Private Parts (11 page)

T
HE ENORMITY OF THE SITUATION
was almost too much to take in. Troy stood shoulder to shoulder with Ari, Palmer, Sheriff Barnaby, Caleb and a couple dozen other men and women of the town studying the sight before them.

The steep hill behind the western line of Main Street businesses bore two telltale bare spots high up—two oblong patches of red earth bare of pines and normal foliage. The juxtaposition of the clear sky combined with the possibility of a mudslide seemed almost too bizarre to consider.

One of the businesses at risk was Penelope’s, Palmer’s wife’s, along with seven other storefronts in three buildings with apartments over them. And if the coming slide was as bad as they feared, it was quite possible it could flow across Main Street to claim the other side as well and perhaps even the first block of houses beyond. Most of the buildings
were well over a hundred years old and would collapse like matchsticks if hit with a wall of mud.

Troy looked over to find several faces pressed against the glass of the Quality Diner, which had opened for a few hours on Christmas Day for those who didn’t have family or anywhere else to go. Including the owner herself, Verna Burns.

“If the wind shifts, this is going to be bad,” Palmer said to his right.

“A catastrophe,” Caleb said to his left.

Troy agreed. Here he’d been worried about the financial health of the town. Now they faced a physical risk.

“What about the state? The national guard?” he asked Sheriff Barnaby.

The other man pushed his hat back and scratched his head. “There are two other active mudslides right now. They’re tied up. Won’t be able to send any help until tomorrow at the earliest.” His cheeks inflated. “That strange drought this summer and now all that damn rain this season…”

He didn’t need to continue. They all knew the story.

“Okay,” Ari said, clapping his hands to jar them out of their trancelike watch of the hill. “This is what we need to do…”

Troy was given a second occasion that day to view his brother differently. As he stood in a huddle with the rest of the men, Ari took charge, suggesting they
get out to the mill ASAP and bring in every bulldozer, forklift and crane that they could.

“I have a flatbed trailer for my semi,” Jim Johns said.

“Good, good,” Barnaby jumped in. “There are at least thirty of those concrete barriers in the station parking lot, left behind a month back when they did that work on Route 6. Meet us there, Jim.”

“And we’ll send out a crane to transfer them.” Troy said.

Within minutes they had a plan. The question was whether or not they’d be able to finish the work in time to make a difference.

A
N HOUR AND A HALF
later, they had the concrete barriers in place behind the buildings, the sound of the heavy machinery echoing down Main Street. They knew they were running the risk of the sound vibrations causing the slide and acted accordingly, but there was little they could do to completely muffle the loud engines.

Troy took off his hard hat and ran his gloved wrist across his brow. Despite the cool temperatures, he had broken a sweat. They all had.

Now only one bulldozer worked, shoring up the far side with a wall of damp earth. He squinted, trying to see who was driving. A glint of silver hair and he looked harder.

It couldn’t be…

He advanced on where Ari stood with Palmer going over contingency plans.

“What’s Dad doing in that dozer?” he demanded.

Ari blinked at him. “What?”

Troy pointed.

Ari’s eyes widened. “I didn’t put him in there. I didn’t even know he was down here.”

“Yes, well, obviously he is.”

Barnaby stepped up. “I put him on when I was called away to see to a fender bender out on Route 5.”

Troy yanked a radio out of his brother’s hand and spoke into it. “Dad. Percy Metaxas!”

No answer.

“He’s not going to hear you,” Barnaby said. “Sitting in that cab is like sitting on the middle of a truck engine.”

Troy slapped the radio against his brother’s chest and took off.

And halfway down the street, was stopped dead in his tracks.

Kendall.

He had to blink several times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Standing outside the diner with a couple of others, she looked especially good in all white. Dressy. Hot.

And she was here.

She met his gaze, her mouth stopping in mid-sen
tence as she spoke to Verna. Her immediate response was a smile. Then it vanished.

He stepped in her direction. She met him halfway.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, probably sounding a little brusque considering the circumstances.

“I saw the news on TV. They didn’t have footage from here, but they named it as one of the areas in danger. I had to come.”

W
HAT COULD SHE POSSIBLY SAY
? Kendall wondered. She’d come because…well, because she’d been compelled to. Because over the course of her stay, Earnest had grown to mean something to her. She knew what parts of the day the sheriff would be sitting at the edge of town waiting for impatient drivers, what time Verna at the diner stocked fresh donuts in the trays and took that day’s pie out of the oven, could identify the clunk of the morning paper when it was delivered to the bed and breakfast…

Even Mrs. Foss she’d come to see as a sort of grandmother figure determined to feed her and look after her best interests in her own ill-mannered way.

The small town had touched her in a way that her own hometown of Portland had never achieved.

Then, of course, there was Troy and the entire Metaxas family…

She stood looking at him now, wishing there were some way to wash away the past and begin anew. She had an urge to throw her arms around him so persuasive it nearly overwhelmed her. And there wasn’t a night that went by that she didn’t wake up aching for him.

But as she watched myriad emotions slide across his handsome face and finally settle on stone hardness, she knew there was nothing she could do. The damage was already done.

A horrible crack vibrated the air. She turned to look toward the hill.

Troy grabbed her shoulders. “Get out. Get out now! All of you!”

T
ROY’S HEART WAS RACING
with fear that he wouldn’t be able to reach his father in time.

He ran frantically toward the hill that was collapsing in a different area than they had expected, making straight for the bulldozer still working diligently to shore up the wall they’d painstakingly built.

Dad!

He wildly waved his arms, trying to get the old man’s attention. He should never have been there. What fool thing had made him leave the house and come down? What fool thing had Barnaby been thinking when he’d allowed him to get inside that dozer?

Percy spotted him and grinned wide. He gave a wave.

Troy was twenty feet away when a shifting sea of earth landed on the bulldozer, rolling it over onto its side as if it was no more substantial than a Tonka truck. His heart stopped in his chest. He was vaguely aware when the river of mud hit the last building, the cracking of support beams loud in his ears. All he could think about was reaching his father, who he could no longer see.

Please, please, no,
he cried inwardly as he climbed over the moving earth even as it threatened to bury him along with the piece of machinery his father sat in.

He became aware of others on either side of him. Ari and Caleb. They all dug furiously, nearly succumbing twice to the onslaught as they cleared out the area where he thought the door would be.

The building a few feet away gave, spilling over like a child’s dollhouse onto Main Street. But Troy didn’t see it. His hand finally hit something hard.

The truck.

They all picked up speed, not stopping until he could smear his hand over the muddy window, making it worse instead of better.

“Dad!” he shouted, on his knees and cupping his soiled hands to try to see inside.

Ari and Caleb continued digging out.

“If you’re in there, roll down the window!”

What had he just said? Of course, he was in there.

But what he couldn’t bring himself to say was, “If you’re okay.”

After the new closeness they’d begun to share, the thought of losing him nearly caused his chest to cave in.

Finally, movement. He heard muffled coughing as the window began edging down a bit, then stopped.

Troy crawled backward to give him room even as ribbons of flowing earth moved around him, finding the opening and running inside.

“Dad! Open the goddamn window!” Ari shouted, kneeling next to Troy and working his fingers over the glass and trying to push it down.

“Get back,” Caleb said, lifting what looked like a splintered two-by-four above his head that he must have taken from the collapsed building next to them.

“No, wait!” Ari told him.

The window started moving down again and this time their father’s cough was clear, with nothing to muffle it.

“Thank God,” Troy said as he and Ari reached in, each grabbing one of his arms and pulling. The mudslide must have broken the back window and the cab was full, making their work harder. But Percy didn’t appear to be any the worse for wear.

They hauled him free and he immediately got to his feet, looking like he’d been dunked in chocolate, the whites of his eyes and his teeth almost startlingly bright.

Another crack.

All three men turned to watch the earth shift over the buckled building, making its way toward the other side of Main Street then, just as quickly as it started, the landslide was over.

“M
ERRY
C
HRISTMAS
!”

Percy held his mug of spiked eggnog up high, addressing the hundred or so people that had gathered in the Metaxas house after a grueling day of drama and cleanup. Most still wore their work clothes, getting no further than washing hands and face before coming together at the same place they had all left the other day during the official open house.

Tonight, they truly had something to celebrate.

Troy hung back from the main crowd, happy to be a bystander as he considered how much worse the situation could have been.

As it stood, they’d only lost the one building, a couple of pieces of equipment, and they would be digging out for some time. But Main Street was now clear, and no souls had been lost. And he, for one, was very thankful.

His gaze went to his beaming father, who looked
like he’d come from working in a coal mine. He chuckled quietly to himself, remembering the old man’s words to him after the mudslide had stopped.

“I’m taking that damn vacation your mother and I always talked about,” he’d said resolutely. “And by God, if Phoebe Payne will come with me, all the better.”

It was nice to see that the near-death experience had filled him with a renewed passion for life.

He realized he was scanning the smudged and dirtied faces of the crowd, looking for one in particular. But nowhere did he see the person he’d hoped to see most: Kendall.

He looked down at his own barely touched mug. Everyone was enjoying the food that Thekla had cooked in anticipation of the gathering. Verna had brought food as well, along with the wives of many of the men so that the dinning room resembled a mish-mash buffet that everyone picked from at will.

No one cared that they were tracking mud all over. Or that they looked a mess. The only thing that mattered was that they’d made it through the mess. Alive. Together.

Ari stepped up to his side, his arm draped over Elena’s shoulder. It was the first Troy had seen of her that day, so he kissed both her cheeks and wished her a Merry Christmas.

He did the same with Bryna, who neared him
with Caleb at her elbow, and Palmer and Penelope when they broke through the crowd. And was that Patience? He chuckled as he greeted his long-suffering secretary.

“We never got to exchange gifts,” Ari commented.

Troy eyed the others gathered. “I think we’ve all just been given the best gift we could have hoped to receive.”

The three other men looked at each other. Troy realized something was amiss.

“What?” he asked.

They dropped their gazes and chuckled.

Palmer patted him on the back. “Oh, I think this one rates right up there.”

More clandestine glances.

“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Sure, bro, sure.” Ari took his arm from around Elena’s shoulders and motioned for others to join them.

One by one, nearly the entire room leaned in closer, putting Troy at the center rather than his father. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the morphing left Percy and Phoebe in the corner alone. And the way Percy was leaning into Phoebe and she was leaning back, he suspected that the two of them would be leaving on that trip very soon.

The foreman they’d been working with who had threatened to bring suit against them stepped
forward, holding his own mug of eggnog in his big hands.

“Well, your brother and us have been talking…”

Troy looked at Ari who was openly beaming at him.

“And we all think that we can come together, work out some sort of employee-owned deal to get this project off the ground.”

Troy wasn’t sure his ears were working correctly.

“Repeat what you just said.”

The foreman did, and Ari and then Caleb added details like possible start-up dates, what financing could be obtained, and that everyone, including the engineers, was also on board.

The foreman said, “The town got itself into this mess together. And if today proved anything, we can sure as hell get ourselves out of this mess.”

Troy didn’t quite know how to respond. He’d resigned himself to the fact that all his efforts had been for naught. That with Philippidis’s latest stunt, it was done. Over.

“Philippidis…” he said aloud.

“Can suck my big fat…” Caleb started as everyone stared at him “…restraining order.” He grinned. “Hey, you can’t be in this business for as long as I have without having made an enemy or two. Thankfully they hate Philippidis even more.”

Troy felt almost dizzy.

Ari grasped his shoulder. “Whoa there, cowboy. Don’t go blinking out on us yet. There’s a lot of work to do.”

“But first there’s a lot of celebrating,” Bryna said, raising her mug of eggnog.

“Hear, hear!”

The room exploded with the sound of clinking cups and laughter.

Even through the joy he experienced, Troy was aware of one thing missing: Kendall.

K
ENDALL STOOD OUTSIDE
the Metaxas place. There were cars parked all over, much as they had been the last time she was there. It was dark and half the house was covered in twinkling white lights. She walked toward the door, blinking when the other half of the lights flickered on and then stayed lit.

Strange…

She wiped her hands on her pants one by one, transferring the items she held as she did so. There was a yap of annoyance and she looked down at her companion.

“Shhh…you’re supposed to be a secret.”

She stood in front of the door and took a deep breath, raising her hand to knock. But before her knuckles hit the wood, the barrier opened inward.

“Oh!” Her breath came out in a rush, unprepared for the move.

Troy was holding it open for a couple to leave. His
gaze crashed into hers and he nearly collided with the couple.

“Sorry,” he said with a chuckle. “Go ahead. Thanks for coming. We’ll talk again next week.”

Kendall stood aside for them to pass.

“Merry Christmas!” they called as they got into a car and pulled away.

Troy waved.

Kendall felt her face flush as he looked at her. “Um, hi.”

“Hi,” he said, clearly surprised. “Do you want to come in?”

She looked around him to find the hall filled with people. “Um, no. I just stopped by to give you your Christmas present.”

She held out a plain, business-size manila envelope.

He looked wary as he accepted.

“Oh, and this.” She handed him the leash and urged the puppy cowering behind her feet forward.

Troy stared at the three-month-old black and white Boston terrier and the terrier stared back.

“His name is Spike and I thought he and you might get along well.”

He held the leash out as if more afraid of it biting him than the dog, who even now tilted his head curiously.

“I don’t know what to say.” Troy appeared completely mystified.

“Can we walk a little bit?” she asked.

“Walk. Um, yes. Sure.”

He handed her back the leash, ducked back inside and came out again wearing his coat. She gave him back the dog.

Spike barked once. Troy appeared to momentarily panic and then grinned as he began walking, Kendall falling into step next to him.

“What in the world compelled you to buy me a dog?” he asked.

Kendall longed to tuck her hand in his arm. Instead she stuffed both into her own pockets. “I always wanted one. My mother’s deathly allergic, so I could never have one. I thought this was a way around that.”

He turned his puzzled look on her.

She smiled and tucked her chin into her coat. It was cold and quiet.

“Troy, look,” she began, then ran out of words.

They continued to walk, Spike’s little legs working a million miles a minute to keep in front of them while alternately sniffing Troy’s shoes and trying to run around them.

Troy stopped and turned toward her. “Actually, Kendall, I have something to say to you.”

She waited, searching his face for the answer she might find there.

“I won’t pretend to understand the reasons behind what you did…”

She looked down at where Spike sat, got up and sat again, his tiny, pink tongue lolling out of his mouth as he considered the preoccupied humans to whom he was tethered.

“But I do understand that you wouldn’t have done it unless you felt you had no other option.”

She looked up.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is…I mean, I know you haven’t asked for it…but, I forgive you.”

Kendall’s heart beat an uneven rhythm in her chest. She hadn’t dared hope that her coming there would change anything. She’d come because she had to. She couldn’t watch from Portland as Earnest suffered through a catastrophic event.

Now Troy was gazing at her like he had before she’d betrayed him. Before she’d learned Philippidis’s real motives for sending her here. Despite the cold, she felt warm all over.

“You may want to open your other Christmas gift,” she said quietly.

It appeared to take him a moment to realize to what she was referring. Then he pulled out the envelope he had tucked under his arm and considered the clasp that held it closed.

“Here,” she said, taking the leash from him.

Spike seemed to think the change in human meant renewed activity and did a little twirl and bark. Then plopped back down in resignation when it became apparent they weren’t going anywhere.

Troy pinched open the clasp and slid his hand inside. He pulled out ragged bits of paper and examined them, looking mystified.

“The fraudulent pages of the contract granting Philippidis controlling interest.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Simple. Philippidis cannot bring suit against you for breach of contract, because he is not in possession of the contract in question. And I’m willing to testify to what he had me do, if this isn’t enough to get him off your back.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he dropped the torn pieces of paper back into the envelope. “You could be disbarred.”

Kendall shifted her weight and looked down. “Yes, well, I figure it’s no less than I deserve.”

He remained silent, his gaze steadfast. Then, slowly, a smile upturned the sides of his incredible mouth.

“Come to work for me. For us.”

Of all the words she expected he might say, those didn’t even rate a place on the list. “What?”

“You heard me.”

He looked toward the house, brightly lit on the outside and in.

“It seems my brother’s been busy while I’ve been distracted. Metaxas, Inc is going to become Earnest, Inc. We’re going to become an employee-owned business.”

“You’re going ahead with the plans?”

“Mmm. You want in on them?”

She laughed, tendrils of hope and desire wending through her bloodstream. “What about your mantra of not mixing business with pleasure?”

Was it her imagination, or had he just moved closer to her?

No, it wasn’t her imagination. The mist of his breath mingled with hers. She detected the scent of nutmeg and warm earth and one-hundred-percent Troy Metaxas. And she thought she’d never smelled anything so intoxicating.

“Well, I’d say we’ve blown that all to hell and back already, haven’t we?”

She welcomed his mouth against hers mid-laugh and instantly melted against him, reveling in the rush of emotions, the heat of his nearness, the hope that not all was lost and that, indeed, the future loomed bright and shiny…with lots and lots of mind-blowing sex.

Spike gave a little yelp. They parted to discover Kendall had stepped on his leash. She removed her foot.

“Sorry about that, buddy.”

He did his running-around bit and barked again.

Troy’s chuckle resonated through the cool air.
“What am I going to do with a dog?” He looked at her again. “What am I going to do with you?”

She smiled suggestively. “Oh, I think I can come up with a few ideas…”