She covered her face, trying not to laugh. “I’m not leaving Dillon unattended, even to just ride around the block!” She pushed to her feet and dusted off the seat of her jeans with her mittens.
“Eh, leave him be,” Mr. Gilcrest called from his front porch. “Boy’s not going to go anywhere, and I ain’t dead yet. He can sit and play checkers with me.”
“Cool.” Dillon abandoned his efforts to build a snowman appallingly quickly and started to run across the yard.
“Dillon! I didn’t say you could go.”
He slipped on the packed snow but managed not to fall. “Can I?”
Abby looked from his bright eyes to Sloan’s. She wasn’t at all certain that the two of them—three, if they’d roped in Mr. Gilcrest—hadn’t somehow prearranged this.
“Oh, fine,” she grumbled.
And she knew she’d really been had when Dillon bumped his mitten-clad fist against Sloan’s knuckles as he trotted past him.
Sloan held the helmet out to her. “You might like it.”
“Don’t count on it,” she grumbled as she took the thing from him and pulled it over her head. It felt heavy and too large as she awkwardly swung her leg over the bike. Sloan told her where to keep her feet then pulled her hands around his waist.
She wondered what he’d do if she let her hand drift lower. He’d managed to shock the stuffing out of her that morning. Seemed as though a little turnaround was due.
He shifted his body, and the engine growled to life. Dillon was waving at her, and she managed to unclench her fingers long enough to wave back before the bike swayed in a curve and Sloan roared away from the house. She gasped, grabbing on to him again, and, though she couldn’t be certain, she thought she felt his shoulders shaking with laughter.
Then they turned the corner at the end of the street, but he didn’t head around the block like she expected. He headed away from town. And a few minutes later, he turned onto a narrow road that she’d never even been on and picked up speed.
Alarm shot through her. She leaned over his shoulder as much as she could, which wasn’t much. “Where are we going?” she yelled.
His smile flashed. “Does it matter?”
Since she was wearing his helmet, that meant that he wasn’t, and the wind was ruffling his thick hair. He looked more carefree than she’d ever seen him. The sky was blue, the land around them iced with snow. It was a beautiful winter afternoon, and he was smiling.
“No,” she finally yelled.
He squeezed her hands where they were clenched together over his belly, and a moment later, the engine gained even more speed as they flew along the empty road.
The truth was, she’d go with him anywhere, as long as he asked.
Chapter Fifteen
By the time they returned nearly an hour later, Dillon and Mr. Gilcrest were still bundled up and sitting on the old man’s porch, playing checkers.
Abby slid off the back of the motorcycle, feeling as exhilarated as she felt shaky. “I’m still vibrating inside,” she admitted.
Sloan’s eyebrow arched. “Intriguing.”
She flushed. “It wasn’t an invitation.”
He laughed. “I’m going to put this back in the shed, and we can head out for dinner.” He started the engine again and slowly steered the bike right across their snowy yards toward the back of his place.
“It was fun, huh,” Dillon said when she retrieved him.
“Yes.” She smiled up at Mr. Gilcrest. “Thanks for minding him.”
He just waved his hand dismissively. “Boy plays a good game.” Then he looked over his glasses at her. “If you want t’ bring me some more of them cookies sometime, I guess that’d be all right.”
She chuckled. “It’s a deal.”
“And tell that deputy of yours someone was snooping around his house lookin’ for him.”
Abby stiffened, her mind too quickly going to Bobby Pierce. But the man was safely in jail. “When?”
Mr. Gilcrest shrugged. “Thirty minutes ago or so. Drove one of them government cars.” His tone made it plain what he thought of that. He pushed to his feet, looking stiff as he shuffled to his front door. “Keep an eye out for Marigold, will you? Damn cat’s disappeared on me again.”
“I will.” She watched until he’d gotten safely inside then turned and hurried Dillon to their own house. While he cleaned up in the bathroom, she tended to Rex and changed into the new sweater that she hadn’t yet worn. She brushed out her own hair, smoothed on some lip gloss and tried to pretend that going with Sloan to the Clays’ family dinner wasn’t a big deal even though it was.
“Abby.” Sloan called her name, and she left her bedroom. When she came into the room, his eyes ran over her. “Dillon,” he commented to her brother, “you’ve got yourself a pretty sister.”
Dillon made a face as if he was gagging, but he giggled too much for it to have any effect.
“Thank you for that vote of confidence,” Abby told him dryly. She retrieved her red coat and slid into it. “Someday you’re going to need me to teach you how to drive so you can take a girl out on a date. And I’ll remember how you just acted.”
Dillon just giggled harder. “Sloan’ll teach me how to drive, wontcha?”
Abby felt a pang. That was years down the road.
Sloan held back Rex even as he nudged Dillon out the door. “Sure thing, bud.”
He saw the black sedan sitting in front of his house at the same moment that Abby did.
“Oh, right. Mr. Gilcrest mentioned...” She trailed off when she saw the way Sloan’s jaw had whitened. She looked from him to the vehicle. A blond-haired man had gotten out. He was wearing a suit but no overcoat, and as he glanced around, his hand smoothed down his tie. “Do you know him?”
“I worked with him.” His tone was flat. “On the Deuces case. Wait here.”
He strode down the porch steps and crossed the lawn. “What the hell are you doing here, Sean?”
Abby closed her hands over Dillon’s shoulders to keep him from following. She wanted to hear more of what they said, but Rex was barking inside the house, and Sloan had reached the other man near the car. Their voices were too low to make anything out.
Then the guy gave Sloan an envelope, and he looked back toward Abby.
She felt something clang shut inside her.
She could see it in his face. Read it in his posture.
Now had come to an end.
She couldn’t even pound her fists and scream at the unfairness of it all. At the shortness of the time she’d been given.
“Dillon,” she managed to say hoarsely. “Go back inside.”
“But—”
“Go!” She winced when his face fell, and she touched his cheek. Swallowed. Rex could hear them and was nearly howling. She wished she could. “Please. I’ll be there in a little bit.”
His smooth brow crumpled, but he went back inside. Through the door, howls immediately became yips of joy.
At least someone was happy.
The black sedan was driving away, and she watched Sloan walk toward her. He stopped next to what was left of poor Deputy Frosty.
“They want you back,” she said.
She’d expected it, but it still felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach.
Sloan hated the look on Abby’s face. A look he was responsible for. He wasn’t any different than Bobby Pierce; he just hadn’t raised his fists to deliver the blow. He lifted the envelope. “Travel arrangements.”
Her eyes went dark, but they were unflinching. “Chicago?”
He shook his head. “Florida.” He rubbed his eyebrow and wanted to look away. But he didn’t deserve a respite. “I leave tonight.”
“What’s in Florida?”
“Tony Diablo,” he said. “Johnny was his cousin.” He told her what Sean had said about the signs that the Deuces were reestablishing themselves.
“And they want you to stop him?”
“The agency fired me. Before.” He saw
the fresh shock in her eyes.
“You never said.”
There were a lot of things he hadn’t said. “I don’t want to leave you, Abby.” He took a step closer. “But—”
“But.” Her lashes finally fell, hiding her gray eyes. “They want you back,” she finished. “And you want to go.”
“I want to know I ended things on my terms.”
“Then you should go,” she said huskily. “You should go get what you want.”
He took a step closer and thought about the other time, when he’d stood in her yard, and she’d clung to her porch rail. He could count the days that had passed since then, so how could so much have changed? “What do you want?”
Her lips twisted. He thought she wasn’t going to answer. But that wasn’t Abby’s way.
Her lashes lifted. Her pretty gray eyes met his. “I want what my grandparents had.” Her voice was husky. “I want fifty years with the man I love. I want forever.” She squeezed the porch rail then let it go and turned to the door.
“Abby!”
Even through the red coat, he could see her shoulders stiffen. She didn’t turn, but her head angled until he saw the fine line of her jaw.
“I...care—” God, it shouldn’t be so hard to say the words “—more than care.”
He saw her swipe her cheek. “I know you do.” She still didn’t look at him. “It’s okay, Sloan. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve worn big-girl panties for a while now.”
“Smart-i-tude.”
She finally turned enough to look at him. Her eyes were wet. “Don’t knock it,” she said. “I always knew you would leave, Sloan. I just...just didn’t think it would be this soon.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
Her lips twisted. “The result is the same.”
Come with me. The words rang around inside his head like a gong reverberating. But come where? Tony Diablo was in Florida at the moment. There was no guarantee he’d stay there; it was highly likely that he wouldn’t. Nothing was stable about where he was going; and everything about Abby shouted stability. Dillon needed it. Her grandmother needed it. Abby had moved to Weaver, but there was no way she’d put even more distance between her and where Minerva lived in Braden.
And he’d never put another woman he loved in danger because of his work.
“It’s okay, Sloan,” she said again, as if she knew exactly what was going on inside his head. Inside his heart. Hell. Maybe she knew better than he did.
She pushed open the door and stepped inside.
His foot lurched forward seemingly of its own accord. “Dillon—”
“It’s better if I handle my brother,” she said, looking protective.
Which just hurt that much more, knowing that Dillon needed protecting from him.
“I told you I was no hero.”
“The only one who ever cared about that was you, Sloan. We just cared about you.” She pushed open the door. “Be safe,” she whispered.
And then she was gone, the door closing quietly, finally, behind her.
* * *
“Come on, Dillon,” Abby coaxed. Just because their hearts were breaking didn’t mean that it wasn’t a Monday and that they didn’t need to leave for school. “You’ve worked on that poster for weeks.”
Since she’d told him that Sloan had to leave, Dillon had barely spoken a single word. The fact that he’d had a nightmare hadn’t come as a surprise. His world had been shaken up.
But she’d gotten him through the rough patches before and she would again. At least with him to focus on, she wasn’t falling apart completely herself.
But now he didn’t want to enter the contest at all.
She brushed her fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead. “I know you’ll miss Sloan, honey. But he’d want you to turn in your poster, too.”
His lips twisted, but he grabbed the poster and carried it with him to the door.
She exhaled silently, and they left. She avoided looking at Sloan’s house. The driveway was empty. It would stay that way.
One Monday morning down. Only a lifetime more to go.
She told Dee about him leaving when she popped her head in during her prep hour. “Well, that bastard!”
Abby shook her head, trying not to cry. “He’s nothing of the sort.”
Dee tossed up her hands and shook her head as if Abby were crazy. Maybe she was.
She didn’t have to tell Mr. Gilcrest that he’d gone. When she took him over a fresh batch of cookies, he’d already known. “Saw for myself when he left with that suitcase of his,” he’d said and patted her hand. “Boy’ll be back.”
Abby didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was the crazy one, too.
January slid into February, and Principal Gage announced the winners of the contest from each grade. Dillon didn’t win, and neither did Chloe, though he’d been convinced she would. February slid into March and March into April. Calvin Pierce finally returned to school now that his father had been transferred to a jail over in Gillette and was well out of reach. Calvin and his mother had left their house and were living in one of the apartments by Dee. Lorraine had started taking college courses online and was looking like a new woman. When she and Abby ran into each other outside of Ruby’s one afternoon, Lorraine smiled shyly, and they shared a cup of coffee.
She continued playing spinster poker and took up the pole class on Saturdays, where Pam Rasmussen gossiped the whole while about everything from the rash of petty thefts the sheriff was certain were being perpetrated by teenagers, to the hot romance she was convinced her great uncle was secretly having, because there was no other explanation for his good humor of late.
Though she couldn’t seem to stop looking at Sloan’s house every time she walked by it, as if one day he’d miraculously be standing there, she did stop looking every day for the inevitable for-sale-or-rent sign to show up in the yard. And she stopped avoiding going to Classic Charms for fear of running into Tara. She learned more details about Sloan’s life during the conversations she had with his sister than she ever had learned from him.
Life, as she had learned more than once, did move along whether she wanted it to or not.
May arrived, and she set out flowers for Mr. Gilcrest. She helped Dillon plant a little garden in the back of the house and surrounded it with wire so that Rex wouldn’t dig in it. But he dug, anyway. And when she discovered a groundhog burrow that extended all the way to the woodpile behind Sloan’s house, she understood why she couldn’t keep Rex from clawing at the wood and barking at it every chance he got.
The school year ended, and Abby signed Dillon up for the same day camp that Chloe attended, and she took a part-time job at the hospital that would last until school began again in the fall. She even went out on a date with one of the doctors there. He was charming and fun. But he wasn’t Sloan. She didn’t go out with him again.
And one day, in the middle of June, she came home after her shift at the hospital and noticed the window in the front of his house was open.
Her heart climbed into her throat.
No sheriff’s SUV in the driveway. No vehicle at all.
Just an open window. And it was much more likely one of the break-ins that Pam talked about than Sloan suddenly returning.
She hadn’t heard a single word from him since the day that black car had stopped in front of his house, and her life had lost its luster. Tara had promised to tell her if she ever heard that he was hurt. But not even Tara had heard from him.
Sloan had left Weaver and he hadn’t looked back.
She ignored the open window and went into her own house. She changed out of her scrubs and pulled on denim shorts and a red tank top. She glanced out her bedroom window up at his bedroom window. Saw nothing but the closed blinds, the same way they’d been for months.
She whistled for Rex, and the dog trotted outside with her, obediently plopping his butt on the sidewalk as she walked down to stand in front of Sloan’s house again an
d study that open window. She’d feel silly calling the sheriff because of it.
For all she knew, a Realtor had come by to look things over. It was a warm summer day. Why not open the window and let in some fresh air to a house that had been left, neglected and alone, for months?
“Come on, Rex.” She headed back toward her house, but he suddenly bolted down the side yard, furiously barking the way he always did whenever he thought there was a chance of catching that groundhog. She followed. So far, she’d resisted Mr. Gilcrest’s suggestion of shooting the rodent, but every time she went back to her garden and found he’d managed to get over or under the chicken wire she kept putting up, the more tempting the idea became.
Rex was going nearly crazy, barking with the ferocity of a canine who believed he was twice the size that he actually was, and she quickly realized it wasn’t the groundhog that had him so agitated.
It was the fact that the door of Sloan’s shed was ajar.
She grimaced and went a few steps closer. “I’ve already called the sheriff,” she lied loudly. “And I’ve got my granddaddy’s shotgun,” she added for good measure. “I’m a mighty good shot, so you’d better think twice about what you’re doing in there.”
The old wood door creaked, and she hastily grabbed for Rex’s collar and missed when he lunged for the opening.
“See you’re still having trouble catching the dog,” Sloan said as he scooped Rex out of midair. He pushed the shed door open the rest of the way with his shoulder, avoiding the dog’s slathering tongue.
Abby could only stare.
His hair was shorter, the flecks of gray more apparent. They were echoed in the short moustache and goatee he wore. His T-shirt had a line drawing of a skull on the front, and his jeans hung on his hips. He was tan. Leaner. And he hadn’t had any fat to spare before. The scar on his right biceps and the tattoo on his left seemed to fit right in.
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