Sweet but Sexy Boxed Set (44 page)

“
I don’t think C.B. is interested in antiques.”

“
Kelly!” Her mother cut her off. “I never ask anything of you. Not since
what happened
. But now I need your help. And Colleen may want something from your father’s family since she doesn’t have her own father.”

Ouch
. Kelly should be used to her mother dredging up “the big mistake,” but it hurt just the same. “Mother, I don’t have time.”

“
You never have time.” She heard her mother’s deep intake of breath. “Kelly, I’m almost seventy. I don’t get around as well as I used to. I need your help.”

Kelly read the pleading note in her mother
’s sharp voice. “With C.B. married and Aunt Bess gone, I’m starting a new life, Mother.”

“
I’m starting one too, dear.” Her mother’s tone softened. “It’s just for a few weeks.”

It had to be tough getting older. Aunt Bess had not taken kindly to old age and had gone kicking and screaming to the end, never acknowledging she wasn
’t able to do what her aging body prevented her from doing. Her mother was different. She’d never written a check until her father died. Although always subservient to him, her mother had taken his passing hard.

She and Aunt Bess could never understand Grace Baron
’s passivity and abject dependence on her husband. They were two self-reliant women, cut from the same cloth and used to doing things for themselves. It was hard for them to ask for help, but they gave it freely as part of their DNA.

“
Okay, Mother,” Kelly said, knowing this time she couldn’t deny her mother’s request. “I can be up there in a couple of weeks. I have some things to get done here before then.”

“
You must arrive before July tenth. That’s when I’m, er, moving. Can you be here for your birthday on the sixth? It will be fun to celebrate it here.”

“
I’ll be there. Don’t worry.”

As always her mother hung up without saying good-bye. Kelly slammed the iPhone down on her mattress.
Damn!
She set her jaw, flipped off the bedside lamp and stared into the darkness. Her mother was moving into a retirement home. She needed Kelly’s help, but Kelly dreaded going home.

“
You can never go home again,” James Agee had written. Kelly fled Lanham at eighteen, accepting the truth of that adage.

By agreeing to help her mother, she was putting her life on hold one more time. Maybe Lanham was as good as any place to retreat and plot her next move.

Chapter Two

Lanham, Indiana

Two weeks later

Lanham
, Indiana, was a small county seat in the southern part of the state about fifty miles north of the border. Kelly’s arrival on Saturday, July third, coincided with the city-wide Independence Day celebration on the town square.

She avoided the square and drove three blocks to her mother
’s house, parking in front. Turning off the ignition, Kelly stared at the two-story white frame house with its wraparound front porch. Surrounded by a white picket fence, the house had been built in 1909 by her father’s grandfather. An old-fashioned swing suspended motionless from the joists just outside a floor-to-ceiling bedroom window.

This was supposed to be home. She swallowed hard, trying to erase the needless fear she felt. Her father was dead. Memories of her harsh upbringing were just that: memories.

Because of her father’s strict rules, she had never fit in with other kids. Forced to wear long skirts and put her thick, red hair up into an out-of-date bun, she was often bullied and called names. While growing up, her father had limited her friendships and activities. Later he had stopped her from dating, thinking he could prevent exactly what happened.

Taking a big breath for courage, Kelly climbed out of the car and grabbed her purse. She strode up the cracked, concrete sidewalk and mounted three short steps to the front porch. A board squeaked and the heels of her sandals made flapping sounds as she crossed the wooden planks to the door. A ruled notebook paper was taped to the glass.
I’m at the square working in the cake walk booth. Come on down. Mom.

Kelly read her mother
’s scrawling handwriting and rubbed her nose. What had gotten into her “afraid of her shadow” mother? Pitching in at a charity event was contrary to her stay-at-home personality. Kelly fished for the house key in her pocket and opened the front door.

There was nothing warm and welcoming in the living room. It was filled with packing boxes that were taped and labeled. All the old, comfortable furniture was gone—the worn flowered sofa from her childhood, the hand-crafted cherry tables built by her grandfather, and multi-colored cotton rag rugs braided by her grandmother.

Kelly frowned. Why did her mother need her help? The packing looked to be well underway and professionally done at that.

Her breath hitched. She couldn
’t stay here. Regardless of its familiarity, this place had never been a true home, not like the one she and Aunt Bess had created for C.B. in Louisville.

Backing out of the room, Kelly shut the door and pocketed the key. Returning to her car, she tucked a handful of bills and her iPhone in the pocket of her khaki cropped pants, tossed her purse into the trunk, slammed it, and locked the car door.

The last thing she wanted to do was go to the Fourth of July festival where she might run into people who had known her as a kid but never accepted her—people who quickly passed judgment when she got into trouble. Granted, she had passed plenty of judgment on herself, but the criticism from Lanham busybodies didn’t help matters. That had been part of the reason she left town.

****

Rob Scott sat balancing on a narrow piece of hard plastic over a five hundred gallon polyethylene dunk tank. It was surrounded by a vinyl-coated steel protective cage. Mercifully his white T-shirt and blue swim trunks remained dry. The assorted spectators peering at him from the courthouse lawn had failed to hit the red bull’s-eye which would dump him into the cold water below.

He didn
’t mind exposing himself like this, perching above the water, egging people on to get them to spend money on chances. Further, the more chances these people bought, the more funds he raised for the Lanham Children’s Club, a local organization that needed help. It had fallen on hard times over the years he had been gone from his hometown. When he returned five years ago, he had taken an interest in it, becoming a volunteer and trying to return it to the well-run club that had been there for him when he was growing up.

Rob wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. The weather was oppressive. The blistering July sun beat down on his head, and the humidity was so thick he could almost see it. Maybe a good drenching was what he needed.

“C’mon, Jake,” he called out to a wide-eyed boy who attended the afterschool program and now stood smacking bubble gum in front of the tank. “Let’s see you hit the bull’s-eye.”

“
Ain’t got no money, Mr. Scott,” the boy replied with a shake of his head.

“
Step aside, kid.” A short man with a beer belly paunch under his ribbed, wife-beater undershirt edged the boy out of the way. “Your time has come, mister,” the guy said with a cocky grin and proceeded to throw three baseballs, each of them missing the target.

“
Aw, c’mon, buddy,” Rob shouted. “You throw like a girl!”

The guy paid a dollar for three more chances and missed again. He went away grumbling, but a teenage boy took his place. Rob heckled his attempt. The boy failed to connect. Maybe Rob would get through his shift without being dunked.

And then he saw her.

She stood behind a group of small girls. A sharp pang took his breath away.
Kelly?
He hadn’t seen Kelly since graduation when she had given him the cold shoulder, but there was no mistaking that shock of dark red hair. She had cut it so it was short like a boy’s, probably shorter than his.

He shouldn
’t be surprised to see her, for he knew Kelly was coming to town. In fact, he and his father planned to have dinner with Kelly and her mother tonight. Yet spotting her in the crowd, all grown up and gorgeous threw him off kilter. He didn’t anticipate their meeting this way, and the shock of seeing her left him confused, an emotion he was all too familiar with lately.

Memory sliced sharply into his chest. Her father was strict and he didn
’t have the guts to run afoul of her old man. He didn’t date Kelly openly. Instead they met at the library, and he walked her part of the way home, bought her Cokes, and dreamed about her at night. But he avoided her in school, taking the coward’s way out.

Other boys thought Kelly was ugly. But it was the way her father made her pin up her beautiful hair and wear skirts and long-sleeved shirts as if he was trying to hide her natural beauty. Kelly was more than a pretty face. She was kind and giving and smart. And she was strong, maybe too strong for her own good.

Regret cut through him. He remembered her long, silky hair, and how he had lost himself in it that night when it slid over his bare chest. Their time together had been brief, leaving him longing for more.

“
Hey, Kel,” he called out to her. “Let’s see that pitching arm of yours. Or has old age caught up with you?”

She stood stock-still, staring at him. She had that same piercing green-eyed gaze that intrigued him at the library senior year. He saw her set her jaw. She dug into her pocket and paid for three balls.

“C’mon now, let’s see what ya got! Wind ‘er up, sugar.” He played his role, egging her on.

He saw her take a steadying breath. With deliberate movements, she faced her shoulder and lower body so they lined up toward the target. Her back was perpendicular to the bull
’s-eye, her hips closed and pointing in the same direction. She stepped toward the target with her lead foot, pushed off her back leg, and threw the ball using her entire body.

The ball glanced harmlessly off the yellow target canvas.

“Aw, you throw like a baby,” Rob chided, liking the way she threw like a boy, moving with an athletic grace that showed off her femininity. “Worse yet, you throw like a girl.”

She didn
’t say a word, but her eyes narrowed. Lining up carefully, she threw again and this time came closer.

“
Sissy! You couldn’t hit a barn!” Rob rubbed it in.

She licked her lips and shook the tenseness out of her shoulders. Then she stepped forward again with the same throwing motion and sailed the hard ball toward the target.

Before he could blink, Rob felt the seat give way, and in a swift whoosh, he plunged into the dunk tank sending a splash of cold water over the side.

Damn,
s
he did it!
Rob laughed, swallowed a mouthful of water and climbed out of the tank. He reached for a towel left in the grass next to the ladder and wiped his eyes. Toweling his hair, he walked around the side of the booth anxious to speak to Kelly.

But she was gone.

What had she done? Kelly scurried through the crowd, sick to her stomach. Rob Scott was the last person on earth she expected to see sitting in a dunking booth on the courthouse lawn.

Her last glimpse of him was at graduation. She had avoided him after the ceremony. Already pregnant with his child, there was no way she could face him after the way his mother treated her. Besides he was bound for Northwestern the following day, heading to summer school so he could get a jump on his freshman year. Rob was like that, a risk-taker, full of big plans and lofty ambitions.

Over the years, he had attained them. She caught sketchy details of his life from her mother
’s gossip during visits to Louisville. Rob was a big shot lawyer in Chicago raking in millions. He had married another lawyer. That news had hurt more than she could have imagined, but good for him. That’s what he always wanted—career, money and marriage. She was glad he realized his dream—something that wouldn’t have happened if he had a wife and child to care for just as he was getting started.

But what was he doing here? And why did he look so damn cute and boyish sitting there in that booth? His blond hair was a little too long and his smile a little too cute. What had snapped inside her? Maybe it was when his gaze had connected with hers. That knowing, superior look in his eyes had gotten to her. Suddenly angry, remembering the way his mother had talked down to her, the way she had always felt inferior to his family, she wanted to take him down a peg—let him know there was more to her than a one-night stand.

It was a good thing she had learned the proper way to pitch so she could teach the kids in her fifth grade class. Pitching was like riding a bike. Once you had the technique, your brain and body didn’t forget how to do it.

Yet she
’d been surprised when the ball connected to the bull’s-eye and Rob had plummeted into the tank. At that moment, she wanted to celebrate. Instead she ran.

Kelly ducked into the Country Affair Antique Store, one of the small specialty shops that surrounded the town square, plunging deep into the rows of consigned furniture and knickknacks, not looking for anything in particular. She just hoped to hide and regain what was left of her composure.

“Kelly? Is that you?”

Kelly pasted a smile on her face as she turned and recognized Mary Beth Jameson, one of the few girls who
’d talked to her in high school. “Yes, it’s me,” she said. “I’m surprised you knew me.”

“
There’s no mistaking that hair color. I like it short.” Mary Beth gave her a quick hug. “I’m so glad to see you. I figured you would come home.”

Kelly stepped back, crossing her arms even though the cool air-conditioned shop felt good. Town gossips already knew her mother was moving.
“Yes, I’m here to help my mother.”

“
I hear congratulations are in order,” Mary Beth said. “When I saw your mother in church last Sunday, she told me her good news and mentioned your daughter got married recently.”

Kelly smiled. She was proud of C.B. and her marriage to such a nice young man.
“Thank you. How’s your family?” She couldn’t remember if Mary Beth was married.

“
My parents retired to Florida and my oldest son starts college in the fall. The youngest one will be a freshman in high school.”

Kelly shook her head.
“Imagine us having grown children.”

Mary Beth huffed a breath.
“I turned forty in February, and I tell you, I feel so old.”

“
Well, you don’t look it,” Kelly said giving her an approving glance. Mary Beth looked the same as the last day she saw her, the day Kelly had said good-bye before boarding the bus for Louisville to live with Aunt Bess.

“
Phaw!” Mary Beth waved off the compliment. “I camouflage the fat well. You, on the other hand, still look trim and fit.”

“
I work at it.” Kelly shrugged. They turned and strolled toward the shop door.

“
You’re not the only one who works at it,” Mary Beth remarked. “I see Rob Scott jogging every morning on the high school track. He’s still as handsome as he was in high school.”

Kelly paused at the door, took a breath and fought the pain that shot through her heart. She glanced sideways at Mary Beth wondering if her friend had ever guessed the truth.
“What’s Rob doing back in Lanham?”

“
He’s working in his Dad’s law firm
and
he’s divorced.”

The news rocked Kelly like a blast of wind.
“Really?” She tried to sound nonchalant.