by Jodi Thomas
Hallie laughed. “You think since I let you touch my chest and I kissed you once that I’ll just let you follow me home?”
Stitch frowned. “Something like that.”
Hallie stood up. “And what would I do with a man like you once I got you home and housebroke?”
“Keep me.” Stitch smiled.
Hallie moved up close and locked her arms around him. “I might just do that.” Then, in bright daylight, she kissed him. When she finally pulled away, her cheeks were red and her breath quick. “You do have a way with words, Shawn O’Toole.”
“I’ll not settle for a sample, Hallie.”
“I always figured you wouldn’t.”
“So, we go home together?”
“Together.”
Chapter 49
Wednesday evening
Second Street, Fort Worth
A few days after the trouble at Anderson Glen, at exactly six o’clock, Abe Henderson walked across the street to the schoolhouse and informed Miss Norman that in one hour they had a dinner engagement.
She stood and nodded, showing none of the surprise at seeing him reappear in her life that he’d expected.
“Would you like me to pick you up here or at the boardinghouse?”
“Here,” she said. “I have papers to finish, Mr. Henderson.”
He returned one hour later and waited while she collected her things.
She was wearing her Sunday dress and the shawl she wrapped around her looked new. Abe knew without asking that she’d been waiting for him to return. Henry had told him that she’d stopped by the store twice a day, but never asked a direct question about his return.
They walked to the café at the Grand and he told her all that had happened while he’d been gone. She listened, then told him of how she checked on the store and Henry had been very helpful.
He took her arm on their way home.
“Mr. Henderson, it seems your leg is better,” she said as they walked.
“I’ll always limp.” He turned toward his store and not the boardinghouse. “But I no longer consider myself a cripple.”
She smiled that tight little smile of hers. “Mr. Henderson, you were never a cripple. You were only a man with a limp.” She waited as he unlocked the store door and held it for her.
She walked past him and all the way back to the storeroom.
“I’ll leave you to get ready, Sara.” He’d said her name slowly as if it were a caress.
She moved into the little study while he stood just outside the open doorway and watched her take off her coat and pull the pins from her hair. He watched her in the mirror as she unbuttoned her dress, just the exact number of buttons he’d told her he liked unbuttoned.
When she turned, she smiled. “I missed you,” she whispered.
“I missed you.”
He moved close and circled her in his arms. “I’ve been thinking that we could save money if you moved upstairs. You wouldn’t have as far to walk to school and there is plenty of storage up there that we could turn into more space.”
She stiffened.
“No, Sara, don’t say a word. I’ve made up my mind. I want you with me. We can be married Sunday.” He moved his hands over her body. “I plan to have you in my bed until the day one of us dies. If you want a house, I can afford one, but I’m thinking the apartment will serve us well until the children begin to come.”
She pulled away. “I’ll hear the words, Abraham.”
He was tugging the lace off her beautiful breast. “What words?”
“The words you said to me when you left.”
He had trouble thinking much less remembering, but finally he managed, “I love you, Sara.”
She smiled. “I’ll hear them every day we’re married.”
She met his gaze, standing firm on her demand.
“All right. I promise.”
“And, we’ll still close at lunch just like you do now. Some days we’ll come in here and do what we like.
He moved his fingers lightly over the rise of her breasts. “I’ll agree to that.
“And you’ll ask me to marry you, not tell me.”
“I thought I was asking . . .”
She shook her head.
“All right, Miss Norman, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, and neither felt the need to say another word.
Chapter 50
Main Street
Duncan hadn’t seen Rose for almost a week and he’d been in a bad mood since the morning he’d watched her step on the train.
He was still hurting, but he had to go to Fort Worth and tell her it was about time she came home.
When he got to the Grand, she wasn’t in her room. He searched the café and the dining room, then walked across to Second Avenue and checked with Abe. No one had seen her all morning.
Crossing back to the garden of the hotel, he let himself in the balcony door of her bedroom. Exhausted, he spread out on the bed and fell asleep. He might be healing, but he wasn’t running at full speed yet.
An hour later when he woke, he felt her at his side. Without saying a word, he rolled over and kissed her.
She melted into his arms and gave him back a kiss better than he’d dreamed about. A deep ever-after kind of kiss he’d longed for.
When he finally pulled away, he brushed her beautiful hair back and said, “You’re my home, Rose. You’re where I belong.”
“And you, Duncan, are my one love. You always have been. It just took us both a while to realize it.”
He kissed her again with a passion that shocked him. His wild Texas Rose was in his arms and he never planned to let her go.
When she finally pulled away, he whispered, “Where have you been all my life?”
She laughed. “I’ve been right here waiting for you.”
* * *
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Chance of a Lifetime
Coming soon from Berkley!
Chapter 1
February 3, 2012
Harmony Public Library
Hundred-year-old elms cast spiderweb shadows from a dry creek bed to the brick corners of Harmony Public Library as Emily Tomlinson closed the blind over the back window of her office. Night was coming. Time for her to move to the front desk. Grabbing the black sweater that always hung on a hook beside her desk, she pulled it over her plain cotton blouse and charcoal trousers.
From now until closing, she’d feel wind blow in every time the library doors opened. Before she could settle, winter’s frosty breath reached her. Emily didn’t look up. Though she wondered who might be coming in just before closing, she didn’t want to see the night beyond the doors. She might be in her early thirties, but the child in her still feared that the night just might look back.
Sam Perkins leaned on his broom and whispered, “You didn’t make it out before dark, Miss Tomlinson. You want me to walk you to your car when you lock up? Ain’t no other staff here on Friday night, and that wind is liable to carry a slim little thing like you away.”
The janitor’s voice sounded rusty in daylight, but at night it turned haunting. Sam Perkins missed his calling as a narrator for ghost tales on a midnight radio show.
Emily didn’t like the possibility that everyone who worked at the Harmony Public Library knew of her fears, even the janitor. “No, I’ll be fine. Who just came in? I was too busy to notice.”
Sam shrugged. “Some guy in muddy boots and a cowboy hat worn low.”
Emily laughed. “That describes half the men in this town.”
The janitor moved on, having used up his ration of conversation for the evening. He wasn’t friendly, smelled of cigarettes most of the time, and had never read a single book as far as she knew, but he was the best janitor they’d had in the ten years since she’d accepted the post of head librarian. The others had been drifters or drunks, staying on
ly long enough to collect wages to move on, but Sam never missed a day’s work.
Emily closed her log and locked the cash drawer for the night. She had a pretty good idea who the cowboy with dirty boots was, as he’d come in on Fridays for as long as she could remember. Most of the time he didn’t say a word to anyone, but she knew he was there.
Walking around the worn mahogany desk, she crossed to the beautiful old curved staircase that climbed the north wall. Cradled beneath the arch of the stairs were all the new magazines and day-old newspapers from big towns across the state.
Emily had bought comfortable leather chairs from an estate sale so the area looked inviting, even though few visited. Most days, the wall of computers drew all the attention.
Sure enough, Tannon Parker was there. His big frame filled the chair, and his long legs blocked half the walk space. His worn, gray Stetson was pushed back atop black hair in need of cutting.
“Evening, Tannon,” Emily said with a grin. “How’s your mother?”
“About the same,” he said as he looked up slowly. “She didn’t know me. She called me by my dad’s name tonight.”
For a second, he reminded her of a little boy and not the man before her.
Emily wished they’d been close enough for her to brush his shoulder in comfort. He might be a tall, powerful man in his prime, but he seemed to carry the weight of the world tonight.
Only she couldn’t touch him. They weren’t friends anymore. She’d known him all her life, could name every member of his family, but one lie, one night, had passed between them years ago, and neither knew how to build a bridge over it.
“I’m sorry,” Emily managed to whisper, “about your mom. I’ll never forget those great cookies she used to make.” A memory from fifteen years past drifted back. She and Tannon had both been seniors on the high school newspaper staff. The night before the paper came out everyone always worked late. Mrs. Parker would tap on the school window and hold up a tray of cookies. Kids knocked each other down to open the door for her.
“Yeah.” Tannon lifted his paper as if he didn’t know what else to say.
Or maybe he was remembering another memory neither would ever forget. A memory that had more to do with pain and blood than cookies.
She straightened, feeling a little like she’d been dismissed. “We’ll be closing in twenty minutes. I’ll let you know when I have to lock up.”
He didn’t answer as she moved away and began collecting books left scattered on tables. When she climbed the stairs to where walls in a once-huge, old home had been removed to allow for long aisles of books, she saw a shadow leaning against the corner window.
“Franky, you still here?”
A girl’s giggle reached her before a boy of about fifteen stepped out tugging his partner-in-crime by the hand. “Is my dad here for me?” she asked.
Emily noticed the girl had pink lipstick smeared across her mouth, but she didn’t seem to care. She just stared at Franky like he was a rock star.
“If you two want to check out anything, you might hurry.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Franky winked at the girl. “We’ve already checked out.”
The girl giggled and ran down the stairs, joining her friends who were clustered around one of the computers. When she was too far away to hear, Emily whispered to Franky, “How long until you get a car?”
“Fourteen more months,” he said with a grin. “I can’t wait.”
“Me neither.” She laughed. “Did you get your homework done?”
“It’s Friday, Miss Tomlinson. No one would ever do homework on Friday. What if the end of the world came or something and you’d wasted your last few hours doing math or English. Monday morning I could be out fighting zombies or aliens for the last food on the planet and I’d be thinking, great! at least I got my homework done.”
Emily saw his logic. “I hadn’t considered that,” she said as she walked with him down the stairs.
“Don’t people like you worry about that kind of stuff?”
“People like me?”
“You know, older people.” Franky shook his shaggy hair. “You should. Tomorrow you could just open your front door and find yourself in a fight for your life.” He looked around. “Come to think of it, nobody would probably come in here. No food, or weapons, or medicine. That’s what we’ll all be fighting over when the end comes.”
She played along. To the boy she must have seemed as old as this building. “Zombies don’t read?”
He shook his head as if she were beyond dumb. “Miss Tomlinson, I fear you’re a goner. Zombies don’t do nothing but run around looking for live people to eat. They’ll rip your arm off, beat you to death, and then have you for dinner. Maybe you should think about getting a gun or a man to protect you.”
When they reached the desk, she handed him a book on the life and works of Hemingway. “Thanks for the advice, Franky. Here’s a book that might help with that English assignment that’s due Monday. Just in case the world doesn’t end.”
He looked at her with raised eyebrows. “How’d you know about that?”
Emily winked. “A zombie told me.”
Before he could ask more, a horn honked and he darted for the door. “Thanks,” he yelled back. “That’s my dad.”
The girls over by the computer wall all giggled and waved at him. Then, like a gaggle of geese, they all hurried out.
The library was suddenly silent. Emily began turning off the computers and closing doors. It had been a long twelve-hour day, but she had nowhere else to be. Friday nights were like every night for her. She’d go home, eat supper, and read.
As she tugged on her coat and reached for her keys, she noticed Tannon waiting.
He held the door as always for her, and she thanked him as he checked to make sure the lock clicked solid. She thought of walking on to her car, but waited. He might not be much for company, but Tannon was steady and safe. Whatever waited in the darkness wouldn’t appear if he walked beside her.
For once, he broke the silence. “The zombies wouldn’t come after you if the end came like the kid said.”
“You heard.”
“I couldn’t help it. You two were standing right above me. But you’d be safe if they were looking for people to eat. They’d go straight to the bakery across the street. The Edison sisters would keep them in food for weeks. Last month, I heard they had to move the counter out a foot because the sisters could no longer get behind it to wait on customers.”
Emily laughed. “That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“Just stating a fact. By the time the zombies finished with the third sister, they’d all be diabetic.”
“Then they’d cross the street to the library and eat me. Maybe I should buy a gun to fight them off. I’m not sure I’d want them in the library even if they were just looking for a snack. I’ve heard they often have limbs fall off as they walk.”
“I’d come get you long before then if there was trouble.”
She glanced up at him, almost firing back that once there had been trouble and he hadn’t come, only the memory of that night fifteen years ago was too painful to speak of. With a quick nervous move, she pulled her car door open and jumped in. The thank-you was lost in the slam of her door.
A few seconds later, she looked back at him in her rearview mirror. He was standing in the empty parking lot. He looked solid as an oak with his feet wide apart and his hands shoved deep into his Western-cut leather jacket. The stoplight caught her at the corner. She watched him as he turned and walked across the street to where he’d parked his pickup in front of the bakery.
It was Friday night and Tannon Parker was headed the same place she was.
Home alone.
Chapter 2
A few blocks away from the Harmony Library, Beau Yates finished the last song in his first set at Buffalo’s Bar and Grill. He ended with an old Gordon Lightfoot song from the seventies called “Sundown.”
Beau didn’t know why he loved
the song. Some of it didn’t even make sense to him, but it had a special kind of magic that made folks who heard it stop and sing along. When he finished the final chord, the crowd went wild with applause.
“You did it again.” His partner, Border Biggs, laughed. “I swear, man, you’re getting better and better and all these drunks know it.”
Beau shook his head. He couldn’t see the gift everyone kept telling him he had. He just followed where the music took him. He knew he was good and liked to perform, but in truth, he played more for himself than the people beyond the caged stage.
Six months ago, when his dad heard that he was playing at a bar, the old man waited in the parking lot one night and preached at full volume about how his only son was wasting his life and shaming his upbringing. At one point he even thanked the Lord for taking Beau’s mother so early so she wouldn’t feel the humiliation.
Beau might have cared if he remembered his mother. He wasn’t even sure she was dead; his dad had a way of stating wishes as if they were facts. But he just stood there as he had all his life and listened to the preaching as if his old man were a carnival barker pulling souls in for the next show.
Border Biggs, true friend that he was, had stood beside Beau until his old man had gotten tired and driven off. Then, as if they’d just been delayed a minute, Border had said, “How about one of them steaks at the truck stop? I’ve been hungry for so long my stomach is starting to gnaw on my ribs. Now that my brother is spending all his time over at his girlfriend’s house we may starve to death.”
“Maybe Big thinks we should feed ourselves. Maybe even buy the food. After all, we’re old enough to vote and almost old enough to drink.”
Border shook his shaved head. “I was afraid something like this would happen if he ever found a female who smiled at him. I knew it wasn’t likely, but I guess I’d better get used to the idea. Last time he came home all he brought was a gallon of milk and Fruit Loops. I hate Fruit Loops. If you ask me, only clowns should eat them things.”