by Liz Talley
When Courtney had been in high school, her parents had been shot in a convenience store theft. Neither had died in the actual robbery, but they’d been gravely injured. Courtney’s father died from his wounds the day after the robbery, but her mother had held on for days, undergoing several surgeries before succumbing. Courtney had lived at the hospital, Lucas with her, bringing her food and comforting her as best an eighteen-year-old kid could. The loss had devastated the sunny Courtney, turning her into a shell of what she’d been, maybe even driving the wedge between them that allowed for the betrayal.
Lucas walked to where Michael sat tapping on his phone. “Guess we better start demoing the damaged parts of the greenhouse. I’ll grab Chris. Can you dig the shears out of the bag so we can cut away the torn plastic?”
Michael looked up. “So you’re finally going to make him do something?”
The kid’s tone was feral.
Courtney’s secrecy had created an angry monster of a boy…one Lucas had to deal with. And he tired of dealing. “Why don’t you watch your tone, Michael?”
“Why don’t you leave?”
“I wish I could.” Lucas shoved his curled fist into his front pocket and walked away. Toward the front of the house. Away from Michael. Away from Chris and Charlotte and the dotty old lady trilling encouraging words to the kids. Away from Addy and her prickly demeanor.
He needed air. And space. And peace. And quiet.
And maybe a shot of bourbon.
*
ADDY SET THE ORCHIDS she’d gathered on the newspaper. She wrapped the roots in wet newspaper and tucked them beneath the blooming azalea bushes framing the back stoop. Thankfully, Cal, the guy who made gorgeous pottery along with inexpensive clay pots, had plenty of selection. She liked terra-cotta for the orchids.
For the past few minutes, she’d tried to forget about Lucas and the guilt she felt about being overly defensive. She hadn’t meant to be so forceful, but the fear inside her over the stupid wildflower tucked beneath her windshield wiper had hooked into her gut and seeped into her bones. When fear came knocking, it was hard to not open the door. So she’d lashed out at Lucas, which was ironic considering her first thought at discovering the “gift” was to call Lucas. Something about the man with broad shoulders and a hard jaw struck something within her, something that told her he could help her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Lucas pocketing his phone and approaching Michael who sat sullenly beside the lumber. A few words were exchanged then Lucas walked away, moving to the Finlay house. Toward his truck. Something in the slant of his shoulders had her dumping the orchids and following him.
Surely he wasn’t going to leave?
True, dealing with kids was tough, but he’d made a commitment, right?
He heard the crunching of the gravel beneath her feet as she followed him, but he didn’t slow or turn his head. She nearly breathed a sigh of relief when he passed his truck and hooked around the front of the house. Lucas climbed the porch steps and sank into a rocking chair that needed a new coat of paint.
Hesitating on the steps, she looked at him, not knowing what to say.
Lucas studied the floating clouds beyond her head. “This was a mistake. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m not the right person to take care of these kids.”
Addy started to deliver platitudes but snapped her mouth closed. “Maybe not, but right now you’re all they have.”
“I need clean air and a clear landscape sitting outside my door. I can’t breathe here.”
The longing in his voice touched her. He felt trapped by the world he now occupied. She knew a little about being confined to a smaller world.
A few minutes ticked by as the sounds of the neighborhood waned and an even smaller world was formed on the porch. A line of black ants squiggled across the top step. A spider clung to a web in the camellia bush, and the rocking chair creaked with the slight motion Lucas gave it. Small, closed in. Intimate in a way she hadn’t experienced the other night. Raw emotion pulsed and she knew it was seldom Lucas admitted defeat, admitted any weakness.
He didn’t look at her, at where she stood near the line of overgrown bushes that had needed pruning last fall. Addy knew Lucas was mentally picking up the scattered bits of his emotions and trying to tuck them into an airtight box he kept in his soul.
Like recognized like.
Something inside her stirred, then stilled. Certainty of what she needed to say settled in her gut.
“I’m sorry about the way I acted earlier. Something happened on Wednesday that shook me up, and I allowed a remnant of that emotion to spill over into today.”
He waved away her apology. “No problem. You were right. I don’t have any business prying into your life. We’re not friends, not really anything to each other. You’re a nice person trying to help me. Bottom line.”
The casual dismissal pricked her. She didn’t want to be nothing to him, and that surprised her all over again. “I’d like to think we are friends.”
His gaze swept to hers. “I suppose we are. In a way.”
“Then you should understand something about me. Not even Courtney or any of my other neighbors know this, but somehow, I think you need to know who I am.”
She saw the muscles in his neck move as he swallowed, as his eyes softened. She didn’t understand the need to tell him about Robbie, about the fear that sometimes ate at her. Just knew it would make things better.
“When I was senior in high school, a neighbor, a man I thought I knew, held a knife to my throat and tried to rape me.”
Lucas’s hands tightened on the rocker. “What?”
Acid ate at her stomach and her hands trembled. She tucked them behind her and met Lucas’s gaze. “I was stupid, a good girl, a quintessential overachiever with a pretty face and a bright future, but I had this need inside me, a little part of myself who wanted to rebel. Down the street lived this older guy. He was in his mid-twenties, cute in a boyish way, rode a Harley and sometimes hung out at my dad’s garage. He flirted with me, I flirted back and then one night I snuck out my bedroom window and climbed on his Harley with him.”
Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You seem so levelheaded. I can’t imagine you sneaking out with an older guy.”
“Of course not. I’ve changed. But we all have some wildness inside us. I just chose to be wild with the totally wrong guy.”
Silence sat for a moment.
“Eventually, being a naughty girl got old. I didn’t really like him as much as I liked the feeling of being disobedient, of having some say-so in my own life. Eventually, I stopped opening that window. But Robbie wouldn’t accept I wasn’t into him. I tried to tell him I had prom coming up and college. I told him we had no future together. And it got ugly.”
“What did he do?” His voice was soft as the day, like sunlight falling on the emerging green of spring.
“At first he said ugly things. Then he showed up at my high school and watched me with my friends. He slashed my tires, wrote me violent letters and called my cell phone and hung up several times a day. I didn’t tell my parents because I knew they’d be so disappointed…and that I’d be grounded for life.” She offered him a wry smile.
He didn’t smile back.
“Then one day I came home from cheerleading practice. No one was around, and I didn’t think twice about taking a shower. That’s when he broke in. Luckily my father had left something at the house—a flyer he needed to print for the Rotary Club. Funny how I remember exactly what was on that flyer—seems silly to remember—but I can’t forget anything about that day. The soap I’d used in the shower, the way my uniform lay crumpled on the bathroom floor, the way that blade felt at my throat. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife—I’d seen too many B movies and thought I could protect myself—but Robbie took it from me. The knife cut me here.” She rolled up her right sleeve to reveal the pink line that ran from mid-forearm to her bicep. It had faded, but the memories had not. Then she pulled down th
e collar of her shirt to show him the scar on her shoulder. “And here.”
“Addy.” Lucas leaned forward, hands clasping the broad wood arms of the chair. He looked as if he might get up, as if he needed to do something.
She tugged her sleeve over the reminder of what Guidry had given her—not just the wound, but fear itself. “My dad saved me. Hit Robbie with the baseball bat my brother left in the corner of the kitchen. My mother must have told Mike a million times to put it up. Thank goodness my brother had selective hearing. All this happened long ago, but it changed me. I’m cautious, and I fight being afraid. I go to group therapy and I function quite well, but the fear is always there. It’s part of who I am.”
“Jesus.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
His face softened. “Don’t you?”
“Watching you struggle, feeling trapped and very much, I don’t know, alone? Guess I wanted you to understand why I’m private. Why I’m not a girl who can open herself to just any guy.”
Lucas watched her, his hands still clasping the chair. Strong hands with hair sprinkled on his knuckles, hair that caught the sunlight. Lucas’s reaction was odd, almost as if he took it personally. “I assumed something had happened to you by the wariness you displayed, but not…that.”
She pressed her lips together, embarrassment creeping in. Or maybe not embarrassment so much as vulnerability. She hated feeling an eternal victim.
He ran a hand through his dark hair, making it stick up and softening his normally hard look. “So is this guy in prison?”
She nodded, anxiety once again filling her at the thought of Robbie Guidry and the scare tactics he employed from behind bars. Seemed ironic he could still bait her from that locked cell.
An overwhelming feeling crept over her. She shouldn’t have said anything to Lucas, should have marched her hind end up those stairs, changed into work clothes and rebuilt the stupid greenhouse with him. “Good fences make good neighbors”…even if he wasn’t her true neighbor.
After all, what did she care if he thought her a rude bitch? He might pack up and leave the next day, so why bother giving him a glimpse into her world?
“Good. I hope he rots.”
Addy swallowed the inclination to give him more details. She’d said enough. The less she gave Lucas, the more she held of herself. “So now you know why I get a little rattled when strangers burst into my world. I try not to allow the past to affect me, but I accept sometimes it does.”
He nodded, his gaze dipping. She knew his thoughts. She dressed to fade into the background. Her long black dress wasn’t particularly flattering and the comfy Mary Janes weren’t anything close to sexy. She’d pulled her dark hair into a low ponytail and tasteful silver hoops dangled from her ears. Her only cosmetics consisted of a good moisturizer, under eye concealer and cherry ChapStick. Plain and unassuming. Designed to be overlooked.
So different from that seventeen-year-old girl with her teased hair, red lips and tight clothing. The Chalmette High School Homecoming Queen 1997 had faded into a shadow of her former self.
But Addy embraced that change. She owned her neurosis about standing out, drawing attention to herself. Many would say she limited herself, but she valued her comfort over being some symbol. So she didn’t buy miniskirts, highlight her hair or get tipsy at bars, dancing in killer high heels in front of strangers. Once she’d done so, and she couldn’t make her brain accept that what had happened with the man down the street years ago wouldn’t happen again.
“I’m sorry he hurt you,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, I am, too. But our past doesn’t have to dictate our future. It’s hard to remember that, but sometimes you have to leave the past behind so you can live.”
Lucas held silent, a lone figure once again contemplating the horizon, the puffy clouds of an early-March afternoon. “The past defines us, becomes part of us. We can’t change that.”
“No, we can’t. We have to accept what happened and move on, trying to be the best we can and still be comfortable within our parameters. That’s what I do.”
“Thank you for sharing your past with me.”
“I wanted you to see it wasn’t you. It’s me.”
“That’s a breakup line.”
Addy smiled. “Yeah, but it stands true in this situation and I needed you to know my prickliness is part of my protection.”
“I see that now.”
“Good, so can we move forward with repairing the greenhouse?”
He nodded, but the troubled expression on his face didn’t ease. His escaping to the porch wasn’t only because she’d lashed out at his questions. The kids and the situation he found himself in had pecked at his confidence, had sent him scurrying for space.
Addy propped a Mary Jane on the step and gave him a smile. “Ready to double-team some kids?”
Lucas shook his head. “I’m not cut out for this.”
“Who is? Taking care of kids is like herding cats—you come away with a few scratches and hair on your clothes, but it’s not impossible.”
Lucas walked down the steps and Addy didn’t back away. He wore a blue work shirt that stretched across his broad chest, sleeves rolled up, biceps bulging against the crinkled fabric. One pearl button in the middle of his shirt was chipped and she longed to touch it, if only so she could step closer to him and learn his smell.
She’d never been attracted to someone like Lucas before…someone so raw and masculine, so big and Marlboro Man–like.
Stopping in front of her, he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It was both tender and intimate. She lifted her gaze to his. Those dark eyes were soft and a flicker of hunger ignited within.
“You’re such a rare beauty, Addy Toussant.”
Addy had been called beautiful before, but it had been a very long time. Something warm and liquid swirled within her, twisting together, making her body soften, crave his touch.
“Thank you,” she whispered as his hand lingered at her jaw.
A tug on her skirt jarred her from the wonderfulness of the moment.
A pair of blue-green eyes attached to a child with a hand thrust between her legs and a desperate look on her face blinked at her. “I gotta go tee-tee bad.”
Lucas lifted his chocolate eyes heavenward. “Dear God, grant me the serenity to—”
“Take Charlotte to the bathroom?” Addy finished for him with a laugh. She longed to step back into that sensual moment with Lucas, but was relieved she didn’t have to. Something about the unexplained intensity with him scared her. “I can do it.”
“If you’ll take her inside to the restroom, I’ll round Chris and Michael up.”
“Be consistent with both those boys,” she said, jogging up the steps, tugging Charlotte with her.
“And you know this how?”
“I don’t.”
“Right,” he said, heading toward the rear of the house.
“Hey, Addy. You wike my Uncle Wucas?”
“He’s all right.”
Charlotte twitched the I-gotta-go dance on the end of Addy’s arm like a fish on the end of a line. “He’s scary.”
“No, he’s a man just like your daddy.”
“Michael says he’s a giant like in my book.”
“You don’t believe everything Michael says, do you?” Addy pushed open the door and entered the family room. It was a mess, with socks on the floor, pillows off the couch and the television projecting cartoons into an empty room.
“Him’s the oldest,” Charlotte said with conviction, tugging Addy toward an open door in the hallway. “Michael says he knows why Uncle Wucas hates us…because Mommy was his first.”
Mommy was his first…what?
Addy frowned. Did Courtney and Lucas have a past? That could explain why she’d never seen the man around the Finlay house. Sounded a bit soap-opera-ish but wasn’t reality stranger than fiction?
“Your uncle doesn’t hate you, Charlotte.” Addy helped
the little girl slide down the elastic-waist jeans and sit on the potty. “He just isn’t used to children.”
“Then why did Mommy leave us with him?”
That was a good question…and Addy didn’t have an answer.
Chapter Six
THE SUN FELT HOT on Lucas’s shoulders, making sweat trickle down his back. He shrugged out of the long-sleeved shirt he’d donned that morning and worked in his T-shirt. He’d found a table saw in Ben’s workshop and had created a makeshift station to cut the boards, which he handed to a sullen Michael. Chris and Charlotte helped Addy and Aunt Flora replant the orchids in the new pots. The three-year-old seemed to be wearing more soil than was in the pots and was happy digging around in the yard and checking on her worm farm.
“I think this ought to do it,” Lucas said to Michael, handing off the last board. “I bought some premade shelving we’ll put together after we get these boards in place. The instructions are in the box if you want to get started.”
“I don’t. I need to shower. I’m going over to Jase’s house.” Michael set the board on his shoulder and walked to the greenhouse, setting it carefully against a small Japanese maple.
“Who’s Jase? And how come I don’t know anything about this?”
“He’s a friend and it’s his birthday. Mom should have told you I had this planned.” Michael squared his shoulders, ready to fight Lucas on the point.
“Fine. I’ll drop you off so I can talk to his parents.”
Michael made a face. “Whatever.”
“That’s your favorite word, huh?” Lucas pointed toward the box. “If you’ll open that and lay out the parts according to the directions, I’ll put it together after I get back.”
The boy sighed. “Whatever.”
“What’s the problem, Michael?”
The boy turned, his expression fierce. “What do you think?”
Lucas said nothing for a minute—merely studied the lanky boy with the crappy attitude. “I never sent you twenty bucks in a birthday card?”