Blackberry Summer (18 page)

He leaned forward to touch the beads, his hands looking incongruously large against the delicate blue. “Soft. You’re right.”

She couldn’t breathe with him this close. He smelled musky and male, like cedar and sage, and he crowded her, made her feel girlish and silly. She eased away a fraction of an inch, but he still noticed the movement.

“Why do you do that?”

“What?” she asked, pretending she didn’t know what he meant.

“Flinch away from me.

She thought about lying, pretending he was imagining things, but the casual words just wouldn’t come. “You make me nervous,” she finally admitted.

His eyes widened. “Why? You’ve known me forever. You have to know I would never hurt you.”

Not physically maybe. Claire wiped suddenly damp palms on her skirt. “I’m not going to be one of those women, Riley. Let’s be clear.”

He shuttered his expression. “Oh, absolutely. I strive for clarity in all things. Which women would you be talking about?”

“I know you’re just teasing me, like you’ve always done. All these little comments about…about sleeping with me and having a crush on me when we were kids and everything. Kissing me. You’re just trying to see what kind of reaction you can get out of me. It’s no different from all those times you used to jump around
the corner and yell boo just for the pleasure of hearing us squeal. I’m not going to fall for it anymore.”

Much to her relief, he stepped back a pace but only so he could glower at her from a better angle. “You’re going to have to help me out here. Clarity, remember?”

She hated feeling stupid and out of her depth and she finally just blurted out, “I won’t have a fling with you, Riley.”

He blinked. “Okay. Good to know.”

“It’s not that I’m not…um…that I wouldn’t…” Oh, she didn’t know how to do this. “I’m not sophisticated or worldly or any of those things. I’m a soccer mom. I’ve been a room mother for six of the last seven years. I’m the president-elect of the PTA, for heaven’s sake.”

“And that’s pertinent to this discussion because?”

“Because I’m not the sort of woman to jump into bed with anyone. Especially not you.”

His jaw tightened and she had the ridiculous feeling she’d hurt him somehow. “Why especially not me?”

“A hundred reasons. For one thing, I know you’re not serious about any of this, you’re playing some kind of game.”

“This is fascinating. Do go on.” His jaw had hardened and he crossed his arms across his chest, which unfortunately only served to emphasize the definition of his biceps.

“Well, you’re my best friend’s little brother.”

“Younger. I prefer younger. And only by a few years, Claire.”

Okay, that was true. If not for the fact that she’d
known him all her life, the difference in their ages would be irrelevant. But she
had
known him. She’d seen him grow from a pesky kid to a surly teenager.

He was close, so close that she could see a muscle flex in his jaw. She wanted to kiss that flutter, just throw caution to the wind and…

The pressure in the room shifted as the front door was yanked open.

“Hey, Mom!” Macy called out from the entryway. “Guess what? Julie Whitaker has a sprained ankle, so guess who gets to play goalie tomorrow?”

Her daughter burst into the family room, overflowing with gangly, slim gorgeousness, even in practice shorts and knee-high socks. She grinned when she saw Riley. “Hey, Chief.”

“Yay for you! Goalie, huh?”

“Yeah. Jule’s super-good, so I never have the chance to goal tend, but she’s out for at least two games, so I get to fill in. Maybe if I do an awesome job, the coach will think about alternating us. I don’t mind playing forward, but I really love goalie.”

“That’s wonderful, honey.” With effort, Claire shifted gears to her mommy role. “You’ve worked hard to improve your skills and you definitely deserve it. Hey, I’m going to order pizza tonight and Owen’s picking a movie.”

“Okay. I’m going to go change and clean up. The field was super-muddy.”

In a rare show of affection, she slid her arms around Claire’s neck and hugged her, then bounced past Ruth in the doorway on her way out of the room.

“Thanks for the ride home, Grandma,” she said.

“You’re welcome, my dear,” Ruth answered. “Claire, good grief, who left such a mess out by the garbage can? They look like shingles. Is that Andy Harris here working on something? He needs to do a better job of cleaning up after himself.”

Riley stepped forward into her line of vision and Ruth’s mouth pursed like she’d just chomped into a peach pit.

“I left the mess, Mrs. Tatum. Claire lost a few shingles in the rains of the last few weeks, so I was replacing them. Don’t worry, I’m planning to take care of the garbage before I go.”

Her mother’s sharp-eyed gaze slid from Riley to Claire and then back again. Claire gave an inward cringe at the questions and suspicions she saw gathering there like an August afternoon thunderstorm over the mountains.

She braced herself, wishing she had some way to warn Riley of the cloudburst about to let loose.

“Chief McKnight. This is a surprise.” Ruth smiled with absolutely no warmth. “Isn’t there a teenager somewhere you can chase down at dangerously high speeds?”

Riley’s only reaction was the twitch of a muscle in his jaw. If this was the attitude he faced around town, no wonder he carried unnecessary guilt about the accident.

“Mom,” Claire chided quietly.

Ruth offered up a falsely innocent look. “What did I say?”

“You know that was unfair,” she began, but Owen’s “Hey, Grandma!” stalled the words.

“Hello, dear. What have you been up to?”

“Me and Riley fixed the roof on the shed and guess what? I got to use a nail gun.”

Oh, dear. Here we go. Now Ruth would accuse her of allowing Riley to put her son into danger. “Weren’t you two going to take a look at your bike?” she asked, a little desperately.

Riley raised an eyebrow at her sudden uncharacteristic eagerness to accept his help, but he only nodded. “We certainly were. That was our next project. Let’s go check out what we’re dealing with, kid.”

“I found just the show on the computer, Mom,” Owen informed her. “I put it at the top of the queue.”

“Excellent. I’ll order the pizza in a minute.”

When the two of them headed outside, Owen pacing his stride to Riley’s longer-legged gait, Claire turned to her mother.

“Mom, that was unkind. Riley was only doing his job. You know that.”

Ruth began fussing around the room, straightening magazines on the coffee table and picking up the granola bar wrapper Owen had left there after school. “I’m sorry, Claire, but I can’t forget that because of the way he did his job, you and my only grandchildren were nearly killed. Look at you. You can’t even walk and you haven’t been able to work for over two weeks. It’s not right.”

“If you’re going to blame anyone, blame the teenagers who decided to go on a crime spree for no discernible reason. Blame Charlie Beaumont. He’s the one who chose to run.”

Ruth made a dismissive sort of motion. “Charlie is a thoughtless boy who ran because he was afraid.”

“Right. Afraid of being caught. They robbed my store and a half-dozen others in town, not to mention that vacation home in the canyon. None of that is Riley’s fault.”

“I’m not defending what they did. It breaks my heart, that’s what it does, and I don’t understand it for a minute. I don’t see how anyone can. Children from good homes, robbing people, vandalizing things. Something’s wrong, I’ll grant you that. Personally, I think it’s all those video games you parents let them play.”

Because she allowed Owen only a couple hours a week of only rated-E-for-everyone games, she wasn’t sure how her mother could justify lumping her into that particular category. Anyway, that wasn’t the point.

“Whatever the reason, it was the choices Charlie—and, yes, the others—made that caused this tragedy.
Not
anything Riley McKnight did.”

“He should never have chased them,” her mother insisted. “Not with those snowy conditions. And now a girl is dead and another might as well be, if she has to live the rest of her life like a…like a rutabaga.”

“Riley did nothing wrong.”

“Believe what you want. I’ll do the same.”

Would that waxed cord be strong enough to make a noose? she wondered, although it was a toss-up whether she wanted to use it for her mother or for herself. Five minutes of conversation with Ruth and she wanted to bang her head on her worktable a couple dozen times.

“What would you have him do? Just let the kids drive away? Then you and J. D. Nyman and everyone else in town would be saying he’s too soft.”

Her mother turned her attention to the entertainment center, stacking loose DVDs and picking up the hundred or so remotes it seemed to take to run everything these days.

“I don’t know. He could have discreetly followed them long enough to get a license number and then picked Charlie up later at home. But personally, I think he wanted the big, flashy arrest so he could show off in his first few weeks on the job.”

“That’s not fair. You don’t even know him. Not anymore.”

“I know all I need to know. That boy is trouble, just like Charlie Beaumont. He always has been. You know what he was like. A wilder boy I never knew. Running around getting girls pregnant.”

“One girl, Mom. One girl.”

“That we know about. The city council made a huge mistake bringing him back and I for one am glad they’re reconsidering.”

Claire caught a flicker of movement and glanced toward the hallway and her stomach dropped. They had been so busy in one of their typical arguments that neither of them had heard Riley come back inside. How much of her mother’s ridiculous vitriol had he heard?

“I disagree,” she said, locking her gaze with his. “I think Riley is exactly what Hope’s Crossing needs.”

“A womanizer who acts first and thinks later?” Ruth scoffed.

“A decorated, dedicated police officer who cares
about this town and the people in it,” she answered with quiet firmness and saw something warm and intense spark in his eyes.

“He’s trouble,” Ruth repeated. “You’ll see. I love Mary Ella, you know that. She’s a good friend and I love her girls, too. But that boy has broken her heart more times than I can count. He’s trouble and he should never have come back.”

Riley apparently decided he’d lurked in the hallway long enough. He took a step forward. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs. Tatum.”

If Ruth was discomfited at all, she hid it quickly. “I’m sorry you heard that, but I’m not sorry I said it.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion. Just like J. D. Nyman and anyone else who doesn’t think I’m the right fit for police chief of Hope’s Crossing. I’m the first one to accept I made mistakes that night. I have to live with them.”

“So does my daughter!” Ruth snapped. “So does Taryn and her family. And your family most of all. You don’t belong here. Not in Hope’s Crossing and not in my daughter’s house.”

Claire stared at her mother, appalled at her rudeness and her gall. “You have no right, Mother. Riley is always welcome here.”

He shrugged. “It’s okay. I was just coming in to let you know we fixed the bike. It only took a moment to straighten the forks and it seems to be as good as new. Owen’s taking it for a test-drive around the block.”

“It’s not okay. You don’t have to leave. In fact, I was just getting ready to order pizza and we’re going to watch a movie. We’d love you to stay.”

The invitation was more to spite her mother and all three of them knew it, but she wasn’t about to rescind it.

Ruth gave an offended sort of huff. “I’ll go, then, and leave you to your pizza since no one wants to hear my opinion.”

Claire was tired suddenly, exhausted from all the years of handling her mother’s moods and piques. She missed the fun, happy mother she now barely remembered, the one Ruth had been before the humiliation of her husband’s murder. She missed cuddles on the sofa under a blanket during a snowstorm and nature walks on Woodrose Mountain and the mom who used to have a funny story for everything. Ruth had gone from smart and capable to needy and helpless, with a side order of bitterness.

“Thank you for picking up Macy,” she said, trying to focus on the positive.

“You know I’m always glad to help. I’ll come by in the morning to pick her up before the soccer game.”

“Thank you for the offer but Holly and Jeff are planning on it. If I hear otherwise from them, I’ll let you know.”

Ruth nodded stiffly and headed out the door, her shoulders tight. She closed the front door carefully behind her and Claire winced worse than if she’d slammed it. She would have preferred a temper tantrum. Ruth’s quiet outrage was far more deadly.

She was going to have to figure out a way to make things right with her mother, but she had no idea how, short of throwing Riley on the pyre of her mother’s animosity, which she wasn’t willing to do.

“I’m sorry, Riley. My mother can be…”

“I know how your mother can be. Blunt but truthful.”

“She has her opinions. Which I don’t share, by the way.”

“Plenty others do. J.D. has a lot of friends who think he should be the police chief right now. The events of this past month haven’t exactly changed anyone’s mind.”

“I meant what I said. You’re doing a good job.”

“Thank you.” He gave her a careful look. “Look, I appreciate the invitation for pizza. It was a nice gesture of support but not necessary. I’ve dealt with worse criticism of my job performance. At least here, nobody’s shooting at me yet.”

“The invitation was sincere, whatever you might think. The kids enjoyed having you over for dinner the other night. They’ll love sharing their pizza.”

“What about you?” His green eyes turned dark, intense, and her insides jumped again.

“What about me?”

“Weren’t you just telling me all the reasons we weren’t good for each other? Do you want me here?”

Here, there or anywhere. But this wasn’t a Dr. Seuss book and Riley was definitely not green eggs.

“I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t,” she answered. “What I said earlier still stands, but just because we have this…thing between us doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”