“I think he might be persuaded.”
Miranda grinned at him. “Do I know how to pick mentors or what?”
He gave her a teasing look. “You know how to make it impossible for one to say no to you.”
Carter reached above the lintel, ran his hands over the rough wood until he found a key. “Let’s go check it out.”
She took hold of his elbow and felt him flinch. He obviously still did not want her to touch him, even as a friend. “There’s one thing I probably should tell you...”
“Okay.” He paused with the key in the door. “What is it?”
“Lawton cornered me right before we left and told me about an idea he had.”
Carter’s eyes narrowed. “Why am I suddenly worried about this idea?”
“You have good instincts,” she said, and let a pause settle between them for a moment. “Here’s the thing, Carter... Lawton wondered if he might get a temporary job at the Christmas tree farm.”
CHAPTER NINE
“AT OUR FARM? Snowy Mountain?” Carter felt the need to clarify since the announcement had left him staring at Miranda as if she’d just announced she were an alien. Secretly he hoped she’d meant any of the other dozen tree farms in the area.
“Yes. And it’s really not such a bad idea...”
He interrupted her. “It’s a terrible idea. First of all, we don’t need any help. We have five guys who will stay the weeks during shearing, and then...”
“They’re just temporary help, though, right? I mean those guys come and go. If a better job opens up, they’ll take off. The way I remember it, you and Jace were always looking to fill vacancies when your help wandered off.”
Carter could only shake his head. Miranda had an awfully good memory.
“Still, it would only be for a few weeks at most, even if I could find a spot for him.”
“It’s a start,” she said. “And he won’t walk out on you in the middle of shearing unless he gets a permanent job, and that’s what we’re all hoping for, right? Maybe someone in town will hear good things about Law’s performance at Snowy and hire him for a different position, a permanent one.”
“Are you even thinking about the fact that Jace has a lot more interaction with that farm than I do? And I can state with good authority that Lawton isn’t Jace’s favorite person.”
Miranda frowned. “He still believes that the Jefferson boys stole his truck in high school?”
“When truck parts showed up in a Boone chop shop owned by an acquaintance of Dale’s, it was a pretty good bet.”
“That’s all circumstantial. No one proved that Dale and Lawton stole that truck.”
“No, it wasn’t proven, but only because Dale was always clever about covering his tracks.” He scowled, remembering the uproar when the truck was stolen. It had taken all of Carter’s powers of persuasion to keep Jace from hightailing it to Liggett and confronting the Jeffersons. “And Lawton just lucked out on that one. The theft may have happened years ago, but I guarantee Jace still harbors a grudge, not to mention the one he has against you.”
He regretted saying that last part as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Yes, Jace had been upset that Miranda dumped his brother, but his feelings for Miranda should have changed by now. After the curt greeting Jace gave her at the farm the other day, obviously Jace still wanted nothing to do with Miranda.
“Against me?” Miranda said.
Carter knew she wouldn’t let that one slide.
“Because we broke up?” she asked.
“No, because you dumped me. There’s a difference.” At the time Jace had almost become annoying in his concern for his big brother. While Carter had just wanted to be left alone, Jace kept asking him how he was, following up with suggestions of things they could do together. Carter had felt smothered by brotherly love.
Miranda straightened her spine. “Well, that’s just ridiculous, don’t you think? I mean people break up all the time and family members don’t carry hate in their hearts for all these years. Besides, maybe Jace was upset for you, but I guarantee your father was dancing the Texas two-step.”
“I couldn’t have cared less about my father’s reaction back then, Miranda,” Carter said. “And neither did Jace.”
Her lips turned down. “I know. I’m sorry. But let’s not allow old feelings to affect this opportunity now. Maybe if you talk to Jace, tell him how Law is trying to start over. Wouldn’t he hire Lawton if you wanted him to?”
Yes, he would. Jace would grumble and complain and ask Carter if he’d forgotten the pain the Jeffersons had caused them. But in the end, if Carter wanted him to hire Lawton, he would. Refusing to give in so easily, Carter said, “I don’t know what he’ll do, Miranda. But it suddenly seems that this mentoring deal has more strings attached to it than a marionette.”
Miranda wrinkled her nose, something she used to do when she feared she was taking a conversation too far. “But you could at least ask.”
He sighed. “Come on inside the house. You don’t need an answer right now.”
“Okay.”
He opened the front door and they went in. With one finger on her lower lip and her eyes taking in every square inch, Miranda was in decorating mode. “This is perfect, Carter. I can refresh the curtains and throw rugs, buy some pillows for the sofa and furnish new sheets and towels, and Law could live here quite comfortably.”
She flitted into the small bedroom and bath and came back to the living room, where Carter had plopped onto the comfy old sofa. “When will you talk to Mr. McNulty?” she asked him.
“I’ll ask him after I ask you a question, Miranda.” This whole conversation about the past had brought up all the old doubts Carter had let simmer for years. He should just follow his grandmother’s advice to “let sleeping dogs lie,” but that wasn’t his way. His need to understand the truth hadn’t faded much with time, and there was one question that had burned in his mind since Betsy had mentioned a significant fact to him in the station the day Miranda arrived.
“Sure,” she said. “Ask away.”
He cleared his throat, leaned back on the sofa and crossed his legs. “Why did you divorce Donny?”
Obviously that was not the question Miranda thought he would ask. Her mouth opened, she took a deep breath. “Carter, why do you want to know that? People get divorced all the time...”
“Just like they break up all the time, right?”
“Yes, right, and usually the memories are bitter and sad.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I’m a member in good standing of the bitter divorce club.”
“I can understand that, but I don’t know why you’re so curious about Donny and me.”
He shrugged, an effort to appear casual, but he’d started this conversation, and he was going to finish it. “Gee, I wonder why. My two best friends from high school married at the drop of a hat...”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Okay, dated a few months and married.” He sat forward, holding her gaze. “Let’s simplify this and start at the beginning. Did you love Donny when you married him?”
“Of course I did. How can you even ask that question?” She turned away from him, stared at the floor.
“Maybe because you had so recently been in love with me, or so you said.”
“I loved you. You can’t doubt that.” Her gaze remained fixed on the floorboards. “But we were kids, and it was a kids’ kind of love. It was fun and exciting, but we didn’t know what the future would hold for us.”
“I knew. My future was you.”
She closed her eyes, and he feared he’d gone too far. He hoped she wasn’t crying, or maybe he hoped she was. “So, you loved Donny.”
“I said I did.”
“Why didn’t it work out?”
She spun around to face him
. Her eyes were moist, but she was under control. He doubted she ever lost control these days. “Irreconcilable differences,” she said.
“Ah. The divorce catchphrase.”
She took a step closer to the sofa. His hands trembled with the effort not to touch her. “What do you want me to say, Carter? That I divorced Donny because I still loved you?”
He hated to admit it, but some shallow, bitter part of him wanted her to say exactly that. “Did you?”
“Donny and I just grew apart. It happens.”
He sighed. “Did Donny believe you two could reconcile your differences?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Her face softened. She crouched down in front of the sofa and took one of his hands. He felt the tingle of her fingers all the way to the nape of his neck. All those years of convincing himself that Miranda was out of his life and out of his mind. All that self-discipline, and one touch from her, one earnest, sad look in those beautiful blue eyes... He struggled to keep his hand in hers.
“So why did you leave Holly River?” he asked.
“I told you at the time.”
“Yeah, you did. Tell me again.”
Her thumb moved languorously over his knuckles. She remained silent for several moments. “My father had just died. Asbestos poisoning from that damn paper mill. Your father came to the hospital and gave us his big check, his pitiful way of making it all okay for Mom and me.”
“Money was always my dad’s answer,” he said.
“I didn’t want to take it. In fact, accepting his guilt money made me feel dirty.”
He shook his head. “Then why did you take it, Miranda?” A slight throbbing in his temple alerted him to a pain behind his eyes. “If you hadn’t taken that money, you would never have left.”
“Maybe not,” she admitted. “I would have been trapped here on Liggett Mountain just like my mother had always been. The truth is, Carter, I hated your father, but I didn’t hate his money. I wasn’t smart like your sister, Ava, and I needed it. My mother was suddenly so alone and frail, wrapped up in her sad, grief-stricken world. I couldn’t save my father, but I had to save her, get her off this wretched mountain. And the best way to do that was to go with her.”
Her hand moved to his knee. “I couldn’t let my feelings come between you and Raymond. Yes, I hated him, but he was your father. I wasn’t welcome in your house. And after I took the money, I knew I could never look Raymond in the eyes again. It was guilt money from your father, but it seemed the guilt was mine for taking it.” She trapped a sob in her throat. “I told myself it was going-away money for me, a chance to start over for what was left of my family. But I don’t think I ever forgave myself for accepting that check. The truth is, the thirty thousand dollars made me resent the Cahills even while it saved my mom and me.”
“But you broke up with me. Are you saying you resented me for the money my father gave you?”
“It wasn’t fair. I know that now. But at the time I couldn’t make the distinction. I was grasping for a way to get us off Liggett and ease the memories from my mother’s mind.”
She leaned close to him, cupped his cheek in her hand. “What you and I had in the protected, brilliant world of young love was forever tarnished. We couldn’t make it better with a few kisses in the back of your car in your mother’s apple orchard or a few stolen beers. At the end of the night, you still went back to your big house on Hidden Creek Road and I went back to my little cabin.”
“But now you’re back.” The words sounded hopeful, almost desperate, and he hadn’t intended that. He didn’t want her back. She was right. There was too much history, too much lost trust.
“I’m back for a while,” she said. “But truthfully, Carter, I didn’t come back with any thought of seeing you.” She smiled. “Silly, I guess. Holly River is a small town. Lawton needed me, and I had to come. I know you loved someone else. I know we can’t get back what we once had, but I’m glad I did run into you right away. You’ve been such a help to me. I can’t thank you enough...”
He stood. There it was, expressed in the simplest of terms. Gratitude to the most helpful cop in North Carolina.
Gratitude.
Well, isn’t that what you wanted to hear? he asked himself. Miranda came here only to help her cousin. She had no interest in seeing you again. Running into you was an act of cruel fate. Just as well. He’d carved out a life for himself without Miranda, without Lainey. He didn’t want to get married again. He didn’t want children. Just as well you cleared the air with her today. Now you can get on with things without having to concern yourself with Miranda’s feelings. She was simply grateful.
He rubbed his hand across his mouth, nodded his head slowly. Sometimes a person just needed to know where he stood, even if it hurt. He cleared his throat. “You ready to go?”
“Carter...” Her voice was low, intensely personal. “I didn’t mean to minimize what we had when we were kids. It was wonderful, some of the best memories of my life.”
“Pretty great, huh?” He walked to the door, opened it. “Let’s go.”
She walked out ahead of him. When they reached the car, he said, “Miranda, I’ll talk to Jace.”
“You will?”
“Yep. I can get him to hire Lawton.” And what the heck, he said to himself. Might as well spread that gratitude around.
CHAPTER TEN
FOLLOWING HIS CHIEF’S instructions, Sam McCall was headed into Boone this Monday morning to check out a few secondhand stores that were known for carrying anything from antique china to old galvanized buckets. The folks of the High Country were skilled in turning junk into dollars, and merchandise of all kinds and conditions was found each weekend at impromptu garage sales and thrift stores. And in this case, “You want it? We got it” shops.
Sam was looking for anything on the list Carter had given him of objects stolen from the local winery last night. He had concrete descriptions of a tiller, fertilizer, weed whacker and numerous other gardening supplies. It seemed that Holly River’s latest crime spree, the one initiated by the theft at the hardware store, was perpetrated by someone hoping for help with a green thumb.
Traffic was light on the main street at 8:00 a.m., but Sam took the alley behind Holly River’s shops and restaurants just to check out early-morning activity. And he found some.
A couple of hundred yards down the alley, behind the River Café, he saw Allie. She and another woman were leaning against an old sedan that had been gathering rust spots for about twenty years. They were talking, and of course, interesting Sam.
As he got closer, he realized the other woman was most likely the lady he’d seen from a distance at Allie’s house on Saturday night. And now that he saw her up close, he recognized her. Pulling alongside the two women, Sam rolled down his window. “Good morning, ladies.”
The older woman, Sheila, nodded a quick hello and opened her car door. “I’ve got to be heading out, Allie,” she said. She climbed into her car, started the engine and proceeded to back away from the patrol car. She did a quick about-face and headed down the alley, leaving a trail of dust behind her.
“What’s her big hurry this morning?” Sam asked.
Allie smiled, leaned her arms on the open window. “Don’t worry about Sheila. She’s always got something going on. How are you, handsome?”
“Not bad at all...now.” With one eye on the fleeing sedan, he said, “Taking a break?”
“Yep. But I’d be glad to get you a cup of coffee.”
Sam grinned at her. “I’d take it, but there’s something I want that I’d pick over coffee any day.” He crooked his finger, drawing her head into the car.
She chuckled. “Happy to oblige.”
She kissed him on the mouth, a quick, over-way-too-soon peck that made him long for the kisses they’d shared while parked at the shore of Sycamore Lake last night. He’d had just t
he right music playing on his iPod and a couple of tall, cool beers in the console. The weather had been perfect, the moon high and full. The kisses had been spectacular. In fact, everything about Allie filled that category.
“Where you off to?” she asked.
“Just checking out some possible leads on stolen property that Carter gave me.”
“Another hardware store robbery?” she said.
He didn’t know why, but he didn’t admit that the merchandise on his list was related to the theft from last week. “No, this stuff is bigger and better,” he said. And that was true. And worth about four times as much as the loss from the hardware store.
She stood straight. “I’ll get you that coffee now. Can’t have you trekking off into the wilds of Bolton County without the proper fuel.”
He held her wrist. “I know your landlady. She works at the Muddy Duck Tavern. She’s served me up a couple of drafts.”
“Right. She does.”
Sam recalled that Carter had told him that the bartender at the Duck had a connection to Dale Jefferson. More specifically, she was a longtime girlfriend, or as Carter intimated at the time, an accomplice.
“So you say Sheila is an old family friend?” Sam asked.
“From way back. She was about fifteen when I was just a kid. That’s why she babysat my brother and me.”
“Where was that?”
“Small town by Wilmington. Why?”
“No reason.” Sam gave her another of his winning smiles. “Can’t blame me for wanting to know everything about you.”
“Now, Officer,” she said, “a woman’s got to have some secrets, doesn’t she?” She tapped Sam on his nose with her index finger. “You already know more than any other man around here.” She backed up and grabbed the handle to the restaurant’s back door. “I’ll see you in a minute with that coffee.”
Sam drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Why should it bother him that Allie was living with Dale Jefferson’s girlfriend? That didn’t mean Sheila wasn’t a good person. And even if she was bolder and more brazen than Allie, that didn’t mean that Allie was like her.
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