by Cheri Allan
Her eyes were bright as she smiled at him. “That’s so sweet of you.”
He shrugged. “I meant it for later. After.”
“You mean there’s more?”
He nodded, noting with relief that John and Rick were no longer standing out front. Hopefully they had the good sense to take their business elsewhere. “Yeah, there’s more. Now go get changed. You can wear that purple number you wore to the reunion.”
Her eyebrows lifted uncertainly even as her hand clutched the newel post. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Why not? The evening can’t turn out any worse than the reunion, can it? We’ll make new, better memories in it.”
She grinned and hurried up the stairs.
Carter looked out the transom window again then swore to himself. Their cars were still in the driveway. Which meant they were probably in the shed. Would they notice the tarp had been disturbed? He hadn’t taken care to replace it, had simply left it as it had fallen not wanting to touch it again.
Damn.
“Where are we going for dinner?” Liz called from upstairs.
“It’s a surprise!” he hedged as he watched yet another vehicle enter the drive. “No need to hurry, though. We’ve got time if you need to fix your hair... or makeup...”
What the heck?
“Hey, Liz, I’ve got to get something from the car. I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Okay, but when you get back, I’ll need you to zip me!”
Carter blew out a quick breath of relief. Good. That would keep her upstairs—and out of the way for a few more minutes while he got rid of John and Rick. And, whomever had just arrived and parked on the road. What the hell was going on?
“Bailey?” Carter said, intercepting her on the front stoop. “What are— Is that Trish and the kids?”
“Probably,” Bailey replied. “So, what’s going on?”
“That’s what I’d like to know!”
“Didn’t Liz’s mom call you, too?”
“No.”
“Huh. I got a message to be here promptly at 6:45 for some big surprise.”
“I’m skyping now, Mom, can’t you see?” Trish bustled up the walkway, the twins fake-tripping each other, the baby swinging from her seat in the crook of Trish’s arm and her tablet held out in front of her.
“Oh, this is amazing!” Liz’s mom yelled from the tablet screen. “Hello, Carter! I’m a mobile hotspot!”
Carter waved at the tablet. “Hi, Mrs. Beacon.”
“Is everyone here? I mean there?” Mrs. Beacon asked, craning her neck, as if she’d get a better view from her sofa in Florida.
Trish looked around. “Not quite, but we’re a couple minutes early.”
“Early for what?” Carter asked again.
“The big surprise!” Mrs. Beacon yelled. “Shh!” she said, putting a finger to her lips. “Trish! Put me somewhere I can see the apple tree! I don’t want to miss a thing!”
“I can do it,” Ben said. The boy stood at Trish’s elbow and reached for the tablet.
Carter couldn’t believe the transformation in the kid. For one, he was standing relatively still.
“Okay, but be careful! No running!” Trish said automatically, but Ben was already walking, albeit quickly, toward the side yard where the apple tree was.
“Is that the same kid?” Carter asked.
Trish set the baby down and rolled her shoulders as more cars entered the drive. “Yes, I’m happy to say. Hey, Aunt Claire!”
Carter’s gut roiled as yet another unwanted guest arrived. Pretty soon… yup. There was Jeff Dayton, and Ted Seamans, the Fire Marshall, and… who the heck was that guy?
A slick-looking metro-dude stepped out of the same sedan Carter had seen dropping Liz off twenty minutes ago. The guy ran a hand through his product-enhanced hair and glanced around at all the cars. He looked nervous as he wove his way toward them.
“Excuse me,” he said, approaching the cluster of people on the front walk. “Does anyone know how I might get in touch with Mrs. Beacon? Liz’s mother?”
“And you are…?” Bailey asked.
“Grant Blackerby.”
The interoffice-guy?
“Grant!” Liz said from behind Carter. She stood at the front door, gawking, the back of her dress flapping in the breeze. “What—? What is everyone doing here?”
“Liz, I’m sorry,” Grant said, peering around her relatives. “I—”
“Jeff?” John said, rounding the corner from the side of the house. “And Ted? What are you doing here?”
“I was chatting with Ted at the station when he got a call from Carter. It sounded interesting, so I thought I might come and take a look, too.” Jeff raised one dark eyebrow at Liz’s brother.
“Look all you want. I haven’t done anything wrong,” John said.
“If things are so up and up, why is Rick here?” Jeff pressed.
“I didn’t want anyone asking questions. It’s a surprise. Or, was. Plans have changed.”
“What’s a surprise?” Liz asked from the stoop.
“It’s good you’re here, Officer Dayton, because this guy is trying to shaft me.” Rick hooked an accusatory finger at John.
“Just return it all,” John mumbled.
“They don’t take returns,” Rick shot back.
“Actually, Rick, we have some questions for you,” Jeff began. “You’re not in any trouble, but we—”
And, that’s when they heard the cyber-screaming from the side yard.
“Mom! Mom!” Ben yelled, running toward the grown-ups, the tablet held in front of him as Mrs. Beacon screamed ‘fire!’ hysterically from the seven inch screen.
“Fire! Fire!” Mrs. Beacon yelled again.
“Mom!” Trish said, grabbing the tablet from her son. “Call 9-1-1!”
“No you call 9-1-1!” Mrs. Beacon screamed back.
“No you have to!” Trish yelled at the tablet. “And, get out of the house!”
“I’m not the one that’s on fire!” Mrs. Beacon yelled back.
“What?”
Everyone looked at each other for one stunned moment, and then all hell broke loose as they started babbling at once.
Carter shoved Liz toward the house and bolted for the side yard, the others hot on his heels. He skidded to a stop. Bright yellow and orange flames raced up the side of the storage shed, fueled by the dry old lumber, licking at the branches of the apple tree nearby.
“Get a hose!” someone called from behind him.
“Get back!” Carter yelled, turning and gesturing wildly as Liz’s relatives poured around the corner of the house and ran around excitedly. “Get back! Get back! John! Get them all BACK!”
John met Carter’s gaze across the yard, recognition dawning, and screamed at everyone to run, goddammit, RUN!
Carter charged forward as the first explosions hammered out the shed door and whizzed by his ear. A brilliant rocket of color exploded in the bushes above a black silhouette of kissing children. A second rocket flattened the silhouette as a third whizzed through where they’d been.
Screams and a handful of startled curses colored the air along with the wild explosions of dozens of fireworks let loose. They shot by him, exploding on the ground, in the trees, zinging toward the driveway and all their cars, popping all around like toy guns run amok.
He saw Jeff Dayton hunkered down by his squad car, yelling into his radio.
John screamed, “Valerie? Valerie! Get down!” across the yard at the same time Carter charged toward the front of the house… and ran smack into Liz.
“What the hell are you doing?” he cried, pulling her upright off the lawn.
“We need to put out the fire!” she yelled, as she stood in the grass in bare feet, her dress flapping open, working frantically to uncurl the hose from its reel.
“We need to get the hell out of here!” he hollered back as another rocket exploded mere feet from where they stood. Why the hell weren’t they going off a
ll at once, for Christ’s sake? Carter grabbed her elbow and shoved her toward the front door where the others were taking refuge even as John, foolishly, bolted across the front lawn toward the driveway.
Liz stubbornly turned on the spigot anyway and started spraying around Carter at the cinders on the front lawn. She shot him in the chest.
“Liz!” He hollered again, as she tried to drown him with the hose. “Get inside! Now!”
“But—”
“Inside!”
More fireworks exploded in a shower of sparks nearby, and he heard a scream from the driveway. He turned to grab Liz, but she tripped and pitched forward, falling hard to the ground in front of him.
Carter threw his body over hers to shield her at the same moment the shed exploded like a sonic boom.
His heart pounding in his ears, he let his face sink into Liz’s hair and waited for the sirens.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
____________________
“SHE’S AWAKE.”
Liz heard the whispered words somewhere outside the drumming fog in her head. Her forehead throbbed, and when she tried to open her eyes, her right eye, in particular, stubbornly refused.
“She’ll sport quite a shiner.”
That was Aunt Claire. Liz recognized the gravely dead-pan tone, although the slight hitch at the end was unusual.
“Liz? Can you hear me? It’s Trish.”
A hand covered hers. Liz soaked in its warmth. She tried to open her eyes again. “Anyone catch… license… of the truck… ran me over?” she mumbled.
Her voice felt disused, raspy, and she scowled, or tried to, as the air filled with relieved, low chuckles.
“No. No one else to blame for this one,” said Aunt Claire. “For such a smart girl, you’d think you’d know enough to break a fall with your hands, not your face.” She was cracking a joke, but you could hear the underlying concern in her no-nonsense voice.
Slowly, as the fog began to dissipate, Liz focused her left eye on the people huddling over her. She struggled to sit up.
“Easy,” Carter said, holding an arm behind her to steady her.
Carter?
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Bailey demanded, shoving her hand in front of Liz’s face.
“Three… Plus a Snickers.”
“She’s okay, folks!” Bailey announced. “She’s okay!”
“I don’t feel okay,” Liz said. “My eye—”
“Here’s a boo-boo pack,” Ben said, thrusting a bag of frozen vegetables at her. “For your eye.”
“Thanks.” Liz held the vegetables to her face, wincing as she did so. “What happened?”
“Your brother had some fireworks stored in the shed. Somehow a fire started and set them off,” said Carter.
Liz rolled her eyes and then instantly regretted the motion. “Lovely,” she murmured behind the peas. “Some people never learn.”
Her brain hurt. Among many other parts of her. “How did he get in the shed? I locked it…”
“He took the key from your purse.”
Jeff Dayton knelt beside her. “We’d like to take you to Sugar Falls General if you don’t mind, just to get you checked out. Or, rather, the lady in the iPad told me that’s what we’d like to do.”
“Oh. Sure. All right.” Liz made as if to stand, but was held in place by a rock-solid forearm.
“She needs a gurney,” she heard Carter say. “She’s not walking anywhere until a doctor says she can.”
“I’m—” she began and then saw Carter’s face. “I’m sure that’s wise,” she murmured.
Soon, the paramedics moved her onto a gurney, wheeled her toward the ambulance and lifted her in.
“Oh, Jesus.” Valerie sat on one of the seats in the ambulance already, a bloody bandage held to her wrist. “Are you serious? I have to ride with her?”
Liz would have turned her head away except they’d immobilized her head for the trip. “The other ambulances are out on calls. It’s less than ten minutes away, Val.”
Val winced, looking a little pasty under her tan. “Fine.”
THEY DROVE TO THE HOSPITAL—a caravan of cars, trucks and one ambulance—as the fire department put out the last of the smoldering embers back at the house.
The paramedics unloaded Liz and wheeled her toward the E.R. entrance. John’s car squealed to a stop behind them. He leapt out as Valerie was being helped from the ambulance and onto a second gurney.
“Val? Why are you on a gurney? Why is she on a gurney?”John demanded.
“I got dizzy,” she said.
“Dizzy? Oh God, Val! Babes!” John grasped her hand, squeezed it and jogged next to her as they rolled the women into the E.R. “I’m sorry! So sorry!”
“You should be. What were you thinking?” Valerie winced. She held up her left arm and instructed the male nurse who was trying to help her with the admission paperwork to snap to it and fetch her a hospital gown so she wouldn’t bleed all over her good blouse.
“I was thinking I needed to do something big… to win you back.”
“So you blew up my hand?”
“You’ll be all right, Miss,” said the nurse, smoothing a hospital gown across her.
“Who asked you?”
“Don’t move your head, ma’am,” a paramedic warned Liz as she craned to see what was going on.
“Shh!” she told him.
“It was going to be a big display over at the lake,” John continued. “Big enough for the whole town to see… big enough for you to see how much I want you in my life.”
Valerie’s eyes grew watery. “Shut up. You don’t.”
“I do! And, I don’t care anymore what you think your chances are with Dan. I won’t let you go back to him. He had his chance with you and he blew it. It’s my turn now.”
Val murmured her address and phone number for the nurse to write on his clipboard. “What do you mean, it’s your turn?”
John stuck his hand deep in his pocket, fished around, and pulled out a little velvet box.
The room gasped. Liz nearly threw up.
“What is that?” Valerie asked, alarm creeping across her features.
“It’s a ring, Val. I’m not going to sneak around anymore. You’re worth more than that to me. You deserve more.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said as she turned toward the nurse. “I’m allergic to Penicillin, too. Make sure you note that.”
“Valerie—look at me.”
Val swallowed visibly and raised a shaky hand to brush the hair from her forehead. “John, we had a good thing, but it’s over.” She glanced around the room. “Don’t make a scene.”
“I love you, Val.”
Her hand stopped at her temple and stayed there a moment before she let it fall to her lap. “What did you say?”
“I love you, Val. And, I want to marry you.”
Val shook her head and pressed the ring box closed. “No. You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m no good at being married. It won’t work.”
“Miss…?” Valerie just kept shaking her head, tears seeping from her baby blues, John clutching her good hand, the nurse standing by the gurney, waiting. “Miss?”
John let out a sigh and put the box back in his pocket.
Val closed her eyes for a moment then turned and snapped at the nurse, “It’s Ma’am to you, kiddo. You don’t look a day older than my baby brother.”
“Ma’am?” the man tried again.
But, Valerie wasn’t listening, was just shaking her head at John. “You almost ruined everything,” she whispered.
“Ma’am?” the nurse said again, clearly not moved by romantic displays as he lowered his voice. “I have to ask before we do x-rays… is there any possibility that you are, or have reason to believe you may be, pregnant?”
Valerie’s eyes leaked even faster, huge tears plopping like rain onto the front of her hospital gown.
“Ma’am? I need to know—”
“I do two hundred sit-ups a da
y!” she blurted, rounding on the man. “Two hundred! Would my stomach look like this if I weren’t pregnant!” And then she shook off John’s grip, huge, ugly racking sobs shaking her as she tried to bully the nurse into wheeling her off to a private room.
He wrote something on his clipboard instead.
“Val,” John whispered from her side, “is it true?”
“No.”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I said! Forget what I said! Isn’t there such a thing as patient-doctor confidentiality anymore?”
“Ma’am, I’m not a doctor…”
“Oh, shut up!” Val and John said in unison.
“But you said… you said you and Dan were getting back together! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’d…” John’s shoulders were shaking as he reached out and grabbed Val’s arm so she’d look at him. “You were going to, weren’t you? After everything we’ve been to each other… You were going to try and pass off my baby as his, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”
Valerie didn’t answer, she just yanked her arm out of his hand and continued to sob.
“Don’t you think he would have figured it out, Val? Huh?”
Trish popped baby Clara over her shoulder and turned to John. “How can you be so sure it’s yours?”
Everyone leaned in. It was a valid question, after all—even if the timing was questionable.
Valerie looked up. “Dan’s infertile. Old football injury.”
“Oh.” The room said, collectively.
“Val—” John began.
“Can you blame me?” she shot back. “What are my options? I’m knocked up, Johnny. Just like my mom. Knocked up and… alone!”
“Honey. Babes. Don’t cry,” John pleaded.
“Don’t tell me not to cry!” Val cried louder. “Why are you even here? Go away! Shouldn’t you be running to the hills like you’re so good at?”
“I’m done running,” is all he said.
Val hiccupped and swiped her eyes with her good hand. “Ha! You left for three months—three months!—with barely a word! You’re just like my father! Only ever was there to knock my mother up and smile at the babies… Well, I’ve got news for you, Johnathan Beacon, I can take care of this baby myself!”