When Abbie looked surprised, Ida reached out to tap her chin. “Whisker burn. Makeup doesn’t cover it.”
Abbie felt her cheeks color.
“No reason to be embarrassed,” Ida went on with a grin. “I’m happy for both of you. Jace needs a good woman in his life, so he can have a life.”
Abbie shrugged, pretending his attitude didn’t matter. He’d had two hours to explain his mood, and for two hours, she’d been feeling like a fool. “Sorry to pop your balloon, but I’m temporary.”
“You don’t have to be. You could stay.”
“I don’t think so. We want different things out of life. I care about him, but I’d be crazy to sacrifice my career for something that has no chance of working out.”
The lines on Ida’s face deepened. “Forgive a nosy old lady her opinion, but life isn’t always about careers.”
Abbie silently agreed, but at the moment, her career was a convenient rock to hide behind so she could save face.
The phone rang. Excusing herself, she took the call, listened to some good news, then said goodbye and hung up. In spite of everything, she was happy for Jace. “That was the company’s attorney,” she told Ida. “The Flaggs have dropped their lawsuit.”
“Wonderful!” Ida exclaimed, snatching up the phone and depressing the intercom button. She handed the receiver to Abbie. “Tell him. Tell him right now. Maybe that will lighten his load.”
Maybe it would, Abbie thought when Ida had gone. If nothing else, it would give them the opportunity to talk about a neutral subject—then possibly segue into more important issues. But after paging him several times without success, she went to see Ida. “He’s not answering his cell phone, either,” she said.
Grinning, the older woman rolled her eyes. “I’m not surprised. It’s back there on his desk.” She nodded toward the front door. “Go find him, honey. I’ll take care of the phones for a while.”
A minute later, pulling her coat over her jeans and white sweater, she headed outside where a brilliant sun sparkled off the dusting of snow they’d gotten last night. Squinting, she waited for a flatbed truck to rumble by, then headed for the sawmill. Jace’s black SUV was still parked beside the office, so if he hadn’t heard her page, he had to be in the mill. Soon she was ascending the metal steps and opening the door.
It was cavernous inside, and the banging of logs and screeching of saws reverberated off the walls of the steel building. Everywhere, conveyors and rollers shoved wood through various stages of cutting, and the air was thick with the smell of sawdust.
She looked. Then she spotted him near the re-saw station where a huge band saw was squaring debarked logs.
Like the rest of the employees on the floor—and the man near the instrument panel at the re-saw station—Jace wore ear protection and safety glasses. He was standing on the landing above a short set of steps, and she saw, rather than heard, him lift his voice to be heard over the slamming cacophony.
Quickly closing the distance between them, she took the rough-cut stairs to the landing.
She didn’t know how it happened or who yelled first— Jace or the employee he’d been speaking to. But suddenly, her boot caught on a raised nail head, adrenaline shot through her and she stumbled.
In a blur of movement, Jace grabbed her arm and kept her from falling onto the conveyor.
She’d never seen him look so angry.
Moments later, they were moving at top speed and he was hustling her out of the mill. His face was livid and his eyes sparked with fury.
“What in hell were you trying to do in there? Get yourself killed? Isn’t a California nut job enough excitement for you?”
“I was trying to deliver an important message!” she shouted back. “I paged you, but obviously, you didn’t hear me. I even tried your cell phone but you’d left it on your desk.”
“Nothing is important enough for you to come traipsing through the mill without an escort. Everything under that roof is dangerous, and I’m not just talking about the saws. Good God, all Ty and I need is another lawsuit.”
Picking up curious looks from the men in the yard, Abbie jerked out of his hold and stopped walking, halting his progress, too.
“Here’s your message,” she said. “The Flaggs have dropped their lawsuit. And if you think I’d sue you for something that was my fault, you don’t know me at all.”
“You wouldn’t be suing. My bosom buddy and lifelong friend Morgan Winslow would.” Jace pulled off his safety glasses and lowered his suddenly shaky voice. “You’d be too messed up to do it. Do not go in there again.”
He was angry, but he was angry because he’d been scared for her. She couldn’t continue to be upset about that. “I won’t.”
“Good.” He scanned the white sweater and designer jeans she wore, then frowned at the brand new grease smear on the flap of her coat. “You should get that to the cleaners right away. Hopefully they’ll be able to get the stain out. I’m leaving now to run a few errands. If you want, I can drop it off, then stop at home and get your jacket.”
“Home?” she asked, wondering if the word held any significance for the two of them.
If he understood, he chose to ignore it. “To my house,” he replied. “Isn’t that where your jacket is?”
Abbie glanced away before he could see the quick sheen of tears in her eyes, then headed for the office. Jace followed.
“Thank you, but I won’t need it. I’ll make sure my car’s warm before I leave. Right now, I have to get back inside. Ida’s probably wondering what’s keeping me.”
“Abbie…”
She met his churning gaze, watched the breeze toss his hair and ruffle the shirt tucked into his jeans.
“We’ll talk tonight.”
“About my ruined coat and my trip to the sawmill?”
“No.” He opened the office door, waited for her to step inside, then slipped her coat from her shoulders. “I’ll tell them to put a rush on this,” he said. Then, without another word, he walked to his SUV.
The morning wore on, but answering the phone and drinking coffee wasn’t enough to keep her mind from her screwed-up life. She knew what she wanted. She wanted Jace. She just didn’t see how that could happen. Especially when Ty and Pete returned from a logging site just before noon, and Ty suggested that he and Abbie do lunch.
She nearly said no. Then she saw something serious— or maybe curious—in his blue eyes, and she wondered if she was in for another chewing out after her trip to the mill.
“You spoke to Jace,” she guessed as they drove away from the business. While he wore a denim jacket over his chambray shirt and jeans, she was coatless, and he hadn’t suggested that she put one on.
He grinned. “Spoke? Does yelling count?”
“He yelled at you?”
“He’s yelling at everyone today—then apologizing. I hear you were on the receiving end, too.”
“My fault,” she admitted, fiddling with the flap on her black shoulder bag. “I nearly fell onto some sort of conveyor near the band saw.”
“Well, I can see why that might’ve set him off.” Staring through the windshield, he went on. “He’s been different since you came back. Less wired and gung ho about things.” Grinning again, he glanced over at her. “Of course, he’s also been an emotional wreck. Do you have the key to your dad’s post office box with you?”
“Yes, why?” Since the second card had shown up, she and Jace had been dropping the mail off at her dad’s house. It had become a near tradition.
“Jace asked me to take you to his place for your jacket, then handle your daily mail run. He can’t do it today.”
Can’t? Or won’t? Abbie exhaled softly. Apparently, he was angrier than she’d thought—and not because of her trip to the sawmill. He’d been thinking, she decided, mulling over their relationship, just as she had. Since nothing cataclysmic had happened after they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, she had to believe he’d opened his eyes this morning and decided
that fourteen years of mistrust couldn’t be wiped away in two weeks. Not even after a night of passion.
Suddenly, Abbie felt very alone. “Ty, if it’s okay with you, let’s just pick up the mail and drop it off at Dad’s. I don’t need my jacket, and I’m not really hungry.”
Tiring of his little game of cat and mouse, Danny munched a chocolate bar as he drove along behind the dark gray Silverado truck. Almonds crunched between his molars. He kept a few cars between them in the noon traffic to make sure he wouldn’t be seen, though with his ball cap pulled low, longer black hair and tiny sunglasses, she probably wouldn’t recognize him, anyway. He smiled then, thinking that despite the other guy driving her around today, she liked black hair. And right now, his looked a lot like Rogan’s.
Maybe they’d party a bit before he introduced her to his Louisville Slugger. He’d tried to think of the best place to do it, a public place where people would see and be really upset. Someplace where it would make a big splash. He’d liked the shocked looks on people’s faces when they’d talked about Maryanne. But Abbie’s father was gone, and she’d been away so long, no one in her hometown cared enough about her to be good and horrified.
Except Rogan.
The Silverado pulled into a parking space beside the post office. Biting off another hunk of chocolate and almonds, glad there were cars ahead of him, Danny cruised by slowly. He drank in her long legs in her snug jeans as she left the truck and quickly walked up the steps. Watched her breasts bob under her white sweater. And he felt a familiar itch.
Yeah, maybe they’d party. He’d stroked off the days on the calendar, and let the anticipation build, but it was finally time.
Tomorrow was his birthday.
It was still light when she and Jace left the business and he followed Abbie back home. They hadn’t spoken much as they’d walked to their respective vehicles, but he seemed to have left his tension behind and she was grateful. She was also curious. Immediately after they’d come inside, he said, “Be right back,” and went out again. A minute later he was back and kicking off his boots.
Wrapped in green florist’s paper, there was a bouquet of pink roses, greens and baby’s breath under his arm, and a grocery bag in his hand.
“I found these lying in the driveway, and thought you might want to do something with them.”
“Just lying in the driveway,” Abbie repeated cautiously. “How strange.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ll scare up a vase for them. There should be one or two around here. Betty likes to fill the place with lilacs when her bushes bloom.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“Steaks. Found them next to the roses. Maybe we should have them for dinner.”
Abbie smiled a little. “Maybe we should.” Then, because she wasn’t sure if the flowers were an apology or something more, she murmured her thanks and carried them to the sink. A few moments later, Jace handed her a tall glass vase, and soon the bouquet was in the middle of the kitchen table.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she murmured when he didn’t say anything for a while.
“Yeah, I did. But maybe we should wait until after dinner. Ty said you weren’t interested in having lunch.”
Her cell phone rang.
Frowning, Jace glanced at her purse. “Go ahead,” he said when it continued to ring. “I’d rather we were interrupted now than after we got into it.”
And suddenly Abbie knew one of the words he’d be saying when they got into it was goodbye. Nodding, she retrieved the shoulder bag she’d looped over a maple chair, then took her cell phone from the side flap. The caller ID displayed a familiar number.
“Dad?” she said, wishing the interruption had come from someone—anyone—else.
He shouted over the noisy conversations in the background—loud enough for Jace to hear. “We’re at the airport, Abbie. We decided to come home early. Didn’t you get the message I left for you last night?”
Her mind swam. No, she hadn’t gotten the message. Last night she’d been busy making love to her father’s arch foe, to put it in superhero context—not checking her dad’s answering machine.
“Dad, I don’t understand. When you couldn’t reach me at the house, why didn’t you call my cell phone?”
“I didn’t think it was necessary,” he grumbled. “I imagined that you’d get the message last night when you got in—or at the very least, this morning. I just phoned the house again. Where are you?”
Abbie met Jace’s grim expression and knew he was interested in her answer, too. She would tell her father everything when she saw him, but for now there was no point in getting him all charged up. He was already annoyed because she hadn’t been at the airport with a Welcome Home sign and a running car. “I’m with a friend, Dad. Just sit tight, and I’ll see you in an hour.”
Abbie folded her phone, slipped it back into her shoulder bag and placed her purse on the table. “I have to go,” she said reluctantly. “I have to pick them up.”
“I know.”
“Jace—”
Her jaw sagged when he took his vest from the hook near the door, slipped it on then took his keys from his pocket. He met her gaze, a challenge in his eyes. “Grab your jacket, and let’s go.”
Chapter 14
“Jace, please, not tonight. I have every intention of telling him I’ve been living with you, and I don’t care how he feels about it. Just let me welcome them home first.”
“Don’t worry,” he answered. “I’m not planning to ride with you. I don’t need your father’s company any more than he needs mine.”
And that would never change, Abbie realized.
“I’m just going to follow you to the airport. If there’s snow anywhere in the state, it finds Bradford, and you’re not used to winter driving anymore. Morgan won’t even know I’m around.”
“All right, thank you,” she said. But she knew he wasn’t worried about snow. He was worried that she might pick up some unwelcome company along the way. And for that, she was grateful.
“One more thing. You mentioned having the newlyweds stay somewhere else when they came back. That might not be a bad idea.”
“Miriam’s home hasn’t sold yet,” Abbie called on her way to the closet. “I’ll convince them to stay there.”
“They’ll think that’s strange unless you give them a reason.”
She sent him a weary look as she slipped her jacket on. “Luckily, I have a good one, but they’re not going to hear it tonight. They don’t need to hear grisly news directly on the heels of their honeymoon cruise. Let’s go.”
Fifty minutes later, they were leaving Route 219 and taking the three mile access road to the tiny commuter airport, Jace’s headlights in Abbie’s rearview mirror. The night sky was dark and thick with clouds, hiding most of the stars and the fine crescent moon.
Abbie pulled to the side of the road just short of the terminal, then lowered her window and waved Jace alongside of her. He put his window down.
“I’ll see you later,” she said, wondering if there would ever come a time when her life wasn’t complicated. “After I drop Dad and Miriam off.”
“You’re coming back to my place?”
“Yes.” Her father would hit the roof, but now, more than ever, she and Jace needed to talk. Without intending to, she’d made him the outcast again—and only minutes after he’d brought her flowers. “I’m not sure how soon I can break away, but I’ll be there.” She tried to smile. “I still haven’t eaten, and someone promised me a steak dinner.”
He didn’t smile back. “Okay, then I’ll see you later.” He nodded ahead where lights blazed around the terminal, and cars dotted the two parking lots flanking the small brick building. “I’ll turn around over there and head back.”
“Jace, thank—”
But he’d already raised the window and was heading for the lot beside a mammoth hangar.
“Great,” she breathed, then pushed her foot down on the accelerator.
&nbs
p; The sunburned honeymooners were waiting just inside the lobby’s sliding glass doors when Abbie pulled under the portico, their luggage at their feet. Shutting off the car, she hurried inside to greet them.
They looked tired, but Miriam still smiled and opened her arms to Abbie. Her dad was another story. Though he returned Abbie’s hug and kiss, years of reading his eyes said there was an interrogation in her future.
She didn’t have to wait long for it.
“I’m still surprised that you didn’t get my message,” he said sternly as she helped them load their luggage into the Expedition. “Is there something wrong with the answering machine?”
Abbie met his gaze candidly. “No, it’s probably working fine. I’ve been staying with Jace since you left.”
It took less than an instant for her words to register. If it had been snowing, water would have sizzled on his head. “Abigail, you know how I feel about this.”
“Morgan,” Miriam interjected, touching the sleeve of his dark overcoat. “She’s a grown woman, and she’s entitled to live her own life. Let her do it.”
“It’s okay, Miriam,” Abbie replied, then faced her father. “I had a good reason for moving in with Jace, Dad—and a better reason for staying.”
“No doubt,” he snapped.
Headlights flared, and Jace’s dark SUV pulled out of the parking lot, rolled past them, then picked up speed as he continued on to the access road. Abbie’s throat constricted, watching his taillights disappear. He hadn’t left immediately. He’d waited until she was safely surrounded by people.
She met her father’s angry eyes again. “Ready? We can talk about all of this later.” Much later.
Thankful that Miriam hadn’t begun to move her things to her new home, Abbie followed her still-fuming father through Miriam’s pale blue, cream and lace living room to the thermostat on the wall.
“I looked forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight,” he growled, squinting to see the numbers as he turned up the heat.
Just a Whisper Away Page 19