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He reached for the metal clipboard, scanned the day’s jobs. Put the truck in gear, fool. Get the hell out of Dodge.
He had no business mooning over a woman running from a bad marriage. Not quite mooning, more like unable to stop dreaming about those eyes. Why hadn’t he noticed the other night? They were damn near purple, like the tiny pansies growing alongside his house. Brave things striving to stave off the approach of winter.
So, why didn’t he start the truck and drive away, instead of spying like a dumbass jock?
Did she dump the husband? Or vice versa? What about kids? So far, gossip said she’d arrived alone.
So was she divorced?
Oh, yeah. Her eyes told him before her words. “A regular carousel ride.” God help him, but he’d felt a pang in his heart at that moment. Hadn’t his own carousel sported fire-breathing dragons?
Oddly, he hoped she would make it in Misty River. Okay, she spelled Big City. Possibly old money. Elite education. Family therapist.
But her face was honest, her smile sweet.
She’d worked with Social Services.
“Find yourself a different woman to drool over, Seth,” he muttered, tossing the orders. A local woman like…
His mind blanked.
A rap on the window had him jerking around. A black-haired devil smirked through the glass. Seth rolled it down.
“Stick to trucking, bud,” his brother advised. “Surveillance isn’t your gig. She’ll make you the minute she steps out outside.”
“Go ’way.”
Jon threw back his head and laughed.
“Goof,” Seth muttered without offense as his brother sauntered down the sidewalk, the khaki police chief’s uniform impressive on his tall, rangy frame. Seth’s mouth worked up a half grin. There, with the love of a damn fine woman went a damn happy man. All the power to you, Jonny.
Rolling up the window, he contemplated the café again. Dammit. This was his town. Where he’d been born, married, had his child, divorced. Established his company. Culture and adventure he gleaned from the PBS or Discovery channels. Tending his own house, his own lifestyle was what he enjoyed.
He’d part with it all if it would give him back every missed year with Hallie.
Through the café’s windows, he saw Kat laugh with the Quinlan woman. As a Ph.D. in San Francisco, her nails would be clean and filed, even polished, her clothes fashionable, her hair styled.
Sighing, he reached for the ignition. He had to be hard up, squandering priceless time on a woman like Breena Quinlan. If he wanted a woman, why not someone like Peggy Whatshername? Or was it Kathy? No, Katie.
He couldn’t remember. Two, three years loomed as a century when it came to placing a woman he’d walked home once or twice.
For reasons he’d rather not contemplate, he knew he wouldn’t forget Breena’s face so easily.
He shoved in the clutch and maneuvered the stick shift to Reverse. She stepped through the door of Kat’s. Immediately, the sun sneaked into the blue-black curls of her hair.
Holding his breath, he watched as she slipped the receipt into the small athletic bag at her waist. She zipped it closed and lifted her head. Wide, violet eyes pinned him where he sat behind the windshield. Then she smiled.
Inside his chest, his heart did a goofy, schoolboy somersault. Ah, hell.
A brief clip of his head and he released both clutch and breath. Fast as the speed limit allowed, he fled Main.
Chapter Three
Memo To Self:
Memories are not always what you want them to be.
Sometimes you have to improvise for survival.
Breena studied the note she’d written in her personal agenda prior to dialing her father this Sunday afternoon.
“Good God, child,” Arthur Quinlan boomed. “I’ve been worried sick. You tell me you’re leaving town, but won’t say where. They tell me at your office you’ve taken a leave of absence. A month goes by—”
“I’m fine, Daddy. Honest.” Cradling the receiver against her neck, she sank onto the lumpy cot that served as her bed and relieved her sore feet of their Reebok Classics. Four hours of walking, of checking out apartment ads from the Misty River Times. Paige would scold her if she knew—and double the argument about sharing her tiny house. Breena shoved aside weariness, offered truth. “I needed some time alone.”
His sigh rattled the air waves. “I suppose you’re right. So…where are you?”
“In Misty River.”
Pause. “I’ll be damned. It’s been years since—well. Misty River, huh? Why there, honey?”
Because it’s the one place we were a true family. “I remembered the bullfrogs at night.”
“The bullfrogs.” She visualized his grin. “They could croak up a storm there, couldn’t they?”
In peaceful, star-scattered nights.
“You seen Aunt Paige, yet?” he asked.
“I’ve seen her.” And bought part of her business.
“How is the old girl? Must be pushing ninety, if a day.”
“Eighty-four.” Why haven’t you been back to visit, Daddy? You could have phoned once in a while over the years.
The brother Paige lost two and a half decades ago had been Arthur’s dad.
For five days Breena, Arthur and Lizbeth had stayed in the old man’s house. Five days, while birds chirped in Grandpa’s backyard and ten-year-old Breena walked each morning to Aunt Paige’s little country shop. While balmy evenings met the night and Arthur sat in the willow rocker on the porch, smoking his one cigarette of the day.
Remembering boyhood days.
A real family in real grief.
Among casseroles and condolences, Paige had taken charge of Breena and Lizbeth, made cookies, walked to the little post office each day and concealed her pain.
Breena cried at night for the grandpa she would never see again. Even sixteen-year-old Lizbeth spent a night secreting tears under the covers. For Paige it had been longer. A quarter century of no family visits.
“She remember you?” Arthur asked, shooing off the memories.
“I’ve phoned her off and on over the years.”
“You have? Why didn’t you say?”
“I didn’t think you were interested, Daddy.”
“Aw, Bree…”
“Anyway, she recognized Great-Granny’s black hair.” Breena freed its likeness from a scunchie.
“And likely her violet eyes.”
Her heart warmed. “Yeah.”
“Hmmph. What did she do?”
“Just stared, then gave me a huge hug. Or, as huge as a woman in her mid-eighties can.” Yet Paige, suffering from arthritis, kept her independence, tackling the narrow, wooden stairs to the second floor daily with the aid of a cane. It hurt Breena to watch her aunt struggle up each step but the old gal would not sit or rest.
“I’ll rest enough when I’m dead,” were her exact words.
“What’s she selling now?” Arthur asked.
“This and that. Some antiques. Mostly knickknacks, birch wreaths, candles, that sort of thing. There’s even an old toilet stuffed with dried flowers. Quite artistic and unique.”
Arthur chuckled. “I can imagine. Any artwork?”
“Some homegrown stuff.” Clay pots, tobacco lath totes. Birdhouses.
“I mean paintings.”
She knew what he meant. “Yes. Oils, acrylics. No watercolors.”
“Get yours in there, then.”
“Maybe someday.” She fingered the hoop of embroidery—a field of prairie grain she’d brought into the bedroom—studying the intricate stitches. She took a breath, plunged ahead. “I bought into her store, Dad.”
“Good God. Why?”
His thunder had Breena holding the phone six inches from her ear. “I need a change.”
“A change? Breena! What about your practice?”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know that I’ll ever do therapy again. My heart isn’t in it anymore.”
Silence. “You’re letting them win, you know.”
“It’s not a case of win or lose. It’s a case of happiness. This shop makes me happy. I like meeting and talking to the customers. I like ordering merchandise, displaying it. I like the feel of the place, Daddy.” And I like the way Seth Tucker makes my heart thump.
“Does this mean you’re relocating?”
“Possibly.”
“Ah, Bree.” Pain in his voice.
“I’ll be fine. Aunt Paige is wonderful, a darling, really. As a matter of fact, I’m having supper at her house tonight.”
He grunted. “Well, at least you’ll have family around. If I could get away, I’d come up myself.”
“I know you would,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t. Dear as he was, Arthur Quinlan liked his home and his garden too much. “I’ll be fine.” After about a hundred years.
“I take it you’re not staying with Paige?”
“I’m temporarily living in one of the storage rooms while I look for my own place.” When he remained quiet, she continued, “I need to do this, Dad. I need time away from…”
“Relatives.”
“Yes, but not in a bad way, just until I rediscover Breena Quinlan.”
“Leo will pay for this, you can count on it.”
“Let it go, Daddy. He’s not worth it.”
“Then she’ll pay. God help me, the girl always chased boys.”
My husband is not my tenth-grade boyfriend.
Not that her father had ever stopped Lizbeth even then. Her sister had merrily chased the opposite sex for years while Arthur stayed home and wrung his hands. Like now. A man of talk and no action. But Breena loved him.
“It takes two to tango in a relationship.” She laid aside the embroidery hoop. “Ours was short about four steps.”
“That’s utter hogwash. You’re a good, loving wife. A wonderful life partner. The guy’s a complete doofus. I never realized how much.”
Tears stung her throat. She pressed an arm against her stomach. “That’s a father’s bias talking,” she said softly. “Leo was my husband, after all.” And she’s still my sister. Her stomach took a sick roll.
Arthur harrumphed. “Far be it from me to denigrate your feelings toward the man. However, if he was standing here in this den, I’d be hard pressed not to kill the SOB.”
Damn drippy tears. “She’s as much at fault.” So am I for not seeing it, for not noticing the looks, the touches. Not wanting to notice.
Her father sighed, a shivering, mournful sound in her ear. “She is at that, sweetheart. Damn her soul. If your mother had lived…”
Breena had heard it all before. “If your mother had lived, Lizbeth wouldn’t be so wild. If your mother had lived, your sister would’ve been different. If your mother had lived, she wouldn’t’ve felt abandoned…”
But her mother had died giving birth to Breena.
Another hurdle on her track of life.
Quietly, her father said, “I love you.”
“I know.” Breena pressed her lips together. “You’re always there, though thick, thin or trim.”
“I’m here now, too.”
“I know.”
“When will you be coming home?”
“In a few months, probably December.”
“For Christmas?”
“I can’t say. It wouldn’t be…” The same. She swiped her cheek. “I’ll see.”
“Will you let me come there?”
“Daddy…”
“Okay. I won’t push.”
She knew him well. “Thank you.”
“You’ll phone again?”
“Yes,” she promised. “I’ll phone again.”
“If you need anything, anything at all…”
“I know. I have to go now.”
“Honey?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t blame yourself. Ever.”
The tears came in earnest now. “Love you, Daddy.” She punched off the receiver and lay back on the bed. Not blame herself? She’d been in the other half of a marriage for almost a decade. A woman didn’t live with man that long and not know what made him tick to some small degree.
What made Leo De Laurent tick was Lizbeth Quinlan.
Her forty-one-year-old sister.
Breena set an arm over her eyes, blocking the memory of that night she’d confronted her husband. Top store manager who became a CEO of the food conglomerate where he’d worked. A master manager.
Who could not manage a marriage with her.
She heard her voice again, hurt, accusing. “You were with her twice today.”
Her mind’s eye saw him spin around, coat winging at his calves. “She was at Alphonse’s already, okay? I saw her, went to say hello, and she asked me to sit. End of story.” He’d picked up his briefcase, then headed toward the curved stairs, to the spacious room that once might have been a nursery but had been streamlined into an office. His office.
Breena had hurried after him. “You also took her to Ocean Beach—where I jog.”
“Nothing happened. I swear.”
“You kissed her. For a long time.”
The beach was, after all, a public place. People kissed there all the time—-but not with their sisters-in-law.
Breena shot off the bed. Enough! Mopping her face with a sleeve, she stood trembling, unable to move. Slowly, slowly, her breathing calmed. She glanced around her tiny bedroom. How could you, Lizbeth? He was my husband. Mine!
“Have there been others?” she had asked him.
“No others.”
Just Lizbeth.
She should be glad the house, Frisco and her unhappiness had forced her to request a year’s leave of absence, buy an ’89 Blazer, load it with her essentials and drive north to Misty River. To Great-Aunt Paige. To that little dream house and marmalade cat sunning itself on the rail…
Lizbeth could have Leo.
Breena stepped into the diminutive washroom. Off came her clothing: the black slacks, the tunic sweater, the cotton underwear. When she was naked, she inspected the body her husband had viewed hundreds of times. Seven years, seven pounds.
Nothing to complain about, Leo, damn you.
So, what had he wanted? A woman without flaws? With youth?
Lizbeth had neither.
But she can have kids.
God. How could she? How could her own sister betray her? Leo, Breena could almost forgive. Almost. But her sister? A woman whose unconditional—
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