His Brother's Secret

by Debra Salonen

  He left everything where it was. He wanted her to see what he was doing and how his creative process worked. Or, in this case, failed to work.

  He took another swig of beer then poured the rest down the drain. So much for telling himself he didn’t want to work with her. He did. Even if it was a bad idea.

  He glanced at the table again and sighed. He’d make one last plea to enlist her help. If she turned him down, he’d call L.A. and hire a couple of screenwriters. Provided any were available on short notice and were willing to travel to South Dakota.

  Normally, he’d hunker down on his lanai with plenty of ice water and his laptop. He probably could have pounded out a rough sketch of these scripts within a couple of days, but now, every time he sat down to write, his mind saw a girl with long red hair and a look of desolation in her eyes.

  He didn’t know if he was doing this for Jenna or for himself, but he was finally able to admit that she was the key. Over the years his memory of her had transformed into a shimmering image of perfection. Every woman he met paled by comparison. He’d put Jenna on a platform, then sealed her fate with a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare, his brother’s actions making her even less attainable.

  He wasn’t sure how this was going to work, but he knew he’d never be able to move forward until he fixed the past. Maybe that meant coming clean about how he’d felt toward her, admitting that he’d had a crush on her. And because she’d left school so abruptly, his feelings had become frozen in time.

  No doubt if they’d actually dated back in college, Shane would have discovered that Jenna was just another pretty girl, no deeper or more magical than any other girl he’d ever been attracted to. Working together now might be the reality check he needed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “AS YOU MIGHT HAVE GUESSED, I’m here to apologize for being so abrupt today.”

  “I thought you were bringing me pie,” Shane said, opening the door. He noticed Jenna’s bike leaning up against a tree a few feet away. No wonder I didn’t hear her drive up.

  She held out a plastic-lidded container. “I did. I figured you’d have a fork. Mrs. Smith’s son did leave all the household items behind after she died, didn’t he?” She looked a little distressed. “I didn’t even think to ask when I called to see about you renting this place.”

  He used his heel to hold the door as he took the dish from her. “No. I mean, yes. We have everything we need, and I talked to Mrs. Smith’s son, Peter, on the phone last night. He said to make ourselves at home. Apparently, he and his sister are still at odds about whether or not to sell the house. They’re in the process of getting it appraised so even if they put it on the market, we could probably stay another couple of weeks if we wanted.”

  “Good,” she murmured, stepping inside.

  She’d changed from the Mystery Spot uniform she’d had on that morning to cuffed white shorts with a black T-shirt. Clean lines. His favorite look. She’d left her hair down, just tucked behind her ears. She had nicely shaped ears, he noticed. Now would probably be the time to give her back the hair clip that was still in his pocket.

  But he didn’t.

  “So,” she said, turning to face him, “my, um, friendly neighborhood readers group told me I was out of my mind to turn down your offer, so I’d like to reconsider.” She delivered the announcement in a rush of breath, as if she’d been practicing the line all the way over.

  He closed the door and walked to the counter. He couldn’t remember which drawer contained the flatware he and Coop had used earlier to eat the scrambled eggs he’d made them.

  “That’s great,” he said, yanking open the most likely suspect. A great shifting of knives and spatulas clattered. “Wait. You do mean helping me with the scripts, right? Not shoveling dirt. Cooper told me there was no way in hell he was going to do manual labor when he needed to be planning a wedding.” He paused. “Libby told you, right?”

  “She made the announcement at our book club. We’re all meeting in Rapid at noon tomorrow to help her pick out a wedding dress. Most of the time dresses have to be ordered, so unless something fits and they can overnight it…I don’t know.”

  He tried another drawer. Yes. Gobs of mismatched forks and spoons. He grabbed a fork with the tines pretty evenly lined up then closed the drawer with his hip. “I take it her mother didn’t leave behind—”

  When she shook her head, her hair bounced in a lush wave that made his throat close up. He grabbed a bottle of water that he’d opened earlier before moving to the table. “Sit. Can I offer you, um, water? Beer?”

  She pulled out a chair after glancing at the papers on the table. She didn’t comment, but he sensed her interest. “No, thanks. I’m fine. Kat asked about an heirloom dress, but Libby said from the photos she has she thinks her mom wore a suit of some kind when her parents got married. My mom and dad, too. They eloped. I guess there was a big scandal.”

  “Why?”

  “She was a student. Dad was fifteen years older and part of the faculty. He wasn’t her teacher, but, still, he nearly lost his job.” She made an offhand gesture. “Try the pie. Char bought it from a lady in Pine Ridge.”

  After nudging his notes out of the way, he pried off the plastic lid and inhaled. His mouth started watering. “Smells good.”

  He cut into the pointed end, making sure to get both top and bottom of the flaky golden crust with a thick, drippy dollop of berries. A long-forgotten, piquant flavor exploded in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. “Wow. That is good. Tart but sweet.”

  She nodded in agreement. “So,” she said a moment later, “after the girls left, Mom and I sat down and discussed schedules. I lucked out. Six of my students from last year still want to work, and one—Robyn—has been with us two summers. She’s a very bright, gregarious person and she’s interested in taking on more responsibility. Robyn and Mom will open, and I’ll take the afternoon shift. I’ll have to pay Robyn more, but depending on what you’re offering…”

  “Would ten thousand a week do?”

  Her jaw dropped open. “Dollars?”

  “Twelve, then.”

  “No. I didn’t mean it that way.” Her blush was so charming he almost choked on his pie. “You were kidding, right?” Twin spots of color on her cheeks deepened to a near chokecherry stain.

  He coughed and made himself concentrate. Frowning, he gestured toward the table. “Take a look at how much Coop and I accomplished in three hours. If you hadn’t called, there might have been blood.”

  She didn’t look convinced.

  He pressed his shoulder blades against the hard chair. “I’ll e-mail my office and have my secretary send a list of recent contracts with writers for projects my production company has done. Salaries vary, but I think we can come to an equitable number—definitely enough to offset the cost of paying a manager.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute, but she did scoot closer to the table so she could see what he and Coop had been working on. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  He finished off his pie, then got up and walked to the sink to rinse the container. “Apparently, neither do I. I showed Coop the four outlines I’d been working on and he didn’t like any of them.” He looked over his shoulder and added, “By outline, I don’t mean like a book with chapter headings and subpoints A, B and C. It’s more of a telling version of the story that you want to show with the script you plan to write.”

  “Oh.”

  “Coop said my ideas were lacking any real connection to Sentinel Pass. He thought this house might be stifling our creative energy. He suggested using Libby’s grandmother’s cabin, but I told him I wanted a story, not a baby.”

  She smiled at that and the vessel he was holding slipped through his fingers. He juggled it gracelessly but managed not to drop it. Damn. How was he going to work with her when even a casual smile turned him into a giddy boy?

  “Thank you for the pie. It was delicious,” he said, carefully setting down the container. “If you don’t mi
nd my asking, where do you go when you want to write?”

  When she didn’t answer, he looked over his shoulder. She was reading his notes, using her finger to follow the small print with extra care. Braille was easier to read than his writing, his secretary often complained. But Jenna didn’t seem to be having any trouble.

  As he watched, a shiver passed down his spine as if she were actually touching him, not his words on paper.

  He quickly dried the container using another paper towel, then carried it to her. “If you don’t want to take me to your private writing place, maybe we could meet at the café in the morning. Grab a corner booth and you can tell me about the people who come in. Their history. How they’re connected to Libby and the town.”

  She looked up. “These would be characters?”

  “The nexus of a character.” He found he was too restless to sit. Maybe he could keep his thoughts straight if he didn’t actually look at her.

  “The best stories are ones that people can relate to. Everybody Loves Raymond was a hit because even if you don’t have an intrusive mother, you probably know somebody who does.”

  She frowned. “My father hated television and my mother preferred stage productions and movies, although for the past few months she’s been ordering a lot of television series DVDs from NetFlix. When I was kid, though, I didn’t watch much TV. Mostly, I read.”

  “Who was your favorite character from literature?”

  “Honestly? Buck. From Call of the Wild.”

  He stopped. “I would have guessed Jane Eyre. Or Anne of Green Gables. But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised since your mother is such a dog lover.”

  Her snicker seemed to say she knew something he didn’t, so he waited for her to correct him. “Mom isn’t really all that much like the character she was telling you about. What name did you two decide on? Agatha? Aggie the dog lady? I like that, by the way. But I get what you’re saying about real people with real stories.”

  “Real, but bigger, richer, campier, more over-the-top. Like the backwoodsman-slash-artist. And Aggie the dog lady, who may be considered past her prime but still has the same needs and desires of a younger woman.”

  Her lips compressed slightly. “You do know Mom’s character isn’t based on a real person, right?”

  “They won’t all be. We have room to have fun with this. Did you ever see Friends?”

  She nodded. “When I lived with my aunt.”

  “Then you know that it was a comedy, but the writers tackled serious subjects—death, divorce, family issues. Once we establish our characters and premise, we can pull from real life and let these people get on with living. That’s what will drive our show every week.”

  He waited for her to ask what a premise was. Instead she cocked her head slightly and said, “Is that what you and Coop were doing? Brainstorming the basics?”

  “Yes. Although with Coop and me, it was a light squall at best.”

  She picked up her container and stood, but her grin was so real it made her eyes sparkle. This was an “old Jenna” smile—the kind he’d first fallen for back in college. His heart started thudding so loud he was certain she could hear it halfway across the room.

  “So, since I have to run into town to look at dresses at noon, maybe we should save working at the Tidbiscuit for another day. Are you an early riser?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I pick you up at six?”

  “Fine. Where are we going?”

  “To the most beautiful writing spot in the world.”

  She said the words with such reverence he knew this was a place she’d never shared with anyone else. His pulse quickened and his fingertips tingled, but he did his best to remain cool and calm on the outside. “Great. I’ll take any of the ideas we come up with in the morning and try to put together an outline. If you like it, we’ll start plugging in some dialogue. I’m counting on you to tell me when I miss the mark. I mean that. A writing team requires trust and complete honesty and candor.”

  He wasn’t sure how he managed to get those three words out without choking on them, but she nodded as if she agreed to his terms and was willing to give this her best shot.

  “And if you give me your e-mail address, I’ll have my secretary send you that information so you know I’m not taking advantage of you.”

  The weak overhead light made it hard to see her eyes, but she shook her head softly. “I never thought that. In fact, it occurred to me that you only offered me this job because you felt sorry for me.”

  The uncertainty in her voice made him close the distance between them. “Why would you think that? I drop into your world out of the blue and basically ask you to turn your life upside down. I’m the one who owes you, Jenna. Big time.”

  Her smile was very sweet, but it didn’t jibe with the skeptical look in her eyes. “I wish I were as confident as you are that I’m going to be any help, but I’ll try. That’s all I can promise.”

  “I promise not to ask for anything more.”

  As he watched her ride away, he reached in his pocket and fingered the turquoise clip he’d unintentionally stolen. He rubbed his thumb back and forth across the smooth, polished surface of the stone. This is going to work, he thought. She could definitely write. He’d sensed raw talent in her poems. She wasn’t afraid to draw from her gut. And she knew the area as well as anyone.

  Yes, she was the one.

  To work on this project. That was all.

  He let go of the clip and closed the door with a bit more force than necessary. He needed to keep his mind on the job he’d hired her to complete. Jenna would benefit monetarily and on a personal level, too, he hoped. He still remembered the sense of accomplishment and wonder he’d felt the first time someone paid him for something he’d written—an article about a virgin surfer’s first time on a board that came out in a regional travel magazine. That sale had changed his life—and how he thought about himself.

  Maybe working on this project would open some doors for Jenna and help her remember a time when she had dreams she wasn’t afraid to tell the world about.

  JENNA PEDALED HOME slowly after leaving the Smith house. Her mind felt as if it were firing on all cylinders. So many ideas were bouncing around, she was sure if she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, she’d see a lightning show. She hadn’t felt this fired up about the creative process since college.

  College.

  Shane wasn’t the same guy she’d known in college. Not that she’d really known him exactly. But she had admired him from across the classroom. Drooled over him in daydreams. Unfortunately, in every version of her dreams she’d given him a complete makeover before introducing him to her parents. Clarence Murphy would have blown a gasket the moment he spotted Shane’s earring, beard and ponytail. The pierced tongue and tattoo would have been nails in the coffin.

  “Tattoo,” she murmured, swerving to miss a pothole. She wondered if he still had it.

  She’d never actually seen it, but the way his brother had described it had been one more reason why she’d chosen the prudent route and given her attention to his clean-cut twin that night.

  “Shane went to the seediest part of Minneapolis and got the biggest, most garish, God-awful tattoo he could afford right in the middle of his back just to piss off our father,” Adam had told her at the party.

  She’d felt bad about snubbing Shane when earlier that week he’d actually said hi to her before class. A breakthrough, she’d thought, but then his Clarence-Murphy-pick-of-the-month, almost-look-alike brother had shown up.

  Unfortunately, she’d quickly discovered that looks were the only thing the two brothers had in common. And by the time she figured that out, Shane was gone. To ease her disappointment, she’d kept drinking. Everything in her world changed after that…

  She pumped her knees more forcefully to keep her mind off that particular train of thought. She hadn’t revisited that night in years and didn’t intend to now. What happened happened. There was nothing anyone c
ould do to change that.

  A loud honk made her jam on the brakes. Her rear tire skidded but she was able to come to a stop without losing control. She looked around and saw a large, familiar truck at the intersection. There wasn’t a stop sign in either direction, but locals knew to approach the crossing with care because of the overgrown lilac bushes that blocked the view. If Mac hadn’t slowed to a crawl, she probably would have creamed him.

  Not that her bike was any match for his truck. She could have been badly hurt.

  “Hi,” she said, hopping off the bike and pushing it toward him. “Women drivers, huh? Sorry. My head was somewhere else.”

  His window was already rolled down, and he gestured toward the other side of the street. “Yeah. I think it would have landed in Mrs. Gate’s strawberry patch if you’d run into me.”

  She laughed, but one part of her brain cried, Oh. Nice line.

  “Well, thank you for being a safer driver than me. I was thinking about my new job. I signed on to help Cooper’s friend write the first Sentinel Passtime screenplay.”

  He leaned closer to the window so she could see his face. Still one of the handsomest men she’d ever known—but for the first time that she could remember, her heart didn’t make a funny little loop-the-loop when he smiled at her.

  “I’m supposed to meet with the two of them sometime this week. They want to work out a deal to rent the mine when they start filming on location. The extra cash will be nice. Megan thinks we need a dog.” He sighed and shook his head. “You heard about the wedding, huh?”

  She nodded. “I’m going dress hunting with Libby tomorrow.”

  He frowned. “Everything’s happening too fast, but nobody is listening to me. Even Gran seems happy about it. And Megan is dancing on the ceiling. We haven’t told her about the baby yet, but Libby asked her to be part of the wedding party.”