by Abby Gaines
“To Kechowa, over the North Cascades. My parents live there.”
“Your parents!”
“It’s not my idea of a good time, either, but I was due to visit next week, anyway, so I thought we’d head out a few days earlier.”
“What do they think about my coming with you?”
“They don’t know.” At her outraged gasp, he added, “They’re used to me bringing a woman along.”
“I am not a woman.”
“I wondered about that myself, the way you’re so—”
“You know what I mean. I’m not the kind of woman you…date.”
Jared eyed her purple bustier-style dress with its short skirt and laced-up bodice. He fought the inevitable rise in blood pressure. “In that getup, you’re not too far off the mark.”
“Gee, thanks.” Holly sank back into her seat in disgust. “We’d better stop on the way so I can buy some clothes. I can’t wear Summer’s stuff out in public.”
Jared didn’t bother to answer that. As he turned onto I-5 north and put his foot to the floor, she craned toward him. He realized she was trying to see the speedometer.
“The limit is sixty until you get out of town. Slow down,” she ordered.
He pressed down harder on the gas and heard her mutter something that might have been, “Pathetic.”
He grinned as he shot into the fast lane and headed north.
JARED SPENT the first two hours of the three-hour drive to Kechowa wondering if he’d made a big mistake, bringing Holly with him on a trip that was bound to be fraught with tension.
He didn’t have time to play nursemaid to Seattle’s most wanted woman, and he didn’t want to be in a position where he owed his parents anything. And he hated the fact that returning to the mountain town where he’d grown up still gave him the heebie-jeebies.
He glared at Holly, who, oblivious, was showing an obscene disregard for the perils of motion sickness by reading EC Solutions’ financial accounts. Just glancing at her as she read made Jared feel queasy on this winding stretch of the North Cascade highway. Still, at least she didn’t want to talk.
He’d bet her intense focus on her work was designed to stop her thinking about the twins dropping out of school, which for some reason seemed to matter even more to her than being charged with fraud.
Jared wondered why he should feel angry on Holly’s behalf. He was all in favor of people, in this case Summer and River, making choices to suit themselves rather than the expectations of well-meaning traditionalists, in this case Holly. That he should now be siding with Holly, even applying the word “ungrateful” to her siblings, was galling.
“You were mean to your mother yesterday,” he said, to remind himself she deserved all she got.
It took around ten seconds for his words to seep through her concentration. The way Holly’s head belatedly jerked up was almost comical. “I was not.”
“Yes, you were.”
“If I was—” Jared had known her honesty wouldn’t let her deny it again “—she deserved it.”
“Why?” he asked. “I can see she might not have been the kind of mother who stayed in the kitchen baking cookies.” There had been something too untamed about Maggie Stephens for that. “But she seemed nice enough.”
“You’re wrong about the cookies.” Holly gave him a hard, bright smile. “My mom’s specialty was hash cookies.”
“Hash cook—as in marijuana?”
“Uh-huh. But to give credit where it’s due, she didn’t let us eat them.”
“Wow.” Jared absorbed the news of Maggie Stephens’s unusual culinary habits. “So she ate them herself?”
“Sure did. She and her friends would sit outside the trailer on a summer’s evening and they’d eat their hash cookies.”
“I suppose she drank wine from a bottle in a brown paper bag, as well?” he asked, wondering if Holly was spinning him a line. He found it hard to believe she’d lived in a trailer.
She smiled faintly. “Mom’s a teetotaler. And before you ask, there were no ‘uncles’ around, either. At least, not when I was there. Dope is her only and occasional vice, in the accepted sense of the word.”
“But you consider she had other vices.”
Holly couldn’t voice the bitter memories that colored her childhood. How strange that she couldn’t bring herself to betray her mother when she had no respect and little love for the woman. She decided her reluctance stemmed from fear that Jared would pity her.
“There are some things that matter to Mom, and some that never will,” she said at last. “She didn’t care that we didn’t dress like other kids, didn’t eat like them, didn’t have a father around after Dad left. Actually, I don’t think she even noticed. She was always in her own world.”
Holly leaned forward and fiddled with the vent until she got the air flow just right.
“But she cared a lot about her causes. The threat of nuclear war under Reagan in the eighties was a biggie, then the Rwanda crisis. Mom would head to L.A., D.C., wherever, to join protest marches.”
“Did she take you guys along?” Jared tried to imagine Holly on a protest march.
“Uh-uh. From when I was twelve, she’d leave me to look after the twins. I guess they were four or five years old.”
He frowned. He didn’t know much about kids, but twelve sounded young to be babysitting for days at a time. “Did you cope okay?”
“Barely. I could do the basics of putting food on the table and getting us all to school. But I felt so…alone. Not knowing where Mom was, not able to get ahold of her in an emergency.” She shivered. “At nights, after the twins were in bed, I’d get scared. I’d sleep in Mom’s bed and I always wanted to pull the covers right over my head, but I was afraid I wouldn’t hear the twins if they called.”
“What about your father? Grandparents? Couldn’t they look after you?”
“Mom had argued with Nana—her mother—and didn’t want her involved. She wouldn’t let me tell Nana when she was going away.” Holly shrugged, stared out the passenger window. “Nana died when I was fourteen, anyway. And Daddy…”
She used the childish name, her memories of her father suspended when she was eight years old. “He was an accountant.” She smiled a wry acknowledgment of Jared’s raised eyebrows. “He left on my eighth birthday and he never came back. He said he’d call me, but…”
Jared’s mouth twisted. “Why did he go?”
“He couldn’t cope with her.”
That one word—her—had a thousand meanings. The disgraceful state of their clapboard house. The endless hours Mom spent painting. And her refusal to look after Daddy. The twins he’d always said he’d never wanted, but Mom had gone ahead and had anyway…
So when her father didn’t call, didn’t come back, Holly had known exactly who to blame. And when they’d had to move out of the clapboard house and into Nana’s house. And later, after Mom argued with Nana, when they’d moved to the trailer park.
Without their father, the thin glue of normalcy that held them together evaporated. With no one to call time on her, Mom retreated further into herself. And the less regular the meals, the less ordered their existence, the more Holly drew on her diminishing store of memories of her father.
Daddy said I must always do my homework. Daddy said if you’re good at math, you’re good at life. Daddy said a healthy body means a healthy mind. When she’d first started parroting his views, she hadn’t known what they meant, only that they brought routine to her life. By the time she understood, they were her lifeblood.
“The twins and I never fit in at school,” Holly told Jared. “We dressed oddly, everything a couple of sizes too small, falling apart. Other kids notice that stuff. So do their parents. I…found it difficult. Knowing I had a normal father out there somewhere helped.” Helped when Mom had turned up at school an hour late for her teacher interview, wild hair uncombed, bedroom slippers still on her feet, only to bawl the teacher out for “not teaching these kids a damn thing about how to look aft
er the world they live in.”
“Your mom took it hard, then? Your dad leaving?”
Holly noticed the forest was thinning and glanced at her watch. They must be getting close to Kechowa. “I guess she did.” She hadn’t really thought about it before. “Yes, she was upset. She’d painted lots of pictures of him. I remember her breaking them up and burning them.”
“But you still have one.”
“I hid it under my mattress. Mom wasn’t the sort of housekeeper who’d ever find anything there. I know Dad was in contact with her after he left, but she didn’t tell me where he was.”
And Holly had never forgiven Maggie, for that or for robbing them of a normal life.
“Your dad’s never made contact with you directly?”
“Not even when Mom went to prison.”
“Prison!”
She chuckled. “Just for a week or two at a time. She was arrested during protest marches a few times, charged with disturbing the peace and smoking dope. We never had any money to bail her, so she’d be in for a few days until whatever organization she was protesting for paid her fine. I looked after the twins, and we never told anyone she was gone. But I did wonder if my father might read about Mom’s convictions in the newspaper.”
“No wonder you’re screwed up.”
“I am not screwed up. I just happen to prefer a more orderly existence than my mother’s.”
“Did you ever try to contact your father?”
Holly hesitated. “I guess after so long I chickened out.”
“Holly Stephens chicken? Never.”
She ignored the warm glow his assessment kindled. “Well, whatever the reason, I didn’t. And chances are, he’ll have read that I’m under investigation.” She’d hoped he would have read about her being Businesswoman of the Year. If he had, it hadn’t spurred him to contact her. She didn’t need to state the obvious about the conclusion her father would draw from the latest reports. Like mother, like daughter. She couldn’t even think about finding her father until she’d cleared her name.
THEY DROVE OVER the riverbridge into Kechowa at four o’clock. Holly pressed the button to lower her window and breathed in the fresh mountain air.
“It’s hot,” she said, surprised.
“It’s often up in the nineties, sometimes over a hundred, here in summer.”
“Remember, I want to stop and buy some clothes,” she said. “Just a skirt and some pants, a couple of blouses.”
“Just tell me when you see a store you like the look of,” he said, unusually helpful.
She soon saw why he could afford to be helpful. The main street was cute, with its wooden boardwalks and frontier-style buildings, but it was no shopping mecca. A couple of stores displayed souvenir T-shirts and baseball caps, and an old-fashioned candy shop tempted her, but for the wrong reasons.
No Nordstrom, no Gap… Just a menswear store, and one called…
“Schott’s Bicycles and Lingerie.” Holly stared at the fancy red stenciling over the top of the window. “That’s kinky.”
“I would have thought it’s your kind of store,” Jared said.
“But what’s the connection between bicycles and lingerie?”
His gaze flicked over the low-cut neckline of her dress. “I’m sure I could think of one, given some encouragement.”
Holly folded her arms across her chest. “You knew there’d be nowhere for me to buy clothes here. You should have stopped before we left Seattle.”
He grinned. “But, honey, I like you just the way you are.”
By the time they reached the far end of town and turned into his parents’ dead-end street, the lightness of his banter with Holly had evaporated and Jared’s mood was black. The paneled front door of the two-story brick house, the last house on the road, opened before he’d turned off the engine.
His parents appeared to battle briefly in the doorway for the privilege of being first to welcome them. It was Dad’s innate courtesy, Jared supposed, that allowed Mom to win and to jog down the front steps ahead of him. Jared scowled. What was the big hurry? They all knew this week would be torture.
He wiped the scowl off his face as he got out of the car. He wasn’t here to argue with his parents. He would keep his distance, emotionally if not physically, get through this annual ritual, get some work done, then get the hell back to Seattle.
Holly figured it would be a waste of time to wait for Jared to come around and open her door. She clambered out and stood next to the car while his mother hugged him and his dad slapped him on the back and pumped his hand. She noted the lack of enthusiasm in Jared’s response.
“Mom, Dad, this is Holly Stephens.” Jared motioned her forward.
Mrs. Harding, who had the kind of compact, rotund figure so many short women end up with later in life, blanched as she took in Holly’s attire. It was hard to get beyond that fashion statement to Holly’s face, but eventually the older woman managed it. She looked Holly hard in the eyes, and a flicker of relief crossed her face. And when Holly extended her a hand, Mrs. Harding ignored it and enveloped her in a rose-scented hug.
Holly began the process of easing back and reclaiming her personal space as soon as she decently could. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Harding.”
“Call me Beth. It’s wonderful to meet you.” Beth’s blue eyes, a warmer version of Jared’s, sparkled in welcome.
“It’s kind of you to have me,” Holly said stiffly, unsure if Jared was about to spill the story of her court case and why she was here in Kechowa.
“I can’t remember the last time Jared brought a girl home.”
“Mom, Holly works for me. This is business.”
So he wasn’t planning to tell them. Yet. Holly let out a small breath, relieved.
“Of course it is, sweetie.” Beth blew him an airy kiss. “But she seems very nice. Are you sure—?”
“Quite sure,” Holly said quickly, certain the sound behind her was Jared grinding his teeth. “We have a lot of work to do, and we need somewhere quiet.”
“As the grave,” Jared chipped in sourly, ignoring his mother’s hurt look.
Beth showed Holly to an upstairs bedroom with a large single bed covered by a blue-and-green-striped counterpane. Football trophies ranged along the wooden bookshelf, and pennants, faded with age, adorned the light-blue walls.
“This is Greg’s room,” Beth said. “Our oldest son.”
Holly struggled to equate this picture of suburban normalcy with the Jared she knew. A middle-class home, two evidently loving, straight-up-and-down parents, a college-football-star older brother. How did this environment produce a man who acted as if normal was a dirty word?
Jared had disappeared with his bag into the room next to hers. His old bedroom, presumably. She stifled the sudden consuming desire to know what story his walls would tell.
After Beth left, Holly unpacked her things, then took her toiletry kit along the hall to the bathroom.
“Oh.” She stepped into the small room before she realized it was occupied. Jared had also decided to freshen up, which in his case involved taking off his shirt. There was about a foot of space between Holly and his bare back. Worse, when he turned to face her, she was eyeballing his chest.
Which was, quite simply, the perfect male chest. Muscled, firm, broad where it should be and tapering down over abs a gym addict would envy.
“Sorry. I didn’t know you were in here,” she said, addressing his nipples.
“You could try knocking,” he suggested.
“You could try locking the door.”
“I’ll be done in a minute, if you want to wait.” He looked at his watch and the movement distracted Holly enough that she could bring her gaze up to his face. “Dinner’s at six.”
His tone made it clear he thought eating dinner at six o’clock obscenely early. So did Holly, but she wasn’t about to agree with him.
OVER DINNER—roast lamb scented with garlic and rosemary, just the kind of comfort food Holly adored—she
answered the senior Hardings’ questions about her business. Since they didn’t actually ask, “Are you being investigated by the FBI?”, she didn’t feel obliged to mention that.
“Your parents must be very proud of you,” Beth said. “Having your own firm and doing so well.”
“No—well, maybe—I don’t know.” Her dithering caused an exchange of concerned glances between Jared’s parents, and Holly rushed to change the subject.
“You must be proud of Jared,” she said. And because his mother’s instant and unqualified agreement elicited something like a faint snort from the man himself, Holly hurried on. “What about your other son, Greg?” she asked. “Is he in business, too?”
For a second the silence filled the room.
“Greg has passed on,” Beth said. At the same time, Edward said, “Greg’s not with us anymore.”
But Jared’s stark declaration overrode both of them. “Greg’s dead.”
CHAPTER NINE
HOLLY CLAPPED A HAND to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Beth said kindly. “And you haven’t upset us. It’s been twenty years now—Greg was a lot older than Jared. We never stop missing him, but after so long the pain isn’t as sharp.”
There it was again, that faint snort from Jared. What was he playing at? Couldn’t he see the hurt in his mother’s eyes, the stiffening of his father’s shoulders?
Holly was at a loss for what to say next. “I’m so sorry,” she finally said again, feeling inadequate. To her relief, Beth started clearing plates.
“Come help me serve the cheesecake,” she invited Holly.
NEXT MORNING Holly and Jared set up in the office, a second-floor bedroom that had been converted to a working space. It faced east, so the morning sun streamed through the windows, picking up dust motes in the air.
Holly opened her laptop on one side of the large desk, while Jared did the same with his on the other.
“We have everything we need here—printer and Internet connection,” he said. “I keep this place set up for when I’m visiting.”