Читать книгу Small Town Secrets - Sharon Mignerey - Страница 9

“I think that’s the last one,” Kim said, placing a tub of dirty dishes on the stainless-steel counter next to the dishwasher. “Ready for me to put up the closed-till-eleven sign?”

“Sure,” Léa said, arching her back to roll out the kinks. She turned around to face the dining room and found that it had mostly cleared out except for Pete Anderson and L. J. Martinez, both long retired and both regulars who lingered over their coffee until she kicked them out.

Except for Zach MacKenzie who sat at the counter, his gaze steadily on her.

“You’re still here,” she said, loud enough to hear over the radio.

“Yeah.”

As she came out of the kitchen, she was aware of Kim ushering out Pete and L.J., but her greater awareness was of Zach. Léa stopped at the milk dispenser where she filled a large glass. Then she came around the counter and sat down next to him.

“The breakfast tasted great.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “But then, compared to the food in prison, I’ll probably be thinking everything tastes great for a while.”

His casual reference to having been in prison surprised her, and, in spite of herself, made her smile.

He smiled back. “So I doubt you’ll be wanting to use me as a reference.”

Her smile grew into a chuckle. “Actually, I was thinking I could add your endorsement to the menu board.” She wrote in the air as she said, “Better than prison food.”

“You were in prison?” Kim asked, setting a tray of salt and pepper shakers that needed to be refilled on the counter.

“Yep.”

She made a point of looking him up and down. “Sadie sure never said a word about that.” She began twisting the tops off the salt shakers. “She does know, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, she knows,” Zach said. “In fact, I wouldn’t have made it through the last three years without her.”

“Well, you must be doing something right. Sadie Graff is the best judge of character of about anyone I know. There’s no pulling the wool over her eyes. You tell her a secret, you can be sure it will stay a secret.” Kim glanced at Léa. “But you knew, didn’t you?”

Léa nodded. Twice during the last year, she had driven Sadie to Cañon City to visit Zach at the prison, which was the only reason Léa knew anything. Kim was completely right—Sadie kept her own council. Just as she had during those two visits, Léa found herself wondering why Zach had inspired such faith and such loyalty.

“So…ah, what were you in for?” Kim asked.

“Kim!” Léa felt her cheeks flush.

“I can’t see Sadie putting up an ax murderer,” Kim said, ignoring Léa.

“I can’t see that, either,” Zach agreed, his attention remaining on Léa. His smile faded, and his eyes became even darker as though he had somehow looked inward. Regret tinged his voice when he added, “I was convicted of vehicular homicide.”

The expression in his dark eyes was unreadable to Léa, but she had the feeling he was trying to convey something important to her. Something well beyond the words he was saying to Kim.

The jangle of the telephone made her jump. She slid off the stool and went behind the counter to the phone. “The Pine Street Café,” she said after putting the receiver to her ear.

“You must be busy,” came her aunt Margaret’s voice over the line, “since it took you so long to pick up.”

“It was a good morning,” Léa said. “And the third ring isn’t that long.” In front of her Zach chuckled in response to something Kim said. Then it hit her what was different. He was more relaxed than he had been before the café closed. Had his easy confession been practicing somehow for the other conversations he was bound to have unless he became a hermit?

When he had first come into the café, he had looked lonely, uncomfortable. Moving someplace new and making friends wasn’t ever easy, and she had no doubt it would be even more difficult in his situation.

Léa suspected it was only a matter of time before everyone in town knew Zach was just out of prison. She doubted most other people would have Kim’s open reaction to him. But then, most other people didn’t have Kim’s deeply held belief of “judge not lest ye be judged.” Léa found herself tempted to feel sorry for Zach. He might have paid his debt to society, but he’d still be viewed with suspicion. She had been so determined merely to be polite—she owed Sadie that much—and definitely keep her distance, so the sympathy Léa felt for him surprised her.

Sympathy? She gave herself a mental shake. The last thing she wanted to feel for this man was sympathy. She knew too well what happened to a man who loved his alcohol too much to give it up. Whether Zach’s apparent regret was over the time he had spent in prison or the death he had caused, Léa didn’t know. If she had learned anything since her hasty marriage to Foley, it was that she didn’t need…or want…anything to do with an alcoholic. Oh, sure, she understood it was a disease, but drinking was the choice he had made over and over. No way did she want that in her life again.

“Léa?” came her aunt’s voice over the phone.

“Yes, what?” Léa dragged her attention back to what her aunt was saying. To keep her attention from straying back to Zach, she turned to face the wall.

“You haven’t forgotten about those six dozen cupcakes I’m donating to the Grange Hall bake sale? I’ll need those tomorrow, you know.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Léa said. The six dozen cupcakes I’m donating, she silently added. Both her aunts loved to show off Léa’s baked goods, but they also expected Léa to donate them on their behalf.

“You really should donate something yourself,” Aunt Margaret added. “It’s for a good cause, you know. Those poor children depend on us for their school supplies.”

“I know.” Léa heard the bell above the front door jangle, and when she turned around, Zach had gone. “I’ll have to see what I have time to do.”

“And don’t forget, Jackie is counting on you to bring some of your yummy cucumber sandwiches to our party this Friday.”

Léa hadn’t forgotten about that, either. She loved her aunts, she really did. Some days, though, she also wished they would see her business as something other than their private—not to mention free—catering company.

After saying goodbye, she hung up the telephone as she stared out the window and watched Zach walk across the street and go into the police station.

“He seems like a nice man,” Kim said while she continued to refill the salt shakers.

Nice? That wasn’t the word Léa would have applied to him, though she admitted he had been nothing but polite both last night and today.

“Foley seemed to have more than usual on his mind today,” Kim added.

Now there was another man she didn’t want to think about. “He found out about my adoption application.” Léa erased the breakfast specials off the whiteboard, then began writing down the lunch specials. “And he’s trying to convince me that I can’t do it alone.”

“Lots of women raise children alone.”

“And he somehow got into my house again.”

“I thought you had just changed the locks.” Kim picked up the tray of shakers and began setting them back down on the various tables.

“I did.” Léa shook her head. “I’m going to talk to Scotty over at the hardware store and make sure he didn’t do something stupid—like making a copy of the key for Foley when he made new ones for me.”

“Sounds like you need a security system.”

Léa nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. Of course if it goes off, the police—”

“And Foley,” Kim interrupted, “will answer the call.”

“Yeah.”

Kim set the last of the shakers on a table, then came across the room toward Léa. “I’ve got an important question for you.” She came to a stop and put her hand on Léa’s shoulder. “Is he just being a pain like he usually is? Or…are you physically in danger?”

“He’s a pain.” Léa stared at her friend. All at once her heart pounded like a gong, last night’s remembered fear vibrating through her. “Just a pain, that’s all.” Humiliating her, badgering her and calling her names when she didn’t agree with him didn’t put her in physical danger—though she always came away from their altercations feeling physically battered. The only night he had laid hands on her during an argument was the night she had fallen down the stairs.

His whispered conversation this morning had centered on him telling her that he wanted to move back in, that he was ready to be the kind of husband she wanted, and all of it accompanied by the same promises he had broken so many times before. Once she might have been tempted to believe him. Once…before she had started smelling other women’s perfume on his clothes along with the stench of stale beer and cigarettes. She was positive he had been drunk again last night. No way was she putting herself through that heartache again. No more putting up with his cycles of rage and remorse.

She couldn’t again survive his unfaithfulness or his drunkenness, much less his verbal battering of her. At long last, she had begun to feel more like her old self again. Happy. Looking forward to the future where she had figured out how to be a mother despite being barren. And most of the time she could justify her divorcing Foley even though, in her mind, the vows had been for forever.

“Hey, you still in there?” Kim said, giving her a gentle nudge. “You looked a million miles away.”

“Not that far,” Léa said. “Just remembering how much in love we were once.”

Kim shook her head. “Hate to break it to you, girl, but in Foley’s case, it was in lust. He wanted what you wouldn’t give him without a ring.”

Léa hated how that sounded but admitted to herself that her friend was probably right. She’d watched the way he had put on the moves, had been herself the object of his considerable charm. And, when she hadn’t fallen right into his arms, he had pursued her relentlessly. All along, she’d had the feeling he liked the chase best, a feeling she had unfortunately ignored. Being romanced by Foley had been a heady rush, and somehow eloping with him had made sense. She had thought she was in love and that their marriage would be like her parents’—filled with love and mutual respect. To her complete dismay nothing changed after they were married. He still liked going out all the time, and she soon realized he lived for the good time, which for him wasn’t complete without drinking a lot.

Not until her uncle and his boss, the chief, got after him after she was pregnant did he put on the mask of being a family man. He’d privately hated that, and he had taken his frustration out on her by passing judgment on everything from how unfairly he was treated by the chief to Léa’s poor choice in friends. Oh, how she had come to dread their time behind closed doors. He spent his evenings drinking and brooding while the television blared. Not once did he take a bit of joy in the child they were expecting together. Toward the end of her pregnancy, he’d started going out again, and some nights he hadn’t come home at all.

Her ultimate humiliation had come toward the end of her pregnancy when she had found condoms in his pants pockets. When she confronted him, he turned on her, insisting they were hers, insisting that he knew she had been cheating on him from the very beginning of the marriage. At that point, they had been married not quite a year, and she had realized she didn’t know him at all. Equally horrifying was realizing his mask dropped only at home—her uncle, the other officers and their friends saw only the flirt, the affable, charming guy who went out of his way to help little old ladies and to speak at drug-awareness functions at the high school. Only Sadie had known the depth of Léa’s despair.

Ending the marriage had been the hardest choice she had ever made. As far as she was concerned, it was going to stay that way.

After she closed up the café for the day, Léa headed for the hardware store at the edge of town. While there, she sought out Scotty Frazier, part owner of the store and the town’s only locksmith, who assured her he hadn’t given Foley a key.

“If anybody got into your house,” Scotty told her, “it was probably through a window.”

“I keep them locked.”

“Locks aren’t that hard to circumvent,” Scotty said.

“Then I think I need an alarm system,” she said. “Today.”

“It will take a couple of weeks to get that scheduled and installed,” he said, going on to explain how he needed to come see exactly what she needed and then order the components. “In the meantime, there are a couple of simple things you can do.” He led the way to a rack that held a huge assortment of screws where he handed her an eyebolt about two and a half inches long. “Drill a hole on either side of the window,” he instructed, “where the part that opens connects with the stationary side. Slide in the bolt, and you have a very effective lock for your windows. Inexpensive, too.”

And within the realm of her carpentry skills, Léa thought, mentally counting the windows in her house.

She made her purchases and headed for home. She stopped at the single traffic light in town where the intersection was shared by the City Hall, the bank, the park and the Good Shepherd Community Church. Several cars were leaving the parking lot of the church. In the next instant she realized the twice-a-week AA meeting held in the church basement was letting out—knew because she had gone to meetings for a while in an attempt to persuade Foley to attend. He never had, insisting he didn’t have a problem and that he wasn’t going to be judged by anyone. The complete lack of judgment was one of the things she liked best about the people she had met there.

While she watched, Zach walked across the parking lot and turned the corner, heading in the same direction she was—presumably toward home.

Curiosity and an odd sense of relief swirled through her chest. Why should she care? When the light changed, she drove through the intersection, and when she reached him, pulled next to the curb and rolled down the window. Immediately he noticed her.

“Hey,” he said as he came toward her.

“Hi.” Léa found herself once again all too aware of Zach, her brain mush when she really wanted to be able to figure out what it was about the man that made butterflies dance in her stomach—butterflies that evidently hadn’t heard her repeatedly tell herself that she was going to be a courteous neighbor and nothing more.

“Want a ride?” she asked.

Everything feminine in her appreciated his physique. Shoulders broad enough to give the illusion he was strong enough to lean on. And his arms—if anything got to her, it was a guy’s well-defined muscular arms, and his were amazing. She had never gone for the shaved-head look, but somehow on him, it looked okay, even though she wondered what his hair would be like if it were longer.

“Sure,” he said. “Thanks.” Opening the door, he slid into the passenger seat next to her. Though a scant five hours had passed since he had left the café, he admitted to himself that he was happy to see her. Then, the red scarf had covered her hair. Without it, her hair looked silky—a rich, dark brown that gleamed with red highlights in the sunshine, cut in a simple style that skimmed her shoulders. The freckles liberally sprinkled across her nose put her in the cute category.

She had changed her clothes, and the pale blue knit shirt she wore made her eyes look even more brilliant than he’d thought them to be this morning. He imagined he could smell cinnamon or ginger, which made him think of the apples in the breakfast special. The woman was as appealing as the food she made.

As soon as they were underway, he said, “Thanks for breakfast this morning.”

“You already thanked me.” She pointed a finger at him. “Plus, you left money to pay for it. I know Kim told you it was my treat.”

“She did. At the time paying you seemed like a better idea.”

“In other words Foley was giving you a hard time.”

She was far too perceptive. Pointing at the logo for the hardware sack next to his seat, he said, “Looks like you’re working on a project.”

“I get to test my carpentry skills.”

“You’ll ace it—whatever you’re doing. The way I figure, cooking has got to be harder than building things.”

“In my case, cooking is way easier.” She tipped her head to the side. “I wasn’t sure you’d come this morning.”

“I almost didn’t.” Though he had made a pact with himself never again to hide behind the lies that had been part of his life before prison, he didn’t owe her that much information. He’d had four hours yesterday after leaving Sadie at the airport to plan how he’d like his life to go for the next year. Stay sober, even if for only one minute at a time. Find a sponsor. Work the program and trust in the Greater Power. Do the things his parole officer expected of him. Make sure he lived up to his aunt’s faith in him. Keep to himself and keep a low profile. The feelings Léa Webster aroused in him were a sure path to trouble even if her ex-husband wasn’t a cop.

“Why not?” she asked, breaking his train of thought.

He shrugged, not sure he could adequately explain. “It’s just different, that’s all. Being around other people and not having to worry about exposing your back.” That was definitely more than she needed to know. Since he’d met her ex-husband, the part about not worrying about his back wasn’t even true. So much for keeping his word to himself about telling the truth.

“I was really shy when I was a little girl,” she said, “and going into a roomful of people scared me to death.”

“You don’t seem shy now.”

She turned onto the street where they lived. “Not usually. When I was in second grade my mother told me to pretend all those people I didn’t know were simply friends I hadn’t made yet.”

“Most kids are taught strangers are dangerous.”

“In a town this size there aren’t that many strangers.”

Remembering the way Kim had seemed to know everyone this morning, Zach figured that was right. “So you grew up here?”

“I did, over on Second Street near the school.” She waved in that general direction.

“Your parents still live there?”

Her expression clouded, and she shook her head. “They were killed in a car accident coming back from Denver a couple of years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” The automatic words were out of his mouth before he could think.

“My house, the one where I live now, belonged to my grandmother,” she added. “Sometimes I can’t believe I’m living here. I couldn’t wait to escape, so I thought I’d arrived at Utopia when I went away to college.”

“Where to?”

“CSU in Fort Collins,” she said. “And after I graduated, I had my dream job.”

“What did you do?”

“I was a pastry chef for a French restaurant in Denver.”

“Impressive. So, why’d you come back here?” he asked.

“Love.” She drew out the word, then she shook her head. “I met Foley at a party when I came to visit my parents, and a month later we eloped. Now that I have the benefit of hindsight—”

“You can beat yourself up based on what you know now.”

To his surprise she chuckled, and her gaze was warm when she looked at him. “That’s pretty good advice.”

He shook his head. “I don’t give advice.”

“Hmm. Too bad that’s how it sounded, then.” She parked the car in her driveway next to the house and gave him another of her infectious smiles. “If you were a really good neighbor…”

He grinned, ignoring the caution light at the back of his brain as he hoped his plans for the next couple hours were about to change. “Here it comes, the sucker punch.”

“All I want is to borrow your drill.” She opened the car door and got out.

“Ah. The lady assumes I have a drill.”

“I know Sadie has one.”

“And you’re qualified to use it,” he said.

She laughed. “Probably not, but if I want to get this project done today, I definitely need power tools.”

“Need anything besides the drill?” he asked, climbing out of the car and meeting her gaze over the top of the vehicle.

“No.” Then she grinned. “Well, drill bits, too.”

“I’ll be right back.” He headed across the street to his aunt’s house.

“You don’t have to do that—I can come get it.”

“I don’t mind bringing it over.”

“Well…okay.”

Unlocking the house and letting himself inside, he recounted all the reasons he had to find the drill, leave it for her and walk away. Being neighborly was one thing, and he knew the emotions she roused in him had nothing to do with being neighbors. Taking her in last night had been meant to be a gesture of comfort. And now, here he was like some teenage boy looking for any excuse to be with her. The least he could do was be honest with himself about that.

He found the key for the workshop and went out the back door. Since Sadie’s house was the last one on the block and the last one at the edge of town, the back of her property still looked like the ranch it once had been. The herd of twenty or so Angus cattle grazed in the field closest to the barn. Unlike the sandy bluffs in the distance, the field was green.

He loved the view, and he figured he’d never tire of it. As he had so many times in the last few days, Zach whispered a prayer of thanks.

He unlocked the workshop and found it dusty but as well organized as he remembered. Within five minutes he was heading back across the street to Léa’s.

A nondescript blue sedan was parked in front of her house, which provided him with an excuse to drop off the tool, then leave.

“Foley Blue stopped by my office this morning,” a woman said from inside the house, her voice carrying through the screen door.

Zach knew he should knock, but at the mention of Léa’s ex, his hand dropped to his side.

“And,” she continued, “he said that he was to be added to your petition to adopt a child, though he’s more interested in an older child than an infant.”

Adopt? Léa was trying to adopt a kid? Zach knew he should leave, but he remained rooted right where he stood.

“He what?” Léa’s voice sounded as sucker-punched as Zach felt.

“I take it then, he hadn’t spoken with you about this.” The other woman’s voice was soothing.

“No. He didn’t.” Though Léa’s voice shook, the words were as emphatic as they had been last night when she had told Zach they weren’t getting back together. “Nothing has changed, Dottie. I don’t know what he may have said to you, but none of this has anything to do with him.”

“I did think it was a bit odd.” There was a short pause. “With the home inspection done, one more step is completed.”

The woman made it sound as though the adoption was likely, which raised a dozen questions in Zach’s mind. He would have thought adopting would be a hard thing for a single woman.

“One more,” Léa agreed.

“But,” the other woman continued, “this whole business worries me.”

“Whatever reassurance you need, Dottie, I’ll do it.”

“You need to set him straight. And I need to be assured that I’m not placing a child in a potentially volatile situation.”

“You won’t be,” Léa said. “You have my word.”

From inside the house, Zach heard footsteps, so he made a point of walking across the porch and tapping on the door. Through the screen Léa was shadowed, as was the older woman coming toward the door.

“Oh, good. You’re here,” Léa said. “Come on in.”

Zach pulled open the door and Léa introduced him, then followed the other woman outside with an “I’ll be right back,” to Zach.

Holding on to her frustration, Léa followed Dottie Franklin, the social worker in charge of her adoption application, to her car. She was furious that Foley had contacted her, much less stated he was to be included on the adoption application. So this was his plan.

Léa imagined confronting him and telling him to stop meddling in her business. As sure as she did, she’d come across as looking like the unreasonable one, not him, because that’s always how it turned out.

Dottie set her briefcase in the front seat of her car, then turned around to face Léa. “I’m sorry I bothered you with this, Léa. He was so positive, so sincere I had to consider that perhaps you were reconciling.”

“We’re not,” Léa said, managing a smile. “It’s nothing more than a misunderstanding.” She feared Dottie recognized that for the lie it was, but needed to reassure both herself and the social worker.

Foley had already taken so much from her She couldn’t let him rob her of this, too.