by Nika Dixon
The truck wandered too close to the shoulder, and he snapped his head around and corrected it back into the lane. He cursed under his breath and warned himself to pay attention to where he was going, not whom he was with. When he looked back, her smile was gone, and her eyes watched him with a controlled wariness. She pulled her arm in, neatened her hair, then clasped her fingers together in her lap.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he told her, fighting the desire to ask her to bring back the other Emma—the carefree one with the sparkling eyes and windblown hair, not the stiff-shouldered woman who was fidgeting nervously with the pocket of her hoodie.
He tried a few more openings to draw her into conversation, but all he could get were one-word answers and shrugs. She didn’t want to talk? Fine with him. Silence was more his style, anyway. But as he pulled into town, it occurred to him his hand-wringing passenger wasn’t being shy, she was nervous as hell.
Of him?
He supposed in a way she had good reason. She really had no idea who he was. But by the same token, had he not let her stay the night in his family home? Did that not earn a little trust in her books?
He parked across from the diner. He’d only made it halfway around to open her door for her when she scrambled out onto the sidewalk.
“Breakfast?” he asked.
“No, thank you. Your father already fed me.”
“Bobby won’t be there for a while yet,” he pointed out, catching her darting glances toward the mechanic’s garage up the street. “I can drive you back to the house if you’d rather wait there.”
“No,” she answered with a rushed exhale. “I’ll, um…just have coffee.”
They crossed the street to Maggie’s. The inside of the small diner was spotted with the usual assortment of Friday-morning regulars. He expected the standard greetings at his entrance, but instead of a wave and hello, all activity froze when he stepped through the door.
It took him all of a second to realize he wasn’t the one everyone was staring at.
The Sharron twins, Dale and Donny, stopped midargument, their bodies rotating on the counter stools until they both faced the door. He almost told Dale to put his brains back in when the younger man gave Emma an appreciative eyebrow wiggle. He glared the idiot down until Dale took the hint and turned away. Donny was at least smart enough not to openly ogle her, but the surprise on his face was more than evident.
At a booth by the window, Maggie had been taking breakfast orders from the three ladies from the city services building. All three women were now silent and staring. Deborah—the only woman in Absolution to wear more makeup than everyone else put together—tapped her red nails on the table and eyed Emma challengingly, as only another woman could. Though, in Marshall’s mind there was no comparison between Emma’s natural beauty and Deborah’s face paint.
The only patrons to show a polite response were JB and his wife, Caroline, who ran the post office and library. The two waved greetings then immediately went back to their meal. Marshall chalked it up to old-school upbringing and proper manners, unlike the other sets of eyes still rudely following Emma’s every movement.
He took a step forward then stopped to make sure his companion was going to stay with him. He shouldn’t have worried. She stuck to his side like a burr. When they reached an empty booth at the back of the room, he took the far side, seating her with her back to the others so she wouldn’t have to put up with their gawking head-on.
“Sorry,” he apologized, setting his hat onto the bench seat beside him. “Folks here haven’t quite learned their manners yet.” He raised an eyebrow in challenge at Dale, who was still staring.
Donny whacked his brother across the back of the head.
“What’d ya do that for?” Dale whined.
“Finish up,” Donny said. “We gotta get to work.”
Dale reluctantly turned back to his food.
Maggie stopped by the table and set a pair of menus down. “Can I get you two some coffee?”
Emma croaked out a request for water.
“I’ll have a cup,” he told Maggie.
“Be right back,” she answered then headed off to the kitchen.
Emma started to look over her shoulder then changed her mind and picked at the corner of the paper place mat instead.
Maggie returned with the drinks. “We have blueberry pancakes on special today,” she said to Emma. “Or I can get you something from the menu. Or not from the menu, if you have something else in mind?”
Emma smiled politely. “No, thank you. Mr. Boyer made me an omelet.”
“Well, then, I guess you have the fun job of keeping this one company while he eats.” Maggie tipped her head in Marshall’s direction. “Same as usual, hon?”
He nodded. “Please and thank you.”
“Back in a jiff.” She started to turn away but changed her mind and lowered herself to perch on the edge of the seat next to Emma. “Don’t you worry none about anyone here,” she said softly. “They’re an annoying bunch of yahoos, but for the most part they’re harmless. Besides, it’s not like you’ll have any problems so long as this one’s around.” She winked at Marshall, patted Emma’s clasped hands, then rose and headed to the kitchen.
As soon as Maggie was gone, Emma leaned forward. “Problems? What kind of problems?” she whispered. “I don’t want any problems.”
“There’s no problem,” he answered. “It’s a small town. Most of these folks have lived here their whole lives with the same people. Someone new comes along and it’s like Christmas to them. You’re a curiosity, is all. They have something to talk about for a couple of days.”
She twisted her fingers tightly around each other. “But I don’t want to be talked about.”
Her words were simple enough, but the waver in her voice made him wonder if there wasn’t more behind it. Her reaction to the whole situation wasn’t embarrassment over being stared at—there was a deeper worry buried in there somewhere, as well. Before he could think over what he was doing, he covered her knotted fingers with his hand, stopping her from squeezing them any tighter. The motion was as natural as breathing. A move he’d made a thousand times. A thousand days. A thousand lifetimes.
Just not his lifetime.
At the startled look she gave him, he pulled back and tried to turn his act of assurance into a casual affair. He picked up his coffee mug and took a drink, wondering just when in the last five minutes he’d totally lost his mind.
Chapter Thirteen
While Marshall ate his breakfast, Emma discovered she was terrible at being sly. Every time she felt she was doing a good job of surreptitiously checking out her breakfast companion, he would catch her staring at him. She was pretty sure embarrassed blush was becoming her permanent skin tone.
Even though the contact had been so very brief—a mere second—her fingers still tingled from the touch of his hand. She rubbed her palms together, willing the sensation to fade. It was useless and dangerous to linger on what it might be like to have a regular life. To be normal. To be loved. She tried to imagine the kind of woman who would own his heart, since there was no way someone as handsome as he was would be alone. His woman would be beautiful, of course. Blond and delicate. A stunning contrast to his dark hair and strength.
Emma picked through the eclectic collection of crayons poking up from a plastic cup next to the silver napkin holder. The broken end of a pencil poked her finger. Only a couple of inches long, it was covered in tiny teeth marks but had a freshly sharpened end.
His words bounced around in her head while she doodled on the plain white place mat. She was a curiosity. Something to break up their routine. People who lived here their whole lives and hadn’t left. Hadn’t gone to the city. Hadn’t met Alan. They weren’t connected to the life she’d had and had no link back to anything that could hurt her.
Blending and shaping, she highlighted fading rings around a setting sun. She wished for a proper sketchbook and some colored pencils so she could m
ake the bland drawing match the vibrant colors in her mind. She darkened the water and swiped in spires of reeds growing along the edges. Taking care not to tear the paper, she added the dark shadows of the forest on the opposite shore. An arched spike evened out the tops of the mountains creasing the horizon. She layered a bouncing reflection on the water, shaped an eagle circling off to the left, and finished off with the crooked silhouette of a jagged tree stump standing sentry in the bottom corner.
When she was done, she eyed it critically, pleased it had come out as close as it had with what she had to work with.
“Oh my,” a voice whispered over her shoulder.
She jerked sideways in the seat, looking up to find Maggie staring down at the drawing on the table. Standing next to her were the older couple who’d been kind enough not to gawk at her when she’d come into the diner, and hanging over the back of the bench, kneeling on the seat behind her, were two of the three ladies from the booth at the front.
“My goodness,” Maggie said, her eyes as wide as her smile. “Emma, that’s amazing!”
“She did all that with a broken pencil,” the old man said to his wife. “Did you see? A broken pencil.”
“I saw.” His wife patted his hand while smiling at Emma. “It’s beautiful, dear. Absolutely beautiful.”
“I wish I could draw like that,” one of the ladies over the booth said with a sigh.
“I can’t even draw a stick man,” the other replied.
Marshall was staring at the picture with a puzzled frown. She slowly turned the paper so the drawing would be right side up for him. She studied his face, her breath barely moving while she waited for his reaction. With Alan, she always felt a sense of dread when she turned in one of her sketches, but here, now, regardless of the chattering strangers behind her, she felt a gut-tightening hope the man across from her would approve.
Chapter Fourteen
Marshall agreed with everyone’s assessment that the picture in front of him was damn pretty, but it was the woman who’d drawn it who had his full attention. When she first looked up from the finished product, she’d had such a childlike glee about her—a sparkle in her eyes, both proud and pleased to share what she’d done. Like Lucy bringing home her latest school project to show off.
Like the woman flying her hand out his truck window.
But when the peanut gallery had started commenting, the look in her eyes shifted to mistrust. Then she’d turned the picture toward him, frowning and wrinkling her nose in distaste as though she’d expected him to hate it.
His anger at the people around the booth for disturbing them shifted to anger at her.
Why the hell would she automatically expect him not to like it? Because he wasn’t some fancy-pants art critic from the city? Well, he did like it. He liked it a lot.
“Go on, now, git.” Maggie shooed the others away from their table. “Show’s over. Finish up and get to work or you’ll all be late.”
The onlookers dispersed with another round of compliments to Emma. As soon as they were alone, her shoulders dropped down from their tense hunch. She waved her hand over the drawing and frowned critically. “It would be so much better if I had colored pencils and the right kind of paper.”
“It’s perfect as is,” he told her, meaning every word.
“You wouldn’t say that if you could see it in my head. There are so many colors I could use.” She fiddled with the broken pencil. “With orange alone, there are at least a dozen I would have used.”
“A dozen oranges?”
Her gold-green eyes sparkled as she listed off names of colors he didn’t even know were names of colors.
“Tangerine is a color?” he asked in disbelief.
“So are marmalade, squash, cantaloupe, and papaya.”
The names were so preposterous, he couldn’t help but laugh.
The sound shocked him. It had been so long since he’d found anything worth laughing about, he’d all but forgotten he even could. He almost put a stopper in it, but her energy was too damn contagious, so he let himself have the moment as she joined in, laughing at her own words.
A sharp clatter of dishes sounded from the kitchen.
In the blink of an eye, the carefree glee that made her come so alive disappeared. Her eyes darkened with worry. Chewing on her bottom lip, she leaned closer to the window and tried to see down the street. “Do you think the mechanic will open soon?”
Marshall frowned at the sudden topic change. “He’s likely there already.”
She started to slide out of the booth, but he called her to a stop with a quick, “Hang on a sec.” He disliked the wariness in her eyes and disliked himself more for even noticing. He needed to remember her feelings were nothing he needed to think on. She wasn’t sticking around.
“I’ll walk you over,” he told her.
He folded her broken-pencil sunset and tucked it into his pocket. After dropping a ten onto the table, he slid out of the booth and offered her his hand. The need to check if her touch would trigger that strange sense of familiarity again had nothing to do with anything, he lied to himself. He was simply being gentlemanly.
Michelle had always complained how his hands were so warm they made her palms sweat, so on the rare occasion their hands were together, she’d take hold of two of his fingers instead. When Emma reached for his hand, he half expected her to use the same city-girl style, but instead of a half-assed loosey-goosey grip, she committed completely. Their fingers locked together like matching pieces, and he helped her out of the booth.
Standing in the aisle beside the table, he wasn’t sure he wanted to let her go.
Maggie bustled past him, breaking the spell.
He snatched his fingers back.
It took twice as long to leave as it had to come in, with everyone needing to compliment Emma as they passed. And with each kind phrase, her red-cheeked stammering increased until her entire face was flaming red.
Stepping out onto the sidewalk, she placed her palms on her cheeks and exhaled her breath with a whoosh. “Oh my.”
“You okay?”
“No. Yes. Is everyone here always like that?”
“Like what?”
“So…nice about everything.”
“This can’t be the first time someone’s paid you a compliment.”
She didn’t answer. Not that he needed her to. Judging by her embarrassment, compliments were something she never received, or if she did, they were few and far between.
As they walked toward Bobby’s garage, a dozen questions flew into his mind, but he shoved them all aside. Emotions over the caliber of people Michelle had clung to broke free of their casket and ripped into him. Her so-called friends had been nothing more than low-life losers and jobless pond scum, telling her everything she needed to hear to keep her from leaving them, as though her presence alone validated their worthless existences. He pictured Emma surrounded by the same type of people, taking her skill and twisting it to make her hurt because it made them feel better about themselves.
She was an idiot if she thought people like that were her friends.
Well, she could have them.
He, for one, would not be falling into that pit again.
They crossed the street in silence and headed up the walkway into the front door of Bobby’s garage. While she chatted with the mechanic about her plan to catch a ride back to Pikes Falls with the insurance agent, Marshall bit back the offer to take her there himself if she was so all fired up to run back to a life full of assholes.
Leaving her to complete her travel plans with Bobby, Marshall returned to his truck.
Her problems were not his problems.
As he’d reminded himself in the diner, she was just passing through.
A temporary distraction to his otherwise happy, quiet, perfectly satisfied life.
Chapter Fifteen
Based on Bobby’s side of the conversation, Emma was pretty sure of the answer before he put the phone back down. Her plan t
o catch a ride back to Pikes Falls with the insurance man wasn’t going to happen as she’d hoped.
“He isn’t coming till Monday.” Bobby’s expression was as disappointed as she felt for herself. “But he did say if things change, he might be able to come out tomorrow.”
Saturday was better than Monday, but still a whole day away.
She glanced over her shoulder to see where Marshall had gone, but the garage area was empty. She walked to the front of the shop. There were a few people moving about down the sidewalk, and a small collection of vehicles parked along the two-block stretch, but the black pickup truck was no longer there.
She’d sensed his anger brewing when they left the diner, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what she had done wrong.
With Alan, the answer was simple—show him a picture he didn’t like. Most other times, he was sickeningly sweet, buying her expensive clothes and jewelry she couldn’t wear because she never left the penthouse. But give him a drawing that didn’t show him the win he expected, and he took it all away.
Yet, Marshall had said he liked the picture. He’d even complimented her. What had changed?
She shook it off with a sigh. She had what she wanted—freedom from the family, and especially the sheriff.
So, why did she suddenly feel like she’d lost something important?
…
“What say you let me buy you lunch,” Bobby said three hours later, washing his hands in the sink in the back of the shop.
Emma was definitely hungry, but her experiments with the small town were not worth repeating. If she wasn’t calling attention to herself by gulping down her food, she was drawing attention with her artwork. “Oh, no, that’s not necessary. But thank you.”
“Heck it is. It’s the least I can do for my best assistant.”
Her cheeks heated at his compliment.
She’d had more fun in the morning she’d spent pretending to help him work on the stolen car than she had in as long as she could remember. She knew nothing about cars, and even less about tools, but he had been incredibly patient and very detailed in his descriptions of where the tools were and what they did. After a few bad guesses, she’d gotten the hang of the names and locations of some of them. He’d answered all her questions and even offered to let her work with a few of the tools, which she’d turned down but appreciated nonetheless.