Confessions of a Small-Town Girl

by Christine Flynn

  Leaving had still been his plan when he’d come up from the barn and seen the women buzzing like bees around the tables outside. That had been when he’d caught sight of Kelsey laughing with his sister and one of his cousins. He didn’t know if he hadn’t wanted to interrupt because his sister looked as if she were having a good time or because Kelsey did, but he’d taken his cousin Ed’s bet on a game of horseshoes and the rest of the day had disappeared.

  Now with everyone piling into their cars to head for the lake and Kelsey waving goodbye to a carload of his relatives from the seat beside him in his truck, he had the feeling he should have stuck to his original plan.

  “You wanted to go to the lake, didn’t you?”

  “It’s okay.” As if to forgive him for having told everyone he needed to get her back to her car—as if it were her fault they wouldn’t be joining them, she flashed him a totally unconvincing smile. “I’ve seen fireworks before.”

  “If you want to go, we will. After today,” he conceded, “I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. I had a great time. I did,” she insisted, mistaking the reluctance behind his offer for doubt. “It would have helped if you’d warned me, though.”

  “About what?”

  “You didn’t just want me there so your aunt wouldn’t nag you about finding yourself a woman. You wanted me there so she and your sister wouldn’t gang up on you about your job.”

  Sam kept his expression impassive as he put the truck into gear and pulled out onto the road. He had no idea how she’d handled what she’d heard. He didn’t know either if he was sorry she’d been privy to whatever they’d had to say, or sorry that he’d subjected her to it. All he knew for certain was that he could feel his defenses rising like missiles in a silo.

  They had no sooner locked into place, however, than he glanced over to see her adjusting the harness of her seat belt. The accusation he’d heard in her tone was there only because he’d sent her into a situation unarmed, not because she had joined ranks. She wasn’t saying a word about how dangerous his work was or about how his family worried about him being undercover for so long. Especially this last time.

  He also knew that he was guilty as charged. That didn’t relax his guard, however, or make him any more inclined to deal with the frustration he inevitably felt having to defend the life he’d made for himself. He thrived on what he did. And as for their worry, while he was doing his job, they had their own, neatly ordered lives. Except for his sister, he mentally qualified. Since she’d lost her husband, her life wasn’t so enviable anymore.

  “She’s having a hard time, isn’t she.”

  There was no question in her tone. All he heard in the simple statement was understanding, and an unspoken agreement to leave his family’s objections to his job alone.

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “I think so.” Thoughts of Megan added an even sharper tug of guilt. His sister’s presence had been another reason he hadn’t been crazy about going to his aunt and uncle’s today. He never knew what to say to her. He felt totally helpless when it came to dealing with emotional pain. Especially in a woman. Most especially in a woman he cared about.

  “I don’t talk to her about anything but the house,” he admitted. When he wanted to know how she was coping, he would ask someone else. His mom. His aunt. “So I’m not really sure.”

  “You talk to her about her sons,” she reminded him. “The monster trap?” she coaxed, leaning forward to catch his eyes. “From what she said, I think you’ve helped ease her mind about the nightmares as much as you did the boys’.” A hint of something that sounded almost like admiration softened her tone. “I don’t imagine there’s anything more important to her than knowing her boys can sleep at night. What you did for them was huge.”

  Guilt jerked hard. He didn’t deserve anyone’s appreciation. Had he not been on a forced leave, his sister would have hired a contractor and he wouldn’t have been working on the house at all. “I just happened to be there when Tyler asked his mom about the closets.”

  “Exactly,” she agreed. “You were there. And you had a solution that gave them control. I don’t think she feels as if she has a whole lot of that right now.

  “So,” Kelsey murmured, thinking it best to ease away from how much his sister and his nephews might need him. She knew how easily he could withdraw, and there was something she needed to ask.

  Dusk was rapidly turning to darkness as they followed the road leading to the lake and to town. Soon fireworks would be visible over the tops of the trees. She wondered if they might see them as they passed, or if they would pass the area before they started and she would miss them completely.

  She really would have loved to see the display.

  “Is this one of the holidays you don’t like?”

  In the pale evening light, she watched him glance toward her. “What makes you think I don’t like it?”

  “You said this morning that you always work holidays. I just wondered if there are some memories that make you want to avoid this one more than others.”

  Sam didn’t mind talking to her about the mill. He certainly didn’t mind talking about her diary. He didn’t even mind talking with her about his family and that wasn’t something he was inclined to do with anyone. But this particular territory lead to a minefield.

  “I don’t think of any of them any differently than the rest,” he admitted, fully intending to skirt that particular piece of his past. He kept his tone nonchalant, his eyes on the darkening ribbon of road. “When I first joined the force, I worked every holiday because I had to. I was a rookie, so I was always assigned the lousy shifts.” That circumstance alone had kept him from joining the others at turkey- and ham-laden tables. For the first year, anyway. “What I remember most about the Fourth of July is working crowd control and hauling in drunk drivers.”

  “But you haven’t been a rookie for a long time.”

  Evading, he reached to turn on the radio. “I guess I just like what I do.”

  The lively strains of a John Philip Sousa march had barely filled the air before Kelsey reached over and turned the radio back down. “That’s not fair.”

  “What?” he grumbled. “I just want some music.”

  “What you want is to avoid the subject. You’re really very good at that, too, by the way. But you don’t have a diary I can pick the lock on,” she pointed out, reminding him of how he’d come by her own secrets. “All I’d like to know is why you like your job better than being with your family. Or having one of your own to celebrate with,” she added quietly, wondering about the woman he’d been married to so briefly all those years ago. No one had said a word about her. “Your aunt and your sister said you used to love holidays, but this is the first one you’ve spent with the family in years.”

  That was only because he’d been put on leave and couldn’t work. She didn’t doubt for a moment that was why he hadn’t stayed away this time, too. What she didn’t understand was why he felt the need to keep that not-so-subtle distance in his relationships, or why it mattered so much to her that he did. She just knew she needed to know what had created his aversion to all the things she’d yearned for so deeply. The home and family she’d told herself must wait for the right time, the right place, the right man.

  She’d just never been in a place that felt like it could be home. Or met a man that made her feel that anywhere she was with him was where she was supposed to be.

  “So this is payback for picking your lock?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  He really needed another assignment, Sam thought, eyeing the woman silently daring him to deny the exchange of information. When he was involved in a case, his mind was too occupied with playing his role and staying alert to trouble to allow room for the old tapes now playing in his head. All of Kelsey’s talk that morning about remembering things that had once been important had resurrected memories he could have sworn he’d shoved back. But they were right there again, st
aring him in the face and avoiding her question wasn’t going to make them go away.

  “I was thinking of family when I first started working holidays,” he finally defended. He would stick to the facts. Considering what she’d not-so-willingly shared with him, it was the best he could do. “Same for when I was working all the overtime I could get. That’s why I was never around even after I didn’t have to take the rotten shifts. I didn’t want to miss the extra pay.”

  There had been a point in his life when he couldn’t have imagined not having a wife and children. He’d truly wanted the life his parents and aunts and uncles had. The life his cousins had now. He wasn’t sure, but he might have decided to marry Trish McDonald even before they’d graduated from high school. He’d been that infatuated with her. She’d wanted to teach, have babies. She’d seemed crazy about him, too. And his Mom and Dad had adored her. So had his sister. She’d fit his dream perfectly.

  “I’d known Trish forever,” was all he cared to admit aloud, though. “We waited until after I’d graduated from college and joined the force to have the big church wedding, then settled down to what had seemed the logical next step. We wanted to buy a house, then start a family. Only I worked so much overtime trying to earn the extra money we needed for a down payment that she got lonely. We’d barely been married a year before she found herself a lover to occupy her time and wound up pregnant. The baby wasn’t mine.”

  His focus remained on the road, his tone matter of fact. “It wasn’t too long after the divorce that I went into undercover work. That took up holidays, too,” he continued, sounding as if what he’d just revealed was only of secondary importance to defending his failure to appear at family gatherings. “By now, I don’t give them much thought one way or the other.”

  For a moment, Kelsey said nothing. She didn’t doubt for an instant that he’d been far more affected than he let on by his flat recitation of his ex-wife’s infidelity. His dreams had been shattered. Right along with his trust. And his heart.

  The thought that his heart might bear the worst of his scars put a funny little ache in her own.

  “I can see why you wouldn’t rush back into anything.” The magnitude of that betrayal might have destroyed a lesser man. “But what about someday?” He’d already spent years alone. Much of that in a world she couldn’t begin to comprehend. “Don’t you ever want to marry again?” she asked, thinking of how incredibly lonely he must be at times.

  “I don’t think I was meant to be married to begin with. I’m good at what I do. And to be good at undercover, you can’t be worried about what’s going on with a family you’re not even living with.” In the deep dusk, the lights of an on-coming car illuminated his easy smile. “It’s not as bad as you’re thinking. Honest. I meet some really interesting people.”

  She couldn’t quite make herself smile back. “Then you really do like what you do.”

  “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

  He’d told her that before. Back when she’d thought he’d chosen his work because it had been expected of him. But he wasn’t living the life someone else wanted for him. He wanted exactly what he had. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that his job had become a sort of cover itself. Something that protected him from having to think about what might have been, about what he would be reminded of not having himself every time he was with his family.

  Not wanting him to realize how sad she thought his self-imposed isolation, she looked away from his shadowed profile. He had such a good heart. She’d seen that with his family, with his concern for his sister, his nephews. He’d exposed it when he’d shown up the day after he’d knocked her head into the post to make sure she was all right. There was an undeniable generosity about him, too. It had been there in the way he’d encouraged her dream about the mill. But he’d locked the most vulnerable part of himself away with his own dreams, and buried himself right along with them.

  She’d forgotten to look toward the lake when they’d passed it. Now, miles beyond where rockets were illuminating the night sky, she listened to the crunch of gravel beneath the truck’s tires as he turned onto the old mill road.

  The thought that he was somehow larger in life than he’d ever been in her imagination only compounded the pensiveness she felt when she realized it wouldn’t be long before she needed to say good-night. And goodbye.

  Chapter Seven

  Kelsey didn’t want to say goodbye. Not yet. She didn’t want Sam to say it, either. Yet, she had the feeling from the way his glance fell to her mouth as he turned off the ignition that he was thinking along those lines himself. A kiss for the road. Then they could both be on their way.

  She simply wasn’t ready. She wanted more time with him. She also wanted what she’d come for that morning, to try to absorb the peace she usually felt in this place.

  Wishing he could feel it, too, she opened the passenger door. “Walk me to my car?” she asked.

  The slam of his door echoed hers, then gave way to the chirp of crickets and the brush of field grass and wildflowers against the ankles of her jeans as she moved to the front of his truck. The moon had crested a distant hill. Its pale beam reflected off the mill’s stone walls and the water cascading over the pond’s little dam. A faint breeze, cool enough to make her shiver, whispered through the trees.

  Instead of moving toward her car a few yards away, she turned full circle, slowly taking everything in. She never knew how long it would be before she could come back.

  “I really wish I didn’t have to leave.” It was probably good that she had to, though, she supposed. The more she learned about Sam, the more time she spent with him, the more she realized how capable he was of resurrecting her little fantasies all over again. There was nothing sensible about the pull she felt toward him. Certainly there was nothing logical about entertaining the lovely ideas he’d encouraged for the mill.

  His features shadowed, he walked toward her, his gait easy, his eyes glittering in the darkness.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “The day after tomorrow. I want to make sure Betsy gets back before I go.”

  Tipping her head when he stopped in front of her, she tried for a lightness she truly didn’t feel. She hated to think she actually dreaded going back, yet there was no denying the knot that formed in her stomach at the thought. “As long as you’re going to be here for a while, keep an eye on this place for me. Will you?”

  “Why don’t you come back and keep an eye on it yourself?”

  She heard the smile in his voice, matched it with her own. “Because I work a couple of thousand miles away,” she reminded him. “And because I wouldn’t have a way to support myself if I came back here.”

  “You don’t have to work where you do unless that’s what you really want to do,” he pointed out, ever so casually. “You don’t have to take that other guy’s offer, either. And if you came back here, you could do what we talked about and reopen the mill.”

  “That was just talk.” Like the stars that had slipped behind a wisp of cloud, her smile vanished. She didn’t want him drawing her any deeper into the idea than he already had. The old longings he’d resurrected tugged hard enough as it was. “It wasn’t anything but something fun to think about.”

  “Your excitement was real enough.”

  “It would take forever to get it up and running,” she insisted, determined to keep her thoughts in perspective. That excitement still felt real. And far more compelling than she should have allowed. “A year at least.”

  “A year isn’t forever,” he countered mildly. “And I told you, I’d help you get started.”

  “But it’s not practical,” she argued right back, not at all sure why he wouldn’t let it go. “Then there’s the fact that it’s not sensible. Or realistic. Or financially responsible.”

  “That’s three.”

  She blinked at his maddeningly shadowed features. “What?”

  “That’s three,” he repeated. He stepped closer, blocki
ng the moonlight, making her tip back her head to see his face. “You said fact,” he reminded her, his voice hushed as he skimmed his knuckles over her cheek. “That’s singular.”

  He was smiling again. She could hear it as surely as she felt the quickening of her pulse at his touch. He’d reached for her as if he couldn’t help it. As if it were something he’d thought about all day.

  “I’m trying to make a point.”

  His knuckles slipped beneath her jaw.

  “So am I,” Sam said. “You told me I was lucky. But you’re the one with the chance to make something you’ve always wanted actually happen. Some people live their entire lives without an opportunity like that.”

  In the moonlight, her skin looked as pale as alabaster, as smooth and perfect as a sculpture. But it was her softness that drew him, along with the respite she’d so unexpectedly offered.

  He had wanted to believe that he hadn’t thought of the dreams he’d lost until she’d come along and unearthed their ashes. But all she had done was poke at what already had been a little too close to the surface anyway. Being back in the real world the past few weeks and being around his family again, he’d been painfully aware of the gaping void in his life. That void just didn’t seem so apparent when he was around the woman so easily allowing his touch. When he was with her, he didn’t always feel the restiveness that plagued him nearly every other minute of the day.

  Not caring to question why that was, just grateful for it for now, he slipped his fingers into the silk of her hair. He’d learned to live his life in moments, to look behind only to remind himself not to repeat a mistake, and to look no farther ahead than was necessary to survive. He carried no encumbrances, wanted none. Life was simpler that way. For him, anyway. Someone like Kelsey needed far more. He hated to see her cheat herself out of it.