Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  He should totally have gone for it.

  His Friday night hadn’t started out all that exciting, but it had ended with a lot more promise. He’d driven Mac and her friends Crystal and Alexandra to their first JV volleyball game, then had sat in the bleachers and yelled every time Mac had scored. Five kills, which was pretty damn good. She was small, but she was quick and aggressive and fearless, and she had the same kind of hand-eye coordination Jim did himself. The kind that made you good at sports, and a good shot, too.

  The girls had lost, but Mac had fought hard to the end, and Jim had clapped and whistled and thought, Look at that, babe. Your girl’s a fighter. Just like you.

  It was moments like that, oddly enough, when he missed Maya most. The good times, the sweet times, because she wasn’t there to share them.

  Which could explain why he’d been extra susceptible after he’d taken the girls out for pizza and then over to Crystal’s house for their sleepover. And why he’d stayed for that beer when Crystal’s mom, Danielle, had offered it. Although that was probably giving himself too much credit. More like pure, hundred-proof, haven’t-had-it-in-way-too-long horndog.

  Danielle Delgado, new in town. Even her name was sexy. She’d been working it a little tonight, too. Blonde hair loose and tousled, falling over one eye. Sitting in a kitchen chair with one foot tucked under her, wearing a tiny white T-shirt and satin pants that looked like pj bottoms and clung to her curves, tied with a bow in front and hanging low on her belly, so that when she stretched her arms overhead, she’d showed an inch of taut brown stomach and a very nice flash of oval belly button, complete with a winking silver stud.

  They’d talked, and he’d looked, and finally, she’d put a light hand on his forearm and said, “It must get lonesome over there with just Mac to keep you company. I know I feel that way, and I’ve got two kids. But it’s not the same thing, is it?”

  Jim had looked down at his beer bottle and peeled the corner of the label back. “Sure isn’t.”

  “More than two years, I heard.” Her hand was still on his arm. Now, her fingers moved, tracing the line of muscle, and damn, but that felt good. “I was sorry to hear about your wife.”

  “Thanks.” It never got that much easier to hear.

  “It’s a long time to be alone,” she said, peering at him from under her lashes.

  “It is. But I’m not really looking for a relationship right now.” Best to be up front. He might be feeling a little desperate, but he wasn’t a total asshole.

  “I get that.” She hadn’t moved her hand. “Marriage sounded real good once. Not anymore. Live and learn. I don’t need anyone telling me what to do. I sure could use the company sometimes, though. A good-looking, decent guy, one who knows how to treat a woman right? Yeah.” She sighed, let go of him, and pushed her curtain of hair back with one hand. “That’d be real nice. I’m pretty sure the girls are asleep. Maybe I’ll just go double-check that, huh?”

  It was one of those times when you froze, because your body and your mind were telling you two exactly opposite things. His body said, Hell, yeah, baby. Let’s go. And his mind went, With the girls right here?

  He’d ended up taking a final swallow of his beer, standing up, and saying, “Yeah. You’re right. It’s late. I’d better take off.” When he totally should have said, “You know what? I’ll take a rain check on that. How about tomorrow night? My babysitter. My . . . treat.” And given her a good hard look of his own, and a good hard kiss at the door, too. Down payment.

  But he hadn’t said that, or done it, either. Which was why he was in the shower alone. And horny as hell.

  None of which had anything to do with Hallie Cavanaugh.

  NEWS OF THE DAY

  “You going to tell me why we’re here?” Jim asked his mother again on Saturday morning as he held open the front door of the converted frame house on Pine Street that housed his sister’s law offices. Cole trailed behind with Anthea, the cool air welcoming them.

  Vicki Lawson’s tension was evident even under her carefully applied makeup. “I already did. To hear about Henry Cavanaugh’s will. That’s all I know.”

  Jim’s mother was a little heavier at fifty-one than she had been when Jim had been growing up, but that hadn’t stopped her from attracting the usual second look from a passing man when she’d climbed down from Jim’s rig onto the sidewalk. She’d never tried to hide her generous figure or blonde hair—in fact, she still wore it in waves past her shoulders, defying anyone to call her trashy. She’d never acted ashamed of herself despite her children’s absolutely fatherless status, her patched-together network of jobs, or their lack of funds.

  “A hard-working woman deserves respect,” she’d always told her kids, “and it doesn’t matter one bit what that work is.” Waitress, cleaner, cashier, bartender—Vicki had done it all at one time or another. Once Anthea’s kids had been born, the jobs had been reduced to child care and some bartending. Less bartending in the past three years, once Jim had brought his little family home and added Mac and Maya to the caretaking list. And then just Mac.

  Jim knew without discussing it that his twin felt the same way he did. Nobody would love their kids as much as their grandmother did, or take better care of them. They’d both had to pay somebody anyway, and they’d rather pay their mom, take some of the burden off her in a way she’d accept. But he worried about what would happen once Deirdre and Ty got a little older and didn’t need the care. Mac was just about grown out of it already.

  But now . . . Henry Cavanaugh had left something to Vicki in his will? Not possible, not with the way Henry had felt about Jim. Unless . . . but no. His mom had hardly ever mentioned Henry’s name, especially since Jim had come home from the Army. The few times she had, it had been with thinned lips.

  So why were they all here? Only one possible answer. Half of his mind said no, and the other half said, You know it’s true. Face it.

  Anthea led the little group down a narrow hallway and into a former bedroom that now featured a narrow oval conference table and eight chairs. The window looked out onto a back garden planted with soothing flower beds, a fountain bubbling in the middle. Civil law, Paradise style.

  Three of the chairs were occupied. Bob Jenkins, her father’s lawyer and Anthea’s senior partner, sat at the head of the table, urbane, distinguished, and giving nothing away. Then Henry’s brother, Dale, at Bob’s left hand, looking stringy, gray, and anxious. His wife Faye beside him, polished, perfect, and a little supercilious, glancing at Jim’s mother in surprise, then at the rest of them with some dismay.

  “I didn’t realize there’d be so many attendees,” Faye said to Bob.

  “Henry stipulated that the details be kept to myself until the meeting,” Bob said. “I’ll explain everything as soon as we’re all gathered.”

  “Mom, why don’t you sit here,” Anthea instructed, settling her mother halfway down the table, which unfortunately put her straight across from Faye, who was still looking at all of them as if they were something the cat had dragged in. Anthea sat between Bob and her mother, and Jim took the seat on Vicki’s other side. Cole slid reluctantly into a chair at the foot of the table, as far away from everybody as he could get.

  The kid was still in the baggy shorts and black Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt he’d worn that morning. Not exactly formal wear, but the scowl on Cole’s face had kept Jim from saying anything. You picked your battles, and Jim didn’t much care what Cole wore.

  Cole hadn’t wanted to come, but their mother had asked all her children to come with her. She was going to need their support, and Jim intended to give it. She sure had never held back her own, and he was in her corner till the end.

  Faye glanced ostentatiously at the clock mounted beside the door. “I thought you said ten, Bob,” she murmured. If the Botox had allowed it, she would have been frowning. As it was, she wore her usual perpetually surprised look, only a faint twist of her mouth showing her displeasure. She was in a purple suit today. Apparently the
period of deep mourning was over.

  The sound of a door opening came from outside the room, and Anthea got up, but Bob was there first, rising and heading out of the conference room.

  Jim forced himself to breathe evenly. He’d known she’d be here. Time to man up and take it.

  Then she was there. Hallie. Looking about a hundred percent more polished than the day before, her hair parted on the side, the curls tamed but still looking sassy-good. She was wearing makeup, too, and he found himself staring at her mouth for a second too long even as he stood. Her lips were lush and pink, just like always, and she didn’t need any lipstick to make them that way.

  And the green eyes above that mouth, shining emerald-clear today, her gaze meeting his with none of the uncertainty he’d seen in the past. Instead, her eyes snapped with what looked like temper, the same kind of temper she’d showed him yesterday, and damned if he knew why. He’d forgotten to ask Anthea about the “upset” this morning. The truth? He’d been a wuss.

  Yesterday had been a surprise, that was all. But it had all happened long ago, and his life had turned out fine—well, except the worst parts—so what did it matter how he’d once felt about her, or how her mouth or her hair looked now? If he still remembered how surprisingly soft those curls had felt when his hands had been shoved through them, or how sweet her mouth had tasted under his, that didn’t mean a thing. He tried not to glance down her body, because he didn’t need to remember that, either. She was wearing a pale blue sheath dress cut just below her collarbones that left her shoulders and arms bare, skimmed her curves, and ended just above her knees, along with strappy, heeled sandals that made her legs look long and lean. She looked appropriate, he guessed. If he thought she looked sexy as hell, with her dress saying prim and buttoned up and Daddy’s princess, and her curls saying wild as you want it—

  No. He wasn’t going there.

  He needed that girlfriend his buddies kept telling him to find. One who wasn’t a redhead, that was for damn sure. He needed to call Danielle Delgado right back up and make that date.

  It took him a long second to realize that Cole hadn’t stood. He kicked his brother’s chair under the table, and Cole rose reluctantly to his feet. Meanwhile, Jim tried hard to remember all the rest of it. All the reasons why Hallie’s hair and eyes and mouth and skin were off-limits to him. All the reasons why she was bad news.

  “If you’d like to have a seat, Hallie,” Bob said, “we can begin.”

  She walked around the table and sat opposite Jim, one seat down from her aunt. And then she told Jim, “I’d like to talk to you afterwards, if I may,” as the men sat.

  “Uh . . . sure,” he said. Something about the investigation, probably. But then why was she looking at him like she was contemplating the various forms of torture, and trying to pick one?

  Then he stopped doing any wondering at all, because Bob started talking.

  Hallie had gone for a run all the way down to the university campus and back up the Ridge that morning, then had wiped down the rest of the upstairs, getting rid of the dust. The taint. Everything but her father’s bedroom and bath, that is. She hadn’t managed to make it in there, or back downstairs, either.

  She hadn’t needed to do any of it, because she was leaving today, but she’d wanted to know she could. Then she’d spent too much time on her hair and her face, loaded her suitcase into the car again, and driven into town.

  Already halfway gone.

  Why was Anthea’s family here? Anthea was Bob’s partner. Her presence wasn’t any kind of a surprise. Anthea had told her about it the day before. Why hadn’t she mentioned the rest of her family being invited?

  Well, Hallie guessed she’d find out. She’d listen to what Bob said, tell Jim what she thought of his games in a cool, calm, adult manner, talk over whatever she heard today with Anthea, get a referral to a Realtor to unload the house and its contents, and drive on down the road. One step at a time.

  Now, Bob was talking, so she quit glancing out of the corner of her eye at Jim and noticing all the ways he’d changed. She stopped looking at the dark hair that didn’t fall that defiant, shaggy bad-boy inch beneath his collar anymore, but was instead cut ruthlessly short and neat. At the new lines she could see at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth, lines carved by desert sun and pain and too many deaths. At the faint white tracing of battle scars on his forehead, the edge of his chin, and, horrifyingly, extending a full three inches down the right side of his face, there beside his ear. At the way he sat so still, without any of the restless energy she remembered, only his watchful brown eyes betraying his tension. At the way he filled out that white dress shirt, and the way he’d filled out his jeans when he’d stood up as she’d entered the room.

  This was why she liked living in the big city. You were never trying not to look at a guy’s muscular thighs, let alone his crotch, in a conference room and remembering how he’d looked in his swim trunks at seventeen. Or, worse, in a clearing among the moonlit cedars at nineteen—the first time you’d explored a man—and how he’d sucked in his breath at your tentative touch. You never had to remember how he’d whispered, “This might hurt a little, baby. We’ll go slow.” You never had to remember the difference between his hot, sweet kisses, the way he’d touched you like you were something precious and wonderful, and the eyes that had stared into yours so coldly a week later, and then looked away. You never had to remember the way he’d left you to deal with everything. The way he’d left you alone.

  She didn’t want to think about any of it, so instead, she listened to Bob talking legalese. And after a while, she forgot about Jim.

  The first part was about her, and she already knew it.

  I give all my residences, blah blah blah, with their contents, including all vehicles on the property, to my daughter, Hallie Jane Cavanaugh, for her use absolutely.

  No restrictions. She’d worried some about that after Bob had told her the house was hers. She wouldn’t have put it past her dad to make her live in it.

  Also, it meant she could dump the bear.

  I give my brother, Dale Marion Cavanaugh, the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, in the hopes that he can keep some of it from his wife.

  Faye uttered a ladylike gasp and said, “What?”

  “I’ll ask you to hold your comments until I’ve finished reading,” Bob said calmly. “At which point, I’ll do my best to answer your questions.”

  I give my illegitimate son, Cole Ryan Lawson, the sum of one million dollars to be paid immediately upon my death, this sum to remain in trust until he reaches the age of twenty-five.

  Silence for a long second, and then Cole blurted out, “You’re shitting me.”

  Hallie’s gaze flew to Anthea’s, and she saw the same shock in her friend that she was feeling herself. She glanced at Jim, but his face was a mask. Frozen hard. She didn’t dare look at Vicki. She couldn’t.

  “I give the remainder of my estate,” Bob continued to read, “including the full value of my shares in Cavanaugh Development, to my brother, Dale Marion Cavanaugh, and my two children, Hallie Jane Cavanaugh and Cole Ryan Lawson, to be divided six months after my death as follows. To Dale Marion Cavanaugh, ten percent. To Hallie Jane Cavanaugh and Cole Ryan Lawson, forty-five percent apiece, with the following provisos. Cole Ryan Lawson’s portion will remain in trust until the age of twenty-five. Hallie Jane Cavanaugh will receive her portion outright under the following conditions. That she live in Paradise, in the residence hereby bequeathed her, if such a residence exists at the time of my death, for six months consecutively after my death, with no more than one absence per month for no more than three consecutive days during that period except in an extreme emergency, the validity of such emergency to be defined by my trustees, and that she not have a sexual relationship with Jim Lawson during said six months after my death. If she fails to meet these conditions, I give her share of my estate, except the house and its contents, to be divided as follows. Seventy-five percent t
o Cole Ryan Lawson, and twenty-five percent to Dale Marion Cavanaugh. If either of my children is not living after said six-month period beginning at the date of my death, their share passes in a proportion of seventy-five percent to the other living child, and twenty-five percent to Dale Marion Cavanaugh, if living. In the event that Dale Marion Cavanaugh is not living at the end of six months and Hallie Jane Cavanaugh has not fulfilled these conditions, the estate passes in its entirety to Cole Ryan Lawson, in trust until the age of twenty-five.”

  “Wait,” Cole said again. “I get the whole thing?” Which wasn’t the part Hallie had focused on.

  Bob held up a hand and kept reading.

  “During said six-month period, Hallie Jane Cavanaugh will receive the following sums as living expenses. One month after my death, ten thousand dollars. Upon reaching three months after my death, thirty thousand dollars. Upon reaching four months, five months, and six months, further sums of ten thousand dollars per month.”

  Bob read a few additional paragraphs that didn’t tell Hallie anything other than that the trustees were Bob himself and Aldon Cranfield, the president of local branch of the Bank of Idaho—Henry’s banker, in other words. Then he set the document down, removed his glasses, folded them neatly and set them in precise alignment to the edge of the paper, and said, “Now. I welcome your questions.”

  Hallie opened her mouth, not sure what she could possibly have said, but Faye, who hadn’t even been named in the will, got the first licks in. “You’re telling me Dale doesn’t get anything?”

  “No,” Bob said, “I’m not telling you that. He receives five hundred thousand dollars. And ten percent of the residue of the estate after six months.”

  “Five hundred thousand,” Faye said. “And ten percent? Ten percent?”

  “Honey,” Dale said. “It’s all right. I’ve got my own stock, you know, and we already have plenty. Henry didn’t owe me anything. I was just his brother.”

  “No,” Faye said. “No. It’s not all right. You slaved for him for twenty years, and now there’s another kid? After he said he’d—” She glanced at Hallie, then broke off.