by Becky Flade
Carter led Henley to the booth farthest from the front door. She was pleased to find that in the back corner, parallel to the kitchen but separated by a wall, the noise had diminished to a comforting hum. “If I were an advocate of Ritalin, I’d suggest Tony give it a shot,” she murmured as she slid into the booth. She enjoyed Carter’s laugh as he settled across from her.
“He’s energetic, that’s for damn sure. One of my favorite persons in the Cove. His pizza is as good as any I’ve found on the East Coast. He tried his hand at a cheesesteak after finding out I’m from Philly. It almost destroyed our burgeoning friendship—it was that bad. But he promised to never do it again, and I promised I’d bring him back a real cheesesteak the next time I go for a visit.”
“Have you been back often?”
“Not once. I’m on the phone with my family often enough that I’m not exactly homesick. I haven’t plans to go.”
“Is your relationship with your family strained?”
“Nope.” He thanked the young, bored waitress and engaged in polite conversation while she dressed the table with flatware, menus, bread, a small dish of butter, and a second, deeper dish of infused olive oil. She lit a fat candle and stomped away.
“She forgot the water glasses, but I won’t tell if you don’t,” Carter said.
“I think Tony will notice.”
“Yeah, probably. That’s his daughter, Gemma. She hates working here, but if she wants him to pay the insurance on her car, that’s the deal. It’s good that he’s teaching her a work ethic, and she always has money in her pocket for gas and whatever it is teenage girls spend money on. He’s doing right by the kid, and she’s giving him hell for it. I’ve been in here while the two of them have had a screamer—I’d like to avoid a repeat performance.”
“This is his place?”
“Tony, yeah, he inherited from his father—Mario.”
“Family. Tradition. Expectations. Appears to be a theme in my life right now.”
“That’s a common theme in everyone’s life, Doc. I’m not only Carter McAlister, sheriff of Trappers’ Cove. I’m also a son, a brother, an uncle, a nephew. A friend. These things make up all different pieces of the whole that is me.”
“But those relationships come with strings.”
“Only if you let them. I know it sounds corny, but in my family you do for the people you care about because they’d do the same for you. It doesn’t have to be an obligation.”
Tony chose that moment to interrupt, carrying water glasses, and the men chatted amiably while Henley picked at a slice of bread. She had known as a child that her family was unique. She’d seen a degree of affection among her schoolmates and their siblings, their parents, to which she’d never become accustomed. But she’d seen and heard enough horror stories—parents that treated their children negligently, abuse, violence—to give Henley many reasons to be thankful for her parents’ odd brand of affection. She’d been glad to prove herself worthy of their quiet dignity, their pride, their respect.
After all, those were Bradley and Eliza Elliott’s only expectations.
She had failed them. And they, in turn, had failed her. Carter’s words rang in her ears. Would she ever know unconditional love? The bittersweet, painful memories Jacob always inspired flooded her. It was unfair to her and to his memory to get back on that merry-go-round. She had loved him. Maybe it wouldn’t have lasted a lifetime like she’d thought at the time. But it had been honest, sweet, and true. Until it wasn’t. She pushed the rest away. It still hurt.
When she looked up from the pile of bread crumbs she’d created, Carter was watching her, his expression thoughtful. She hadn’t noticed that Tony had returned to his counter. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not worthy date conversation.”
“You look sad, Doc.” Carter reached out as though to take her hand but changed his mind. He let it fall and rest on the table between them. “Anything I can do?”
She shook her head and reached for a menu, not wanting to make eye contact until she had her emotions under better control. “Tony will be back in a few minutes. We should be ready to order.”
“I know what I want.” The simple phrase sounded loaded. Henley resisted the urge to glance up but suspected if she had she would’ve seen a teasing hint of desire in his blue eyes. “Feel free to check the menu.”
She intended to do that, but when she opened her menu she saw only variations of linguine. She laughed, remembering Carter’s story as she glanced over the choices. She peeked at him over the top of the folder. “But you can’t get linguine over at the diner?”
“Exactly.” Carter smiled. “When Tony’s dad got fed up with trying to find different ways to offer linguine, he expanded to pizza delivery. From what I’ve been told, Ma doesn’t argue the takeout options like fries, pizza, and such, because they don’t offer fast food at the diner. But she told Mario that if he ever started offering anything to his sit-down customers other than linguine, the truce was null and void. As a result, Mario’s is always busy, but you can always get a table.”
“What do you recommend?” She could’ve bit her own tongue. Her cheeks burned. She fixed her sights on her menu. He surely must have been waiting for her to provide an opening for him to inject a sly innuendo. Carter enjoyed deviling her.
“The linguine, of course.” Her chin snapped up. His expression was innocent. “You were expecting me to say something else?”
Henley shook her head.
“Fibber.” He chuckled and brushed his fingertips across her knuckles that gripped the laminated page. “Relax, Henley, I won’t hurt you.”
He had touched her again. He did so frequently, casually. His touch, his emotions, they unsettled her. Like the unexpected kiss he gave me earlier. No one had ever insisted on breaching the boundaries she set between her and the world, until Carter. She wasn’t sure what to do, what to say, how to process the full range of emotions he regularly shared with her. Tony returned and interrupted her scattered thoughts.
“You come from a large family?” she asked when Tony had bustled away to answer the phone, their orders tucked into his apron. She needed the routine of asking questions that she’d developed while she’d been practicing. It afforded her the distance she craved.
“I do.” Carter grabbed a slice of bread, and she watched, fascinated, as he smeared it with the thick, creamy butter before dipping it into the oil. “I have four siblings: two brothers and two sisters. Not counting Maggie, and the whole family counts Maggie.”
“I bet you’re the baby.”
“Nope. Second to last but only by eleven months. My sister Jenna, Maggie’s best friend, and I are considered Irish twins.” He winked. “I wasn’t quite two months old when Mom got pregnant again.”
“And your parents?”
“Still together, in love, and disgustingly hot for one another. My sibs have spouses and kids of their own. And my parents weren’t only children; I’ve got aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins-in-law, and some of them have kids. My grandmother on my dad’s side is still with us, as is my grandfather on my mom’s. The two of them are on a senior citizens couples’ cruise.”
“Together?”
Carter nodded and smiled, dipping more bread. “Yeah, that’s been going on for about three or four years, best we can tell. They went public about a year ago.”
“And your family is okay with it? Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“Nah. They’ve been in each other’s lives for a long time, have all the same family, a lot of friends and interests in common. And no one understands better how much they were loved by their late spouses. I think my dad was freaked out at first—you know, the idea of his father-in-law getting frisky with his mom.” Carter laughed. “Pop asked him if he wanted to take his attitude outside and deal with it like men. Grammom told them to get over themselves. She wasn’t about to let the two of them punch on each other like a couple of fools.”
“She sounds fantastic.”
“It sounds like you love them very much but that you also like and enjoy them. Home is a real place for you, full of family, support, and history; it’s not an address. You’re blessed, and I bet you know that.” She swirled pasta onto her fork. “Why are you so far from home, Carter?”
“That’s not dinner conversation, either.” His expression portrayed the easy demeanor she’d come to associate with Carter as he shoveled food into his mouth, punctuating his statement. But she’d seen the shadow slide over his face. His eyes lost some of their shimmer. She felt the chill coming off him in waves. In a professional setting, she would’ve tabled the topic and come back around to it another way at a different time. But she wasn’t his doctor. And he had pressured her into revelations about herself that she wasn’t comfortable sharing.
“I thought we’d agreed on a quid pro quo exchange. To date, things still feel very one-sided. As in, I’m the only person revealing anything.”
“I told you about my family.” He pointed his fork at her. “And I’m not saying I won’t tell you about it. I’m saying not while we’re eating.” Something or someone over her shoulder caught his attention. Henley chose not to turn around, suspecting it was another method of avoidance on his part, and she didn’t want to have her suspicions confirmed. She bit into another forkful of pasta with more force than she intended. His reluctance annoyed her. This man kept touching her, making her tell him things, turning himself into a trusted confidant. She barely recognized the stirring of arousal he’d ignited, but it was there. It simmered just under the surface of her skin, like a waiting charge, similar to the banked desire she sensed whenever he touched her. But he was still a stranger. She opened her mouth to protest, but he interrupted.
“Do you want to take that to go?” he asked as he waved Tony to the table. “Hey, man, how many does that make in the last ten minutes?”
“Six. And that doesn’t count the people who have called.” Carter swore, and Henley startled. Maybe there was something behind her. She looked over her shoulder as discreetly as she could. Standing at the counter, staring at them, was Mrs. Barnes from the general store, her friend and Maggie’s neighbor, Alice Black, and two other people Henley didn’t know by name but recognized from around town. “You want to-go containers?”
“Please,” Henley pled. Carter reached for her hand, but she pulled back.
“I’m sorry, Doc. I didn’t think we’d generate that much attention eating here. It’s why I didn’t suggest the diner.”
“It’s okay.”
“Clearly it’s not. You detest being on display like this. And the gossip will make it worse. I’m sorry for that, too, because I know that will bother you. But it’s not to be helped in a town this size. And I’m trying very hard not to be pissed off that you pulled away from me.” He tossed money down on the table and stood, intercepting their dinner from Tony. He placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her toward the front door.
“Good evening, ladies.” He nodded to the small group of gawkers on their way out and didn’t stop to chat. Henley couldn’t help her embarrassment, but she kept her head and shoulders proudly upright. She was glad the door closed before the whispering started, and she refused to look back. The only time she’d seen Carter hurry was when there had been an intruder at the cabin. But because of his long legs, his usual lackadaisical pace ate up a ton of real estate, and he arrived at his destinations quicker than most. She wouldn’t consider this current stride a race, but it did feel hurried; she had to struggle to keep pace.
“My place or yours?”
“Excuse me?” She couldn’t keep indignation from tinting her tone, and the words felt frosty to her ears. He chuckled, but she didn’t sense mirth.
“You cut a man, Henley, you do. No worries about my ego with you.” He waved the bag full of Styrofoam containers. “Where do you want to finish eating: your place or mine?”
“Oh. Um, I don’t know.”
“Fine, I’ll choose.” He stopped, and she was surprised to see they were standing beside her car. “Keys?”
“Take your own car. It’ll make life simpler when we’re done eating regardless of where we eat,” she said as she dug her key ring from her bag.
“I’d every intention of doing that. But you’re not hurrying, my dinner is cooling, and the longer we linger, the better the odds one of those busybodies will catch up with us.”
She looked behind her, but Carter had led her into the narrow lot beside the sheriff’s office, and she couldn’t see most of the route they’d taken. “They wouldn’t. Would they?”
“Barnes and Black? Damn right they would.” He threaded his fingers into her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “Relax, they’re not going to lynch you for having dinner with me.”
“Why do you keep touching me?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but she couldn’t take the words back. Even if she’d been able, she still wanted an answer.
“Because I can. Because I want to. And you should know, I’m not touching you nearly as much as I’d like. Can’t stop thinking about it. Does it hurt you still?”
She shook her head.
“Good. It doesn’t hurt me, either.” He tickled the skin of her neck with the pads of his fingers. “Can you feel what touching you, what even thinking about touching you, does for me?”
Instead of answering, she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and couldn’t help a little mewl of longing. The air felt too hot, too thick. His arousal spiraled around her subconscious, feeding her own. She felt his eyes on her as she stared at the thick column of his throat. With gentle fingers on her chin he tipped her head back. Their eyes met, held, and his gaze singed her. She didn’t need any special ability to know what he felt. But she did feel it, and his need mirrored hers.
“Get in the car before I do something stupid.” He stepped back, and Henley launched herself at the car lock. When she was behind chrome and glass, he rapped his knuckles on the glass. “Follow me,” he told her when she cracked the window.
She was afraid to follow him. She was afraid to not. And she was afraid that wherever they were heading, they’d both be burned.
Chapter Ten
“I left Philadelphia because I needed to heal. I chose Trappers’ Cove because Maggie and her family were here, which kept the rest of the family off my back. To a certain degree, anyway.” They had driven to his house, and after letting Dublin out to run, he’d escorted her to the dock at the lake’s edge where they ate in silence. It was his favorite view at his favorite time of day: the sun setting over the lake. The judge had put two big Adirondack chairs out on the dock with a tiny wooden table between them. Carter liked to think of the old man sitting here with a sub and a bottle of suds, not seeing the view around him as he came up with solutions to small-town problems. Certainly the view had helped Carter more than the department-ordered counseling he’d received.
He had thought he’d never get used to silence when he lived in the city, but the countryside wasn’t silent. Once he’d grown accustomed to the quiet, he learned to recognize the sounds of the wilderness. He could hear the bullfrogs and the crickets. A bird, maybe a crane, kicked up a ruckus. If the bird wasn’t careful, Dublin would be on the hunt. Carter tipped back the beer he’d scored from the refrigerator when he’d let out the mutt.
“You hit the nail on the head when you guessed I was the man Dublin saved in that alley.”
“It wasn’t a hard conclusion to draw. He saved you, you saved him. Why else would Dublin’s adoption have made the news?”
“Right. I trimmed off the section of the article that detailed how I got my best friend and partner killed in that alley. In that moment before Dublin arrived
, that moment when I lay in a filthy alley, bleeding, a gun cocked and pointed at my head, I looked into Justin’s empty eyes, and I was okay with some bastard ending me, too.” He drank to clear his throat. “Justin had a family, wife and kids at home. I couldn’t comprehend having to face them. Or my family.
“The dog saved my life, yeah. But it’s thanks to him they caught the shooter. You know the SOB showed up in the emergency room of the same hospital I was in? While I was having his bullet dug out of my thigh, he was downstairs looking to have Dublin’s bites treated.” He choked out an ugly laugh. “When I came up out of the anesthesia my family was there. My captain. My squad. I couldn’t look any of them in the eye. I went from living in the hospital on twenty-four-hour meds to daily physical therapy and mandatory counseling where, between the two, I was given more meds. They had me on painkillers, antidepressants, sleeping pills because I had a hard time sleeping, and valium to combat the night terrors when I did.”
“You became dependent?”
“Yes.” He speculatively checked her. Was it judgment? Or insight? He remembered she said she’d had her own problems after her accident. The warmth and the understanding she radiated helped him relax. She was talking from personal experience, he’d warrant. “Physically, my recovery was better than anticipated. Emotionally, I wasn’t well. The night Justin died wasn’t the only time I’d considered dying.”
“Your family?”
“My family. The almighty McAlisters are a one-for-all, all-for-one family—when one is in need, everyone steps up to the plate. Whether you want them to or not.”
“You didn’t want them to see your pain or what you considered weakness. Do they know you got hooked on the scrips?”
“I told myself they didn’t. But yeah, I think so.”
“How’d you get better?”
“You think I’m better?”
“Yeah, Carter, I think you’re better.”
“Hmmm, we’ll leave that open to debate. Amelia, Justin’s widow, came to see me. I was stoned, and she was angry. By the time she left we were both crying, and all the pills had been flushed down the toilet. I hadn’t been hooked long; I was lucky. It wasn’t challenging to overcome, but I’d lacked the will to do it until Amelia came to see me. I was still angry and depressed but loathed the very idea of medicating. I saw department shrinks, and they reported back to my superiors. That wasn’t appealing. My family suffocated me. I know they cared, but it got to the point where I couldn’t stand to hear their voices anymore. I called Maggie. She said as soon as the physical therapist cleared me I could stay with them as long as I needed.”