Blackberry Summer (23 page)

“Why?”

He didn’t answer her and electricity suddenly crackled in the air. She found her gaze on his mouth again and quickly jerked it away, but not before a couple of wild fantasies flashed into her head, the two of them tangled together, his mouth exploring her skin….

Right. No. They were friends. She wasn’t going to wade into those dangerous waters.

“It’s a pretty evening,” he said abruptly. “Feel like getting out? I thought we could take a walk, if you’re up to it.”

She should say no, return to her backup plan of cake and a shower. But the night was lovely and the idea of a solitary evening had lost most of its appeal. Riley’s presence seemed to have blown away her exhaustion like cottonwood puffs on the breeze.

“Sure. Okay. A walk would be nice,” she said quickly before she could let common sense change her mind.

“It’s cooling down now that the sun is setting. Do you want a jacket?”

“Probably.”

“I’ll get it for you. Just point me in the right direction.”

She had a half-dozen lovely sweaters she couldn’t wear over the cast without stretching out their left sleeves irreparably, so her buttery-soft apricot pashmina would have to do.

“I’ve been using a wrap. I think I left it hanging over the back of one of the chairs in the living room.”

He found it quickly and returned to the kitchen. “Now the wheelchair.”

“I can walk, if you have the patience to wait for me.”

“I don’t mind pushing. I was thinking we could walk over to Sweet Laurel Falls. That’s probably a bit too far for you to handle on your sticks here.”

She hated the wheelchair, but he was right. She could maybe make it to the end of the street and back, but that was probably her limit before she lost feeling in her arms.

“Okay,” she finally said with reluctance.

“What about Chester? Where’s the leash?”

At the magic word, Chester let out a single deep bark and his morose expression lifted a fraction of a degree. Riley grabbed down Chester’s retractable leash and hooked it onto his collar. The dog gave a snuffle of approval and did a little stubby-legged sidestep of excitement.

Next, Riley wheeled in the chair from the family room where she’d left it and carried it down the stairs. Claire followed him on the crutches, but after watching her unwieldy efforts, he shook his head, scooped her into his arms and let the crutches fall away with a clatter as he started down the steps.

“Riley,” she exclaimed, feeling heat soak her cheeks. “Completely not necessary. I can walk.”

“Humor me.” His arms tightened around her and she tried not to notice that sexy afternoon shadow on his features or the enticing scent of him, musky and male. She wished again that she could be light and foolish, could kiss him right here on her back porch.

He carried her easily down the stairs and set her in the stupid wheelchair, gripped the dog’s leash and they were off.

The moment they hit the sidewalk, Claire wanted to tell him to turn around. She only needed a pair of granny glasses to look just like an old lady being pushed around the yard of her nursing home, especially with the wool pashmina tucked around her shoulders.

She glanced at her watch, the chunky beaded one Owen had made her, and saw it was past 8:00 p.m. Families on Blackberry Lane were settling down for the night, working on homework, relaxing in front of the television. As the sun slid down behind the mountains, the air took on a bit of a nip, as nights did here even into July and August.

“Tell me more about your plans for this benefit,” Riley finally said after they reached the corner and turned toward the mountains.

She tensed, the echo of his harsh words still loud in her ears, then forced herself to relax. She didn’t want to fight with him. Not tonight when the evening was so quiet and peaceful.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she suggested. “What’s been the toughest thing to get used to again about coming back to Hope’s Crossing?”

“Old friends who ignore my questions. Seriously, I want to hear about the benefit. Is this a one-woman show or are you setting up committees?”

She turned her head to look at him but found no trace of sarcasm in his expression or his voice. He sounded genuinely interested. “I’m organizing the
auction portion of the evening and the service project side of things. Alex agreed to arrange the food for the dinner, with her contacts among the local restaurant scene. Evie’s handling the decorations and, uh, Holly, Jeff’s wife, insists on doing the publicity.”

“You seriously just came up with this whole thing today and now you’ve got a full raft of committees, and on the very day you returned to work. How is that humanly possible?”

“I told you, once we started talking about it at the store, everything sort of snowballed and everyone jumped on board to help. Everybody we talked to has been really excited about it.”

“Except me.” His voice was low in the cool air and in the hazy light, she couldn’t see his features clearly.

“Was it the benefit you objected to or just my involvement in it?”

“Neither.” He grew silent as they approached the twenty-foot waterfall and she could hear the muted rumble. “I’m a cynical jerk, Claire. What you’re doing sounds nice and noble on the outside. I’m just not sure it will make any kind of difference in the town or the way people are dealing with the accident.”

“I can’t say whether it will make a difference or not, but what’s the harm in trying? I only know whenever I’m serving some need outside my own inherent selfishness, I always feel better.”

He pushed the wheelchair to the small weathered bench some civic-minded person in years past had placed here where it had a lovely view of the falls in
one direction and the city slightly below them in the other.

Riley sat down on the bench facing town and the flickering pinpricks of light in the gathering dusk. Chester sniffed around the bench, in full hound-dog mode.

“St. Claire. Always so willing to see the good in people.”

“Not true,” she protested. She thought of her tangled relationship with Holly, how she tried very hard to like the other woman but just couldn’t seem to move past her negative feelings to be truly friends.

“Nobody’s all good or all bad, Riley. I’m sure you’ve seen that in your line of work.”

“Yeah, point taken. I’ve seen hardened criminals sob their beady little eyes out at those made-for-TV movies on Lifetime.”

She smiled, enjoying the cool night and the rippling sound of Sweet Laurel Falls and Riley’s company.

“Is that really true?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “When have you ever known me to stretch the truth?”

She laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. How about the time you told Alex and me you heard on the radio every New Kids on the Block had been killed in a plane crash? We cried for an hour until we turned on the news and figured out you made it all up.”

“All right, I may have prevaricated on that one. Give me a break here. I only wanted to make you notice me.”

“I think you only wanted to torment your sister and I was just collateral damage.”

He shook his head. “No, Claire. It was you. It was
always
about you.”

His words curled around her like the May breeze. She didn’t know how to answer as that slow, sultry tension eddied between them again.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything back then?” she finally asked.

“What was I going to say? You were three years older than me.”

“I still am. Thank you for the reminder.”

“Three years means nothing now. But back then, we were on completely different social planets. Think about it. I was only a freshman when you were a senior. You might as well have been a movie star for all the chance I figured I had with you. Anyway, all you ever saw was Jeff Bradford.”

He was absolutely right about that. She had wanted her happily ever after, a peaceful family life with a man who adored her and would never have an affair with some biker bar cocktail waitress.

She had fallen hard for Jeff because he had been smart and ambitious and had seemed to want the same things she did. His family had seemed so
normal
after the scandal that had rocked her young life and his parents had adored her. Sometimes she wondered if she hadn’t married Jeff so she could have his parents for in-laws.

He closed his hand around hers and played idly with her fingers. “What if I
had
said something? What would you have done back then if I had told you how crazy I was about you?”

Her stomach swooped as if she’d just dived off the
top of the waterfall into the small pool below. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “The old Claire was pretty stupid.”

“What about the new Claire?”

She curled her fingers, nails pressing into her flesh. “She would probably wonder why you’re wasting your time with a divorced mother whose husband left her for a ditz with perfect teeth and a boob job.”

He closed his eyes. “You won’t let me forget that, will you?”

“I would still like to know the answer to the question. Why are you here, Riley? Why do you keep coming back, even though both of us know you shouldn’t?”

He gazed at her for a long moment and then he tipped a finger under her chin and kissed her.

S
HE CAUGHT HER BREATH
at the tenderness of his kiss, sweet as the night air around them. She wanted to curl into him, to wrap her soft throw around both of them and stay there in his arms in the dark while crickets chirped in the bushes and a great horned owl hooted somewhere in the distance.

Some part of her warned her loudly to push him away while she still could, but she ignored it, sliding into the kiss like she had wanted to slide into that warm, scented claw-foot tub earlier.

This was not going to end well. Riley McKnight was going to shatter her heart into a thousand shards of glass and in that moment she knew there was not a single thing she could do about it.

He edged backward, his face a blur in the moonlight. “I can’t stay away. I keep telling myself all the reasons we both know this is crazy. But something keeps pulling me back.”

She said nothing, trembling a little at the fear and desire that warred inside her.

“You’re freezing,” he said.

She wasn’t about to tell him the reasons why. “A little.”

“I’d better get you back to your house. This seemed
like a good idea earlier this evening, but I sometimes forget how quickly the temperature can drop in the mountains.”

They were both quiet as Riley pushed her down the slight hill toward her house. She didn’t have the first idea what might be on his mind, but
she
couldn’t stop thinking about that stunning, tender kiss.

Something was happening here, something she wasn’t sure she was ready to face. Her feelings for Riley were a conflicted muddle. This was no longer about simply being attracted to a gorgeous man who made her feel vibrant and alive.

He took a different route home, a little more direct, that led them along the creek and past the small Craftsman cottage where Maura lived. A light was on inside, and Claire could see a figure move across the window.

“Oh, stop. Please stop.”

He looked down at her, that unreadable look in his eyes again. “It’s late, Claire.”

“She’s awake. I just saw her. I haven’t had a chance to see her in person since the accident. Alex and I stopped this morning on my way to work, but Maura didn’t answer the door. We’ve talked on the phone, but it’s not the same. Please.”

He didn’t want to. She could see it clearly in the hard set of his mouth and the stiffness in his movements, but he finally shrugged and turned her wheelchair into his sister’s winding front walk.

The house had four steps leading to the porch, and he parked her at the bottom.

“Wait here. She doesn’t always answer the door.”

Claire folded her hands together and waited while he knocked softly. After a long moment, just when she thought this would be one of those times Maura wanted to avoid company, the door swung open and his sister stood there in her porch light.

She looked thinner, gaunt almost. Her dark curls were flat and lifeless and she wore a faded Hope’s Crossing High T-shirt and sweats. Surprise flickered for a moment in green eyes so much like her brother’s, but she quickly blinked it away as if she didn’t have the energy to spare.

“Riley, hello. What are you doing here so late?”

“Claire and I were out for a walk and saw your light on.”

Maura looked down the steps and saw her. Claire had never hated the limitations of her injuries as much as she did right at that moment, when she longed to climb those stairs and embrace her friend. Without her crutches or at least a cane, she didn’t dare attempt it. To her relief, Maura made the move toward her, walking down the steps in her bare feet. Claire gripped the armrests of the chair and forced herself to stand, balancing on her good leg and the tip of her cast. She hugged Maura tightly with both arms, even the casted one, ignoring the pain. Sometimes the only comfort a person could give was a quiet embrace. She had been the recipient of that same comfort many times and just stood for a moment now, wishing she could absorb Maura’s pain into herself.

“I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to stop before now.”

“Don’t be. You’ve had your own stuff.”

“That’s no excuse. Not really.”

After a moment, Maura moved away and Claire sank back to the wheelchair. She watched as the other woman reached down to pet Chester. The dog looked a little baffled at being the recipient of only a perfunctory pat instead of the ebullient love Maura usually gave him.

“Mom told me about this benefit you’re cooking up.”

Claire searched her features in the glow from the porch light, but she couldn’t read anything in her expression. “It’s not much, but at least it’s
something.
”

“You can’t fix this, Claire.”

Maura’s low words echoed just what she had already heard from Riley. She shifted her gaze to him and found him watching her steadily, though without a trace of an
I-told-you-so
in his eyes.

Claire sighed. “I know, honey. Nothing can fix it. But we all want to remember her, too. This is a small thing, but if it helps bring a little more peace and maybe makes the town a little better, don’t you think it’s worth it?”

“I won’t come. Don’t ask me to.”

“Do you want us to forget the whole thing? We can put everything on hold, Maur. It’s early days in the planning process.”

Maura was silent for a long moment, her fingers working a fraying edge of her T-shirt. Riley was watching his sister, his jaw tight. Finally she shook her head.
“No, it’s a loving gesture. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. But right now, I just…I can’t.”

Claire reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly. The benefit and day of service wouldn’t make things right, but maybe they could make things better.

“Looks like your front door’s coming off the hinges.”

Riley had a too-casual tone she found grating. Only when she looked hard at his features in the moonlight did she see the vast pain in his eyes.

Maura gazed at the door as if she hadn’t noticed. “I’ve had a few visitors lately. I guess it’s been overworked.”

“I’ll stop by tomorrow after my shift to fix it.”

Maura opened her mouth to argue, but closed it again and simply nodded.

He embraced his sister, and Maura, usually so competent and together, seemed as fragile as antique handblown beads. “Try to get some sleep,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

“Thanks, Ri. Claire, thank you for stopping by.”

He waited until Maura returned to the house before he turned and pushed Claire back down the sidewalk toward the road. Both of them were silent as they traveled the remaining distance to her house. Even Chester seemed subdued, although when they turned onto Blackberry Lane he picked up a little more energy, apparently eager to be home.

As they passed Mrs. Redmond’s house on the corner, Claire spied the elderly woman, dressed in her favorite pink housedress, wrestling her big garbage can out to the street.

The garbage can probably weighed more than Mrs.
Redmond’s eighty pounds. She shifted, guilty suddenly at her thoughtlessness. She hated to ask him for something again, but she couldn’t ignore a neighbor in need.

“Riley, wait. Can you go help Mrs. Redmond with her garbage can? I usually do it, but I haven’t given it much thought lately. I forgot tomorrow was garbage pickup day.”

He suddenly tensed, she could see it in the set of his jaw. “Of course,” he said after a slight pause. He set the brake of her stupid wheelchair and then approached the elderly woman. “Let me help you with that, Mrs. Redmond.”

“Who’s there?” She squinted into the darkness.

“It’s Claire, Mrs. Redmond,” she called quickly to allay the woman’s suspicions. “Claire Bradford, along with the police chief. Why don’t you let him roll your can out to the street for you?”

“The police chief? That McKnight boy?” Scorn dripped from her voice. “I don’t think so. I’ll get it myself.”

“Come on, Mrs. Redmond. Let him help you. I’m sorry I haven’t thought to arrange someone else to take care of that for you.”

“I don’t want his help. He’s rotten to the core, that one. You know he knocked up my granddaughter, don’t you? Ruined her, that’s what he did. She was a good girl until he came along. Then he gets her pregnant and drops her the minute he found out.”

Oh, heavens. Claire had completely forgotten Riley’s high school girlfriend was Mrs. Redmond’s granddaughter. She knew the old scandal, even though she’d
been away at college at the time. Alex had been livid with her brother for the whole thing, for hurting his mother and being stupid enough in the first place not to wear a condom.

“Not true,” Riley said now to Mrs. Redmond, his voice tense. “I never dropped Lisa. You and everybody else knew I wanted to do the right thing and marry her. Even after she had a miscarriage, I would have married her.”

Lisa Redmond had been a cheerleader, popular, pretty. She’d been sixteen, Riley seventeen, when she’d gotten pregnant. Claire knew from Alex the girl had miscarried just a few months into the pregnancy, while their families were still trying to sort through their options.

“I was ready to marry her regardless,” Riley said again. “But your son and daughter-in-law sent her away.”

Mrs. Redmond made a disparaging sound. “To get away from
you.
You think they wanted her to marry someone like you if she didn’t have to? Being married to you would have been a misery for that girl. You would have ruined her life even more than you already had. A clean break, I told my son. Like yanking off a bandage, do it fast and sure. That’s the only way. And I was right. You left town the minute you could, didn’t you?”

“Right.”

Claire couldn’t see his features, but she heard the grim tightness in his voice and her heart ached for him. She could tell he hated this. For the first time, she had a glimpse into how difficult things must be for him
here in Hope’s Crossing, how there were still plenty of people who would never see beyond the hellion he’d been once.

R
ILEY REFUSED TO ALLOW
the words of an angry, bitter old woman to wound him, especially when he had earned every ounce of her vitriol. It was difficult, though, especially on the heels of their visit with Maura.

“Mrs. Redmond, please let him help you with your garbage can,” Claire said in that soft, persuasive voice. “This is silly. That was all nearly twenty years ago. Lisa is happy now. She married a very nice man, a pharmacist from Highlands Ranch. I went to their wedding. They have a son, right?”

“A lucky escape from
him.
”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Riley said, layering the same thin veneer of calm over his underlying tension he used in difficult police situations. “All I want right now is help you take your garbage to the curb. That’s what I’m going to do. You can still hate me all you want—after this moment, if you never want to speak to me again, you don’t have to. But like it or not, I’m taking your garbage to the curb.”

She blustered as he grabbed the can from her. “I don’t want your help. I’ll have you arrested for trespassing!” she said, her voice querulous.

“You can try, but I
am
the chief of police, so you might have a hard time convincing anyone in my department to take me in for the terrible crime of wanting to help you.”

She followed him out to the curb, blustering the
whole way. Riley would have liked to just dump the can on the grass and walk away from the old bat, but he knew he couldn’t do that with Claire looking on. Okay, he probably would have stopped to help her anyway, even if Claire hadn’t been with him. A month in Hope’s Crossing must be rubbing off on him.

When he finished, he turned back to the thin old lady, her features now the same shade as her pink housedress.

“For what it’s worth, Mrs. Redmond,” he said quietly, hoping Claire was too far away on the sidewalk to overhear, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’ll be the first to admit that. But what happened with Lisa is one I regret the most. I was seventeen and stupid, but that’s no excuse for what happened.”

“You’re damn right it’s not. You took advantage of a naive girl’s hopes and dreams.”

He bit his tongue to keep from responding that he hadn’t been Lisa’s first boyfriend or sexual partner—or that she had actually done most of the pursuing in their relationship.

“I hope you’re not doing the same with Claire, taking advantage of her,” the old woman’s voice was pitched just as low as his own, thank the Lord. “She’s a good girl who’s had a hard time of it, just like my Lisa. She doesn’t need the likes of you ruining her life.”

Her words sliced right to his gut, reinforcing everything he’d been thinking since they left Maura’s. She was right, damn it. Claire didn’t need him. She had a life here she loved. He would only complicate that for her.

He had to stop this. He couldn’t trust himself around
Claire obviously. Every time he told himself he could keep their relationship on a friendly level, he ended up sharing another of those mind-blowing kisses with her.

He turned his back on Mrs. Redmond and strode back to Claire. After releasing the brake on the wheelchair, he pushed her back the short distance to her house.

“I’m sorry about Mrs. Redmond,” she said when they reached her driveway and that was all it took for his frustration to explode.

“Will you stop apologizing for the whole damn town, Claire? First your mother, now Mrs. Redmond. Give it a rest. We reap what we sow, right? Isn’t that what Father Joe was always cramming down our throats? I made some lousy choices when I was a kid. Now I have to deal with those.”

“You shouldn’t have them thrown back in your face every moment.”

“I was crazy to think I could come back and have any hope of functioning competently in my job, with all this latent hostility that’s been simmering for years.”

He hadn’t meant to say that, but the words were out and he couldn’t take them back.

“People here have long memories, but don’t underestimate the people of Hope’s Crossing. They’re capable of moving on and behaving with civility, even if they can’t forget. Look at your mom and Harry Lange.”

He blinked a little at that non sequitur. “What
about
my mom and Harry Lange?”