Unforgiven (18 page)

“Only because you don’t think you can do it,” he said. His voice was even, but his grip tightened on the steering wheel. “You can move mountains, Ris. You’ve done it before. All you have to do is commit.”

She pursed her lips, but didn’t respond.

“Fine. Forget I said that. I did it because I thought you would like it, because it was a gift within my reach to give you.” He paused, then said, “I did it for me, too. I’m coming down off an adrenaline high, trying to avoid the crash.”

That was the most truthful thing she’d heard him say since he walked through Brookhaven’s front door. “So why are you going to school to be an architect?”

Now he blinked. “What?”

“If you want the rush, why stick yourself in an office, drawing elevations and blueprints?”

“I like to build things.”

She stared at him, disbelief in her open mouth and wide eyes, but he braked to a halt at the top of Brookhaven’s circular drive. “And when did you figure this out?”

“I have to do something. The SDSU program focuses on sustainable design, and the state needs more architects. It’s as good a job as any.”

“So how come you get away with ‘as good a job as any’ but I have to see new possibilities? How come I get to go sailing in what will probably be the best day of my life, ever, and you get to join the Marine Corps, then live in a cube farm? Let’s talk about your dreams,” she said, warming up. “Let’s go there.”

“I don’t get a dream, Marissa.”

Using her full name meant he was pissed. So was she. “Because of what happened to Josh? I was there, too, Adam. That night I was right there with you. My house, my land, my mantel on the bonfire.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “That’s another reason why I don’t get a dream. You weren’t on the bike,” he bit off. “You didn’t say what I said, you didn’t take the turn too fast on roads as slick as snot, knowing you could barely handle it and Josh couldn’t.”

“So you pay forever?”

His profile was carved from stone, eyes bleak. “Why not? Josh did.”

“Josh
died.
You didn’t. I know you, Adam. You like speed, movement, people. You like hard things, testing the limits. You’re smart as hell, but you’re not going to be happy at a desk job. You make things happen. You make other people believe things can happen. That’s why everyone wanted to be where you were in high school, that’s why Keith befriended you when he couldn’t take you down. Architecture sounds like Delaney’s idea of a perfect white-collar, double-income life, maybe enough to let her stay home with the kids. Was it your idea, or hers?”

She was shouting now, gesturing wildly enough to smack her hand against the Charger’s dash. The pain flashed her back twelve years to arguments in the front seat of his old Challenger, fights that led to make-out sessions that went nowhere. They’d been like caged animals then, trapped behind bars they couldn’t see, only feel.

“It doesn’t matter whose idea it was,” he ground out. “I’m in the program, and I’m going through with it.”

Taking Josh’s place in the Marine Corps and serving five tours was payment enough for the mistake he’d made. She scrambled for options, anything to make him reconsider. “Can you defer a year? At least take some time and think about it.”

“No. No more time. All this time with nothing to do is making me crazy. I’m in. I’m going to lease one of those apartments. I’m going to grad school. That’s final.”

She unfastened her seatbelt. “Exactly,” she said softly. “I’m going to finish Brookhaven. I’m going to pay off the home equity loan. And
that’s
final.”

“Fine,” he said. “There’s no reason for us not to pick up where we left off twelve years ago.” He’d conducted the conversation while staring fixedly out the front windshield, but now his gaze flicked to hers. Anger and a very familiar sexual arousal mixed with something deeper, something anguished glimmered in the hazel depths.

Longing, hot and sharp, speared through her. “Oh, no,” she said. “One of us is delusional about our futures, and it’s not me. I can’t afford to fall for you. You being here makes no sense. You don’t belong here, and you won’t stay. But I will, and I can’t go to pieces like I did the last time you left.”

She hefted her tote from the floorboard and opened the door. He gripped her forearm and prevented her from getting out of the car. His gaze was hot, enticing, everything he’d been twelve years ago, everything he was now. “Fall for me, Ris. I’m staying.”

How could he give her the space to be someone else, if only for a weekend, yet box himself off so rigidly? She tugged gently. His grip tightened, then relaxed enough for her to pull free. “Thank you for a lovely weekend, Adam. I’ll remember it forever.”

She’d left the porch light off when she took off thirty-six hours earlier, so she fumbled in the gravelike darkness until she got the key in the lock. Once inside she flicked on the kitchen light. Her tiny apartment remained exactly as she’d left it. She hung her jacket on the row of hooks by the door, got herself a glass of water, checked the weather for the next couple of days, then set about the business of fitting her new self into her old world.

A bath would help. Hot and liquid and engulfing. While the water ran into the claw-foot tub, she put away her few toiletries. Next she found her new hat. Her underwear, nightshirt, and sweater went into the laundry basket. She pulled out Ben’s peacoat and hung it next to Adam’s gift, her brand-new, bright red jacket, then went back into her bedroom.

The plastic bag at the bottom of her black tote was dark blue, so only the white
ana pub
lettering caught the light from the lamp on her nightstand. Slowly she reached in and pulled it out. It didn’t weigh much, only as much as a weekend shaped out of wind and dreams. The drawstring was pulled tight. She opened it, drew out neatly folded tissue paper, and upended it.

Three hundred dollars of beautiful, useless silk slid into her lap. “Adam,” she said quietly. “Oh, Adam.”

She snipped the tag off, stood in front of her full-length mirror and wrapped the scarf around her neck, then pulled it off and draped it over her shoulders. As the fabric shifted and slid in the dim light, the colors blended, water and sky and rain around her shoulders. Still wearing the wrap, she went to the kitchen and picked up her old rotary phone and dialed his cell number.

“Hey,” he said gruffly.

She rubbed her forehead with her palm. Where to start? “Thank you.”

A pause. “You’re welcome.”

“You shouldn’t have,” she said. It was so much, the plane ride and the hotel, the day of sailing, the Art Institute, the wrap. The start of something she thought was doomed and he thought was a new beginning.

“I wanted to,” he said, still gruff, even a little defensive. “I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to have everything you can dream, everything it’s in my power to give you.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I said . . . everything I said in the car.”

“No, you’re not, tough girl,” he replied, amusement clear in his rough voice.

She laughed. “Okay, that’s true. But I feel the same way about you. I want you to dream, too.” In the silence that followed she heard the Charger’s engine shift into idle. “You’re home.”

“Yeah. I have to see what Mom’s been up to. Tomorrow I’m going to Brookings to get an apartment. Want to ride along?”

“I can’t.”

“You’re going to get the mantel.”

Her heart clawed its way into her throat, and birds’ wings fluttered at her temples. “No,” she said quickly. “The weather’s just cloudy with a chance of showers for the next couple of days. I need to re-side Mrs. Carson’s house.”

“Ris,” he said quietly.

She cut him off. “Then . . . then I’ll get the mantel.”

“I’ll put off the apartment,” he said. “What time are you starting at Mrs. Carson’s?”

“I don’t need help with either project.”

“But I need something to do, so you’re doing me a favor. What comes after that?”

She rubbed her forehead and walked into the bathroom to turn off the water running into the tub. “I have to clean the great hall. The event planners arrive on Friday to start decorating, and the caterer needs to get into the kitchen no later than noon.”

“You know, I need a date for this wedding,” he said offhandedly.

“Let’s not do that,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because if you show up with me, it’ll be scandal and gossip and I’m tired of people talking about you and me.”

“You weren’t invited to the wedding, were you?” His flat, hard voice made the question a statement.

“I’m not friends with Delaney, and I think Keith’s one life-form removed from pond scum. Why would I be invited?”

“Your house is the reception location.”

“Oh, I’ll be there,” she said lightly. “Working. In the background, making sure the event planners and caterer have everything they need.”

She didn’t catch all the words that tumbled out of his mouth, but
motherfucker
featured prominently in the low growl.

“Better clean up that potty mouth,” she said. “Welcome back to Walkers Ford.”

16

M
ARISSA NEGLECTED TO
give him a starting time for Mrs. Carson’s re-siding project, but Adam figured sunrise, or seven thirty, was a good bet. On his way to the job site he swung through the Heirloom Cafe. He waved off the hostess and leaned against the counter to order two large cups of coffee to go. The waitress working the counter went off to pour them. Coffee at the Heirloom wouldn’t win any international awards, but it also wouldn’t taste like week-old battery acid. Their little inside joke, bringing her a cup she could hold. He tried to remember if he’d had anything like that with Delaney. In the beginning she’d been a textbook military girlfriend. Regardless of whether he was stateside, on a WESTPAC cruise, or deployed, packages arrived every week or so, filled with magazines, supplies, and homemade treats his fellow Marines fell on like wolves. He’d matched her efforts with cards and e-mails, flowers, gifts ordered online and shipped to her door in his absence. It was all very Delaney, the right thing to do. But what were their inside jokes, the things that bonded a couple on more than one level?

“Are the books you checked out proving adequate?”

The town’s contract librarian, her brown wool coat buttoned to her chin, a summer sky-blue scarf trapping her loose hair, leaned against the next stool over. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”

“It’s my pleas—”

Marissa’s name and a low laugh drowned out the rest of Alana’s sentence. Her gaze sharpened. “Yesterday I taught a class on computer research at the high school,” she said, her voice just a little louder than before. “While I was there I picked up several of their better books on public speaking and rhetoric. Unfortunately I don’t have them with me, but please stop by the library later today, if you’re interested.”

Whether he needed the books or not, he’d get them and at least skim them. “I appreciate that, ma’am. Thank you,” he said.

“—good at finding a man to teach her what she needs to know.”

The words, spoken by an older man at a table behind Adam and to his left, dropped into that sudden hush that falls over crowded spaces at odd intervals. They so closely mirrored what Keith said to him a few days ago that Adam knew Keith was the one to frame Marissa in that particularly unflattering light. The characterization stank of his particular wit, stinging and smarmy and accurate all at once.

Adam exhaled sulfur, long and slow, as he lifted the lid off one of the to-go cups and stirred cream into Marissa’s coffee. Something hot, leathery, and dangerous shifted inside him, testing the chains holding it inside. He looked at Alana, twin red flags staining her pale cheeks as she fit the lid on her oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins. Her precise movements and high color told him he couldn’t have asked for a better straight man. “You know what we’re taught in the Marines?” he asked.

“I know very little about military service,” she admitted.

The conversations at the periphery of the dropped stone of gossip now halted as most of the heads in the restaurant turned to stare unabashedly at Adam and Alana. He ignored them all, just stood ramrod straight, arms folded across his chest. Projecting command presence into the space around him. “We’re trained to fight in pairs. A Marine alone is hard to kill. Two Marines together are nearly impossible to kill. Three or more, with thirty seconds to plan and weapons made from things you can find on this counter and we will wreak havoc.”

Fuck you up
is what he meant.
Wreak havoc
came out at the last minute as he remembered where he was. “A Marine who learns everything he can from someone who knows more about a weapon or a terrain or a situation is a smart Marine. Resourceful. Adaptable. Someone you want in your platoon.” He swallowed a mouthful of his own coffee, noted with intense satisfaction the absolute silence in the restaurant. Still moving with a precision totally at odds with the fierce creature seething inside him, he snapped the lid back on Marissa’s coffee.

“How interesting,” Alana said. She extracted her wallet from her leather bag and withdrew a bill, then tucked it under her oatmeal. “Allow me to buy your coffees this morning, Adam.”

“That’s not necessary, ma’am,” he said. Something about her formal cadence had him braced like he would for a conversation with a visiting general or dignitary.

“It would be my honor,” she said.

“Thank you.” He balanced both cups in his palm and followed her through the still-silent dining room. She pulled on gloves and gathered her breakfast, then he opened the door for her.

“And say hello to Marissa for me,” she said as she swept through.

Despite the fury boiling inside him, he had to smile. “I will, ma’am.”

Outside she ducked her chin into her scarf and gave him a mischievous grin. “That was fun.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Damn this place.
Damn
it for labeling Marissa, defining who she was, how her life should look when she wanted so much more. Could be so free. Thoughts were flying thick and fast now, with emotion hard on their heels.

“Stop calling me ‘ma’am.’”

“Sorry,” he said, barely cutting off the automatic
ma’am
her imperious tone inspired. “Old habits die hard.”

“I understand,” she said. “Do you want to stop by the library now? I was heading home, but I can open the building for you.”

“Maybe later this afternoon,” he said, remembering the library’s official afternoon hours. “I don’t want this coffee to get cold.”

He put the coffees in the Charger’s cupholders and drove across Main Street to the older part of town. The wide streets were lined with small houses on good-sized lots. Marissa’s red diesel dualie made it easy to identify Mrs. Carson’s house.

For a moment he watched her unload siding board by board from the truck bed to a location alongside the garage. She wore paint – and caulk-stained overalls, and her red fleece zipped to her chin underneath. Her hair lay in brown braids over her shoulders, topped with a red fleece watch cap. Her cheeks were pink either from the cool air or the exertion.

Nothing about what she did, the way she moved, was calculating. She was just being Marissa, but she had to know what people thought of her and she wasn’t even trying to deflect attention.

He got out, reached back in for the coffees, closed the door, and joined her by the tailgate. He handed her the fuller cup then hefted a piece of siding, a movement that exerted more effort than he’d expected. “What is this stuff?”

She looked at it. “Fiber cement. Best siding on the market. When I’m at the auctions I look for construction overbuys and leftovers and pick them up. I found it at an auction when Mrs. Carson said she wanted to re-side her house. The color’s neutral. I’ll put it on now and if she doesn’t like it, I’ll paint it in the spring. It’s heavy, though.”

“Who helped you load it?”

“At the auction or today?” she asked over the rim of the coffee cup.

“Either.”

“The guy running the auction had a forklift, so he put both pallets in the back of the truck for me. I unloaded it into the barn piece by piece back in July, then reloaded it to bring it over.”

The single piece of siding still straining his biceps, he looked at her, long and hard enough to get her attention. “I can barely afford to pay myself, Adam. I don’t have the money to hire a second set of hands, and there’s a limit to what I can trade.”

The concept of bartering brought back the way Walkers Ford’s citizens cut her down to their size at the Heirloom. He looked at the house. The old, vertical siding was still on it. The house wasn’t big, maybe a thousand-square-foot ranch style with a single-car attached garage, but there’d be ladder work. Remove the old siding and heft it into the back of her truck to take to the dump. Unload it. At least she could just back up and shove it off. Tack on the new weather guard/rain barrier. Measure, cut, hang, and nail on the new siding, piece by piece, in the damp fall rain.

“Why are you working in construction?”

“That’s what Chris did, remember?”

He did. Vaguely. Chris’s father was a handyman/jack-of-all-trades, doing whatever didn’t require a building permit from the county. No electrical work, but a little plumbing. His father hurt his back young and Chris picked up his tools, and his drinking habit.

She held the cup in both hands, inhaling the coffee-scented steam. “I had a couple other jobs after high school. I waitressed at Saddles and Spurs, worked as a checkout clerk at the convenience store, but I didn’t like being inside all day, or standing in one place all the time. I just started going to work with him. I figured if I could help, he’d get through a job faster and could take more work. When the opportunity to buy Brookhaven came up, we thought we’d renovate it, get experience, then sell it.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “And he bought that?”

Her gaze flicked to his face, then off into the distance. “Yes,” she admitted. “I sold it pretty convincingly.”

He wasn’t ready to go there yet. “Did you get the panic attacks when you worked on the house with him?”

“They’re not panic attacks,” she protested. “It was different work. Before he died we rewired the house with the help of an electrician friend of his, and were most of the way through the plumbing. That next fall, when the paying work slowed down, I started on the ceilings and walls. Come summer, Brian helped me with the windows. Then I tackled the floors.”

From a construction-plan standpoint, her strategy made perfectly logical sense. There was no point in replacing the mantel and woodwork only to have to remove it or cover it while she was rewiring, plastering, painting. But that wasn’t why she couldn’t drive up Mrs. Edmunds’s driveway. “So the panic attacks are about the mantel.”

“They’re not your fault,” she said.

“Sure they’re not,” he scoffed, then pinned her with his gaze. “I destroyed it. You’d be done by now. That’s on me.”

“The physical damage is your fault,” she said quietly, “but you’re not responsible for me.”

Because you left.
The words vibrated in the air as surely as if she’d spoken them, and therein lay the rub, as they said. He’d left, forfeited any right or claim to Marissa Brooks, and no matter who did the asking, she wasn’t ready to give him a second chance.

He couldn’t blame her, but that didn’t make hearing the gossip any easier. She didn’t need a knight in dress A’s to sweep her off her feet. She needed a second set of hands to finish this siding job, and a friend at her back when she went to do what she had to do.

She set her coffee cup beside the wheel well and pulled on her work gloves. “Let’s get the siding off the side of the garage.”

He’d brought some tools from his mother’s garage. She wedged the split end of her pry bar under the nail head and tapped on the opposite end to pop the nail out, then lifted her eyebrow at him to check his understanding. When he nodded, she asked, “Low or high? Low’s hard on your knees. High’s hard on your shoulders because you’ve got your arms over your head.”

“High,” he said. He had more upper-body strength than she did.

She went to her knees in the grass and efficiently popped the nails. He watched her technique for a second to get his bearings, then went to work where the siding met the soffit under the gutter. For a few minutes the only sound was the screech and jerk of nails tearing free from wood and the thud of the hammer against the pry bar. When the sheet of siding sagged away from the framing, Marissa stood up. He popped the last nails loose, then they took down the sheet of siding, rotted and crumbling at the bottom, and carried it to Marissa’s truck and slid it into the bed.

“I’ve been to the Architecture school at SDSU,” she said as they walked back to the house.

He hefted his pry bar and hammer. “Yeah?”

“They have a collection of photos and newspaper articles about old houses in the upper Midwest. Original plans and elevations. That kind of thing. It’s kind of interesting.”

“If you could do anything for work,” he said, putting his full weight into a stubborn nail, “what would you do?”

Screech. Pop.
“Truth?”

“Always.”

“This,” she said.

He looked down at her. “Really?”

Her blue eyes were wide, challenging. “Why is that so surprising? I couldn’t handle a desk job. I like the challenge of redesigning a space, making it reflect a person’s character or personality. Your mom and I had a blast working out her bathroom reno. It’s not buildings, but it’s satisfying, and I’m good at it.”

“Even after going out on the
Resolute
?”

“That’s not reality, Adam. It’s a dream. That’s all.”

“I thought it was a tangent.”

Screech. Pop.
Then she cut him a glance. They worked in silence for the next few minutes. “What had you so pissed off when you drove up?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Give me three guesses,” she said but continued before he could agree. “You heard some gossip about you and me down at the Heirloom.”

He put a little extra force behind the hammer swing. “Close enough. It was just about you.”

Bitterly amused laughter huffed from her as she gripped the bottom edge of the siding in her work gloves. “They’re just too intimidated to talk about you so openly,” she said.

“They should be,” he said with a grunt. He hoisted the rotting sheet of siding himself and dropped it into the truck bed.

She finished the rest of the coffee. Her breath condensed in the cool air. “The merry widow of Chatham County. That’s what Keith used to call me when I did start going to Saddles and Spurs after Chris died. He was home from law school by then.”

“Because you were so fucking merry?”

“I was the life of the party,” she said, so blandly he couldn’t tell whether she meant she’d gotten drunk and danced topless on the tables, or she was as reserved and remote as she was now.

Did it matter?

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “You know how this town talks. Why carry on like you did?”

“Like I do,” she interrupted, lifting her cup.

A hot flush of anger replaced the cold-air flush on his cheekbones at the thought of being the latest in a long string of men teaching Marissa something she wanted to know.