by Jane Graves
Fortunately, he seemed no more inclined to talk about the past than she did, which was fine by her. What had happened between them was over and done with. He could work there, give her the temporary help she needed, and then he’d be gone.
Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? Nothing with Luke had ever been simple. And not only would he be working there, he’d be living there. For a moment she imagined what it was going to be like to come to work every morning and see Luke coming out of his apartment, looking even more tempting than he had all those years ago.
Good Lord. Why the hell had she hired him?
Because his persistence knew no bounds. Because Freddie Jo wanted her to. Because if she didn’t get help soon, she was going to hit the end of her rope. Still, no matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d made a very big mistake.
Luke followed Shannon back up the path toward the office, his knee throbbing. Yeah, he talked a good game, pushing hard for the job he didn’t want but sure as hell needed, but what she didn’t know was just how much it shook him up to see her again. It had been one thing to run into her in Rosie’s. But in that barn…
He remembered one day when he’d first gone to work there that summer eleven years ago. She’d had an Appaloosa gelding cross-tied in the center walkway, cleaning his hooves. When Luke came into the barn, she was bent over with the horse’s hoof between her knees, and he’d gotten the most spectacular view of her ass that any high school boy could possibly have hoped for.
“Getting an eyeful back there, Dawson?” she’d asked him, jabbing at the horse’s hoof with the hoof pick.
“Oh, yeah,” he’d said with his usual cocky tone. “In fact, think I’ll have a seat right here on this bench and watch the show.”
“How about you come over here and do this, and I’ll watch your ass?”
“That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as me watching yours.”
She dropped the horse’s hoof and turned around, her gaze slithering down his body and back up again, lingering in all the appropriate places.
“Maybe for you it wouldn’t be,” she said.
To this day he remembered the shiver of sexual awareness he’d felt as she spoke those words. Other girls had been intimidated by him. In awe of him. Scared of him, even. Not Shannon. She gave as good as she got.
After her remark, she’d pulled a pair of wire cutters from her pocket and tossed them to him. “Now, clip open a couple of bales of hay and let’s get these horses fed.”
That had been Shannon, through and through. If there was a job to do, she did it. She did it fast, she did it well, and she did it on time. As inclined as Luke had been to screw off back then just to be obstinate, hell would freeze over before he let her work harder than he did.
In the beginning, he’d hated her because of everything she had that he didn’t—rich parents, pristine home, good grades, and confidence that oozed from every pore. So for the first several weeks, sarcasm and taunting had been the order of the day. Neither of them yielded an inch of ground to the other, using every encounter as a reason to get under each other’s skin.
Then, slowly, things changed.
They still teased each other, but their sharp-edged talk softened into the kind of banter two friends might toss back and forth. Pretty soon Shannon was looking him right in the eye when she spoke to him, and it wasn’t long before they were searching for any reason they could to stay at the shelter a little longer in the evenings. Sometimes they sat in the grass down by the barn and just talked, and every second that passed seemed singular and special.
For the first time in his life, Luke let his guard down, telling Shannon things he’d never told anyone else. And before long he realized she wasn’t the privileged rich girl he automatically hated. She was a real person who maybe even had a few problems of her own. In a life that had been filled with nothing but pain and heartache, just being able to sit and talk to Shannon was maybe the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Soon Luke could barely put one foot in front of the other because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He wanted her so badly he quivered with the thought of it. But surprisingly, not all of those thoughts were X-rated. When he thought about the reputation he had in high school, it always made him laugh. According to legend, he could have a girl’s bra off in four-point-two seconds, followed by her panties in under ten. And yet every night when he went to sleep, what filled his mind was how Shannon’s skin would feel beneath his palm and the gentle way she would smile at him as if she cared.
He’d been with a lot of girls he’d never thought twice about coming onto, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it with Shannon. A girl like her with a guy like him? In what universe did that happen? Every time he imagined the elation he’d feel if he kissed her, it was canceled out by the pain he’d feel if she rejected him. And it stopped him cold every time.
Then one evening they’d been sitting cross-legged next to each other in the grass after everyone else had gone home, watching the sunset and talking about nothing. Out of nowhere, Shannon reached out and put her hand over his.
Luke literally stopped breathing for several seconds, his head dizzy with disbelief. Then slowly he turned his hand over and grasped hers. Such a small, small thing, but to Luke, at that moment, it felt huge. He began to stroke her hand with his thumb, back and forth, back and forth. It was as if a spell had been cast and they were both afraid of breaking it.
Finally he turned to face her, staring into those beautiful blue eyes. He lifted his free hand, placed it against her cheek, and kissed her. She leaned into him, circling her arms around his neck, and in that moment he was sure the Rapture had happened and he’d gone straight to heaven.
In the days that followed, they exchanged longing glances when other people were around and stole kisses when they weren’t. By silent consent, they kept their relationship a secret. Being secretive was second nature to Luke, so at first he hadn’t thought anything about it. But as time went on, he began to look ahead to the day when the whole world would know Shannon was his.
But that wasn’t how things had turned out. And to this day, in the dark of night, sometimes he felt the pain of it all over again.
No matter what happened between him and Shannon in the coming months, one thing was clear. She was never going to know how much she’d hurt him. That had been the first time—and the last—that he’d let down his guard and allowed a woman to take even the tiniest bit of himself that he didn’t intend to give her, and he’d be damned if he’d ever do it again.
Luke and Shannon went into the office to find Freddie Jo sitting behind her desk, her fingers going wild over her keyboard. She looked like Dolly Parton’s younger cousin—a little less flashy, a little more fleshy, but her mascara-laden eyes were Dolly’s through and through. He’d liked her from the moment he’d met her. She’d clearly been instrumental in Shannon deciding to give him this job, and that only made him like her more.
She stopped short and looked at Luke expectantly. “You’re still here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So…?”
“Put him on the payroll,” Shannon said.
“Well, hot damn!” Freddie Jo said with a big smile. She pointed to the chair beside her desk. “Sit yourself down and we’ll get the paperwork taken care of.”
Shannon went to her desk and retrieved her purse. “Goliath? Come on, baby.”
For the first time, Luke noticed the gigantic dog that had been with Shannon at Rosie’s lying in the corner behind her desk. He rose to follow Shannon, ducking his head like a scared puppy as he took a wide berth around Luke. They left the office, and through the window Luke saw Shannon hop into her truck with the dog beside her and take off toward the highway.
Freddie Jo had Luke fill out the obligatory payroll forms, then rose from her desk to show him the caretaker’s apartment. He followed her into the back hallway off the kitchen, then into a room with a bed, a desk, a small table
and two chairs, along with a microwave, two-burner stove, and refrigerator. He’d never been inside George’s apartment, and it surprised him just how small and plain it was.
“Bathroom’s in there,” Freddie Jo said, pointing to a doorway. “I’d take you in there and show you around, but it’s so small that the two of us shouldn’t be in there together unless you put a ring on my finger.”
Luke glanced down to see she already had one of those. “I’m thinking your husband might have something to say about that.”
“Honey, I could have an affair with the entire Dallas Cowboys defensive line, and until Carl looked in his dresser drawer and saw he was out of clean underwear he wouldn’t even know I was gone.”
She reached into a closet and pulled down linens to make the bed. Luke told her it wasn’t necessary, but she had it finished in no time. After a few hard smacks that passed as fluffing the pillow, she tossed it at the head of the bed.
“There,” she said. “That should do it. Let’s see…got a computer with you? Phone?”
“Phone, yeah.”
“Then let me give you the Wi-Fi password. You’ve got no TV, so at least you’ll have some kind of connection to the outside world.”
She gave him the code in addition to a set of keys for the various buildings on the premises.
“If I’d known you were going to be here,” she said, “I’d have brought a few things for your fridge.”
“That’s okay. I’ll run up the highway to the Pic ’N Go later and grab some stuff to tide me over. I need to get gas, anyway.”
They went back into the kitchen at the same time a teenage girl popped through the back door. She had short, dark hair and wore a T-shirt with the shelter logo. A tattoo of vines swirling around a rose climbed up her thigh.
“I finished up in the cat cottage,” she said. “But they’re already pooping again. It never ends.”
“Luke,” Freddie Jo said, “this is Angela Cordero.”
Angela Cordero? Now Luke officially felt old. She’d been about six years old when he’d lived there before. He remembered her as a skinny kid with dark, straight hair and a bright, sunshiny smile in spite of the fact that she’d been just as motherless as he was. More than once he’d seen her father bring her to Rosie’s, sit her on a stool at the counter, and together they’d have apple pie and milk shakes. Luke had sat in a booth at the back of the restaurant, drinking black coffee and imagining what it must be like to have a father who gave a damn.
“I remember,” he said. “Marc Cordero’s daughter.”
“Luke used to live here,” Freddie Jo said. “I think you might have been in the first grade back when he left. He’s going to be our new caretaker.”
“Great!” Angela said. “We can sure use the help around here.”
“So how are things at the vineyard?” Luke asked.
“About like always. My dad says we’re going to be in a world of hurt if it doesn’t rain soon. But he says that every year. ‘If that mold spreads, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt.’ ‘If that new varietal bombs, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt.’ ‘If that label doesn’t sell, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt.’ I swear I’ve lived in a world of hurt since the day I was born.”
“Angela is off to college next year,” Freddie Jo said.
Angela smiled. “Which means I’ll miss harvest. Darn.”
“Hard work?” Luke asked.
“My dad always says, ‘Everybody pulls their weight at harvest, doubly so if your name is Cordero.’” She rolled her eyes. “I doubt I’ll have a professor half as tough as my own father. I swear it’ll be like a four-year vacation.”
In spite of Angela’s complaints, Luke didn’t hear any animosity in her voice. That was unusual for the average teenager, but he guessed Angela was above average. She reminded him of Shannon at her age, with a lot less intensity and a lot more smiles.
“Gotta go,” Angela said. “Nice to meet you, Luke.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
After she left, Freddie Jo said, “Angela comes in after school and on weekends. She’s the only other paid employee. But we’ll lose her next year when she goes to college. Damned shame. She’s a good kid. We could use three more just like her, if only we had the money in the budget.”
“So the rest are volunteers?” Luke asked.
“Yeah. We have a few on the schedule right now, but they come and go.”
“Are things really that tight around here?”
“Expenses are up, and donations are down.”
“You’d think this town would support the shelter no matter what.”
“It’s not that people don’t want to. But when it’s between that and putting food on the table, you know what comes first. Angela’s doing a good job with our website and Facebook page and donations are coming in, but it could still be better. The festival is coming up, though. During that we can usually count on a bunch of adoptions and some decent donations.”
Luke couldn’t say he was looking forward to that. The festival was just one more place in this town where he’d felt as if he was on the outside looking in.
“Shannon said you had some rules for me,” Luke said.
“Only a few. Do you do drugs?”
“Nope.”
“Smoke?”
“Nope.”
“Entertain women after hours?”
“Okay, you’ve got me there. I just won’t do it here.”
“You catch on fast.” She gave him a grin. “Just so you know, you may have left town, but your reputation is still hanging around.”
“I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.”
“Heard you used to be pretty bad news. Or is that just a dirty rumor?”
“Well, normally I’d say you can’t believe everything you hear, but where I’m concerned, you probably can.”
“So you really were a juvenile delinquent?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Juveniles don’t get much more delinquent than I was.”
“Nice to see you got over that.”
“What makes you think I got over being delinquent?”
A sly smile stole across her lips. “I was talking about the juvenile part.”
Luke liked this woman. Hell, he was inclined to like anyone who didn’t hold his past against him. Of course, she hadn’t lived there when he was a teenager whose goal in life was to disrupt life in Rainbow Valley as often as he could. He didn’t expect to get the same cheerful welcome from the rest of its citizens. To a point, he had to admit that was fair.
To a point.
“One more question,” Luke said.
“Yeah?”
“Tell me about Russell.”
“Russell? You know about him?”
“Not exactly. But evidently Shannon is seeing him tonight.”
“He’s a dentist. Moved here about four months ago. He and Shannon date now and again.”
So Russell was her boyfriend. For some reason, picturing Shannon with another man made a twinge of jealousy slide along his nerves. But in spite of their history, Shannon wasn’t his. She never had been. So why did he feel as if he was losing something valuable even though it wasn’t his to begin with?
“Thanks for the help,” Luke said. “And thanks for talking Shannon into hiring me.”
“Teach the llamas not to spit, and we’re even.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Freddie Jo’s gaze turned serious. “Look, I know you and Shannon have history. Don’t know what it is. Don’t need to know. I’m just glad you’re here because we need the help something awful. Just always remember that even when Shannon’s barking, she’s not going to bite. She needs you too much for that.”
As Freddie Jo walked away, those words bounced around inside Luke’s head. She needs you.
Damn it. Why did she have to say that? She made it sound as if he were some kind of savior. He wasn’t. Not even close. If this place survived, fine. If not, that was fine, too, because he had no ties there at a
ll.
Shannon was paying him to do a job. That was it. He intended to do that job to the best of his ability, but that was where his responsibility began—and ended. He didn’t want to depend on anyone, and he didn’t want anyone depending on him.
Chapter 6
At two minutes till seven, Shannon sat with Russell in his Lexus, which was parked at the curb in front of her parents’ house. He had the visor pulled down and was looking at himself in the mirror. He fluffed his sandy-brown hair with his fingers, then turned his head left and right. What he was checking for, she didn’t know, because nothing about Russell was ever out of place. He was impeccably dressed as always, wearing a sport coat that was probably cashmere and slacks with creases sharp enough to cut steel.
He’d been raised in a wealthy family—his father a heart surgeon and his mother a high-powered real estate agent—so Shannon knew he was comfortable with money. Why he’d chosen to open a dental practice in Rainbow Valley, she still didn’t know. His explanation of I was passing through once, liked it, and stayed, didn’t make sense to her. Small town life didn’t seem quite right for him, and he didn’t appear to be much of an animal lover. So what was left to like?
He flipped the visor back up again and reached into the backseat to grab the bottle of wine he’d brought. “I hope this pairs well with what your mother is cooking.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“This is the first time I’ve been to your parents’ house. I want to make a good impression.”
He took a deep, calming breath, as if there was actually something to worry about. The moment Shannon told her mother she was dating the new dentist in town, she’d been beside herself with delight.
“You don’t have to be uptight about this,” Shannon said. “It’s just dinner.”
“Dinner with your mother. Don’t take this wrong, Shannon. But she’s a little…discerning.”
“Don’t you mean ‘demanding’?” And demoralizing. And depressing. And—