to wrap my foot and realized how much better it felt than even the day before. The swelling had gone down enough that I could wear both hiking boots.
The Road to Testament Page 27