Heartbreak, Tennessee (5 page)

Amber couldn’t help
smiling. “Yeah, I’m sure you were picking up on the karma of this place from
three hundred miles away. When did you feel it beckoning? During a pedicure and
facial, perhaps? Or while you were shopping?”

“I’ve just got a good
feeling about it,” Sheryn insisted. She could be so stubborn. Amber rubbed her
temples before continuing, knowing there was no choice but to go along with her
employer’s plan.

“Anyway. We were
talking about you traipsing all over town, drawing attention to yourself. I
think we need to do a little positive public relations work before we—shall
we say—unleash you on the citizens.”

“But they love me
here! You should have seen it, I must have signed a dozen autographs over at
the Sunset Diner.” Sheryn beamed; no matter how many thousands of times she’d
been approached for an autograph, she never seemed to tire of her fans. Amber
reflected that she was a little childlike that way, almost naive in her
enjoyment of the attention.

“I’m sure they do,” she
said gently. She remembered the conversation she’d had with Mac last night. “It’s
just that not everyone is going to think this theme park is such a good idea. You
have to look at it from their perspective. It’s going to bring in tourists and
night life and a lot of other things that will really change the face of this
place. The people who live here are accustomed to life moving at a slow pace. I
mean, there probably still isn’t anything open on Sunday around here.”

“Then they should be
thrilled! I mean, what if they get a craving for a Big Gulp at two in the
morning?”

“You really don’t get
it, do you?” Amber said, exasperated. “Small towns aren’t like other places,
Sheryn. Certainly nothing like Chicago or Nashville. You know, maybe it was a
good idea to come here after all, so we can see how long you last. There’s
nothing
going on here. You’ll see—it’ll
drive you crazy. I’ll bet we’ll be on our way back by tomorrow night.”

“Oh?” Sheryn said, a
flicker of interest in her eyes. “OK, we’ll make a bet. I’m not only going to
last all week, but I’m going to love it—and the town is going to love me,
too.”

“You’re on,” Amber
said, grinning. “If you still want to go through with this crazy scheme at the
end of the week, you win. I’ll—I’ll bake you one of my Bailey’s chocolate
chip Oreo-crust cheesecakes. But if you cave in, you drive home. And we don’t
stop at a single Dairy Queen.”

“Oh, no,” Sheryn
moaned in mock horror. “Guess we’d better get to work, then.”

Mac paused for a
moment to wipe away the perspiration beading at his brow, squinting at the old
Mercury V6 outboard he was working on. Damned if he could figure out what had
blown the spark plug out of the cylinder head, charring the foam insulation. It
had wintered under cover right on the lot, and Junior Wilkes had tuned it up in
the spring. Junior might be young, but he was one of the hardest-working and
smartest guys in the shop. When this particular boat had come back, Mac decided
to take a look at it himself.

He took one more look
at the work laid out before him and concentrated...and then he had it. Hadn’t
Mercury had a problem back in the seventies with the aluminum alloys used in
casting their blocks?

Satisfied, Mac made a
mental note to tell Junior what the problem was. Bad news for the owner of the
outboard, but on the other hand he’d gotten some fine years out of it. Mac
could sympathize with anyone who held onto an old, reliable piece of equipment,
getting to know its temperament, caring for it to ensure a long life.

That was how it should
be.

When it came to boats,
there’d never been a problem he couldn’t track down. His father had made sure
of that. Whenever Mac was ready to give up on a repair, his father was there,
ready to ensure he kept at it. Often, it was true, Pete McBaine motivated with
threats and curses, but it had been effective. Many nights found Mac at work in
the shop long after everyone else went home, knowing he wasn’t welcome at his
own house until the work was done.

And on the few
occasions when it wasn’t...Mac winced, the memory of his father’s heavy belt
causing his back and shoulders to tense up in a leftover response to that old
pain.

Still, if the old
bastard hadn’t ridden him so hard all those years, Mac might not have had the
guts to plow through the rough times since he took over the shop. It had been
touch and go there for a while, with barely enough money coming in to cover
expenses and payroll. But the tougher things got, the harder Mac worked. Without
the lessons that his father had planted, the shop would be nothing more than an
abandoned building, and Mac would probably be pumping gas.

So engrossed was Mac
in tinkering with the outboard that he had tuned out the sounds around him. Besides
the sounds of men at work, music played in the busy but neat cinder block room.
The guys usually had the radio on WCAD—”Country All Day”. A few of them
loved singing along, belting out their favorite tunes in voices more
enthusiastic than lyrical. Even Mac had been known to join in once in a while.

Straightening up and
stretching his cramped limbs, Mac grinned as the voices of his employees rang
out when the latest Sheryn Sawyer hit came on the radio.

“Listen to that! Isn’t
that Sheryn?”

“Yeah, I hear the lady’s
going to be a neighbor.”

“Hey, Mac, soon you
won’t be the biggest employer in town!”

Mac’s smile wavered a
little. “That gal’s got quite a fight ahead of her if she thinks she’s going to
turn Heartbreak into Dollywood.”

“Yeah, you’ll probably
get your undies in a knot along with all those grandmas at the Preservation
Society,” Junior called. “Nothing fries you more than progress, right, Mac? You
probably pitched a fit the day they invented indoor plumbing.”

Mac took the
good-natured ribbing in stride. “Well, I suppose if she manages to slice off a
big piece of the pie around here, and lures you all away to work for her, maybe
I can take that fishing trip up to Canada this summer after all.”

“Yeah, right,” Turner
Sheldon, his shop supervisor, said. “When’s the last time you took a vacation,
Mac? Five years ago? Seven?”

“Hey, I went to the
Boat Show up in New York last year,” Mac protested.

Everyone knew how much
he hated to leave the shop behind. In a way, the success of the place had been
a curse, since Mac now needed to meet with industry reps to look over new
lines, and attend RV and outdoor shows. Sometimes it seemed like weeks went by
when he didn’t even get his hands on a boat. Still, the guys saved the tough
stuff for him; no one knew the older equipment like he did.

“You know what you
need,” drawled Bill Overton, a sixty-ish relic from his father’s days. “Get you
a gal. Bet you’d be a lot more fun to be around if there was a lady in your
life.”

“Hey, I was out with
you guys just last night, and there were women there.” Mac protested.

“That don’t count,”
Junior chimed in from across the room. “You could hang out at Buzzy’s every
night of the week and it still wouldn’t count. The gals down there—”

“They aren’t really
the sort of lady we’re talking about,” Sheldon agreed. “You’ve known all of
them for years. Every last one of them probably wouldn’t mind getting her hooks
in you, but if you was going to get close with one of them you would have done
it by now.”

“I’m saving myself for
Charlene,” Mac said, hoping to put an end to the train of conversation, which
was getting a little too close to the truth for comfort.

“Aw, the hell you are.”
Though attractive, Charlene was very much married, his office manager and
bookkeeper since he took over his father’s operation. Married to one of his
best childhood friends, Charlene had four kids and was the closest thing he had
to a sister.

Junior’s retort hung
in sudden silence. The lull in the noise level in the shop, Sheryn’s voice on
the radio echoing through the room, caused Mac to pause, curious as to what had
diverted their attention.

“Look at that,” Turner
mumbled under his breath at the next bench. “That ain’t local goods.”

Mac turned slowly in
the direction of Turner’s gaze, knowing it had to be Amber even before he saw
her standing uncertainly in the doorway, sunlight streaming through the thin
material of her skirt, outlining her legs in a most enticing fashion.

Amber looked around
the shop with a mixture of admiration and apprehension. Coming here was not a
good idea—that was the message her mind had been telling her loud and
clear on the way over. Her heart was another matter. At the moment it was
thudding like a bass drum. As heads turned in her direction, she was almost
afraid that the men in the room could hear its pounding rhythm.

Another fear nagged at
her as well: that they knew her, all of them; with one glance recognized the
naive girl from fourteen years ago. That all the efforts she’d made over the
years to mold and change herself had failed; the expensive wardrobe and
perfectly-shaped hair and subdued makeup were inadequate camouflage, and with a
single glance they would be able to look inside and see....

...what? Amber shut
her eyes tight to force the memories back, but for a moment it was as though
the years fell away, and she was standing in the shop when it was still Mac’s
father’s place. The old, battered workbench was...over there, off to the right.
The acrid stench of perspiration and cigar smoke and chewing tobacco filled the
room. Pete McBaine would be on his ancient, cracked-leather stool, smoking and
glaring at his workers if no customers were around.

He never glared at
her
, of course. Not even as he...

Amber shook her head
and opened her eyes, gulping deeply as she fought to regain her composure. The
air she breathed was clean, the scents that mixed were honest and not
unpleasant. The men who stared, she reminded herself, were just reacting to an
unfamiliar face, a woman, no less, probably not a frequent sight even for one
of the largest boat dealerships in Tennessee.

It really was amazing,
what Mac had accomplished. In the big light-filled showroom, sleek powerboats
gleamed, their curvy lines enticing even to Amber, who knew very little about
boats. In fact, the last time she’d been out on the water was years ago with
Mac. Signs advertising Mercury outboards hung high above the gleaming floor,
and the smell of new chrome and fiberglass mixed with the buzz of customers.

And even the original
building, which housed the repair shop, was completely transformed. Racks and
racks of tools gleamed above well-organized workspaces. Bright lighting
supplemented the sunlight filtering through new windows. Motors in various
stages of disassembly lay with their innards exposed as men worked over them,
and strains of music could be heard over the sounds of activity.

It was a far cry from
what she remembered. But on the other hand, Amber would have been surprised at
anything less. Mac had always been fiercely committed to everything he did.

Then she spotted him,
observing her quietly from his post at a workbench, dressed in a pair of jeans
faded to a soft pale blue, a yellow polo-collared shirt straining against his
powerful biceps. A rush of pleasure went through her to see the familiar
profile, the long limbs that had the grace of a dancer’s, no matter what he was
doing.

Mac had always been
able to make something as mundane as bending to pick a penny off the sidewalk
look like an artist’s study, an effort to capture the beauty of the human form.
He was unconscious of it, and she had never found words to tell him—but
it was one of the things she’d loved most about him.

To find his natural
grace preserved after all these years pleased her, and she returned his frank
gaze, adding a smile. She notched her chin up, squared her shoulders, and took
a step toward Mac, ignoring everyone else in the room. None of them, she was
sure, could tell she’d been briefly unnerved to find everything so changed.

Except, perhaps, Mac,
who knew her better than anyone. Better than she would ever allow anyone else
to know her again.

As he walked toward her,
the corners of his mouth tugging upward in a slight grin, she found her body
responding. A small spark ignited deep inside, sending a pulse along her
nerves, which were suddenly hypersensitive to the slight draft in the room. It
riffled the hair on the backs of her forearms, and brushed her long skirt
against her calves.

Her pulse quickened,
and she became aware of another sensation, long absent—desire, wending
its way through her system, setting her body aflame as easily as a pile of dry
kindling takes to a match. Ignoring the stern admonishment from her brain, her
arms longed to wrap around his wide, hard torso, bringing her cheek in contact
with his firm, stubbly jaw, as she had a thousand times before.

Desperate to douse the
unwelcome fire in her body, she focused on his shoes, well-worn canvas sneakers
meeting the frayed hems of his jeans, and a laugh escaped her lips before she
had time to think.