Mara took a deep breath. “I came here this summer hoping to help my family rebuild their orchard, and instead, my family and James helped me rebuild my life. I can’t now let that life harm other people.” She stepped over Amanda’s legs into the open aisle leading to the door. “When you cast your vote, cast it for the person you think will do the best job in the present, not in the past. A smart man likes to talk to me in internet memes, and I finally have one for him—don’t judge anyone by the past, because no one really lives there anymore.”
She walked as quickly as she could out of the conference room.
It was time to go, before she hurt the people she loved any more than she already had.
* * *
JAMES WATCHED MARA walk out of the conference room, stunned. She never looked back. Didn’t hesitate.
She was gone.
Everyone started talking at once, but two people didn’t say anything. Amanda, who was sitting in her chair with a shocked expression on her face, and CarlaAnn, who had taken her seat and was smiling broadly. Damn, but that woman was a witch.
James tapped his finger against the microphone, trying to focus attention back on the debate. “Excuse me,” he said loudly when the tapping didn’t work.
“Hey,” Bud yelled, standing up a couple of seats away from Amanda. “Shut up so James can talk,” he said, and the buzzing conversations stopped.
All the attention focused on James, and he ran his finger around the collar of his polo shirt.
“You asked if the bus prank was ill-thought out,” he said, focused on CarlaAnn. “Yes, it was. But it wasn’t Mara Tyler’s thought. It was mine. Mara was turning on the cabin lights to run down the batteries. She thought it was unfair that seniors were allowed to skip the last week of school while the underclassmen had to take finals. Sure, that extra week’s vacation was a perk for the senior class, but Mara had been determined that, after our graduation, the entire high school would get that extra week of summer break. That doesn’t excuse what she was doing. What I was doing. Because while Mara was turning on the lights, I was letting the air out of the tires.” The crowd gasped. James put his hands on either side of the podium and gripped the wood tightly. “I don’t have a good explanation for that. I was young and stupid, and I never thought that letting the air out of the tires would warp the rims. And, for the record, Mara isn’t the only person who repaid the school. I began making anonymous donations the year I started working for the sheriff’s department. I know that doesn’t change what I did, but I have made restitution. I would like to say that we all do stupid things when we’re kids. I can’t take back what I did on graduation night, but I can tell you that if given the opportunity to serve you as sheriff, I will continue to make up for that night.”
James looked around. Trooper Whitaker looked stunned. CarlaAnn looked annoyed. His father looked shocked.
“If you’ll all excuse me, though, I have something more important than this debate to deal with right now.” Before he could second-guess himself, James stepped off the platform and followed Mara’s route out of the conference room.
He saw her rounding the corner of city hall and took off at a run. She whirled when she heard his footsteps approaching.
“Don’t. Don’t tell me again that people won’t care about the things I did.” She held up her hands. “The CarlaAnns of Slippery Rock are never going to let it go, and I can’t let my actions do harm to you.”
“The CarlaAnns of this world are sad, pathetic human beings.”
“James.” Mara sighed. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then stay. Because the only way you can hurt me is if you walk out again.”
“You know this can’t work—”
“I know we can work through this, together.”
Mara sidestepped him and started walking. James stepped around her, cutting off her route.
“Your job—”
“—is as a deputy, and if I’m elected sheriff, great. If not, I can still be a deputy.”
“Do you really think Whitaker is going to keep a former teenage vandal on his staff? CarlaAnn just outed the water tower thing—”
“And I outed the bus thing,” he said. James took her arm. “I don’t want to be sheriff only because you lied to protect me. I should never have let you take the blame in the first place. I should have owned up to what I did.”
“I didn’t mind people thinking I did it, because it made it easier to leave. And I needed to go. I needed to see what was out in the world, and I needed to understand who I was without Gran and Granddad, Collin and Amanda.” Mara shook her head. She pulled her arm free. “I had already come up with a million reasons not to go, though. I was afraid to leave and afraid not to, and when you let the air out of the tires, I knew what would happen. I saw it as my chance. If I left, the town would blame me.”
“So you sacrificed your reputation to save mine.”
“Mine was already mostly broken.” Mara pushed away from him. “I have to go. If I don’t go now... I have to go.”
He couldn’t keep running around her like a crazy person. James grabbed Mara’s arm with one hand and opened the back door of one of the department SUVs with the other, pushing Mara inside. He slid onto the seat beside her and shut the door.
“I’m not letting you go. I did that once already. It didn’t work out so well.”
“We can decide on visitation for Zeke later—”
“It isn’t about Zeke. It’s about me. I love you, Mara. I want to be with you more than I want to be without you. I want to live in that house by the lake and watch Zeke grow. I want to play chase in the orchard. If I’m not elected sheriff of Wall County, so be it. I’ll work as a deputy or maybe go to the highway patrol.”
“But it’s your dream.”
“Being sheriff is only one dream. Family is another. Kids. Growing old with the woman I love. Shooting darts with the guys until we’re all eighty. We can have more than one dream, Mar, and the most important dream to me is you. Zeke. Collin and Gladys and Amanda and my parents are all in there, too, but you’re at the front of the line. At the top of the list.”
“James, I love you, but—”
“You’re worth more than a career,” he said, putting his finger under her chin so she had to look at him. “You’re worth more than the pettiness of a woman like CarlaAnn. You’re worth more than the parents who neglected you for years. They didn’t break you. You’re strong and smart and sexy. You’re a great mom.” He pressed his mouth to hers. “Let yourself have the things you want.”
Her hands were trembling when she put them against his cheeks. “I want you,” she said, kissing him back. “I want all the things you said, but I’m afraid.”
“News flash, Mar. We’re all afraid, but you can’t let fear steal your happiness. You have to reach out and grab it. Hold on to it, work for it and never let it go.”
She rested her forehead against his. “I do love you.”
“And I love you. The rest is going to fall into place.”
“Promise?”
He buried his hands in her hair, and pressed another kiss to her mouth. “Swear.”
Mara put her arms around his neck and sank into the kiss. “James?” she said.
“Yeah?”
Mara tested the handle of the SUV. The door didn’t budge. “Do you think you can figure us out of the back seat of this police SUV? It’s a little hot in here.” She waved her hand in front of her face.
For the first time, James realized what he had done. He’d locked them in the back seat of a police car. He shook his head.
“We’re going to have to wait to be rescued. It could be a while. The shift change doesn’t take place for—” he checked his watch “—another couple of hours. At least the windows are cracked, right?”
Mara chuckled. “We’re going to make the newspaper this time, aren’t we?”
James shrugged. “Probably.” He rested his forehead against hers. “You know what’s really serendipitous about this?”
She looked at him with a strange expression on her face. “Serendipitous?”
“Accidental?”
“I know what the word means. It just seems a little...odd to be using that word when we’re locked in the back seat of a cop car.”
James wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to his side. “No. It makes perfect, random sense.”
“Why?”
“I fell in love with you the first time in the back of my dad’s patrol car. It’s kind of fitting that I get you to agree to marry me in the back of another patrol car.”
“You didn’t ask me to marry you.”
He kissed her again, nibbled her full lower lip. “Will you marry me, Mara Tyler?”
“Yes,” she said, her hands tickling the back of his neck. Mara swung her legs over his in the back seat.
James twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. He’d had the ring in his pocket since Founder’s Weekend, looking for the perfect moment to give it to her. In a moment, he decided. For now, it was enough that he had Mara exactly where he wanted her. She wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from WELCOME HOME, KATIE GALLAGHER by Seana Shelby.
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Welcome Home, Katie Gallagher
by Seana Shelby
CHAPTER ONE
Kate
YOU DON’T ALWAYS know when you’re having a nervous breakdown. It’s usually later, after being confronted with photographic evidence in the form of a mug shot, that you realize you lost your shit in a truly spectacular way.
The tap of the cop’s flashlight on the driver’s-side window, combined with a soft woof from the back seat, made me jump and splash grape soda down my sweater. I watched it pool in my lap before fumbling with the can. I searched for a napkin.
“Ma’am, could you roll down your window?” The shield on his coat was hard to miss.
Chaucer lifted his massive head, slowly coming to his paws, needing to hunch in order to fit. He sniffed my ear and then looked down into my lap, no doubt hoping I’d dropped something he could eat.
“Shit, shit, shit. Try to look innocent,” I told him as I rolled down the window. I did not need more trouble with the law.
“Ma’am, could you explain why you’re parked in the middle of the road? Are you having car trouble?” His voice was a deep rumble, which was oddly comforting, considering the situation. He leaned down, keen eyes taking in everything. God, he smelled good—warm leather and rich wood smoke overpowering the sticky sweetness of artificial grape.
Towering Maine pines, silhouetted against the predawn sky, swayed in the frigid gusts skating off the ocean. I shivered, wishing I’d worn something more substantial than a thin sweater set.
I’d stopped in the middle of the road because I couldn’t remember whether to continue straight along the cliff-side road or veer inland up ahead. And that question quickly turned into a paralyzing fear that I had no idea where I was going in my life.
“Um, car trouble? No, Officer. I was just thinking.” I hadn’t slept in weeks. What the hell was I supposed to say? I was falling apart, and this was merely a bump in the road of the shit-losing lollapalooza that had become my life?
Seemingly unaffected by the freezing temperature, he cleared his throat and leaned down farther, peering into my eyes. “Ma’am? Are you telling me that you purposely stopped your car in the middle of the road, possibly causing an accident, so you could think? Have you been drinking this morning, or late last night? Taking any narcotics?”
Chaucer wedged his head between mine and the window to get a better look, or more precisely a better sniff, of this potential food giver. I’ll give it to the cop; he barely registered the shock of seeing a hundred-and-forty-pound Newfoundland squished into the tiny back seat of a small sedan.
I tried to push Chaucer back, explaining around his head, “Unless you can get wasted on grape soda, I’m unfortunately sober.” What I wouldn’t give for a vat of margaritas and a big bendy straw.
He wore the same look of arrogant disdain that my husband, Justin, wore whenever I’d done something wrong, something worthy of censure. Ex, I kept reminding myself. On-the-road-to-being ex-husband. He let me know with one cursory glance that he saw through my carefully cultivated, but ultimately lacking, veneer and what he found wasn’t equal to his standards.
The cop rumbled, “Ma’am, can you please explain what happened to your vehicle?” His eyes glinted in the low light.
I was done being patronized, done with the barely veiled condescension. “Look, I’m not drunk, and you need to quit calling me ma’am! I’m twenty-five, for God’s sake, not eighty. ‘Causing an accident’? Seriously? I’ve been sitting here for an hour, and you’re the first car that’s come by!” I threw the door open, trying to tag him in the thigh as I got out.
He moved remarkably fast, sidestepping the initial swing before stopping the door with one hand.
“And—” I turned to look at the dusty, battered car, with its duct-taped rear window and side panels riddled with deep dents. “That? Pfft. They can buff that right out.”
“Ma’am, you need to get back in your vehicle. I didn’t tell you that you could step out.” Steel threaded through his voice now.
Damn, he was a lot bigger than I’d thought. I should have stayed in the car. No. I was done agreeing with men who used their size and authority to cow me. I’d had enough.
“I am not drunk and I’m not a hazard, so leave me the hell alone! And stop calling me ma’am! Twenty-eight is not a ma’am. I’m a miss, damn it! A miss!” I’ll admit I was kind of shrieking there at the end.
The cop raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a rip in the space-time continuum.”
Fine. I was thirty. Whatever.
He took a step back, resting his hand on the firearm secured at his waist. Okay, in hindsight, screaming at a cop probably wasn’t the best way to start putting my life back together, but sometimes it’s hard to stop the scream. After years of quietly acquiescing, the pressure had built. Outrage seeped from the fissures. I’d become a little Chernobyl of screaming, in voi
ce and in deed. I needed to give more thought to the fallout, though.
Chaucer sensed the tension, not that it was hard to miss, leaping over the seat and out the door to stand between the cop and me. I shivered and reached out to weave my fingers through the thick, warm fur of his brown, bearlike head, pulling him toward me. I didn’t want the cop to get any funny ideas about my dog being a threat. Plus, he was an excellent windbreak and space heater.
The sun was starting to rise, dark sky bleeding to red. The cop’s face was turned away from the light, but he looked vaguely familiar—dark hair, light eyes, a strong, square jaw and a crooked nose. I didn’t know him, and yet there was something.
He glared down at me, his jaw clenched. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you and your dog to get back in your vehicle and calm down. You need to give me your license and registration.” He slid the flashlight into his belt and waited for me to decide what to do.
The fight in me died almost as quickly as it had flared. I leaned in past the driver’s door and snaked my arm around to open the back door, as the handle on the outside was missing. Chaucer hopped back in. I dropped into the soggy driver’s seat and reached into the glove box.
I rummaged in drive-through napkins and salsa packets to find the owner’s manual with the registration tucked inside. I handed him that, and then started digging through my bag for my wallet. Hands shaking as the adrenaline waned, I surrendered my license. The quirk of his eyebrow told me that he’d noticed. At least he was no longer clutching his gun, so maybe I’d get out of this without being slammed up against the car and handcuffed. That would be nice for a change.
“I’m going to need you to stay right here while I call this in.” I started to nod, but then he busted out the ma’am.
I stared daggers into the son of a bitch, not that he seemed the least bit concerned. I was almost positive I saw a grin before he turned and walked away.
Rebel in a Small Town Page 24