by Alison Kent
He wore scuffed work boots, worn jeans that rode low on his hips, and a gray athletic T-shirt washed to nothing but threads. If she held it to the sun, she’d be able to see right through it. What she saw now was the outline of muscles, a thatch of dark chest hair, absolutely no fat, and biceps she had never imagined when picturing him all grown-up and his own man. Though hadn’t he always been his own man? Just not aged as he was now, beautiful and so richly seasoned.
She pushed away the thoughts. What good would they do her, making her long for… something, she wasn’t sure what, that she couldn’t have? He didn’t want to be her friend. He certainly wouldn’t want to resume their previous intimacy. Admiring him with more than a quick glance would only leave her frustrated. And since the next five days would have them both inside the house, the proximity close, the tension high, she didn’t want to be fighting an attraction she feared would give Angel any sort of edge.
Nope. Best not even go there, no matter how tempting he was.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d changed your mind,” he called as she opened her door and set one foot on the ground. Saying nothing, she swung her other leg from the car and stood, pocketing her keys after hitting the lock on the fob. Still silent, she made her way up the sidewalk to the porch, where he leaned against a support beam, arms crossed.
Funny how after the lecture she’d just given herself, she still wanted to grab his shirt in both hands, hold it to her face, and breathe deeply of who he was now. Instead, she said, “Not a chance.”
He took her in. Head to toe. And a second time, lingering. Her boots were suede. Her sweater cashmere. Her scarf, well, a Patchwork Moon exclusive. “You don’t exactly look dressed for work.”
That was the thing… “About the five days—”
“Uh-uh.” He pushed off the beam. “No reneging.”
“I’m not reneging. But I do have a life. Commitments. Professional and personal.” She was so behind on her weaving she feared her winter holiday collection would suffer, and she’d barely begun thinking about her spring. Then there were all the plans for the center she’d set in motion before knowing she’d have Angelo to deal with. And one of these days, she really did need to pack. “I know what we agreed on—”
The corner of his mouth pulled into a smirk. “But you want out of the deal.”
“No, though I need at least four hours a day for me. My business. And everything I’ve got going on with the center. Plus, I’ve just bought a loft—”
He cut her off with a huff, the corner of his mouth tugging upward. “Got tired of all the sheep jokes, did you?”
He’d teased her as often as anyone, and she just stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “You live on a sheep farm, you live with the sheep jokes. Not much to be done about it.”
“I guess not,” he said, though she could tell he was having a hard time not laughing, and that surprised her. Humor was the last emotion she’d expected from him today.
She took advantage, using the break in the tension between them to ask, “You never told me what you’re doing here. In Hope Springs.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Figured I’d better come see what I might want before you got rid of it.”
“What happened to taking everything you wanted when you left?” she asked, because she couldn’t imagine that was the whole truth.
“You didn’t own the house then,” he said, as if the name on the deed made a difference.
Why it would, especially to him… She thought back to yesterday, when he’d mentioned her selling scarves, and wondered what else he might know. “How did you find out?”
“I hear things,” he said, after a long moment spent weighing his response.
She hadn’t heard from him in eight years. She didn’t even know where he lived. “But apparently not that your family had stopped paying the mortgage?”
Something she couldn’t identify flickered in his eyes. “We don’t talk.”
That wasn’t an answer. At least not to the question she’d asked. “If you’d known about the foreclosure, would you have stepped in to keep it from happening?”
This time his shrug was a lot less sarcastic and more a gesture of having no answer.
“You don’t know if you would’ve saved the house, and yet you want to make sure I don’t destroy anything you might want.” His logic made her head hurt. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“Yet here I am and here you are.”
Because that had been his plan? She broke the hold of his impenetrable gaze, squinting through the front window as if she could actually see inside. What she saw instead was his reflection. It was just as striking. Just as stirring.
Her heart ached in ways—and for things—she wasn’t sure she understood. “Did you start going through the rooms last night? Or did you decide to wait for me?”
“I worked in the shop,” he said, giving a jerk of his head that direction. “There are some tools out there I could use. I’ll buy them from you.”
So he still did woodworking? Did he build furniture like his father had? Had he finished his architecture degree? “You don’t have to buy them,” she said, turning to face him again. “Anything you want, it’s yours.”
“It’s business, Luna. Don’t be sentimental. You could sell them to a local carpenter and put the money back into your center.”
“Does that mean you’re a carpenter?”
He huffed. “Are you fishing?”
She had been, but now that he’d called her on it, she changed her mind and the subject. “I haven’t told you, but we’re calling the center the Caffey-Gatlin Academy.”
He leaned his head to one side, popped his neck, leaned it to the other, and did the same. “Yeah? Are you telling me now because you want to know how I feel about it?”
“No. I’m telling you to tell you. If I wanted to know how you felt, I’d ask.” But she did want to know. She wanted that fiercely.
“You tell Merrilee and Orville Gatlin yet? See what Oliver thinks about having his family’s name connected to mine?”
“I don’t care what he thinks. And I really don’t care what you think either. I just wanted you to hear it from me, rather than anyone else who’ll be around.”
A deep frown creased his forehead. “What do you mean? Who’ll be around?”
Oh, that’s right… “I bought the place before I had the idea for the arts center. I couldn’t bear losing the connection to Sierra. But since we’ll need more room than the house provides, I’ve hired a contractor to look into putting up something that will better suit our needs.”
“So all three buildings… You’re taking them down?”
Why did that seem to bother him? “I’m thinking about it. But we’re just in the initial discussion stage. Nothing’s been decided.”
He nodded as if relieved, and again she wondered, what she was missing? After what had happened between them, after the way he’d left—her, his family, Hope Springs—surely he had no lingering attachment to the place.
And yet something had brought him here. “Having looked around since yesterday, do you think we’ll need more than five days? Because if that’s not enough to get you finished and back to…”
“More fishing?” he arched a brow to ask.
She arched one, too. “Isn’t that what we’re doing here?”
“Touché,” he said, then added without her having to pull on her line, “Vermont. I’d be getting back to Vermont.”
Now she was even more confused. If he lived in Vermont, how did he know about the foreclosure or her scarves? “And that’s where you’d be using the tools?”
“I work for a furniture builder, so yes,” he said, nodding. “It’s where I’d be using the tools.”
She bit her tongue against mentioning anything about his following in his father’s footsteps. She didn’t want to burn a bridge they’d only just started to cross. “Okay then. I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise. If waiting a day to g
et started messes up your schedule, we can work through the night or something.”
“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t really expect to get five days out of you.”
“Then why did you ask for them?”
“Good question.”
As aggravating as always, wasn’t he? “You’ll get your five days.” If she had to rework her week’s appointments, she would. She headed across the porch for the steps, then stopped. “Oh, and if you happen to run across a necklace you don’t recognize, please let me know.”
“I won’t recognize any necklace, so if I find one I’ll set it aside.”
“Thank you. I’ve lost one. Apparently years ago,” she said, and waved a hand. “It belonged to my grandmother. She gave it to my mother. I borrowed it for one of Sierra’s recitals and haven’t seen it since.”
He considered her as he stacked his hands behind him and leaned against the porch beam again. “And you want to give it to your daughter one day?”
Smiling, she shook her head. “Actually, my mother wants to give it to my sister when she’s born. Her name’s Skye.”
His tone was taken aback when he asked, “Your mother’s expecting?”
Luna nodded. “Unexpectedly so. I’ll be old enough to be my sister’s mother.”
“Huh. And after being an only child all this time.”
She didn’t think she’d ever feel like anything else. “Both of us, Skye and I, will have been raised that way, if you think about it. Neither of us will have what you had, all the running and screaming and laughing with your siblings.”
“Yeah, well, that was a lifetime ago,” he said, bumping his head against the beam, contemplative.
“I loved coming here because of that,” she said into the peace that seemed to be settling between them. “It was so quiet at home.”
“I could’ve used some of that quiet,” he said, his tone almost regretful but still tinged with what sounded like anger.
“The grass is often greener.”
“Or you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
“Sounds like you miss them.”
“I miss… normal,” he said, pushing off the beam to look across the yard. “Not cringing when the phone rings, expecting bad news. Not wondering how much I can afford to keep out of my own paycheck. Not waiting every day for another shoe to drop. Not hoping there are no more shoes.”
She hated that his family’s demands had been so hard on him. “I wondered if things between you had changed after…”
“After they disowned me?” He shook his head.
That made her sad. “I never meant for that to happen.”
“Neither did I.”
“They must hate me so much,” she said, and took a deep breath. “Sierra. Then you.”
His heavy-lidded gaze found hers. “‘First you will come to the Sirens, who enchant all who come near them.’”
Angelo Caffey quoting Homer. Her world was upside down. She cocked her head, considered him. “Is that what you think I am? A Siren?”
The grin that pulled at his mouth spoke of knowing her well. “You always were, Ms. Meadows. You always were.”
DAY ONE
TUESDAY
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.
—Virgil
CHAPTER SIX
Tuesday morning, Luna started work in the kitchen, picking up where she’d left off the day Angelo had found her. While she’d looked through cabinets and drawers, he’d brought a stack of moving boxes inside, dropped them on the kitchen table, and silently set about assembling them, taping the bottoms, lining them up along the wall.
She’d asked him about some of the things she’d found: the coffee cup his father had never been without, white with black musical notes scattered about and the size of a pint glass, the teapot his mother had used every morning at breakfast with Darjeeling, every evening at the Caffey family hour with chamomile. He hadn’t been interested in either, or in any of the pots or pans or small appliances or gadgets or even the knives.
She’d filled two garbage cans, which Angelo had carried out to the Dumpster. It had arrived shortly after her, not long past seven. Sadly, there wasn’t much worth donating. Time had taken its toll. Bugs and mice and, judging by their leavings, larger varmints had used the abandoned house for shelter. She’d yet to run into any that might cause her to scream, but then she’d been raised on a farm. She wasn’t much of a screamer.
After two hours in the kitchen, she was beginning to doubt five days would be enough for just this one room. An exaggeration, of course, but not by much. The house was filled with nooks and crannies, and the Caffey family had put all of them to use. Who needed five bottle openers? Five packs of five hundred wooden skewers? Five cabinets filled with empty spaghetti sauce jars? Who did everything in fives? Certainly not her, because three more hours of this and she’d be on the phone to a cleaning service, forget Angelo and his five days.
Stepping off the back porch into the beautiful September morning, she breathed deeply of the warming air and lifted her face to the sun. She wasn’t an outdoors nut—she had no trouble sitting in her weaving shed for hours at a time—but seeing all that clutter had her thinking about hiking boots and hiking trails and, well, hiking. Instead, she took off around the house, looking at the siding and the gutters and the window frames. She didn’t know enough about construction to tell what was in good shape, but she could definitely tell what was bad. As sad as she’d be to see the house go, it was probably for the best.
A quarter of the way around it, she reached the window she knew best, the one Sierra had used to escape her first-floor bedroom more times than Luna could count. And she only knew of the times when she’d escaped, too, or stayed behind and waited up to let Sierra back in. Who knew how often Sierra and Oscar had arranged to meet past her curfew? How far down Three Wishes Road she’d had to walk to climb into his car?
How quiet they must’ve been, maybe rolling his convertible until they were far enough from the house to start it without being heard. Or perhaps they hadn’t used his car at all, but had sneaked off into the woods surrounding the property, climbed into the Caffey children’s tree house, and lain together until dawn, planning their future, talking of music, sharing their dreams, becoming one.
Luna had never had a real boyfriend. She’d flirted, been flirted with, gone out for fast food with groups of both male and female friends, done the same with concerts and movies and swimming trips to Barton Springs. But no boy had ever found a place in her heart the way Oscar had in Sierra’s. No boy except for Angelo, and their relationship, at least during her sophomore year of high school, couldn’t really be called one. They were both full of lust and curiosity and insatiable desperation, too young to know if they were doing anything right.
It was only later, after he’d graduated and left for Cornell, that they’d talked. Really talked. Epic phone calls she’d paid for with long-distance calling cards, buying several at a time with money her daddy thought he’d given her to spend on new shoes. Hearing Angelo’s voice when she’d picked up the private line in her room, or when he’d picked up from nearly two thousand miles away, had been the best parts of her days.
Once she’d graduated, started weaving, and had the time and money to meet him halfway for an occasional weekend in Louisville, Kentucky, or Nashville, Tennessee, she’d been desperate for each first glimpse of him, desolate after the last. But boyfriend had never been the right word to encompass what Angelo Caffey had been to her.
She wanted that feeling again; it had been so long, and she missed it—the giddiness, the intoxication, the thrill. Sierra had felt it for Oscar, and Luna was a complete believer in its existence. She’d witnessed the love shared by her friends Tennessee Keller and Kaylie Flynn. She knew well that time’s joys and hardships had only strengthened the love between her parents.
She’d seen the look in Mike Caffey’s eyes when he’d gazed upon his lovely Carlita. As young a
s Luna had been in those days, listening as Sierra’s father played his guitar, watching his face while he’d watched his wife’s, she’d been moved by the couple’s emotional bond, swearing if she reached into the air she could grab the feeling and hold it. It had been that palpable. That defined.
Even now from beneath Sierra’s window, she could almost hear Mike’s flamenco guitar, though he would never have left it behind. What he had left were memories. As much as Luna had loved watching Sierra’s mother with her needle and thread, doing so was made even better when accompanied by music… whether Mike’s guitar, Isidora’s ukulele, Emilio’s mandolin, or Sierra’s cello.
Slowing her steps, Luna returned to the present, realizing she wasn’t imagining the guitar at all. The sounds, plaintive and somber, yet full of something harsh, were coming from inside the house. There was only one person who could be making them. And she hadn’t even known he played.
Quietly, she returned to the back porch. The kitchen door creaked when she pushed it open, but Angelo continued to pluck and strum the strings, to strike the heel of his hand against the wooden body for emphasis—an emphasis she wasn’t sure how to take.
She found him in his parents’ bedroom, one hip cocked on the edge of the window seat, the guitar on his thigh, the other foot on the floor. His eyes were closed, his head moving as he played, a dip of his chin, and a darkly narrowed frown when, judging by the change in the song’s tenor, he must have felt something brutal and sharp.
What she felt was indescribable as she recognized his pain, the sensation slicing through her like a garrote. Her chest clutched, reaching for air, for blood, for all the things she needed to stay alive. And yet listening to him play, seeing him entranced by the work… It made her swoon. And ache. For him. Because of him…
A sob caught in her throat, and she gasped with it. His fingers stilled; his eyes opened. He kept his gaze cast down, and she heard an audible click as he ground his jaw.
Stupid. She was so stupid. She should’ve left him alone. “Why didn’t I know that you played?”