She was a grown woman now, one who’d been forced to grow up far faster than she should have. Why should she care if she saw Mrs. Ligori, the teacher who had always made thinly veiled comments about apples not falling far from trees? Or Mr. Hansen, the convenience store owner whose truck she had defaced with bright pink paint. They could see her, and all they would find was a woman who had turned from hellion with a lot of baggage into a polished, successful woman.
They could look all they wanted. All traces of that girl were gone. Well, except for one. One that was hidden beneath her clothes, that she ran her fingers over from time to time, just to remember.
Mrs. Ligori. Mr. Hansen. Or, she noted with a sinking heart, Anna Jacek, the counsellor at the high school, the one who Ellie had actually tried reach out to. The one who was sailing her full cart of groceries toward Ellie at a steady, unavoidable pace, a Titanic with hennaed hair to Ellie’s iceberg.
Wincing, Ellie braced herself for the crash.
“Eleanor Kendrick.” Rather that the grating squeal of the waitress in the diner the night before, Anna—Ellie would forever think of her as Ms. Jacek—brought her cart to a halt, then, before she could catch her breath, folded Ellie in a soft, warm hug.
“Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry.” Drawing back, Anna framed Ellie’s face in her hands, sympathy written all over her face. “Losing someone who played a big role in our lives is always hard, isn’t it?”
“I—” And suddenly, there it was, the grief that she hadn’t thought she’d been capable of. This woman—she understood some of what Ellie had experienced growing up. Knew her fears at being abandoned, because of the way her mother had left her with Estelle and never looked back. The way the father she barely remembered, Estelle’s own son, hadn’t wanted her either.
Anna had been privy to some of the constant struggle between the old woman and the wild granddaughter that she’d been saddled with. The way Ellie had chafed, had rebelled to the extreme under Estelle’s unyielding method of parenting.
She wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t cried for ten years. She certainly wouldn’t give in to the emotional impulse now.
“Well, just look at you.” Anna stepped back, looked Ellie over with a warm smile. “You’re as lovely as I always knew you would be.”
The compliment didn’t sit well. “You can’t possibly have seen this under all that hair dye and makeup.” Ellie’s voice was quiet.
To her absolute astonishment, Anna laughed. “Oh, sweetheart. You sure did express yourself in every way that you could. Drove your grandmother batshit crazy.”
Ellie’s felt her mouth fall open. She and Estelle had just barely tolerated one another, yet this woman—this woman who knew those dynamics—made it sound like Ellie had been no more than your average teenager.
“She was proud, you know. That you followed her into the business.” Anna nodded toward the buckets of flowers to emphasize her point. Ellie pursed her lips and shook her head.
“Well. Perhaps that’s how most grandmothers would feel.” She didn’t want to be rude to this woman who once shown her such kindness… even if the years had clearly addled her memory.
Anna cast Ellie a knowing look. “Believe it, sweetie. When she found out that you had gotten your business degree, she held a giant sale to celebrate. An entire week.”
Ellie felt as though she’d been struck dumb. Estelle? The woman who pinched a penny till it bled, made Ellie feel guilty for every cent that it cost to feed and clothe her?
“Well. I’d best let you get on with your day.” Anna gestured to the rest of the store. “I’ve got a few more aisles to hit, myself. But don’t be a stranger. If you need a hot meal any night that you’re in town, you come on over. Hal and I are still in the same house.” And then she was gone, having… not turned Ellie’s world upside down, not quite, but tilting it on its side, for sure.
In a bit of a daze, Ellie finished her shopping, giving in to temptation and adding a large bar of dark chocolate with dried fruit and nuts at the last minute. An emergency bar, she told herself. Calories didn’t count.
She’d just placed that bar on the moving surface of the conveyer belt at the checkout, eyes down again, lest the cashier, who’d been a few years behind Ellie in school, recognize her and have yet more questions. She’d just placed the plastic divider down when a hunk of uncut bacon landed nearly on top of it, followed quickly by a tin of coffee grounds, and a box of doughnuts.
Annoyed, she whipped her head up to—well, maybe not snap at the person for their impatience, not anymore, though she probably couldn’t resist a glare—and when her eyes met those of the man behind her, she stopped cold.
Familiar. A green just like Gabe’s. But far more world weary, the lines showing both his age and the weight of the badge that he’d worn for so many years.
The last time she’d seen Ed Gabriel, his hair had been dark like Gabe’s, with the sparest hints of salt and pepper at the temples. Now it was fully grey, his skin the dark, leathery tan of someone who spent a great deal of time out of doors.
“Mr. Gabriel.” An invisible rod snapped into place in her spine, making her instantly and uncomfortably stiff. This was Gabe’s father… the man who blamed her for corrupting his golden son, who’d made her feel like trash every single time they so much as breathed the same air.
A man who knew her deepest secret.
She refused to feel intimidated. She wasn’t a teenager anymore; he couldn’t do anything.
Couldn’t do anything except make her feel like she was fifteen again, with those intense eyes boring into her own.
“Ellie.” He nodded once, then shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearly as uncomfortable as she, though she knew that cantankerous old man would never admit to it. His face set in inscrutable eyes, he gave her the once over that she was starting to feel almost used to. “You look different.”
Ellie’s temper rose, hot and thick enough to choke her. He means I look different from the trash that he once accused me of being.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing that he’d upset her. So she simply nodded, and let him look.
“Heard from Estelle that you got yourself a good job in some fancy tourist town. Tickled her pink.”
For the second time in ten minutes, Ellie was thrown sideways.
“How on earth did you hear that?” But she knew. Nothing was ever a secret in a small town.
His next words blew her away.
“I take flowers to Mary’s grave, once a week.” He squinted at Ellie. “Estelle’s Blooms is the only florist in town. Not taking this grocery story shit to my wife, am I?”
His dead wife. Estelle had mentioned during once tense phone conversation that Gabe’s mother had died, a car accident, but Ed Gabriel had never struck Ellie as the sentimental type.
There had to be more to it than that. After that final showdown, the screaming exchanged by Ed and Estelle while Ellie cowered in a corner...
There had to be some other reason that Ed frequented that store.
Too bad Ellie just didn’t care.
“Well.” She had no desire to engage in small talk with this man, not even if her curiosity was roused by the very idea of him being a patron of her grandmother’s store. There had to be more to it. The last time she had seen the two of them together, they had been hurling vicious insults, laying blame while Ellie sat in a corner and tried her best not to be violently ill.
Still, with every minute that she spent back here, the more she felt like she’d never left. So she found herself asking how the Sheriff’s office was.
“I retired. Passed on the flag, two years ago come May.” His sudden cagey expression left Ellie with no doubt about who he had passed that flag to.
The car Gabe had driven up in last night had told her that her former lover was a cop, but somehow she’d never imagined him as sheriff. Once, he’d wanted to get out of this town just as badly as she had.
“That’s… great.” If she had
little desire to talk to the man at all, conversation veering into the territory of his son sent alarm bells shrieking in her head. Giving Ed a tight smile, she turned, shoved a wad of folded bills at the cashier, though she hadn’t even heard how much her total was.
But Ed was still watching her. She wondered what he saw—certainly not any hint of the girl he’d so vehemently wanted out of his son’s life.
Maybe he wondered how someone like her had managed to succeed, to drag herself out of the gutter that he’d helped shove her into.
At the bottom of it, she didn’t really care.
Thanking the cashier, Ellie slid her fingers through the handles of the canvas tote that her groceries had been packed in. It was a city habit, carrying a foldable tote in her purse, and she saw Ed snort in its general direction as he requested plastic bags for his groceries.
“Goodbye, Mr. Gabriel.” And she chose her words carefully—no see you later, no have a good day.
She never wanted to see this man, not ever again.
But he just couldn’t—wouldn’t—let her go.
“What are you going to do with Estelle’s shop?” The cashier looked up, eager for gossip, and the woman minding the next till over turned around too, forcing Ellie to stifle a sigh.
“I’m selling it.” She hadn’t entirely made up her mind until that moment, but really, what else was there to do with it? She certainly didn’t want it, not the shop, and not the apartment above it either.
Looked like her next stop would be at the realtor’s, to get an estimate of the property value. Maybe she’d donate the money to one of the prisons. She wouldn’t keep a cent.
Ed narrowed his eyes in contemplation; Ellie felt certain that the entire store was listening.
Well, let them listen. What did she care about these people, anyway? They’d only ever let her down.
“Why are you bothering?” He asked finally, and Ellie pursed her lips at the audacity. “What I remember, you never much bothered with things you didn’t care for. And you two never exchanged a civil word in your lives. Figured you’d just abandon it, let the lawyers figure it out.”
Here, here was the attitude she’d been expecting from her return—someone who still saw her as the gothic princess intent on wreaking havoc under his orderly rein.
She was not that scared little girl anymore. She stared at him in return, stared long and hard until something—guilt?—flashed over his face.
“Once, I was just a child.” The words were bitter; she couldn’t help it. This place brought it out in her. “But I’m all grown up now. And I don’t leave my problems for other people to clean up.”
Slinging her grocery tote off the counter, she stalked toward the exit of the store. If she’d been paranoid about people staring at her when she’d gone into the store, she was all too aware of the audience that she had on the way out.
Well, that was too bad. She had made something of herself in the last ten years, damn it. And she refused to let this town, these people—her ex-boyfriend’s domineering father—take that away from her.
She’d prove them all wrong. She didn’t know why she cared… but she did. She hadn’t thought she’d care… she hadn’t cared, not until she’d arrived.
But she’d show them that she’d grown, despite all of them. And then she’d leave.
And she’d never come back.
Chapter Four
Gabe was having one hell of a time keeping his mind on his work.
Unsettled, he tried to focus on the stack of paper centered on the desk in front of him—parking and speeding violations that he needed to process. It was a job he’d taken on because no one else in the station wanted to do it, and normally he just bulldozed his way through, but today… today his thoughts were haunted by a woman with grey fire in her eyes.
And so he looked up eagerly when he heard the station door swing open. The wooden panel slammed into the plaster wall with enough force to make him wince. It also told him who his visitor was, even before he set eyes on them.
“Son.” Ed Gabriel always made a big, loud entrance into the building where he’d reigned as sheriff for nearly forty years. Gabe thought it was his father’s way of making his mark now that he had no other ties to the station, to the job he’d held for so long.
He stopped in at least once a week, and it had put a definite strain on their relationship. So his relief over a potential distraction tightened with tension as he watched his father make his way through the small waiting room, past Suz, who worked in dispatch, past the door to the back room, where Pete, one of his deputies, was brewing a pot of coffee.
“Dad.” Gabe was puzzled when his father tossed a bakery box full of doughnuts onto his desk. “What’s this?”
“What? I can’t bring my son something to go with his coffee?” Ed scowled, his brows knitting. Chest puffed out with his characteristic swagger, he lowered himself into a chair across the desk from Gabe.
“Well. Thank you.” Gabe didn’t quite know what to say. Ed Gabriel had never made it a secret that, while age had forced him to turn over his job to his son, he still clearly knew better than Gabe ever would, at least when it came to this job. And he’d never pretended that his visits were anything but what they were—a check in, to make sure he approved. After every visit, Gabe was left with shoulders knotted from tension after an hour or more spent defending his decisions, the way he did his job.
Yes, he could tell the older man to lay off. But this was his father, and in his mind, you owed your parents some measure of respect.
His thoughts flashed to Ellie, to Estelle, and bitterness coated his mouth. There were two sides to every story, true enough, but there were exceptions to every truth, as well.
He watched, eyes narrowed, as Ed drummed his fingers on the desk. They might not always get along, but he knew the other man well enough to know that something was stuck in his craw.
Opening the box of doughnuts—at twenty-seven, he was still able to eat pretty much what he liked, though he suspected that would change in a few years—he selected a maple bar, then settled back to wait.
His father wasn’t a man who’d ever been able to keep his thoughts to himself. He’d spit it out sooner or later.
It was sooner. The sweetness of the pasty had just spread over Gabe’s tongue when Ed leaned forward, braced his arms on the desk.
“Saw Ellie at the store.” In the past, she’d been ‘that Kendrick girl’, but after the spectacular mess that was the breakup of Ellie and Gabe, there was no point in playing games, not even for Ed.
Still, it set Gabe on edge. He swallowed, reached for his cold sup of coffee to wash it down. “Well, that’s not a surprise. Always figured she’d be through at some point after Estelle died.”
Ed huffed out a breath. “Said she’s going to sell the shop. The apartment.”
“Hmm.” This wasn’t a surprise either. Estelle and Ellie had been saddled together while Ellie was a child, but Ellie had left the other woman—left him—as soon as she possibly could. “Well, I never figured on her wanting to keep it.”
Sitting back, Ed sat still for a long moment, gazing out the window that showed the street. Gabe continued to work on his doughnut, a show of nonchalance, waiting for whatever it was his dad was after.
“I want you to buy the shop for me.” Ed pinned Gabe with a sudden, ferocious stare. Gabe waited for one beat, two, but no further explanation came.
Blinking once, he placed the last bite of his maple bar on the lid of the box, looking his father over slowly.
“What?” His gut was churning, the pastry suddenly heavy as a rock. “Why on earth would you want to buy Estelle’s?”
“I have my reasons.” He nodded, decisive. “I never asked you for details about you and Ellie. Man’s got a right to keep his own business private.”
“Jesus, Dad.” Of all the things he’d thought his dad might want to talk about today, this hadn’t even crossed his mind. “If you want it, then buy it. What do you need m
e for?”
“She’ll never sell it to me. She’d see it abandoned first.” Ed’s voice was grim. And Gabe was shocked, all the way to his core, that his first instinct was to defend Ellie.
“I can’t do this.” Sitting up straight, Gabe shook his head. “Not a good idea.”
He had honestly thought that Ellie Kendrick and the wild tumult of their relationship was long in his past. And he’d been surprised and not a little angry to discover the intensity of his reaction, just seeing her face framed by a window the night before.
She’d once been a tsunami, a beautiful and awe inspiring force of nature whipping through his life, where every day was the same, packed full of monotonous expectations.
And even though he was fully capable of understanding the difference between the rebellious teen she’d been and the woman she was now, after seeing her he wasn’t as sure as he’d been a day ago that she would ever be fully out of his system.
Buying a piece of property from her… it would throw them together. He wasn’t at all sure that was a good idea, even if some small part of him sat up and paid attention to the notion.
“She won’t sell it to me, either.” He said finally. This was the safest answer. “In case you’ve forgotten, things between us didn’t exactly end well.”
“And that’s why you owe this to me, son.”
Gabe’s mouth fell open a bit when his father planted his palms flat on the desk, and glared at him over the desk.
“I owe it to you?” He couldn’t help but think back to when he and Ellie had been torn apart. He’d been out of his mind, and his father hadn’t had even an ounce of sympathy. “How do you figure?”
Under his own watchful eye, Ed, the man who was intimated by nothing, shifted a bit in his seat, breaking eye contact.
Gabe’s stomach sank. “What did you do?”
Ed blustered a bit, trying to stare down his son. But he’d trained Gabe well, and he held his own until Ed slammed his hands down on the desk, the sound reverberating throughout the small station.
“I did what any responsible parent would do. I saved you from ruining your life on a girl who would never give you anything but trouble.”
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