One morning, Julianne stood looking at the front part of the store. Mitchell had just walked in carrying a Do-Nut Delite coffee cup. “I don’t think paint really helped this old, crummy window-display shelf,” Julianne commented. “I’d like to build a new one.”
Mitchell reached for the tape measure on his belt. “I can do that. Hold the end of this tape.”
When she reached for it their hands brushed, and she flinched. “Sorry.”
He took her fingers and closed them around the yellow metal measure. “No cooties, okay?”
She felt a hot blush work its way up her neck, and she looked up into his face. Still attractive, damn him, and worse, she felt as tongue-tied as a girl. “Well—no, I didn’t—let’s just—”
“Hold it to the edge of the old shelf and read the numbers to me,” he instructed, so she did. She studied him as he wrote down the dimensions on a piece of scrap paper he’d pulled from his pocket and saw lines fanning from the outer corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there before. The scars on his arms had faded over time, but burn scars never went away. Her memory pulled up a scene from that horrible night—that horrible sight—Mitchell carrying Wes, both of them burned, smoke rising from them, a ghastly, indescribable smell overlaid with the odors of whiskey and gasoline. That event had been the culmination of years of half-truths and desperate secrets, exalted, heartbreaking romance, and lives forever changed.
Mitchell was two years older than she, and she remembered sitting in the bleachers at the high school, watching him play baseball. She’d also heard talk about the “wild Tucker boys,” and not just at home. Their mother had taken off, and even though Earl Tucker came home once in a while, most kids knew that they were pretty much raising themselves. Julianne had been just a nobody-freshman and hadn’t realized he’d even noticed her.
But he had. And so it began . . .
“You want a shelf just like this, right?” he asked, looking up suddenly.
Yanked back into the moment, she felt foolish, getting caught staring at him. “Uh, yes, yes, I like that shape and the height.”
“Okay, now put the tape blade here.” He guided her hands to the end of the shelf, and she read those numbers to him as well.
He took back the tape and hooked it to his belt. “I’ll head over to Carver’s for the plywood. What about the window boxes?”
“I guess we might as well measure for those, too,” she said. They started to head out the front door.
“Julianne? Could I get your help here?” She glanced toward the back-room curtains and saw Cade standing there, watching. For how long, she didn’t know.
“Go on,” Mitchell said, “I can manage this.” He took the tape from her and went outside.
“All right.” She headed to Cade with an odd, guilty feeling of having been seen doing something wrong. “What’s up?”
He inclined his head toward the front. “Was he bothering you? It looked like it.”
“No, nothing like that. If he were, he’d know it and so would you. So far, it’s working out.”
“Considering how much trouble you’ve been having with vandalism and those other problems, I can’t understand why he’s even here. It’s an open invitation.”
She sighed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then crossed her arms over her chest. “I can see why you’d think so.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“I don’t think it’s Mitchell. It would be so obvious. We’ve talked about this already, Cade, and believe me, my antenna is up. He already knows that I’ve got the sheriff’s department on speed dial.”
“The doc said I’ll be back up to snuff in a couple of weeks. Then you can send him packing.”
“Uh-huh, great.” She didn’t sound convincing, even to her own ears.
“You said that’s why he’s here,” he continued. “Because I was stove-up with this busted wing and you needed the help.” The newly healed arm looked thin and pale compared to his other one.
“Yes—right. So you didn’t really have a question when you came out here?”
“No. I was helping you get out of a tight situation.”
Julianne was beginning to feel suffocated. “Okay, then we’ve all got work to do.”
While Mitchell worked outside, he looked at the condition of the casement and pictured what would look good for window boxes. Julianne might be better off going with planters resting on the pavement pushed up against the wall below. There was no real way to gauge the soundness of the windowsill, considering how old this building was. Window boxes, heavy with soil and water, might not hold. He had no idea what a geranium was, but he could imagine plants lined up under the window. It would be a nice touch.
In the store, that Lindgren was hassling Julianne again. He was always around. He half expected the guy to pee around the perimeter of the store to mark his territory like a dog. Mitchell wanted to tell him that he had nothing to worry about, that he had no romantic intentions toward Julianne. But it would be a lie. His feelings for her had coming roaring back to life—well, if he were going to be honest with himself, they’d been there all along. He’d managed to push them to the back of his mind and a quiet, secret corner of his soul. Time had ripened the girl he’d known into a full-grown, mature woman, more beautiful and interesting than he’d envisioned her during those long, dark years in prison.
Behind him, he heard the clunking sputter of an engine with a bad timing belt. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Darcy behind the wheel of one of his junkers, a sorry-looking Ford. James was in the passenger seat. Both of them wore angry, disapproving scowls. They cruised by slowly, giving him the evil eye.
“Hey, brother, you’re busted, man!” Darcy yelled, then hit the gas. The car’s tires squealed on the pavement, leaving a blue cloud of exhaust and burning rubber.
Oh man. He’d known it would happen—the family would find out about this one way or another. He’d hoped for more time, but he wasn’t going to get that kind of break.
Julianne stepped outside in time to see the back end of the Escort fishtail around the corner.
“What was that?” she asked.
He felt the burden of fate resettle itself on his shoulders, digging in and getting comfortable for a long ride, as he gazed at the dissipating cloud. “Nothing.”
In truth, he knew it was hell coming to kick his ass again.
“I just came back to get my stuff,” Mitch said to the three angry faces that greeted him at the trailer.
“Gonna go shack up with her?” Earl sneered, his rocker-recliner moving at top speed, an indicator of his fury.
“Nope, I’m just moving out.”
“I can’t believe it. You turned against your own flesh and blood,” James complained bitterly.
Knucklehead, obviously mirroring all the negativity, joined in. Four male voices, yelling at the same time, along with the barking dog, stirred up a high-volume din that made Mitchell remember the bad old days of his youth. Darcy, swearing at the dog, planted a foot in the animal’s ribs that sent him across the room, squeezing a yelp out him.
Mitchell turned on Darcy, grabbing him by his shirtfront and pulling him up close, filled with an icy fury at his brother that he’d always felt in his gut. Darcy was a mean, sneaky bastard with a talent for spotting those weaker than himself. “You ever touch that dog again, I’ll tie you down and let him eat your balls for breakfast.” His fist still wound in the shirt, he roared, “Everyone shut up!”
They all looked him, caught off guard.
“Now you listen to me! I’ve never known what caused that feud between the Boyces and the Tuckers, only that I was supposed to defend everyone against it. Well, I’m goddamned sick to death of it. The one time I asked you about it, Earl, you gave me a whack that threw me halfway across the room. But I went to prison for burning down Wes Emerson’s barn, not any of you, even though James and Darcy were with me that night. I served seven years for manslaughter, not any of you.” He caught both
of them in his sights. “No one ever knew you two were with me. I took the full blame because you were young and I didn’t want your lives ruined, too, although it doesn’t look like I saved y’all for much good.” He looked around at the tobacco-stained walls and ruptured, dirty furniture. “If I want to look at it from your viewpoint, I’m the one with the biggest bitch against the Boyces, but I’m tired of dragging it around like a dead tree branch stuck in my undercarriage. I don’t care anymore. I’m over it!”
He paused to take a ragged breath. He released Darcy with a shove. “I came back to Gila Rock to do one thing. And when it’s done, I’m leaving again. I don’t belong here. This is not the way I want to live the rest of my life, fighting a battle that you probably started, old man.” He stared at Earl. “Fighting a ghost, always looking backward and never to the future.”
The three men gave him surprised but bitter looks.
He called the dog with a short, sharp whistle, and Knucklehead regained his feet and followed him to the back bedroom. He jammed his few belongings into his duffel bag and grabbed the dog’s food. Before he left, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill that he wadded up with one hand and threw at Darcy’s feet. “For the crappy Skylark. I hope it isn’t stolen.” Then he was out the front door, Knucklehead next to his knee, letting the screenless screen door flap in the breeze. Just before he started the engine, he heard the shouting begin again among them and was glad to be out of it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Julianne rolled over and stared at the dark ceiling above her bed. The window was open, but at this hour, everything outside was quiet. For now. She glanced at the clock, and the dim, green digital numbers read 2:37 a.m.
Even when she worked herself to the point of utter exhaustion, Julianne’s nightmares about Wes still invaded her sleep. But sometimes, like tonight . . . oh, sometimes when she lay between the two worlds of sleep and wakefulness . . . dreams of Mitchell invaded her mind. Feverish dreams of the way his lips and hands had felt on her before Wes came into the picture. Worse, these dreams were even more vivid than those of her late husband. Maybe that wasn’t surprising. She and Wes had been married only a few months. Her history with Mitchell went back much further.
She’d known she was supposed to regard him as an enemy—her father had told her over and over that the Tuckers were no damn good. His resentment had seemed to increase after her mother died suddenly from an aortic aneurysm. Julianne had carried the seeds of his bitterness in her heart, too; it was part of her family tradition, along with ham, not turkey, on Thanksgiving, attending every Fourth of July picnic in the town park, supporting Future Farmers of America and visiting family graves on each deceased’s birthday. Every family had its quirks—hers included this grudge of unknown origin.
She remembered clearly the first sign that she’d caught Mitchell’s attention. One spring evening just before dusk, she’d gone outside to collect the wash from the clotheslines. With her mother gone, all the housework had fallen to her by the time she was twelve. Against one of the clothesline posts, she’d discovered a bouquet of wildflowers tied with a long stalk of grass. She’d looked around but had seen no one in the sorghum fields beyond. When she picked up the flowers, she’d realized that a small square of paper had been jammed down among the blooms. It bore a couple of squiggly ink marks—J from M. Julianne had been truly baffled. At fifteen, she’d been shy and not very interesting to boys. There was no one around the farm with the initial M, not even among the hired hands. She’d brought in the laundry with the flowers but didn’t mention them to her father, who kept a sharp eye on her activities.
At school, she considered and discarded possible admirers, eventually deciding that it must have been just some weird, random event. Then one day on her way to biology class with Melanie Sanchez and Kristin Gruelin, she found herself face-to-face with Mitchell Tucker in the hall. He was with a bunch of his rowdy friends, but he caught her gaze and held it until he passed. It was a straightforward look, not threatening, not rude or disdainful. But his scrutiny had made her squirm, and automatic, inborn resentment had flooded her while scalding her cheeks.
“Ooh!” Melanie piped up, grinning like a cat with a pint of heavy cream. Her glossy, blue-black hair nearly reached her waist. “Did you see how he looked at you?”
“Yeah, Juli! He’s a b-a-a-d boy!” Kristin giggled, her braces gleaming briefly in a sunbeam that came through a window. “I didn’t think you knew him.”
“I don’t!” she muttered, her face hotter still. She wrapped both arms around her books and hunched her shoulders.
“Hey, that’s right—your family and the Tuckers have that grudge,” Kristin added. “Oh, it could be like Romeo and Juliet. So romantic!”
“Shut up, both of you! I don’t like him, he doesn’t like me, and that’s the way things are.”
“If you don’t know him, how can you know you don’t like him?” Melanie pushed.
Losing her patience, Julianne hurried her pace and tried to lose the teasing girls, cursing Mitchell Tucker with every step for making her the object of major embarrassment. Where did he get off, that Tucker loser, thinking he could examine her that way, like—like a specimen on a microscope slide? After he’d blended into the rest of the students in the hall, she heard his laughter rise above other voices, and she’d thought of the brilliant retort: Take a picture; it’ll last longer.
But the flowers at the clothesline appeared again three more times over the coming weeks, usually at that hour before dusk. Still, she told no one, and she didn’t know why he was doing it. If it was him.
The mystery was solved one evening, when a fourth, straggly bunch of late-season flowers showed up. She looked around, not expecting to find anyone. Then she saw him and pulled in a startled breath. He was leaning against the big live oak beyond the barn. There was no mistake. She glanced back over her shoulder at the house, but no one was watching. She recognized his dark, curly hair and his usual T-shirt and jeans. There was nothing special about his clothes—lots of guys wore the same stuff—but on him they were different somehow. Better.
With another cautious scan of the windows, she picked up the flowers and darted toward the tree. When she got closer, she slowed. He just watched her, still leaning against the tree with his hands in his back pockets.
“Are you—you’re the one who’s been leaving these?”
He nodded. “I wondered if you’d figure it out.”
She frowned. “What do you want? I’m not supposed to talk to you. You’re gonna get me in a lot of trouble.”
He shrugged. “You can go back anytime you want. I’m not keeping you.”
“Why did you do this? How did you do it?”
“This is a good time of day. Not dark enough to make dogs bark, but easier for me to stay out of direct sight.” He gave her a smile. “As for the why, I didn’t think that would be hard to figure out.”
“You could get into a lot of trouble, too. If my dad sees you here, he’ll probably sic the farmhands on you and blast you full of shot.”
“Only if he knows. Are you going to tell him?”
No, she had never told her father. Somehow they’d kept their secret for two years.
Julianne rolled to her side, trying to shut out the memories and quiet her busy mind. If she’d had the gift of foresight, if she’d known what would happen, so many things would have been different.
But she was faced with the here and now, and morning would come soon enough. In the darkness, she rummaged around in the drawer of her night table and found a bottle of over-the-counter allergy medicine she saved for times like this. It would make her drowsy enough to sleep for another four hours.
She hoped.
The next morning Julianne slapped the snooze button on her alarm twice before finally dragging herself out of bed. While the coffeemaker dripped, she pulled on her clothes, brushed her teeth, and ran a comb through her hair. She’d never been one for dressing up much, but she wanted to
present a better image than jeans and a tank top—eventually. When the coffee finished brewing, she poured it into a vacuum pot and took it downstairs along with the shotgun, hoping to get a couple of hours to herself before Cade came in.
She flipped on a light switch, and the fluorescent tubes overhead sputtered to life. Her arms loaded with ledgers he’d already entered in the computer, she kicked aside an empty box to reach a back corner of the storeroom. She called this area The Tomb for the time being. All the strange, old junk she didn’t know what to do with ended up here.
Cade. A thought of him buzzed around in her mind again like a fly bouncing against a window—not a flattering image, she knew. He hadn’t pressed her for an answer to his proposal, but whenever she was around him he watched her with what seemed like alert expectation, as if that moment was the moment. Now? No? Okay . . . now? Every time she thought about marrying him, a little part of her cringed. That wasn’t a good sign. But neither did she want to deal with a big scene right now. He would just try to convince her that everything would be great, and she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t want to lose his friendship. It was selfish, she supposed, but they had been friends before he’d gotten all swoony about her and messed things up.
Just as she emerged from The Tomb, she heard a knock on the back door. She glanced at the wall clock. It was only 7:15. Immediately on guard, she crept to the window and peeked around the edge of the curtain. She saw Mitchell.
Opening the door, she said, “What on earth are you doing here at this hour?”
He looked rumpled and haggard. The dog sat to his left, and a bag of dog food was on his right. “I’m glad you’re up. I waited until I thought you would be.”
Wary, she stood aside to let him in. “What’s the matter?”
“Julianne, I need a favor.”
Wishing she’d left him on the porch, she pulled back and gave him a suspicious look. So now they were coming to the real crux of the matter. She’d always had the distinct feeling that he was worming his way into her life for more than just “community service.” “Favor?”
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