Rule Breaker

by Joanne Rock

  Now, with time dwindling before they reached Kalispell, he knew he should talk to April. Glancing over at her across the Land Rover’s wide console, he took in her black pantsuit with tiny gold buttons to the waist. She’d removed her wool coat an hour into the trip, folding and stowing it in the back seat with his. The heated leather seats kept the interior warm despite the frigid temperature outside.

  She tipped up her sunglasses and met his gaze, perching the shades on her head, blond curls spilling over her shoulders.

  “Thank you for making the trip today.” She drew some staticky hair away from her shoulder, a few strands clinging to the window next to her, leaping with a life of their own. “I felt like our evening together took an awkward turn after I kissed you, and I thought maybe you’d back out.”

  In spite of the dark cloud of his thoughts hanging over him, he had to admire her forthrightness. Some women might have danced around a realization like that.

  “It’s not awkward.” He shook his head, regretting that she’d read his mixed feelings even as he appreciated her willingness to confront the topic. “At least, not because of the kiss.”

  His grip tightened on the heated steering wheel; he recognized that she’d given him an opening for that conversation he didn’t want to have.

  “So you admit there was some awkwardness?” She sounded more curious than anything, and for that he was grateful.

  “Only because I realized that I wanted more than just a kiss.” He followed the shore road around a winding turn, slowing for a few deer crossing a quiet stretch.

  Three does stared at the Land Rover before leaping back into the woods on the east side of the highway. April drummed her short fingernails softly on the gray leather console. Once. Twice.

  “I don’t see why that’s a problem.” She shook her head as if his behavior was another complex problem to solve. “If you are worried that I’m going to have any expectations of you after my case closes, Weston, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that.” He pressed the accelerator, frustration with himself firing faster than the engine. This beautiful, intelligent woman seemed to be openly welcoming a no-strings affair, and instead of embracing it like he wanted to, he had to clear the air. Talk about things he’d hoped never to revisit. “But I realized it wasn’t fair to you to move forward with the attraction when I wasn’t completely honest yesterday. I brushed over details of Zach’s story that are important.”

  Tugging the sunglasses off her head, she folded them precisely and set them in a depression in the console, an action that seemed to buy her time before she responded.

  “In my work, I’m frequently faced with puzzles that unravel slowly at first and then—all at once.” She swung her gaze toward him. “So I can’t say I’m surprised to have the story come together in pieces.”

  He ground his teeth together, hating the image of himself as cagey. “The facts weren’t all mine to share. I wanted to touch base with some of the people who might be affected by the outcome of this if the past comes to light.”

  “Fair enough.” She accepted his explanation with a nod while he drove around the bend in a village so small it was just a few buildings nestled in the snow. “What else should I know?”

  He slowed down for an older man bundled in bulky layers crossing the street. The guy clamped his fedora hat to his head with a leather-gloved hand as he battled the gusts coming off the frozen lake.

  Weston knew there was no way around the topic now. He’d have to put his head into the wind as surely as the old guy did and forge his way through.

  “The reason we all agreed with the school’s decision not to share Zach’s death with the press,” he began, coming right to the point. “The reason we didn’t want that kind of spotlight was because we weren’t sure if his cliff dive was truly an accident or if—” Even all these years later, the idea was raw as a fresh wound. “He might have jumped that day—when the water was too high after a storm—because he wanted to end his life.”

  Weston’s blood rushed in his ears, just like the water had when he’d jumped in after Zach to try to save him. For a moment, he couldn’t hear anything but his own breathing. Not a surprise, given that he hadn’t shared the story with anyone since the psychologist the school had demanded he see right after the incident. The therapist hadn’t been able to excise his nightmares, but at least he’d gained some techniques for pulling his thoughts from the dark rat maze of guilt.

  “I’m so sorry, Weston.” April’s gentle words floated through his consciousness before he grew aware of her touch on his shoulder, the gentle squeeze of her fingers. “I can understand how that ambiguity would have complicated the family’s decision to release more information.”

  “Zach had a poor excuse for family,” Weston found himself saying, steering through another winding section of the shore road. “He attended Dowdon on a scholarship because he was bright and talented. His only support system was us—his friends. And we failed him in the end.”

  He picked up speed as they left behind another village, the vehicle easily navigating the fresh snow blowing off the lake, white puffs swirling past like winter tumbleweeds. April’s comforting touch fell away as the vehicle listed to the right on a hard turn.

  “You didn’t fail him.” April’s words were firm. Certain. “You all supported him when he wanted to extend the trip in the first place. You tried to be good friends.”

  Her take on it was flawed because it was based on the barest of details. And yet her perspective was interesting just because it wasn’t weighed down by personal involvement.

  She hadn’t leaped into icy-cold water to find a friend whose body was long gone.

  “We didn’t see it that way.” He’d never shed the guilt that came from his inability to save his friend. “I jumped in after Zach, but I couldn’t find him. I couldn’t stand knowing that I might have saved him if I knew more about rescue. I took classes in CPR. Courses in water rescue and survival. Even after I finished college, I spent more time in training exercises than I did working my father’s ranch.” Much to his family’s frustration.

  “You jumped too?” April asked slowly. “I thought you said the water was too high from a recent storm?”

  The rushing waters had been over two feet deeper than they’d been the day before. Murky with debris and mud from the river floor.

  “Someone had to pull him out.” From the time they were kids, Weston had been the freewheeling daredevil. The prodigal son. The brother who was more expendable. “In our group, I was the risk taker. So when all eyes turned to me, I didn’t think twice.”

  “How terrifying.” April’s voice was a whisper. “I can’t begin to imagine what you went through.” She turned and looked out the window as they passed a sign for Kalispell.

  “The harder part was getting back out of the water.” He’d been numb with cold, his skin shredded with cuts from the branches and rocks swept into the fast current. Still, he wouldn’t have left the water without finding Zach if he hadn’t floated up on a rock ledge where he’d been too exhausted to fight his friends as they dragged him out. “Because that meant admitting my failure. I had to concede our friend was gone forever, and that I’d been a poor choice to save him.”

  * * *

  April heard the pain in his voice.

  She heard it, not because anything gave it away in his tone. Anyone else listening to his account might think him dispassionate. Aloof, even, given how sparing he was with the details. But she recognized the deep ache behind the words because she’d felt it so often herself over the role she’d played in her mother’s decline. How easy it was to pinpoint others’ misplaced guilt, and yet how impossible to admit the very same guilt was unwarranted when it came to yourself.

  “If any of your other friends had gone in the water to look for him, would you have blamed them for returning without Zach?
” she ventured, needing to offer him whatever comfort she could.

  “Of course not.” His answer was immediate. Clear. “And some of them did end up in the water before we had to give up the search, but they climbed down the rocks to enter from water level.”

  While Weston had been swimming all that time on his own. It chilled her to think what that must have been like. The fear for himself as well as his friend.

  Weston downshifted as they reached the outskirts of Kalispell and headed west. When his hand returned to the console between them, April slid her palm over his.

  “It wasn’t their fault they didn’t find him because they were kids. Just like you were,” she offered gently as the vehicle began to ascend higher into the mountains.

  He opened his mouth to argue—or at least, she guessed that’s what he was about to do—so she continued.

  “I only mention it because I’m well versed in how easy it can be to blame yourself for things when you’re smart, competent and used to bending the world to your will. I carry a lot of guilt over my mother’s sickness. And it doesn’t matter how many people—doctors, even—have said it’s not my fault. I know I bear blame.”

  Frowning, he took an icy curve very slowly as the road got rougher.

  “That’s different.” His words were clipped. Abrupt.

  She brushed a last light touch over his hand before easing back.

  “It is, but only because I have the benefit of other people in my hometown knowing the full story, and they weigh in on it. Whereas you haven’t had anyone to tell you it’s misguided of you to heap all that responsibility on yourself.” She glanced over at his clenched jaw, knowing she risked pushing him away by telling him a hard truth, but she felt like he deserved to hear it. “As someone looking at your situation with fresh eyes, I see it so differently than you do. Your friend’s death wasn’t your fault.”

  For a long moment, silence reigned, interrupted only by the hum of the heater and the crackle of ice under the tires.

  When he pulled off the road and onto a private drive where the snow was deeper, she saw a huge log cabin home in the distance.

  His or his aunt’s?

  But she didn’t have time to ask before he put the SUV in Park and turned to face her. Having his full attention was a sudden intimacy she hadn’t been ready for, and his hazel eyes seemed to see inside her.

  “Your mother’s disorder is a mental illness, April.” His tone was kind, even if his words implied their situations weren’t the least bit similar. “How could you think you played a role in that?”

  “Life stress can be a trigger.” She’d caused the stressful situation that started it all. “So what begins as a pattern of comfort—collecting things for enjoyment—spirals into an out-of-control need to acquire.”

  “And you think you caused that life stress?” he asked, his voice a warm baritone. He raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

  “I know I did.” Her voice came out tighter, more clipped than she’d intended. But she didn’t want to share this story.

  “I already bared my soul on this road trip.” His smile was wry but humorless. “Am I going to be the only one?”

  He had a point.

  Gritting her teeth, she tried to frame her words so this would be as brief as possible. Most of all, she didn’t want to sound self-pitying over something that had happened a lifetime ago. “My parents were having problems when I was a teen. My father all but disappeared from our lives, and I resented him for that.”

  Weston stopped her short with a squeeze to the hand. “Of course you did. You deserve to have your dad in your life.”

  “I understand that now. But then? I acted out for attention in a way was both predictable and childish. I scandalized my high school—where Mom worked as a teacher—by getting caught in a compromising position with an older student during an event she was chaperoning.” Putting it that way was a kindness to herself that April didn’t deserve. She’d lured the teen there, knowing full well they’d get caught. She hadn’t been thinking about him and his reputation, only considering her own ends. “I coaxed him into the coat closet at the dance and let things get out of hand. I thought my mom would find us and have a reason to call my dad. It would be a way to bond with him in their worry about me.” She’d been thoughtless. Stupid. “Instead, the principal found us.”

  Her ears burned even though she’d long ago grappled with how she’d embarrassed herself and her family by engaging in behavior that would hurt her mother’s career. She’d gone to family counseling with her mother, and it had helped April tremendously even if it never seemed to work for her mother.

  “That sounds as painful for you as it must have been for her,” Weston pointed out, kindness in his voice. “Besides, the stress of your mom’s situation existed before that.”

  April’s therapist had made a similar observation. Not that it relieved her of the responsibility for her own actions.

  “Yes.” She nodded, willing her embarrassment to subside since she knew Weston wasn’t judging her. “I just made it a hundred times worse by making her work world miserable. My actions robbed my mother of her most reliable support system—her teacher friends and the school community. The gossip was bad enough. The administrative inquiry into my mother’s suitability to chaperone students made her workplace unbearable to the point where she turned in her resignation.”

  Things had fallen apart after that. Completely and utterly. The anxiety had pushed her mother to the breaking point.

  “She made the decision to quit.” Weston threaded his fingers through hers, his palm warming her when she hadn’t realized a chill had taken hold. “So I’ll remind you of what you told me. You were a kid too. It wasn’t all on you.”

  “Intellectually, I know that. But I lo.st a lot of time to negative thoughts over the years, my brain playing the great game of what-if.” She stared down at their locked fingers, a new warmth stealing into her despite the conversation she didn’t want to be having.

  She appreciated the quiet acceptance. The comfort of his presence.

  “I’ve gone a few rounds of that in my day.” His slow nod was full of understanding.

  “Mom could have recovered from a divorce, if that had been all she’d faced. Without a reason to get up for work every day, she turned to home shopping, filling up our house with things that never had a chance of making her happy.” April didn’t want this conversation to turn any darker than it already had. Especially now that it appeared they’d arrived at their destination. “But I’ve made some peace with my guilt—misplaced or not—by taking an active role in helping Mom get better.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with me.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers. “I know it wasn’t easy. Guilt is a relentless beast, and it doesn’t play fair.”

  The pleasure of his mouth against her skin soothed the confusing emotions churning through her, narrowing her focus to that place where they touched. Where his lips lingered.

  Her pulse sped, and she remembered what it had been like to kiss him the night before. That moment when their mouths met had been seared into her brain so vividly she’d relived it over and over in her dreams.

  “I’m very ready to think about other things,” she confessed, her voice breathless enough to betray what he did to her. She swallowed hard and tried to recover her composure for the interview she needed to conduct with Fallon Reed. “Is that your aunt’s house up ahead?”

  They were parked in the snowy driveway, the big log cabin–style home visible through a thin layer of fresh powder on the windshield.

  “No. I thought you might want to drop our things off and stretch your legs before we meet my aunt.” His hazel eyes locked with hers while heat steamed over her skin. “This place belongs to me.”

  Seven

  After the intense conversation on the ride to Kalispell, Weston
had figured it would do them both good to retreat to separate corners for an hour or two before they went to visit his aunt.

  But he hadn’t counted on the sensual turn things would take as they sat in the snow-covered Land Rover, sharing confidences. By the time he unlocked the front door and invited April inside the mountain cabin, the undercurrent of desire between them was palpable.

  “This is beautiful,” she murmured, taking in the rustic details and minimalist furnishings as he led her to the guest suite at the back of the log home. “The views are breathtaking.”

  She paused by a window overlooking the Flathead Valley and Swan mountain range. He set her suitcase inside the guest suite, holding the door for her.

  “You’ve got a good view from your bedroom too.” His gaze scoured the place, making sure his caretaker had readied everything. Fresh towels waited on the en suite bathroom vanity, and there was a vase of yellow tulips on the nightstand. A basket of toiletries and teas was on the wet bar. “You should have everything you need.”

  Tearing her gaze from the mountains, she joined him in the guest suite, setting her handbag on the leather love seat before spinning in a circle to take it all in.

  Weston couldn’t see anything but her, though. Her black pantsuit and boots were sleekly elegant, her blond curls hugging her shoulders as she turned. But he wouldn’t let himself act on attraction yet, even though the need to taste her again was a constant thirst.

  At one point during their drive, she’d suggested she might be open to a no-strings affair, implying that he didn’t need to worry about any expectations from her once she closed her case in Montana. But that had been before he’d shared the full story of his role in Zach’s death. They’d both bared more of themselves than they’d wanted to, and that complicated things. Walking away wouldn’t be easy if their emotions got tangled up in this.