by Sarah Remy
“Cool.” Chris snagged the keys. “No worries. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Abby watched from her perch on the boat as Chris raced back along the pier. Everett noted the faint curl of pleasure on her lips, and heard her chuckle as her son slipped on the damp logs and then scrambled to regain his balance.
“Kid seems good,” he offered. The breeze blew chin length silken tendrils around her eyes and ears.
She looked down at him, and some of the pleasure left her mouth. “What are you doing here, Ev? I thought we had an agreement.”
“Agreement?” He drawled the word, and saw her redden in annoyance. “You ran out on me, Abby Ross -”
“So now you know how it feels,” she snapped.
“ - but I don’t remember anything about an agreement.” He continued, unperturbed. “I came for the boy.”
“Chris.”
“Chris,” he agreed. “He’s pale as winter, Abby. Don’t you ever let him out in the sun? The kid looks like he needs fresh air.”
“He spends his life out doors,” Abby retorted. “How did you know we were here?”
“Picked up the phone and asked some questions. Your clerk was very helpful.”
“I told you, he’s my partner, not a clerk.”
“Your partner. That why you have a standing Tuesday night date with the man, Abby?”
“It’s not a date. And it’s none of your business.”
“You’re right,” he allowed. “It’s none of my business.” And maybe he’d have to change that. “Are you coming down?”
She huffed, and then swung herself easily up and over the rail. The logs rocked when she dropped from boat to pier. Everett held out a steadying hand.
She dodged his grasp. “I’m not going to break.”
Everett felt a pang. He forced himself to smile. “And I know it. Here comes lunch.”
They stood side by side as Chris lugged Everett’s cooler from the shore. The breeze off the James tossed Abby’s scent into the air. The hair on his forearms prickled in reaction, and he had to stuff his hands back into his pockets to keep from touching her.
“I think you’ve made his day,” Abby admitted as Chris made a goofy face across the logs. “I don’t think I’ve seen a grin like that since at least July.”
“I’d like to make yours.”
“Stop it.”
“All right.” Because he wanted to kiss her, Everett strode from her side and crossed the slip to help Chris with the cooler. Together they set their burden in a spot of shade at the end of the slip and, under Abby’s direction, began laying out food.
“The sandwiches are huge,” Chris marveled as he passed out napkins.
“There’s a shop in Merchant’s Square,” Everett said, digging a six pack of cola from beneath blue ice. “They specialize in sandwiches. They have a secret house dressing. Might be the best I’ve ever tasted.”
He heard Abby laugh and glanced over his shoulder. She stood on the edge of sunlight and shade, and shook her head.
“Men and their stomaches,” she said as Chris eagerly unwrapped a sandwich.
“Says the woman who can’t resist dessert.” Amused, he rummaged in the cooler and fished out a small cardboard box. “Luckily, the Trellis does desserts to go.”
Her jaw literally dropped. “Not more cake.”
“No. Sour cream fruit tart.” Everett winked at Chris. “Fruit’s healthy, right?”
“Totally.”
“Give me that.” She reached for the container, but Everett shook his head.
“Eat your lunch first, Abby. Don’t want to set a bad example,” he said, dead pan, and Chris whooped with laughter.
She growled, and tried to snatch the cardboard. Everett caught her grasping fingers and squeezed. She froze, but didn’t pull away as he expected.
“Sit,” he ordered. He tugged her down onto the logs at his side. “Try a sandwich, you’ll be glad you did. Cola or lemonade?”
She stared at him as though baffled. When she licked her lips he felt his body tighten, and had to release her hand.
“Lemonade, please,” She said in a small voice, and reached for a sandwich.
They took their time with lunch, lingering in the shade as the afternoon heated up, licking crumbs from fingers and swallowing every sweet drop of soda. Chris ate two of the gigantic sandwiches and helped Abby devour half of the tart, all the while running on about the skiff and how best to get the boat ship shape and sea worthy.
“Does it have a name?” He asked, separating bits of strawberry from crust.
Everett shook his head. “Never christened her. But you’re right, she could probably do with a name. Why don’t you think about and let me know what you come up with?”
Chris licked pastry crumbs from his finger, and stared out over the water, obviously deep in thought. Everett watched the boy with interest. Abby’s son had a liveliness about him, a sharpness of attention, and the dry wit of a young man twice his age.
He wondered how much of that intelligence was innate, and how much came from growing up under Abby’s care.
The breeze shifted, ruffling Everett’s napkin. He pinned the square of paper down. When he glanced back up he caught Abby watching.
She turned away when he met her stare, but not before he saw the faint, puzzled lines across her brow.
The wind lifted again. Everett grabbed for his forgotten napkin. Chris pounced on a fluttering piece of plastic wrap, then yelped as a sudden gust sent an empty paper cup spinning into the water.
“Go after it,” Abby said, smiling.
Chris handed Everett scrunched plastic wrap, and then ran easily along the pier, diving into the river with a boy’s lack of concern.
“What happened to the ‘don’t swim until you’ve digested’ rule?” Everett asked mildly. Out in the water Chris made a dramatic show of capturing the errant cup.
“We never paid any attention to rules, either.”
“No.”
The bridge of her nose had turned pink in the sun. Everett wanted to reach across and soothe the delicate skin.
“You’re burning.”
“I always do,” Abby agreed. She began dumping the remnants of her lunch into the cooler. “Bring your suit?”
“I planned on lunch, not a dip.” He shrugged and let her see his teeth. “But I’m wearing boxers.”
“You’re not going swimming in your underwear in front of my son.”
“It probably counts as male bonding.”
“It’s probably illegal.”
“I remember the two of us swimming in a lot less in this very same river.”
Her mouth twitched. “I’ve got to get back to the boat. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
“You forgotten how to have fun, Abby?”
“Ev.”
But he couldn’t resist. “When’s the last time you dipped your feet in anything deeper than a bath tub?”
“Everett.” He watched temper cloud her eyes, and thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. “Shut up while you’re ahead.”
He arched one brow. “I’m ahead, am I?”
“Lunch was nice,” she admitted gruffly. “Dessert was a low blow. And you get extra credit for making Chris laugh.”
“I try.” He leaned forward, and brushed her sun burnt nose with a gentle thumb. “How about a kiss for gratitude?”
“Everett.” But her eyes were laughing. “How about I say thank you instead?”
“You’re welcome.” He made himself pick up the empty cooler, and climb to his feet. “Tell Chris I’ll pick him up Friday.”
To his immense surprise, her smile blossomed to brilliant and knocked the air from his lungs.
“What?” He asked when he could breathe again.
“Nothing.” But she set her hand over his fingers where they gripped the edge of the cooler. “I’ll walk you up.”
He didn’t argue. He watched her as they crossed the Pier, noting how she split her atte
ntion between the dry land ahead and the splash of Chris in the river.
He knew, all at once, that she was in her element and, despite a mother’s natural tendency to worry over her son, happy. With her life, her family, with her growing business.
And on the tail of that thought came a twinge of guilt. He didn’t want to be the one to dull the sheen of her joy.
She stood silently as he unlocked the Spyder and set the cooler on the floor.
“I’ll swing by Friday evening, then. Soon as my clients are out the door.”
“Come when you like,” he said, succinct, and slid into the front seat.
“Save me a taco,” she said. And waved.
He almost reached out to grab those fingers and pull her close, almost kissed her again and again until the taste of her soothed the tumult in his soul.
Instead, he pulled the car door shut, and jammed the key into the ignition. He gunned the engine, childishly. And then he watched through the rear view mirror as Abby hopped back onto the pier. In another few steps she would be back on the house boat, back at work, back in the world she had made without him.
Happy.
“Hell,” he spat between his teeth.
He set his foot down, hard, on the accelerator. The car bucked and growled, and then raced back over the bumpy road. Everett kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the rear view mirror until the grey glitter of the James disappeared.
His temper only burned hotter when he rounded the corner of the drive to find his front steps occupied. He’d been expecting the visit. Truth was, he’d been considering a little reconnaissance of his own.
And maybe, Everett thought as he parked his car alongside the Chevy hulking in front of his garage, maybe a nice tangle was just what he wanted.
“Afternoon,” the man on his steps offered without rising. “Pretty ride.”
“Does the job.” He wouldn’t admit the Porsche looked a little frivolous next to his visitor’s battered truck.
“Got half the town talking. Rich tourists usually come in on buses.”
“I’m not a tourist.”
“Some might argue.” The man rose, then, and kept unfolding. Everett resisted the urge to crane his neck. He hadn’t remembered the man being quite so tall. Damn if he didn’t top six feet. “Jack Pierce.”
“I know who you are.” Windsor hadn’t been able to dig up much of interest about the itinerant carpenter who’d finally decided to settle in southern Virginia. The man, sadly, seemed squeaky clean. “What do you want?”
“Well, then, I’m supposing you know that, too.”
“You’re blocking my steps.”
The giant shrugged, but didn’t move. “You’re troubling my sleep.”
Everett took a slow breath. “Get off of my porch.”
“Stay away from my family.”
Everett hit him then, a quick jab to the ribs. He figured he was being more than fair, as the bastard’s balls were an easier target. His knuckles crunched nicely against the man’s ribs.
His visitor took a deep breath, sighed it out. “Sure that’s the way you want to handle it?” The fellow managed to look regretful as a puppy.
“Get off my porch.”
“Stay away from my family.”
Everett hit him again. This time he heard the man grunt, which was satisfying. His left hand went numb on impact, which was less so.
Jack Pierce knocked him down. Everett rolled off the walk, and fetched up in the daffodils. Pierce followed him into the flower beds.
“I don’t generally kick a man when he’s eating dirt. But your car just makes me mad. So I’m thinking you should lie there nice and still, and listen.”
Lie still and listen, boy.
Everett saw white and tasted blood. He rolled to his feet and flung himself forward. It wasn’t Abby’s partner he took down. Everett pummeled his past with all of the fierce concentration he’d spent a decade learning in a Seattle gym.
Unfortunately, his past didn’t fight fair.
Pierce rolled, and twisted, and broke something heavy over Everett’s head, and the lights went out.
Chapter Eleven
HE WOKE TO A THROBBING SKULL and blue sky overhead. Groaning, he rolled onto his side in the dirt, and then managed to sit up. A hand to his head came away clean, but he was pretty sure the lump over his ear was already the size of Mount Rainier.
Pierce squatted not three feet away, enjoying what was obviously one of Everett’s own microbrews as he picked shards of terra-cotta from the flower bed.
“Shame about the pot,” he said. “Had a mate who used to do that. Easiest way to end it was knock the sense back into him.”
Everett decided he wasn’t ready to stand.
“Was the war that made him fight berserk.” Pierce watched Everett from under lowered brows. “You do that often?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Just another good reason I don’t want you sniffing around Abby and Christopher. They don’t need a man’s demons derailing the life they’ve made.”
“You’re mistaken.” He wanted to hit the bastard again, but once he made it to his feet the world tilted. He had to gag lunch back to keep from puking on the daffodils.
Silently, Pierce passed over his beer. Everett took a swallow, rinsed, and spat. He set the bottle at his feet.
“You two go way back, and maybe she thinks she still loves you. Could be she just likes the way you play in bed. Either or, she’s back soft on you and I don’t like it.”
“You’re not sleeping with her.” He’d known it, because she would have told him, but now he was sure. Something that had been pulling on his heart eased.
“No.” Pierce laughed. “I’m not her brother, either. But I’ll still warn you off.”
Everett climbed his steps and found the front door cracked open, his keys hanging from the lock.
“Doesn’t matter.” He turned and faced Pierce down. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“We’ll see,” the other man turned on his heel and walked away. “We’ll just see.”
Fall hit all at once with a whoop and a holler. Humid summer breezes turned to driving blusters, snatching leaves from trees, and stripping faded summer blossoms from the wild flowers that grew up along every roadway.
Overnight new colors ripened. The yellows, oranges, and reds of the season tinted myrtle and maple. The air smelled of woodsmoke and spice. In Colonial Williamsburg tourists jammed the roadways, marveling at the seasonal decorations, sampling spiced cider and mulled wines.
Even Jefferson School was done up for the season. Dried corn husks rattled in the wind over the front doors. Bales of hay alternated with pumpkins up and down cracked concrete steps.
Everett, remembering similar decorations from his own school days, knew that the gourds wouldn’t last more than a week. Pumpkin smashing had been a favorite past time, and he supposed it still was.
What kid in his right mind could resist the resounding crump of a detonated gourd?
As he pulled into a turn around outside the school, Everett saw that the profusion of fall decorations wasn’t the only tradition remaining in place.
Students sat in clumps on the concrete steps, divided into groups by boundaries as simple as dress and hairstyle, as complicated as economic class and academic standing. The jocks and cheerleaders ruled the top steps, the band club the bottom, and a handful of tiny synthetic worlds rotated between.
Everett remembered the cliques well. Fifteen years past the trend in dress and hairstyle might have been slightly more conservative, but apparently little else had changed. He had spent his afternoon hours behind the gym with a pack of stolen cigarettes and borrowed comic books. He’d never bothered to find a place on the school’s front steps, but even from a distance he had been aware of the unspoken rules and the inner workings.
Abby’s son, Everett was mildly surprised to see, had a place on the steps closer to the top than the bottom. Not bad for a skinny kid. And the boy�
�s crowd looked wholesome enough. Dockers and jeans and one pair of fatigues, and not a stolen smoke anywhere in evidence.
No girls, either, Everett noticed with amusement. Six gawky boys, too old for the playground, too young yet to bother with the promise of a short skirt or tight sweater.
But not too young to appreciate a flashy car. As one the six boys trooped down the stairs, eddying to avoid huddled classmates, and then log jammed against the Spyder.