Redemption Road: Jackson Falls Book 5 (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  “I type and file for you,” she pointed out. “Aside from the ass-grabbing, what’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that you’ll have Ali to do that stuff. What I’m offering you is something a hell of a lot more challenging than the piddly job you’re doing now.”

  “Why me?” she demanded. “Why me, when between the two of you, you have more money than God? Enough to buy a dozen business managers and two dozen accountants?”

  “You’re sitting right here in front of me. Do you see anybody else sitting here? Why would I look elsewhere when this very smart woman, with a background in business and no concrete plans for the rest of her life, is already in my employ?”

  “And conveniently happens to be your sister-in-law. Your offer smacks of nepotism and feels like welfare.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. There’s not a damn thing wrong with nepotism when the person in question is fully qualified for the job and there aren’t any other candidates on the horizon!”

  They glared at each other. The phone rang, and she picked it up. Said sweetly, “Good morning, Two Dreamers Records.”

  “Morning. Jeff Payne from Soul Sounds Electronics. Is Rob around?”

  “He is. One moment, please.”

  She put the call on hold. “It’s for you,” she said. “Some guy named Jeff Payne. I’ll put him through to your office. In the meantime, maybe it’s time you switched over to decaf. I hear it smoothes the rough edges.”

  He picked up his coffee cup and removed himself from her desk. “This conversation,” he said, waving the cup for emphasis, “is not over.” And he stomped down the hallway to his office.

  A moment later, she heard his door slam. Receiver to her ear, she pushed a button. “Mr. Payne?” she said. “I’ll put you through now.” And she shot the call off to Rob’s extension.

  As annoyed as she was, her brother-in-law’s words lingered. He was right, of course. Not about all of it. She had no plans to stay in this miserable town at the end of the earth. But she’d been so busy planning her escape that she hadn’t given any thought to where she would escape to. Certainly not Florida. During the winter months, the climate almost made it worthwhile. Being able to go swimming in February was a treat for a girl who’d spent most of her life on frozen Maine tundra. But Florida held too many memories. Florida meant Irv, and Irv wasn’t coming back. Besides, she wasn’t welcome in Florida anyway. Gold-digger. The word still hurt. Irv’s brats were welcome to the gold. After what they’d done to her, she wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

  There was always Boston. The winters were brutal, but opportunity flowed like warm honey. Trav lived there, which was a mixed blessing. Like her, he’d escaped from all the family drama, so they were simpatico in that sense. But the truth was that he was as much of a stranger as Casey had been when she first got here. And his wife, Leslie, was a real pill, a Chestnut Hill snob she’d spent years wanting to bitch-slap. Boston was a small city, small enough so she wasn’t sure she could successfully avoid her brother’s wife.

  With a sigh, she booted up the newfangled computer Rob had lugged home from New York the last time he’d been there. She was in the middle of trying to teach herself the complicated and uncooperative billing program when the phone rang. Frustrated, she shut down the program and answered the phone.

  “Mrs. Berkowitz?” said a young voice. “It’s Annabel.”

  Her mood took an upward swing. “Oh, hey, Annabel. What’s up?”

  “I was wondering if you’re free tonight.”

  She hated vague questions like this one. If she said yes, she was leaving herself open to any manner of unappealing possibilities that, once she’d admitted to having no plans, she wouldn’t be able to weasel her way out of. If she said no, who knew what she might be missing out on? And then, there was the whole idea of spending more time with Annabel. Leading her on, allowing her to believe they were friends, when the truth was that she’d be gone soon, to wherever she decided to end up, and their friendship would, for all intents and purposes, be over.

  “Mrs. Berkowitz? Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here. Sorry, my mind wandered. Yes. I’m free tonight. Why’d you ask?”

  “I’d like you to come over after work. If you could. It’s not something I can talk about over the phone, but I’d really like you to come. It’s important.”

  Concerned, she said, “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. I just have something I want you to see.”

  A mystery invitation from a twelve-year-old. That was a new one. How bad could it be? Annabel was a delightful kid. There was no doubt that whatever she had planned for show-and-tell, it would be intriguing. Mikey would just have to settle for a late dinner. Or he could fend for himself. He probably wouldn’t be home at dinnertime, anyway. Her son wasn’t spending much time at her apartment. He slept there every night, but during his waking hours, he wasn’t around much. Colleen had no idea where he was going or what he was doing, but as far as she could tell, he didn’t seem to be doing it with Paige. So maybe she’d been wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe she’d misinterpreted Paige’s reaction to Mikey’s name. Maybe there was nothing going on between the two of them.

  “I’d love to come over,” she told Annabel.

  ***

  Darkness fell early at this time of year. When she pulled into the barnyard, the porch light was on. In its glow, Annabel stood waiting. Colleen parked the Vega behind Harley’s pick-up, shut off her lights, her engine, and got out of the car. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.” Annabel clicked on the flashlight she held in her hand and said, “You have to come with me.”

  So the mystery was going to continue for a little longer. Annabel Atkins was something else, an amazing kid, and she realized, for the first time, just how much she was going to miss the kid when she left Jackson Falls. Maybe, somehow, they could continue their friendship. Write letters. Talk on the phone. Share things they couldn’t talk about with anyone else. If she ever had a little girl, she’d want her to be like Annabel. Smart and sassy, independent and fearless.

  A lot like her, now that she thought about it.

  Annabel led her around the barn, crusty snow crunching beneath their boots, the flashlight trained low on the path in front of their feet, its illumination bobbing up and down as she walked. Above them, the sky sparkled with a million stars. Colleen drew clean, bracing air deep into her lungs. She’d forgotten what it felt like to stand beneath the stars and watch her own breath as she exhaled air that was crystal clear, fresh, and smelled of pine.

  Annabel stopped just short of the frog pond where she and Casey used to swim in summer and skate in winter. “Stay right here,” the girl said. “Don’t move.” And she and her flashlight headed in the direction of the barn.

  Without the flashlight, it was as dark as the bottom level of hell out here. She stood in the darkness, listening to the crunch of Annabel’s footsteps. They stopped near the barn, and then, suddenly—

  Lights.

  Music.

  Magic.

  An enchanted fairyland spread out before her. He’d cleared the snow from the pond, had encircled the perimeter with two-by-four posts from which he’d strung strand after strand of Christmas lights. Red, green, blue and white all pooled together in an otherworldly blend of reflections on the smooth surface of the ice. On the far side stood a plywood replica of the Manhattan skyline. She recognized the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, drawn in black marker and painted a soft, crystalline blue. Backlit, with holes poked here and there in the plywood, the windows appeared to be illuminated.

  Violins wept from a boom box set at the edge of the ice, and the incomparable Ray Charles began singing about Georgia. In the midst of all this splendor, dressed completely in black except for the bright red scarf wrapped around his neck, the incomparable Harley Atkins moved restlessly on his ice skates, those blue eyes watching her. Waiting for
a response.

  She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. And Harley said, “It’s not quite Rockefeller Center, but we did what we could.”

  It was a grand romantic gesture, the kind of gesture that, coming from any other man, she would have laughed at. But coming from Harley, it left her breathless. Was it really possible that somewhere there lived a woman, some idiot of a woman, who had actually walked away from this man?

  “You did this,” she said, her voice trembling. “You did this for me.”

  He moved from side to side on his skates as the violins continued to weep. “I did, yes. With a little help from Annabel.”

  “How did—” She stopped, wet her lips. “How did you know?”

  “A little bird told me you used to be quite the skater. Come on, Berkowitz. Put your skates on and get out here.”

  “I don’t have any skates.”

  From behind her, Annabel said, “You do now.” Colleen turned, and when she saw what the girl was holding, not just any pair of skates, but her skates—cleaned up and refurbished, her name still scrawled on them in indelible blue ink—something gave way inside her. Some heretofore frozen part of her, possibly her heart, cracked and thawed, melting like a river at ice-out, a sweeping flood of liquid warmth that flowed from her chest to her belly to her pelvis, then ran like an electrical charge through her extremities.

  “My work here is done,” Annabel said. “I bid you both adieu. Have a lovely evening. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” And she crunched away, her footsteps growing fainter, until Ray’s crooning eventually drowned them out.

  “You used your daughter to lure me here,” she said.

  “Guilty as charged,” he said in that soft Georgia drawl that made her toes curl. “Come on, Berkowitz. I’m getting impatient, all by myself out here. Feelin’ kinda foolish. Don’t make me come get you.”

  She sat on the wooden bench that Mama had always kept in the upstairs hall, pulled off her boots, and laced up the skates. “It’s been forever,” she said. “I’m not sure I even remember how to skate.”

  “Of course you do, darlin’. It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget.”

  When she hit the ice, she was wobbly for a minute. Then it all came back to her, and she flung out her arms, turned her face to the stars, and in perfect sync with the music, she skated in smooth, flowing circles around him, thrilled by the intoxicating sensation of flying. How had she forgotten this feeling? She’d forgotten, as well, the exhilarating swish of blades against ice. Above her head, the lights became a blur of color as she circled and twirled and made figure eights, her delighted laughter spilling out into the night.

  She came to a stop in front of him, so abruptly that her skates threw a fine cloud of ice crystals into the air. He reached out and caught her by both arms to steady her. The violins swelled and throbbed, while Ray sang about roads leading home. “Harley Atkins,” she said.

  Those blue eyes warmed, and his hand slid down her arm to thread fingers through hers. “Colleen Berkowitz,” he said. “Shall we?”

  She nodded, rested her other hand at his waist, and they began moving around the ice, a little awkwardly at first, until they found each other’s rhythm. Then, perfectly in sync with one another, they glided, circling and twirling in a nebulous waltz, caught up in each other and the music and the night.

  Eventually, they broke apart and skated in tandem, Harley following her around the perimeter of the ice as she moved in time to the music. His taste in music was eclectic, from Patsy Cline to Bon Jovi, from Gloria Estefan to the Bay City Rollers. They criss-crossed each other’s path, then came back together and moved in wide loops, side by side, hand in hand. He was good at this, skating with a smooth, flowing style that told her he’d spent many hundreds of hours on skates. Most guys she knew thought ice skating was a girly activity.

  They paused for breath and stood appraising each other, blue eyes gazing into blue eyes. Her chest ached from the exertion. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold. She narrowed her eyes. “You’re very good at this,” she said. “I thought you were from Georgia.”

  He reached up a gloved hand and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Do the words ‘ice rink’ mean anythin’ to you?”

  “I don’t know many guys who skate. My brothers refused to learn. They said it was for girls.”

  He raised a single, dark eyebrow. “Are you questioning my masculinity, Berkowitz?”

  She gave him a mischievous smile, turned, and raced away from him, her laughter floating on the air behind her. He chased her, caught her elbow, and tugged. When she spun around, too quickly, her right foot tangled with his left. They performed an awkward, lurching dance and went down hard, landing in a snarl of arms and legs and skates.

  He unsnarled them and flopped flat on his back on the ice beside her. Breathing hard, he said, “You okay?”

  “I may have broken my ass. You?”

  “That bad knee’ll probably work again. Eventually.”

  They lay side by side, staring contentedly up at the star-splattered sky. “I played hockey,” he said. “My momma was friends with the woman who ran the ice rink in our little town. She let me skate there for free. After Annabel was born, we moved to New York. As soon as she was old enough, I started taking her to Rockefeller Center.”

  “I always wanted to go there.”

  “I know. Casey told me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  She waved an arm. “For all this. For your wonderful homegrown version of Rockefeller Center.” She paused. “For giving all this back to me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  After a few moments of comfortable silence, she said, “You tripped me on purpose.”

  He rolled up on one hip, his knee dangerously close to her thigh. “Now, why on earth would I do that?”

  Those blue eyes, that handsome face, with its full lips and its arched brows, were just inches from hers. Trying to still the sudden hammering of her heart, she said, “I have no idea.”

  His laughter spilled out in a warm gust of breath against her face. He moved closer, cupped her cheek with a gloved hand.

  And he kissed her.

  A thrill shot through her. His skin was cold, but his mouth was warm and soft against hers. Instead of the hard, demanding onslaught she’d expected, his kiss was gentle. Tender. Incredibly exciting in its restraint and its promise. He tasted of things she’d long since stopped believing in. Hope. Belonging. A thousand tomorrows. A rightness she’d never thought she would find. Needing to be closer, she reached out to touch him. But his puffy down parka made it impossible, and she had to settle for clutching quilted polyester.

  He ended the kiss before she was ready. She wanted more, needed more, the same way she needed air and water. Her breath came in tiny, shallow gasps. Somewhere nearby, the cassette tape clicked off and the music stopped. He cleared his throat and said, “Annabel put dinner in the oven just before she left.”

  Wondering how he could jump so effortlessly from kissing to dinner, she searched for her voice, finally found it. “Left?”

  “For the night. It should be just about ready by now.”

  ***

  He’d cleaned the kitchen.

  The last time she’d been here, the place had been drowning in clutter. Tonight, the counters were bare, the table empty except for two place settings and a single fat candle that Annabel had lit before she left. The shoes that were generally in a jumble by the door were lined up neatly along the baseboard. She left her boots in line with his, hung her coat with his on the rack behind the door. It was the oddest thing; there was a strange kind of rightness to being here, with Harley, in the house where she’d grown up. As if she’d come full circle.

  “Most men,” she said, “would ask a woman out on a date, instead of tricking her into it.”

  He opened the oven door, took out a pair of baked potatoes and two roasted chicken breasts that smelled like heaven. “I don
’t deal well with rejection. I didn’t want to chance it.”

  He didn’t look too concerned about being rejected. It was quite possible that he was the most confident man she’d ever met. She tried to feel indignant, but tonight, it was too much effort. Tomorrow was soon enough for indignation to surface. Tonight, for the first time in so long she couldn’t remember when she’d last done it, she would go with the flow.

  “I’m not much of a cook,” he said. “But I’m learning. Gradually. There’s not a lot you can do to screw up chicken breasts and baked potatoes.”

  From her shadowy cave beneath the table, Ginger stretched and yawned. The dog raised her head, wagged her tail, then rested her chin on her forepaws. “I didn’t even notice her under there,” Colleen said. “What’d you do, tranquilize her?”

  “I’ve been working with her.” He carefully placed a chicken breast on a dinner plate. “Sometimes, with a skittish creature that’s been hurt somewhere along the way, you just have to exercise time and patience, and eventually they’ll come around.”

  Not wholly certain he was still talking about the dog, she crossed her arms and said, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  He glanced up and smiled. “Just being here’s enough. I hope you don’t mind canned peas. Annabel always insists that I have to serve a vegetable. If it was up to me, I’d just serve French fries with every meal. That’s my definition of a vegetable. Annabel doesn’t agree. I blame her mother for that.”

  She hid a smile. “Canned peas are fine.” She’d grown up on fresh vegetables from Mama’s garden. But she’d eaten plenty of canned peas during the lean years before she married Irv. “Are you planning on a garden next summer?”

  “Not unless Annabel wants to make it her project. I’m too damn busy to take care of it.”

  Dad had always said the same thing. Mama had been the one who spent hours on her knees in the hot sun, pulling weeds, with her daughters by her side. Colleen had hated every minute of it, but the end result had been worth the backbreaking labor. There was nothing finer than feasting on sweet baby peas right from the pod. Mama used to say it was a miracle that any of them made it to the dinner table when it was Colleen’s turn to shuck them. But she’d said it without any ill will. Mama had been the sweetest, the kindest person she’d ever known. Certainly nothing like Colleen, with her smart mouth and her attitude. No, it was Casey who was most like Mama. Ellen Bradley had been loved by everyone who met her, and Casey possessed that same mysterious quality that drew people to her.