Owen was gone. Again.
Oh, the gall of him, to bring her grandmother into it! And to make Whitney, and worse, Cade and Abigail, feel stupid about their sweet surprise plan.
Fine. Whatever. What an ass. How could she have ever seen anything in him? Lucy kicked the side of the trash can by accident as she tried to lift the bag out and stubbed her toe so hard she saw stars. “Shit.”
“You okay?” said Molly, tucking another paper plate in the bag.
“No.”
“Where did Owen go?”
“I don’t know.”
“His speech was weird. But do you think that baby-naming thing will help you work it out with him, though?” said Molly with a saucy wink. “Double date? With me and Jonas?”
“Molly, no!” Lucy’s voice came out even more horrified than she felt, and that was saying something.
Molly’s smile fell away. “All right. We need to deal with this, now. Which is the part you hate more, exactly? The part with you and Owen? Or the part where your slut friend is dating your brother?”
They stared at each other.
Lucy opened and closed her mouth, and then said, “You’re not a slut. You just sleep around. A lot.”
Molly gave a high screech and clenched her hands into fists. “What is wrong with that?”
“Nothing! There’s nothing wrong with that!” said Lucy. “But he’s my brother and I just don’t want—”
“—him to get hurt. Obviously,” said Molly. “In the meantime you’re about to lose your best friend if you keep this up. You need to think about what you’re saying, and I’m not kidding here.”
“I . . .” There was so much to say Lucy didn’t know where to start. She loved Molly, so much. But for Jonas? For sweet, injured Jonas? She didn’t want to hurt her friend, but how could she make Molly understand that Jonas wasn’t ready for her? “He’s just so . . . Look, Molly. You’re an erotic novel.”
Molly cocked an eyebrow and a hip at the same time. “I’m porn?”
“No, they call it erotic. It’s totally acceptable. It’s hot. It sells, and it’s good stuff. Well-written and fun. Very, very popular. But Jonas, he’s an inspirational romance. Maybe historical. Like on the prairie. He’s looking for marriage material. Someone for the long haul, someone to help him . . . pull his tractor or something.” Lucy’s voice trailed off.
Molly’s mouth opened and then snapped shut. Her freckles stood out in sharp relief on her angry face. “I hate to break it to you, Lucy, but that’s not what he wants pulled. He’s looking for someone to screw on my back-porch swing while I’m giving people instructions on how many baby aspirin to take for their chest pain in Cantonese. Then he kisses me and goes home. He’s the best lay I’ve had in years and the kindest person I know, and we’re not looking for anything right now but fun, and I would have shared that with my best friend if she’d been able to get the stick out of her ass for even one second.” Molly’s façade was broken only by the sheen of tears in her eyes, but not a drop fell. “Call me if you grow up a little bit, okay? I need a friend. Not judgment.”
Lucy felt sick as she watched Molly leave. And there was nothing she could say as she stood there, more alone than she’d ever felt in her life.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Knit like you love—with your heart, hands, body, and soul.
—E. C.
Parking in front of Willow Rock, Owen sighed.
His mother was the last item on his list. As usual. But on any given day, being with her was the roughest, and longest, part of his day. Could anyone blame him for putting it off as long as he could?
Owen shouldn’t have left the bookstore. He should have insisted on staying with Lucy. But he’d been so stupidly stunned by the way he’d felt standing next to her that the instinct for flight had kicked in when that crush of people had set upon him, when all he’d wanted was to hold her, to put his arms around her. And at the same time, he was so mad at her—that she’d even consider placing herself in danger, putting herself in places where he couldn’t follow her. Sure, it was the twenty-first century, and women were just as good as men when it came to being heroes. He knew that. He’d worked alongside women on the force who were head and shoulders better than any men he knew at their jobs. But when it came to Lucy . . .
When he imagined her running somewhere when that pager went off, someplace that he couldn’t go, where he couldn’t help? Unarmed? Impossible. Even if it made him an asshole of the first order, he was supposed to be the rescuer, the hero. Didn’t she know that?
But after all that, he still just wanted to take her to bed and keep her with him, safe and warm. And if it moved to hot and bothered . . . Okay, so sex with her was the hottest he’d ever had. Every time he thought of her, he had to balance his concern with his lust.
But she wasn’t just a good time, a great lay. Lucy was so damned much more than that.
That was the problem. She couldn’t be more than that to him.
Not when he had nothing to give her.
He’d been running errands all afternoon since the surprise marching band . . . thing, trying unsuccessfully to drive Lucy’s dark eyes from his mind—maybe searching his mother’s chest of drawers for more tissue-wrapped shit would distract him.
In her room, his mother was showing Miss Verna a piece of knitting.
“Sleeve,” she said.
“Mmmm.” Miss Verna nodded.
“And heel.”
“Are you making a sweater or a sock, Irene?”
His mother scowled and put the knitting under her pillow.
But Miss Verna grinned at Owen as she slipped past. “She’s feisty today. Your visitor did her good yesterday. Get her to wash her hands, would you? It’s almost dinner.”
“What do you mean, visitor?”
“You know, that pretty girl. The short one. You put her on the list.” Miss Verna looked suddenly worried. “Lucy?”
Owen said, “She came? Already? To see Mom?”
“Was here all last night, knitting with your mother. Kept her quieter than I’ve seen her in months, and she’s been in a good mood all day. Now get her hands washed for dinner, if you don’t mind. It’d be a help.”
Owen nodded, trying to picture Lucy seated in this dark room with the drapes always drawn, leaning over his mother whose breath was probably not so fresh. “Hey, Mom, wanna wash your hands?”
Irene drew the knitting out from under the pillow again and focused on it, bringing her nose dangerously close to the sharp tips of the needles.
“Mom?”
Dammit, where had she gone? She’d been right there a few seconds ago. “Mom. Please. Get up. You need to wash your hands. Almost dinner.”
Glancing up only for a second, Irene hissed. “I’m knitting.” But the yarn wasn’t moving through her fingers anymore.
Owen rubbed his eyes with his hand. He leaned on the wall.
How did people do this all day? How did people manage this at home, taking care of the people they loved without help? They were fucking saints and he wasn’t worthy of being in the same room with them. He wasn’t even good at being able to handle this for a small part of every day. Couldn’t even do this right.
“Mom. Now.”
She ignored him.
He had an idea. Probably a stupid idea, but it was all he had.
“Hey, Mom. Would you help me wash my hands? Please?”
Irene looked up, and it was as if she had put on a different face entirely, as if she were a different woman. “Always had dirty paws.”
In the bathroom, Owen stood next to her, the water running over their hands. “Like this?”
“Let me, let me. Lather, lather.”
Irene’s hands were still strong, and she rubbed the soap into his, turning them so that she didn’t miss a spot.
In the mirror her eyes met his. They were his mother’s eyes again. Without thinking before he spoke, Owen said, “Why didn’t you ever leave him, Mom?”
Irene looked into the sink. “Didn’t want to go.”
It was his mother. She was here for the moment. “But he lied. And hurt you. All the time. And he had nothing to give you. Nothing.”
“Love is love is love.” Irene sounded disgusted with him. But at the same time, her hands never slowed, still pushing and rubbing his under the water.
And Owen, in a blinding moment, got it. Even if his dad had had the world’s shittiest way of showing it, his father had loved his mother. And Owen was rocked to the core as he realized for the first time in his life that his mother had loved his father back.
And as she scrubbed Owen’s hands with hers, her arthritic, knobby fingers cleaning his as they had a thousand times when he was young, he understood something else: Irene loved her son, but she would never say it.
She’d chosen his father that awful night. But she’d put his father in jail when it mattered, and she’d always loved her son.
Owen leaned hard against the toilet tank as the truth sunk in. “Thanks, Mom. You did a good job,” he said gently.
“That girl needs the boxes.”
Owen said, “What?”
“Eliza boxes.”
“Lucy?”
“For her. Eliza’s boxes.” It was a long string of thoughts for his mother, and the words were sharp.
Owen’s brain stalled like a car running out of gas.
“Mom, do you—”
The water was getting colder, and Owen added more hot. He’d be lucky to have any skin left, but Irene’s pale eyes that met his in the mirror were completely clear, without shadow.
“Mom, do you mean the boxes in your storage unit?”
“Eliza made you socks. She always said you’d come home. To me. To her.” Then Irene looked down and said. “Clean. All clean.”
Owen dried both their hands on the scratchy white towel hung on the rail. “My hands are clean now. You did a wonderful job. And I’m home now, Mom.”
He beamed at his mother, and Irene gave him a shaky smile back. The shadows were back again, behind her lids. “Turtles.”
“You bet,” he said. “Turtles are totally where it’s at.”
Not tonight. Today had been too much, and he’d been a royal asshole at the bookstore. No surprise there. Tomorrow. He’d go to Lucy tomorrow. They’d probably never know what Eliza Carpenter had meant by leaving those papers with his mother. But it was enough that she had.
And love was love was love, according to his mother. God knew Irene Bancroft wasn’t the best model for romantic bliss, but maybe telling Lucy what his mother had said about Eliza would be enough to gain a small fraction of forgiveness, to earn back a small bit of her trust. He hoped to God it would.
Because it hit him with the force of a bullet. Bancrofts weren’t good at this. Owen was in love with Lucy Harrison, and he was scared to death.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Use a bright light to look for moth holes. Face them head on. Admit that you have a very, very serious problem. You might have to have a wee cry. I wouldn’t blame you.
—E. C.
Lucy slept fitfully that night, fighting through dreams of tubas blaring and babies crying. She woke, wishing the bookstore were open, but it was Monday. Of course, she was the owner. She could open the Book Spire if she wanted to. But that would be admitting failure somehow, and she grimaced at herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth.
She could handle a day off, right? She wasn’t some crying fool, sick to the gills over some guy, lost and brokenhearted.
Why did it feel so much like she was, then?
Lucy eschewed making her own coffee in favor of heading for Tillie’s for breakfast. She pulled on the same dang pair of old overalls, Ruby’s bookstore cardigan and blue-and-green Keds. She made sure the fire-department pager was in her pocket—she had duty for the next twenty-four hours.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” she muttered to herself, as she pulled her door shut behind her. Mr. Kento across the street looked at her in surprise. Yep. Now even the neighbors who thought she was semi-normal would think she was batshit crazy, finally gone ’round the bend and talking to herself. Just as well.
As she sat at her booth in the diner while Shirley poured her coffee, Lucy fought back tears. There, at the front of the restaurant, was a big flyer advertising tonight’s intro class for the next session of the volunteer fire brigade training. Captain Jake Keller’s smiling face beamed down on the diner patrons, and even the handlebar mustache someone had penciled in on the poster couldn’t detract from the commanding presence he had. VOLUNTEER. SAVE LIVES. CHANGE YOUR OWN.
She loved volunteering with them. It was part of who she was. Sure, it was a sleepy town, and in the last four years, she’d only been able to actually help on a few fires, and usually she only did rehab on them—fire watch, handing out sandwiches afterward. Mostly the pages that went out were handled by the people actually paid and on duty—the volunteers handled backup. But she had handled real medical calls. Difficulty breathing. CPR, those few times, and it hadn’t been like it had been with her grandmother. She’d known what to do, she’d trusted in her training, and in the volunteers at her side.
But Owen didn’t trust her, obviously. Not to help people. He’d actually said that, in her backyard. He couldn’t be with someone who put herself in danger, he’d said. Because she might hurt herself ? Or someone else? Which one did he mean?
He’d said once that he thought she was brave. Guess he’d changed his mind.
Damn. She’d even chased her own best friend away, for God’s sake. She had no idea how she was going to fix that, or even if she’d be able to.
She remembered seeing Owen’s hand shake, the gun still in it, still pointed at his brother, and wondered if he’d felt the same way. Too late. Too broken.
What if they’d just screwed everything up so badly there was no going back?
Lucy ate her eggs without tasting them and choked down half a piece of toast. At the back of the diner, a small group of women waved at her. Lucy waved back—she sometimes knitted with them on lazy Monday mornings. Betty, a rather new knitter and already a very good spinner, smiled and held up a promising-looking scarf. Janet, a local superstar known for her imports of luxury fibers, raised an important-looking eyebrow and winked. Mildred and Greta, always present at most of the local knitting groups, blew her a kiss each, but Lucy just paid her bill and slunk out of the restaurant, shooting the group an apologetic smile. She just couldn’t handle small talk right now. They’d ask about Owen, she knew they would, and if even one of them hugged her, she’d come undone, and she wouldn’t cry now.
No. No crying. Absolutely not.
Outside Tillie’s, two seagulls squabbled over half a bagel, one pecking the other viciously, the other not giving up, beating and flapping its wings in a great show of loud force. Lucy shooed them, using her feet to drive them apart, then she broke the bagel into two pieces, throwing them in opposite directions.
“Gah,” she said, looking at her fingers. The Rite Spot’s doors were open. The bar, even at this hour, probably had a patron or two. She’d use Jonas’s restroom to wash her hands, and maybe use the opportunity to ask her brother what he thought he was doing, if he was even thinking at all. God knew someone in this town should look before they leaped.
Or how about just not leaping at all? How about staying nicely in one spot where it had always been safe, how about that?
Jonas was behind the bar reading a book. For once he wasn’t moving, not cleaning, not wiping anything down.
Lucy held up her hands. “Washing! I’ll be right back.”
When she came back out, she tried to get a look at the book Jonas was reading. “What’s that?”
Jonas looked up and pushed the book beneath the counter.
“Was that . . . ? You didn’t buy that from me; I’d remember. If you bought that on Amazon, I’ll burst into tears, and you don’t want that. This is not my day.” Lucy meant it.
�
�No, no. It’s just . . . I borrowed it. Not my normal thing.” He held it up a J. R. Ward vampire suspense.
“Those are fun. Dark and scary.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Nothing wrong with them.”
“If you’re a girl.”
Lucy shook her head. “You’re right. Absolutely. I forgot. You’re such a vapid specimen of a man that reading a romance is obviously going to turn you into a female. Well, good. I always wanted a sister.”
“Shut up.”
“They’re good books.”
Jonas leaned forward and lowered his voice so the old man at the end of bar wouldn’t be able to hear. “They’re great. They’re like candy. I can’t put them down. Molly gave me one the other night at her house, and I’m totally hooked. This is my fourth already.”
Perching her bag on top of the counter and leaning a hip on a bar stool, Lucy took the only opening she might get. “About that.” Then she took the J. R. Ward book out of Jonas’s hands and smacked him, hard, along the side of the head, before putting it back into his hands.
“Dammit! What was that?” Jonas rubbed his ear.
“What the hell are you doing with my best friend?”
“None of your damn business!”
“It is my damn business if both of you get hurt and come crying to me and I have to decide which one to have lasagna night for, and my lasagna isn’t even that great, but it’s the only comfort food I make, which’ll mean I’ll have to eat it forever and ever while you two rotate through my house on alternating nights.”
“Or we’ll be fine. She’s a big girl, Lucy.”
“I know. That’s what worries me. I love her with all my heart, but she’s the Big Bad Wolf and you might be . . . Well, you might be carrying a basket in the woods. Do you have any idea . . .”
“How many men she’s been with this year? Last year?” Jonas nodded. “I have a more current tally sheet than you do. Molly doesn’t tell you everything, you know that?”
Lucy sat up straighter. “She does, too!”
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