Not in Her Wildest Dreams

by Dani Collins

  She lifted her chin. “You know why I didn’t tell you?”

  She waited for him to turn and look at her.

  “I knew you wouldn’t help. That’s all you’ve said you wanted to do, ever since we both rolled into town, but I knew you wouldn’t, not with this. Good thing I didn’t expect any better of you, because I’d be sorely disappointed right now.”

  She walked out.

  ~ * ~

  Two hours later, Sterling felt worse than he had when he’d been fighting with Paige. Worse even than when Grady Fogarty had taken a round out of him. The very last thing he wanted to do was drive out to the lake house.

  But here he was with more ibuprofen than alcohol in him, feeling every single bump in the road.

  The rain eased and he turned off the wipers, able to quit worrying if the plastic sheet he’d used to cover his kitchen window would hold since he’d barely got it nailed on before his mother had shown up with her antibiotic ointment, her brown bag meal, and her impossible to refuse request.

  At least this errand took him away from her ‘I told you those Fogartys were no good’ lecture.

  Fogartys. Jesus, he was so mad at Paige. Making him feel like a heel, cooking up re-hiring conspiracies with his father, going to the lawyer. Of course she had consulted one. Of course she had known he would fire Lyle. Of course she had known he wouldn’t help.

  It shouldn’t gnaw at him that she had anticipated his letting her down, that he had lived up to her lowest expectations, but it did.

  He sighed as deeply as his sore ribs would allow, dismayed because he didn’t want to feel like a heel. He wanted to stay mad at her and her idiot brother.

  And that was another thing. Where did Lyle get off acting like he was capable of honesty? Damn it, if he started believing things like Lyle being innocent of sending Grady after him, he’d have to take seriously some of the other stuff Lyle had said. He’d take bamboo up the fingernails before he’d admit he’d ever been lovesick.

  Slowing and tightening his grip on the wheel, he negotiated a pothole full of water. The dip and rock of the Bronco jiggled him enough that he grunted against the pain.

  This was like driving into the pit of hell itself. He knew the road had been allowed to deteriorate to discourage traffic out to the reservoir, but this was ridiculous.

  Finally he broke through the encroaching woods into the clearing.

  He hadn’t been up here since the last time his mother had sent him chasing his father, about eleven years ago, but the one-time logging camp hadn’t changed much. The sixty-year-old two-room box cabins, with their tiny gabled porches, were still in various states of repair. His father’s, white with green trim, had pansies fluttering in a flower box beneath the side window, but the place two doors down had a blue tarp over it, and the one beyond that was weathered and mossy, ready for a match.

  Sterling parked beside his father’s Lincoln and gave himself a moment to gather not just his physical energy, but his mental strength. His father and mother were fighting. This was hardly the first time, but he hated when they put him in the middle of it. It was the main reason he had such an aversion to coming home.

  He especially hated seeing how his mother was capable of hurting his father. She was strong-willed and highly opinionated. He didn’t know why his father took that so deeply to heart. On the other hand, he completely understood why his father took refuge up here. Sometimes couples needed a break, so why did his mother have to act like the world was coming to an end? Why push Sterling to rush up here and persuade his father to come home?

  He might have wormed his way out of this if he didn’t suspect, deep down, that he was the reason his father had come up here to lick his wounds.

  With a heavy sigh, he stepped into the still gusting wind and walked between the cabins to the lakeshore.

  His dad liked to make out like he was a character from A River Runs Through It, floating a fly out to the middle of the water with a deft sway and launch. In reality, he showed all the grace of a spider on amphetamines and had thrown his rod in with the line more often than he liked to admit.

  Sterling waited well back, until he was sure the chance of taking a hook in the face—not for the first time—was minimal before he approached.

  “Hey, Dad. What’s biting?”

  “Nothing. I just like the peace.” His father’s eyes were rimmed in red.

  The nausea Sterling had been fighting settled in. Crying? Shit no. It wasn’t that bad, was it?

  Sterling cleared his throat and concentrated hard on a deadhead poking up from the water at the far side of the lake, wished he was back at the house, killing his knees with tile work, or back in the Carolinas, accepting a contract in freakin’ northern Alaska if that’s all he could get. But no. He’d gone and claimed ownership of his father’s company, wrestled it from the pack leader and everything.

  “It’s quiet this time of year,” Sterling murmured, recalling how it had been when he’d been a kid. He and his friends had torn up the beach with every possible flotation device, every family dog, every stick, ball, or Frisbee they could find. And every one of them had been smeared with the white stink of Noxzema to cool the sunburn.

  His father didn’t say anything.

  “Mom said she wasn’t sure when you were coming back. She’s worried how it will look for the campaign.”

  “She thinks I still have a shot at that? She does have a remarkable view of the way things work.” His father gave his line a slight yank.

  Sterling chewed his inner lip, thinking that sounded like his dad was mad at his mom, not him.

  “But you are going back, right, Dad?”

  No answer.

  “Mom says she doesn’t feel safe in the house alone. She’s threatening to move in with me. I’d appreciate you heading back tonight.” Sterling’s words fell flat. Humor wouldn’t do the job. Not at all.

  His father sniffed and fought the downward pull at the corners of his lips.

  Oh, Christ. Seriously. Don’t.

  He knew things got bad sometimes. When he’d been a kid, he’d thought he’d caught his dad crying in the garage once, but he’d convinced himself he’d misinterpreted something. Now he wondered. Worried.

  It was nearing dark, the wind biting if the fish weren’t, heavy clouds held up by the spiked tops of fir and cedar, soundless but for the rustle of tree boughs.

  Sterling didn’t want to be here. He felt like a bag of shit, wanted nothing more than to be horizontal, watching CNN, nursing a beer and, well, not heartache. No, that’s what his mother did to his father. He was immune to that sort of thing.

  He glanced at his father.

  “Mom wouldn’t tell me why you left. Was it because of our argument?” Maybe it wasn’t too late to take back his insistence on taking over. He’d been flexing angry muscles like a gorilla whacking a branch on the ground. It was posturing, Dad, really.

  “I couldn’t take it back now if I wanted to, son. You’ve made your mother too happy.” He sounded bitter.

  Sterling shifted, uncomfortable because his mother had already been planning to order a cake, talking about the position she’d hold in the community. “I’ll be Dowager Countess of the factory.” Whatever the hell that was.

  “It wasn’t you, son.” His father’s voice was heavy with the weight of the world. “It’s me. I try to make her happy, but it’s never enough.” His father’s chin quivered. “Everyone will know it this time.”

  “What everyone? That’s not true, Dad. You make her happy. She already misses you.”

  “No, she has ideas. I never live up to them.”

  Good thing I didn’t expect any better of you, because I’d be sorely disappointed right now.

  “Mom has high standards, sure, but she picked you, didn’t she?”

  His father’s rod trembled. He began reeling in with sharp jerks on the tip.

  “She sent supper.” Sterling showed him the brown bag. “It’s chicken salad. With mayonnaise, even though y
ou’re not supposed to have it.” Feel the love, Dad.

  Beside him, his father made a pained, tortured noise.

  Sterling stood paralyzed, horrified not just that his father looked about to openly sob, but that any man could be reduced to tears by a woman.

  “What am I going to do, son? I’m a one woman man, always have been.”

  “That’s good, Dad,” he reassured. “She wants you to come home. She loves you, too.”

  “I can’t.” His shoulders began to shake.

  Why don’t you want to get married, Sterling? Don’t you want to be like us?

  “I always thought it was something to be proud of,” his father choked. “Loving only one woman. But it’s hell, son. It’s hell.”

  “I know, Dad,” Sterling murmured, holding the bag a little higher, just wanting his father to take it and stop crying, go home.

  “I suppose you do,” his father said, dropping his rod, and blowing his nose. “Being built the same.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Paige had heard all the town gossip about the terrible waste of money renovating the new police station had been. When she’d gone in there to thank the deputy who’d checked out the house after the break in, she’d thought the naysayers had been wrong. The clean lines of high-security, the fresh earthy beiges and pale yellows, the glimpses of natural light from the narrow row of windows on the slanted ceiling, had all seemed to make the cop-shop a more pleasing atmosphere than it used to be.

  It was all perspective though. When you showed up to bail out a relative early Saturday morning, it felt like the crater of doom.

  The entrance was surprisingly busy. Friday night drunk-tank checkouts, she assumed, passing more than one man wearing badges of dishonor similar to the ones Sterling had been sporting yesterday.

  Don’t think about it.

  She followed a female officer through a rabbit warren of hallways into a centralized area free of natural light. It was crammed with three desks, several filing cabinets, a photocopier, a dusty fax machine, and a tired fichus.

  She stopped beside an alcove where Britta and Cam sat on an ox-blood vinyl-covered bench. Across from them was a counter littered with a spattered coffee maker, a half-full box of sugar cubes, and a pile of cellophane-wrapped cookies.

  Britta’s cheeks were wet with fat tears. Paige felt her knees give way. She sank down beside her.

  Cam jerked to his feet, his one hand held out in protest.

  “When did you call her? She can’t be here,” he said to Britta.

  “I was looking for Lyle. Where is he?” Britta asked Paige.

  “Never came home.” It had been a brutal night, actually. She loathed being alone in that house. Glancing up at Cam, Paige said, “When your best friend phones and says her son is in jail, you come.”

  Cam ran a hand down his face, muttered curses. “The J.O. is going to kill me. A young offender’s identity is supposed to be kept strictly confidential. Strictly.”

  “She’s his aunt!” Britta said.

  “She’s an owner in the company.”

  “What’s a J.O.?” Paige asked. “And what does this have to do with the factory?”

  “Juvenile officer. Ours cracks heads when we get sloppy. She’s really tough. In a good way,” he added with a glance at Britta. He scratched his hair. “Seriously, you have to leave.”

  Paige ignored him and asked Britta, “What happened? Where is he?”

  “Hanging himself with his shoelaces for all I know. They won’t let me see him. Is something missing from the factory? Money or something?”

  “Money, yes, kind of, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Zack.”

  “See?” Britta said to Cam.

  “I can’t do anything, Brit. They’ve called the J.O. When she gets here from Lasser, we’ll straighten it out.”

  “Who arrested him? Who said he stole from the factory?” Paige asked.

  “Zack did.” Britta blew her nose.

  “What?”

  “He turned himself in for stealing.”

  ~ * ~

  The ringing phone woke Sterling. He came up on an elbow and pain crippled him into falling back onto his pillow.

  His first sleep-dulled thought was that it might be Paige. Then he remembered he was mad at her. He waited for the voicemail to take it so he could decide if he wanted to call back.

  It was probably his mother anyway. He wasn’t interested in being berated for failing to coax his father into coming home.

  Listening to the notes of his ringtone echo through the empty bedroom, trying to work up the will to reach for his phone and see who was calling, he noted how truly lousy he felt. Like roadkill. He hadn’t realized how much he’d grown used to waking up to sex-scented sheets and a lazy satisfaction that went bone deep until it was replaced by the ripeness of his hungover body and a sense of losing rudder control when it came to steering his life.

  Ignoring the sick knot in his gut, the pain in every tissue and cell of his body, he rolled to reach his phone and saw it was Patty. He answered.

  “You sound like you’ve been drinking bourbon.”

  “Beer wasn’t doing the job.” He tried to find a position that avoided pressure on his scabbed shoulder.

  “Oh, sugar, what’s happening? Your momma drivin’ you crazy? You’d best get yourself back here. People are calling, you know. Hey, you said you wanted a contract in Washington State? How ‘bout Northern Cal?”

  He closed his eyes, might have groaned a little.

  “What. Did you find something else?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Oh, no. You are not staying longer, Sterling. I told you not to eat the vitamins if your mother gave them to you.”

  He snorted, rubbed his face, wound up nudging a bruise. Damn, that was tender.

  “Dad left Mom. I’m on deck for taking bag lunches to the lake house, delivering get-your-ass-home lectures.”

  “Well, you’ve heard enough of them in your day, I suppose you give a good one. So what does it mean? You’re there for a couple more weeks?”

  The rest of my life. He didn’t say anything as reality struck. What had he been thinking when he had said that?

  “Ster?”

  “Um, I don’t know. It was weird. Dad and I argued and he kind of gave up the reins of the company.” Or I yanked them from his weary hands.

  Sterling found a rough spot on the inside of his lip with his tongue, where a blow from Lyle had cut his skin against his teeth.

  “Don’t you think you’re being snowed there, darlin’? That’s what they always wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “Mom did, yeah.” Had he played into her plan, then? Was he that stupid?

  “Sweetie, I think I’d better come up there and stage an intervention. You’ve told me a thousand times how living at home, running the family business is, like, your biggest Stephen King-sponsored nightmare.”

  “Yeah.” But it wasn’t the reality of running the company that made him squirm. It was the realization he hadn’t made a conscious choice to do it. He’d engaged in a power struggle without thinking through to the consequences. That wasn’t like him at all.

  “Hon, you’re not doing this to make your mother happy, are you?”

  “No.” Was he? “But if I can help them keep their marriage together, well, it’s not a crime to want to keep your father from bogarting the exhaust pipe of the family car, is it?”

  “It’s really that bad?”

  “No, he’s not going to kill himself.” He hoped. “But he’s not happy. Certainly not up to running the company.”

  “So you’re just shouldering the burden while he pulls it together?”

  Sure. He’d go with that.

  “And you’re not actually living with your mom, right?” she asked.

  “No, I’m pretty comfortable in this house.” Despite the fact he’d torn half of it apart. Which was a project he’d had no business starting, now that he came to think of it, since it was a wa
y bigger renovation than he could have reasonably accomplished in the handful of weeks he’d originally given himself. Really, what had he been thinking?

  “She’ll drive you nuts anyway.”

  “Mom? She does no matter where I live.” He scowled at the water stains on the ceiling tiles, not happy with the realization that he had unconsciously moved back here without weighing all the angles.

  “If you stick around too long, she’ll think you’re ready to find a wife and make grandbabies.”

  An electric jolt raised all the hair on his body. Through the fog of his hangover, he went back to what he’d been ignoring since waking, what he’d tried to tranquilize with alcohol since his father had said it yesterday: A one-woman man. Built the same.

  “Oh. My. God,” Patty said into the silence.

  “What? Hey, I’m just thinking about something.”

  “Someone. Tell me she’s tall and blond.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” He threw off the quilt, growing hot yet coated in a clammy sweat.

  “Except that you’re seeing someone.”

  Was. It hurt to breathe as he thought about watching a bottle smash through his kitchen window. Thought about Lyle calling him lovesick, his father accusing him of being built the same. Don’t you want what we have, son? Oh, Christ.

  “Ster? Tell me about her. Does she look like me?”

  “What? No. Why would you say that?” He scrunched his eyes shut, accepting the accompanying pain as justified punishment for letting himself be tricked into revealing there was anyone at all.

  “I mean, is she a short brunette?” Her voice gurgled with excitement.

  “No.” Where was she going with this? “Not short-short. Slightly below average height, I guess. And more like a blond-brunette. Maybe the streaks are store-bought. Probably, since she didn’t have them in high school.”

  “You’ve been carrying a torch since high school?” Her tone hit a note between shocked and gleeful. “Oh, that makes so much sense.”

  “No!” He almost sat up, but an all-over flash of blinding pain pushed him flat onto his back again.

  “You have so! Every woman you’ve ever turned your head for has been a short brunette. That’s how we met.”