Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

“Could you . . .” She hesitated. “Could you sell them for me? I’d give you a commission,” she hurried to add. “Five . . . ten percent. Whatever.”

  He shut the door of the safe and turned the key before he said, “I’ll do it for you. And I don’t want a commission.”

  His voice and posture were both stiff, and she sighed. “I’ve offended you. But it’s a lot of effort. It’s only fair.”

  “Say I owe you.”

  “You do not owe me. We talked about this!”

  “You bet I do.” He handed her back the keys and said, “I’ll do it. If you trust me. That’s a lot of money.”

  “Do me a favor,” she said in disgust. “Like you’d cheat me.” She did trust him, she realized in some astonishment. Maybe she shouldn’t, but she did. She worked the key to the safe off the ring and said, “Here. Take the whole thing. The safe and all.”

  “I can’t do it today. This thing’ll weigh a few hundred pounds. I’ll get the Jackson boys out here with me, and we’ll load it up.”

  “Be my guest. Whenever.”

  “You might want to hang on to one of the shotguns,” he said. “Not the Purdey. Maybe one of the twenty gauges. That Winchester—that’d be good. If you’re going to be living out here on your own, it might be best. As long as you know how to use it.”

  “I know how to use it. My dad taught me to shoot. Made me practice, too. I know how just fine.”

  “So you want it, or not?”

  “Not,” she decided. “If I need a shotgun, which I don’t, I’ll get my own.” She paused as a thought struck her. “Wait. Cole. Would he . . . do you think he might want one of them?”

  “They’re not his,” Anthea pointed out. “You inherited them.”

  Hallie made an impatient gesture. “Who cares? I don’t want them. And Cole was his son. He has a right.”

  “Most people would care,” Jim said.

  “I wasn’t expecting any of this,” Hallie said. “It’s like finding money in your coat pocket. If I give something to him, I’m not losing anything.” She shook her head. “I can’t explain it well enough. But I don’t care.”

  “But,” Jim said slowly, “you are losing something. Which is why most people don’t feel like that. The second they find out something’s theirs, it’s theirs. You find that money in your coat pocket? If you lose it again, you’re bummed. If you don’t feel that way, all I can say is—maybe you’re not thinking about it clearly.”

  “Or maybe,” she said, feeling the temper rise, “I’m thinking about it exactly clearly.” She didn’t usually let the redhead out. A lifetime spent with her father had taught her hard lessons about the consequences of anger. There’d been one person in this house allowed to get angry, and that person hadn’t been her. “Maybe I’m not most people. Maybe I understand that everything comes at a price, including money.”

  “The camel through the eye of the needle thing?” Jim asked. “Rich men don’t go to heaven?”

  “Plenty of rich men do, I’m sure,” Hallie said. “My dad wasn’t one of them, and we both know it. What I’m trying to say is more like that proverb, though. ‘Take what you want and pay for it, says God.’ Because there’ll be a price, always. I didn’t think the price was worth it before. I didn’t think that seeing my father and doing what he wanted was worth the inheritance. And now that I have it after all, I need to make sure the price is one I’m willing to pay.”

  Jim didn’t say anything. He was looking at her, she was looking back, and the tension stretched out between them like a rubber band. Anthea, for once, wasn’t saying anything.

  Jim finally said, “You’re different.”

  She said, “So are you.”

  He looked for a minute like he was going to go somewhere with that, but instead, he just said, “Yeah. Well. I guess we’ve both done some paying. I’ll ask Cole and my mom about the guns, if you want me to.”

  “Please,” she said, and tried not to shake. It wasn’t cold in here anymore, but she was wound up all the same.

  He nodded and said, “OK. Moving on. I don’t know how closely you’ve looked, but I’d have somebody come in, rip up the carpet in here, and lay some new. Won’t cost much, not for one room with no furniture. I did my best with the blood, but even if you got a service in to deep clean . . . not sure you’d ever feel really good about that. But you do that, get your pool table, hang some badass girl stuff on the wall, and it’ll be a new room. Your room.”

  “Badass girl stuff?” Anthea said.

  Jim shrugged. “Biker chick? Sports? Uh . . .” He gave Hallie his half smile and said, “Sorry. I got nothin’. Put you in black leather, and you’d still be sweet.”

  That one threw Hallie right off balance. She hadn’t been sweet just then, and she knew it. It took her a few seconds to recover, and then she cleared her throat and said, “I’ll do that. The carpet. Also—Monday. Now that I know about the guns, I can’t leave the doors unlocked. I don’t care what somebody steals, but I don’t want them stealing guns.”

  “You sure don’t,” Jim said. “Set that burglar alarm, too. No telling where those would end up, or what somebody’d end up doing with them. You don’t want that. And I’ll have to wait until my next day off to go up to Spokane and sell them. I’d rather not take them until then, for the same reason. The bed of my truck isn’t secure enough.”

  Hallie looked out the picture window and across the sea of rolling hills to the horizon. She was having a hard time looking at Jim without the treacherous color, the bane of redheads, rising in her cheeks.

  Anthea, who’d been watching the two of them all along like they were on Wimbledon’s center court, said, “Know what we need now? Pizza and beer. I already snuck the six-pack into the fridge,” she told Hallie. “Surprise for you. And after Jimbo calls in the pizza order, we’ll go around and stick those labels onto everything you want to give away, and we’ll be all done.”

  “Oh, I’m calling it in?” Jim asked. “Amazing.”

  “Why amazing?” Hallie asked.

  “That I’d get to decide.”

  “Oh, you’re not deciding,” Anthea said. “Hallie and I are deciding. You’re just calling.”

  Jim gave that half smile again, and Hallie laughed and thought, How about that? I laughed. And Henry’s stuff is going, going, gone.

  They ate the pizza out on the deck. The day had cooled at last, and a light breeze disturbed Hallie’s curls. Beams of sunlight were slanting low through the puffy clouds, creating a landscape like a religious painting and making her remember that not everything about Idaho was terrible.

  Once again, she was a mess, her hair disheveled, her shirt damp in places, her yellow shorts limp, dusty, and bedraggled, and she didn’t care. She’d be sleeping in a tank top and her underwear tonight, and that would be fine. She wasn’t going to stay in her childhood bedroom, either. She’d picked an upstairs bedroom that looked north, toward the town and the university. Brand-new accommodation. She’d go into town tomorrow morning and buy something cheap to wear on the drive home. She’d be fine.

  The first beer had gone down fast, and she was well into the second now. Anthea was pacing her, but Jim was holding himself to one. “Driver,” he’d said. “Plus, I’m high on life.” He’d smiled at her across the table, nice and slow, and she’d gotten a flutter low in her belly. And maybe it had moved on down and become a tingle, or maybe the tingle had been there all along. She wasn’t telling.

  Now, he looked at her, his gaze measured. He was kicked back in his chair, his feet on the lower rail of the deck, the bottle in his hand. “That scratch is looking angry,” he said. “You ever put that antibiotic ointment on it?”

  She glanced down at the red line across her chest. It still burned some, and it was in no way attractive. But then, ‘attractive’ had gone out the window sometime back pre-moose. “Huh,” she said. “No. I don’t have any. I’ll get some in the morning, maybe.”

  He swung his long legs down from the railing and stood. “
Be right back.” He loped off across the deck and down the stairs, and Hallie took another swallow of beer and said again, “Huh.”

  “What are you thinking?” Anthea asked.

  Hallie thought about not answering, but this was Anthea, who knew her better than anyone. That she was Jim’s twin, too—that was confusing and tricky, but it was reality. “How much he’s changed, I guess,” she finally said.

  “Not too surprising,” Anthea said. “You have, too, you know.”

  “I still feel the same inside, though. I’m guessing he doesn’t.”

  “But you’re not. Look at what you’ve done today.”

  Jim’s head and shoulders appeared, and then the rest of him, leaping up the stairs as easily as he’d run down them. He came over, holding a white plastic box, and said, “What did I miss?”

  “Just talking about you,” Anthea said, and Hallie put a hand up to stop her saying it, then dropped it. “How you’ve changed. And Hallie, too. And I was starting to say, not too surprising. You’ve both had a lot of life happen.”

  “You haven’t changed, though,” Hallie told Anthea. “You’re still exactly the same, isn’t she, Jim?”

  “Mm,” he agreed. “But then, Anthea’s more or less in a class by herself.” He’d opened his box, was pulling something out of it.

  “You have a first aid kit in your truck,” Hallie said. “And it’s organized. Now, see, that is different. Bet you didn’t always have that.”

  “Nope. But I’m a cop, you know.” He ripped the top off a packet and unfolded a thin square of antiseptic wipe.

  “And a father,” Hallie said. “I guess that changes things, too.”

  His eyes met hers, and he said quietly, “Yeah. That changes everything.” Then he said, “I’m going to clean this off. Might sting a little.”

  “That’s all right.” She knew she should take it from him and do it herself. But she didn’t. She sat still and let him scoot close. He put one hand on her shoulder and dabbed gently at the scratch. It did sting, and she sucked in a breath and stiffened at the first touch. He looked up, into her eyes, and asked, “Hurts?”

  “No.” If she was a little breathless, it was the sting, that was all. He went back to work, then set the cloth aside, squeezed a ribbon of antibiotic ointment onto his finger, and dabbed it carefully down the cut. His touch was nothing but gentle, and all the same, she was having a hard time sitting still under it.

  He finished, but kept his hand on her shoulder. “You still grab your lip with your teeth.”

  He was so close, she could smell the scent of him, all pine soap, warm cotton, and warmer man. She could see the shadow of beard along his jaw, too, and had a sudden, irrational urge to press her lips to the corner of his mouth, there where he was almost smiling. And then to work her way down the side of his strong brown throat while she rubbed the short hair at the nape of his neck and pressed up close to that big body. Sitting in his lap, maybe, with his hands all over her, because if she were there, he’d be feeling her up. And that would be so good.

  And Anthea was right there, watching.

  Hallie swallowed, and knew they both saw it. “I . . . yeah. I guess.”

  Jim took his hand off her shoulder and took his time twisting the top back on the tube and repacking the first aid kit. “That used to drive me nuts. The lip.”

  “I know,” she said. “Bad habit. My dad used to grab my cheeks and shake my head when I did it.” Anthea made a little protesting noise, and Hallie could feel herself flushing. She was babbling because she was nervous. She hadn’t meant to say that. It had been humiliating, and a little scary, too, to have her dad’s hard fingers pinching her cheeks, whipping her head back and forth.

  “You know, I’m sorry he’s dead,” Jim said.

  “What?” Hallie said.

  “Can’t tell you how many times today I’ve wanted to punch him out. That one goes up there near the top of the list, though.”

  Not at the top, Hallie thought. That would be your mother.

  “So,” Anthea said. “What’s your plan, Hal?”

  Jim didn’t say anything. He just sat still and looked attentive, and Hallie thought again how different he seemed. He’d always had that watchful air, that impression of coiled strength, but the restlessness was gone now. Maybe she’d call it controlled. The energy was still there; it was just held in reserve.

  “Mm?” she asked, and he kept looking, and she looked back.

  Anthea sighed. “You two are so not going to make it six months. That is bad news. But ahem. The will? Your inheritance?”

  “Oh.” Hallie had avoided thinking about it all day, but the pieces seemed to have been falling into place all the same. “I thought,” she said slowly, “earlier today, that there was no way. Now, though, I’m wondering if I could do it.”

  “Well, of course you could do it,” Anthea said. “But do you want to do it?”

  Hallie said, “I don’t know. Maybe giving all his stuff away has given me ideas. I hate to think of him pulling my strings, and I know that was the point. To get me to give up my job teaching brown kids and get me back here. But—it’s the kind of thing you ask yourself all the time, right? What would you do if you won the lottery? Would you use it to help people, the way you’d like to think? Or would you just spend it? So what would I do? I know one thing. I didn’t want to live my life for my father, but I don’t want to live it to spite him, either. Maybe that was what it was about at the beginning, when I went off to teach English in Japan instead of getting a job in business. But then it became something else. It started to be about doing something I enjoyed, something that felt worthwhile. Could this be the same thing? Could I actually do some good with the money?” She looked at the clouds, at the hills, and asked the question of them. “Or would I just be fooling myself? Is that an excuse to say why I want millions of dollars?”

  “Seems to me,” Jim said, his voice as deep and calm as a mountain lake, “that if you were that kind of person, I wouldn’t have been making that call to Goodwill.”

  “Maybe,” Hallie said, “I just want to live here on my terms. Maybe I want to say that there’s another way to live, right here with his . . . ghost watching. Maybe I want to win.”

  “Maybe you do,” he said. “Nothing wrong with winning. I’ve always preferred it to losing, personally.”

  “Well,” she said, “that’s because if you lost, you died.”

  A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and the way the light was hitting him highlighted that scar along the edge of his hairline. “That, too.”

  She sat back, yanked at her curls, and sighed. “My students, though.”

  “School year’s, what,” Anthea said, “four weeks in?”

  “Seattle,” Hallie said. “We’re only going into week three.”

  Anthea shrugged. “Give some teacher who thought she wasn’t getting hired this year a break?”

  Hallie chewed on her lip some more. “I’d have to get a job here.”

  “Yep,” Anthea said. “Too bad you’re lazy.”

  Hallie’s eyes opened wide, and then she laughed. “You’re right. I’m not lazy.” She slapped the table with sudden resolve. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the bear. Or maybe it was the company. “You know what? I could do it.”

  THAT GUY

  Jim was still thinking about that when Anthea drained her beer bottle and said, “Well, I suppose I should go hang out with my husband.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “We should go.” He didn’t want to. He wanted Anthea to leave, and then he wanted to hang out right here on this deck and split that last beer with Hallie while he watched the setting sun turn her hair to red-gold. But he hadn’t been invited, and Mac was still over at Anthea’s, so he stood up, gathered the beer bottles for the recycling, and said, “Can’t imagine you could get back here by Monday morning, Hallie, even if you decide to stay. I can probably arrange to swing by and let Goodwill in, if you want to give me your key. Do you have my cell
, so I can get the key back to you? And what about that alarm?”

  “Uh, no. I don’t have your cell.” She stood up herself and wiped her hands on those tiny shorts, which were quite a bit the worse for wear by now. She was all messed up again. She looked great.

  He was still thinking about that when she said, “Hang on,” grabbed the pizza box and headed into the house, then came out with her phone and her father’s key ring. She typed the number he dictated into the phone, then handed him the keys. “Give them the Jet Ski and the snowmobile, if the keys are on there,” she said, “and the trailer to haul them. But not the car and the truck. Let me think about those for a bit.”

  She’d either come back to stay or she wouldn’t. Nothing more he could do about it. Nothing he could say. So he helped her reset the alarm code and typed the number into his phone, touched that she trusted him that much, then waited while Anthea hugged and kissed her good-bye. Finally, he nodded at Hallie, said, “Drive safe tomorrow,” led the way down the outdoor stairs, tossed the bottles, and climbed up in the truck to take Anthea home.

  He still wasn’t sure if he should have told Hallie his suspicions about her father’s death. Well, he was sure. He shouldn’t. It had come in as accidental death, and that was almost certainly what it was. Telling her would just open a can of worms. Besides, Henry’s enemies wouldn’t be Hallie’s, would they?

  Still, he wished she’d keep a shotgun in her bedroom, if she knew how to use it safely. Maybe he could suggest that again, give her a refresher course if she needed it. If she came back.

  He was still turning it over in his mind as he pulled out of the driveway and onto the road. Anthea said, “So. You could’ve told me.”

  “No. I couldn’t have.”

  Another couple minutes of silence, and he asked the question that had been uppermost in his mind all day. “So what does ‘sexual relationship’ mean, exactly? In a will?”

  “What do you think it means?” Anthea said, which was one of those lawyer-type questions Jim hated.

  “Well, obviously it would cover, uh, intercourse. But how far could you, um . . .” He trailed to a stop. “I mean, legally.”