THE STARLIGHT HILL COMPLETE COLLECTION: 1-8

by Bell, Heatherly

  “Gran’s so excited about this,” Diana said, helping Mandy take the luggage to the door.

  “About me losing my livelihood?” Mom asked idiotically.

  “No, Mom,” Diana deadpanned. “She’s very sad about that. But try to think what this is like for her. She’s got all three of us here together for the first time in decades.”

  “Since before the divorce,” Mom said. “Too bad this is what it took to do it.”

  “So be nice, Mom.” Mandy ordered.

  “I can’t act like I’m happy about this, girls. I’m fifty-eight years old and taking refuge with my mother.”

  Diana wanted to add a few choice words about her maybe being grateful to have a mother to take refuge with, but decided to be nice also.

  Gran greeted them at the door. “Darlings!”

  To Diana’s surprise, her mother just folded into Gran’s arms. “Oh, Mother.”

  “It’s going to be all right.” Gran patted Mom’s back.

  “Let’s get inside,” Diana said. “I want you to see the place.”

  Mom hadn’t taken two steps in the door when she stopped. “Oh my goodness.”

  Diana smiled. She felt pretty proud of what she’d done here. There were no more issues of Good Housekeeping littering the hallways or books and yarn on every available surface.

  Mandy ran into the spare bedroom. “Where’s my bed? And my posters of Justin Timberlake?”

  “I’m sorry, dear.” Gran followed her shouts. “It was just time to move on from the nineties. Diana said so. Doesn’t it look much nicer this way?”

  Amazing how much Diana had been able to do on a shoestring budget. But outside in Gran’s old shed, Diana had found a used chest of drawers which she’d cleaned and scrubbed. The thrift shop had a daybed on sale and Diana had managed to whittle the owner down to a reasonable price. She’d found a small blue area rug discounted at the department store and a set of irregular but perfectly workable bed covers.

  “I’d still like to paint in here. I’ll get around to it,” Diana said.

  “It all looks wonderful, Mother!” Mom said. “And to think I was worried about you.”

  “Well,” Gran said. “It was nice of you to worry, anyway. Diana did most of this.”

  “You helped, Gran.” Diana put an arm around Gran’s shoulders.

  “Helped? I just assisted.”

  “Where did you put everything?” Mom asked. “There had to be boxes and boxes of things.”

  “I took my bed back to my studio, and most everything is now boxed up and packed in the shed outside,” Diana explained.

  “You take the daybed in here, Mom. For now I’ll sleep on the couch,” Mandy said.

  “Maybe Mandy should stay with Diana.” Mom turned to Diana.

  Was it selfish that she didn’t want her sister around when she could have Scott instead? “Oh no. My place is way too small.”

  “It’s quaint,” Gran added.

  “But it will be just like old times, the two of you rooming together,” Mom said.

  “Nah, I don’t want to cramp Diana’s style.” Mandy winked.

  “You won’t cramp my style.” Diana rolled her eyes.

  “I actually meant your love life, not your style. You’ve got great style if this room is any indication,” Mandy said.

  “Is there someone special?” Mom’s eyes sparkled with bat-shit-crazy mother of the bride fire. “Have you finally met someone new? Oh my stars above, you have!”

  “She has,” Mandy said. Then when Diana threw Mandy a death stare, she playfully stuck out her tongue. “Maybe you should measure Diana again. Just in case.”

  Diana stepped back. “You’re not coming near me.”

  “I knew it would happen, sooner or later!” Mom twirled around the living room floor, high as a kite. “You can’t give up on love!”

  Mom was about to ruin everything for Diana again and put some kind of a wedding jinx on her. She didn’t want to rush into anything, but only enjoy what they had together. Whatever it was. “I don’t want to be the lady with the wedding dress hanging in my closet, waiting for the proposal. I’ve already done that once. I think we can safely say it’s bad luck.”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Mandy added. “You never stop to think how creepy that is. What’s a guy going to think about a girl who already comes with her own wedding dress?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mom said. “I’ll keep it in my closet.”

  Diana and Mandy exchanged horrified looks. Diana spoke at the same time as her sister did. “Mom, you didn’t!”

  “Yes I did! I saved one dress. For each of my daughters.”

  “So that’s what was in those garment bags you carried like live ammunition?” Mandy asked.

  “Can you blame me? Everything’s going to be auctioned off but those two dresses!”

  “But I don’t need a wedding dress!” Diana groaned.

  “Fine, fine, I know that’s what you say right now. It will keep until you’re ready. You take your time.”

  Wait. Had Diana’s mother actually told her to take her time? It felt like the whole world had shifted off its axis for a second.

  “You’re so right,” Gran, who had been mostly observing the volley of words back and forth, spoke up. “If it’s worth having, it’s worth waiting for. Isn’t it?”

  From her mouth to Mom’s ears.

  Diana didn’t stay much longer since she had to get up at the crack of dawn again. She drove the short distance back to her home. Sleep didn’t come easily the first night in five that she wasn’t sleeping next to a big badass of a man. So not good. Only a few days out of her life and she already missed him lying next to her, one long arm thrown over her waist like he owned her. Her thoughts ran to the accident she’d witnessed and she picked up her phone to text Scott, but changed her mind and put it down. Then she picked it back up again. And blew out a breath.

  This was what it would be like if they were in a serious relationship. She’d worry about him every night, and go to bed anxious the nights he wouldn’t be at her side. Good thing we aren’t in a relationship. The thought almost made her laugh out loud. No matter what she’d said, this thing with Scott had turned out to be far more than she expected. She’d been an idiot to think she could do casual with any man but least of all him.

  He wasn’t the kind of man who played it safe, who walked into danger only when he had no choice. He acted first, thought about it later. His actions ran to the selfless every time, and for some reason he didn’t seem to consider his own life worth playing it safe. She put her phone on the bed next to her on the spot where Scott would normally lie, and wondered about that disconcerting thought until she couldn’t fight sleep another second.

  * * *

  “I think you know you’re up Shit Creek.” Ty’s arms were folded across his chest and on a pissed off scale from one to ten he looked to be hovering at around five-hundred.

  Scott sat across from Ty in his windowless office. “Suspend me.”

  Scott didn’t give a shit anymore. The kid was going to make it, even if a broken leg was going to keep him from driving for a while. If Scott got suspended, he’d go as a volunteer to the wildfires. Maybe this was for the best. What he wouldn’t do was regret sitting with the little snot until hazmat had cleared the area. The kid had been scared and alone down in that car while the first responders waited above him, safe and sound. That wasn’t what this gig was about. Yeah, he understood safety first. But he’d really only risked his own life and last time he checked he had a right to do that.

  “You think I want to, you little shit?” Ty growled.

  “You should.”

  “Maybe not. What if I want you near me so I can knock you out next time you try something stupid like that?”

  “Ha. Just try it.”

  “I mean it, Turlock. Flat on the ground. Lights out.”

  “Yeah, you wish.” He felt good, really alive, for the first time in years.

  Ty fixed him with his
Killer Look, but then surprised Scott by laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You. You remind me of me a couple of years ago. I was such a shithead.”

  Was? “So now you’re calling me a shithead.”

  “Oh hell yeah. And I have one important question, soldier. You better think about this one and answer it honestly because your career is on the line. Do you or do you not have a death wish?”

  “Not.” It was reasonable for Ty to ask that question. He couldn’t have a bomb ready to go off at any time anywhere near his men.

  “What about PTSD?”

  Scott waited a beat. “Yes. No. I mean, not anymore.” I don’t think.

  “You hesitated.”

  “I don’t have it.” Scott was fairly sure Jake’s problem had been PTSD. Untreated PTSD mixed in with a bit of alcoholism to boot. Not a good combo.

  “I said I don’t want to suspend you, but it’s not up to me. If I let this go, it won’t look good. You’re suspended— two days.”

  “Worth it.”

  “Yeah.” Ty now studied him like a fly under a microscope. “Look, we all have regrets. Things we would have done differently.”

  True. But Scott had accepted losing the friends he had on the battlefield, painful as it had been. He’d accepted the scars and missing limbs of some of his friends. Jake was different. What had been wrong didn’t show up on the outside but it was still missing. It shouldn’t have happened here at home where they were safe. Unless ‘safe’ was a bedtime story they all told each other so they could sleep at night. Ty pulled out the Scotch bottle he secretly kept under his desk and slammed two flasks beside it.

  He poured for both of them and raised the flask. “To the fallen.”

  “To the fallen.” Scott slammed it down.

  Ty’s glacial eyes were boring into Scott. “Some make it back and some don’t.”

  “Jake made it back.”

  “Did he?”

  It was the question of the hour. Some would say Jake had never made it back. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

  Scott felt some of his euphoria evaporating. He’d felt good for a few minutes, but now Ty would try to steal even that away from him.

  “We lose men on the battlefield, and we lose them at home every day. It isn’t right, but it happens,” Ty said.

  “I would have been with him that weekend. We were supposed to go fishing.”

  “Right. It wouldn’t have happened that weekend.”

  Finally someone understood. “Exactly.”

  “But it would have happened the next weekend.”

  Scott didn’t have an answer because he was beginning to think both Ty and Wallace were right. Unless he’d followed Jake around for the rest of their lives, Scott couldn’t have stopped him from taking his life.

  Ty stood up and slapped a paper on his desk. He pushed it toward Scott. “I’m part of this organization. You should be too.”

  “Wounded Warriors?” Scott picked up the pamphlet.

  “It helps.” With that Ty left the room leaving Scott to stare from the pamphlet to the closed door and back again.

  19

  On Tuesday morning, Diana waited on Ophelia, who showed up for her regular order of donuts and bagels she took to the business focus group she led at the Chamber of Commerce. She had a copy of one of the calendars with her.

  “For you.” She handed Diana a calendar. “I think you’ll be happy with the finished product.”

  “I don’t see any possible way I couldn’t be.”

  She smiled. “Will my article be ready soon?”

  “It’s ready now,” Diana said. “But I have two more days until your deadline, so I’m polishing and editing.”

  “Just don’t polish and edit the thing to death.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s an article for the website, not a peace treaty. I know you want it to be perfect, but sometimes you need to let it go.”

  Everybody was an editor these days. “I don’t want to give you anything but my best work.”

  “And I don’t doubt you will.” Ophelia took her box of pastries and left, leaving a lull between customers.

  Diana picked up the calendar and went straight to September. Scott looked even better than she remembered, none of his scarring showing but all his hotness steaming up the page. He had his head slightly bent under his helmet, showing only his near perfect jawline. No smile, just serious and sexy rolled into one and splattered all over the page. She might be drooling. As far as she was concerned, it could be September all year long.

  Speaking of Mr. September, she wondered if he was okay. She realized he had to be, or she would have heard something by now. But she hadn’t actually heard from the man himself. Wondering if he might be asleep at the station after a long night, she still pulled out her cell phone and sent him a text.

  I seem to have lost my way to the shower again.

  Just when she’d begun to give up on a reply, he texted her back:

  You are directionally challenged. I can help with that.

  She smiled and put her phone away. He did help with that, and so many other things. Diana had brought her notebook with her and planned to work at one of the tables in the bakery when her shift was over. She’d also told Mrs. St. Michaels to meet her here with the draft of her first few chapters so that Diana could look them over and give some feedback.

  And of course, Diana wanted to talk to Sophia. Gen was back to work on a lighter schedule, so Diana didn’t see Sophia every day. She’d seen her once since the night of the ruined dinner, but they’d been like ships passing. Today, she’d make time to talk. Diana couldn’t get past the fact that she may have inadvertently said something that caused Sophia to run off halfcocked. When Sophia waltzed in for her shift, Diana was busy filling orders and as usual they easily made the switch-off so smoothly the customer hardly seemed to notice when Diana took the order and Sophia rang them up.

  “Thank you, Jerry! Have a nice day, and come again!” Sophia sang out and went to the next customer in line.

  Diana hung up her apron, and went around to the other side of the counter. She took out her notebook and Alphasmart and set them on a table near the window.

  “Are you staying?” Sophia asked when the last of the customers had gone.

  “I’m meeting Mrs. St. Michaels here today to read her book.”

  “Mrs. St. Michaels wrote a book?”

  Diana nodded. “She’s working on it. Kind of a memoir.”

  “Wow, that’s weird.” She took out her phone and her fingers started flying.

  “Are you posting that to Twitter?”

  “Maybe,” she said without looking up. “I know a few people that might be in it.”

  Diana pretended to be busy, but her mind was grappling for an easy way to bring up the subject. “I kind of heard about what happened at dinner.”

  “Of course you did.” Sophia didn’t look up.

  “I feel like maybe I misled you. When I said I wouldn’t let anyone tell me what to do.”

  Sophia looked up. “It wasn’t anything you said.”

  “Are you sure? The truth is it took me a long time to get over disappointing my dad. We were never really close, and he shut me out after the divorce. I was used to disappointing him, in other words. Things were different with us, but you and your dad seem to get along. I’d hate for you to make a quick decision—”

  “This isn’t quick. Or sudden. It’s been coming.”

  “Is your dad upset?”

  Sophia snorted. “One could say that.”

  “And you’re not upset by that?” Kind of difficult to believe, given what Scott had told her about Sophia. She was a good daughter and not exactly a rebel. Maybe a little too addicted to social media, but who wasn’t?

  She looked out the storefront window. “I was upset, for a long time. The whole thing was making me sick. Depressed. Honestly? I wasn’t sure I could go through with telling him. I figured
I’d just flunk, and he’d find out and get me a tutor. Throw more money at the problem. But then we were at dinner and I don’t exactly know what happened. I guess I looked around the table and I saw a bunch of happy people. Wallace and Gen, in love. Billy and Brooke, about to have a baby. Scott finally in a job where he can help people twenty-four seven. Even my dad with Eileen. Everyone at that table had what they wanted out of life except for me. I got so pissed off I couldn’t wait another minute to say something.”

  “Sometimes timing is everything.”

  “I’m sorry I ruined dinner, but I’m not sorry I finally had the guts to say what I’ve wanted to say for years. I didn’t want to disappoint my dad, but like you said, I’m the one who has to live my life. I think once he realizes how miserable it was all making me, he’ll come around.”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  “I’ve got a great dad. He loves me, I know. I wish he trusted me to live my own life.”

  “And do you know what you want to do with your life?”

  “Of course. I think I always have. I want to run my dad’s restaurant, just like my mother did. I’m just like her so I’m good at it, and it makes me happy.”

  Diana swallowed around the lump in her throat. Writing had always made her happy, but when others became involved in the process, something had changed. Something that brought her joy somehow wasn’t good enough. And then came the day when writing became a chore and the words dried up.

  The bell jingled and Mrs. St. Michaels walked in. “Hello, girls! I’m ready for the New York Times bestseller list. Kidding!”

  “Who’s in your book, Mrs. St. Michaels?” Sophia asked. “Is Stu in it? The guy who took the toilet?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know? That’s my little secret. You’ll have to buy the book, won’t you?”

  Mrs. St. Michaels sat across from Diana and pulled a stack of papers out of her briefcase. “Chapters one through five.”

  “You’ve been busy.” In a week, she’d done better than Diana had in a year.

  “It’s so much fun, isn’t it? Writing? I never realized. But I guess you would know.”