He stared forward for several seconds before glancing down to where her hand lay atop his. "How did you do it?"
"At first, I didn’t do anything but stay in bed all day and wander around the cabin all night. I cried all the time, threw up a lot. Mom was understanding for a while. But after week upon week of it, she threatened to take me to the doctor if I didn’t eat something and get some sun. I was so angry at her I wanted to leave. I mean, how dare she scold me. She still had Dad. What did she know about losing a husband?"
Shelly paused to take a deep breath at the memory of that explosive altercation. She’d never screamed at her mother like that. Weeks later, she’d begged her mother’s forgiveness only to have her mother smile and say she didn’t have to apologize. She’d said the screaming was the first step to healing.
"I learned a couple of months ago that Mom lost a baby before Sean was born. I felt awful, remembering the things I’d said to her that day. And you know what she did?"
Reed shook his head.
"She hugged me and said it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have known. Reed, she could have fired that back at me that day when I was screaming about how she didn’t know what that kind of loss was like, but she didn’t. She put me before her own feelings."
"You’re lucky to have such a good mother."
She squeezed his hand. "You have one, too."
"It’s not the same."
"Because you’re a man?"
He shrugged.
"Contrary to popular belief, men can have feelings. And they can talk about them."
"I didn’t see the point in bothering her."
"She’s your mother. You wouldn’t be bothering her."
He pulled his hand away and stood. He walked a few steps before turning back toward her. "I don’t want to relive it over and over, okay? It’s bad enough that Eddie’s release has dragged it all up again."
She wanted to go to him, to put her arms around him, but she was afraid he’d retreat even farther. "You’re already living it over and over, in your mind. It won’t hurt any worse if you say it."
"I just told you how I feel. I think about it every day, I see the blood, I’m angry. What more do you want?"
"That’s a start, saying those things out loud." She stood, but only moved as far as the bottom step. "It took me months to really talk about that day, but when I started it was like little pieces of the pain started to chip away. I owe my mother my life because of that." She swallowed, hoping she wouldn’t spook him with what he would likely consider touchy-feely stuff. "I’m here, Reed, if you want to talk about it."
He started to protest, but she held up her hand to stop him.
"I’m not saying you have to spill everything tonight, just that when you’re ready, I’ll listen. It doesn’t matter if it’s while you’re still here or the middle of the night when you get back to Texas. I know how you feel, like no amount of talking can ever make it go away. You’re right. It will never go totally away, but you can get your life back."
"Have you?"
"I’m farther along that road than I would have ever imagined possible."
They stood silently, staring at each other in the dim light. The expression on his face told her he wanted to say something, perhaps thank her, but he wasn’t able to form the words. Deciding he’d had enough strong emotion for one night, she tried to lighten the moment.
"So, if I go back inside, are you going to resume your post on my porch?"
"Yes."
She glanced toward his cabin, a dark square against the darker trees behind it, and spoke before she lost her nerve.
"Well, if you’re determined to play bodyguard, you might as well get some decent rest while you’re doing it. Go get your stuff, and you can sleep on the couch."
He stood staring at her until her cheeks burned. She hoped he didn’t read anything other than friendly concern into her gesture.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. How much worse could it be than if someone finds you asleep on my porch with a gun?"
The faint light was bright enough that she saw his smile.
"Go on now before I change my mind and make you sleep in your car. And, by the way, we should take that car back. No sense paying for it if you’re not going to drive it."
"Yes, ma’am." Still smiling, he shot her a salute.
"Well, I’m going back to bed. If you need anything, wait ‘til morning. All this chasing raccoons has made me tired."
He chuckled as she turned and walked back inside. That, she considered, was progress.
She curled in her bed and listened for Reed to return. There was no backing out now. She just had to make sure no one in town found out. If they did, it’d be all over the county in thirty seconds flat. She wouldn’t doubt her mother and brother would hear soon thereafter. Everyone but her parents knew why Reed was there, but people would still wonder and whisper and she didn’t want to deal with that.
With Reed in the next room, she thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep. But she drifted off within a couple of minutes. And the reason why was as clear as the Little River. She felt safe.
****
Reed stared at the ceiling from where he lay on the couch, his conversation with Shelly replaying in his mind. She seemed convinced that if he’d just talk about Troy’s death, he’d stop dwelling on it every day. While that possibility tempted him like forbidden fruit, it also seemed like a betrayal to the best friend he’d ever had. And failing him once was quite enough.
A day from the summer he and Troy turned thirteen floated up from somewhere in his memory. Janie Frasier, two years older than them, had been having a pool party. They’d snuck up to the hedges at the edge of the Frasiers’ yard and watched as half a dozen freshmen girls in bikinis that revealed larger breasts than girls their own age had dived, swam and basked in the sun. He and Troy had eventually leaned so far forward that they’d tumbled through the bushes, sending girls screaming. While he and Troy had still been untangling themselves, Janie recovered enough to grab the garden hose and douse them.
Reed smiled up at the ceiling. They’d laughed so hard that they’d barely been able to make it home without collapsing.
Damn, he missed Troy. His eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them away. He wasn’t going to cry, damn it.
He turned onto his side, determined to put the memories away and get some sleep. A whiff of flowery scent made him sit up. Had Shelly entered the room? His heart hammered, even after he realized she was still behind her closed bedroom door, no doubt asleep by now.
He flopped back onto the couch, and was greeted by the scent again. He lifted the thin patchwork quilt to his nose. It smelled like her, like some flower he could never name—just as he couldn’t name all the emotions that smell sent swirling through him. He curled beneath the quilt, chilled a bit by the air conditioning and the aftereffects of his conversation with Shelly.
Rubbing his hand where she’d placed hers, he remembered how warm and comforting it had felt, how he’d almost turned his over and entwined his fingers with hers. And when she’d looked up at him, her lips had been close enough to kiss with little effort.
God, why could he no longer think of her the way he had when she’d lived in Dallas?
Because she’s not married, not seeing anyone.
Only because you failed to save her husband.
Reed rubbed his temples. He’d almost told her when she’d badgered him outside that what haunted him most was the guilt that ate at him like acid. But she would have said something like it wasn’t his fault when he knew with every cell in his body that it was. If it weren’t for him, they would have never gone after Eddie Victor and his bunch in the first place. And if he hadn’t been inside flirting with that bridesmaid he would have been Eddie’s first target, giving Troy time to take cover.
The guilt pressed down on him. How could any amount of talking ever make it go away? He didn’t deserve to be free from it.
He held his breath for a mom
ent, listening for movement from her bedroom. Tonight, his heart squeezed with a new ache. If he let himself, he could fall for Shelly, might already be halfway there. But she was putting her life together again and didn’t deserve to have him hanging around as a reminder of the past. He’d protect her with his own life if necessary, but when Eddie was taken care of, one way or another, he was packing his things and going home. Besides, he was a cop, and that was the last thing Shelly needed in her life again.
****
Eddie kept perfectly still, barely breathing as he watched the cabin. He let the thick foliage hide him until the light inside clicked off. Still he waited. He was familiar enough with Tanner’s determination to believe him a man who’d stand inside a dark cabin and watch a darker surrounding forest for even the hint of out-of-place movement.
The sight of the two of them together had flooded him with blazing anger, an anger so intense that he almost regretted not bringing his gun with him from the car. But he’d left it safely in his trunk to avoid ending things too early. The two people tucked inside the cabin hadn’t suffered nearly enough.
And from the look of things, waiting a while longer would make the revenge that much sweeter. There seemed to be a bit more than friendship between them. If he waited for that relationship to strengthen, the pain would be even worse for them when he took out one, then the other. He would have smiled, but almost believed his teeth would shine like a beacon in the impossibly inky blackness.
He’d make her live that day all over again, only this time with a different man. Or maybe it was her turn to go first, sentencing Tanner to watch her die before he met the same fate.
Decisions, decisions. Eddie began his careful retreat to his car.
****
Shelly exited her bedroom the next morning to find Reed had already made coffee and opened a box of doughnuts she’d bought from Linda.
"I see you’re settling right in." She tried to ignore how good he looked in her kitchen, almost as if he belonged there.
He held up a half-eaten cinnamon doughnut. "I dreamed about these doughnuts all night."
"Linda Brickman claims another victim." She moved to the counter and selected a chocolate cake doughnut.
"I don’t think this is what our mothers had in mind when they said we should always eat a well-rounded breakfast."
"Are you kidding? Without Linda, I might never have had breakfast."
"Really? I would have thought your mother was a good cook."
"She is, for lunch and dinner. By the time Sean and I dragged ourselves out of bed, she and Dad were hard at work already."
"So, they’ve had this place a long time?" He seemed genuinely interested, not just making idle conversation. And it was good to talk about something that wasn’t depressing or frightening.
"Yeah. They inherited the land from Dad’s parents and started with one cabin and a couple of rafts the year before Sean was born. They weren’t the type to work in an office for someone else for forty years. Until I went to college, I’d never lived anywhere but here."
"You love it," he said, more of a statement of fact than a question.
"Yeah. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I came back."
A flicker of something, perhaps disappointment—no, more like resignation—sparked in his eyes. She blinked, certain she’d imagined it. Why would Reed be disappointed by her love of her surroundings? Did he take it as a slam against his native Texas? No, that didn’t make sense either.
They heard the car engine at the same time.
"Chris," she said, suddenly nervous that her employee might see her and Reed exiting her cabin together and come to the wrong conclusion.
"Don’t worry. We’re old friends. Nothing wrong with us sharing breakfast. And Chris knows why I’m here."
"I know. I guess everything makes me jumpy now. Everyone will get wind of it sooner or later. Chris will know as soon as he sees guests checking into the cabin you’ve been staying in."
"I’m not worried about it. You shouldn’t be either."
"I know, I know. Nobody ever said all my feelings made sense."
Shelly yelped in surprise when she opened the cabin door to find Chris outside about to knock. Chris flinched in response. His gaze darted beyond her to where Reed stood, cup of coffee in hand.
"Uh...mornin’" Chris stammered, questions riding the glances darting between Shelly and Reed. "I wanted to check on the order for the vending company. They just called to see what we needed."
"Oh, I forgot to do that yesterday." She’d been forgetting a lot of things lately, her mind occupied alternately by worries about Eddie and her father and confusion about Reed. "I’ll call them back in a few minutes. Want a doughnut. I’ve got plenty."
"No, thanks. I met Anna for breakfast before she went to work." Chris glanced at Reed again, and she’d swear one of those male thumbs-up looks passed between them. Well, she’d just have to set Chris straight.
Trying to act casual, Shelly glanced over at Reed. "Chris’s girlfriend, Anna, is interning with Friends of the Smokies this summer. They help fund projects in the park that don’t get funded by the government."
"Sounds interesting."
She could almost kiss him for his easy air. No wonder he was such a good detective. She figured detectives had to be good actors to go undercover effectively.
"Well, my work isn’t going to do itself," Shelly said. She walked past Chris and toward the office. Thankfully, she didn’t hear any snickers uttered behind her. If Chris made any suggestive comments, she might have to box his ears no matter his age.
He didn’t say a word as he followed her, but once inside the office she glanced over to find the expression on his face one of amused satisfaction.
"Just what is that look?"
"Look, what look?"
She crossed her arms and faced him fully. "If there’s a joke, I wish you’d let me in on it. What, do I have doughnut in my teeth?" She made a production of running her tongue over her teeth in search for doughnut crumbs she knew weren’t there.
"No." He kept looking at her with such probing that she wondered if Chris might be considering becoming a detective himself.
Dang it, it was no use. They’d known each other too long, were able to read each other’s minds too well. "Would it do me any good to say it isn’t what you seem to think?"
He raised his brows, a teasing smile curving his lips. "What would I be thinking?"
She refused to answer his question, launching into an explanation instead. "It’s a matter of practicality," she said, frustrated that she sounded defensive. "We really needed the extra cabin, and..." She hesitated, flirting with the idea of making up some plausible excuse but finally deciding the truth would be the easiest course. "He was sitting on the porch every night anyway."
Chris’s expression changed from surprised smile to pinched concern. "He’s that worried? Has he heard something else?"
She shook her head. "No. He would tell me."
"Maybe it’s the fact he hasn’t heard or seen anything that has him more concerned."
The embarrassment and teasing of seconds before evaporated, and Shelly sank into her chair. She’d managed to carve out portions of her day when she successfully held Eddie’s menace at bay, but other moments brought cold, blinding fear that Eddie was hiding just out of sight and her life would be extinguished as quickly as Troy’s had been. She wouldn’t have time to say goodbye to her parents, her brother, her sweet little niece—or Reed.
Her heart squeezed. She’d known Reed for several years, but she’d grown closer to him in the few days since his arrival at her doorstep than she had in all the previous years of their acquaintance. Dying too young frightened her beyond description, but the growing fondness and attraction toward Reed frightened her in a very different way, a fear that was somehow more difficult to confront. One wrong step could ruin their friendship.
She glanced over at Chris. "Well, there’s nothing I can really do about it. E
ddie Victor might be a mile away, drinking a latte in Seattle, or eating a hot dog in Central Park. I have no way of knowing, so I have to keep going until I do. And Lord knows, I have plenty to keep me busy today." She shooed him toward the door with a wave of her hands. "Go on, I have a vending order to place."
But as Chris started to open the front door, she called his name. When he turned back toward her, she looked up. "If..." Her voice caught in her throat, forcing her to clear it. "If Eddie does make it here, I want you to stay out of the way. Take care of the guests unless we’ve asked them to leave already."
He started to protest. She saw it in the stiffening of his lean body and the parting of his lips.
"No, I mean it. This isn’t your problem, not your fight. You have your whole life ahead of you. I want you to finish college, get married, find a job you love, have a gaggle of little nature-loving kids."
"And you think I could live this happy life if I carried around the guilt of not helping you when you needed it? You’re not just my boss, Shelly. You’re my friend, like a sister to me. You and your folks are like a second family."
Tears pooled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. "I just don’t want you to be hurt, or worse."
"I don’t want that to happen to you either. Thirty-two isn’t exactly over the hill, you know. You can have all of those things you want for me." He stared straight into her eyes, not glancing away or wavering. "Including the happy marriage and the gaggle of kids." He glanced out the side window, drawing her attention there as well.
Reed walked across the lawn adjacent to the line of cabins. She jerked her head back toward Chris to reiterate that nothing was happening between her and Reed, but found he’d already slipped out the door.
She returned her gaze to Reed, watched his long, enticing strides. Would she have been lying if she’d uttered that denial to Chris? Was there really nothing romantic between her and Reed, or were deeper feelings taking root on both their parts despite their mutual efforts to fight them?
Reed stopped to talk to one of the guests, turning his profile toward her. Her breath caught for a moment, remained suspended in her full chest for a few seconds longer than normal. She’d been fighting against the idea of being able to love again for months, every time her mother or a well-meaning friend even suggested the possibility. As she stared at the man across the clearing—his strong jawline, his broad chest and shoulders, his long legs—she found it hard to muster up her old arguments about not being able to love like she’d loved Troy and not wanting to risk being hurt that way again. She didn’t want to fight at all.
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