After parking in front, he paused on the sidewalk to study the lines and lure of the old house with its captain’s perch and wide front porch. Too bad he couldn’t convince Summer that she could love Echo Falls again, that living here three years wouldn’t be so bad. What wasn’t to like? Mustang football, Chad’s pumpkin farm, picnics in the park with people you knew, and a police force of which he was a proud member that worked its backside off to keep the area safe for kids and families.
Maybe he could teach her to love sunsets over the reservoir again. Maybe he could teach her to crave Clem’s apple pie. Maybe she could love his family’s Halloween celebration—part harvest celebration, part holiday. Then maybe he’d get the chance to explore this tumbling out of control feeling every time he was around her. He was finding he didn’t really blame her anymore. She’d had her reasons for staying away and he wasn’t going to judge.
Because mixed in with the will stipulations over the house and Summer’s feud with her grandfather were his own deepening feelings.
He wanted a chance with the dark-haired beauty.
££££££
Summer looked up at the sound of an engine. Tom’s black truck pulled into the driveway. Despondent, she couldn’t quite get up the energy to lift herself out of the chair. It was noon and the heat was still climbing. About an hour ago, she’d plunked herself on the porch with a bottle of water after three solid hours of trying to draw something. The inspiration from Mrs. Patch’s house the other night had vanished, evaporated like dew in the hot sun.
Her hair pulled at her head, knotted on the top with a hair band. She resisted the urge to scratch, afraid it would tumble the whole dark mess down the back of her sweaty neck. She disdained the urge to pull her denim shorts down or to rush in to change the ruby tube top to something showing less skin, instead going for a nonchalant “I-don’t-care” pose. The air was hotter than blazes and that was a serious strike against staying in Echo Falls. Not that she was considering it.
Tom stepped from the truck and sucked her into a fantasy world where sex and art mixed. His face had the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow, his black shorts hit just above the knee and forced her to watch his muscled legs eat up the distance to her porch. What she wouldn’t give to jump into his arms and see if those legs would give the promised steadiness.
Then she realized how ridiculous she looked staring at his legs and switched to the gray muscle shirt that left his arms bare, but held the promise of knowing how to hold a woman. If she kept looking and thinking muscles, she was going to hyperventilate. His face didn’t help. His eyes were warm and inviting, his mouth curved in a sort-a- there smile, and really, if the man got any more handsome, all the women between her porch and Main Street would swoon.
“Good afternoon.” He put his foot on the first step.
She glared, struggling to stay silent. But the trying failed. “I hate the heat.”
Tom smirked. “Well, I hear there is an invention called air conditioning.”
Yeah, but her grandmother’s garden was outside. She settled on an insult. “Smart-ass.”
Tom raised a brow at her. “I have a sister and two brothers who torment my existence. You’ll have to do better than that.”
She squinted at him, tempted, but decided not to rise to his bait.
He grinned, knowingly. “Had lunch?”
“No.” She sounded pissy. She was pissy and reveling in it. “Why?”
“Let’s go to Clem’s then. I’ll buy. He’s got a Southwestern Chili Soup on Tuesdays that’ll blow your socks off.” Tom grinned.
She almost said no out of that same sheer pissiness. But Clem’s. Her mouth watered at the thought. She hadn’t been there in years. The groceries she’d bought to expedite eating didn’t have the same appeal. “Clem still have to-die-for chocolate shakes and melt-in-your-mouth apple pie?”
“Yep, except I took you for some sprout-eating California girl.” He obviously thought he was up to the challenge of her mood.
She sniffed, raising her nose in the air. “I don’t do sprouts. A burger and fries sounds good, though.” When she didn’t move, he gave her the look males have been giving females since the days of “we-live-in-cave-and-hunt-with-sticks,” that “let’s go, I’m hungry” look.
She dropped her feet and rose. “Give me a minute to change and I’ll be with you.”
“You look fine,” his mouth said.
His eyes said she looked more than fine. They smoldered as his gaze swept her skin and she could swear she felt the touch, all of which incited her own difficulties with keeping her hot factor under control. She hadn’t had sex in over a year, and right this moment Tom Applegate looked like afternoon’s delight.
When she didn’t move, he had the audacity to grin.
“You changing? Or we going?” He didn’t say where, but his gaze suggested the bedroom. She blushed, barely stifling the need to fan her face. “I’m changing. Wait right here.”
He raised his palms. “No problem.”
The screen door slammed behind her, and she looked back to see Tom testing the paint on the porch post—paint she knew was peeling. Her mood deteriorated from contrariness into something akin to despair.
Subdued, she dressed in khaki shorts and a salmon short sleeve blouse, released her hair and brushed it into a better knot at the top of her head, slipped into her sandals, grabbed her purse, and pushed back through the screen, closing the front door behind her.
“Lock it,” Tom said, his deep voice brushing down nerves that didn’t like the yo-yo effect of depressed, then rolling in lust.
She glared at him, but stopped to check she had her keys and did as he said.
“Occupational hazard,” he explained, shrugging.
“I’ll bet.” She jiggled the knob to be sure and followed him to his truck.
“You working today?”
“Nope, took the day off. Have stuff to do. With you.” Gentleman that he was, he opened the passenger door and stepped aside to let her enter.
She fastened her seatbelt and noticed details. What she gleaned about Tom from his truck came to her as natural as a brush stroke against canvas. Tidy, well-maintained, no empty gum wrappers, no clothes left in the truck, and no drinks. There was only a cord attached from the cigarette lighter for his iPod and a business card for Marla Spooner Realty in one of the cups. The seats were clean, the floor mats vacuumed. In fact, his pickup was cleaner than the last limo she’d ridden in.
Tom got in, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway, then fastened his seatbelt all in one continuous motion. Observations forgotten, she turned her head slightly so he was in her peripheral vision and she could watch him drive. He drove with concentrated, competent movements, a welcome change from Jonathan, who drove too fast, and Fatty Parsons, the Freeman’s limo driver, whose driving skill depended on his mood.
At Clem’s, she and Tom had to wait to be seated, so she took the opportunity to look around. The layout was exactly as she remembered. Walls the color of cream and forest green upholstery in the booths suggested traditional hominess with the same sense of community closeness. Customers chatted with each other and the waitresses. Mouth- watering aromas came from the kitchen. The bulletin board was covered with all the coming events in Echo Falls.
Their hostess came to seat them, and Summer became aware of how many people greeted Tom and the whispers behind their backs as they passed.
They settled into their seats and ordered drinks. Summer snapped open her plastic menu, not wanting to look at Tom to see how he felt about the whispers. After several long minutes, she lowered the menu and peeked at him. He sat with his hands laced in front of him, watching her.
She licked her lips and ran nervous fingers around her face, checking her hair. “What?”
“They’re curious. They don’t mean to be rude.” Tom glanced around and most of the whispers and interested stares stopped. “Well except for Charlotte Drummond. She seems to think she’s better th
an most people in town, so you’re probably a real crimp in her social agenda.”
Summer glanced around, not sure who he was talking about until her eyes connected with a fortyish platinum blonde woman with a diamond the size of an apple on her finger. She’d never seen her before, so Summer shrugged.
“Should I know her?” She hated to ask, but she didn’t remember everybody.
“Nope. She moved here from Odessa after you left. Husband runs the bank and travels for international investing. She comes from money down San Antonio way and has nothing but time on her hands.”
“So why does she care about me?”
“Money. Fame. Beauty. Brains. You got it all. She’s trapped in a little town and has a cheating husband. I’m guessing its jealousy.”
“Some people need to get a life,” Summer muttered under her breath.
Myrna Croft bustled up to their table, slid their drinks in front of them, and pulled out her pad. “What’ll ya have?”
Summer grinned, back to being little and coming in here with her grandparents. Myrna Croft never aged. She had the same wrinkles, the same flashy red lipstick, the same bustling energy. Funny she would remember that. “Hamburger basket with the works, apple pie a la mode.”
Myrna grinned. “Like a woman who can make up her mind. Tom, the usual?”
“Yeah, Myrna. Except skip the loaded baked potato and give me some of Clem’s soup.”
“Gotta keep your girlish figure, I expect.” She flashed him a flirty grin.
Tom gave her one back. “Gotta try anyway. Keeps the girls looking.”
Myrna snorted. “And it’s working, sweetcakes.” She grabbed the menus and rushed off to put in their order.
Tom blushed lightly, seemingly at a loss for words.
Summer watched the by-play and was bowled over by something akin to jealousy. She craved his flirty grin. But whatever for? She was not staying here. It didn’t matter what the will said, she could not stay here, no matter how hot and sexy Tom Applegate was.
Tom’s gaze came back to hers, the flirt gone. Mr. Serious was back. “I expect at some point you and I need to talk about your grandfather.”
Summer ground her teeth, then gave him a false smile. “You know, I’m not in the best of moods, so today probably isn’t a good day for that.”
“As near as I can tell, so far, begging your pardon, but there probably isn’t going to be a good day.”
Summer shrugged and studied the décor again, suddenly realizing two paintings on the wall across the restaurant looked like hers. Shoot. Now she was going to have to get up and go look to make sure they actually were hers. What a pain. Days ago, before Jonathan had sprung the first forgery news on her, she wouldn’t even have considered that.
“Why did you leave? I heard Walter’s version, but I’d like to hear yours.”
Reluctantly, Summer forced her attention back to him. Leave it to a cop to cut right to the heart of the matter. “He wanted me to quit painting.”
Tom frowned, then his face blanked.
She ground her teeth against pissiness. “What? Isn’t that what he told you?”
Her question hung in the air while Myrna delivered their rolls and Tom’s soup.
Tom leaned forward, ignoring his food. “He never said that in so many words. He wanted you to get an education. He was a product of the Depression and wanted you to get a job, something to give you stability, but all you wanted to do was paint.” Tom raised his hands when she opened her mouth to protest that namby pamby version. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
She clamped her mouth closed, determined not to let the anger escape in words she couldn’t take back to a person who had nothing to do with what had happened.
“Maybe we should drop this.”
Tom toyed with his silverware, then took a drink of his sweet tea. “If you want.” The disapproval was there again. That same disapproval she’d felt on the first day she’d met him on the front porch of the house.
“That’s not even close to what happened. I’m sure the years have distorted the final argument we had—but I can’t believe he simplified it to that,” she snapped.
“To be honest, he never really gave me a blow- by-blow. He admitted he said some things he felt were necessary to say and you took off.”
She had to swallow twice before she could answer, striving with all her might to keep her voice down so the people in the adjoining booths weren’t privy to the conversation. “Ileftfor college,” she hissed. “And since I refused to come back, that makes me a bad little girl, and I’m automatically wrong.” She crossed her arms and sat back, shaking with all the pent up rage from that argument years ago.
“I did not say that.”
The precise enunciation of the words poked at her. “You may not have said it, but it sounded like a judgment to me.”
Tom pushed a hand through his short, dark hair making it stand on end. He took a deep breath, so Summer took one too.
His mouth turned up in a small smile at her mimic. “If it sounded that way, I apologize. It wasn’t. He never told me much more about it, and I wanted to know. Pardon me for intruding.”
Their food arrived before she could answer, and he picked up a fork and cut into his catfish before she could be snitty. Long moments passed and then it was too late to set him on his ear. He’d given such a nice apology after all.
They ate in near silence, with an occasional question by Summer concerning community things and people. Tom answered with minimal word use.
After the bill had been paid, Summer managed a walk by her paintings on her way to the bathroom. She heaved a silent sigh of relief when she remembered painting them. She met Tom back by the entrance. He acted the aloof gentleman and it irked her.
“Where to next?” she asked.
He waited until he opened the truck door to answer her. “The nursing home. We need to sort out his room and get that settled.”
Her mood plummeted further, but she couldn’t come up with any good reason to put it off. He lapsed into complete silence during the ride. Summer squirmed in her seat to get settled, uncomfortable from the atmosphere and her pissiness. Wasn’t it time she figured out how to deactivate her hot button?
“I’m sorry. I guess my grandfather’s opinion of what I did is not something we can easily discuss.”
Tom’s fingers were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, and he paid an inordinate amount of attention to the traffic. “I guess not,” he finally answered. “Maybe I’m too close to the situation, but it seems to me neither of you cut the other any slack.”
“No. Slack wasn’t one of his characteristics.”
“People change.”
“You’re saying he did?”
“I’m saying you did. And you’ll never know if he did because you didn’t talk and move on. I’m not the person to discern who was in the right and who was wrong. I just know what he told me. He loved you.”
“He loved me as long as I did what he wanted me to do. When I had a dream and a brain of my own and used them, he didn’t like it.”
Tom shook his head, lapsing into silence again. Clearly, there could be no winner to this conversation, so Summer let it drop. He parked at the nursing home and got out, rounding to her side to open the door. Even considering their conversation, the respect for her needs and comfort gave her pause.
Inside the entry way were four women, all of whom she remembered from the funeral. Sudden reluctance washed over her. Who was she to clean out her grandfather’s things, to greet these friends of his, to talk as if she’d mattered to him? The family tree said granddaughter, but she certainly had quit feeling like family long ago. She’d never been in the nursing home before which suggested all sorts of things about their relationship, none of which she wanted to think about.
“Ladies,” Tom greeted.
The four women tittered like junior high girls getting noticed by their first crush. She could relate. She gave a smile and a slight wave to the four
women and followed Tom. He walked to the far end of the hall where it split in two different directions and stopped in front of the painting on the wall.
“This is the painting Walter donated. He thought it should be out where everyone could enjoy it.”
She stared at the work, tracing ever detail, every shade, searching her memory.
When she didn’t respond, Tom leaned to her and bumped her arm. “I told you he’d donated this. You have a problem with that?”
“Only one,” she answered, her heart sinking to her toes.
“What?” His tone dripped with feigned patience.
She turned away from the painting to face him.
“What problem, Summer?”
She cleared her throat. “It’s not mine.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Tom gaped at her like she’d lost her mind. “I took this painting from Walter’s. It was in the attic. I decided the size was perfect for this wall.”
She leaned into his face. “It’s not mine. Neither were any of the others in the attic.”
“But it looks just like the stuff you do.” His gaze left her face and went back to the painting, uncertainty in his tone.
“Yes, it does. Interesting, huh?”
Summer pulled her bag off her shoulder and rummaged for her cell phone. She flipped it open and speed dialed Jonathan.
When he answered, she gave him the bare facts. “I’ve got another fake.”
“What?” He whispered an expletive. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll call you back.”
“Thanks.” She snapped her phone shut.
“Who was that?”
“My business manager.” She opened her phone again, started the camera and moved back until she could get the entire painting in the photograph. She snapped the picture and texted it to Jonathan.
“Another one?”
Tom leaned a tad closer to her until they were near chest-to-breast and suddenly Summer realized how close she was to him and how much she liked his warmth, that damn sandalwood scent, and his size. He didn’t tower over her, but her shadow would have been protected by his. Everything about these circumstances was wrong, but everything abouthimseemed right.
Echo Falls, Texas Boxed Set Page 48