by Oram, Jean
Of course, he had to be a gentleman. He wouldn’t let her just flee. He had to explain all the reasons why being together wouldn’t work out. Like she hadn’t already figured them out on her own. With his job he’d never be around. If he got a new job, he’d be stuck behind a desk—one unlikely to be in Blueberry Springs since it was such a small town and jobs were at a premium. She knew you couldn’t take someone who thrived on the freedom of the outdoors and shove them behind a desk or a counter in a convenience store and expect them to be okay. You had to let them outside.
She opened her door and Rob followed, carrying her bag. “Thanks for everything.” She lightly touched his lip, memorizing the way his gray eyes had those uncanny flecks of blue and how, right now, his eyes seemed more blue than gray.
It felt like goodbye.
She ignored the playful smile, the delectable lips, and turned away.
“Where have you been?” demanded Moe, popping out of Jen’s bedroom, his eyes half-mast as though he’d just woken up.
Jen leapt back, landing on Rob’s foot. His arms encircled her protectively, and she shook him off, charging at Moe.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” She planted her hands in the middle of his chest and heaved him backward, adrenalin charging through her like a bull in a china shop, redirecting all her anger at the poor timing between her and Rob toward Moe. “You scared the crap out of me!”
Rob stepped up behind her. She could feel his warmth, strength, presence and alpha male side butting in to protect her from her friend. She shouldered him away and focused on Moe. He needed to back off. Enough was enough. Rob might break her heart, but he was going to do it on her terms. And she didn’t need Moe’s help with that.
“Where have you been?” Moe asked again. “I was worried.”
“What are you doing in her apartment?” Rob moved to shield Jen from Moe.
“I have a key.” Moe taunted Rob with Jen’s spare key dangling from his finger.
Jen snatched the key. “Give me that!”
“Hey! I was helpful! I replaced your juice and I took phone messages.” He held out his hands in confession. “Well, I just listened in as the answering machine picked up. You have two new clients for your August long weekend hike.” His brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you pick up the calls on your cell?”
“I was taking a day off, not that it’s any of your business. In fact, anything I do with Rob isn’t your business. You’re not my father, my brother, or my keeper.”
Moe crossed his arms. “No, but I’m your friend. And I know you don’t talk to your dad and you don’t have a brother. You need people to look out for you—and that’s me.”
“Moe.” He was making things so much harder than they needed to be. “I appreciate your concern. I really do. I think you are wonderful. All of Blueberry Springs is.” She tried to shoot him a meaningful look. “But I need to talk to Rob right now, okay?”
“We were supposed to watch Mantracker.” Moe pouted, arms still crossed.
She rolled her eyes and tugged her ponytail, turning to Rob.
“You know what? I think maybe I should go,” Rob said, hands raised. “I’m just a complication, and you need some time to figure things out.”
“Rob, wait! No, it’s just…” Rob’s hurried footsteps echoed as he charged down the stairs and to the street. A few moments later, his truck peeled out.
She sighed. “The timing is all wrong.”
She breathed back tears as Moe massaged her shoulder.
“You know why they call me Moe?” he asked.
“It’s short for Maurice?” she muttered, staring at the vacant doorway.
“Middle of Everything.”
“You’re kidding?” she said with a teary laugh.
“Nope. Real name’s Rodney.” He held her elbows firmly. “You know I’m here. You’re not alone.”
She shook her head. She was alone. She knew it because it had already slammed into her like a wrecking ball.
CHAPTER 10
She was trapped in a nightmare.
Pure and simple.
A second forest fire had started near Blueberry Springs, meaning Scott had come by to see if she had an alibi. She’d ended up telling him about her weekend with Rob, which got back to…well, everyone. The fire had started in Woodchuck Park—another of her favorite places to hike and was a place she’d been on Saturday with the Father’s Day hikers—and there were too many gaps in her alibi. It had started on Saturday or Sunday and she hadn’t been with people for the full forty-eight hours, meaning her alibi resembled Swiss cheese.
Which also meant Rob was going to have to investigate her. Again. Or so she assumed.
They just really couldn’t catch a break.
She pulled in a deep breath and stood outside Wally’s store, trying to let the cool morning air relax her and put her mind at ease.
She was about to head to Benny’s for a slice of his heavenly chocolate maven pie when Judge Radcliff came across her path. She darted her eyes left and right, seeking an escape route. It was too late. He was already upon her.
“Too bad about Mr. Raine,” he said.
She froze midstep.
She turned, narrowing her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It looks as though your boyfriend’s testimony and report findings were tossed out.”
Jen took a step closer to him. “Why?” What the hell had happened? She resisted the urge to grip the judge’s arm and pump him for more information.
“Maybe you should ask him,” the judge said with a sly smile. He turned and headed down the street in a leisurely fashion, his hands gripped behind him as he whistled a jaunty tune.
Jen fled to Mary Alice’s. She’d know. She knew everything. She fell into the store, gasping for breath and trying to act cool, calm, and as though she didn’t have a stitch in her side.
“Where’s Mary Alice?” she asked the clerk behind the counter as she bent over, panting.
“In the city.”
“Why?”
The clerk shrugged. “She’ll be back around five.”
Jen flung the door open and ran down the alley, using the fire escape to reach her apartment over the store. She grabbed her cell phone off the couch and checked for messages. Nothing. No reception. She placed her phone on the windowsill to see if she could get a signal and grabbed her old Tinkerbell phone that was hooked up to her business’s landline. She held her thumb over the number pad. No, check her caller ID in the kitchen first. Nothing new there either. She checked her cell phone again. Signal. She punched the numbers to check for messages. Nothing.
She inhaled, and with shaking hands, tapped out Rob’s number.
No answer. She left a quick message when voicemail picked up, wanting to call it again to hear his voice, to reassure herself that things weren’t as bad as she feared.
She hesitated before putting down her phone. It could be a while before he got the message and called her back. She needed to know what happened, and she needed to know right now. She punched in a new number, calling Dina. She bit her lip as she waited for her to pick up.
“Hello?”
“Dina, it’s Jen.”
“I know. There’s this thing called caller ID.” There was something in Dina’s voice that made Jen sit down.
“What happened?”
“With what?” Dina asked, hesitating, obviously stalling.
“I heard Rob’s testimony and report findings were thrown out.” She took a deep breath, hoping Rob’s family had interfered and found out all the information she currently needed.
“They were.”
“Why?”
Dina sighed. “It’s a bit of a mess, Jen. Rob’s pretty upset.”
Jen fought the panic welling up inside her.
“Why?” She was starting to feel like a three-year-old with all the ‘why’ questions she was asking today. “What happened?”
“What Rob said was—”
“Where is he? He di
dn’t answer his phone.” Worst-case scenarios were flitting through her mind, and she took a sharp intake of breath to try and settle herself.
“I’ll get to that.”
Oh, man. This was not adding up to good things.
“Is he okay?”
She heard Dina let out an impatient sigh on the other end of the line. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”
“Sorry.”
“Basically, word got out that Rob was hobnobbing with one of the suspects in a fire he was investigating.” She paused. “That would be you.”
Jen sensed where this was going and she wanted to head it off like a hero in an old western. Get to the train tracks and untie the heroine before she got run over. Or in this case, save herself from the awful truth that was about to coming pouring out.
“His findings were discounted because a claim was made that he’d lost his objectivity. So, basically, his findings and report were thrown out. His boss put him on probation. And he got demoted. He’s working on a remote forest fire case where he had to be flown in so he can’t be influenced by the suspects. Plus, he’s not to associate with you since his company is investigating the new fire and nobody is sure yet if you’re a suspect or not.”
Jen sat on the couch, letting out a long, slow breath. This was bad. Really bad.
Poor Rob. He was probably kicking himself for helping out his sister and letting Jen into his life.
And as for herself, would there be a new investigation for the Raspberry Creek Park fire? Would she have to deal with a new investigator and face another interrogation? Another hike into the forest to show where she’d camped? Despair surged through her, settling in deep, making it difficult to breathe. All the evidence Rob had found…it would be gone by now. There had been wind and rain since the fire. He’d stressed to her how important it was to get to the ignition site as soon as possible in order to gather evidence. Everything would be lost by now.
She buried her face in her hand and fell back into her couch cushions. It was worse than she’d feared it could possibly get.
A few kisses had ruined his career and put her back under the gun. Why hadn’t she waited? Where was her self-control?
The idea that she’d brought harm to Rob chilled her like she’d taken a dive into a glacier-fed lake. She needed to find a way to make it up to him, but how could she do that when they weren’t supposed to have contact? This couldn’t be the end, could it?
“How is Rob taking things?”
“I think this space is probably a good thing, Jen.”
* * *
Jen gazed out the window, catching sight of Liz pointing up toward her apartment with someone she couldn’t identify. Sighing, she took her coffee to the back patio, eager to let the evening air work magic on her blues. The last thing she needed was to talk to the press about becoming the suspect in another fire or how she’d messed up Rob’s life.
Her Tinkerbell phone rang—her excursions line—as she passed. She grabbed Tinkerbell, hoping it was Rob, and wound the cord around her finger. It had been hard not leaving messages on his phone, respecting the edict of not contacting each other his boss had insisted upon.
Would he call when his boss lifted the edict? Was this him right now? Could she finally apologize? Ask to see him again? Find out how he was doing? Find out whether he was angry or if he felt it was worth it to kiss her, hold her hand, be with her?
“Hello?” she asked, hope lifting her voice.
“Jenny?” The familiar, husky breath caught her off-guard, sucking the wind from her lungs. It couldn’t be.
That voice. It had comforted her. Angered her. Caressed her. And she never wanted to hear it again because despite the years of finding herself, her own beauty and strength, as well as gathering her own space, she was instantly reduced to the woman she had once been—a scared and alone girl desperate for a scrap of what she thought might be love.
“Who is this?” she asked, playing dumb, her heart skittering in her ribcage, her cheeks burning. Her chin wobbled and she resolved that she would not let on how important he had once been.
“It’s Ken.” He said it gently, as though the power of his name might rock a great ship or create a sudden storm.
Rational-I’m-Over-It-Jen instantly won the battle with Bitter-Resentful-Jen. Closure. This weak man needed closure—with her—so he would be secure in his future relationship with her ex-best friend.
And she was over him. Had been forever. What she’d been holding on to was a fear that no one else could ever love her.
“How are you?” Pity dripped from his voice as if he felt she was some unhappy, fragile woman.
“I’m fine. Great, really.” She walked to her front window, pushing her curtains aside, laughing silently as Liz chased the man she’d been talking to up the street. What the hell was going on down there? She cranked her window open in hopes of overhearing some of the commotion. “And I need to thank you,” she said into the phone.
“For what?”
“For showing me that I wasn’t surrounding myself with true friends. That I needed to move on and live a real life. Now, when I meet real friends, I recognize them.” She gently touched the horde of brownies Mandy had brought over to cheer her up, laughing again at the Playgirl and box of chocolates from Amber.
Yes, she could see how real Blueberry Springs was now. They wanted to help without asking anything in return—nothing she couldn’t or wouldn’t give them willingly—and simply because they liked her and saw her as one of their own.
Friends. And all she’d had to do was let them in.
“So? What? You need my signature?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Ken’s voice was hard with hurt.
She was barely holding back her exasperation, frustrated by the way he was making this more difficult and by the way Liz had herded the sidewalk’s action out of earshot. Maybe it was a shoplifter from Wally’s. They’d had quite a few of them this year.
“I want to sell the house.”
“Maybe I want to move back.”
Silence.
“I’m with Kim now.”
Jen tossed her head back and laughed for the first time in days. Oh, that was rich. He thought she wanted him? Good luck!
“What?” His voice was hard, full of hurt again. “You took off. You didn’t even say goodbye. We were worried. But then again, that wasn’t the first time you ever ran away from your life.”
Rage boiled through her veins at the implications, at the way he was trying to load her with guilt, exclude himself from blame. “I’m sure Kimmy helped you through it.”
“It’s Kim now.”
La-di-da. “Then you’d better call me Jen. Not Jenny. That girl grew up and is gone.”
Silence.
“What exactly do you need, Ken?” She hated the way he’d always made her be the one to bring up any unpleasant business. If she’d ever wondered if she’d done wrong in the way she ran away, she knew right now without a doubt that it was one of the wisest decisions she’d ever made. That was one thing her good, old, reliable fight or flight responses had gotten right.
“Sign the house over to me.”
“Not bloody likely! I own half of that thing. Real estate values have gone up.”
“Yeah, and you haven’t contributed to payments in three years!”
“So you want to run off with our money?”
“You took the car.”
“And left you the truck.”
“Why are you making this so difficult?”
“Why are you such a cheating son of a bitch who lacks to gonads to stand up and deal with things that are difficult?”
“You’re one to talk. You ran away.”
“You were banging my best friend on the side!” She slammed down the phone, angry for how her voice had turned choked and weak. She was supposed to be over this. Better than this.
That son of a bitch.
The phone rang again and she took several deep breaths before wipi
ng her eyes and picking up Tinkerbell. “What?”
“I need you out of the picture obligation-wise.”
“And I need you to stay under that rock you keep crawling out from under. Talk to my lawyer.” She slammed down the fairy again, satisfied that she had an old-fashioned phone that could be slammed. She bet he couldn’t do that with his new fancy-pants life.
Damn. He didn’t know who her lawyer was. Mostly because she didn’t have one.
Tinkerbell rang again, the lights in her wings flashing. She smiled. Ken was on the run. Man, that felt gratifying.
“We don’t need lawyers,” he said. “You can just sign the papers and send them back.”
“I never sign anything without a lawyer. I’ll have him call you at this number to make arrangements,” she said coolly. “He’s very busy. It may take awhile.” Surely John’s offer to be her lawyer would extend to this situation as well. She only hoped she could afford him.
“Only because he deals with criminals like you,” Ken muttered.
“You can suck a bear’s hairy gonads, you jerk!” She slammed the phone down again. She picked it up, checked the caller ID on her cell and dialed him back.
“Make sure he knows you abandoned me,” Ken said, as though she’d never hung up, “and that I have no obligations to you legally or financially and haven’t since you left. There has been no contact and you can’t sue me. We’re dissolving this thing once and for all.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be sure he hears about your infidelity.”
“My lawyer said—”
“Well, you might want to get a better one, sweetheart. John is going to crush your ass.”
“The wedding is in two months.”
“Are you inviting me?” She listened to him sputter out excuses before hanging up the phone, grinning for the first time in days. She leaned out her window, calling Liz upstairs. It was time to talk to the press. She might not be able to apologize directly to Rob, but she knew someone who could grant her the next best thing.
* * *