The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  But he’d not paid even half of Glover’s fees from the divorce, and young Mr. Glover was too competent to be susceptible to a disciplinary complaint through the grievance committee.

  More’s the pity.

  You land a single blow on a woman—a woman who had provoked you past all bearing—and you were labeled for the rest of your miserable, misbegotten life.

  It wasn’t as if Donal had meant to strike Vera, for pity’s sake. He’d never laid a hand on a woman or a child before or since, and he would have apologized sincerely if she hadn’t slapped that restraining order on him.

  Then he’d dragged his miserable arse off to counseling—which he could not afford—because his attorney had strongly “suggested” it.

  “If you didn’t slash her tire, who did? If you didn’t leave those messages, who did?”

  “It is not my job to investigate every petty prank in Damson County,” Donal said. “If you must know, when the restraining order expires, which it ought to in about six weeks, I want to approach Vera about honoring the concert dates she hasn’t canceled yet.”

  Glover fiddled with some sort of high-tech blinds, softening the afternoon glare in an office that had likely cost more to furnish than Donal’s entire downstairs.

  “If you were at an AA meeting, just say so, Donal. I have it on good authority at least two of the judges sitting in this county are regular attendees.”

  Was that supposed to comfort a man drowning in legal bills?

  “I do not attend AA meetings, Glover, though I’d put up with even those glorified pep rallies for the sadly afflicted if it would put me in a more flattering light in Vera’s eyes.”

  Glover turned, his gaze roaming Donal’s features with the flat curiosity of one who’d seen much despite his relative youth.

  “Donal, you are either the ballsiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met, or you’re stone stupid. What makes you think Vera would want you to represent her, even if she did take on those performances?”

  One could be ballsy and stupid, if one were Scottish, broke, and weary to death of lawyers.

  “Vera doesn’t have a choice. If you knew the first thing about business law, you’d know I booked those dates in my capacity as her agent. She has a small window left when she can cancel them and pay a reasonable fee, but if she doesn’t cancel soon, I get the commission on the advance due the agent. She’s contractually bound, plain and simple. As agent, I have a lot of say in how those performances take place.”

  “Why would you want this?” Glover asked, folding his arms across his chest. He was a big man, fit, lean, and smart, a gladiator in his prime. He’d been chosen to be a suitable adversary to that snake Knightley, but he’d disappointed Donal. Who would have thought a gladiator played by a bunch of infernal rules?

  “You think I’m obsessed with my former wife’s charms?” Donal said. “I can assure you, ours was a practical union on both sides. The poor woman was too busy pining after her dead first husband or spoiling the children when she wasn’t practicing. As far as I’m concerned, she can marry anybody who won’t interfere with her talent.”

  With her revenue-generating ability. Donal wasn’t proud of such a mercenary position, but his children needed to eat.

  “As a commodity,” he went on, “Vera’s stock is going up now because she’s on hiatus. She saves her passion for her music. Sales of her recordings are steady, when they should be nonexistent, and she’s going completely to waste, teaching out in this benighted backwater. She could come back stronger than ever, line up performances five years out, and make me enough to retire comfortably. She agreed to do as much when I married her.”

  The prospect of a comfortable retirement—of any retirement—had made a fool of him. Donal wasn’t proud of that either.

  Glover scrubbed a hand over his face, glanced out the window, then back at Donal, and oh, mercy, Donal had failed once again to impress his counsel with selfless sentiments and bottomless remorse.

  Donal would apologize to Vera all day long, sincerely and humbly, but that was none of this fellow’s business.

  “Whatever you do, Donal, do not approach her personally until that restraining order is expired. You will go to jail, no ifs, ands, or buts. The best attorney in the state could not ethically prevent that outcome. That your children have contact with her is over my objection, but the judge didn’t place any restrictions on them. Now, where were you at the time Vera’s car was vandalized?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Donal, I cannot defend you if you don’t give me the ammunition to do so.”

  “I am not charged with anything.” Donal plucked an imaginary speck of lint from the sleeve of his best suit. “Really, Glover, must I do your lawyering for you? Send the appropriate letter fussing and fuming and claiming I want a cordial relationship with Vera when circumstances allow it. It’s the damned truth.” He rose, not waiting for Glover to be the one ending the meeting.

  For a patient man, Donal was about at the end of his rope, regardless of the fees owed for services rendered. Had Glover done a better job, Vera would have been brought to heel, and this whole mess could have been avoided.

  At the very least, Vera would be performing again, and happier for it.

  Donal had reconciled himself to the divorce easily enough—they hadn’t had much of marriage, after all—but if Glover had been more effective, then the financial mess might not have been so god-awfully complicated.

  And Donal did so hate complications.

  * * *

  When Trent Knightley needed a knock-down, drag-out, two-hand-tackle game of racquetball—when he was coming down off a bad loss or a tough win in court, for example—he called his brother James. Typically, Trent could hold his own against James, but had to battle for every point.

  The difference in their ages was part of it, a small part, but James had a natural athleticism that defied fairness. Trent had long ago decided the better course was to be proud of his brother.

  And he was.

  Also worried about him.

  “What in the hell has gotten into you?” Trent passed James a bottle of water and flopped down on the bench beside him. They were in a panting, stinking, righteous sweat, and Trent would be sore for days. “You were trying to kill me.”

  James chugged half the bottle. “Just playing for keeps.”

  “You weren’t playing, James. What gives? Hannah won’t like it if you cripple me for life.”

  “I’ll be there to comfort her and serve as a father figure for the girls.” James elbowed Trent ungently in the gut. “You go tend to your aches and pains, old man.”

  “Hannah already turned you down flat once. You gave it your best shot, and she chose the better man.”

  “My best shot? You call a few casual lines over lunch a man’s best shot? I wasn’t half trying, and you’d best treat that lady like a queen unless you want her straying into my more appreciative arms.”

  “You’re coming very close to crossing a line, James.” Trent spoke quietly, because James was a flirt and maybe a slut, but he was also Trent’s brother, and a gentleman.

  A gentleman slut, if such a thing were possible. Maybe even a gentleman slut on slut-hiatus, if Mac’s speculations were accurate.

  “Put a sock in it, Trent. Hannah Knightley is your wife, for one thing, and ass over teakettle in love with you, for another. I have my standards. I’m just…”

  “Just what?” Trent cracked open his own water bottle—even his hands were sore—and waited.

  “I’m thinking of getting a dog.”

  “You love animals,” Trent said, and yet James possessed none of his own. What did a dog have to do with playing racquetball like a rhinoceros on crack? “You have plenty of space, and a dog is good company.”

  “Dogs stink. They chew your favorite shoes, piss on the carpet, hurk on the
porch, and either hump everything in sight or come in heat, and that’s worse.”

  Too good an opening for a concerned older brother to pass up. “You don’t want the competition?” Trent nudged James hard and let a little of his water spill on James’s leg.

  James nudged back harder. “For your information—”

  “I know. Mac is fretting that civilization as we know it has come to an end because you’re working a lot more than you’re playing.”

  Playing. Something in Trent’s mind connected, and his mild concern ratcheted up a notch. He would say something to Hannah and see what her woman’s intuition suggested.

  James chugged the rest of his water, crumpled up the bottle, and lobbed it into the nearest trash can.

  “My department is shorthanded,” James said. “You stole the perfect new hire away from me, and then you married her. I’m taking up the slack.”

  “Take up bowling, come riding with us, or go fishing with Mac. You need a hobby, James, or—I can’t believe I’m saying this—to get out and socialize more. You’ve got the biggest little black book in the history of single men.” Trent passed him another water. “The single females of Damson County will go into a collective mope if you continue to withhold your favors.”

  This time, his nudge was playful, or intended to be. James didn’t nudge him back.

  “No, Trent, they won’t. They’ll go shopping and buy a new pair of shoes, and in the morning, their new shoes will stay in their closet and still fit just fine.”

  James held up a fist to bump in parting, then rose and walked away.

  Slowly. At least James walked away slowly.

  When Trent could, when he was done with his second bottle of water and had properly inventoried his pulled and aching muscles, he got up slowly too, and called his wife.

  * * *

  Rather than spend his morning staring at more crossword puzzles or—James had resisted so far—breaking out the sudoku, James sought the winter woods because nothing soothed quite the way a quiet woods could, the dead leaves crunching underfoot, the occasional squirrel lecturing from the safety of a high, sturdy branch.

  A dog would have enjoyed the chilly breeze, because to a dog, the wind always bore interesting information.

  But, James reminded himself, a dog would have found something dead to roll in, and happily brought the stink into the house for the next three weeks.

  Growing up, James’s father had favored bull mastiffs as farm dogs. He’d said they were neither too dumb nor too bright. James had found them loyal and good-natured, if a little hard on the groundhog, rabbit, and squirrel populations.

  But big. Too big to spend long days crated in the kitchen while James was off making his living at the office or the courthouse. And one dog wasn’t enough, because they were pack animals, genetically predisposed to having others of their kind to socialize with.

  So no bull mastiffs. No dogs, in fact.

  A sound off to the left dragged James’s attention away from the dogs he wasn’t going to buy—a brindle pair would be nice, maybe breeding quality.

  Whatever was moving around was big enough to be indifferent to how much noise it made in the woods.

  A rabid animal might not care about making a racket, but a healthy animal ought to. The Maryland mountains provided a home to bears, and increasingly, to bobcats, mountain lions, and coyotes.

  None of those big predators sang “Alice the Camel” as they hunted their next meal.

  “Hullo, James!”

  “Twyla, hello. You’ve wandered a long way from home.”

  “Not so far. Besides, I’m not lost. Home is right over that way.”

  She gestured vaguely over her shoulder. The girl wasn’t wearing mittens or a scarf, and sneakers were not the wisest apparel for walking in the woods.

  “Home is that way,” James said, taking her by the shoulders and gently spinning her about 120 degrees. “You aren’t dressed for hiking, my friend. Come on. I’ll walk you to the tree line.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’ve been walking these woods for years, and it isn’t that hard to tell which way to head. What time of day is it?”

  “Nine in the morning,” Twyla said, giving him a patient look. “Mom will be doing her exercises for at least another hour.”

  So Vera was a woman who took her fitness seriously. “Where did the sun come up?”

  “Over there,” Twyla said, pointing generally east.

  “Then that’s east, and the woods are west of your property, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  At least James wasn’t the only one feeling a bit lost. “If you’re exploring unfamiliar territory, Twy, you need to know how to find your way home. If that’s east, you show me where west is.”

  He oriented her to the compass points, and led her through a series of questions that resulted in Twyla figuring out in which direction her home lay.

  “If I had a dad, he’d show me things like that,” Twyla said, kicking at the dead leaves as she walked along.

  If James had a dad… But he hadn’t had a dad since he’d turned thirteen.

  “If you had a dad, he’d bless you out something fierce for leaving the house without telling your mom where you went.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You’re not the only person ever to be eight years old, Twyla Waltham.” Or to heed a reckless impulse. “Allow me to point out, your mother was also eight once upon a time.”

  Twyla stumbled on a rock hidden beneath the carpet of leaves. James wasn’t quick enough to catch her, but she righted herself and trudged on.

  “Yeah, but Mom was perfect. I heard Donal telling her that once when I was supposed to be in bed. He said she used to be perfect, and he liked her better when she was a girl who listened to her elders.”

  “I take it Donal is older than your mom?” Did posing that question constitute prying? James was fairly sure it did.

  “He was a geezer. My dad was a geezer too, but Mom liked him.”

  “I guess that makes me a dinosaur?”

  She smiled up at him. “You’re not a geezer yet, and you can do fractions.”

  Her smile reminded James of her mom, and that was both a joy and an irritation.

  “Fractions are one of my greatest strengths,” James said, smiling back. “You will tell your mom you took off this morning without letting her know, won’t you?”

  “I don’t want to,” Twyla replied, and the lawyer in James heard the hedging. “She’ll say she’s disappointed in me, and that’s the worst thing ever. She gets this patient look on her face, and I want to cry.”

  Thank God, older brothers didn’t cry. “But you broke a rule, didn’t you, Twy?”

  “Maybe.”

  At least two rules, then. Time to do a neighbor a kindness. “If your mom asks me, I won’t lie to her. I’ll tell her you were out prancing around in these woods, half lost, tempting any bear or mountain lion who came along.”

  “There are bears and mountain lions around here?”

  “Black bears for sure. Don’t worry about them, though, because they’re shy. If you make a lot of noise—sing ‘Alice the Camel’ at the top of your lungs, for example—they’d probably only sniff you over without taking a very big bite.”

  Twyla slipped a small, cold hand into James’s larger one. “If people are going to have bears in their woods, they should put up signs.”

  “These aren’t my woods, and they aren’t yours either. If people are going to trespass, they should be glad the woods aren’t posted.”

  Twyla came to a halt but did not drop James’s hand. “I thought this was our land.”

  “Your land stops just inside the tree line. You see this pile of rocks, here?” James pointed to a long, undulating line of rubble.

  “I wonder
ed what it was.”

  “This used to be a stone wall, and it marks the line between your land and Inskip’s.”

  “What happened to it?”

  How long had it been since James had enjoyed such a natural curiosity about his surroundings?

  “Time happened to it,” James said, turning them to walk along the ruin that was once a stout wall. Time happened to a lot of once-solid structures. “Back when they cleared the land and first put it to the plow, they built these walls with the rocks they turned up from the new fields. Over time, the wall would settle, the ground would freeze and thaw, and freeze and thaw, and the wall would shift, until it began to come undone. In spring, you be careful climbing over these rocks, because the blacksnakes like to come out and sun themselves.”

  “Snakes?”

  Mission accomplished. “Big blacksnakes, and the occasional copperhead too. A bite from a copperhead might kill a little thing like you, and it would hurt something fierce. Then too, poison ivy loves to grow in these woods, and so does poison oak.”

  Also wildflowers, but James didn’t tell Twyla that. She had his hand in a death grip now.

  “Have you ever seen a snake for real?”

  “As big around as my wrist,” James said, holding out his free arm. “He was having a nice comfortable nap on a big, flat rock, but he heard me walking up, and came awake.”

  “How can he hear without ears?”

  Leave it to a kid. “He can feel vibrations. He has organs right under his skin for that purpose, and then too, his whole body is lying on the ground, so he can feel things like you’d feel somebody walking on your bed when you’re trying to nap.”

  Twyla was quiet, but because James was matching his stride to a child’s, they weren’t making very quick progress through the woods.

  “You know a lot, James. Did you learn all this when you went to law school?”

  “I’m not sure I learned anything important in law school. I do know you should not have wandered off alone, and you know it too.” Spoken like a guy who’d wandered off alone into a lot of other people’s beds.

  “But staying home all the time is boring. Mom does her exercises every morning, no matter what, and it’s the weekend. We should be having fun, and we never do.”