The Welcome Home Garden Club (7 page)

His stare was more intense than the noonday Texas sun in August—bold and hot and vivid. She had to turn her head away or be forever scarred. Briefly, she closed her eyes, but she could still see him. Still smell the almond blossoms.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“What? And have you reject me over the phone? No ma’am. The letters returned unopened was kick in the gut enough.”

“But I didn’t get your letters.”

“How was I to know?”

“I left home,” she explained. “Just weeks after you went away.”

He pushed at a crack in the cement with the toe of his motorcycle boot. Her gaze followed his movement, fixed on that heavy leather boot.

Should she invite him in? It was the polite thing to do, but the thought of being closed up with him inside her small kitchen was too overwhelming to consider. She didn’t know him anymore. Not really.

“So your father was the one who sent the letters back.”

“I guess that’s what happened,” she agreed. She certainly didn’t put it past the judge.

“And you really thought I was dead?”

She nodded, raised her gaze back to his face again. Could he see it in her eyes? How his death had destroyed her? His expression was impassive, hiding whatever he might be feeling. Was he even feeling anything? Had the army turned him into an automaton?

“Why did you believe that?”

“I hired a PI to find you.”

“You looked for me?” He swallowed hard, his shoulders tensed visibly.

“Yes. The PI showed me proof that you were dead. He said you’d been killed in a roadside bombing.”

“I wasn’t killed.”

“But you were involved in a bombing?”

“Bombings. More than one. The first time, in Baghdad, I suffered a severe concussion resulting in temporal lobe retrograde amnesia,” he explained.

“Oh. I bet that was weird.”

“Worse than weird. You feel . . .” He paused, speaking of himself in the second person, keeping the experience universal, unspecific. “ . . . lost.”

She placed a hand over her mouth, unable to think of anything to say.

“It took months for my memory to fully return, and when it did . . .” He paused. “There were some things that I still did not remember clearly.”

“Did you remember me?”

“In my dreams.” His smile was vague, humorless. “I’d dream of you and wake up feeling confused and empty. It took a while to piece everything together, but with time and therapy I recovered most of my memory, although I still can’t recall the hours just before the bombing.”

“How long did it last?”

“Over a period of several months.”

It seemed so odd, talking like this, catching up as if they were old high school pals who had met in the grocery store and were chatting over Fruit Roll-Ups and Hamburger Helper. Surreal.

“Are you still in the army?”

He shook his head. “Medical discharge a couple of years ago. After the second bombing.”

She shifted, hugged herself tighter, glanced down again. The toe of his boot was still working on that crack. Was he trying to open it up so he could fall in? “What have you been doing since?”

“Personal security and translation services to foreign businessmen in the Middle East.”

“Translation services?”

He shrugged. “Turns out I have a knack. I suppose growing up bilingual helped. I pick up languages really quickly and the military took full advantage of my skills. I speak both Afghan languages, Dari and Pashto. Plus I’m also fluent in French, Italian, Kurdish, Arabic, Hindi, and Farsi as well as Spanish.”

“Impressive,” she said, because she did not know what else to say.

“It’s helped me make a good living.”

“That’s wonderful.”

Silence fell between them. He was studying her with an intensity she found unsettling.

“So you,” he said, and waved a hand, and that was when she realized he was still wearing leather gloves. “You’ve got your own house. And a flower business?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“You always loved flowers.” His tone softened.

“I still do.”

Another long silence.

“Do you remember the first flowers I ever brought you?” He spoke so quietly she almost didn’t hear him.

“White lilacs. I’m surprised you remember.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “So, did you get to college? Get that degree in botany you wanted?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Life got in the way.”

“It has a way of doing that.”

“Uh-huh.”

The silence stretched into eternity.

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” she echoed. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Me too.”

Neither one of them knew what else to say.

“Listen,” she said at the same time he said, “Look.”

They laughed uncomfortably.

“You go first,” he said.

“No, you.”

“I was just going to say that I’m in town for the reading of J. Foster’s will. Apparently he left me something.” Gideon snorted. “Imagine that. He probably left me his toilet seat.”

Encouraged to see a small glimmer of his old sense of humor, she smiled. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Hey, it was no loss to me.”

“I guess the inheritance is the reason you came back?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t even know about that until I got here, but a friend told me I couldn’t really move on with my life until I got some closure with my past, and I realized she was right. What better way to get closure than to see them put Goodnight in the ground?”

She?
Caitlyn was appalled to discover she felt jealous. She had no right to feel jealous. She had no claims on Gideon. The bond they’d once shared had been severed long ago.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I was wondering if you’d like to go to dinner one night, catch up.”

It sounded so normal, so sensible, but there was nothing normal about this situation. Her lover had come back from the dead.

“I got married,” she blurted.

“I saw the ring.” He looked at the wedding band. She hadn’t taken it off after Kevin had died because it thwarted men from hitting on her.

“I thought you were dead. The PI told me you were dead. What was I going to do?” She knotted her fists.

“You don’t owe me an explanation,” he said.

She studied his face but she could read nothing there, nothing to give away what he was feeling.

“Bring your husband along with you to dinner. I’d love to meet him.”

“My husband died six months ago.”

“Oh.” His face remained expressionless, impassive. She could read Braille easier than she could read him.

“He was struck by lightning while roofing our flower shop. It’s been tough. He didn’t leave any life insurance—” She broke off. “But there’s no reason to burden you with my troubles.”

“You married Kevin Marsh?”

“Yes.”

“Funny.”

“What?”

“I never would have guessed you would marry someone like Kevin.” He sounded displeased.

“What was wrong with Kevin?” she asked, feeling suddenly defensive. He had no right to judge her choice of mates. He’d been the one to ruin things between them by burning down J. Foster’s barn. If he hadn’t done that, he would not have started the awful chain of events.

“Nothing at all. It’s just that he was very—”

“What?” she snapped, not understanding why she felt so irritable.

“Don’t take this the wrong way. I liked Kevin. He was a good guy. He cut me a break on the flowers for my mother’s funeral. It’s just that he was so . . . ordinary.”

“What’s wrong with ordinary?”

“Your father made it clear enough that his daughter was way too good for ordinary.”

“Things change.” Caitlyn knew she was going to have to tell him about Danny. She was dancing all around the topic, but she just couldn’t bring herself to come right out with it. She needed to think this through, figure out the best way to break the news to Gideon that he had a son. To let Danny know that Kevin had not been his biological father.

She might have just gone ahead and spilled the whole thing, timing be damned, if at that moment a large moving van hadn’t rumbled into her driveway.

“Going somewhere?” Gideon asked, arching one eyebrow.

Caitlyn shook her head, but, grateful for the interruption, she moved toward the driver, who was swinging out of the cab.

“Hello,” called out the burly man with a handlebar mustache.

“You must have the wrong house,” she said, waving a hand at the moving van. “I didn’t order movers.” She felt rather than saw Gideon come up behind her. He had her back. It was a disturbingly comforting thought.

The man consulted his clipboard. “You Caitlyn Marsh?”

“Yes.”

“Then this delivery is for you.”

While they were talking, two more men had climbed from the cab and had gone around to open the back door of the eighteen-wheeler tractor that was taking up Caitlyn’s entire driveway. She followed the driver to the back of the truck. Gideon fell into step beside her.

She rounded the corner of the vehicle and peered inside. There lay the pieces of the carousel. The animals, the mechanics, the frame, the platform, all stuffed inside the truck. Her father had finally come through.

“Please sign this.” The driver extended the clipboard toward her as his assistants started to pull out items. One of the men had hold of Blaze’s severed head.

“Wait a minute.” Caitlyn raised a hand. “Can you guys take this delivery to the vacant lot on the square? That’s where we’re building the garden.”

“Sure,” the mustached man said.

“What this all about?” Gideon asked.

“It’s for the victory garden the town is building in your honor.”

Chapter Six

Traditional meaning of aconite—misanthropy and poisonous words.

C
aitlyn’s words caught Gideon like a hard left jab to the jaw and he’d never thought to defend against it.

Twilight was constructing a victory garden to honor him?

A surprise ripple of chagrin, pleasure, and embarrassment ran through him. He’d spent the last eight years hating this town and everyone in it only to find out they were honoring him with a garden.

He hitched in his breath. Then again, apparently they’d all thought he was dead. It was easy to make nice with dead people. As evidenced by the throng at J. Foster’s funeral. He shouldn’t feel touched. Rallying around a serviceman was the thing to do. It was symbolic, not personal.

Besides, he’d done nothing to earn the star treatment. He’d simply performed his job. He didn’t see himself as a hero.

The delivery van backed out of her driveway. “I’m going to walk over to the town square,” Caitlyn said. “Would you like to come with me?”

“Sure,” he said, and they took off after the moving van. The square was only a quarter of a mile away.

They walked side by side in silence.

“Have you considered staying in Twilight?”

“What?” He’d been so caught up in his thoughts he hadn’t heard her.

“Why not stay awhile?” She canted her head, her blue-green eyes searching his face. “Unless you’ve got commitments somewhere else?”

Did she have any idea the effect she had on him? He recalled how she’d been in high school, so dreamy-eyed and sensitive, with her head in the clouds. No, not clouds. Flowers. Her thoughts were usually so wrapped in flowers that she didn’t notice that heads turned when she walked by. Even now, she still gave off that naïve, soft-focused aura that roused his protective instincts. Hell, what was there to protect her from but him?

Did she want him to stay? Better question, could he risk staying? “Why?” he hedged.

“We need someone to repair the carousel. Once upon a time you even promised you’d restore it for me. Remember?” Her smile was soft, beguiling. “And you were always so good with your hands. If you were staying in town . . .”

His laugh came out in a barking snort.

Her startled eyes widened. “Did I say something funny?”

She hadn’t noticed his hand. Of course not, he was still wearing his motorcycle gloves. He’d kept them on primarily because he hadn’t wanted her to know. Had wanted to postpone the inevitable.

She put out her hand to touch him, but he sidestepped it. She looked hurt again, just as she had at the cemetery.

Why couldn’t he let her touch him? Maybe it was because he knew that if she touched him he wouldn’t be able to hold on to his stoic façade. That he’d come completely apart at the seams. The thought scared the shit out of him. He’d held his tender emotions in reserve for so long he didn’t even know if they were still there. Maybe that was really what terrified him. That he’d lost the ability to love.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

Just rip off the Band-Aid. Show her. Get the horror over with.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not your man.”

“What?” Confusion clouded her features.

“I can’t refurbish your carousel.”

“Because you’re leaving town.”

“Because I
can’t
do it.”

“Nonsense. Remember that jewelry box you made me for my seventeenth birthday? I still have it.”

Why did that news make him feel so buoyantly sad? “I
was
good with my hands. Past tense. Not anymore.”

Her nose crinkled. “What do you mean? You can’t forget a talent like that.”

“No, but you can lose it.” He was being coy with her, which wasn’t his style, but he couldn’t seem to make himself just pull off the glove and show her. They’d reached the town square. The van had pulled up into the vacant lot and the workers were unloading the contents.

“How?” she asked.

He anticipated the stunned look on her face that would quickly turn to revulsion when he pulled the glove off. He knew how it would go. The only two women who had not turned away from his deformity were an army nurse with a weird kink for amputees and Moira, who’d seen so many land mine casualties it no longer fazed her. “Remember when I said I’d been in more than one bombing?”

“Uh-huh.” She brought a hand to her mouth and fear came into her eyes. Those innocent eyes that should never know about stuff like this.

He took a deep breath. Here was the moment of truth. Standing in the vacant lot, surrounded by wooden carousel animals ravaged by time and burly workmen going about their chores. “It happened in a village outside Kandahar. I was a newly minted Green Beret, on a special ops mission targeting high-level Taliban insurgents.”

Caitlyn’s gaze never left his face, but he couldn’t look at her or he wouldn’t be able to continue with the story. He shifted his gaze to the budding mimosa trees on the courthouse lawn. This place was so damn Norman Rockwell. He didn’t belong here. He never really had.

“There was a little girl.” He spoke dispassionately as if it had happened to someone else. “She dropped her doll in the street.”

Caitlyn was shaking her head, already jumping to the obvious conclusion. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me there was a bomb in the doll.”

He nodded.

“Oh, Gideon.”

“In spite of my training, some stupid impulse took hold of me. I grabbed up the dropped doll, called to the girl, and—” He stopped, unable to say anything else.

This was where the rubber met the road. The time had come to stop talking and just show her. He tugged off his left glove, revealing his artificial hand. Then he took off his jacket, and rolled up his sleeve to where the prosthesis connected to his stump.

Shock etched her features, just as he knew it would, but the revulsion never came. Instead, she looked him straight in the eyes and said, “All the more reason for you to refurbish the carousel. You can’t let this define who you are. The job is yours if you’re up for it. That dinner you invited me to? Why don’t you come to my house instead? Monday night. I’ll make meat loaf, your favorite. We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

A
fter Gideon had left and the movers had unloaded and stacked the carousel parts in the middle of the lot, reality finally sank in. Gideon had lost his left hand—his dominant hand—and she’d just invited him to rebuild her carousel. Not only that, but she’d also asked him to dinner because she had her own metaphorical bomb to detonate.

Danny.

Speaking of her son, she was over an hour late picking him up. On the way over to the babysitter’s house, she practiced saying the words out loud. “Gideon, this is your son, Danny. Danny, this man is your real dad.”

She groaned and snagged her own gaze in the rearview mirror. “This is not going to be easy.”

When she got to the sitter’s house, she was surprised to find Crockett Goodnight on the front lawn in his funeral suit playing catch with her son. He had his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie tucked into his front pocket. She got out, shaded her eyes with her hand.

“Hey, Mom!” Danny called, easily snagging the ball Crockett sailed his way.

His two front teeth were missing and he was at that ungainly stage where he seemed to be all elbows and knees. She walked over to settle a hand on the back of his shoulder. He smelled of fresh-mown grass, dandelions, and the oil he rubbed into his baseball mitt every night.

“Hey yourself.” She glanced at Crockett. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at your father’s wake?”

“I couldn’t go back to the ranch with all those chubby-cheeked, casserole-bearing ladies clucking their tongues and gossiping about Dad. And I couldn’t face the thought of my empty condo, so I took a walk and saw Danny out here in the yard trying to play catch by himself.”

“Crockett says I’m a natural.” Danny beamed.

“Does he now?”

“I wish my dad was here,” Danny said. “I wish he could see what a good player I am.”

For one startling second, Caitlyn thought he was talking about Gideon, but then immediately realized he meant Kevin. “I know, buddy.”

“Crockett’s dad died too.”

“It’s a sad thing to have in common.”

Crockett gave a hangdog look for Danny’s benefit. He still had a black eye and bruises from his fight with Bowie in her flower shop. She remembered how he’d pulled the switchblade knife on his brother, and an uneasy feeling slid down her spine. As much as Danny enjoyed throwing the ball around with Crockett, she was thinking maybe that wasn’t the best idea in the world. Especially now that Gideon was back.

Gideon was back.

Her heart fluttered. She felt it then, a rush of heat and hope and anticipation. Gideon had always been able to make her hot and bothered with one simple look, and nothing was different on that score. But what did it mean? He was so changed.

It might sound bizarre, but she found the changes in him incredibly sexy. When he was young, he’d been something of a loose cannon—impulsive, edgy, wild. She supposed, for a good girl who’d always toed the line, that was the attraction.

This new Gideon was controlled, steely-eyed, immovable. What had once been unfocused youthful energy was now deadly intense concentration. He was even more dangerous than he’d been then, but somehow, she wasn’t afraid of him. In fact, around him she felt safe, protected.

And highly aroused.

From the moment she’d looked into Gideon’s eyes at the cemetery pavilion, an undercurrent of dark sexual attraction ran like a deep flowing river beneath all the other emotions of disbelief, shock, hope, and anxiety. Eight years of believing him dead, of mourning him, missing him, of yearning to kiss him again, to hold him, to touch him, make love to him coalesced into throbbing, primal need. He was the only man she’d ever really wanted.

Crockett came trotting over to the van in his easy, carefree lope. Sweat glistened his skin. A charming smile curled his lips. A smile that seemed far too upbeat for the occasion. “Could I talk to you in private for a sec, Caitlyn?”

“Danny,” she called out. “Run tell Amelia I’m here to pick you up.” Her son went for the front door of Amelia Mullin’s cute Cape Cod.

“What is it?” she asked once Danny was out of earshot.

“I’ve got season tickets to the Rangers game. I was hoping you and Danny might join me on opening day.”

“Are you asking me out?”

“No, no.” The look he sent her said,
That is, unless you want me to ask you out.
“You’re a good friend, Caitlyn. One of the few people in this town I can converse with on an intellectual level.”

“I appreciate the offer, Crockett, but this victory garden project eats up all my spare time.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it, you’re a busy woman.” He shrugged and widened his grin. “But if you change your mind, just let me know. We could have a really good time.”

If he’d asked before the unsettling switchblade incident with Bowie, before Gideon had come back to town, she just might have said yes, but not now, not ever. “Thank you for asking.”

Danny came zooming up, rescuing her from more conversation.

“Well, I’ve got to get Danny home.”

Crockett’s smile hung like faded clothes on a wash line. She could almost feel his disequilibrium. But what did she expect? He’d just buried his father today. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his designer slacks, restlessly jangled his keys. His shoulders pulled downward in a lonely slump. She wondered why he stayed in Twilight. He seemed so out of place here. Was it the same reason she’d stayed? His roots ran too deep to pull them up.

She had an urge to touch Crockett’s arm, to tell him everything was going to be okay, but she didn’t want to lead him on.

Because Gideon was back, and even though things were strange and strained between them, the one thing she knew for certain was that her feelings for him had not changed.

She wanted him just as much now as she had eight years ago. Maybe even more so. To think they’d lost so much time together and her father was to blame.

The anger she’d struggled to keep under control made her nose burn. She’d put it off for too long. The time had come to confront her father about his unconscionable actions. She could no longer allow him to get away with what he had done. It was time he paid for his sins.

S
unday morning after J. Foster’s Saturday funeral, Richard Blackthorne sat in his usual pew near the front of the First Presbyterian Church of Twilight. He’d been attending the church for thirty-four years. Caitlyn had stopped coming here after she’d moved out and married Marsh. She’d turned Baptist on him, going to Marsh’s church on the other side of town. To avoid him, he knew. Today’s service was on transgressions, and he couldn’t help thinking of Caitlyn.

Richard had just stood up with the rest of the congregation, hymnal in hand, ready to sing “The Old Rugged Cross,” when he felt soft fingers clamp down on his shoulder from behind and smelled the light lavender scent of his daughter’s perfume.

“I need to see you,” Caitlyn whispered in his ear.

An undertow of panic caught him low in the gut, snatched at him, ripped. He kept singing, pretending he didn’t hear her.

Her fingers tightened. “Now.”

Sweat dampened his collar, but the room wasn’t hot. He was alarmed to realize his hands were trembling.

“I’ll be waiting for you on the front steps,” she said, and then took her hand from his shoulder.

A second passed. He turned his head and saw his daughter disappearing out the back door.

For a moment, he thought about not going, but Richard wasn’t a coward. He put his hymnal into the slot behind the pew in front of him, then apologized and excused himself to the end of the aisle. He arrived out in the bright morning sunlight to see Caitlyn pacing back and forth at the top of the steps.

He frowned, acting affronted to hide his fear. “Why have you dragged me from my worship service?”

She stopped pacing and stared at him, her mouth grim, her lips so pale they were almost white, as if she’d been biting them hard and long enough to drain away the color.