Читать книгу Small Town Secrets - Sharon Mignerey - Страница 10

As Léa came back into the house, she wondered how much Zach had overheard. To her surprise, he wasn’t in the living room…or in the kitchen. Then she saw him through the large multi-pane window that overlooked the back yard. He was sitting at the picnic table under the enormous cottonwood tree in the middle of the yard. The big tomcat that visited her every day sat on the table. Both of them faced the house as though they were waiting for her, a thought that somehow cheered her.

When Zach looked up, she waved, and he stood in a fluid movement and came back toward the house. Tail in the air, the cat headed in the opposite direction.

Admitting to herself she was glad he had waited, she held open the door for him. Remember? You were going to be merely polite. She remembered. Right now…right now, she wanted—needed—a distraction.

“Ready to put me to work?” he asked, gesturing toward the drill.

“I am, though I imagine you have other things to do, especially since I kept you waiting.” There. She had made the offer, and he could leave if he wanted. He was off the hook.

“It’s not a problem.” Zach’s gaze took in the sky-blue color of the kitchen, the rustic, redbrick fireplace and the print curtains at the windows. “I visited here with Aunt Sadie a couple of times years ago.” He gestured toward the tree in the backyard. “The tree is a lot bigger, but I remember this room. Your grandmother made great oatmeal cookies, if memory serves.”

Léa grinned. “That she did, and I have the family recipe. I might even be persuaded to bake some for you.”

“Yeah?” He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had offered to cook for him.

“Yeah,” she agreed, as she led the way into the living room where she closed and locked the front door. “I thought we’d start in here.”

Zach thought the beige living room looked as though it was in a completely different house. The room was mostly empty, as though furniture had been taken out and never replaced. A couple bookcases filled with books and CDs lined one wall, and an old-fashioned rocking chair sat next to the window. The neutral colors didn’t seem at all like Léa.

He waved in the direction of the walls. “I was expecting more of your rainbow colors.”

Her smiled faded. “That was…” Firming her jaw, she added, “a mistake. When I was little, this room was painted yellow, and even on the gloomiest winter day, it was like coming into a sunny room. Gram had this big flowered couch and a handmade rag rug. Not to mention enough knickknacks to open her own gift shop.” Léa’s expression grew pensive. “She said the yard was too much for her to keep up, and so she gave me the house for a wedding present. Foley didn’t especially like what I had done with the rest of the house, so I told him he could do whatever he wanted in this room. He had an ugly black recliner and an even uglier couch that, thank goodness, he took with him when he moved out. That’s when my grandmother changed the paperwork and put the house solely in my name.” She glanced around. “I bought paint a couple of weeks ago, and I’m going to repaint within the next week or two.”

“In your spare time.” For a split second Zach thought about offering to help her before reminding himself he now had another reason to stay away from her. A woman trying to adopt a child needed to keep her distance from an ex-con like himself.

She nodded and a generous smile lit her face again. “Yeah, then.”

“I must have been somewhere in my teens when I was last in this house. I remember your grandmother’s cookies, but…” He paused and looked at Léa. “I don’t remember you.”

“I don’t remember you, either. How old are you?” she asked.

“Thirty-six.”

She grinned. “You don’t remember me because I’m eight years younger. A seven- or eight-year-old girl wouldn’t even register on a teenage boy’s radar screen.”

He laughed. “Let’s hope not. Where’s your grandmother now?”

Again, Léa’s face lost its animation. “She had a stroke seventeen months ago, and she broke her hip. That’s healed now, but she’s still not well enough to leave the nursing home.”

“The one here in town…” He waved in the general direction he remembered it being. “A block or so past the hospital?”

“That’s right. I’d bring her home in a heartbeat, but since there’s no bathroom downstairs and since she can’t navigate stairs—”

“That’s a problem,” he finished.

She nodded. “And probably way more than you wanted to know.”

It wasn’t, but he didn’t confess he wanted to know everything about her—from what she had done in Denver before moving here to how she spent her time when she wasn’t at her café to what she dreamed about.

Ignoring the caution light in the back of his brain that was blinking again, he asked, “What’s the plan?”

She fished a couple of slim eyebolts out of the bag and gave them to him. “According to Scotty—he owns the hardware store—drilling holes through the window frame and inserting the bolts is a guaranteed way to keep people from coming through the window.”

People. Her ex. Since she had told Zach that she had just changed the locks, Foley Blue had clearly found some other way into her house.

She pulled the sheer curtain away from the window frame. “Two bolts per window, ten windows in the house.” She glanced at Zach. “Are you sure you have time for this?”

“I have time.”

She let go of the curtain and held out her hand for the hardware in his hand. “No, you don’t. You’re frowning.”

“Not about helping you.”

“So this is your normal expression.” She waited until he met her glance, then turned down the corners of her mouth and her eyebrows into an exaggerated frown.

He grinned at her silly expression. “Something like that.”

She smiled back. “Much better.”

How could she smile, he wondered, given that she wouldn’t be barring herself into her house if she wasn’t worried?

“Want something to drink?” she asked. “Iced tea? Lemonade.”

“Whatever you have.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Zach took the two minutes she was gone to examine the wood frame on the windows. The plan for securing them was deceptively simple. Effective. Nearly as effective for keeping herself locked in as bars would be. He hated that she was imprisoning herself. To get in, a person would have to break a window.

“Maybe you should opt for an alarm system,” he told her when she returned and handed him a tall glass of iced tea.

“That’s in the works, too. But, this isn’t like a city where you call and they come the same day. Scotty can do it, but he doesn’t carry the parts, plus he’s got to come over to see exactly what he needs, order the stuff, and then install it…that’s a couple of weeks away.”

“Unless you have air conditioning—”

“I don’t.”

“—it’s going to be hot in here all summer if you can’t open a window. I can drill you an extra set of holes so you could open the window a couple of inches and still use the pins,” he said, demonstrating what he meant.

“Good idea. And Foley…” Her voice trailed away.

“If you’re that worried, get a restraining order,” Zach said.

“I…it hasn’t come to that.” She took a sip out of her glass while he drilled the first hole. “I’ll have my uncle talk to him.”

“A strong arm?” Zach shot her a grin. “I could use an uncle like that.”

“Mine is the chief of police.”

“Ah.” A cop in her family. The reasons to keep away from her just kept multiplying.

“He’s the one who introduced me to Foley, and Foley’s like a son to him, you know?” Her ex was on her mind—understandable, given the project they were doing.

“I can imagine.” Personally, Zach’s relationship with his father was nothing to brag about. “Have you thought about moving somewhere else?” he asked, drilling the second hole.

“Yep.” She gave him another of her easy smiles that slid like a ray of sunlight into him. “Only three problems with that. First, this is my home—not to mention the house that my grandmother gave to me—and if I leave again, it will be because I want to, not because somebody drove me off. Plus, this is a great place to raise a family. Yes, my marriage to Foley may have been a disaster, but I still hope for more. The thought of coming home to this house every night—coming home to children—I want that.”

He set the pins in the pair of holes to make sure they fit, then removed them, lifted the window two inches, and drilled a second set of holes.

“You make that look disgustingly easy,” she said. “I would have been at this for another half hour.”

“And the third reason,” he prompted, mostly because he liked the sound of her voice. Plus, she was close enough that he imagined he smelled cinnamon again.

“I’d have to take me along,” she said, simply.

He made a point of looking her up and down. “And that’s a bad thing because…”

“If I ran I away, I’d be pretending that I didn’t have any responsibility for the things that happened in my marriage.”

“Make a fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” he said. When she sent a questioning glance in his direction, he swallowed and gave her the bare truth. “You saw me coming out of the meeting today.”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“I’m an alcoholic,” he said, just as he had hundreds of times over the past three years—and remembering a time when the words hadn’t come easily. His sobriety was something he needed to maintain for himself, but he admitted that he wanted Léa’s good opinion of him. “And that’s one of the steps to recovery.”

She didn’t say anything, just watched him with those clear blue eyes that seemed to look right through him.

“Just what every girl wants,” he finally said to break the silence. “An alcoholic ex-con across the street.”

“When you put it that way, it sounds awful.”

“It was. It is. And I have to live the rest of my life knowing that, whether I was drunk or not, I’m responsible for someone dying.”

“Are you…sober, now?”

He nodded. “Three years and two months.”

“Then, I can think of worse neighbors,” she said.

He liked the sound of that, even though another bare truth was he still wasn’t feeling just neighborly. Not by a long shot.

They finished installing the pins on the other two windows in the living room. “One room down,” Léa said.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked. When she sent him a questioning glance, he added, “Lock yourself in like this?”

“I’ll sleep easier.” She led the way to the kitchen.

That simple statement told him too much. Namely that she hadn’t slept last night. He knew what that was like, knew the stress it caused.

“My favorite room in the house,” she said, moving toward the bank of windows.

Zach understood why it was her favorite. The view through the windows included a large yard with a couple trees and farther away the ramparts and juniper-covered mesas that stretched for miles.

He then realized that locking the windows wouldn’t keep out anyone determined to get in.

The back door opened onto an old-fashioned glassed-in porch, and both doors were fitted with a big pane of glass that would be an invitation to a burglar in a big city.

“All somebody has to do is break the window and they can still get in,” Zach said, stating the obvious.

“At least I’d have proof someone had been in the house,” Léa said.

“If you’d told me two weeks ago that I’d be helping a neighbor build a prison—”

“That’s how it seems to you?” She looked genuinely shocked.

“How does it seem to you?” he countered.

“I’m not—” She shook her head, her stricken glance lancing him, then skipping away. “I just want to know that when I go to bed at night no one can get in.”

“Hey.” As he had last night, he took her hand, liking the way it felt within his. “Don’t mind me. Just because I can’t stand the idea of being locked in doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you need to. Okay?”

She looked away, then nodded.

He released her hand and moved away from her, once again repeating to himself the litany of reasons she was off limits.

She made him another iced tea while he repeated the process he had done in the living room. Throughout, their conversation remained carefully away from the subjects of prisons and her ex-husband. Zach hated caring so much that she hurt. He had just met her, yet that didn’t keep him from wanting to shield her from heartache—another surprising thought had him silently laughing at himself. He was the last person imaginable to shield her from hurt or heartache or anything else.

She led him upstairs, the stairwell in her house accessed from the kitchen, the sky-blue color of the kitchen continuing down the hall. She opened the first door—a nursery all done up in soft colors and white painted furniture. Clearly, it was a room that had been put together with the care of a woman already loving the child who was to be in here.

Léa paused an instant, then crossed the room to the window where she took down the café rod that held crisp eyelet curtains.

Following her into the room, Zach cleared his throat. “I overheard you and the woman who was here before—you’re wanting to adopt?”

She nodded, her gaze not quite meeting his. Her guarded expression revealed just how important this was to her, which somehow made it important to him.

“Some kid is going to be lucky to have you for his mom.”

“Thanks.”

Léa’s voice was husky, as though she needed to clear her throat.

“I could be putting my foot in my mouth, but I thought it was nearly impossible for a single person to adopt.”

“In some states I’ve heard that’s the way it is,” Léa said. “Thankfully, here in Colorado, it’s a little easier, though the scrutiny for a single parent is the same as it is for a couple.”

He made quick work of securing the window, then followed her on down the hallway past the bathroom and into the larger bedroom at the end of the hall. Her room.

It was comforting and feminine. The white wicker furniture reminded him of being on a porch, and, as he gazed around the room, he decided that it might have once been one. It appeared that after it had been closed in, a pair of glass double doors had been left that now opened onto a balcony too narrow even to stand on.

“The left-side door doesn’t open,” she said, pulling back the sheer curtain. She vibrated with tension as she stared out the window. “Right after we moved in, Foley dubbed this the Romeo balcony.”

“I thought Juliet was on the balcony.”

Léa nodded, her gaze lifting to his. “Exactly.”

“And he was able to get in this way?”

“I used to love sleeping with the door open,” she said without directly answering his question. “A breeze would come in, and you’d be able to smell the junipers and the piñon. I hate this—locking the doors up this way—but I don’t know any other way.”

“You could move.”

“No,” she stated simply, although the look she gave him spoke volumes.

Though Zach disliked the idea of marring the white woodwork with the sturdy latches she handed him, he installed them both. Since the doors were panes of glass, they also wouldn’t keep anyone out for long.

Finishing, he turned around to look at Léa where she stood next to the bed.

“Need anything else?” he asked, deliberately putting distance between them and heading down the hallway toward the stairs.

“You’ve done more than enough,” she said. “Any time I can return the favor…”

“You fed me breakfast. Let’s just call it even.”

She followed him to the front door where he casually let himself out of her house without looking back, telling her that he’d see her in a day or two. If he could stay away that long, that is. Like her cooking, she was a feast for the senses, and he loved everything about being around her.

Oh, he could tell himself that he was simply being a gentleman and a good neighbor because he was worried about her. But that would only be half the story. Being with her had made him feel more human and more alive than anything he’d experienced during the last three years. And seeing her vulnerability made him ache to hold her close the way he craved a shot of bourbon.

He shook his head to clear it. That comparison made him break into a sweat.

As he put away the drill and headed to the pasture, he called up the tools he had learned in AA. Take things one moment at a time. He didn’t have to stay sober forever. Just for the next five minutes.

And he didn’t have to give up wanting Léa forever. Just for the next five minutes.

“Human beings live not on bread alone,” he recited to himself, “but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”ⁱ As always, he had a choice. Surrender to the temptations of the moment. Or hold them at bay for the next five minutes. Five minutes. He could do that.

Deliberately, he reminded himself of all the reasons to stay away from Léa. She had plans to be a mother, plans that a relationship with him would probably ruin. She had an ex who would clearly go ballistic if he even suspected she was interested in someone else. Her uncle was the chief of police. As soon as he found out where Zach had spent the last three years, he’d definitely be persona non grata. Since Zach had gone to the police station to register his presence in the county, complete with a new mug shot and fingerprints, it was only a matter of time before the whole police department would know about his past. He hoped he was ready to deal with the predictable fallout.

Zach glanced at his watch. Three minutes more.

Sadie’s cows ambled toward the fence as they always did, the red Angus more pets than livestock. Her bloodlines book showed the care she had taken over the years to breed the cattle for an even disposition, low-birth-weight calves and strong growth. The calves regarded him with open curiosity. The fifteen cows and the big bull watched with more wariness, but Zach knew he could work in the field with them without worrying one of them would take after him. Tomorrow he’d need to move them to the other pasture, rotating the fields as Sadie had taught him when he was still a boy. Mentally he walked through the process of moving the cattle, then catalogued the things he needed to do tomorrow.

Find a sponsor.

Check in with his parole officer.

Repair the fence along the south boundary.

Stay away from Léa.

When he looked at his watch again, nearly fifteen minutes had passed.

“Thank you, Lord,” he said, closing his eyes.

When he opened them, he noticed, really noticed, the lush green of the thick pasture, made so by an artesian well. Beyond the pasture where surface water was non-existent, the sandy landscape was dotted with dark green junipers that stretched to the west.

He loved this view, and it was just as good as he had imagined it would be every day he was in prison. Nearly forty miles away, Azure Mountain rose above the Raven Rampart. Breaks in the hills and mesas were painted in tones of lavender, emphasizing the vast expanse of land between where he stood and the distant mountains. For thirty-two and a half months the extent of his vision had been measured in yards. For every one of those months he had imagined this view, standing right here and being free. At last he was, and one thing was for sure: he was never going to be locked up again.

The late-afternoon sun bathed everything in rich hues. The breeze carried the scent of the junipers.

Zach inhaled deeply. Sadie’s promise that she’d have a place waiting for him had seen him through the bleakest days. He had just never imagined there would also be a woman who captured his imagination the way Léa did.

Her petition to adopt a child seemed just like her, even though he hardly knew her. Easily, he imagined her in the role of a mother. Zach didn’t know anything about adoption law, but he figured an ex-con wouldn’t rate as a suitable potential father. Thinking about the kind of men he had served time with, that made sense.

What didn’t make sense was his even thinking about fatherhood or why he’d give an instant of thought to a long-term relationship with Léa Webster. Not for the world would he subject any child to the kind of father he’d had as a role model. Stern, disapproving, authoritarian. After his parents divorced, he had been shuffled between them until he ended up living with his dad after his mother remarried. To this day, he was thankful his dad’s older sister Sadie had taken an interest in him. Despite that, he was pretty sure most men grew up to be like the fathers who raised them. No way did he want any kid of his to feel like a perpetual disappointment. Best way to avoid that was to avoid having children.

Zach went back to the tool shed, opened the double doors, and went to work cleaning things up. From the film of dust on the windows to the rusty condition of shovels and hoes, everything needed maintenance. He worked until he had to turn on the light, then he continued working until hunger made him quit for the night. He warmed up a frozen dinner in the microwave, a meal that filled him with about the same amount of satisfaction prison food had. It was time to learn to cook. Just that fast, Léa was back in the center of his thoughts.

Determined to exert some discipline over his mind, Zach turned on the television. Within minutes he found the sitcom he’d tuned into boring, so, after he was finished eating, he turned off the set and wandered outside. Almost at once he felt more calm, admitting to himself that he relished the idea that he could go outside whenever he wanted. He walked around the yard, liking the feel of the lawn against his bare feet. Eventually, he settled on the swing that hung on one end of the porch. Alone in the dark, he imagined that he might be dreaming, because everything was as he had imagined it would be.

From down the block he heard someone’s TV through an open window, and the intermittent bark of a dog farther away. A couple of doors down the street, the rhythmic sound of a sprinkler was accompanied by the distinctive aroma of water flowing through a hose. From within the spruce tree in the yard came the chirp of a robin as it settled in for the night. He inhaled, trying to find the scent of juniper and piñon that he had smelled after leaving Léa’s earlier.

So much for not thinking about her.

Across the street Léa’s car was gone, her porch light casting a welcoming glow. Against his better judgment, Zach wondered where she was. Logic dictated it didn’t matter. He wondered, anyway.

Once more, he worked to regain control over his thoughts, closing his eyes and listening for the cattle in the pasture behind the house.

A car door slammed, and Zach opened his eyes. A police car was parked in front of Léa’s house. Dark as it was, Zach recognized the man in uniform heading for her front door. Foley Blue.

Foley rang Léa’s doorbell, then went to the living-room window where he cupped his hands around his eyes to peer in. Zach figured he must realize she wasn’t home since her car wasn’t in the driveway. Foley came off the porch and went around the side of the house. Scant seconds later he returned, the set in his shoulders conveying irritation. He looked up and down the block, his hands on his hips. Then he looked across the street, and Zach knew the instant Foley spotted him.

The cop stood there a minute, then came across the street and up the walk to the house.

“What can I do for you, officer?” Zach said without getting up.

“Just wondered if you had seen my wife this evening.” Foley stepped close to the porch, his face still in shadows.

“Léa, you mean?”

Foley put one foot on the step and leaned an elbow across his knee. “Yeah.”

Glad that Foley had qualified the time frame, Zach shook his head and truthfully said, “Haven’t seen her.”

“And you don’t know where she went.”

“Nope.”

Foley swore. “I told her I’d be by when my shift was over.”

Zach figured that might explain why she was gone. “I’d be happy to let her know you dropped by,” he said blandly. He had no doubt that Foley had tried to get into her house through one of the now-secured windows. The idea of it made Zach seethe.

Foley looked up, his light-colored eyes glittering despite the nearly black shadow he stood in. “You don’t have to do that. She doesn’t need anyone coming around. Not this time of night.”

“No, I don’t suppose she does,” Zach agreed.

“You sitting out here in the dark for a reason?”

“Just getting a little fresh air before I turn in.” He managed to keep his voice rock-steady, though the question rankled. Telling Léa’s ex that it was none of his business would likely cause trouble, the one thing Zach was determined to avoid.

“Uh-huh.” Foley shifted from one foot to another. “Well, then, I’ll leave you to it.” With that, he turned around and headed down the walk toward his car without so much as a good night.