by Dana Marton
“I’m making the house handicap-accessible,” she told him in a none-of-your-business tone.
He seemed to miss the hint. “I’ll help.”
“No.” She nearly stepped back but caught herself and pretended that she was just rocking on her heels. No way was she backing down. But the truth was, she didn’t want him near her, all large and looming, and everything she wanted to forget.
A stubborn glint stole into his eyes. “I can help your mom. You don’t have to stay.”
“She’s my mother.”
His voice was flat as he said, “First time you remembered that in a decade.”
The words hurt all the more because they were true. And yet, still none of his business. She resisted grinding her teeth. “It’s difficult for me to be here.”
“Time to forgive, Jess.” For a moment he sounded . . . tired?
She, on the other hand, was jumpy and buzzing with nerves. “Easy for you to say,” she snapped, then dialed it back a notch because she didn’t want to give him the power to make her upset. “I thought you were telling me to leave.”
“Forgive from afar.” He stabbed his fingers through his short, dark hair. “And easy for me to say? Easy? Jesus, Jess, is that what you think?”
“You don’t seem to be having any trouble being here.”
The staggering sense of betrayal choked her. Her life had been destroyed here, on this land, and nobody seemed to care. Everybody just went on with their lives, and expected her to get over the past.
How could Derek live here, after those three nightmarish days they’d spent in the woods, the prisoners of a madman? After what had been done to Jess? Derek had been tied too, so he could watch, so he could tell the story later, after she’d been killed. That had been the attacker’s plan.
The masked man had planned on killing Jess, then sending her body through the wood chipper. He was going to feed her to the crows. There wouldn’t be enough left of her for the police—or for a funeral—so he was counting on Derek to tell the tantalizing tale of his genius.
After Jess had been released from the hospital, all she’d asked from her parents was that they move away from here. You will heal, her mother had said. This is the land of your ancestors. This is your heritage.
Her parents had chosen the family land and family business over her. And—more stunningly—they’d expected her to be OK with that. They’d expected her to get over it.
She hadn’t.
She’d quit college—since she was going locally—and went to live with her father’s youngest sister, Aunt Linda, who had moved to LA decades before.
Derek had joined the navy.
Jess had thought that he felt the same as she did about staying here—that the very idea was obscene and impossible. She’d been wrong. He’d come back and settled in.
Derek put his hands on the chair to take it from her, but she wouldn’t let go.
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re stronger than you look.”
“Which is why I don’t need your help.” She marched toward the garage, dismissing him.
He fell in step next to her. “We should talk.”
She said nothing. She noted, however, that he had a limp. She’d been too upset earlier, at his showing up out of the blue, to notice.
He stepped in front of her to open the side door, then flipped on the lights both inside and outside. “You hate being here. You shouldn’t be back.”
She set the chair by the wall and faced him. She tried to channel some serenity, but it wasn’t coming. “You think I want to be here?” she snapped.
His slate eyes flashed with frustration that matched hers. “I’m serious. I can help Rose. There’s no need for you to stay.” He shook his head, looked at the chair, and picked it up. “If we bring out a bunch of stuff, it’s better to start stacking in the back.”
She grabbed the chair back from him, but only because, after a second of tug-of-war, he let her. She smacked it down right next to her. “What’s wrong with your leg?”
Impatience flashed in his eyes. Or maybe resentment.
So there were things that bothered him. Just not their past. Not coming back here to live. Not looking out at the sugar bush where her life had been destroyed forever.
“My chopper got shot down in the service.” Brief and emotionless, the words were delivered with a finality that discouraged further questions on the subject.
His chopper got shot down. He could have been killed. Jess’s chest squeezed. Her gaze strayed to his leg again before bouncing back to his face. “How bad is it? How long before you’re fully healed?”
“The leg is as good as it’s going to get.” He shrugged, but his words had an edge. “Doesn’t matter. I spend half my life in a chair, in front of a computer, anyway.”
By necessity? Because he couldn’t do anything physical? A second or two passed before Jess fully caught up to that thought. She’d always thought of him as indestructible. He looked indestructible, even now, with the limp.
Not for a second did she believe that the injury didn’t bother him. Even the slightest weakness had to aggravate a man as physical as Derek. At one time, he’d wanted to be a professional rugby player. He’d been on the college team. He’d had recruiters looking at him already, that early.
As if knowing what she was thinking, he said, “I liked the game, but I’m OK with being off the field. I played for the navy, made it to the USNA rugby team. And I have the trophies to prove it. Want to come over and see?”
That last part was said in Derek’s old, light tone, the sudden change giving Jess whiplash. A sharp longing cut through her. Oh, hell no. She mercilessly killed the impulse to soften. Memory lane was a slippery slope.
She strode across the empty side of the garage, all the way to the back, grabbed the dolly, and pushed it in front of her as she headed out. “You can leave the door open, I’ll be coming back. Goodbye, Derek.”
He followed her back into the house.
“Hey, Zelda. How are you today? Want me to bring in some wood for the fireplace?” He gave the old woman a hug that was brief, but also warm and real, nothing perfunctory about the embrace.
“I’m all right for tonight.” Zelda patted his shoulder. “Thank you, anyway.”
Jess stared at the two.
Apparently Derek was a frequent visitor, because he said, “I don’t suppose you have any of that beef stew left?”
Zelda flashed a coy smile. “I might. Come back to the kitchen.”
“I’ll help Jess carry out some furniture first.” Derek turned to Jess, all his earlier anger carefully tucked away as he played the gentleman for Zelda. “What’s next?”
Jess couldn’t make him leave, short of picking him up and carrying him to his truck, and she wasn’t that strong. She pointed at the secretaire. “You want to put out your back, be my guest.”
He rolled up his sleeves, eased the heavy oak piece onto the dolly without any visible effort, then took the handle from her. “You bring another chair.”
She didn’t want to fight with him. Just seeing him left her emotionally drained. She would let him carry out a couple of the bigger pieces, tell him they were done, and then he’d leave.
Jess picked up a chair and followed him. She didn’t allow her gaze to hesitate on the way his quads filled out his jeans, subtly stretching the denim. If he was a writer and sat at a desk all day, as he’d said, how on earth was he so built? Not something she needed to think about, for sure. She snatched her gaze from his wide shoulders and looked at his hair. There, hair should be safe.
“Did you have to leave the next Oscar winner to be here?” he asked over his shoulder.
Had he kept up with her career? The thought unsettled her. She hadn’t been settled since his pickup had rolled up the driveway. “I’m in between movies. And stunt people can’t get Oscars. There’s no category for our work.”
He stopped for a second to stare at her, his forehead furrowed. “That’s bullshit.”
At a differe
nt time, she might have been able to appreciate that he was instantly on her side, but at the moment, she was far from able to appreciate much about him. She shrugged and moved on.
He deposited the secretaire in the back of the garage and turned back for more. “You like LA?”
“If I didn’t like it, I’d go someplace else.”
Did she have to sound so defensive? Ah, hell, dammit. She did not have to defend her life choices to anyone. She was an adult. She lived where she pleased. She didn’t need anyone’s permission.
“How did you get into stunts?”
She responded, but only because giving him the silent treatment would be childish. “I was climbing the rock wall at the gym, and someone came up to me. He was in the business. Gave me a card, and asked me to come and see him if I was interested.” She’d been bewildered, but she’d gone to the stunt studio anyway, signed a release, and joined the day’s training.
Stunt training was the kind of drug you only had to try once to be hopelessly addicted. The tasks were all-absorbing and required 100 percent attention, to be 100 percent there and mentally present. She couldn’t think about the past or her nightmares when she was suspended fifty feet above the ground on wires. For the first time since her three days of hell in the woods, Jess had felt completely free. She would have done anything to feel that freedom again and again.
“After I saw what it was about, I begged to be accepted for official training so I could be considered for a spot on the team.”
“Sounds like you found your place.”
“Have you?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you ended up being an author. After all the stuff you wrote for the school paper. You were always good at writing.” He’d been good at everything he’d ever tried.
As Derek pushed the dolly back to the house, the muscles flexed in his forearm and made Jess remember the endless hours she used to watch him playing rugby, running with the ball, blocking, flexing muscles that made all the girls sigh. Especially Jess. She’d definitely been his biggest cheerleader and most ardent admirer. In the past. As in, no longer. As in, she needed to stop ogling him.
She picked up her pace and cut in front of him, which solved the problem of having to look at him at all.
Inside, Zelda was standing by the kitchen sink, Sinatra on the CD player as she washed dishes and swayed to the music, oblivious to the fact that they’d come back.
Jess pointed at a giant Gothic sofa table, made of some kind of dark wood. One was more than enough per living room. “I think we might have to carry this by hand. You grab one end, I’ll grab the other.”
“I’ll go first so you won’t have to go down the front steps backward.”
She let him, but only because arguing with him would make him stay longer.
“Are you working on a book?” she asked as she walked with the clunky piece of furniture, then could have bitten her tongue. She didn’t care. She didn’t even want to be talking with him.
“Always,” he said easily.
“About what?” She didn’t seem to be able to stop herself.
“Another FBI thriller.”
His answer was suspiciously vague, but she didn’t push. She didn’t want him to think that she was overly interested. She wasn’t.
She managed to stay silent for all of thirty seconds. “What made you write novels?”
“You mean why not become a war correspondent or something like that?”
She nodded. He had the military experience, and he’d always been active, had craved being in the middle of the action.
“I’m done with war,” he said. “And I met a writer. She writes mysteries. You might have read her. She does pretty well. Carolyn Hargrove.”
The name wasn’t familiar, but Jess’s heart gave a hard thud in the middle of her chest. She was not jealous. She couldn’t be. The very idea was nutcrackers.
To prove that she was completely unaffected, she said, “So you fell in love with a writer, and . . . ?”
He grinned. “I didn’t fall in love with her.” The ridiculously handsome grin widened. “OK, maybe a little. But everybody who meets her does. On my end, the love was for her way with words.”
Why Jess should feel relief was beyond her.
“After my team shipped back to the US, we all spent various amounts of time at VA hospitals. I was in the same room with two of the guys I came back with, Kyle Robson and Mike Hargrove. Mike’s sister visited almost every day.”
“The author.”
He nodded. “She used to run ideas by us. The way her mind worked fascinated me. I fell for writing. Now, Kyle, he fell hard for her.”
She almost asked for the story before she caught herself. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to hear about his friends. She didn’t want to get to know Derek or his life better. So she simply nodded, and kept silent.
After the sofa table, he helped her with a grandfather clock that hadn’t worked for as far back as Jess could remember. Her father had restored the clock cabinet, but he hadn’t been able to wrestle the mechanics into submission.
The towering clock stashed safely in the garage, two overstuffed armchairs that had always been ridiculously uncomfortable marched to their new resting places next. When Jess returned to the house, she stopped on the stoop, dusting off her hands as she turned to Derek.
“We’re done.”
His gaze searched her face. “Are you sure? There’s plenty left. We could do the whole living room tonight. I have time. Let’s just finish.”
He wanted the job done, thinking then she would leave. The weird thing was, she didn’t really want to be here; she wanted to be back in LA with Eliot as soon as she could manage it. But Derek’s obvious desire to have her gone rubbed her the wrong way and, perversely, made her want to stay.
“Done enough for tonight. It’s been a long day for me. You go get your stew from Zelda.” Jess paused for a second, then another and another, letting her eyes tell him how much she meant every word of what she was about to say next. “I appreciate the help, Derek. Thank you. But, for as long as I’m here, I’d prefer if you didn’t come back over.”
He watched her with a fathomless look in his slate eyes, standing too close, focused too sharply on her. Why was he even taller than before? Shouldn’t he have stopped growing at eighteen, as she had? Why could men grow the kind of insane, intimidating muscles that women couldn’t? And why did all that have to look so good on him?
A sharp Technicolor memory hit her in the chest, hard enough to hurt.
Ten years ago, after having driven her home from the movies, he’d kissed her on this very stoop. And then he’d said, So . . . wanna go out to the old cabin? She’d been deliriously happy. She’d been a different Jess then.
That was before. And this was after.
As Derek watched her now, his expression seemed to take in all of her. His gaze sliced into her like ground-penetrating radar. She had the uncomfortable feeling that he could see all her dark and hidden places, that he was weighing what lay at her depths. And she could tell there was a speech coming, probably about how he wanted her to go back to LA.
Maybe he didn’t want her here because she made him remember and made him feel guilty.
Tough shit.
She turned on her heel and walked away from him, into the house. She marched straight to the back, into the laundry room, even if she didn’t have anything to do there. She organized the detergent boxes while she waited for him to leave.
She didn’t return to the front of the house until he was saying good night to Zelda, walking out with a plastic container of stew. He nodded at Jess from the edge of the porch. She locked the door behind him without saying a word.
Zelda shuffled into the living room. “We had two feet of snow last week. He came over without needin’ to be asked and shoveled off the roof for us. It’s a sturdy roof, but two feet of snow’s a lot of weight. He’s a good boy, that one. His
mama sure raised him well.”
Derek Daley was neither good nor a boy, but Jess didn’t contradict Zelda. “How are Mr. Daley and Mrs. Daley?”
Zelda sank onto the couch. “Doin’ much better than they used to. Bob quit drinkin’ a while back. They moved last year. Didn’t Derek tell you?”
She put her feet up on the ottoman before adding, “Helen and Bob are livin’ in town now, in one of those fifty-five-plus ranch-home communities. Don’t have to do a thing. Lawn mowin’, snow shovelin’, all done for them. Not that there’s a lot to do with them tiny lots. But there’s a clubhouse with an indoor heated swimmin’ pool and a gym. They got bingo every night.” A wistful tone crept into her voice at that last bit.
“Why is Derek living at the farmhouse? Why not lease that too?”
“For one, the folks leasin’ the sugar bush and the outbuildings don’t want to live here. They have their own place, another hundred-thousand-tap operation up north.” Zelda pulled a blanket over her lap and arranged it to cover her feet. “Derek says he likes the quiet. Good for writin’. He got hurt in the service, you know.”
“I saw.”
Zelda sighed. “A young man like that. Hardly fair. He jokes that I could outrun him.”
Jess doubted that. He did have a limp, and maybe he was slower than he used to be, but he was strong and in shape. He’d lifted furniture she wouldn’t have been able to budge, and she was in the best shape of her life.
Zelda reached for the remote. “Mind if I turn on the TV? I watch my cookin’ shows in the evenin’s. Helps me to get sleepy.”
“Go ahead. Mind if I shower and go to bed?”
“I saved some stew for you. It’s in the fridge.”
“I’ll have it tomorrow. Thank you. If I eat this late, I’ll have heartburn.” Her stomach felt off already, filled with odd flutters.
“You go rest, child.” Zelda’s smile was pure love, her face a Welcome Home banner. “I’m so glad that you’re here.”
Jess still couldn’t wholeheartedly say Me too, so she said, “I’m glad we’ll get to catch up.” She grabbed her duffel bag from next to the couch and headed upstairs. She stopped at the top to call down, “Good night.”