Unforgiven (26 page)

“Marissa said she thought you might want to ride it again someday,” she said simply. “And I agreed.”

He bent his head, inhaled carefully, at the thought of his mother and Ris taking care of his dream when he couldn’t. “I loved this bike. I thought it was my future.”

“
You
are your future, honey. The bike’s just a way of getting you there.”

He looked at her, saw himself in her eyes. “I’m leaving. I’m going back out to San Diego.”

“I know,” she said again.

“I’ll get a storage unit in Brookings,” he said.

She smiled, with a hint of sadness, but she knew how to let him go. “Good. Get a helmet.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her on the cheek, then ran his hand over the engine housing. The Marine Corps drilled courage into his soul, his bones, but it paled in comparison to a mother’s courage necessary to let her children go, just for a couple of hours, for a few months, or forever. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“We’ll be in touch,” she said. She patted his cheek, then stepped back.

He started the engine again, then opened the throttle and the bike surged forward, kicking adrenaline through his veins. The soles of his boots scraped the cement as long-unused skills came back on the fly. He balanced and the bike gained speed, then he rocketed down the street, driving right into the setting sun. He stayed at the speed limit as he rolled through town, taking one last look around. The Heirloom Cafe, nestled in the main shopping district. The library. The gas station, then the long curve to the highway.

A couple of miles outside of town, Brookhaven loomed to the north, rocking on the ocean swell of the hill like a boat, all white and orange and red, the figurehead pointing west. A toy truck of a moving van sat in front of the double doors as the new owner set up her retreat center on the plains. Adam pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the bike, staring at the house. That’s where the dragon was born, in the clash between his turbulent feelings for Marissa and his determination to be something more than just a waste of breath and space. As a teen he hadn’t known how to channel passionate emotions; as a Marine he’d learned to ignore them. Love. Longing. Desire. But mostly love.

Marissa taught him how to feel. How to love. And the dragon was gone.

The house receded as he headed south and east, to Brookings. As he rode, he compiled a list of things to do in his mind. Buy a helmet. Break his lease. Move his stuff into a storage unit. Pack what he could carry in his duffle and head west.

Where he belonged. With Marissa. It was time to find his dream.

23

M
ARISSA AWOKE TO
a foreign sound, erratic, gentle, with a faint slap to it. She lay with her eyes closed and absorbed stimuli, the rocking motion under her, the unusual triangular shape of the bed tucked into one side of the bow, warm air on the length of her arms and legs, exposed by a thin pair of cotton shorts and a tank top.

She lay in a bunk on a boat, wearing not sweats, a sweatshirt, and socks under three blankets, but shorts and a tank, one cotton sheet, and a lightweight quilt she’d kicked off during the night. She exchanged the sleepwear for the bikini at the end of the thick pad that served as a mattress, and was dressed for the day. A pair of khaki shorts made the bikini modest enough for casual morning wear, and her wind-and-dreams silk wrap warded off the slight chill of morning in San Diego.

The sounds. A soft thump as the boat drifted against the dock, and not quite a sloshing, not quite a patting. Waves. Waves gently rocking the sailboat she now owned. Her dream came true in the form of a Westsail 32 that needed some interior refinishing but was mechanically sound, simple to sail, and comfortable for cruising. Nicknamed the “wet snail,” her new home was no classic racing yacht, but she loved it fiercely, dearly, even after just a few days onboard. In tribute to her past, she’d named the boat
Prairie Dream
.

No one she’d met in the marina thought she was crazy for dreaming of wind and waves. The forty-foot boat next to hers held a family of four, parents and two kids who left a home in Indiana to cruise around the world while homeschooling their eight-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son in both the sailing life and traditional coursework. The kids took great pleasure in teaching her all about her new home, how things worked, cooking simple meals, and the parents were no less enthusiastic about sharing their sailing knowledge. Early in the mornings Ashley often hopped over to Marissa’s boat with a blueberry muffin or a plate of pancakes to share. Marissa returned the favor by gently guiding Ashley’s husband, Tony, through his cabin renovation project. Apparently carpentry skills would come in handy in a marina.

She scooted to the bottom of the bed and stood up, which put her in the kitchen/dining area. Cabinets with clever little fasteners hung above the stove and over the counter space. She boiled water on the stove, then poured it into the French press containing the last of the Intelligentsia coffee from Chicago. While she waited for it to brew, she unlocked the hatch and swung it open. Fresh salt-tinged air flowed down the stairway and into the kitchen area. For a moment she simply stood there, rocking slightly with the boat’s motion, face tipped upward as sunlight and happiness patted her with gentle palms.

Right where I belong.

The thought rose to the surface of her mind. She had no schedule beyond the day’s sailing lesson, no plan other than
Make a plan
. The Southern California coastline offered dozens of short trips, opportunities to hone her skills within sight of land before she launched out, perhaps to Seattle, perhaps to Hawaii and on to Thailand, perhaps through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean. She had time, and knew how to live frugally. She owned a boat. Sun and wind and water were free.

What she didn’t have was Adam.

They e-mailed and Skyped. She’d seen his apartment through the camera on his computer, everything neatly organized and stowed, heard his plans for spring semester courses and internship applications. But three days ago the contact ended abruptly. He wasn’t on Skype and hadn’t answered a single e-mail. She told herself he was busy getting set up in Brookings, attending orientation meetings for the incoming students, and reminded her aching heart that some things just weren’t meant to be.

She missed him so much that she wondered if she liked what she’d started. Saying good-bye to Brookhaven tugged at her heartstrings until she saw the ocean. Saying good-bye to Adam still knotted her throat. She loved him, both the boy he’d been twelve years ago and the man he was now, strong enough to set her free rather than keep her for himself. But only he could decide whether to stay trapped in his past, or build a new future.

She depressed the plunger on the French press to trap the grounds, poured a mug of coffee and climbed the stairs, expecting to see a rumpled Tony sitting in his cockpit, nursing his first cup of coffee while the kids clambered around like monkeys. True to form, Tony sat in the captain’s chair, blearily eyeing the dark-haired, hazel-eyed man sitting on the dock by her boat. He wore a USMC T-shirt with jeans, but dangled his bare feet over the edge of the dock, his boots lined up beside him next to a motorcycle helmet and a single duffle bag. In one hand he held a Starbucks cup.

Adam.

She blinked, then surreptitiously patted the wheel for reassurance.

“You’re not dreaming,” he said.

“I must be,” she said, striving for casual. “You’re drinking Starbucks.”

“I was desperate,” he said, giving the cup a disparaging glance. “I rode into town a couple of hours ago and the first coffee place I saw was Starbucks. I’ve been awake since Utah.”

One phrase had her heart doing slow flip-flops in her chest. “You rode into town?”

“On the bike,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you kept it running?”

Tears of sheer joy stung her eyes. She blinked them away, then sipped her coffee. “If you went looking for it, you’d know. If you didn’t, then it didn’t matter.”

He looked ragged, shadows under his red-rimmed eyes, stubble thick on his jaw. “All that time I was on you about daring to dream, and you’d kept mine alive.”

“You thought I needed a little shove,” she said. “I thought you needed space. Was I wrong?”

“No,” he said. A smile broke soft and sweet in the dark scruff obscuring his jaw, but he stayed where he was. “You weren’t wrong.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” she said.

“I got here at oh-four-hundred. I didn’t want to scare you.” He sipped the coffee, and nodded at
Prairie Dream
. “Nice.”

“Nate helped me find her,” she said. “She’s not pretty yet, but she will be when I’m done with her.”

“I think she’s beautiful, tough girl,” he said as he scanned the sails and rigging with a knowledgeable eye. “You going to sail her by yourself?”

“I could rework the rigging so I could sail her single-handed,” she said. “It’s been done.”

He sipped his coffee and made a noncommittal noise completely belied by the
over-my-dead-body
look in his eye. Single-handed sailing was for people with a death wish and no respect for the international conventions requiring a constant watch on the high seas.

“Or I could try to find someone who wanted to sail around the world with me,” she said. “It’s not easy to do. It would have to be someone I knew well. Someone who wouldn’t spook at the first sign of trouble. Someone I’d seen at his worst, and who’s seen me at mine.”

“Someone capable, but adventurous,” he said, summing up her requirements. “Practical, but enough of a romantic to go after the next sunset. Preferably with more sailing experience than you.”

“That part’s not hard to find,” she said, “but for the rest of it . . . yes. Exactly.”

“And you’re having trouble finding someone who fits that bill?”

“That depends,” she said, her heart in her throat. “Why are you here?”

“I’m following my dream,” he said.

“What about architecture school?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m not rushing into any decisions right now. I’m going to take some time, get reacquainted with who I am, and what I want out of life.” He looked at her, his clear, bottomless gaze drawing tears to her eyes. “But this I know, Marissa Brooks, this I’ve always known. Whatever future I make is empty without you.”

She gave a hiccupping little laugh and set her coffee on the hatch. “Well, that’s lucky,” she said. “I happen to need a first mate.”

“Permission to come aboard?”

At her nod, he swung his legs over the side of the boat and dropped into the cockpit. The boat rocked gently with his momentum and weight, tipping her forward, right into his arms. Right where she belonged.

It would take more than her weight and a gently rocking boat to knock him off his feet, so she assumed his knees buckled because he wanted her in his lap on the red cushioned bench. She straddled his hips and flattened her palms along his jaw to kiss him, tasting bitter coffee and hot desire. One hand palmed her butt while the other fisted in her hair, for a very long, very tantalizing kiss.

She broke away and looked over her shoulder at Tony, studiously focusing on his open laptop. “We can’t do this here,” she whispered. “This is a family-friendly pier.”

“Guess you’ll have to show me my new quarters.”

“So you can sleep.” She ran her thumbs gently along the dark circles under his eyes. “You look so tired.”

“I didn’t want to wait one second longer than necessary to see you again.”

“I’m so glad you got the bike out again.”

“Didn’t even get a speeding ticket on the way here. Riding it, knowing you were at the end of the trip was rush enough. I love you, Ris,” he said. “Always. Even when I wouldn’t feel it, much less admit it, I loved you. I felt so much when I was with you, and not just teenage lust. Love. Fear. Exhilaration. Mostly love, but I was so scared of what I could do to you that I did something worse to Josh and his family. To all of us.”

“You’ve learned. That’s all we do. We live, and we learn, and we keep going.” She searched his gaze, but the bitter emotions driving him for so long were gone. “I love you, too, Adam.”

That earned her another long kiss, but he was good and kept his hands at the middle of her back. When the kiss broke off, he reached over the gunwale and snagged the Starbucks cup sitting on the dock, flipped off the lid with his thumb, then dumped the rest of his coffee into the water. “We haven’t discussed pay,” he said. “I work for good coffee.”

Her cup still sat on the hatch, miraculously upright with all the rocking. She reached for it, took a sip, then handed him the mug. Heat and love danced in his hazel eyes as he turned the rim to drink from the same place she had.

“We’ll lay in a good supply before we cast off for Thailand,” she said.

His gaze flicked over the cockpit and rigging. “Have you taken her out yet?”

“Not yet,” she admitted. “Nate’s guy looked her over thoroughly, but I’ve been waiting.”

“For what?” he scoffed. “You’ve got the boat, sunshine, a good breeze, and temps in the upper sixties. What else could you need to sail?”

“You,” she said simply.

His hand came up and tangled in her hair, then he touched his forehead to hers. “I’m here, Ris,” he said. “Let’s go.”

TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF ANNE CALHOUN’S NEW NOVEL

Jaded

COMING SOON FROM BERKLEY SENSATION!

A
LANA WENTWORTH LOCKED
the front door to the Walkers Ford Public Library with one thing on her mind: Chief of Police Lucas Ridgeway.

She gave the brass door handle an absentminded tug to make sure it was secured before setting off at a brisk walk down the traditionally named Main Street. Lucas usually got home a few minutes after she did. With any luck, she’d have just enough time to put on the opposite of her librarian clothes, which consisted of a primly buttoned silk blouse and cashmere sweater over a tweed skirt. The blue scoop-neck T-shirt with the rosettes would do, then she’d put a little extra oomph into her makeup. Figure out her strategy before his truck pulled into the driveway next door to hers.

A quick glance at her watch told her she’d left herself just enough time to get ready, but not enough to talk herself out of what she planned to do.

She stepped lightly in the shallow depressions worn into the marble steps by thousands of residents, and turned for home. With the May 1st late frost date two days in the past, spring had taken a firm grip on the region. The Business District’s beautification committee had spent the day hanging planters full of impatiens from the green-painted light poles and set out the half barrels spilling over with tulips and crocuses, but Alana only noticed the hardy spring flowers when a sharp knock on the Heirloom Cafe’s front window snapped her out of her reverie. Fifteen-year-old Carlene Winters, dressed in her green uniform, waved brightly and hurried to the cafe’s front door.

“Hi, Miss Wentworth! I just wanted to say thanks for the recommendation. I started
Pride and Prejudice
last night, and I can’t put it down.”

“You’re welcome,” Alana said. “I really have to—”

“The language was a little tough, but I totally got that Mr. Darcy was being mean to Lizzy,” the girl continued. “He says there aren’t any pretty girls for him to dance with, but she’s more than pretty. She’s funny, and she laughs at herself. That should count for something.”

Normally she’d love to talk to Carlene about all the intricacies of Darcy and Lizzy’s courtship, but not tonight, not when she wanted to start a courtship of her own. Or something resembling a courtship, in a way. In a very indirect way. “It should,” Alana agreed rather desperately. “I’m sorry, but I have to get home. Come by the library tomorrow and we can talk about it then?”

“Sure! Have a good night.”

An image of Lucas from last Sunday flashed into her mind. He’d caught Alana in her thin robe and nightie, scampering barefoot down the driveway to pick up her newspaper for her Sunday morning tradition of reading the
Trib
in bed with a pot of coffee and Nina Simone on in the background. Dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a hunter-green fleece pullover, he’d loaded his retired service dog, Duke, into his truck for
his
Sunday morning tradition of taking Duke for a long hike. As usual he’d looked unflappable during the embarrassing encounter, but when she reached the safety of the stoop and looked back, he was still watching her.

The look in his dark-chocolate eyes had sent heat flickering through her despite the early-morning chill. Even now, two days later, her nerves still held the charge of that look.

“I hope to,” she said to Carlene, then set off again, impatient with the delay, but mostly impatient with herself.

Once again she’d left something important until almost the last minute. Well, this wasn’t the last minute. The last minute would be two weeks from today, when her contract with the town of Walkers Ford ended and she left town to drive back to Chicago. But her habitual distraction and procrastination meant yet again she was scrambling to do something she’d always meant to do, then didn’t.

Like working in a public library, the goal she’d set when she got her MLS then let slip through her fingers after graduation. The whole point of this diversion was for her to learn to be more proactive in her life, to make things happen rather than let them happen to her. Including Lucas Ridgeway, assuming he had no objections to being one half of the oldest clichés in the book—a whirlwind affair between a repressed librarian and a cop.

She hurried down the street to her rented house as nature put on a show in the expansive sky at the end of the street. There was the Hanford house five doors down, then there was nascent twilight streaked with the sunset’s reds, oranges, and pinks. It should have clashed horribly, but the prairie sky wore the colors with a magnificent lack of concern that reminded her of her sister, Freddie. Freddie wore jeans, ballet flats, and a faded blue button-down shirt in front of fifty thousand people and within minutes
#preppiestyle
trended on Twitter all over North America and Europe.

Nothing ever just happened to Freddie. Freddie made things happen. Their mother often complained that one daughter got all the initiative and the other got all the absentmindedness.

She hurried up the driveway, trying to remember if the shirt she wanted to wear was in her dresser or on the closet shelf, when Lucas’s police department Bronco pulled into the driveway next to hers. The transmission ground when he shifted into park and cut the engine.

Too late. The story of her life, but she resisted the urge to write off the rest of the night. Instead, she climbed the front step and waited, pretending to thumb through the mail while she watched him greet Duke. Maybe it was the untempered affection he had for the dog that tugged at her heart. He hunkered down to scratch the dog’s throat and whisper, “
You’re a good boy yes you are
,” into his upturned muzzle. Duke spent his days on the screened-in front porch of his house next door. Every time Lucas came home, Duke pranced and danced and rubbed his white-furred snout against Lucas’s legs, his fawn-colored tail wagging frantically. The raw blast of emotion from the dog and Lucas’s gentle scratching tightened Alana’s throat every time she saw it.

Tonight was no exception. When the reunion ended, Lucas got to his feet, then glanced her way. He wore a navy suit and a gray tie, with his badge and service weapon clipped to his belt.

“Evening, Chief,” she said.

“Ms. Wentworth,” he replied.

The way he said it shouldn’t have made her heart beat a little faster, but her name in his mouth always did. She could salvage this, still take her few minutes to get ready. “I wonder if you’d have a moment later tonight,” she said. “The bathroom sink isn’t draining properly.”

“It’s not the kitchen sink this time?”

“Sorry, but no,” she said.

He looked at his watch, a no-nonsense Timex. “I’ve got a couple of minutes now,” he said. “I’ll get my toolbox.”

Damn!

Alana carried her bags inside, turning on lights as she moved from the kitchen to the dining room and down the short hall to the bedroom she used as an office, where she dumped the bags, then continued down to her bedroom. The house was lovely, with gorgeous hardwood floors, walnut cabinets built into the corners of the dining room, brick molding, and charming window seats in the two bedrooms. When she first looked at the rental property, Lucas had told her his grandparents lived out a seventy-year marriage in the house. Love seeped from the woodwork and floors to give texture to the light that poured through the picture window overlooking Mrs. Ridgeway’s famous rose beds. Chief Ridgeway had scrupulously pointed out the house’s defects—leaky windows, ancient plumbing—but to Alana, bundling up during the winter was a small price to pay for the chance to see those roses bloom as spring turned to summer.

She smiled wistfully at her cluelessness. The roses wouldn’t bloom until long after she left town, but the possibility had charmed her into ignoring the plumbing problems.

After opening the kitchen door, she poured herself a glass of wine, turned on NPR, and more attentively sorted through her mail. The stack included the usual bills as well as invitations, personal notes, and birth announcements on Crane’s finest paper. She slit open the formal announcement of a party in a few weeks’ time honoring her stepfather’s contribution to efforts to ameliorate global poverty. Her mother had set the date for the celebration months earlier, but receiving the formal invitation made it all real. Alana’s time in Walkers Ford was almost over. She should start packing, another task she was putting off, but she’d brought so little with her. A few hours one evening and she’d be ready to leave.

Lucas knocked at the kitchen door with the Maglite she recognized from the sports bag he carried to and from work each day. Glass of wine still in hand, she crossed the kitchen and let him in.

“You’re still dressed for work,” she said, stating the obvious. He’d left the gun and badge in his house, though.

“Town council meeting tonight,” he said as he turned sideways to get past her. He carried an old-fashioned wooden toolbox weathered gray. A hammer and a neatly organized set of wrenches lay on the top shelf, other tools stored in the compartment underneath. His broad shoulder brushed hers as he managed to avoid hitting her knees with the toolbox.

Every cell in her body lit up, and heat bloomed on her cheekbones. His gaze, normally so controlled, flicked down just enough to let her know he saw the blush. Silence. The air between them heated.

“I’ll just . . .” he said with a tilt of his head toward the bathroom.

“Of course,” she replied, and stepped to the side to let him down the hall.

Her experience with Marissa Brooks and Adam Collins a few weeks after she arrived had taught her about small-town values, and gossip. She couldn’t just start up a torrid affair with the small town’s Chief of Police. Yet she wondered how to tell him in no uncertain terms that she wanted to go to bed with him and stay there until she couldn’t remember her own name, preferably without sounding like a shameless tart.

A sophisticated woman would know how to go about this. Freddie could probably do it while polishing a paper for an international conference on human trafficking. Alana wasn’t Freddie, though, or her mother, or her stepfather, the senator. In a family characterized by brilliance, wit, and a talent for far-reaching policy development, Alana was quiet, observant, content with the background.
Just stand still and smile,
her mother used to say with resignation.
You have such a pretty smile
. So her pretty smile graced the walls and corners first of school dances and mixers, then college parties, then cocktail parties and receptions when she went to work for the Wentworth Foundation.

But not even time spent on the edge of the limelight matched the long, heated moments when Lucas Ridgeway gave her his full attention.

“It’s a budget meeting,” he said as he set down the toolbox.

“Sorry?”

He shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over the linen closet’s doorknob. “I’m still dressed for work because there’s a town council meeting tonight. Budget meeting.”

“Oh. Of course.”

The tiny, rose-pink bathroom was barely large enough for Alana to dry off after a shower. Lucas could brace one shoulder against the wall and rest his palm on the mirror opposite, something he’d done the day the pipe draining the shower cracked and leaked peach-scented water into the basement. He’d been cursing steadily and quite prolifically under his breath then, but not tonight.

He yanked the stopper free and peered into the drain. “It’s clogged again.”

“I could use a drain cleaner.”

“It’ll eat right through the pipes,” he replied. “They’re seventy years old. Some weekend soon I’ll replace the drain line and the P-trap. Maybe that will help. In the meantime . . .”

He handed her the flashlight, then stretched out on his back and wedged his torso into the cabinet under the sink. One hand fumbled in the toolbox. He lifted his head to see better, banged his forehead on the cabinet, and grunted.

“Sorry,” Alana said hastily, and shone the light on the offending pipes.

It took only minutes to clear the pipe, then reattach the stopper to the drain lever, each stage punctuated by curt instructions given by the big male maneuvering in the small room. He twisted, his legs pushing against the opposite wall so his knee pressed into her shoulder.

“Do you wash your hair in the sink?” he asked.

“No,” she said, pulling a handful forward to consider it. It was thick and poker-straight, cut in a bob that swung just below her jawline. It’s only redeeming characteristic was the natural, pale blond color. Freddie bemoaned her regular appointments at Chicago’s best hair salon to maintain the same shade. “There’s just a lot of it.”

“I can see that,” he said to the interior of the cabinet. His dress shirt pulled free from his pants, revealing the waistband of his dark blue boxers. A thin line of hair ran from his navel into the waistband. Muscles flexed as he tightened the joint, and with each moment the scent of male skin and laundry soap permeated the air.

Don’t let this chance slip through your fingers.

According to the thriving small-town gossip he wasn’t seeing anyone, which gave her an excellent reason to use what she’d heard described as the oldest technique in the book to get over what happened with David. She was going to get under Lucas Ridgeway. Tonight. A single, uncomplicated interlude without any awkwardness because he’d leave for the town council meeting.

She should probably attend, too. The town was in the process of conducting a search for a permanent librarian, one capable of ushering the library into the digital age. That was her research focus during her master’s program, but while she’d given Mayor Mitch Turner a fairly lengthy document outlining a wide variety of possible approaches to upgrading the library, she had no real long-term business in town. It was an interesting challenge. The library, built with money donated by Andrew Carnegie in the early 1900s, was a beautiful old building dangerously near the point of being unrepairable. Something would have to be done, soon, although she assumed the something would be done by whoever they hired full time. . . .

The wrench thudded back into the toolbox.

Stay focused.

“Do you want a beer?” she asked.