Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  She was looking shaky again, and Jim was swearing at himself. “I’m going,” he said. “Den.” And he went.

  “Right,” Anthea said as Hallie listened to the sound of Jim’s feet retreating down the stairs. “Let’s hear it, sister.” She stopped. “Oh, wait. Awkward.”

  “No,” Hallie said, pulling herself back together. “For heaven’s sake. Not awkward. I’m not your sister, and I’m sure not Jim’s. And all right, obviously, he and I had sex once. Once. A very long time ago. We got caught, my dad found out, and there was hell to pay. End of story.”

  “And that’s why Jimbo enlisted,” Anthea said slowly. “Holy shit. And you didn’t tell me.”

  “How could I have?” This, Hallie knew for sure. “How could I have faced you, after I got him arrested?”

  Anthea looked at her, a twisted smile on her face. “Uh . . . yeah. You know what? I’ve got a feeling I know which one of you initiated that. And it sure wasn’t you.”

  “I’m not telling,” Hallie said, feeling about five years old.

  “You don’t have to. Let me throw out a wild-ass guess here. Your dad banished the man who dared to sully the purity of his daughter. Except that, whoops, turns out he just happened to have raped that man’s mother and fathered her child, which could’ve had something to do with wanting to get her other son, that annoyingly protective one, out of the way before he started asking questions. Assuming Cole was born then?”

  Hallie sat down again, because her legs didn’t want to hold her up. “Fourteen years ago. How old is Cole?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Hallie nodded bleakly. “Did your mom tell you that? Did she say it was . . . rape?” She didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t want to believe it, and she knew it was coming, and that it was true.

  “More or less.” Anthea sat down beside her, put an arm around her shoulder, and hugged her close for a second. “Man, he was a piece of work, huh? You always said so, and I used to think you were being dramatic. Turns out you were lowballing it. But you know what?” She got to her feet again. “You need to get busy tossing his evil ass out of this house. Where do we start?”

  “Oh, man,” Hallie said, so grateful not to be talking about it anymore. She was on overload. “I so want to do that. Could we get some Hefty bags and bag it all up? Throw away anything he used, bathroom and all that, but otherwise . . . could I just call Goodwill? What do you think? I’d throw everything away, but somebody could use it.”

  “You bet,” Anthea said. “Start with his bedroom?”

  This was why you had a best friend. Because Hallie couldn’t even face looking in there. At the collection of bolo ties, complete with their gigantic hunks of turquoise. At the western shirts with their snap fronts, the belts with their silver buckles like Henry had won them riding rank bulls in the rodeo, the cowboy boots in lizard and alligator and kangaroo and ostrich and anything else that cost extra money and came from far away and couldn’t be had by just anybody . . .

  Whoops. She was losing control again.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Start there. The thought of some ‘bum’ who works down at the recycling center, somebody my dad would’ve thought was dirt, wearing his ostrich boots? That gives my heart a real nice lift.”

  “It would’ve upset him, huh?” Anthea said.

  “It would’ve killed him. If he wasn’t dead already.”

  “Then I’m going to do it. You do . . .” Anthea made a vague gesture. “Whatever. But I’m doing this.”

  They found the Hefty bags under the kitchen sink, and Anthea marched off to the bedroom. Hallie emptied the kitchen garbage, tossed everything from the kitchen that she didn’t want—which was almost all the food, because her father had had taste that ran to white bread, bologna, and mayo—and then tackled the living room. She began with the bighorn sheep horns on the mantel, stood on a chair to take down an original Remington print of a lean cowboy on a leaner horse, sighting a rifle across the plains, and then got an idea.

  She was on her chair again in the entryway, holding the heavy wood plaque in place with one hand while she unfastened the right-hand screw holding up the pronghorn antelope head with the other, and tried not to stare into its beady, accusing glass eyes, when Jim said from somewhere behind her, “You know, you could ask.”

  She whirled and lost her hold on the antelope, and it swiveled down fast on its lone remaining screw, its wickedly sharp, curving horn raking a path across her chest along the way.

  The pain was instant and red-hot. She heard the screwdriver hit the floor and Jim swearing as she cried out, grabbed her chest, and tipped straight off the chair.

  Jim caught her in midair. The chair crashed to the flagstones, but his arms were around her, and he was holding her tight, her feet off the ground, her entire body pressed against his. And then he set her down and put her away from him with one hand on her shoulder while his other hand pulled the fabric of her shirt away to check the injury.

  “Stop . . .” she hissed, slapping his hand away and stepping back, “sneaking up on me!”

  “Stop doing things half-assed!” he snapped back at her. “You get a ladder so you’re high enough. You get a spotter. You get a damn electric screwdriver!”

  Her eyes had filled with tears, because it hurt. She looked down to see a thin line of blood welling up along a four-inch slice that ran diagonally down to the top swell of her right breast.

  “Oh, damn it to hell,” Jim said. “I did that wrong. Don’t cry. Come on. Where’s the first aid kit?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, blinking the tears back. “I don’t live here, remember? And it doesn’t matter. It’s just a scratch.”

  “Hurts, though.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” It did, a razor-thin trail of fire, but it wouldn’t kill her. “It surprised me, that’s all. The Revenge of Bambi. Ambushed by the Antelope.” She had her hand over the scratch, could feel the blood welling up beneath her fingers. “If I get this shirt all bloodstained, though, I don’t have another one. Shoot. I need those paper towels.”

  He ripped a few off the roll and handed them to her. “I’ll go get a cold washcloth,” he said. “That’ll help with the pain, too.”

  “Never mind. I’ll do it. It isn’t a big deal.” He started to object, and she sighed in exasperation. “Jim. You have a Purple Heart. You’ve got that terrible scar on your face, and some kind of . . .” She gestured in the direction of his midsection. “War wound that I can’t see, the one you got rescuing two of your buddies when they were pinned down in the street. Anthea told me all about it in gory detail, because you almost died.” She didn’t share how shaken she’d been to hear it. “You got shot. I scratched my chest.”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it again, and she looked at him warily and said, “What?”

  He looked sheepish. “Never mind.”

  “What?” She took the paper towel off and checked out her own war wound, tugging down her shirt to do it and exposing a fair amount of bra and a lot of skin, and looked up to find him watching her do it.

  “I was going to say something about your chest being more important than my guts,” he said. “But then I decided it was a little—”

  “Cheesy,” she finished. “And you’re staring again.”

  “I’m trying not to. But if you pull your shirt down like that, I’m going to stare. I’m a guy. I’m hardwired.” He looked at the wall of trophies. “OK. I’m moving on, because I’m a professional. We ditching the heads?”

  “Yes.” It was good to be moving on. Of course it was. Definitely. “I hate them. And to answer your earlier and extremely undiplomatic criticism, I was on the chair with the screwdriver because I didn’t want to go to the garage, all right? I didn’t want to go past the den. And I didn’t want to wait. I want them gone.” She stared at the bear, who snarled back at her. “And I want Smokey gone, too. No offense, Smoke,” she told the bear. “Wait. Probably a girl bear.”

  “Yep,” Jim said. “That’s a female b
ear. Size-wise, and equipment-wise. You know that Henry would never have let the taxidermist take those off. I always thought he must have had some size insecurity, personally.”

  “I feel we’re having a bonding moment,” she said, and he laughed out loud. The sound rang out against the hard surfaces of the entry hall, and somehow, it chased away some of the darkness.

  He was full-on smiling at her now, the skin around his eyes crinkling with amusement in a completely satisfactory grown-man way. If only he weren’t so damn manly, this would be so much easier. “Let’s bond some more,” he suggested. “What do you say? I’ll go find a ladder and a better screwdriver, and you can give me a hand getting these down so neither of us gets attacked. But while I’m doing that? Go find some antibiotic ointment. No telling where that antelope’s been. He was the low-life type, you can tell. And if you want a hand with the, ah, application? The motto is ‘Protect and serve,’ you know.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said, and he smiled some more and took off down the stairs to the garage. And Hallie didn’t look for the antibiotic ointment, because Anthea would probably have thrown it away by now anyway, and besides, she didn’t want to use Henry’s Neosporin. But she did have a very stern conversation with herself about the unreliability of physical attraction and the terms of wills and the inadvisability of making decisions while in a fragile emotional state.

  Not that it did much good.

  FUTURE PLANS

  A couple hours later, there were at least a dozen big black plastic bags leaning up against the garage door, and Hallie was feeling a little better about things.

  “Wonder if I can donate the vehicles, too?” she asked as she and Jim carried the gigantic moose head out between them and laid it down on the driveway with the rest of the trophy heads. Jim had taken most of the weight—she hadn’t missed that—but still, she pulled her sleeve down her arm and wiped her forehead with it. She didn’t even think about the fact that she was showing her bra again, and that Jim was watching. Well, barely. It was still hot, even in late afternoon.

  “Don’t see why not,” Jim said. “Can’t really see you using that snowmobile, and I don’t picture you as a big Jet Ski fan, either. More of the cross-country-ski, kayak type, I’m thinking. Seattle.”

  “Got something against hippies?” She went for smart-mouthed, because it was easier than thinking about her father, or about Jim, or about . . . anything.

  “Nope, I sure don’t. Not if they’re you,” he said, and she tried not to think that that was a pretty good answer. “The car, though, not to mention the pickup . . .” he went on. “Henry had one classy rig. Sure you don’t want it, or at least want to sell it?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hallie said as Anthea came out with a bag full of empty liquor bottles whose contents Hallie had already poured down the sink, because she’d decided that drinking her father’s liquor was another thing she couldn’t stomach after all. “I’m sure. But if you want it, be my guest. One dollar bill, and it’s yours.”

  His mouth twisted. “Yeah. No, thanks. And that’s something, because that’s my dream rig. Black crew-cab F-150 with all the bells and whistles? That’s the one. But I sure don’t want it.”

  “You and me both.” She looked around her at the trophy heads, the artwork, the garbage bags. “I’ll have to call Goodwill on Monday. There’s no way that moose is fitting in my car. But what if it rains before they can get out here? I don’t want this stuff in the house, but maybe we should at least shove it into the garage.” The clouds had billowed and dispersed all afternoon, giant cumulus puffballs that could bring a sudden, violent North Idaho downpour before you knew it. The garage had an overhanging roof, but still.

  Jim looked at her a minute more, his face inscrutable, then pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans, and Hallie tried not to look at his biceps, as she’d tried all afternoon. He poked around a little, then held the phone to his ear and waited.

  “Hey, Marine,” he said after a moment. “Jim Lawson.” He listened a minute, then smiled and said, “Nah. Unofficial. So Henry Cavanaugh died, if you heard. You want, oh, about half his possessions? Most of the good stuff? His daughter’s cleaning house, and she’s feeling charitable.” Another pause, and he said, “Then here’s what you do. Wherever you’ve got the truck going on Monday, can it. Bring it up here to Arcadia Ridge, and all of this is yours. Blow it, though, and I’m calling Caring Hearts of the Palouse on Tuesday. So you know.”

  Another pause, and he said, “You can probably fill up the truck, yeah. Got some furniture for you, I think. Hang on.” He held the phone against his chest and asked Hallie, “Furniture in the den? You want it? How about his bedroom?”

  “No.” The word exploded from her, and he gave a crooked smile and said into the phone, “Yeah. Big-ass leather couch and chairs, bedroom set, all on the high end. That Wheel of Fortune scoreboard just ticked over another few grand. Better send a couple guys, anyway, because he liked the heavy stuff. Oh, and there might be some vehicles in it for you. But it’s Monday morning, or it’s gone.”

  He listened a minute more, then said, “Almost forgot. Got a full-grown stuffed and mounted black bear here that’s got ‘Merry Christmas to the World’s Best Mother-in-Law’ written all over it.” He laughed, said, “Yeah. Thought so. Monday, Marine,” and hung up.

  “Marine?” Hallie asked, trying not to be impressed that he’d solved her problem just like that.

  “Will Harrison,” Jim said. “Manager over at Goodwill. Marine.”

  “What did he say about the bear?” Hallie asked. “Will he take it?”

  “Said, ‘Dibs on the bear,’” he said, and Hallie laughed, and Anthea did, too. Jim went on, “So what you do is get a stack of paper, some tape, and a marker. Write ‘Goodwill’ on whatever you want them to take, stick it on there, let them do the hauling. Including the bear.”

  “Oh. Good.” She’d known it would take all three of them to get that huge thing down the stairs, and she’d shrunk from touching its furry . . . shoulders. If that was what you called the front end of a bear. Somehow, the bear had come to symbolize all her discomfort with the house.

  “You could keep that TV in the den, maybe,” Jim said, “because that’s a sweet piece of electronics, and a wall-mounted TV doesn’t retain asshole molecules, would you say?”

  Hallie considered. “No. Not so much. OK, I’ll keep the TV. You know what would be cool to have in there? A pool table. The room’s big enough. If I got a pool table, would you guys come over and shoot pool and drink whiskey with me? We could be badasses.”

  Anthea said, “You couldn’t be a badass to save your life.”

  Jim said, “I’d do that. I’m guessing I could be enough of a badass for both of us.” He didn’t smile, just looked at her, a little bit dark and a little bit dirty. Or maybe that was her imagination.

  She tore her gaze away, made a business of patting her hair back into place, then realized she was touching her hair for a man and stopped. Jim cleared his throat and said, “One other thing in there you’re going to have to decide about. Whatever’s in that gun safe.”

  “Oh. Right.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Huh.”

  “You got a key for it?” he asked.

  She started to say no, and then realized that she probably did. “Come on.” She took the two of them up the stairs to the kitchen, where she picked the heavy ring of keys up off the counter. “It’ll be on there, I’m guessing. He’d have kept it with him. He loved his guns.”

  “Bet he had a weapon in the truck, too,” Jim said. “We’ll want to check that before you donate it.”

  They all trooped down to the garage again, where Jim hopped up into the truck after Hallie motioned him to go ahead. She didn’t want to sit in there. He dove into the glove compartment and came out with a snub-nosed semiautomatic. He ejected the magazine, then racked the slide and caught the live round in one hand before climbing out of the truck again.

  “This thing’s a Kimber Ultra,”
he told her. “Zebrawood grip? Fifteen hundred new, easy.”

  He started to hand it to her, but she put her hands up and said, “You keep it.” He raised his brows, but stuck the magazine and spare round into his pocket and headed into the den again, picked out a heavy-duty, round-barreled key, inserted it into the lock of the matte black cabinet that sat in a purpose-built niche, and swung the heavy door open.

  He took a good, long look, then whistled. “Whoa.”

  “Whoa what?” Anthea asked. “Seven long guns and a few handguns? That’s practically unarmed by Idaho standards.”

  “Not if one of them’s this.” Jim put the small handgun and the ammo onto two of the safe’s shelves, then lifted one of the long guns out of its slot, handling it almost reverentially. “This is the prize, right here.”

  “It’s a shotgun, that’s all,” Hallie said.

  “Bite your tongue. This isn’t ‘a shotgun.’ This is a Purdey. This thing’d fetch thirty grand at retail. And the rest of it . . .” He put the shotgun carefully back into its slot and examined the rest of the guns, then frowned some more, and Hallie waited.

  Anthea didn’t, though. “When you’re done praying over the firepower . . .” she said. “Anytime.”

  “Adding it up,” Jim said, unruffled. “Not everybody’s mental processes work as fast as yours. But I’ll bet you could get forty grand easy for all this, Hallie, even wholesale. One of these rifles is a Jarrett, and those don’t come cheap.” He looked at her, frowning again. “You can’t donate guns. Donate the money if you want, but all this has to go to a dealer, assuming you don’t want it. A big one. Seattle would be best. I can call a buddy, get a name for you.”

  “No,” she said immediately. “I’d have to carry them all back in my car. No. Isn’t there somebody close by?”

  “Not for this. Spokane would work, maybe. Won’t get as much, though. And you’d still have to get it there.”