“I forgot. Does that mean you’re off today?”
“No, but this time of year weekday mornings can be slow. There’s no rush. I’ll walk over in a bit, spell her for lunch.”
“I can spell her if you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick. Just tired.” He yawned again. “I got in late.”
Baxter glanced beyond him, into his small bungalow. “Do you have company?”
“You mean a woman? No.”
“Then where were you last night? I came by a couple of times.”
Noah ignored the apparent subtext of that sentence—the possessive “where were you?”— because he wasn’t even sure it existed. “Believe it or not, I was rescuing someone.”
“You always wanted to be a superhero,” Baxter joked.
“Now I just need the cape.” Relaxing slightly, Noah held the door. What was wrong with him? This was Bax! They’d been on lots of double dates together. Noah knew for a fact that Baxter had slept with a number of women—at least when they were younger.
His friend grinned as he came in. “Who’d you rescue this time? Yet another chick from the confinement of her clothes?”
See? When Baxter said stuff like that, as if he was just another one of the guys, Noah wondered if he was simply being conceited or...or paranoid to think Baxter was attracted to him.
But there was always that indefinable something, like the feeling that had triggered his desire to pull on a shirt.
Whatever was going on was so damn contradictory and confusing....
“Is that the kind of rescue mission you’d like?” he said with a laugh.
Baxter didn’t rush to convince him. “Now and then. There are too many risks and complications that go with sleeping around to do it very often.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get naked with anyone last night.” He had seen—and touched—Adelaide’s bare ass. That was memorable. But, in deference to what she’d been through, he wasn’t going to mention it. Maybe the rest of the circumstances surrounding her ordeal would go public. The incident was too sensational for word not to spread. But nobody had to know about the private hour he’d spent in Milly’s home, removing slivers. “Do you remember Adelaide Davies?”
Baxter’s gaze lighted on everything that was out of place. He’d been a neat freak since he was a little kid. “Adelaide who?”
“Went to high school with us. Would’ve been a sophomore when we were seniors.”
“I don’t recall anyone by that name.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. We were at San Diego State by the time she graduated, and she left town right after.” Noah dropped onto the couch and dangled one leg over the arm.
Baxter sat in the opposite chair, but he did so with his usual decorum. He wasn’t wearing one of his hand-tailored suits. He worked at a brokerage house in San Francisco Monday through Thursday, but his hours were flexible. Maybe he was taking two days off this week instead of one. Anyway, even his casual jeans and shirts came with expensive labels. He was stylish, well groomed, always had a perfect haircut and smelled like the men’s department at Macy’s.
But Noah tried not to file any of that under the “gay or not gay” headings going on in the back of his mind. He refused to define Bax—someone he was supposed to know better than anyone else—according to stereotypes. He was still hoping his so-called gaydar was wrong....
Actually, he didn’t care if his best friend preferred men. He’d deck anyone who had anything to say about it. He just didn’t want Baxter’s preferences to include him. Any admission along those lines would be far too weird.
“She’s back?”
“Just returned.”
“And you didn’t sleep with her? You’re falling off your game, bro.”
Noah scowled. He wasn’t that big a player. Living in a small town made it impossible to screw around very much—and maintain any respectability. It wasn’t as if he went out looking to get laid. Not very often, anyway. Women had always sort of...come to him. “Why do you keep bringing everything back to sex?”
“Isn’t that what you usually want to talk about? How hot your latest conquest was?”
Maybe he did talk too much about the women in his life. But he was trying to convince himself that the loneliness that had begun to plague him in recent years wasn’t going to taint his whole existence, that the life he led was fulfilling and would continue to be fulfilling even if nothing changed.
Besides, he couldn’t think of a better way to put Baxter on notice that he wasn’t about to get intimate with another man.
“She was beaten up! Of course I didn’t sleep with her. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you what happened.”
“Fine.” Baxter spread out his hands. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“Forget it.” Flipping him off for being so damn facetious, Noah got up and headed to the kitchen.
Baxter chuckled as he followed. “Now you’re clamming up?”
“You don’t really want to hear.”
“That’s not true. I’m dying to learn every sordid—or not so sordid—detail. Did you punish the guy who was giving her trouble, or what?”
Noah turned to face him. “She was in the mine.”
At this, Baxter sobered. “What do you mean ‘in the mine’? What mine?”
“The one we used to party in at the end of our senior year.”
“The Jepson mine? She couldn’t have been. They closed it off after—” his voice softened “—after Cody.”
Noah didn’t want to think about his brother. Ignoring the reference, he once again shoved away the memories of the June morning he heard his brother had been found. “That’s what I thought, too,” he said.
“But...”
He pulled a carton of orange juice from the fridge and shook it before offering some to Baxter.
“No, thanks.” Baxter’s lip curled in disdain. “I wouldn’t drink from one of your glasses to save my life.”
“Because you’re OCD.”
“Because you barely rinse them before you use them again.”
Just to bug him, Noah drank from the container. “Wasn’t enough for you, anyway,” he said, and tossed the empty carton across the kitchen and into the trash can.
“Nice shot.” Baxter transferred a stack of dirty dishes to the sink before leaning against the counter. “Back to Adelaide Davies. How’d she get into the mine? And how did you find her?”
“I was riding past the entrance when I heard a woman call for help.”
“That must’ve freaked you out.”
“Yeah. It was twilight and cooling off, so it’s an odd time to run into someone up there. I certainly wasn’t expecting to perform a rescue mission.”
“That entrance is no longer sealed off?”
“It is. This was an ancillary opening. Someone had torn away the boards and, after beating her up, threw her down into the hole.”
Baxter blinked several times. “You’re kidding.”
Noah could understand his surprise. Nothing like that ever happened in Whiskey Creek. There’d been rumors that Sophia DeBussi’s husband, the wealthy world-traveler Skip, knocked her around once in a while, but that was the only hint of violence that had occurred in recent years. “No. And get this...she’d been taken from her bed.”
“Kidnapped? That’s what she said?”
“She didn’t have to say. It was obvious. She had rope burns. And she was in her underwear.”
Baxter whistled. “That’s serious. How badly had she been beaten up?”
“One eye was swollen shut, and she was all scraped and bruised.”
“Who did it?”
Noah shrugged. “Who knows?”
Baxter pushed away from the counter. “Wait a second! When I stopped at the Gas-N-Go last night, I heard that Chief Stacy was asking about a woman who’d gone missing. It’s Milly Davies’s granddaughter, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You found her?”
“I found her.”
“Milly must be relieved. But—” he hesitated briefly “—had she been raped?”
“Claims she wasn’t, and I’m inclined to believe her.”
“Because...”
“Her panties were...you know...on and intact.”
Baxter looked baffled. “So...what was the point of taking her?”
Noah sighed. “No idea. Maybe he intended to rape her, but she fought too hard and he gave up.”
“Wow. After that welcome home, I bet she’s ready to leave town again.”
“She can’t.”
“Why not? She left before, didn’t she?” Baxter started cleaning up the kitchen, which he’d probably been itching to do from the second he got there.
“Milly’s getting too old to run her restaurant. That’s the reason Addy came back.”
“It’s a good thing you were there and that you heard her. The Jepson mine’s not stable. She could have...”
He let his words trail off, but Noah knew what he’d been about to say.
Instead of following up with a comment about Cody, Noah focused on the mundane. Avoidance was always easier than trying to cope with the loss he still felt. As far as he was concerned, that was private. “Stop doing my damn dishes!”
“Why?”
“Because it makes me feel like a slob.”
“You are a slob,” Baxter joked, but there was no real energy or accusation in the statement. Noah could tell he was thinking about Cody. The three of them had been inseparable as children. Baxter wasn’t a stellar athlete, but he’d joined all the same teams Noah and Cody had been on, even if he didn’t get to play on game day.
“Compared to you,” he said. “You iron your sheets and underwear.”
“Makes them feel great. You should try it sometime.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “No, thanks. I have better things to do with my time.” He rinsed off a plate, but Baxter took it and put it in the dishwasher as if Noah would only put it in the wrong slot.
“Do you think Chief Stacy will catch the guy who kidnapped Milly’s granddaughter?” Baxter asked, returning to their conversation.
“Not if she doesn’t give him some sort of description.”
“Maybe it was someone who followed her here from wherever she lived before.”
Noah remembered how reticent Addy had been after he’d pulled her out of the mine. Wouldn’t most women be shaking and crying and begging to go to the police?
She’d wanted to pretend the whole thing had never happened.
“It has to be someone she knows.” He couldn’t get around that. She’d said it wasn’t her ex, but...was she lying?
“Why?” Baxter spoke above the sound of the kitchen faucet.
“Because she acted strange, wouldn’t give me any details. She wouldn’t even let me take her to the hospital or the police.”
“There could be other reasons.”
“Like...”
“Maybe she hit her head, wasn’t in her right mind. Or...it’s possible that she was raped and she’s too embarrassed and humiliated to talk about it.”
Noah doubted she would’ve allowed him to remove those slivers if she’d just been violated. “That’s not what happened. I believe she’ll try to play it off as if it was a stranger. But...”
“What?”
He rinsed off another plate. “I got the impression it wasn’t.”
Baxter kept loading the dishwasher. “I’m not sure that makes sense. If she knew him, why not point the finger?”
“My guess? She’s afraid.” Actually, it wasn’t a guess. She’d said as much, hadn’t she?
“That he might get to her before the police can get to him?”
“Absolutely.”
“If she wasn’t raped, what could her abductor have wanted? Was it a robbery?”
“No.” Noah felt certain she would’ve said so if that were the case.
His cell phone vibrated on the counter, but when he saw the incoming number, he ignored it. It was a woman—a tourist he’d met when he’d stopped for a drink at Sexy Sadie’s during the summer. She’d come through town with her sister, they’d spent one night together and she’d been calling him ever since.
The noise caught Baxter’s attention. “You’re not going to get that? Why not? Don’t tell me Shania’s been calling you again.”
Noah wrung out the dishrag so he could wipe down the counters. “No, I think she’s finally accepted that I’m not going to take Cody’s place in her life. It’s Lisa. Again.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“As a friend.”
“She wants more?”
“She hasn’t asked for a commitment, but she sure wants to see me a lot.”
“She’s the one who took off your clothes in the car.”
Noah could easily remember that night. Few women had come on as strongly as Lisa. And yet she’d seemed almost straitlaced when they were talking in the bar. “That’s the one. She’s been hounding me ever since.”
Baxter’s smile shifted to one side. “I guess you’re just that good in bed.”
Was there an undercurrent to that statement, too? It felt as if maybe there was, but Noah couldn’t figure out why there would be. What was Baxter feeling? Jealousy? Envy? Or was there some criticism in those words? “Very funny.”
The buzzing of his phone stopped but started up again a second later.
“You’re right,” Baxter said. “She is persistent. Maybe you should answer it and tell her you’re not interested.”
“I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I don’t mind seeing her now and then.” As long as they were in the company of others. He was growing bored with the kind of sexual encounters that didn’t mean anything, and had begun to think he was missing out on a whole other dimension. Actually, after seeing how happy and in love Gail and Cheyenne and Callie were, he knew he was missing something.
“Of course not. You’re always up for a good time.”
Noah studied his friend, searching for clues as to the correct interpretation of that line. But Baxter’s benign expression suggested he should take it at face value and Noah felt it was in the best interest of their friendship to let it go. “You like a good time, too, don’t you?”
“Sure,” he said.
Noah grabbed a bowl from him. “Good. I’ll tell her to come this weekend, and bring a friend.”
Baxter met his gaze. They were only a few inches apart and Noah got that odd feeling again, but he refused to step away. He shouldn’t have to. This was his best friend, damn it.
“Why would you have her bring someone?” he asked. “Now you’re into threesomes?”
“No. The friend is for you.” Noah clapped him on the back and smiled, waiting for him to beg off. These days, that was what he normally did. He’d say he had to work, he was in the middle of a project at home or he’d be out of town. Noah had started hanging out more with Riley and Ted, especially if there were going to be women present.
But Bax didn’t offer up the typical excuse. Although he didn’t seem as pleased as Noah thought he should be, he accepted. “Why not?”
“So, if she can do it, we’re on?” he asked in surprise.
“As long as it’s not tomorrow night. Tomorrow’s the big game, remember?”
It was Homecoming at the high school, but that didn’t mean what it used to. They didn’t attend the Friday-night games anymore; they were too old to hang with the high school crowd. But he had to go to this game. He, Cody and a lot of the friends they’d grown up with, including Baxter, had been part of the football team that won state during their senior year. Those who lived in the area had been asked to return and help present a memorial plaque to Coach Nobis, who was retiring and would be moving to Arizona in a few months. They were also going to retire Cody’s number. Noah’s father would be on hand to speak, in his capacity as mayor and as Cody’s father and, because he was his brother’s best receiver, Noah was expected to say a few words, too. But he wasn’t looking forward to i
t. Cody was too emotional a subject for him. He hated speaking about the loss of his brother, especially in public.
“Right. The big game. Trust me, I’m not likely to forget.”
Obviously picking up on his sarcasm, Baxter studied him. “You’re spending too much time dreading it. It won’t be that bad.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You never do.”
Noah rounded on him. “Why should I have to? Why does everyone want to hear about Cody?”
“It’s been fifteen years, Noah. How much longer can you put off dealing with it?”
“Dealing with it? You’re kidding, right? I have to deal with it every day of my life! I just don’t want to dwell on it.”
“So you’d rather talk about people who mean nothing to you. Lisa, for instance.”
“Sure, why not?” Lisa was an uncomplicated subject. He’d been honest with her about his level of interest and owed her nothing. But Cody. That was a different story. With Cody he had to ask himself too many what-ifs. What if he’d attended that party? Would he have been able to keep Cody safe? What if he’d gone to his parents and told them Cody was using drugs? Would they have been able to change the situation before it was too late? Would they have restricted him? Kept him home that night? And what if he hadn’t pointed out the Jepson mine to Cody in the first place?
“Should we ask Gail if she’ll let us use the cabin Saturday night?” he asked.
Baxter hesitated but allowed Noah to return to their former subject without complaint. “You mean the mansion?”
One of their best friends, Gail DeMarco, had married box-office-hit Simon O’Neal, who’d recently had a cabin built back in the hills. It must’ve cost eight million dollars, but that was mere pocket change to them, and the O’Neals often let friends or family use it.
“We could grill steaks, watch a movie, lounge on the deck,” Noah suggested.
“Drink a few bottles of wine?”
“If you want,” he replied, but this suggestion surprised him. From what he could tell, Baxter had quit drinking. At least, he never drank around Noah. He’d started taking life more seriously, had become all about making money, for himself and his clients, and renovating his house. And then there was that scare, when they thought they’d lose Callie, another friend, to liver disease. Baxter had been singularly devoted to her for most of the summer, even after the transplant that saved her life. He’d probably be at her farm this weekend, helping improve the place, if Callie wasn’t on her honeymoon. “But...you don’t drink anymore.”
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