by Toni Blake
This time her lack of reply created one more slightly awkward moment until she pointed vaguely in the direction of her house. “Well, I should go.”
He offered a quick nod. “Thanks again for the dessert.”
“No problem,” she said softly as she started backing away, suddenly eager for escape. But this wasn’t about fear—not this time. It was about the way he kept her on edge and was so full of mystery. And that the angry scar on his face provided a constant reminder of some darkness inside him, dark enough to send him here, retreating into the woods as if maybe he was hoping to just fade away.
“Be careful walking back, Daisy,” he told her, still not quite smiling.
“Sure,” she said easily, now putting still more distance between them—and then she stumbled backward over a tree root and lost her balance. Oh Lord.
Reaching out a hand—maybe it was more like flailing, actually—she made contact with a tree trunk and steadied herself before falling. Thank God. Then she lifted her gaze to find Duke watching. “I’m fine,” she assured him.
He spoke low, under his breath, but she still heard it when he murmured in a deep, provocative tone, “Yes, you are.”
And then, finally, for the first time, Duke Dawson cracked a grin—just before she turned around and rushed away through the trees.
“You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked.”
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
Four
Sam Cooke’s smooth voice echoed out the window as Anna toted a heavy ladder from the garage. Although she could have turned on the radio or listened to her iPod, she’d felt the urge to play some of the albums she’d found upstairs last night in Cathy’s trunk. When she’d come across an old record player in the attic, too, it had seemed like kismet.
She had a plan. Or at least the start of a plan. And that was definitely better than no plan at all. First, she would remove the rusted old falling-down gutters that weren’t even serving a purpose anymore. Then she’d replace a few loose boards and take off the shutters. Then she would paint the house. Not that she’d ever done any of those things before. But she’d bought books covering all phases of home repair—from Under the Covers, of course—and she figured it was just a matter of diving in and following instructions.
That would still leave a lot—the porch and trim repairs, adding new gutters, painting and reattaching the shutters, and the roof. And who knew what else she’d come across by that time—or how long any of this would take. But at least she was getting started. And that was why she now found herself climbing the ladder she’d just leaned against one side of the house, wearing a tool belt she’d found in the garage. Whether or not she knew what she was doing, at least she looked the part. And something about the old music motivated her—maybe she liked the idea of restoring the house to what it might have looked like when the records had originally been played here. Maybe they reminded her that real lives had taken place here, real people had lived here. Which she’d known all along, of course, but the things in the trunk had made the house begin to come alive for her in a whole new way. And if that gave her the oomph she needed to get going, she’d take it.
As she hooked the pronged end of a hammer around the first rusty nail she came to in the decrepit gutter, her mind drifted to what she’d brought down from the attic yesterday evening—the two old diaries she’d spotted when investigating the trunk, complete with worn spines and yellowing pages.
To her delight, she’d quickly figured out that both had belonged to Cathy, and they’d been written in 1959 when Cathy had been sixteen years old. The first page of the earliest diary began:
Today is my sixteenth birthday. My cousins came, and the rest of the family, and we had a grand party. Mother thinks I have an aptitude for expressing myself, so she bought me this diary. I’m not sure what I’ll write about—so far nothing has happened to me that feels worth writing down—but I’ll give it a try. The weather has been unseasonably warm for March, so we held my party on the summer porch.
Anna was pretty sure the summer porch Cathy referred to was the large screened porch on the back of the house, and she’d found it fun to imagine a young girl blowing out candles on a cake there, and opening gifts, party streamers wafting in the breeze.
Though as Anna had read on, she’d found that not every page was captivating—some days Cathy had nothing more on her mind than the list of chores she’d finished that afternoon or the school assignments she’d completed. Yet even when skimming those entries, Anna had felt she was holding history in her hands. And it fascinated her to hear what life was like in her house that long ago, in a time when Destiny was a much younger, more isolated little town and Half Moon Hill must have seemed even farther away from civilization.
Since, while remodeling inside, she’d seen hints that her home had once been a much fancier place, she wasn’t surprised to learn from the diary that Cathy’s family had been well-off. They’d owned more than one car—which Anna could tell had been a big deal—and Cathy had often felt ostracized at school since most of the kids were poor. Cathy’s dad, Otto Worth, had been the president of the Bank of Destiny from its inception—the bank still operated on the town square today, and Anna had noticed the year 1944 carved into the building’s cornerstone.
And then, finally, after over an hour of reading, she reached the part she’d been waiting for. The part about Robert, who’d given Cathy the novel.
The boy’s name is Robert and he’s living in the cabin in the woods that Daddy says was here before our house. He’s eighteen and has a dangerous look about him, and Daddy says I should stay clear and not talk to him when he’s working in the yard or inside. Daddy doesn’t know where his parents are but thinks he ran away from an orphanage.
When Mother asked why we should have someone around who he doesn’t even want me talking to, he said that’s why the boy is living in the cabin and not in the house with us—that it was far enough away not to be a worry—but he never really answered her. If you ask me, Daddy wants somebody who will work cheap because even though we have plenty, he doesn’t like giving any of it away. He says too many folks have too little and will rob us blind if we let them, so we need to hold on tight to what we’ve got.
After that, the diary had resumed talking about things like the mean girls at school, a shopping trip that resulted in a new blue dress, and the butterflies Cathy watched in the yard and was attempting to sketch with colored pencils. And she’d also mentioned sitting in the swing that hung from the big maple tree in the front yard, leaving Anna to wonder if it could possibly be the same swing she’d seen in the attic.
She’d been just about to turn in for the night, her eyes drooping shut, when she’d come across the shortest but perhaps most alluring entry in the diary she’d seen by far:
Robert is planting a garden in the little field beyond the backyard. Daddy still forbids me to go near him, but I watch him from the summer porch sometimes. You’d think that would be boring, but it’s not. I’m not sure why.
And something about that—those very simple words from a young girl over fifty years ago—had helped Anna fall asleep feeling strangely happier than she had in a very long time.
Now, as she began on the house, thinking about Cathy and her youthful fascination with Robert made Anna’s work feel easier, lighter. She used the hammer to extract the old nails, one by one, some of which actually disintegrated into red dust as she pulled them out. A long stretch of rusty gutter now hung down loose behind the ladder, helping her feel she was actually making progress as she reached, leaning slightly, for the next nail, a short distance beyond where her ladder leaned.
Suddenly feeling productive and energetic, she looked forward to getting back to the diary. Of course, maybe she’d ultimately find out that nothing noteworthy or exciting had ever really happened to Cathy here. Maybe the giving of The Phantom of the Opera wouldn’t hold the magic she hoped. Maybe she’d finish the diaries and realize they didn’t make much of a story,
after all.
But she just didn’t think so.
Duke wasn’t sure what led him on the path through the woods to the house. Boredom, maybe. He’d told her he was fine out here, that he had all he needed, and that was true. But maybe he was beginning to miss simple human contact. A little anyway. Which surprised him. But there it was. Maybe having those small bits of interaction with Lucky’s sister had reminded him there was actually something valuable in connecting with other people.
For a lot of years, he’d blocked out that need. He’d convinced himself doing the lone wolf thing was best. But it had been a hard life, putting up that kind of wall, having no one. And then Lucky had come along and they’d hit it off, and somehow he’d known from the start that he could trust the guy, that they were coming from the same place.
“You were two lost souls,” Lucky’s wife, Tessa, had once told him when they were talking about his and Lucky’s friendship. He didn’t like getting all dramatic and philosophical about it like that, but he supposed she was right. Finding Lucky had changed his life. And he’d realized that having even one real friend in this world made him a fortunate man.
Though he and Lucky had gone through some hard times together, afterward life had been pretty good for a while. He’d found . . . direction, purpose, for the first time. He’d worked hard—mostly doing construction—and saved up his money. He’d bought the bar in Crestview. He’d made a home for himself—at least as much of a home as he figured a guy like him could hope to have. And he’d been happy. Well . . . again, as happy as he expected he ever could be with the kind of baggage he dragged around.
And look at you now. Living in the woods like a fucking animal.
But that was your choice.
He just suddenly hadn’t . . . known how to function among people anymore. Or maybe he just no longer had the energy. This was the closest he could come to disappearing, and he guessed that was what he’d wanted—to just disappear.
So he still wasn’t sure why he was walking through the trees toward the big Victorian house.
It surprised him when he heard music. And not anything current, either—old stuff, like from the fifties.
He stepped up to the edge of the tree line, near the honeysuckle—to see the last thing he’d imagined. Anna Romo stood on a ladder, a hammer in her hand, a tool belt around her waist, her long, tan legs looking as fine as ever in another pair of those same shorts she always seemed to wear.
Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised—she’d told him she was fixing the place up, and God knew it needed it—but he just hadn’t envisioned her doing the actual work. She didn’t look built for heavy labor.
She was full of surprises, Lucky’s sister. Couldn’t pick berries without twisting her ankle but was up there giving it her best to yank down an old gutter. For some reason the word resilient came to mind. He supposed it fit what he knew about her. She’d had a pretty weird, tragic past, too—but she seemed to make the best of it, and he couldn’t help admiring that.
Maybe that was why she’d agreed to keep his secret. And why she’d made him that cobbler—which had been pretty damn good. Maybe she’d realized they had something in common before he had—that they’d both seen some dark times. Maybe she was hiding out in the woods just as much as he was—just in a more civilized way.
And that was when he realized she actually wasn’t built for heavy labor—or at least she didn’t have the brains for it. Because . . . what the hell was she doing? She was reaching too damn far—stretching that hammer as she leaned to one side, rather than just backing down the ladder and moving it over like anyone with any sense would.
Just then, she reached a little farther, pulled a nail from the gutter, accidentally dropped the hammer to send it plunking to the grass below, and murmured, “Shit,” right in the middle of “Twistin’ the Night Away.” Then the ladder tilted to the right, sliding along the roof a few inches, one of the two feet coming off the ground. Shit was right.
Duke moved rapidly across the yard, but by the time he reached her, the ladder was leaning, leaning, slowly falling away, out from under her, giving her just enough time to grab on to a couple of old wooden railings on a balcony over her head. The metal ladder clattered to the ground to leave her hanging there, about a dozen feet above him. Damn.
“Don’t panic, Daisy, I’m here,” he said, rushing forward to start maneuvering the ladder.
“Huh—what?” she yelled, clearly all the more startled by his presence. Then she glanced down and let out a yelp—whether at seeing how far up she was or just merely at the sight of him, which seemed to scare the hell out of her each time, he couldn’t tell.
“Just keep holding tight, girl,” he instructed her, working to get the ladder upright again—a job that would have seemed easier if he wasn’t trying to rescue some damsel in distress.
“Hurry,” she was saying. “Hurry!”
A few seconds later, he finally got the ladder against the roof next to her, then scooted it to where she could reach it. “There—put your foot over until you find a rung. And keep holding on.”
“Like I’m gonna let go,” she snapped. God, she was sassy. And he was too busy at the moment to know whether it pissed him off or if he liked it.
She swung her left foot onto the ladder, which he held firmly in place from the bottom. “There you go,” he said. “Now the other one.” But she was already doing that.
Though even once she was safe again, she still clung to those rails with a death grip, still looking panicked.
“It’s all right,” he said as soothingly as he could. Which probably wasn’t particularly soothing—it wasn’t a skill he’d ever much needed before. “Just relax—you’re fine now. I’m holding the ladder—all you gotta do is back down, real slow.”
He didn’t pressure her after that, just waited until she finally moved her hands, one by one, to the ladder. He heard her pull in her breath before she began to take the first backward steps toward him.
“Just don’t let go,” she said.
“I won’t. Promise.”
And he didn’t. Even as she neared the ground and ended up backing right into his chest.
Maybe it was awful, but having her up against him gave him the same sensation it had the last time—when he’d carried her home. A sexual tug. A reminder of passion.
But then came the bigger realization: No one would want him anymore, least of all this gorgeous, sassy girl with the killer legs.
So he moved forward in his thoughts to something more practical. And without weighing it, he said the first thing on his mind, speaking low, near her ear, since there was no reason to speak louder at the moment. “You worry me, Daisy.”
She took a second to answer, and he spent that second knowing he should probably be moving, letting go of the ladder, freeing her from having his arms on either side of her—but for some reason he still didn’t.
Her voice came softer than when she’d been in panic mode. “I’m not usually as clumsy as I probably seem.”
He wasn’t sure if he believed that or not. “Either way, you still worry me.”
Anna felt pleasantly imprisoned by him, but it was strange to know that if she turned her head and saw her wolfman so close, it would alarm her even now. So she just faced forward, her heart beating too fast from what had happened. Or maybe also due to where she now found herself, pressed softly up against Duke Dawson, a place that seemed nearly as perilous as dangling from the roof.
And she seemed to have lost the ability to calculate time—because she wasn’t sure if it was five seconds or thirty before he finally released the ladder and backed away.
Only then could she gather the courage to turn and face him. And like always, she found the sight of him intimidating—though she began to wonder if it was still about the scar and scraggly beard . . . or if maybe now it was also the way his heated gaze penetrated hers. His eyes shone a little bluer in the sun.
“Guess I owe you another thank you,” she managed
.
He just shrugged. “Couldn’t really let you fall.”
It was hardly a heroic statement, yet it reminded her that he’d recently witnessed the death of a friend. Which somehow made her even more appreciative. “Well, actually, you could have. So thank you anyway.” She dropped her glance briefly before lifting it back to his. “So . . . you were just passing by?”
Another noncommittal shrug. “Something like that.”
Hmm. Had he been watching her from the woods? And if so, why? She didn’t want to be scared of Duke anymore—but she also didn’t want to be foolishly trusting of a guy in a bad place.
“Anybody ever tell you it’s not real bright to lean when you’re on a ladder, Daisy?”
Again, she found herself defending her intelligence and remembering life had been easier back when she’d stuck to what she knew. “Nope. Never talked to anyone before about being on a ladder. Or been on one before, either. I’m learning as I go—and now I know. Don’t lean.”
She couldn’t quite interpret the slight smirk he cast within all that hair on and around his face. “If you’ve never been on a ladder before, what are you doing on one now?”
“Removing a gutter,” she said, glancing toward the line of rusty metal now hanging almost to the ground, still barely attached at the top.
“That I can see,” he informed her. “I just meant . . . if you don’t know how to do this kinda stuff, might make more sense to hire somebody, or at least get some help. I’m sure your brothers would come lend a hand.”
She drew in a long breath, let it back out. Though she knew he meant well, the very suggestion made her feel tired. “I’m sure they would, too. But . . . maybe I want to show them I’m capable of doing things on my own.”
“That’s fine—when it’s something you can do on your own. But . . .” He leaned back, took a long look at the house. “Getting this place in shape is gonna be a big job. And a hell of a lot bigger for somebody without any carpentry experience.”