by Alison Kent
“The way you do now?”
“Except it would be out of my own home. Not my parents’.”
“Hey, you’ve got a good thing going. You sure you want to mess it up?”
Wasn’t he just urging her not to let the lofts get away? “It’s less about messing it up than it is getting on with my life and letting my parents get back to theirs.”
“And that guy up there?” Will canted his head to indicate Angelo, who was no doubt still glaring. “Is he part of getting on with your life?”
If he was, she certainly wasn’t going to admit it to Will. “He’s part of getting on with the arts center. That’s all.”
“Right.” The corner of his mouth lifted wickedly. “You may think that’s why he’s here, but he’s got other things on his mind.”
Why was she giving him an explanation…? “We have a history. I’ve known him forever. And most of that time we’ve been at each other’s throats.”
“I’m going to say the rest of the time you were at each other in bed.”
“It’s not like that with me and Angelo.” Not anymore, though when it had been… She took a deep breath, blowing away the thought as she exhaled.
“Maybe not for you. It is for him.”
Luna found herself frowning. Was he right? Or was he just being his usual frustrating self? Then she remembered the kiss, and Angelo’s need. She glanced toward the porch, and lust made itself known, tingling in places heated by Angelo’s narrowed gaze.
“You just met him,” she said, turning back to Will and knotting her hands at her waist. “You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know this,” he said, the dark brow not hidden by his hair arching deliberately. “I don’t need to be his pal to know this.”
Pal? “You won’t mind if I don’t take your word for it.”
“Don’t mind at all. You should find it out for yourself,” he said, and tossed back his hair. “I think you’d have a really good time doing so. And he obviously needs to have a good time.”
Enough. She held up one hand. “Listen, wolf boy, just because you’re all about sex—”
“Don’t be naive, Luna. All men are all about sex. Whether we get it or not is another thing entirely.”
She bit her tongue before asking who he’d been sleeping with. “Thanks for the idea about keeping the house intact. I’ll talk to Ten and the nonprofit board and see what everyone thinks.”
“It worked for Kaylie. And something tells me your man up there is not as indifferent to this place as he wants you to believe. Might be you need to figure out why.”
She didn’t need to figure out why. She knew exactly. And then it hit her. She was sitting, as it were, on a gold mine of an architectural degree. Why wasn’t she involving Angelo in the building plans?
At that, Will leaned in and brushed his lips over her cheek, then climbed into his seat. She backed away, and as he started the truck, Angelo moved into her peripheral vision. “He’s a frustrating little prick.”
“Funny. I was thinking the same about you,” she said, heading back inside and ignoring the shiver sliding down her spine at the sound of his deep, rolling laugh following her.
“So what do you think?” Luna asked a few minutes later as Angelo joined her.
He’d found her on the floor in the kitchen again, as if she couldn’t move to another room until she’d finished with this one. As if for some reason she had to handle every dish, every utensil, every small appliance, every long-expired coupon before letting it go. And she hadn’t even been the one who’d lived here. Which had him wondering, why the OCD?
“What do I think about what?”
“Will’s suggestion.”
He shrugged. He was trying not to think about Will. “I don’t think anything.”
“You’re a carpenter,” she said, and sat back on her knees, winding her hair and dropping it down inside her shirt. “Or if I don’t miss my guess, a degreed architect, since that’s where you were headed, last I knew.”
There she went, fishing again.
“I don’t believe for a minute that your mind wasn’t spinning while he talked.”
His spinning mind hadn’t been thinking about construction. His spinning mind had been wondering about her relationship with the other man, and for no reason that made any sense. “He’s right. And he’s wrong.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, frowning.
“Using the house…” He came farther into the kitchen, pulled one of the chairs from beneath the table, and sat, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “I get what he’s saying. I just don’t know if the house is usable. I don’t even know if we should be using it. Rats could’ve taken a liking to the wiring.”
“That’s what happened to Kaylie’s house. Or so the fire inspector thinks. Rats or squirrels and wires in the attic.” She glanced upward and frowned. “Maybe I should get an electrician out here to look things over.”
“I’m sure your boy Will knows someone.”
She glared at him, her mouth twisting. “You really need to stop doing that. You don’t even know Will.”
“I know how he was looking at you.”
“Oh, good grief,” she said, getting to her feet. “He was looking at me like a friend making sure the man sizing him up wasn’t a threat to me.”
“When have I ever been a threat to you?” he asked, lacing his hands behind his head as he leaned back. He knew the answer was never, but he was curious to hear what she’d say.
Shrugging, she avoided his gaze, pulling a trash can close as she opened another drawer. “I guess that depends on what you mean by threat. But Will doesn’t know our history.”
That wasn’t much of an answer, he mused, pushing to his feet and heading for the back door. He stood there, a hand braced overhead on the frame as he tried not to dwell on their past. He wasn’t ready to go there yet, though he’d known coming here meant he’d eventually have to.
“The barn might work just as well.” He felt her gaze when she looked up, waited while she connected the dots.
“Built out for classrooms, you mean?”
“That, or if you need it, living quarters. A house. Maybe studio apartments for your faculty. Whatever.” He added the last because he really didn’t care.
“Are you ever going to tell me how you knew I’d bought the house?”
But he was back thinking about their history again. Even though he’d told himself not to. “When we were together,” he said, glancing over, “you never talked much about how it was for you after the accident. I mean physically. Being confined to bed for so long—”
“I missed you,” she said, as if the words had been hanging there, waiting.
He wondered if she’d meant to say it. Or planned to say it. Or if it had just slipped out. If she’d missed anyone, he would’ve thought it was Sierra.
He’d missed seeing her, too, but he doubted their missing had been for the same reasons. He’d been eighteen when they’d hooked up, a high school senior, caught up in football and the approaching freedom graduation would bring. And the money he didn’t have for homecoming or the prom. And dodging the endless recruiters who refused to understand he’d fallen into football without meaning to. That his parents had pushed him, hoping like with Sierra that his abilities would benefit the family as a whole.
Seeing Luna had been about getting away from all that. About being someone else. “We saw each other later. We saw each other for two more years.”
“Until moving day,” she said, her voice sad and soft but lacking the tone of accusation he’d expected. The tone he deserved.
“Yeah,” he said, but that was all he had. She hadn’t been the one to disown him. His parents had done that. So why had he walked away from her, too…? “I shouldn’t have let that happen. Any of what they said to you. And I shouldn’t have gotten out of your car at the airport without looking back.”
“I think the problem started when you got in my car. Me bein
g the taxi driver who brought you to the house.” She picked up an ivory-handled carving knife he remembered seeing his father slam point-down into their table. “That didn’t go over so well.”
His parents hadn’t known about his relationship with Luna. Showing up with her the way he had… “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess that having you there would make things easier.”
He’d been the bad guy that day, the one who’d forced his parents’ hand by calling his mother’s family. He couldn’t deal anymore with the way they were living—or weren’t living—since losing Sierra. He’d had a big hole in his life, too, but all they’d seemed to care about was that he was sending them away—their words, their interpretation, their idea of the truth.
Luna tossed the knife into the trash and slammed the drawer. “But it didn’t.”
He shook his head, let the subject drop, and then pushed through the screen and left her without a word. Just like he’d done at the airport on moving day.
DAY TWO
WEDNESDAY
If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day.
—Confucius
CHAPTER NINE
Knock, knock,” Luna called, pulling open the back door into the kitchen at Two Owls Café the next morning. “Kaylie? Are you here?”
The other woman, Luna’s closest friend, had been the one to text and interrupt the kiss with Angelo. She’d asked Luna to stop by the next time she found herself in the neighborhood. Kaylie didn’t have to know that Luna’s being in the neighborhood so soon after was by design.
“In here,” Kaylie called, and Luna followed the other woman’s voice to the largest of the connected dining areas that used four of the three-story Victorian’s original ground-level rooms. Kaylie lived with her fiancé, Ten Keller, on the second floor, and would take over the third as well once the construction was finished. Her living and working in the same place had done a lot to tempt Luna into moving the contents of her weaving shed when she moved herself. “Hey, you.”
“Hey yourself.” Kaylie stood on a step stool, straightening one after the next in a row of black-and-white photographs, matted and framed in the same alternating colors, and hanging against a wall painted the brick-red of autumn leaves. “Does this one look straight to you? Every time I stand across the room, this one is crooked.”
Luna’s gaze traveled from one end of the row to the other. “It’s fine. I think it looks crooked because of the angled lines in the photo. They’re throwing you off.”
“Hmm. You’re probably right. Thanks.” She backed down off the stool. “And thanks for stopping by.”
“I almost came by last night,” Luna said, walking closer, “but figured it would be too late.”
“You should have,” Kaylie said, turning from Luna back to the photos while she talked. “Ten was stuck in San Marcos on a job, and it was just me and Magoo.”
Luna glanced back the way she’d come. “Where is Magoo anyway? He usually shows up at the door before you do.”
Kaylie gave up on the photos and joined her. “He’s been extra vigilant since the fire. He likes to roam and make sure everything’s as it should be. These days he’s most interested in the fall garden. Things are stirring to life, and the wildlife has noticed. He patrols the plot like an embassy marine.”
“Bet he loves having a job.”
“The best dogs do,” Kaylie said with a laugh, and Luna smiled.
She missed having a dog since losing her beloved Maya to a very old age. “Will said you’re hoping to open by November.”
“I should be able to. We’ve got a few more things needing to fall into place, and one of those”—she lifted an index finger—“is why I wanted you to stop by.”
“Sounds ominous,” Luna said, widening her eyes dramatically. “Or sounds like you need something from me.”
“I don’t need it.” Kaylie grinned, her ponytail swinging as she cocked her head to the side. “But I’d like it.”
“I’m listening.”
“I want to pay you to weave something for me. And before you tell me you don’t take orders, I know that you don’t take orders. I also know you’re up to your ears with the demands of the nonprofit, and even if you did take orders, you wouldn’t have time for a while—”
“But you want to place one anyway,” Luna said, cutting in when the other woman stopped to take a breath.
Kaylie nodded. “I’m hoping you’re at least curious enough to ask me what I want.”
“Because I know you as well as I do, I’m going to guess it’s something for the café. Even though you know I only weave scarves.”
“I know that’s all you’ve done in the past, but I also know you’re doing some bigger projects for the nonprofit’s auction.”
“Did Mitch tell you that?”
“He did,” she said, moving to Luna’s side and staring, then frowning, at the row of framed photos and shaking her head. “He also said you weren’t advertising that fact yet, so don’t be mad at him.”
Even before Luna was born, Mitch Pepper had been her father’s best friend, and Luna had played a large part in reuniting him with Kaylie, his daughter. Doing so would probably stay with her forever as one of the most satisfying moments of her life. “I could never be mad at him.”
Kaylie reached for Luna’s arm and squeezed. “Have I told you what an amazing father he is? And how much I owe you for what you did?”
“Even though I lied through my teeth while doing it?”
“I would’ve done the same thing,” Kaylie said, squeezing again before letting her go.
“Yeah, well, lying’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Especially lying to people you love. Even telling yourself it’s for the best, that you’re protecting them, that what you’re keeping from them wouldn’t change anything, and might even hurt them…” She stopped, shuddered, and took a deep breath. “It sucks. With you and Mitch it wasn’t so bad. Everything was going to come to light soon enough.”
“But you’re not talking about me and Mitch.”
Luna shook her head and wandered into the hallway. Kaylie followed, and both women made their way to the staircase, Luna sitting on the third step, Kaylie sitting beside her.
“You told me a few months ago that you’d lost your best friend in an accident, but never told anyone everything that happened. I’m guessing this has something to do with that?”
Luna swallowed, wondering how much of the story she wanted to share. “I missed the first two months of my senior year with a broken hip. My car slammed into a boulder, but the car I was traveling with…” She closed her eyes, opened them, thought about Oliver Gatlin climbing down into the ravine. “The same accident killed my best friend, and might as well have killed her boyfriend. He’s been in a permanent vegetative state ever since.”
Kaylie pulled in an audible breath. “Luna, sweetie, I had no idea.”
“I don’t talk about it. And since we all went to St. Thomas rather than Hope Springs High, fewer people in town knew about it when it happened, but it’s pretty much common knowledge now.” She cast a knowing glance toward Kaylie. “Especially since the boy involved was Oscar Gatlin.”
“Merrilee Gatlin’s son?” Kaylie asked, and Luna nodded. “Wow. I’d heard she and her husband had a child in the rehab facility, but I had no idea of the details. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“Nothing really happened to me. Except the break—”
“Luna,” Kaylie said, and wrapped an arm around her. “You lost a friend. You lost two friends. And knowing what I do of Merrilee Gatlin, I can’t imagine she did anything to help you with your suffering.”
An understatement if ever there was one. “According to Merrilee Gatlin, her family was the only one who did suffer. I was alive, so my parents couldn’t know what she and her husband were going through. And the Caffeys buried their daughter, so they got closure. As if that was supposed to be some kind of consolation.” Even now, thinking about that family’s g
rief had her chest tightening. “Oscar was the one driving the car, and yet the Gatlins made life so miserable afterward for Sierra’s family they eventually packed up and left town.”
“That’s the property where you’re building the arts center, right? Where their home was?”
“The house is still there, and still filled with all their things. They only took clothes and keepsakes, and even then they left a lot.” She thought of the personal items she’d found. How Sierra’s room appeared to be untouched, though she hadn’t been inside to check carefully. “They just up and started over.”
“Where did they go?”
“To Mexico. Angelo, he’s the oldest son, called their mother’s family, and they came to help.” She breathed in, breathed out. “He’s here now. Angelo. He came to go through the house before it’s torn down. If we do tear it down. Will’s going to talk to Ten and see if maybe we can save it.”
But Kaylie ignored all talk of the house to hone in on what was important. “You must’ve known him pretty well. Angelo. Being close to his sister. It’s got to be good to see him again.”
Oh, where did she even begin to describe what it was like seeing Angelo Caffey? “It is, except…”
“You’ve got a history with this man,” Kaylie said, reading between the lines.
Luna laced her hands together, pressed them between her knees. “We spent a lot of time together in the past.”
“And where exactly did you spend all this time?”
Luna felt her face coloring. “That, missy, is none of your business.”
“I knew it!” Kaylie slapped her hands against her thighs, her feet against the stair. “You have a sordid past!”
Luna sputtered, then bent over laughing until she couldn’t laugh anymore. “I do not! At least no more sordid than any other sixteen-year-old girl whose best friend’s brother is a god.”
“Oh, so now he’s a god.”