by Dana Marton
“Coat kept me alive,” she told him. “Don’t mock it.”
Smartest thing would have been to turn her head and pretend she was watching the snow outside, but she couldn’t make herself look away.
A flipping decade. In some ways, the blink of an eye; in others, not nearly enough to forget how badly Harper had betrayed her.
His eyes were the same, but the rest of his face had grown more angular, more masculine, more handsome, if possible. His lips still looked as mesmerizing as ever, and she had trouble pretending that she didn’t remember how many times those lips had kissed hers. How many spots on her body he had kissed.
Don’t go there.
She loosened the top button of her coat. After the freezing temperatures outside, the cab was too warm.
Oblivious, he reached for the dashboard and cranked up the heat another notch, turning down the music while he was at it.
How many times had they sat in his old truck, listening to the same kind of music? Or barely listening because they’d been busy doing other things. First boy she’d ever slept with. A monumental step to her, which, as it turned out, had meant nothing to him.
He leaned forward to see the top half of her face better, the two-inch strip between her nose and forehead that her scarf and hat left uncovered. “Do you still feel faint?”
“I didn’t faint. You knocked me over with your plow.” She shot him the murderous glare she’d learned in drama class, one that could not be misinterpreted even from the back of the theater. “You almost killed me.”
She crossed her arms for good measure, no easy task in the bulky coat, but she managed.
“I’m Harper Finnegan,” he offered.
“Allie,” she mumbled through the scarf as the overhead light went out, shrouding her in blessed darkness at last.
“Nice to meet you, Abby.” Harper finally turned his attention from her and shifted the truck into gear.
He had to plow a patch clean before he could turn around and head back the way he’d come. Allie stared forward as myriad snowflakes whizzed by, lit by his headlights, small sparks of light against a background of darkness, as if she were in a spaceship, flying through a field of stars. The moment had an odd serenity to it, even if he drove faster than Allie considered prudent under current weather conditions.
“I’ll drop you off someplace warm where you can defrost,” he said. “Then I’ll come back and save your car.”
Not the first time Harper Finnegan had filled her head with promises. Not the first time he’d taken her for a ride. At least this truck likely belonged to the town instead of being stolen. He seemed to have a job now—plow operator. So maybe he’d matured.
Or maybe he was on a work-release program from prison.
Allie stayed silent and focused on thawing out her extremities. She wiggled her toes. If they moved, that meant they hadn’t frozen off, right? She worked on them, one by one, then wiggled her frozen nose too.
“You all right?” He was looking at her from the corner of his eye.
He probably thought she had a twitch. Let him. “Mhm.”
They zoomed by another sign on the side of the road. WELCOME TO BROSLIN, HOME TO 3211 HOPEFUL PEOPLE.
Because Allie liked to think she knew how to be polite, she resisted a groan and instead silently rolled her eyes. When had Broslin gotten this hokey? The place had been a typical Pennsylvania small town when she’d lived here. Looked like someone had started a feel-good movement in the past decade. Either that, or hippies had invaded.
If they had, they hadn’t tie-dyed anything. Yet.
Warm light called from the windows of the houses as they drove by, the chimneys puffing smoke. St Patrick’s Day banners flew on every phone pole in front of the quaint snow-laden brick houses. The streets looked as if Thomas Kinkade picked up a leprechaun by his ankle and swung him around until he threw up shamrocks, rainbows, and pots of gold all over everything. Since a lot of Irish had settled in the town in the eighteen hundreds, St. Patrick’s Day had always been something the locals considered a “serious shindig.”
Allie read the banner hanging over the street. HOPE MAKES YOU STRONGER.
Aaand…she couldn’t bite her tongue any longer. “What’s with all the signs?”
“Township put them up in honor of Hope Hill Acres. We just got a brand-new rehab facility for veterans. People want to show their support for the vets coming in.”
Allie took back every disparaging thought, glad she hadn’t mocked the signs out loud, talking as little as possible so Harper wouldn’t recognize her voice. Unfortunately, she had to ask one more thing.
“Could you please drop me off at the bed-and-breakfast on Main Street?”
She shouldn’t have bothered. Had Harper Finnegan ever done what people told him to do? Hardly.
He didn’t deviate from his usual this time either. He sailed right by Allie’s accommodations and turned at the corner, not stopping until he reached Finnegan’s on the next block.
“Shannon at the B and B doesn’t serve food past eleven in the morning. You need a hot meal. Tell them to put it on my tab. Welcome to Broslin, Abby. We hope you’ll like it here.”
Back when they’d been teenagers, his I’m-the-town-bad-boy-and-I-know-it smile had been devastating. The adult, masculine version curving his lips now…
Allie’s head would have to stop pounding first before she could find a word to truly describe him, so she settled for heart-stopping. That smile and those stormy Irish Sea eyes brought back a million memories she’d spent a lot of years locking away.
Not going to fall for this again.
“Thank you,” she said, to prove she could speak.
She refused to be mesmerized by a guy who’d come within an inch of running her over with a snowplow. The very same guy who’d broken her heart ten years back—made her love him, then threw her away.
“If you give me your keys,” he was saying, “I’ll go and tow your car to the B and B. I don’t want the big plow to sideswipe it in the morning by accident. If the snow buries it, Eddie might not see it.” He kept watching her face, narrowing his eyes as if that would give him the ability to see through the scarf. “Have you been to Broslin before?”
She dug into her pocket and handed him the keys. “Thank you.”
Then she pushed the door open and stumbled out of the truck half backward. Caught herself. Did not fall. Score. She slammed the door closed behind her before he could ask any more questions she didn’t want to answer.
As Harper drove away, Allie drew her first easy breath since he’d bent over her in that snowdrift. Her lungs immediately protested the shockingly cold air. The wind threw fresh snow into her face. She wrapped the coat tighter around herself before reaching for her purse…grabbing nothing but buffalo fur.
Are you kidding me?
“Wait!” She lurched after Harper, lifting a ten-pound arm as the taillights disappeared in the swirling snow at the end of the street.
An icy gust slammed into her, bringing tears into her eyes and, she was pretty sure, freezing the snot in her nostrils into icicles all over again. She looked after the truck she could no longer see, then back at the pub.
An orange poster with wiggly green font covered most of the door, four shamrocks decorating the corners, a smiley face used in lieu of punctuation. WE HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY.
Right.
She had no intention of going inside and running into Harper’s parents or one of his brothers. She was done with anything Finnegan. For life. But as she swiveled on her bootheels to walk to the B and B, a black SUV turned down the end of the street.
The little hairs stood straight up on Allie’s nape.
“No-no-no.”
She squinted against the snow but couldn’t see if the vehicle was the same car that’d been following her on and off for the past two days. It was the closest look she’d managed to steal, but with the windshield wipers going, she still couldn’t make out if the driver behind the wheel was Zan
e.
The SUV slowly rolled forward.
“Ah, hell, here we go.” Allie reached for the door behind her. “Finnegan’s it is.”
Would Calamity Jane be intimidated? Not hardly, dagnabbit.
Allie pushed the door ajar and wrestled her coat through the opening. A gust of icy air blew in snow behind her, and people turned to look, but she paid them little attention. She glanced over her shoulder instead.
The SUV passed by with a middle-aged guy behind the wheel. He craned his neck as if he was looking for the closest parking spot to the door. Not Zane.
Okay. She could leave.
Except…the heat. And, oh God, the delicious aromas in the air. Her stomach growled, insisting that she’d already made her grand entrance and drawn the attention of every person at the pub, so she might as well get a hot meal.
As Allie stepped farther in, she could almost hear the jokes. So, a grizzly bear walks into a bar…
She didn’t want to make eye contact, so she looked at the updated décor instead. The place had always been a little too quintessentially Irish for an Italian girl, with its green booths and Sláinte signs, but it had been Irished up even more for St. Patrick’s Day—leprechauns, and flags, and shamrocks, oh my.
She stepped aside as two women in their early twenties passed by her on their way out, embroiled in an intense conversation. “He says he wants to be friends with benefits. Except, he wants me to be exclusive. But he’s still going to live with his girlfriend.”
“Tell him to wrap his benefits in barbed wire and shove them up his ass,” the girlfriend advised. “You can do better, and—”
The door closed behind them, cutting off the rest. Allie wrestled off her coat and hung it on the polished dark wood coatrack by the door, then her scarf and hat too.
Word to the wise: If you want to keep a low profile, don’t wear spurs that jingle.
She kept her head down as she hurried to the nearest booth, encouraged by the fact that nobody called her name. Maybe she’d changed enough so people wouldn’t recognize her. Maybe Harper’s parents had retired.
Instead of Sean Finnegan, Harper’s father, a hot twenty-something college kid was pouring the green beer and Guinness at the tap. But just as Allie thought luck had finally smiled on her, Rose Finnegan burst forth from the kitchen, still a stunning redhead at what had to be around sixty: slim figure, startling blue eyes, hair pinned up in a regal twist.
“Sliders coming up in a second,” she called to the bartender before turning to the room.
And suddenly, it was too late to run.
A little voice in Allie’s head began to sing “Dead Girl Walking” from the musical Heathers.
She had one hope left: maybe Rose wouldn’t recognize her either.
Last time Allie had been in Broslin, she’d had dark hair—courtesy of her Italian heritage—in wild-girl spikes. She’d let it grow since to the middle of her back, colored it light brown, an in-between shade that worked for most of the historical characters she portrayed. It spared her from having to wear wigs that were a pain to keep in place and had to be stored carefully, not a possibility for the small trunk of her car.
When she’d last lived in Broslin, she’d been skinny as a microphone stand. She’d filled out since in the chest and hips. Back in the day, she’d been the queen of makeup, had desperately wanted to look older for Harper. Now she went au naturel—for her job’s sake. She couldn’t play Betsy Ross or Martha Washington with cat eyeliner and bright red lipstick.
She shook her hair forward to cover as much of her face as possible while Rose marched over, her gaze snapping to Allie’s boots.
“You got a horse out there in this weather?” she asked with the same tight expression as her son had.
“No horse. Long story.”
“Hm.” Rose looked up.
Here we go. I’m so sunk. And she was.
“Allie Bianchi.”
The words were spoken matter-of-factly, without a hint of good to see you in the tone. If Allie was hoping for a friendly welcome, she wasn’t going to get it from Harper’s mother.
“Mrs. Finnegan.”
Rose looked her over as she would have looked at a bag of dog poop pranksters left on her doorstep. “You’ve grown up. What brings you back to town?”
The unspoken second half of the question—And when are you leaving?—hung in the air.
“Work.”
The woman’s expression did not warm. “Are you here with your father?”
“My father passed away.”
To her credit, Rose Finnegan didn’t say good riddance. Of course, neither did she say I’m sorry.
In a blink, the past ten years disappeared, and, once again, Allie wanted to protest that she was nothing like her father. But, like back then, she didn’t think anyone would believe her.
“How long are you staying?” Rose asked when Allie wouldn’t volunteer any further information.
“Leaving tomorrow.”
Harper’s mother slid a laminated menu on the table.
Clearly, one day had been the right answer. Like when stage actors caught a twenty-four-hour cold that messed with their performance. They hated it, but they hated it with the appreciation that it was better than being sick with the flu for much longer.
Allie cleared her throat and ordered her old favorites on the gather ye rosebuds while ye may principle. “A bowl of baked potato soup, please, and a side of stuffed cabbage. Sprinkled with bacon.”
“Drink?” Impatience saturated the single word.
“Just water, please.” Then the devil made Allie add with a smile, “Harper said to put it on his tab.”
“You ran into him already?”
Rose’s gaze hardened. Flinty. She could be that. “I thought he was out helping the town plows because they can’t keep up with the snow.”
Allie squinted.
So, he wasn’t one of the town plow drivers? He was a volunteer? Working in this weather out of the goodness of his heart. She had trouble processing the unlikely thought. The image didn’t match the Harper she remembered.
“My car slid off the road. It’s stuck in a snowbank,” she told Rose. “Harper brought me in.”
“He’s a police detective now.” Rose’s words took on a warning tone. “Did he tell you that?”
He most definitely did not. Good thing Allie didn’t have her soup yet, or she might have choked. She blinked at Rose. Harper? A cop? In what universe? Inconceivable.
Oh God. She was dead.
She’d died when she’d fallen. Hit her head. Frozen to death. This was some hallucination her brain was making up as the lights were slowly blinking out in her mind…
She pinched herself under the table. Hard.
The pain was definitely not imaginary. She drew a ragged breath.
“How is the rest of the family?” she stuttered out the words, because she refused to let Rose Finnegan—or any other Finnegan, for that matter—stun her into silence.
“Jack left the Navy last year when his second daughter was born.” Rose’s lips curved into a syrupy smile. “He was a Navy SEAL. And Kennan just returned from his last tour with the Marines. Mark is still in the Army. Sean Jr. is with the National Guard. Ian works private security in Harrisburg for the governor.”
Her message could not have been clearer if she shouted it. Don’t mess with my family.
“You must be proud of them.” Allie was committed to staying nonconfrontational. No need to draw more attention than they already had.
“Damn straight.” Rose snapped up the menu from the table and marched away.
Okay. All Right. The worst was over.
Allie made herself relax and managed it for all of five seconds before some college kid who couldn’t have been more than twenty slipped into the booth across from her.
“Hey, beautiful. Are you new in town?”
He had short dark hair, thick dark lashes, and bedroom eyes if she’d ever seen a pair.
“Joey Murano.” His smile was the devil’s. “How about I show you around the place?”
“I left my snowshoes at home.”
He leaned forward and looked over every inch of her above the table until she became self-conscious of the way she filled out the pink sweater she’d put on for the drive. In mid-March those stubborn winter pounds still showed no sign of wanting to leave.
Neither did Joey Murano.
“Nothing nicer than Main Street and the square in falling snow. We can stop by my place to warm up if you get chilly.” He added a suggestive grin.
Rose flew by and whacked him on the back of the head with a dish towel in passing. “Don’t you start trouble, Joey. I’ll be seeing your mother in church on Sunday.”
Allie stiffened as if she’d just been slapped instead of the kid. Did Rose Finnegan think that Joey had been in danger? That Allie ruined men wherever she went? Still thought that Allie had contaminated Harper, and that she was the reason he’d become the black sheep of the family back in the day?
So, fine, her father had been the one who’d taught Harper how to hot-wire a car. And how to pick locks. Her father had been the one who bought Harper smokes and beer whenever Harper helped him out with a “job.” But what had Allie had to do with any of that?
“Sorry,” Joey mumbled. “Was just trying to be welcoming.”
As he slunk away, Allie swallowed the injustice of other people’s opinions of her, the old hurt that bubbled right up all over again. All she’d ever wanted to be was just a regular, honest, hardworking person—someone respected. Trouble was, nobody in this town would ever believe her.
One. Single. Day. Then she could leave.
She could handle a day, she thought, one second before her high school arch nemesis, Brittany Wallingford, walked in.
Chapter Three
Harper kept his back to the squall, holding the phone to his ear with one hand while he checked the tow hitch on the back of his pickup with the other.
“You sure you don’t need help?” Murph asked on the other end of the line.
“You sure you don’t want your badge back? You seem to miss serving the public.”