Safely Home (23 page)

This is what Alex had done to her. He’d brought it to this, leaving her nervous and disheartened, defensive and worn, all while she fought the big “C”.

A horde of emotions swirled inside Cress.

Hadn’t he seemed too good to be true? Hadn’t she felt niggles of concern? Questioned her judgment?

But no, once again she fell into the well-woven trap of a man who played the game and played it well. James had been uncanny with his ability to see her vulnerabilities and cash in on them.

Obviously so was Alex. To think that she fell for it again, so soon after dragging herself out of a hospital bed, her head spinning…

How needy was she? How helpless? The thought that she not only let herself be led down the garden path again, but actually encouraged it—

Right now she wasn’t sure who she hated more. Herself or Alex Westmore. Grabbing her keys, she headed for the car and slammed the door. She’d awakened with sweet-dream notions of tr
ue-love’s kiss and happily ever-afters. Right now, homicide seemed a more likely alternative.

She stopped at the convenience store long enough to grab a newspaper, then headed to Alex’s apartment, the upper half of a quaint village home, a former rectory.

No answer.

An older woman stepped out onto the porch from the lower half. “You lookin’ for Alex, honey?”

Cress didn’t trust herself to do anything but nod.

“He’s most likely workin’ at the new place out on Cramden Ponds Road. You know where that is?”

Of course she did. They used to go swimming in Cramden Ponds back in the day. More like small lakes, the series of ponds was edged by deciduous forest, tall trees standing sentinel, a beautiful setting all four seasons. “Yes, ma’am.”

“He musta gotten an early start,” the woman continued. She settled herself into a rocker, her coffee mug clutched tight. “Usually I hear him head out, but not today.”

“Well. Thanks.”

Cress headed back to her car, hopped in, turned around and headed toward the ponds, feelings warring for attention. For the short drive, she put them on hold, determined to get there in one piece, have her say, and walk away.

Maybe, if she was lucky, the Minneapolis Police Department would tear up her resignation. Or maybe she could become a trooper like Cruz, and have a downstate assignment. Because she knew there was no way she could live in Watkins Ridge with Alex and be reminded of how stupid she’d been. Again.

Reaming herself internally, she nearly missed his driveway. The wide stone path curved to the right, then left through the trees, but the big, cedar-topped mailbox said WESTMORE – 1279. She braked quickly, backed up, and wheeled the car up the drive, spitting stones. The drive opened to a flat, stoned parking area. Stone-trimmed steps marched up to a glorious house, total prairie m
ixed with woodland, a blend of stone, cedar, and glass topped by a dark red metal roof that looked quaint and expensive all at once.

But then, why not? When you’re playing with other people’s money, why not buy the best? Have the best?

Hadn’t he said he wanted her opinion on kitchen things? Oh, he’d get it all right. Staring at the mega price-tag new home rising from its wooded hillside setting as if born of it, Cress’s anger surged exponentially.

While Gran struggled to make ends meet day to day, Alex lived a debit card life in the lap of luxury. Oh sure, he was generous to Gran. Anyone could see that. Why wouldn’t he be? He’d already gotten what he wanted, their land, their farm, their family legacy. And then he’d cut it all up and sold it for parts, like a junk lot of old cars. Only it wasn’t someone’s old wreck. It was Cress’s home, her personal playground, her memories of her grandfather and the horses, the cows, the cool grass of farm fields beneath a young girl’s feet, midsummer.

Alex came striding around a back corner of the house, a tool belt slung from his waist, a dark tee-shirt leaving his muscled arms bare and brawn. He grinned surprise to see her and quickened his pace, but as he drew closer he read her face, her stance and paused a few steps back, chin down, head angled. “I’m in trouble.”

“Way beyond trouble
.”

He frowned, his look of confusion well done, only now Cress knew, she understood how good an actor he was. She moved forward and thrust the local section of the paper into his hands with way more force than necessary. “Page one.”

Add a hint of hurt to his look of confusion, but Cress was beyond caring, beyond being fooled and taken for a ride. First James, now Alex. She obviously didn’t have a clue where men were concerned, and she’d understood that with James, could look back and see the whole thing unfurl, her part clear and concise, but with Alex?

She’d let hope spiral out of control with Alex. Hope in the future, that tiny coil of faith and belief, of goodness and down home warmth.

She’d been stupid to believe it. And since she had a history of being stupid, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. She watched as Alex read the article, eyes narrowed, his brow knit until a look of disgust grabbed his features. He stopped reading without turning to the closing paragraphs, re-folded the paper, and handed it back to her, his face constrained. “And?”

“You did this.”

A flash of pain darkened his eyes before he masked it, just long enough for her to see it and almost feel sorry for him. But not quite.

“Applied for grant money? Yes.”

“So you could do the promised park for free, Alex?” She waved a hand toward the pretty house behind him, the crisp, clear lines a credit to the one-with-the-land style and a gifted architect. “It gives you all that much more to play with on a personal level, right? While my grandmother scrimps and saves, eyeing both sides of a nickel before plunking it down for a loaf of bread? A quart of milk?” She moved closer, anger clouding her thoughts, her judgment. “Did you ever once think of what this was like for her? Trusting you? Turning it all over to you only to have you sell everything out from under her like a Black Friday sale at the mall?”

Chin down, he turned, eyeing the house, the trees, the slow rise beyond that led to the ponds. A muscle in his jaw twitched, not once but twice. He flexed his hands, his face set, the glimpse of pain hidden behind granite features. Cool. Hard. Unemotional. He stepped back, hands up, palms out. “I’ve got work, Cress.”

He had work?

He turned and headed back to the house, his long strides creating distance she hated and thought she wanted.

Tears stung her eyes, a hateful, feminine reaction that bogged her down when she least expected.

She’d wanted him to defend himself, to say it wasn’t so, to argue, show her why what he did was all right.

He did none of that. Didn’t even try to explain himself. Totally ticked off, Cress bent down, grabbed a decent-sized stone and hurled it his way. It landed just in front of him, enough to garner his attention. He turned, his face gray with question, hands up as if asking what was it she wanted?

“I want you to say it isn’t true.” Emotion pitched her voice high and sharp
. “I want you to say it’s a mistake, that this reporter’s got it all wrong. I want you to tell me why, Alex.”

He took two steps back, his head angled, the look of hurt she’d glimpsed earlier back in full measure. “And all I wanted was for you to believe in me, Cress. Pretty simple concept, sweetheart.” He stepped backwards once more, his look, his stance saying he was done. “Have a good life, Crescent.”

He walked away. And this time, he didn’t look back.

Chapter
Eighteen

He hadn’t thought anything could be this painful, not anymore. He’d done a great job of staying one step removed from anything too emotional, too serious as an adult. He’d had his share of that as a kid, helpless and torn, and saw no reason to let history repeat itself.

Until she came along. Oh, yeah, he’d noted the warning signs. Her temper, her spark, her fire. Her sharp tongue that could use a good gentling.

He was silly enough to think he’d made a difference to her. That he mattered. That in the short time they’d known each other, he’d earned her trust. Sure, he knew how it looked. Reading that article, he saw the political ploy behind the leak. Two men vying for the state senate seat will stop at nothing to have their day, wrenching those last votes away.

And what could he have said to her? He’d pledged his silence to Gran, a pledge he’d take to his deathbed if necessary. A man, a real man, didn’t go back on his word, especially not to a sick old lady who’d been his friend, his confidant for decades. No, Gran’s secret was safe with him, and maybe she’d done him a favor. He’d have gone on thinking he could build a future with Cress, thoughts of ruddy-haired little boys and tousle-headed girl
s fogging his brain. Christmas Eves making love by the fire, Christmas mornings knee-deep in mangers and wrapping.

Maybe it was better this way, to see that no matter what he did, how he did it, he was still one of those Westmore brats to some people, and that’s all he’d ever be.

Cruz showed up mid-day. He sized up the pity party right off with a look that wasn’t even borderline sympathetic. “So. You’re just going to let her get away?”

“Shut up.”

“Yesterday you were gung ho about saving her life, making a future. Today you have a misunderstanding and you hang it all up? I don’t get it, Alex.”

“And I think you’re missing the meaning of the words ‘shut up’.”

Cruz grabbed a sports drink from the refrigerator, took a long slug, then waved the half-empty bottle around as he followed Alex outside. “What did you build all this for if not to share it?”

“Investment.”

“Bull. No one builds a family home like this for investment alone. Shouldn’t you at least talk to her? Go after her?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Alex scrubbed a hand through his hair, picked up a good sized rock and hurled it as far as he could. It thudded against a distant tree before clattering to the ground. He sighed, spit and ran a hand through his hair again. “I wanted her to trust me.”

Cruz nodded slowly. “But that’s a little hard to do when everything points to you being a bottom dweller who bilked an old lady out of her family legacy for your own monetary gain.”

“I didn’t make a penny off that sale. You know that.” Cruz knew he’d refused any kind of commission, but he didn’t know why.

“But they don’t,” Cruz reminded him. “Specifically, Cress doesn’t. And she’s just been totally juked by the guy who was supposed to be her boss and had been her boyfriend, so she’s probably a little gun shy. Do you remember what Mom was like after Dad died?”

Alex frowned, then turned Cruz’s way
. “What do you mean?”

Cruz shifted his shoulders as he leaned against the deck rail. “She didn’t date. Didn’t go out with men. She was a young woman, Alex. You never wondered why?”

Alex shook his head, his squint deepening the frown. “Not really. We were kids, she was working. I guess I thought she was too busy. Or didn’t think of it at all.”

“Shell-shocked. Woman that get abused learn to distrust their instincts. Second-guess everything. They do the self-blame game and it’s a pretty powerful thing.”

“I would never hurt Cress.”

Cruz shrugged. “Not physically, no. But she’s just come off a roller-coaster ride of getting knocked around, getting shot, having surgery, physical therapy, a grandmother with cancer, and, this just in,” he raised a hand as if showcasing a news flash for the television audiences, “an attempt on her life less than twenty-four hours ago. You might want to cut her some slack before getting all high and mighty on your white horse.”

His words knocked a glimmer of common sense back into Alex.

Cruz was right. From that perspective, Cress’s line of reasoning not only made perfect sense, it made a whole lot more sense than blindly trusting someone who may or may not have robbed your family’s legacy.

Alex pressed a hand to his forehead, pinched the bridge of his nose, growled and nodded. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

“So go get the girl.”

“I can’t.”

Cruz swore.

Alex shook his head, leaned over the deck rail and gazed out, his jaw working. “I can’t tell her about Gran. Without that piece to the puzzle, I still look like the guy that plays two sides against the middle to benefit my own ends.”

“Tell her it couldn’t be helped.”

“Tell a detective that? What are you smokin’?”

Cruz’s face said he couldn’t disagree. “Okay, good point. But there’s got to be a way to be honest with her without spilling private information about her grandparents.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Then think on it. I was looking forward to nephews and nieces, cute little kids running around with Aiden and Nick.”

“You and I foreswore marriage a long time ago. Remember?”

Cruz plucked a blade of grass and nodded. “We were kids and we were pretty busted up back then. We’re better now.”

Alex eyed him. “So you’d consider making the plunge yourself?”

Cruz shot him a look of horror. “Are you kidding me? A wife? Kids? That might interfere with two-beer-limit poker nights. No,” Cruz shook his head and mock-shuddered. “I’m all right with you guys jumping in both feet, but I’m okay with being Uncle Cruz.”

Did Alex detect a note of resignation in Cruz’s tone? If so, it was gone before he could be sure. “I suppose coming home to a wife wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing.”

“They nag,” Cruz reminded him.

“True. But they do other things to make up for it.”

Cruz shot him a grin. “You think it’s worth it?”

“With the right girl… Possibly.”

Cruz clapped him on the back. “Fix this. I don’t know how, I just know you need to do it.”

Alex eyed his watch, sighed, nodded and grabbed his cell phone, a plan taking form in his sleep-deprived brain. “If this all blows up in my face, I know where to find you.”

“You do that, bro. I’ll be around.”

*

“I called you all here for a reason.” Gran stood centered in her kitchen, the family gathered around her big, old table, their faces turned her way, expectant. “Now I know you’ve all got a lot to say about how I do things, when I do things, and for the most part it ain’t none of your darned business and I’d thank you to butt out.”

“Norma, I—”

“Hear me out.” She leveled Cress’s father a firm look, not angry, but nothing to be trifled with either. “Now I married your grandfather young.” She directed that to Cress and Audra. Eric was unavailable and Kiera was off doing a winter catalog shoot on some icy mountainside wearing precious little, not a job Cress would opt for, ever.

“We had good times and bad, that’s pretty much the way of life. But he weren’t no farmer, and that was my mistake.” She squinted slightly, as if seeing old scenes, old times through clearer eyes. “I thought he’d come to love this land like I did, see it like I did, treat it like my father did, and my grandfather before him, but Horst never quite got it.” The look of dismay said Gran had regrets of her own, and that some of them stretched a long ways back. “By the time I realized that, it was too late to do much about it. Your Uncle George was dead, my parents were gone, and I had your mother to raise and a farm to help run. There wasn’t time to fine-tune anything. By the time we lost Carol Anne, things had gone from bad to worse. We were operating in the red and had to remortgage twice to stay in business. When Grandpa died, I had Alex go over everything.” She sighed, her face grim, her gaze out-turned. “Your grandpa had a problem. Maybe had it all along and it just got worse. I don’t know for sure, but for the last two decades a good share of that mortgage money went to gambling. It started out with just the car races, over at the speedway, but it mushroomed from there.”

She turned toward Ray more fully. “You remember back in the day. He loved racing. He loved driving a hot car, the speed, the smoke, the noise. He always talked about being one win away from the big one. But at some point it all went out of control and he used everything we had to try and haul in that big win, the one that would set things right. And of course, it never happened.” She shrugged. “What Alex showed me was that in order for me to keep my home, I’d have to sell the farmland. We went over it eight ways to Tuesday, and it came out the same each time. If we could sell the farmland I could settle Grandpa’s debts and have a bit tucked by. A small bit,” she added, emphatic.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Ray, obviously concerned. “Maybe we could have helped.”

“A body don’t necessarily want the whole world to know what her man’s been doing,” Gran offered back, cryptic. She shot a look of understanding to Cress, a look that said they shared more than a tough-as-nails attitude. They shared a deep-seeded pride, but seeing her grandmother’s face, the pain of the confession, brought to light the dark side of a prideful nature. A little pride? That was all right, good even.

But to make things so all-fired important? She and Gran had both been wrong. In her case, almost dead wrong, but Gran’s revelation made her see something else. She’d assumed Alex’s guilt because she couldn’t trust herself. So who did she trust? No one? Not God, not man, not herself?

Gran interrupted her swirl of revelation. “I want the bad talk about Alex and what he’s done stopped once and for all. He’s never been anything but a friend to me, a good one. And about that parkland, young lady?” Gran turned Cress’s way more fully now, her posture saying that if Cress thought she was wrong before, watch out, because a big slice of humble pie was about to be dished her way.

“Yes?”

Gran handed over a typewritten page. “I went to see Dick
Thompson this afternoon. We had a long talk. It seems the parkland was delayed because Grandpa let some old time businesses dump poisons up there, polluting the land. They paid him under the table and he turned his back on what they were doing in the dark of night. Alex found out about it when they tested the soil, so he’s spent the past two years getting everything in order to clean it up and fix it. Make things right. But he didn’t want me to know about it because he knew I’d be embarrassed. Again.”

Oh, man.

Cress dropped her head to her hands.

Could this get any worse? How on earth did she call herself a detective when all this drama went on around her and she had no clue?
Because you didn’t come home
, she reminded herself. Hadn’t Audra made note of that weeks ago?

And it was true
. Cress had immersed herself in intentional obscurity while ignoring the here and the now of what Gran had handled the last ten years. Put another hash mark in the dunce column. At this rate, Nancy Drew was looking like a better detective than Cress Dietrich.

“Now hear this.” Gran moved forward, put the flat of her hands firm on the table, and made eye contact with each and every one of them in turn. “I have every intention of licking this cancer thing. I’m too feisty and have too much to do to spend the next decade or two lyin’ in a box. I plan to see at least some of my great-grandchildren get baptized,” she sent a dagger sharp look to Cress and Audra in turn, “and I refuse to leave this planet with my house unpainted and these drafty old windows in place. So now you know my goals.” She straightened, sent them a no-nonsense look and crossed her arms firm across her chest. “What about yours?”

Audra stood first. “I’m making a list tonight, Gran. One thing on the list will be to get financing for that new addition for the quilt shop. The man thing?” She rounded the table and gave Gran a big hug. “That’s gonna take some doing.”

Ray swiped a hand across his face, then hugged his mother-in-law. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. And sorrier yet that I didn’t realize how bad things got.”

She nodded, chin firm, her face resolute. “I didn’t want you knowing. I’m a private person, leastways I was. But now that we all know, I can rest easy that people aren’t thinking ill of Alex. Never was a nicer man born on this earth, and to think people doubt him or suspect him. Well.” She huffed and sent a look at Cress. “That was as much my fault as anyone’s. I’m ashamed I let it go on as long as I did.”

Cress stood, trying to figure out a way where she wouldn’t have to grovel at Alex’s door, to beg his forgiveness. A forgiveness that most likely wouldn’t be forthcoming.

She’d hurt him. Hurt him bad. She’d seen it in his face, his eyes, his posture. Doubting him, mistrusting him, she’d put a knife in him, heart and soul, and there was no easy way to fix either.

But she had to try, at least to the point of gaining forgiveness. She didn’t harbor princess dreams of
glass slippers and happily ever-afters, not after treating him like she did, so soon after he’d gone the distance for her in Minneapolis. What kind of person was she, anyway? So quick to draw a conclusion, to make judgment. Hadn’t she felt his warmth, his sincerity?