CarlaAnn harrumphed. James walked out of the store with Mara.
“It’s Tuesday,” he said. “Why wait until Monday?”
“Just an assumption that I won’t be able to get much done until Mike returns. And another assumption that he’ll come back to work on a Monday. My boss at Cannon will have contact information for him. If he isn’t back Monday, I’ll wait a little longer. I can do a lot of the programming from my computer at the B and B.”
“You aren’t staying at the orchard?” Usually only tourists stayed at the motel or B and Bs in town. He’d been so focused on his reaction to her, he’d ignored those other references to staying in town rather than at her family’s farm.
That uncomfortable look flitted over her face again. “I, ah, thought it might be simpler to be closer to Mallard’s.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a set of keys, which she began fiddling with. “You know, glitches and things.”
They arrived at her car, and James wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to ask how she’d gotten involved in the security industry. Wanted to ask why she hadn’t come back to town before now. Wanted to know what she’d been doing for the past two years.
He didn’t believe for a second that glitches and things were the real reason she was staying at the Slippery Rock Bed-and-Breakfast in town rather than in the ample space of the farmhouse at the orchard.
If she were a friend, he would push the issue. But she wasn’t a friend. Friends didn’t cut friends out of their lives the way she’d cut him out. James decided to let it drop. Mara might make his blood run hotter than Bud’s Fourth of July chili from Guy’s Market, but James was through allowing her to make him do irresponsible things, like trying to push his way into her life.
“I guess I’ll see you around, then. Try not to set off any more alarms, okay?”
She grinned, but that uneasy look remained in her clear blue eyes. James fought the urge to try to make that look leave her face. “I’ll do my best,” she said and slid behind the wheel of a navy SUV with darkly tinted rear windows. She gave him a finger wave as she pulled out of the parking lot.
Asking any of those questions would imply he was interested, and he wasn’t. Was not interested in Mara Tyler. At least, he shouldn’t be.
CHAPTER TWO
MARA HAD RENTED a suite at the Slippery Rock B and B. Well, suite was a bit of an exaggeration, but there were two rooms with an adjoining door. It was the best option she had. The only other hotel in town looked like it had been through a war, and she didn’t think it was entirely due to the tornado. This B and B was one of the few buildings on the west side of the downtown area that hadn’t been hit hard by the tornado. Joann, the new owner who had moved to town a couple years before, told her they lost the roof and a little bit of siding, but that was the extent of the damage. She didn’t question Mara about why she was staying at the B and B instead of the orchard—the question Mara knew James had been dying to ask at Mallard’s.
Mara opened the door to her suite with her happy mommy smile plastered to her face, ten minutes after Zeke’s usual wake-up. When Mara started to say something, Cheryl Johnson, Zeke’s nanny, shook her head.
“Still sleeping,” she whispered. “I think the drive tuckered him out.”
Mara crossed the room to the small Pack ’n Play she traveled with, wishing for the thousandth time that Zeke had a proper crib. Cribs didn’t transport well, not even in an SUV. Since her work required regular travel, this was the best solution. She ran her fingers lightly over the little boy’s brown hair. It was soft and silky and baby-fine, unlike the thick mass of hair his father had.
She blew out a breath. The office of Mallard’s Grocery hadn’t been the right place to tell James about Zeke. She knew that. So why did she feel so guilty about her silence? She’d come here to tell him about his son, to introduce them, and she would do it. But not when she was on the verge of being arrested for stealing a carton of milk and a box of generic cookies.
Mara took the items from her bag, put the milk in the small fridge inside the oversize bureau and tossed the cookies on top.
“Thanks for sticking around until I got back. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Are you kidding me? If today and tomorrow are the last days I have with Zeke, I’m going to pack as much of his sweet baby face as I can into them. Are you sure you don’t need me to stay? My contract with the school district in Tulsa doesn’t start for another two months—”
Mara held up her hand. “And you’re going to spend two of those weeks helping your sister plan her wedding, and after the wedding, you’re taking your father on that trip to Ireland he’s always wanted. Zeke and I will be fine.” She couldn’t ignore the little spike of fear that hit her belly, though.
She’d hired Cheryl to be Zeke’s nanny when he was three weeks old. Cheryl had traveled with them all over the United States, but earlier this year her father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Cheryl wanted to be closer to her family, and Mara couldn’t blame her, especially with a wedding coming up and a parent whose health was in decline. She might not have the close familial ties her nanny had, but Mara could empathize.
Part of her hope for this trip was that she would be able to repair those ties with her own family. That, and tell James he had a son. She also planned to tell him she could raise Zeke on her own so he could continue with his postcard-perfect, fairy-tale life as the heir apparent to the Slippery Rock Sheriff’s Department and forget he’d ever been so reckless as to have an affair with her.
“But you’ll send me pictures, right?” Cheryl’s hazel eyes clouded with tears, and her voice cracked. Mara wrapped her arms around the woman who was her only friend.
“Are you kidding? Who else is going to understand just how cute the little monster is when he’s destroying his dinner like Godzilla destroyed Tokyo?”
“Okay. Okay then.” Cheryl pulled back, grabbed a tissue from the box on the bureau and dabbed at her eyes. “I swore I wasn’t going to get choked up. This isn’t forever. The contract is only for a year, and then, who knows? Dad will be settled by then. He might not need as much attention.”
“Sure,” Mara said, pushing more confidence into her voice than she felt. She had no doubt that she and Cheryl would stay in touch, but she was very doubtful this sabbatical would last only for the length of the school year. Cheryl’s father wouldn’t get better, and her sister would begin having children. Unlike Mara, normal people weren’t made to live out of suitcases in a series of boring hotel rooms. “Until you come back, I’ll text and email more pictures than you ever wanted to see. You’ll have to block my numbers to stop the flow of toddler silliness.”
Cheryl dabbed at her eyes again, but she seemed to have regained her equilibrium. “I’m going to collect those takeout menus the manager promised when we checked in.” She closed the door, and Mara was alone with her son.
She sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. She could do this. She’d taken all the parenting courses, enrolled herself in therapy to deal finally with the baggage from her childhood. She was now in the same town with her baby’s father, and she was ready to tell him that he could have a place in his child’s life or not. Either way, she and Zeke would be just fine. Simple enough conversation.
Zeke made a small noise, and his little fingers began their usual scrape-scrape-scrape down the mesh sides of the playpen. His favorite stuffed toy, an ugly black-and-brown lemur, was wedged under his hip, but he wrestled it free and began talking in mumbles to it.
She was stronger now than she had ever been. She could do this.
* * *
“BUT WHY ISN’T she staying at the orchard?” James called himself ten kinds of fool for asking Collin the question, but he couldn’t resist.
He’d stopped by his house to change out of his uniform, but somehow the old jeans and gray T-shirt weren’t a
ny more comfortable than the layers of stiff, starched cotton, body armor and gun belt he wore to work every day. The fact that Collin, Mara’s brother and one of his best friends, looked incredibly relaxed in a pair of cargo shorts and a similar T-shirt only made him more uncomfortable. He, Collin and Levi were sitting at their usual Wednesday night booth in The Slippery Slope, the waterfront bar. It still felt odd not to see Adam across the booth, but he was in the hospital recovering from the injuries he sustained in the tornado. The doctors weren’t certain he would walk again.
“She says it’ll make things easier with the odd hours she’s keeping working on the security system at Mallard’s,” Collin said. “And to be honest, I don’t need the distraction of my sister underfoot. I’ve got enough to do with the new plantings.”
Tyler Orchard had been hit hard by the tornado. Collin had lost about half of their apple trees and several peach and pear trees, too. Still, when family members visited Slippery Rock, they didn’t stay at a B and B.
“The orchard is all of a ten-minute drive to town,” James said. “Don’t you think that’s odd?”
James hadn’t seen Mara since Tuesday morning—apparently she’d had no more run-ins with the wonky security doors at the grocery store—but he couldn’t get her out of his head. He’d worked with one of the construction crews this afternoon, putting up the new roof of the farmers’ market just down the street, and he could have sworn he saw her standing on the corner. Of course, when he took a closer look, he’d seen Mrs. Bailey, the Methodist minister’s wife. Mrs. Bailey was short, had iron-gray hair and carried a pocketbook from 1959. No sane man would mix her up with the tall, thin Mara Tyler carrying a canvas tote bag.
“What’s with the third degree over where Mara chooses to stay while she’s on a business trip?” Levi asked, coming to the table with a tray of beers and a bucket of peanuts.
James sat back as if he hadn’t just been interrogating one of his best friends about said best friend’s sister, while the best friend was unaware that James had been having an affair with that same sister. “No third degree, just curiosity,” he said, hoping neither Levi nor Collin would push the issue.
“Look, you have the black-and-white sitcom version of the perfect family. Having family stay with you is normal. The Tylers have never been anyone’s version of normal,” Collin said, but his words didn’t hold their usual rancor. Since he’d fallen for Levi’s sister, Savannah, Collin’s anger at his parents seemed to have dissipated. “If Mara says it’s easier to stay in town, I’m fine with that. If she decides to come to the orchard, we have plenty of room.”
“She hasn’t even been to the orchard yet?” Not going to see her family was weirder than weird. Who came home for work and didn’t immediately check in with the family? Sure, she’d been only a sporadic visitor, but he knew Mara loved her grandmother and her siblings. None of this made sense.
Collin, who emanated that happy-in-love countenance usually seen only on the guy characters in chick flicks, shrugged. “She called to let us know she was in town. She’ll probably be out this weekend.” He popped a peanut into his mouth and chewed.
“And you don’t find that just a little bit strange?”
“Not really. You know Mara. She does things at her own pace.”
“Usually that pace rivals the Indy 500 drivers,” James said, sipping his beer. It was one thing for Mara to check into the Slippery Rock B and B, but not even to go to the orchard to see her family? That was unlike the woman he’d known.
Of course, he’d never envisioned that woman walking out on him, changing her phone number or ignoring his emails, and she had done all of those things. Maybe he didn’t know Mara Tyler at all. James opened his mouth to say something, anything to get Collin to tell him what was going on, but Levi spoke.
“If we aren’t going to play, I’m going to head back. Pulling double duty with the cleanup crews and at the ranch is killing me. I had no idea twenty-eight could feel so old.” Levi wove a single dart through his fingers.
“We’ll play,” Collin said, and James nodded.
All three of them—hell, most of the people in town—were working around the clock to get the town back in shape. A few weeks before, Savannah and some friends from Nashville had hosted a benefit concert to help with renovations. Now the town was pulling together to complete the projects in the hope that the Bass Nationals would hold a major tournament at Slippery Rock Lake this fall. As part of the benefit, they’d held a smaller fishing event, but having their lake on national television would do a lot to promote tourism and show the world that Slippery Rock remained a good vacation destination.
The three of them played a couple of rounds of darts, but without Adam, their usual round-robin style of play wasn’t as fun, and Levi bowed out and left after the third game. Collin and James nursed their beers across the table from one another.
“Jenny called this afternoon. The doctors say he’ll need surgery eventually, but that Adam is going to walk again,” Collin said after a long moment.
That was the best news James had heard in a while.
“Any word on when they’ll release him?”
Collin shook his head. “Jenny said they needed more testing, and the doctors are still tweaking the treatment of the seizures. I thought I might drive up to Springfield to see him, but Jenny says he doesn’t want visitors still.”
“That’s not like Adam.”
“How would you feel about gawkers if a tornado left you partially buried under the rubble of a church? And if the head injury left you with seizures?”
James didn’t have to think about the answer. “Pissy.”
“So, we leave him be. We can bug the bejesus out of him when he’s home.”
Collin finished his beer, and James watched the clock tick off a couple of minutes. No songs played over the jukebox, and Juanita, the waitress, was snacking on the cherries and oranges Merle kept on the bar to garnish the fancy drinks. He wanted to ask about Mara again, but couldn’t think of a way to do it without sounding like a concerned boyfriend.
“You want to tell me why you’re so all-fired interested about where my sister stays this visit?” Collin finally asked.
“Curiosity. You know it killed the cat. Apparently it’s trying to kill a deputy sheriff now, too.”
“Acting sheriff, soon to be elected sheriff,” Collin added. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
James shook his head. His father, the current sheriff, was off work on disability and couldn’t come back to the department. He’d gotten caught in the tornado and broken a hip; Jonathan Calhoun wasn’t ready to step down from his position, but he had to. “You know my dad’s legacy speech.” James deepened his voice to imitate his father. “Three generations of Calhouns have protected this town from predators.” James finished his beer. “If I don’t become that fourth generation, I think he might disown me.”
“If you didn’t want to be sheriff, you wouldn’t care about being disowned.”
There was truth to that. He’d wanted to be sheriff for as long as he could remember, long before graduation night, and not just because it was his father’s dream. James finished his beer. “Sorry about the third degree.”
Collin shrugged. “Enquiring minds,” he said, a teasing note in his voice.
“Yeah, well. I have an early shift tomorrow, and you’ve probably got trees to plant or something.”
“I’ll be at the farmers’ market in the afternoon, finishing up the roof.”
“See you there.”
Collin left while James went to the bar to pay the bill. The four of them—three of them, he corrected himself—took turns paying rather than making Juanita print separate checks every Wednesday. Merle made change from the old-fashioned register. Then James walked onto the familiar street.
He could smell the lake and the pine trees surr
ounding it. He even thought he might smell the cattle from Walters Ranch, where Levi and his family lived, and the fruit from Tyler Orchard. He knew that was fanciful thinking, and he wasn’t a fanciful guy. He was straightforward. Conscientious. Responsible.
He’d spent nearly all his life trying to live up to the legacy his father established; the one time he’d stepped outside the boundaries, he’d nearly ruined his entire life. Put the local school in financial jeopardy. Stepping outside the bounds wasn’t worth it. He should have remembered that before he’d started meeting Mara on the sly years ago.
Maybe, with Mara back in town, he would finally learn that lesson.
CHAPTER THREE
“AND THAT—” MARA pointed to the tilted neon sign that read The Slippery Slope “—is the town bar where everyone goes on Friday nights. Of course, it’s only Thursday so no big crowds tonight.” One of the green Ps was burned out, along with the word The on the sign, just as it had been when Mara was a teen. Some things never changed. The thought was comforting, especially considering the amount of change she was bringing to Slippery Rock.
“There’s a church on either side of it and one across the street, too.” Cheryl laughed. “God, small towns are great.”
“If the beer doesn’t save you, the brimstone sermons might,” Mara agreed. It was Cheryl’s last night in Slippery Rock, and Mara had convinced her to come out and really see the town. She used an online service to find a local babysitter for Zeke, a teenage girl who didn’t seem to associate the Mara Tyler she was working for with Tyler Orchard outside town.
Mara and Cheryl had dinner at the Rock Café overlooking Slippery Rock Marina, and had been walking around for the past few minutes while Mara pointed out the local landmarks. They weren’t due back at the B and B for another hour.
“If you want to see real small town, you have to go inside the Slope. Mahogany everything, a jukebox from the 1970s that still has mostly old stuff on it and enough neon to light up downtown.”
Rebel in a Small Town Page 3