Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  Not much. Some spoiled milk, moldy American cheese, and a carton of eggs with a sell-by date that suggested they’d been sitting on the shelf for a month. Half a case worth of Rainier in cans, which she wouldn’t be drinking. She could live the whole rest of her life without drinking bad beer.

  The freezer was more of the same. Stouffer’s frozen dinners and store-brand ice cream. There had better be some garbage bags under the sink.

  She hesitated with her hand on the open freezer door. It was Saturday. If she were going to turn her back on the money, on the past, on all of . . . this, she needed to go. She had to be in her classroom on Monday, which meant she had to leave tomorrow. No need to shop, or to clean, either, especially if she called that woman. Eileen. If Eileen could handle it, that is. But whatever she decided about the money, she had to go home, even if it were just for those three allotted days. All she really had to do was pick up something to eat tonight, grab breakfast on the way out of town in the morning, and she’d be done.

  She slammed the freezer door shut, got herself a glass of water, drank it all down, then tore another chunk off the hard-as-rock energy bar with her teeth, grimaced, and tossed the rest into the garbage under the sink, recoiling at the smell of a week’s worth of kitchen waste.

  You don’t have to decide now. You don’t even have to think now. Action would be good, though. Cleaning, whether or not she stayed. A metaphorical thing. Cleaning house. Not to mention emptying the garbage. She could figure out what to do about Eileen later. And everything else, too.

  She headed back to the entryway for her suitcase, then hesitated. She didn’t want to go downstairs yet. Change first, then. A quick detour into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and she was bringing her suitcase into the living room and tossing it onto the stone coffee table, toeing off her sandals, unzipping the blue dress, and then . . . well. Then she rummaged in the suitcase for an outfit that would hopefully magically materialize, like a ten-dollar bill you’d forgotten you’d put in your jacket pocket.

  It didn’t, of course. She’d planned to drive straight back from the lawyer’s today, and she hadn’t packed much extra, which meant that it was going to be the little yellow shorts from her pj’s and a white T-shirt that was the only other thing she’d tossed in.

  Well, it was Paradise, and it was hot. She held up the thin cotton shorts and tried to tell herself that they didn’t necessarily look like sleepwear.

  The peal of the doorbell startled her so badly, she dropped the shorts. Then she heard the door open and Anthea call out, “Hey, Hallie.”

  “In here,” Hallie yelled back. She bent down to retrieve the shorts, then came up with them and said, “I’m just—”

  She squeaked and jumped back, then held the shorts to her crotch.

  Anthea. And Jim. Who should have jumped back himself, and then left. Instead, he was standing there and staring at her. Not at her face, either.

  No. She wasn’t cowering. She dropped the shorts again and lifted her arms away from her body. “What?” she asked. “You waiting for me to strip for you? You’ve seen it all before.”

  Anthea said, “What?”

  Hallie looked at her, ignoring Jim, even as she felt his gaze on her as if it were his hands touching her skin. “You didn’t know? I figured you just didn’t want to talk to me about it.”

  But really? Anthea hadn’t known about her and Jim? There’d been way too much new information today. She couldn’t handle any more.

  Jim cleared his throat, but he was still looking, she saw with a quick glance. “I’ll just—” he said, and waved a hand backward, in the direction of the entryway. “Give you a . . . sec.”

  He’d changed clothes, too, Hallie realized. He was wearing pale-blue Levi’s and a black T-shirt, both of them faded and thin from washing. He looked good.

  Finally, he turned around and headed out of the room, and Hallie stood in her underwear and watched him go.

  She was mad. Frustrated, too, with herself as much as anybody. Ready to be done with this, to talk it over and put it behind her. It was nothing but old baggage, it was getting in her way, and it was unnecessary.

  Time to clean house.

  But she still noticed his shoulders, straining that black T-shirt. And his butt, high and tight in those faded Levi’s.

  Damn it.

  Jim stood in the entryway and tried to figure out how long he was supposed to give her.

  He was doing his best to think about it, anyway, but it was tough. Most of his brain space was being used up by the retinal imprint of Hallie in a dark blue lace bra that scooped down low, covering barely half her breasts and pushing them up some, too, so they swelled over the tops of the cups. And then there was the very tiny pair of matching underwear, cut in a thin, dangerous V. When she’d been bent over and he’d seen that they barely covered anything in back, either . . .

  Oh, yeah. That was another image that wasn’t going to be fading anytime soon.

  He remembered red-gold curls under his fingers. Those weren’t there anymore, because he’d have seen evidence. It was all smooth, pale skin. Shoulders and arms and belly. And breasts. And thighs. And ass. And . . . man.

  When she’d lifted her arms from her sides and spoken, it had taken about five seconds for his brain to register what she’d said. Then he’d heard the thing about stripping and thought, Yeah, I want that. Do that. It was only when his sister had started talking that he’d come back to himself, had realized that he wasn’t supposed to be looking at Hallie half naked, that she was waiting for him to leave. That she’d been getting dressed, and he’d walked in on her.

  Now, Anthea called out, “You can quit hiding now, Jimbo. She’s semi-decent.”

  He muttered, “Hoo-ah.”

  Cool, he reminded himself. Calm. In control.

  He took a deep breath and went into the living room again. Hallie had the suitcase zipped up and put away, and was standing beside the couch with Anthea. At Jim’s entrance, Hallie raised a hand to her hair, tucked a curl behind her ear, and caught the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. The same way she’d used to do in chemistry class, when she’d had the table next to him and he’d almost flunked.

  “So,” Anthea said. She had her arms folded across her chest, her brown eyes narrowed, and was looking between the two of them. “Somebody want to explain this to me?”

  “This isn’t your cross-examination,” Hallie said.

  “Nope,” Anthea said. “It’s just my twin brother and my best friend. Two of the people I’d have said I was closer to than anybody in the world. Until today, when I find out that they’ve apparently both kept a giant secret from me for—what? How many years are we talking here?”

  “Fourteen,” Hallie said, just as Jim said, “Fifteen.”

  Hallie glared at him. “You don’t even remember.”

  “I remember,” he said. “I remember everything.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Anthea said. “Start at the beginning.” She pointed at Hallie. “You.”

  “First,” Hallie said, folding her own arms, “why are you here? Why is he here?”

  Jim tried not to notice that she was wearing some very short, flimsy shorts, and that he could see the blue lace of her bra right through the white T-shirt. Or that the T-shirt had a scoop neck that revealed the top edge of her breasts, as well as some shadowed cleavage, especially with her arms folded like that.

  “You’re staring at my boobs again,” Hallie informed him, and he jerked his head back up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “What was the question?”

  She narrowed her eyes exactly like Anthea. “I’m not that good-looking.”

  He blinked. “Says who?”

  “I never tan.”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m not that thin.”

  “That, too,” he agreed.

  “I have red hair.”

  He gave up. “And all that adds up to what? That I shouldn’t think you’re hot as hell and always have? Or is that
the wrong answer? If it is, I’ll try again.”

  “You always have?”

  He didn’t try to hide his exasperation. “Well, yeah. I thought I’d made that pretty clear at one point. What part of it wasn’t convincing?” He didn’t add the next part. Tell me, and I’ll do it again until I get it right.

  “Then why did you leave without saying good-bye?” she asked. “And never try to get hold of me again? Why wouldn’t you even look at me?”

  His mouth opened and shut. He had the feeling he looked like a trout. “You know why,” he finally managed to say.

  “I do know why.” She stood there, then, and told him. “Because you hated my dad. You wanted to screw Henry Cavanaugh’s virgin daughter before you left for the Army. One last thing, so you could win. You wanted to beat him, because you worked for him and you hated working for anybody, and you did. You won.” Her voice was shaking now. “Or maybe because of your mom. Maybe you . . . maybe you knew. Of course you’d be furious about that. How could I blame you? But did you have to use me? What did I ever do to you? I was a person. I wasn’t just his daughter. I was seventeen, and stupid, and I loved you, or I thought I did, and I . . .” She sank down onto the couch. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. It’s all so long ago, and I know you’re not that person anymore. I’m not, either. It’s the past.”

  Jim couldn’t stop himself. He sat down next to her, took her hand and held it when she’d have tugged it away, and said, “Hallie. No.” He could tell she was about to cry, and he was about half sick.

  Anthea was looking from one to the other of them in astonishment. “So you’re telling me,” she said, her finger pointing from one of them to the other, “that you two did the deed, and you took off, Jim, and you never talked about it? OK, you didn’t tell me, and you should have, because I’d have . . . well, I’d have done something, I’ll tell you that. But holy cow, Jimbo. We’d known her forever. How could you do that to her?”

  He glared at her. “Because I was nineteen! Because I’d been hot for her since she was about fifteen. Because she was so pretty, and she was in my car, and I was yelling at her, and then I stopped, and she looked at me with those big eyes, and I kissed her, and . . .” He stopped. “You really want me to tell you this? It gets a little graphic.”

  “No,” Anthea said. “Ick. Stop.”

  “Well, I figured.” He looked at Hallie again. She wasn’t crying, and she’d pulled her hand from his. “Hey,” he said softly. “That wasn’t what it was about. That was never what it was about.”

  She nodded, short and jerky, and didn’t look at him. “Sure.”

  He sighed. “Well, damn. You really don’t know.” He looked at Anthea again. “You want to give us a moment?”

  “No,” Anthea said. “But I will. I’ll go wipe fingerprint dust.”

  “Leave the den for me,” Jim said, and Hallie looked like she was going to say something, but Anthea was already gone.

  MOONLIGHT ON CEDARS

  Jim sat next to Hallie on the couch and tried to think of how to start. With her this close, he could feel the warmth of her body, could smell something floral—her shampoo, or her perfume, he didn’t know which—and it distracted him.

  Just like it had that night.

  They’d been in classes together since the sixth grade, since middle school. She’d been a top achiever, always, just like Anthea, even though Hallie was at least a year younger than everybody else, because she’d skipped first grade. Everybody knew that. She was also the only girl in town to be given a brand-new red Jeep on her sixteenth birthday. Everybody knew that, too. Meanwhile, Jim had sat in the back of every room, been a badass, and watched her raise her hand and talk, so smart and serious. When she’d come over to the house, he’d pretend he didn’t notice her, and then he’d shoot hoops for an hour in the driveway and hope she was watching.

  That was the way it had been when he was sixteen, seventeen, anyway. He’d told her and Anthea that he’d had a thing for her since she’d been fifteen. In truth, it was fourteen, but he didn’t like to say it. The year she and Anthea had hung out all summer at the city pool, and Hallie had gotten her first bikini. It had had orange and yellow flowers on it. As he recalled.

  By the time they’d graduated, the gulf between them had been too wide to bridge. Anthea, on the other hand, had kept right up with Hallie. Hallie had been headed to the University of Washington, Anthea had been headed to the University of the Palouse with the aid of scholarships and loans, and Jim had been headed nowhere.

  He’d been headed that way faster than usual on that Friday night. He’d driven up to a party on Paradise Mountain around nine thirty with a couple of buddies and a case of beer in the trunk, had sat around an illicit campfire in a clearing and popped the top on a can, eyed the girls, and exchanged some glances with Amber Sanderson, sitting with a friend on a log to his right. He’d been about to head on over there when a glob of pitch in the fire had flared up bright, and he’d seen somebody sitting on the other side of the clearing. Somebody with two guys standing over her.

  He set down his beer, edged past the girls on the log with a last regretful look at Amber, and drifted over there.

  Something was making his antennae twitch. He’d just check, that was all.

  He got away from the fire and closer to the little group, waited until his eyes adjusted to the dark, and listened.

  “It’s hot,” a tall figure he recognized as Kyle Roundtree was saying. Good-looking, and mean as a snake. He was standing a little too close to the girl on the rock, and Jim watched as she pulled a knee up against her chest and hugged it to her.

  “Yeah,” she said, because of course it was Hallie. Who had absolutely no business being at a kegger on Paradise Mountain, especially by herself. “I’m hot, too. I think I’d better go home.”

  Jim breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to have to do anything.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Kyle said. “I’m going for a swim. I think you should come.”

  “I didn’t bring a towel,” she said. “Or a suit.”

  “You can dry off on my shirt,” Kyle said. “And you don’t need a suit. It’s dark. And we won’t peek, will we, Mitch?”

  “Hell, no,” Mitch Goodman said from Hallie’s other side. He put out his hand and twined one of Hallie’s red curls around his finger. Her hair was falling down her back tonight, not pulled back the way she usually wore it at school. Mitch tugged, and Hallie uttered a startled “Ouch!”

  Both guys laughed. “Come on,” Kyle said. He grabbed the hand around Hallie’s knee and pulled her to her feet, even as she tried to hang back. “I think she needs to get tossed in, don’t you, Mitch?”

  “No,” Hallie said. “I don’t want to. Please.”

  Mitch was already reaching for the other arm, but he didn’t get hold of it, because Jim was there, grabbing him none too gently by the front of his T-shirt and shoving him off.

  “Hey!” Mitch said in outrage.

  “Well, hey, Mitch,” Jim said, looking at him in feigned surprise. “Sorry, didn’t realize that was you. That’s lucky. Thought I was going to have to kick somebody’s ass.” He looked at Mitch a little harder, and Mitch, who was about five inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter, backed off a step. “You ready to go?” Jim asked Hallie. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Uh—”

  Jim shifted his attention to Kyle, who was unfortunately made of different stuff. The leader, not the follower.

  “Hey,” Jim told him. “I’ve got this.”

  “She’s with me,” Kyle said.

  “I don’t think so.” Jim let some of the good nature go. “I think you’ll find that she’s with me, and she’s leaving. Right now.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Kyle said. “I’d like to see you try.” He still had hold of Hallie’s arm, too.

  “Man,” Jim sighed. “Here I told my mom I wasn’t going to get in any more trouble.”

  Kyle started to laugh and said, “Your m
o—”

  That was when Jim hit him.

  Not too hard. But right in the gut, so he doubled over, staggered around, and started to retch. Jim picked him up by the back of the belt and stuffed his head and shoulders into a huckleberry bush for good measure, then told Hallie, “Let’s go.”

  “My purse,” she said.

  Mitch was saying, “Hey!” and looking like he longed to take a swing at Jim but was trying to work up the courage, and Jim thought about how much trouble girls were, and how little they knew about getting out of the fight before the other guy’s buddies jumped you.

  She finally found her purse, and he had her hand and was edging around the fire just as heads were turning, voices rising.

  They headed over the hill toward the road, Hallie stumbling against him in the dark. “How much did you drink?” Jim asked.

  “Two beers. And part of another one. Only a little bit, though.”

  “I’m going to ask why you came, but I’m going to wait until we’re out of here.”

  “You don’t get to ask why.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I do.”

  “My car’s over here,” she said when they got to the road, heading to the left.

  Jim pulled her back by the arm. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’ll come back with you for your car in the morning. You’re not driving with three beers in you.”

  “Two. And part of one.”

  “Come on.” He dragged her down the road to his car, opened the driver’s side door, because the passenger’s side was all the way against the bushes, and said, “Get in.”

  She stood still and said, “Why should I go with you when I wouldn’t go with them?”

  “Give me a break.” There were voices coming from up the hill, an angry shout, an answering one. “Unless you want to see a fight,” he told her, “get in the damn car.”

  She climbed in, slid across the seat, and he jumped in after her, hit the locks, and started to maneuver his way out of the tight spot.

  He’d just pulled out when Kyle’s older brother, Charlie, came running up and slammed a fist into the hood. Jim gunned the engine, Charlie jumped back, and Jim did a fast K-turn on the narrow, rutted dirt road while three more guys ran up. One of them kicked the bumper hard, making the car lurch forward, and Hallie shrieked.