The Debutante’s Second Chance
Liz Flaherty

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Tahne Flaherty, Kari Wilson, Laura Flaherty,

Chris Flaherty, Jim Wilson and Jeremy Flaherty.

Some by blood and some in-law,

but all the children of my heart.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Prologue

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Susan, I’m married to my high-school heartthrob, and have three great kids. I named this column “Window Over the Sink” because it’s my favorite part of my house. I call it the poor woman’s therapist, because when I look through its panes at the Twilight River and imagine the breeze singing through the sycamores and maples and cottonwoods, I feel immense comfort. I’m writing this first column right around April Fool’s day because that’s something else that gives comfort in this life: being a damn fool once in a while….

The first column appeared on Micah Walker’s desk on the last day of March, before he’d even put out the first issue of the Taft Tribune with his name on the masthead as the owner-editor. The article was in a plain, white, number-ten envelope that had been mailed in Taft; the return address was a post office box. The column ran about seven hundred words, neatly printed on a laser printer. Some of it, like “high-school heartthrob,” made his journalistic side wince, but the terminology fit in the small Indiana town on the Twilight River. If he tightened it a little, it would fit right into the Tribune.

Allison Scott, the reporter who had come with him from Lexington to work on the Tribune, stood in the doorway of his office. “Did you write this by any chance?” he asked when she came in. He handed her the column.

“No,” she said instantly, and began to read. When she was finished, she looked wistful. “I kind of wish I had. It’s not technically perfect, but you sure can feel it.”

“You’re a romantic.” She was, but that didn’t stop her from being one of the finest reporters he’d ever met. “I’ll tighten it up and run it. I don’t think ‘Susan Billings’ is her real name, but that’s who we’ll make the check out to.”

“Don’t tighten it,” Allie suggested. “Let the feelings come through.” She turned to go.

He nodded. “Where are you off to?”

“A meeting. Domestic Violence Awareness. They’re going to discuss a sheltering system for battered women and children, the Safe Harbor Railroad.”

Micah shook his head. “Little towns are supposed to be utopian. They shouldn’t need that kind of group. Let me know if there’s something the paper can do,” he said, “without endangering anyone, I mean.”

“I don’t know if they’ll even let me in. Secrecy is the reason for its success, I guess.”

He nodded, half-listening. “How’s your mother?” he asked, without looking up.

“What?” Allie sounded startled.

“You know, your mom. How’s she doing?” Micah never interfered in anyone’s private life; he was pretty proud of remembering that Allie’s mother had been ill.

“Oh. Better. Much better.” But she seemed shaken by the question.

“Good.” He smiled absently in her direction, his mind already moving away. “That’s good.”

“Well.”

She seemed uncharacteristically indecisive, and he looked at her again. “Was there something else, Allie? Do you need a few more days off?”

“No. No, thanks.” She straightened. “Well, I’m off to the meeting. You’re right, though—how could a place that produces a ‘Window Over the Sink’ need an Underground Railroad? It just seems wrong.”

Chapter One

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Sometimes I miss having heroes. All the ones I knew when I was young seem to have developed feet of clay and leapt without conscience from the pedestals I placed them on. But today I lay on an uncomfortable cot and gave blood. I looked around at the people who gave their time freely, at the others who gave their blood just as freely. I saw a minister, a newspaper editor, a reg istered nurse who was spending her day off inserting slender needles into veins, half the Taft High School baseball team still wearing their practice jerseys. And I realized there are heroes all around us, and they don’t need to be on pedestals because they don’t have time for that kind of nonsense.

Landy Wisdom didn’t look at all the way Micah remembered her from high school. Her hair had been the color of sunlight then, her eyes like the darkest of the lilacs that grew in studied profusion in her grandmother’s side yard. Her figure had been lithe and nubile in her designer jeans and silk blouses and cashmere blazers. Her clothes hadn’t been bought at JC Penney or Kmart like most everyone else’s, but on shopping trips to Cincinnati and Louisville. She’d been, in a town without a social scale, a debutante. Her grandmother had owned the brewery and was one of the few people in town who had servants. Landy’s boyfriend had been the high school quarterback, the son of Taft’s best-known attorney, who’d gone on to stardom at Notre Dame.

But there had been more to Landy than that. Her best friend had been Jessie Titus, whose grandmother had kept house for old Mrs. Wisdom. Landy had aided with her grandmother’s charities, but she’d been hands-on help. She’d washed dishes at dinners, cleaned up after dances and walked every inch of every walkathon ever held in Taft.

Micah remembered talking to her once as she slogged through rain for crippled children. She hadn’t had a raincoat because she’d tossed it over the shoulders of the minister’s wife, and mud splashed up her legs as she walked.

“Who are you?” he’d demanded. He’d been so angry then, furious at the “haves” in what he was finding to be a “have-not” world. The fact that Landy Wisdom didn’t fit into his idea of a “have” made him even angrier. People who had it all didn’t share things when that sharing got them wet, cold and muddy.

“I’m just Landy,” she’d said quietly, a hurt look in her eyes, “and I’m sorry you don’t like me.”

Twenty years later, standing in line in his London Fog raincoat and watching Landis Wisdom as she wrote down information for the Red Cross blood bank, Micah felt a niggle of shame because he’d put that look in her eyes. Good writing and solid investments had made him into one of the “haves” he’d so despised, and along with the money had come the realization that there really wasn’t that much difference in people.

But he still wondered who she really was, and what had happened to the debutante he remembered. The hair color had deepened to the hue of honey, the eyes to violet. She wore a navy blue sweater with faded jeans and no makeup, no jewelry other than tiny pearls in her ears, not even polish on what appeared to be chewed-to-the-quick fingernails. Her figure had thickened a little over the years, but not much. She still looked nice.

But not like a debutante. Not like the richest girl in town. She’d evidently not jumped on the plastic surgery bandwagon, because small lines had carved themselves into the skin at the corners of her eyes, at the outer edges of her mouth, in her forehead between her eyebrows. She looked every minute of her thirty-six years.

“Are you a first-time donor?”

He realized with a start that the husky voice he heard was hers and that she was speaking to him.

“First time here,” he said, suddenly remembering why he was in the basement of the Taft United Methodist Church. “I just moved here two weeks ago, but I have a Red Cross card somewhere.” He rummaged in his wallet, feeling as clumsy and foolish as he had on that walkathon.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Another voice, softer and filled with laughter, made him look for its source. “Look up, Landy, and see who you’re waiting on.”

“Don’t swear in church, Jess. Our grandmothers will come back and haunt us.” But Landy looked up, and Micah saw recognition leap into her eyes. They were like pansies, not violets. Dark and mysterious and tragic.

“Micah Walker.” She sounded glad to see him, and the welcome in her voice opened up a warm place inside him, a place he wasn’t about to look into. “I heard you and your dad moved back. You bought the Tribune?”

He nodded, and Jessie said, “About time someone bought that rag. Maybe you can turn it into a real newspaper.”

Her voice made Micah remember she was there, standing beside Landy’s chair, and he extended his hand. “Jessie, it’s good to see you.” Her name tag said “Jessie Brown” and he remembered that she was a widow.

“Micah, is that your card?” Landy asked. “I’d love to talk to you, but there’s someone waiting.”

“Oh, sorry.” Micah turned to apologize to the person behind him, recognized his father and grinned instead before returning his attention to Landy. “It’s all right, it’s just some old coot.”

She grinned back at him, the expression having more of an effect on him than Ethan’s thump between his shoulder blades. He thought abstractedly that the debutante wasn’t entirely gone; Landy’s front teeth were beautifully but undeniably capped.

After Jessie had taken a pint of his blood, the volunteers in the church kitchen gave him a ham salad sandwich and a glass of juice. “Wait over there a bit,” she’d said, “till you get your legs back.”

He exchanged pleasantries with the volunteers, recognizing Mrs. Burnside, his high school geometry teacher, among them. Another donor passed behind him and sat at the end of the table, muttering thanks to Mrs. Burnside when she brought him his sandwich and drink.

Micah continued talking to the woman on his right, whose name was Jenny and who owned the café downtown, appropriately named Down at Jenny’s. But he felt the hair on the back of his neck standing on end and knew he was being stared at. He looked toward Landy’s table, but she was busy. In profile, her face looked pale, and he saw that the hands that shuffled the papers on the table were shaking. Frowning, he looked toward the end of the table.

Lucas Trent hadn’t changed much in twenty years. He was bigger, his florid complexion redder, but he was still handsome, wearing the patina of the city as surely as he did his expensive suit. Micah wondered, not for the first time, what had kept Trent in Taft when he obviously held the two-stoplight town in the lowest kind of contempt.

The attorney used to stand at the fence at football games. “Come on, you dumb farm boys,” he’d shout. “Protect your quarterback.” The quarterback, of course, being Blake Trent, Landy’s boyfriend and Lucas’s son.

“Mr. Trent.” Micah nodded a polite greeting.

“Walker.” Trent returned the nod. “Heard you were back in town. Do you plan on staying long?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve bought the Taft Tribune.”

“Made a success of yourself, have you.” It wasn’t a question, and Trent’s expression was cold and dark. “Next thing we know, you’ll buy a house on River Walk and start socializing with my erstwhile daughter-in-law.”

“Erstwhile?” That wasn’t a word used much in places like Taft. Most people would have said exdaughter-in-law or son’s former wife.

The simplicity of speech had been only one of the things about Taft he’d been happy to leave. He’d found the town stifling as a teenager and had been happy to shake its river valley dust from his feet when he went away to college. Graduation had landed him a job in Lexington, Kentucky, and he’d loved it there.

“You mean you haven’t caught up with the gossip yet?” Trent’s face was drawn and angry, the kind of anger that comes with suffering. “No hint of scandal has passed under your journalistic nose?”

Micah shifted impatiently in his chair, wondering what was taking his father so long. “I try not to deal in scandal unless it involves hard news.”

“Oh, it was hard all night.” The attorney shuddered, and pain crossed his face. “Blake’s dead,” Trent said, “and Landis is the reason why.”

Landy helped put the church basement in order, trying not to watch the tableau across the room. Even so, she saw Micah’s face harden and knew Lucas had told him.

Micah would believe whatever Lucas said. He’d never liked her anyway, would be eager to accept that she was not only a poor little rich girl but a murderer as well.

“Landy.” Mrs. Burnside’s voice reached her. “Would you help me in here, dear?”

“In here” was the kitchen. She’d have to walk past the table where Micah sat with his father and Lucas Trent and feel their baleful gazes burning holes into the back of her sweater. She wondered why it was the unhappy things, like painful memories and people thinking badly of you and the need for donated blood, that seemed to be unending. Happy spaces in time were always fleeting.

“Don’t slump.” Jessie’s voice came softly. She stood beside Landy, pulling on her coat. “Stand tall and smile like there’s nothing that could ever reach you. Don’t make me whack your spine to straighten you up the way Grandma used to.”

Landy stretched up tall just the way Evelyn Titus had taught her. “See you later, Jess. Kiss the kids for me.” She drew her mouth into a smile and moved across the room, going to the sink to dry the pitchers used for juice.

“Good turnout today,” said Mrs. Burnside.

Landy nodded, trying to think of something to say. “So, how do you like being retired, Mrs. Burnside?”

“You can call me Nancy, dear. We’re not in geometry class anymore. Retirement’s all right. I miss the kids, especially those few every year who soaked up information like a sponge.” She tilted her head and lowered her voice. “Like that Walker boy. He wasn’t gifted, or even extraordinarily intelligent, but he loved learning as much as anyone I ever taught. He had a bad reputation, but he was a pleasure to have in class.”

“Was he?” Micah had been in Blake’s class, two years ahead of Landy. He’d seemed taciturn and always angry. Blake hadn’t liked him, so she’d avoided him. Even then, it was better not to cross Blake.

Lucas brought his glass and plate to where they stood. “Better be careful, Nancy,” he warned, “who you let in here. There’s no telling what’s in their blood.”

“Go back to your office, Lucas.” Her voice was frosty. “We don’t have time for this.”

Landy looked past her former father-in-law at where Micah still sat at the table. He was watching, his gray eyes expressionless. He spoke to his father in a low murmur, but his gaze never left the scene at the sink.

“Landy.” Micah’s voice was still quiet, but it carried easily to where she stood. “Jenny said you were a Realtor. Could you show me some houses? The bed and breakfast is comfortable, but I need something permanent.”

Landy almost grinned. She was, indeed, a licensed Realtor, but her sole contribution to the field was answering the phones at Davis Realty when the receptionist didn’t show up for work.

“Of course,” she said, and some devil made her add, “Any particular area?”

He got to his feet, reaching for his coat. “Yeah, I was thinking about something on the River Walk.”

He hadn’t been thinking that at all, but it was worth the lie to see the look of dismay on Lucas Trent’s face, the quick shimmer of glee that crossed Landy’s features. “Are you free now?” Micah asked. “I could buy you a cup of coffee and give you an idea what I’m looking for.”

Mrs. Burnside took the pitcher Landy was drying from her hands. “She’s free, but you buy her some dinner, too, Micah. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

“You kids go ahead.” Micah’s father spoke. “I’ll help finish up here.”

Landy looked as though she wanted to argue, but Nancy Burnside was holding out her black pea coat expectantly. “All right,” Landy said finally, slipping her arms into the extended sleeves.

Micah put a hand under her elbow as they ascended the basement stairs. She had a hitch in her walk, and he wondered if she was on the tail end of a sprained ankle. He didn’t ask, but when she pitched slightly sideways at the landing, he tightened his hand.

“I really don’t do much with real estate,” she said. “Taking the course was just one of the things I did to keep busy at a time in my life.”

“I know you don’t.” Jenny had told him that much.

They crossed the church foyer, and he kept his hand under her arm, liking its warmth, the way the heat moved through his own veins.

In a few minutes, they were seated across from each other in the back booth of the café, Jenny’s fresh coffee steaming between them.

“What kind of house do you have in mind?” asked Landy.

“Old. Big. Near the river.”

“Sort of ‘in your face?’”

“Not really, although I’m sure the Lucas Trents in town will take it as such.” He shrugged. “I can’t help that.”

“Tell me about you,” she urged, lifting her cup to her mouth. “What have you done with your life?”

Her hands weren’t like he remembered them, either, not that he’d paid that much attention to them twenty years ago; her other parts had been much more interesting. In addition to the short, unpolished nails and the fingers’ lack of rings, the hands were thin and capable-looking. A few of the knuckles were more prominent than the others, one of the little fingers crooked. She didn’t flutter her hands or fidget with them the way nervous people he knew did; nevertheless, he felt tension emanating from her.

“I went to college,” he said, “at the University of Kentucky and stayed in Lexington after that as a reporter and a columnist. I loved what I did, even though it didn’t leave a whole lot of time for a normal life. Then a year and a half ago, my mom died. My dad was lost without her, and the only time he ever showed any interest in anything was when we talked about Taft. The paper was for sale, so here we are.”

“It’s nice to have you back,” she said politely. “Do you want to look at some houses now? I can pick up keys and take you to ones that are empty. I’m afraid I don’t know what’s available, but we can look at the listings.”

Micah wanted to touch her pale cheek, wanted to murmur, “It’s all right. Nothing can hurt you now,” and convince her the words were true. He kept his hands wrapped around his cup.

“At least with this rain, you’ll be seeing the properties at their worst, so there won’t be any unpleasant surprises later.” Her tone was businesslike and crisp, and her eyes avoided his.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Let’s look.”

Narrow and tortuous, the Twilight River flowed slow and lackadaisical between wooded hills and dumped itself unceremoniously into the Ohio. Just before reaching the Ohio, the Twilight widened and splattered, looking on the map like nothing so much as a human fist with a short, extended thumb. Taft nestled in the V between the thumb and the fist, beginning toward the end of its second hundred years to meander around the edge of the curled fingers of the river.

Some of Taft’s earliest inhabitants—the richer ones—had made a walkway around the thumb, complete with a narrow bridge that spanned the appendage. The corridor’s cobblestones had been carefully maintained over the years, its gaslights eventually replaced by electricity, and its park benches painted green each year and replaced as needed. The walkway was low enough to have been flooded a few times, but high enough to elude most of Mother Nature’s watery tantrums.

Houses surrounded the walkway on oddly shaped lots, scarcely visible even to each other when trees were in full leaf. Most of the houses were old, some of them large and elegant, some small and cozy.

Landy had grown up here, in her grandmother’s house at the end of the thumb. Blake Trent had lived four houses away, Jessie Titus in Landy’s grandmother’s carriage house.

Micah had lived across town in what was optimistically termed a subdivision. Three bedroom, one bath ranch houses, six to the acre, filled the neighborhood. A sign at its entrance told all comers its name was Twilight View, but everyone knew it as the Bowery.

“Do you live in your grandmother’s house?” asked Micah, driving slowly up the wide avenue the houses faced.

“I sold it after…Blake died. The church bought it for a parsonage. I was going to start over somewhere else, but I didn’t really want to leave Taft.” She gestured toward the end of the thumb. “My house is further down.”

Micah turned into the driveway of the house that was for sale, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that she was smiling.

“This is my favorite house on River Walk,” she said, unfastening her seat belt before he’d even stopped the car. “It’s where Eli St. John grew up. Remember him?”

Who could forget Eli? Class president. Another of the running backs from the high school football team. He’d been neither as flamboyant as Blake nor as good as Micah. “I am known,” he had said from his spot as the sixth man on the basketball team, “as the deuce of all trades because I’m not good enough to be a jack, much less a master.” He’d been, if guys had talked about things like that, Micah’s best friend.

Eli, would you come and visit if I lived in your old house?

Micah felt a surge of pleasure with the memories, and—annoyed with himself for the pleasure—said gruffly, “Is he still in Taft?”

Landy nodded. “Not still, but again, like you. He got divorced a few years ago and came back here to raise his kids.”

“What does he do?” Without waiting for an answer, he got out of the car and walked around to open her door, but she was already out, closing the door herself.

“He’s the min—”

She was interrupted by a shout. “Well, it is him. I thought for sure you were making it up, Landy.”

Micah felt his shoulders being thumped and turned to look into Eli St. John’s open countenance. The face had changed so little since he’d last seen it that Micah thought for a disjointed moment that Eli was still eighteen.

“Micah, it’s so good to see you.”

“Eli.” Micah did a little thumping of his own, and felt his throat tighten.

“Landy called and told me you were coming to look at the folks’ house,” said Eli, leading the way to the front door, “so I came over to hide where the roof is leaking and stop up all the gushers coming into the basement.”

Standing in the foyer of the St. John house, with his coat dripping onto the hardwood floor, Micah felt as though he never wanted to leave it. He hadn’t been inside it for twenty years, but he remembered where the fireplace would be, flanked by built-in bookcases with glass doors. He knew the floor of the living room would be constructed of wide planks, with the imperfections and irregularities of age adding to its beauty. He knew, before he peered into the library or the formal dining room or the family room off the kitchen, before he walked up the curving front staircase or the crooked, narrow back one, that he’d come home.

Halfway up the front stairs, he said, “I’ll take it.”

Eli, following him, stopped. “You wouldn’t like to know how much it is?”

He shrugged. “Are you going to screw me?”

“No.”

Micah gave him a sideways grin. “Then, no, I don’t need to know right now. When can I move in?”

“Tomorrow.”

He met Eli’s outstretched hand with his own. “Tomorrow? For all you know, I’m a con man looking for a respectable place to launder money.”

Eli’s smile was enigmatic. “I was on the football field with you. I know better. Landis, you going to take care of this?”

Micah had forgotten she was there, so enthralled had he been by the house. He looked down at where she stood, his gaze meeting hers in mute apology. But she was laughing, and her eyes were sparkling.

How could he, for even one minute, have forgotten her presence?

“Couldn’t you two at least talk this out a little more so I will have earned my commission?”

Eli looked at his watch. “I don’t have time. I have to make sure the madding crowd over there doesn’t dismantle the dining room, and then I have to make myself look properly preacherly before the evening service. Call me in the morning, Micah, and we’ll finish this over breakfast.”

He wrung Micah’s hand again, sketched a wave to Landy as he passed her, and was gone.

“Preacherly?” said Micah.

“Eli’s the minister at the Methodist Church.”

“A minister?” But it fit, Micah realized after a moment—Eli was one of the good guys.

His attention shifted back to Landy. “You never did have anything to eat,” he said suddenly. “Let me buy you dinner.”

Chapter Two

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: April is such a beautiful month. Things start getting green again and there’s hope everywhere and baseball fields ring with the sounds of joy.

But you have to watch for storms in April, have to listen to tornado warnings and watches and open your basement door and keep a bottle of water and a first-aid kit down there in case something bad happens. Sometimes the price we pay for spring is a heavy one.

The fact that she wanted to have dinner with Micah surprised Landy. She hadn’t shared a meal alone with a man since the last time with Blake. Her husband had skimmed his meat across the table like a pebble on a pond and she’d said, “I’m sorry,” even though there had been nothing wrong with the pork chop—everything was wrong with the marriage, where terror and abuse had places at the dinner table.

She hesitated, lost in memory, and was brought back to the present by Micah’s questioning gaze. “All right,” she said, “but come to my house. My cooking is the best example of mediocrity you’ll find this side of a fast-food place. But I have some chili I can heat up that’ll be perfect for a rainy night like this. We can get there in two minutes on the Walk.” And it was safe. Nothing could happen to her there in a house where Blake had never been, where pain had never lived.

Micah nodded, a smile coming into his eyes. She locked the St. John house and handed him the key, and he pocketed it without comment. She realized that houses didn’t mean the same thing to men that they did to women. Men seemed to see them as investments, mere buildings to keep them out of the rain, while women saw them as safe havens, warmth against the cold and extensions of themselves. They wanted the decor to reflect their personalities and be welcoming; men wanted it to be cheap and not show dirt.

“What are your plans for the paper?” she asked. “It’s become so political in recent years. Are you going to keep it that way?”

“No.”

He took her arm, and she knew he’d noticed her limp. People always did.

“Remember when we were kids?” he asked. “The news was mostly local. Weddings, funerals, fiftieth anniversary parties. The columnists, even the political ones, wrote from the slant of living in a little river town. Kind of like the towns Tom Bodett and Garrison Keillor write about.”

“I remember. Everyone in town took the paper then.”

“Right. And if a paper boy or girl forgot to deliver it, the editor took a copy out to the subscriber the same night and gave him the next week free.”

They were at her back steps now, and she tried not to lean on his arm as they walked up. Her leg wasn’t more painful when she climbed stairs, but lifting her foot repeatedly was awkward and tiring.

“Is that what you’re going to do? Bring that back?” Keep him talking and he won’t ask you why you limp.

“I’m going to try to,” he corrected her. “It was that kind of newspaper that made me want to be a journalist.”

She led the way into the kitchen of her house, tossing her coat over the back of a chair to dry. “Let me take your coat.”

She hung his raincoat in the laundry room and returned to find him standing at the cold fireplace in the kitchen. “Light a fire if you’d like,” she suggested. “I know it’s not that cold, but the chill from the rain gets into your bones.” Especially ones that have been broken. She longed to swallow some aspirin to ease the ache in her leg, but didn’t want to invite comment.

He knelt before the fireplace, laying a fire carefully. “Was this kitchen like this when you moved in?”

“Pretty much, though I refinished the old floor and put up wallpaper everywhere. Sam down at the paint store goes into ecstasy when he sees me coming. I’m pretty sure I’m putting his oldest daughter through medical school.” She turned a burner on low under a pot of chili and went to the windows that overlooked the river, turning the wands that closed the blinds. “Do you want to see the rest of the house?” She couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice.

“Sure.” He straightened and looked around. “I’d like for the St. John house to feel like this one. Cozy, I guess, but not lacy or fussy.”

She grinned at him. “The lace and fuss are upstairs. Come on.”

Micah was a perfect house tourist; he liked everything, even the rose-strewn wallpaper in her bedroom and bathroom.

“Did you have a decorator?” he asked.

“I did it myself,” she said. “Well, me and Sam and Jessie and everyone I hired to do the things I was afraid I’d screw up.”

They sat at the kitchen table with their dinner. “Blake had a designer do Grandmother’s house when we moved into it,” she said, “and it was beautiful, but Jessie said it felt like a hotel she couldn’t afford to stay in.”

Landy watched Micah covertly while they ate, putting bits and pieces of what she saw into the safe place where she kept good memories.

He was tall and broad-shouldered like her husband had been, but had maintained his muscled build in a way that Blake had not. Micah’s dark brown hair was well cut, but not particularly neat, looking as though he combed it with his fingers throughout the day. He squinted sometimes, and she pictured his lean face with reading glasses sliding down his nose. His eyes were the same gray as the pewter pitcher on the mantel, fringed by thick lashes. His smile was wide and lovely, and came seldom. His hand, when he’d held her arm, had been strong but not bruising. She didn’t think Micah Walker had a need to convey power; it was there in his quiet presence.

Without in the least meaning to, Landy sighed.

Across the fat candles that flickered between them, Micah caught and held her gaze. “What happened?” he asked, and she knew he wasn’t asking her about the sigh.

She hesitated. He was a reporter, she reminded herself. He was like those people who had dogged her every step for days, had been at the hospital, the mortuary, in the courtroom and camped in the front and back yards of Grandmother’s house. They had held microphones in her face and shouted questions at her. They had created an obstacle course that a woman on crutches could scarcely navigate.

But the one time she had fallen, when, blinded by tears, she had tripped over someone’s thick black cord, one of the reporters had stuffed her recorder into her pocket and come to Landy’s aid. She had helped her up the steps and into the house, speaking quietly in her ear. The voice had been low, but the words had included the term “predatory sons of bitches” and Landy had laughed in spite of everything. The young woman helped her to a seat and then left her alone, and when Landy got up and peered outside through a lifted corner of a curtain, there had been no one left in her yard.

She’d always wanted to thank the reporter for rescuing her, but had never seen her again in the hordes who had followed her until someone else’s drama took news media precedence over hers.

“You were the debutante,” said Micah. “Your life was supposed to be charmed.” His voice was soft, gentle, the kind of voice that could lull you into thinking you were safe. Could, if the time was right, talk you into bed naked before you knew your bra was unfastened.

“I never knew what I did,” she said, “to make you think I was like that. I went to the same school, church, Kmart that everyone else did, but I couldn’t ever be just everyone else. To you, anyway.”

“I know,” he said. “When I was eighteen, I divided the world into those who had and those who didn’t. You had, which made you worthy of my contempt. At the time, I imagine I thought your family even hired people to go to the bathroom for you.”

The self-directed sarcasm startled a laugh from her. “Not quite,” she said, “but speaking of bathrooms, would you excuse me?”

In the pretty little powder room under the stairs, she swallowed three extra-strength pain relievers and willed them to work. The ache in her leg had become a raging fire, with little arrows of flame shooting and swirling all the way from her hip to her ankle.

They sat in comfortable chairs in front of the fireplace, their coffee on a cloth-covered round table between them. Landy stretched her jeans-clad legs out straight, propping her feet on the ottoman the chairs shared, and Micah saw a spasm of pain cross her face. The expression cleared immediately, however, to be replaced with a Mona Lisa smile he recognized as a mask.

“It’s pretty much a classic story,” she said. “Blake started hitting me in high school, stopped while we were in college, and started up again before we’d been married three months. We’d go to counseling, it would get better, then he’d drink and it would happen again. It became such a cycle I was almost able to mark it on a calendar.”

She spoke without expression, though the color in the cheek he could see was hectic and her hands had that look about them again. That tension that made her grip her coffee cup and raise it to her lips in a studied motion.

“Why?” He had to force the word out.

“Why what? Why did an intelligent woman stay with an abusive husband? I told you it was a classic story—my reasons are just as classic. He didn’t mean to, I deserved it, it won’t happen again, I can’t manage on my own because I don’t know how. You’ve probably heard them all before.”

He nodded slightly, his jaw hurting from being clamped so tightly. This shouldn’t have happened to her. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but especially her. She’s fragile, small, a debutante, for God’s sake.

“Finally, five years ago, we got divorced. It was very civilized, as divorces go. I kept Grandmother’s house and Blake married his secretary and went to a law firm in Indianapolis. It was more prestigious than his father’s firm. Also less accepting of his lax professional standards. He was back with his father within a year.”

She rose, straightening slowly, and limped to the coffeepot, bringing it back and refilling their cups. When she returned to her seat, she gave a small gasp and grasped her leg. “Charley horse,” she said, with a hitching little laugh.

He nodded, knowing she lied. He wanted to offer to rub the pain from her leg, but sensed the gesture wouldn’t be welcome.

“Blake’s new wife came to my house late one night two and a half years ago. It was storming to beat the band and she asked for shelter. I remember thinking how much smarter she was than I’d been, getting away earlier instead of waiting for him to change. Blake arrived within the hour.”

Micah wanted to tell her to stop. The fact that his jaw hurt and her leg hurt and the fire needed another log were all good reasons for her to stop, weren’t they?

She set down her cup, and he saw that the hand with the chewed fingernails and bumpy knuckles trembled the way it had that afternoon in the church basement. He took it in his and held it, not saying anything.

“She and I were at the top of the stairs when he let himself in—I’d never changed the locks, since the divorce was so civilized. What an idiot I was.” She shuddered, and her fingers tightened around his. “But it was different this time, because Blake had a gun. I’d felt so powerful, so alive, after we were divorced that apparently I thought I could stop bullets, because I stepped in front of his wife. But he wasn’t interested in me and tried to push me out of the way. I grabbed his arm—can you believe that? The man had a gun and I grabbed his arm. I knocked him off balance and when he went down the stairs, he took me with him.”

She swallowed hard, and her eyes were dark and sad, glimmering with unshed tears. “The gun went off, just like in the movies. God, what a horrendous noise that makes. I had blood all over me and I was hurt, so I thought I’d been shot, but when I turned my head, he was lying there and not moving. He died on the way to the hospital.”

“Did his wife tell a different story?”

“No, but Lucas didn’t believe either one of us.” She rubbed her leg with her free hand, not looking at him. “I kept remembering how much I’d loved Blake, how much fun he could be when he wanted to. I thought of how he insisted I learn to use a gun correctly to keep me safe. It’s easy to blame yourself when the other person is dead.”

“What happened then?”

“Lucas lost the case, I sold Grandmother’s house to the church and life went on. On the surface, at least. Underneath—” she hesitated and drew her hand from his “—underneath, I think my life ended when Blake’s did.”

He gestured toward her leg. “Is that a leftover from the fall down the stairs?”

She nodded. “It was broken in three places. The surgeon wants to operate again, but I keep putting it off.”

Micah lifted his hand to her face, cupping her cheek and stroking a tear from her lashes with his thumb. “I think maybe your life’s broken, like your leg was, but not over. Some healing takes a long time.”

She nodded. “But some things never heal at all.”

Chapter Three

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Don’t you just hate moving? On Susan’s personal list of favorites, it’s right up there with root canal and cleaning the mold out of the refrigerator. But there’s an upside to it. When you’re actually living in your new home, sleeping in your own bed, and spilling grape juice on your own new carpet, you get a different feeling from any other. You feel at home—there’s nothing any better than that. Sometimes, moving is a second, third, or last chance at a brave, wonderful new life.

Landy helped Micah move into the St. John house. She pushed furniture around after it was delivered, hung towels in the bathrooms and prepared supper for him and his father three nights running. She and Jessie stood on stepladders and measured for window treatments, then put the airy curtains up when they arrived.

On his first night in the house, Micah gave an impromptu dinner party and Eli, Jessie, Landy and Nancy Burnside came. They laughed, told stories, ate pizza and drank beer. When everyone went home, Micah kissed Nancy and Jessie on the cheek. Landy brought up the rear, and he didn’t kiss her at all, just gave her a long look. After that night, he hardly saw her at all.

She waved to him across the produce aisle at the grocery store, but by the time he carried his purchases through the checkout, her aged black Chevy was pulling out of the parking lot. He saw her on the River Walk most evenings at dusk, walking as fast as her hitching gait allowed. She and Eli were in and out of each other’s houses, too. Sometimes one of Eli’s numerous and sundry children accompanied her trek around the thumb, and the lapping river water would transmit the sound of her laughter to Micah as he sat on his back porch.

“I always liked that little girl,” his father said one evening, and Micah looked up to see the setting sun embracing Landy, turning her hair the color of orange marmalade and making his heart ache in a place he hadn’t known was there.

He thought then about asking her to go to dinner with him, maybe crossing the big bridge into Cincinnati to see a play, but later that night he saw Eli slip through the darkness to her house.

It was a good match—Eli and Landy. Micah told himself that, but then he sat silent and morose on the porch until he saw Eli go home.

The “Window Over the Sink” columns arrived in the mail every Friday, and he printed them in Saturday’s Trib. People liked them. “Been there, done that, bought the damn T-shirt,” they told him.

Plans for the newspaper were working out, coming together faster than he’d thought possible. Advertising and subscriptions were both on an upswing. The town clergymen took turns writing a short, inspirational piece every week. Mrs. Burnside did a rambling twenty inches or so on who was doing what. It was corny, she admitted, writing down when so-and-so’s daughter from Ithaca, New York, visited with her two young sons and spoiled cocker spaniel, but people liked reading it and she had a good time compiling it. Micah liked her writing—and her—so well he offered her the receptionist’s job and she took it, managing his newspaper office as efficiently as she had geometry class. Her coffee was good, too; his entire staff had threatened mutiny when, being the first one in the office one Monday morning, he made the coffee.

“This stuff,” said Joe Carter mildly, “gives sludge a bad name.” So Nancy made the coffee.

“Window Over the Sink” was the most popular of the columns, drawing the most reader comment. Everyone had his own idea of who Susan was, ranging from Jenny from the café to Micah’s father—an idea that horrified Ethan. Micah had even looked at the back of one of the newspaper’s checks that had been issued to Susan Billings, to see if her signature looked familiar. But the check was stamped with For Deposit Only and had been cashed without question at a local bank.

Micah considered for a while that the writer might be Landy. In the end, he didn’t think so, because she had no children and her high-school heartthrob was dead. Susan wrote with a lightness of spirit that had left Landy one night on the stairs of her grandmother’s house.

He didn’t really know what Landy did, though. She worked at the realty sometimes, but not often. She substitute-taught everything from kindergarten to senior English and occasionally waited tables during the lunch rush Down at Jenny’s. She volunteered everywhere, clerking for the blood drive, reading aloud at Wee Care Preschool, and delivering Meals on Wheels.

He saw her in church, in the same pew as Jessie Titus Browning with Jessie’s three children lined up between them. Sometimes, Landy wasn’t at the service, and he wondered where she was until one Sunday he went to the basement restroom and found her presiding over the nursery.

When he caught sight of her that Sunday, Micah stood in the door of the big room that housed the nursery, not noticing the cribs, the changing table or the miniature table and chairs. Not even really seeing the six or seven preschoolers milling around the room.

He saw only Landy, standing with a baby on her hip. She swayed gently, crooning into the ear of the sobbing infant. Watching her, he remembered something his father had said once. “Equal rights or no, there’s nothing in the world any prettier than a woman with a baby in her arms.”

Pop had been right.

The woman looked up and saw him then, and smiled. “Good morning,” she said. “Here.”

Before he knew what was happening, she had plunked the weeping baby in his arms and was rummaging in a cupboard. “These kids are starving to death. They know they get treats down here, and Colby—he’s the one you’re holding—has kept me so busy I’m behind.”

“Okay.” Micah looked down at the wizened little face of the baby. “I’ll try not to drop you if you’ll quit crying, how does that sound?”

He stepped carefully between the toys that littered the carpeted floor and sat in a rocking chair, propping Colby up on his shoulder the way he’d seen countless women do. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? The baby smelled good, and Micah breathed deep.

Landy handed out disgusting-looking fruit things to the children and began pouring juice out of a can into paper cups. “Sing to him,” she suggested over her shoulder. “He likes it.”

“You think so, huh,” he grunted, but when Colby’s whimpers became sobs again, he began to sing “Yellow Submarine” in a low voice.

Pretty soon, Colby stopped crying, and by the time Micah had finished “Hey, Jude” and was halfway through “A Hard Day’s Night,” the other children were quiet, too. They sat cross-legged on the floor and listened.

“That’s classical music, my dad says,” commented Lindsey, Eli’s youngest. “My brother Max says it’s just old.”

The snort of laughter from the woman leaning against a changing table made Micah glad he’d come down the stairs, even though his hand was asleep and Colby’s diaper had sprung a definite leak.

“Would you have dinner with me tonight?” he asked, not caring that all the children heard him and Lindsey was probably going to report to her father that his friend Micah was asking Landy for a date.

Landy started, and her cheeks turned pink, but she was smiling again when she answered. “Sure, if you’ll sing ‘Twist and Shout.’ I always liked that.”

“It’s a date, Jess. What in the hell am I doing going on a date?” Clad in white cotton underwear, Landy paced between her closet and dressing table, so distracted that she didn’t even think about her leg.

“Driving yourself crazy, I’d say,” said Jessie, “and it’s about time.”

“He just looked so sweet, holding Colby and singing, I couldn’t say no. But Blake used to be sweet, too, and if I’d said no more often, he’d probably still be alive.”

“Landy—”

“It’s true. Don’t try and tell me it’s not.” Landy reached for the cup of tea that sat cooling on a table.

“Okay, I won’t. But maybe if I’d told somebody the first time he ever hit you—after you smiled at Micah and told him good game—Blake would still be alive. Maybe if his parents hadn’t blinded themselves to his violence, he’d still be alive. Maybe if the steps in your grandma’s house hadn’t been so steep, there wouldn’t have been time for the gun to go off and he’d still be alive.” Jessie’s normally soft brown eyes snapped. “You going to live the rest of your life on maybes?”

Landy got up, going back to her closet. “Maybe,” she said over her shoulder, and laughed when Jessie raised one finger in a universal gesture.

“Wear a dress.” Jessie poured more tea.

“Oh, Jess, I don’t think so.” Landy looked down at the scars left by the surgeries on her leg. “This doesn’t look too pretty.”

Their eyes met in the mirror. “You’re right. You’ve been hiding from who you are ever since Blake died,” said Jessie. “Why stop now?”

Stung, Landy reached far into the closet and withdrew a hanger.

It looked like a basic “little black dress” until the wearer moved and hints of plum shimmered in its depths. Darts and seams made it fit as though it had been tailored for her, even though she’d bought it off the clearance rack at the boutique beside Down at Jenny’s. She’d never worn it, but sometimes she would come into her room and try it on. She’d turn this way and that before the long mirror and imagine herself unscarred and free.

Maybe, just for tonight, that’s what she could be.

She slid her feet into strappy black cloth heels and fastened silver hoops in her ears, a silver chain around her throat that nestled inside the scooped neckline of the dress, and a row of delicate bracelets that slipped up and down her arm and captured light when they moved.

“You look wonderful,” said Jessie, her voice soft.

Landy looked into the mirror again, almost afraid there would be no reflection there because the Landy Wisdom who wore clothes like this no longer existed.

“It’s really me,” she said, swallowing sudden, ridiculous tears.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she knew the heels were a mistake. She already had one off when the doorbell rang, and she limped to answer, standing with her stockinged foot tucked behind her other leg.

“Hi,” she said.

“Wow,” he said.

She tugged her shoe back on. If she regretted it, so be it. “We should go,” she said. “I’ll turn back into a frump when the eleven o’clock news comes on.”

“Never in a million years.” He looked up at where Jessie stood on the stairs. “She have a curfew, Jess?”

She grinned at him. “Before daylight or else park in the garage. We don’t want the neighbors talking.”

“Eli would be parked on the porch waiting.” Landy lifted a black cashmere stole from the newel post. “He runs the neighborhood watch,” she explained to Micah.

“Is that all it is?”

“What else?” she asked, puzzled, but he was opening the door for her. “Later, Jess.”

“I thought we’d go to the Overlook. It’s warm enough to eat on the porch. That okay with you?” Micah seated her in the passenger side of his Blazer—giving her a boost when her skirt was too narrow for her to negotiate the step up—and pulled the seat belt up for her to fasten.

“It’s my favorite place,” she said, when he’d climbed in beside her. “I like your Blazer.”

“My dad wanted me to bring his nice, conservative Buick. He said it was a much better choice for taking a lady out to dinner.”

She adopted a haughty air. “That’s all right. We debutantes are quite tolerant.”

They were seated at a table beside the windows that looked out over the Ohio when Micah said, “I was crazy about you, you know.”

Her eyes widened. “You didn’t even like me.”

“It made me mad that you couldn’t see what a jerk Trent was, and I knew I’d never have enough money or prestige to ask you out, regardless of him.”

“Oh, my goodness, no. You weren’t even good enough to kiss my ring in those days.” Anger and disappointment made her voice wobble, which made her even angrier. “Take a look at me, all right?” She gestured toward her body with open palms. “I have wrinkles and scars and a gimpy leg. Most of my grandmother’s money paid for a lawsuit after I killed my husband. Here’s your debutante, Micah.”

Fury gave flash to her quiet prettiness, and Micah enjoyed her anger even as he did a little internal squirming because he was almost certain it was justified.

“You’re right,” he said. He picked up the wine bottle that sat between them and poured more into both their glasses. “I’m sorry. Coming back to Taft seems to have brought out the angry young pain in the ass in me.”

She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “I’m sorry for blowing up, too,” she said. “Shall we start over?” She extended her hand. “I’m Landy Wisdom.”

He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Micah Walker,” he said. “Very happy to make your acquaintance. Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

She beamed at him, her eyes tilting, and he felt his heart do a flip-flop.

Over the main course, he asked, “Do you think Nancy Burnside has designs on my father?”

Landy dropped her fork. “Designs? Mrs. Burnside? I’m not sure, but I think that borders on blasphemy. She’s a geometry teacher. Isn’t that like a nun?”

“She was a geometry teacher,” he corrected. “She drank beer at my housewarming party. That’s not nunlike.”

“She was just being polite,” she scoffed. “Good grief, she’s been widowed forever.”

He took a sip of wine, looking at her over the glass. “I think it would be great, starting over in your sixties.”

“It doesn’t bother you, thinking of your father being with someone besides your mother?”

“No. At least not as much as the idea of him being alone the rest of his life bothers me.”

“Jessie and Eli and you and I are all alone,” she said. “Not everyone’s meant to walk two by two.”

“No, but my father is. There are holes in his life that definitely can’t be filled by a thirty-eight-year-old single son who makes bad coffee.”

There were holes in her life, too. Great empty gaps where self-confidence and two good legs used to be. Not to mention waking in the middle of the night with longing singing through her veins and making her heart pound painfully hard. Though she hadn’t always enjoyed sex with Blake, she missed the kissing, cuddling and full body contact that came before it, the illusion of closeness that came after.

She looked across the table at Micah and acknowledged the attraction she’d felt since first seeing him again in the church basement. She was honest enough to admit that the attraction went back as far as Taft High School, when she’d smiled at Micah even knowing Blake would be angry.

She would like, she knew, to kiss and cuddle with Micah, to sleep in his arms and wake beside him. She’d like to cook his breakfast wearing nothing but his shirt, the way they always did in movies. It would do an admirable job of filling some of the holes of being alone.

But, between the cuddling and breakfast came the act itself, the physical invasion that meant she was being overpowered. Micah would expect that, but she would never be overpowered again.

After dinner, they sauntered through the gardens of the Overlook. Landy’s leg was killing her, and her limp became more pronounced despite her best efforts.

“You’re hurting, aren’t you?” he said suddenly, and seated her on a path-side bench before she knew what was happening. He knelt before her, lifting her foot to his thigh and slipping off her shoe. “Why didn’t you say something? Here.” He handed the shoe to her and straightened, lifting her into his arms and moving toward the parking lot.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, holding herself away from him, hoping to stave off the warmth that emanated from his body along with the fresh scent of soap. “It just does that sometimes.”

“Ms. Wisdom.” He stopped walking and scowled down into her face. Reflections from the muted lights that lined the path danced in his eyes. “I am trying my best to use the manners my mama taught me. The least you can do is go along with it and maybe, just maybe, I won’t drop you.”

“Oh.” She relaxed in spite of herself, allowing the warmth to flow over and through her. “Your mama would be proud,” she said, as they approached the Blazer.

“I hope so.” He opened the car door, propped his foot on the inside running board so that her backside rested on his thigh, lowered his head and kissed her.

Oh, yes, was all she had time to think before her senses took over. This wasn’t passion as she knew it. There was no demand in the heat of his lips. His eyes had been clear and bright before they closed, not fogged by alcohol or some other mind-altering drug. Although his arms tightened as the kiss deepened, no hand pushed against her breast or thrust beneath the skirt of her dress. When his tongue sought entry into her mouth, she denied it, but he didn’t end the kiss in fury or disgust. He raised his head, smiled at her and lowered it again.

This time, when his tongue slid across the seam of her lips, she opened them. The age-old dance was slow and warm and tasted sweetly of wine and coffee and something else. She felt a sensation between her thighs that she hadn’t felt in—oh, so very long. Her breasts were sensitized, the soft cloth that covered them feeling scratchy even though it wasn’t.

“That wasn’t part of what my mama taught me,” he said when the kiss ended.

Chapter Four

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Trust is something you lose when you grow up, eroded by the hurts and betrayals that are part of everyone’s life from the time you find out your folks lied about Santa Claus. But every spring, when the green has made us forget the browns of winter and kites make colorful stars in the daytime sky, we learn once again to trust. We know Taft will clamor with the sounds of lawnmowers on Saturday afternoons, another class will be preparing to graduate from Taft High and everyone will be sweeping their porches just to have an excuse to be outside.

I said once that there is a price to be paid for spring, and there is, but that regaining of trust—even if it’s temporary—is worth the cost.

“Neighborhood watch, huh?” Micah lifted a hand to return Eli’s wave as his neighbor jogged toward Landy’s house. “Seems to me he only watches one house.”

The thought that he was sitting on his porch spying on people and talking to himself entered his mind, and he returned his attention to the golf clubs he was re-gripping.

He was wrapping tape around the shaft of the seven iron when a voice said, “You could at least offer me a beer,” and he raised his eyes to see Eli standing on the brick path that led to the River Walk.

“I could,” Micah agreed, and looked down at the roll of tape in his hand. “Or you could go in and get the beer and we could both have one.”

“Once a sixth man, always a sixth man,” Eli complained, walking past him and into the house.

Micah grinned at nothing, thinking Eli hadn’t stayed long at Landy’s house. Not that it was any of his business. It wasn’t. Really.

“Lindsey tells me you and Landy had a date.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Micah took the bottle Eli offered. “Did she also tell you I sang Beatles songs in church and little Colby Whatshisname peed all over me?”

“Oh, yes.” Eli sat down. “Lindsey’s very thorough. Her older siblings have threatened to clamp her lips together with Super Glue.”

“Did you stop by to tell me you don’t want me to see Landy anymore?” Micah asked bluntly.

Eli’s eyebrows shot up so high they disappeared under the dark blond hair that fell over his forehead. “Huh?” He set his beer on the porch floor with a little bang. “Why in the pocket of Joseph’s coat would I do that?”

Micah glared at him. “Well, because—why in the what?”

Eli looked abashed and ridiculously young. “For a minister,” he said, “I have an alarming tendency toward swearing. In order to keep their father employed and out of their hair, my two oldest children gave me a list of curse alternatives. Some of them stuck.” He picked up his beer. “But don’t change the subject. Why did you think I would mind you seeing Landy?”

“Well.” It was Micah’s turn to be embarrassed, and he was. “You go over there a lot, all times of the day and night. You walk in without knocking. You’re both single adults. I just thought….” He let his voice trail off.

Eli shook his head sadly. “A big-city reporter, award-winning, no less, and you jump to conclusions like you were still a running back on a high school football team. Lord, Lord,” he said prayerfully, looking up, “what is to become of this lamb of Yours? This black sheep, I mean. I understand that the Beatles songs in Your house were okay—You have John Lennon and George Harrison with You, after all—but couldn’t You just give him a little guidance down the path of common sense?” He waited, head cocked as though listening, then gave Micah a doleful look. “He says He did, but you went the wrong way. Again.”

“Elijah St. John, you are an unmitigated asshole.” But Micah was laughing.

“I try,” said Eli modestly.

“If you aren’t seeing Landy, why do you go over there all the time?” Micah demanded. So much for minding his own business, but there were limits, after all.

The smile stayed on Eli’s face, but dimmed in the green eyes. “We’re friends,” he said. “She’s gone through a rotten few years. A rotten many years, really.”

“I know.” When Eli didn’t continue, Micah was silent. He had been a reporter long enough to understand about confidentiality even when it was unspoken. He had, in the past, pushed people to the very limits of their discretion. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost his taste for that—at least in his personal life.

It was time to change the subject. But not necessarily to mind his own business.

“What about you?” he asked quietly. “Did you have some bad years, too? You’re a divorced minister with six kids. I doubt that was an easy thing to become.”

Sadness slid over Eli’s features like a mask. The expression was so out of place on the usually smiling face that Micah felt as if the sun had suddenly disappeared behind a cloud. He got to his feet. “Be right back,” he said, and went into the house.

When he came back out, carrying a bag of potato chips, Eli’s face was clear again, though there was a pensive look in his eyes.

“Remember,” he said, “how you used to call Landy the town debutante?”

Micah nodded, flinching. “I’ve also made that mistake in the past couple of weeks.”

“Well, I went to Princeton, remember, and I met a real one.” Eli shook his head. “White dress, curtseying, the whole bit. Dee was my roommate’s sister and I met her when I went home with him on some weekends. It was like being in a different world, you know, where people actually do dress for dinner, and she was the very best part of it.

“She really liked the idea of cultivating the country boy and we got married the week after I graduated. It wasn’t until we were on our honeymoon that she found out she couldn’t talk me out of being a minister. Still, it was okay as long as we lived in the Hamptons and had a big, social church. She was a good minister’s wife, generous with her time and money both. We had the first two kids—Max and Josh—and entered them in nursery school before they were even born. It was okay,” he repeated, looking down at the beer in his hand.

“What made it not okay anymore?”

“She got pregnant again, wanted an abortion, I said no. She agreed to have the child, finally—that’s Wendy—and loved her after she was born, but it changed something between us. I didn’t feel the same about Dee and she stayed angry. Then her brother—my old roommate—and his wife were killed in an accident. Dee was distraught, of course—her whole family was—but no one wanted their kids. We’d agreed to be their guardians without ever once thinking what that entailed. Dee wanted to allow some rich, childless couple to adopt them, but I couldn’t do that. Hence, I got Ben, Little Eli and Lindsey, but lost my marriage in the process.”

He looked up, smiling again. “I moved them all here to rebuild, and it’s worked out well.”

Micah sipped his beer silently, then set it down and concentrated on wrapping tape around the shaft of his six iron. He was angry with Eli’s ex-wife, and he wanted to tell his friend she was no great loss; he could do better.

“What’s Jessie’s story?” he asked instead.

Eli’s shrug was elaborately casual. “She’s a nurse who was married to a doctor who died of a heart attack.”

Something in his eyes alerted Micah that once again, Eli was fudging. “She’s a nice woman.”

Eli got up, brushing potato chip crumbs from his shirt. “She’s okay. I need to go. I’m umpiring at Wendy’s softball game. Now there’s a job that ought to get me a father-of-the-year award.”

“More likely to get you lynched,” said Micah, laughing and completely failing to notice his friend’s sudden speculative expression.

Which is how he found himself in a half-squat behind home plate yelling “Stee-rike one!” while demure young ladies in baseball caps and ponytails kicked dust at him.

She’d been so involved with the shape of his mouth and how well it fit over hers that Landy hadn’t taken the shape of Micah’s backside into account. When he assumed the position of home plate umpire at the game in which Jessie’s and Eli’s daughters were playing, she had a chance to correct the omission.

The view was admirable.

“Breathe. You’re turning blue,” Jessie mumbled. She sighed. “He does look fine, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.” Landy looked sideways at her friend, seeing the wistful expression on her face. “You know, Jess,” she said carefully, “I don’t have any claims on him. We just went out once, is all.”

Jessie gave her a blank look. “What in the name of Noah’s ark are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” Landy grinned at her, unable to quash the ripple of gladness Jessie’s reply created. “You’ve been around Eli too long. You’re starting to talk like him. Is there anything you’d like me to know?”

“Oh, please.” The look this time was wilting. “I loved, married and lost one workaholic. I don’t think I care to go through it again. Eli and I are just friends, thank you very much, and we will remain that. Except for when we’re being enemies, that is.”

The subject of their conversation came up the bleachers and sat between them, casting a longing gaze at Landy’s popcorn that made her lift her shoulders in resignation and hand him the bag. “Garbage gut.”

“You need to talk to Micah,” he said, taking Jessie’s soft drink and lifting it to his lips. “He’s suspicious of me coming to your house, and I can’t lie to him.”

“He’s a reporter,” said Landy. “We can’t tell him. How can you suggest such a thing?”

“He’s my friend,” he reminded her, his gaze level on hers. “I trust him, and it’s time you trusted somebody.”

“I’ve been there and done that,” she said, her voice feeling jagged in her throat. “I do trust him, to a certain extent, but not about Safe Harbor Railroad. It’s too important to too many people.”

“I’m not forgetting,” he said, “but maybe it’s time you did. Some things, at least.” Eli stopped, his eyes narrowing as he watched the field. “He just called Wendy out. Doesn’t friendship mean anything in this world?”

Jessie looked toward the sky, a cloudless blue expanse. “It’ll be a terrible waste of good weather if no one cooks out tonight.”

“I will,” said Landy immediately. “I’m probably the only one whose grill is clean anyway.” She prepared to leave. “Will you invite Micah for me? And his father and Nancy, too, if they’d like to come.”

She was standing beside the grill in her backyard when Micah came down the River Walk. She wore a towel on her head and a robe and had a cordless phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear as she poked at the grill.

When he came close, she looked up and flashed him a smile, but something like guilt crossed her eyes. Something furtive that made him feel like a snoop and an interloper. He frowned, not liking the sensation, and walked past her to put the beer and soft drinks he carried into the cooler that sat on the end of the picnic table.

A moment later, she said, “Hey, Micah,” and he turned. She was putting the phone in the pocket of her robe. “How are you at starting fires?” she asked.

They were at least five feet apart, but the tension arced between them so obviously that he almost expected to see sparks. This hadn’t been the kind of fire she meant, but it was there nonetheless.

“Well,” he said, “I never was a Boy Scout.”

She looked so wonderful standing there. No makeup covered the dark shadows under her eyes or filled in the little brackets that pain had dug around her mouth, but her smile lit her face. It made her look younger, as did the anxiety behind it.

He wanted to kiss her again, and the drooping shawl collar of her robe showed the shadowed beginnings of her breasts, making him want to do more than kiss her. He even took a step in her direction, then stopped, suddenly realizing that her tension wasn’t the same as his.

Anxiety. He’d already thought the word, but its meaning hadn’t come through then. It did now. Her tension was sexual, as his was, but it didn’t feel good, as his did. His was anticipatory; hers was filled with dread.

Oh, God. Oh, dear sweet God. She was afraid of him.

He cleared his throat. “Your hair looks fetching that way, and I like your outfit,” he said, his voice sounding gravelly, “but if you want to finish getting ready, I’ll see what I can do with the fire.”

“Thank you,” she said, and turned and fled.

“I acted like a freaking idiot,” she told Jessie, tossing salad with a violence that had iceberg lettuce littering the counter, the floor and Jessie’s arm when she stood too close.

Jessie didn’t crack a smile. “That’s no act. Stand up straight.”

“I can’t.”

Worry crossed her friend’s features, and Landy was sorry she’d answered so abruptly. “It just hurts some today, is all,” she assured her.

“Right.” Jessie reached into the cupboard over her head and found the kitchen bottle of pain relievers. “Are you taking these a lot?” she asked, running a glass of water and handing it to Landy.

“More than I’d like,” Landy admitted, “but not a dangerous amount.” She swallowed the pills. “What am I going to do, Jess? He’s so attractive, and I get goose bumps just being in the same room with him, but if he touches me—I mean really touches me, I’m going to freeze up. I know it.” She tossed salad with frustrated abandon. “Why does the actual act mean so much to men?”

“Not just to men.” Jessie washed vegetables, her expression pensive. “The ‘act,’ as you call it, is wonderful. I’m so sorry you never had the opportunity to know how wonderful. And,” she added, shaking a carrot at Landy so that droplets of water sprayed them both, “you never will if you don’t work on this fear.”

“Work on it,” Landy repeated. “As in what? Writing a report? Driving everyone nuts by talking ad nauseum about my hang-ups? Asking Micah to be an experiment?”

Jessie glared at her. “Maybe,” she said. Still scowling, she demanded, “Where’s the damn vegetable tray?”

“I have it,” said a meek voice from behind them, and they both swung on Eli.

“How long have you been listening?” Landy asked.

He adopted an injured air. “Not long enough, evidently. I didn’t hear one thing that was interesting. Holy sh—shmoly, Landy, what have you been doing with that salad? It’s all the way from one end of the kitchen to the other.”

“Take it,” she ordered, plunking the salad bowl into Eli’s still-open hands and giving the sectioned vegetable platter to Jessie. “We’ll be right out.”

He moved toward the door, but stopped before he got there. “You might try it,” he said quietly, “the experiment thing, I mean. Not all men are pigs. Not all reporters are untrustworthy.”

Micah was standing at the edge of her brick sidewalk with Lindsey in his arms when Landy went outside. “Your walk’s coming apart,” he said.

“I know. It’s on this spring’s to-do list.” She stroked Lindsey’s strawberry blond hair back from her face. “Hungry, Linds?”

“Oh, you’ve met my new girlfriend?” Micah looked at her past the child’s face, his eyes warm. “Be careful. She’s the jealous type.”

“He’s silly, Aunt Landy,” Lindsey announced, planting a noisy, wet kiss on his cheek and pushing herself out of his arms. “Let me go, Uncle Mike. The hot dogs are done.”

Landy watched the little girl run to join her siblings and Jessie’s children around a platter mounded with hot dogs. “Uncle Mike, huh? You’ve made a conquest.”

“Oh,” he said, “I’m a whiz with the five-year-old set. And Wendy and Jessie’s girl Hannah assured me I didn’t do too bad as an umpire.” His hand lifted, pushing her hair back from her face in much the same way as she had Lindsey’s, although his touch was much more tentative. “How am I doing with the thirty-somethings?”

His hand lingered at her hairline, then slipped down to cup her cheek. She looked up at him, and it seemed that she could become lost in the foggy depths of his gray eyes. And she wanted to. She wanted to be lost in that way that happened to other women but eluded her.

When she spoke, her voice was thready. “Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.”

Chapter Five

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Sometimes life goes so smoothly, you’re lulled into a false sense of security. You know, the mortgage is paid ahead, you’ve lost the ten pounds you’d gained since the last high school reunion. The sunset reflects its palette of colors on the Twilight and gives you heart’s ease at the end of the day and all is blissfully right with the world.

Then, in one short day—or perhaps only a moment—it all goes to hell in a hand basket.

He waited till everyone else had gone to take his leave. Then he took her into his arms and kissed Landy until his legs felt like scrambled eggs.

For a moment, she trembled, and he expected her to draw away, but she didn’t. She just looked up at him in the flickering light from citronella torches and said, “Lindsey wouldn’t like this.”

Do you? Your heart’s beating as fast as mine, but I don’t know if it’s from excitement or fear. He tried to ask her the question silently, but there were no answers in her face. Only more questions.

“Didn’t you notice?” His voice sounded funny to his own ears. He was reminded of coming back to earth after a heavy make-out session at the drive-in that used to be on the edge of town. His heart was pumping like crazy and he felt flushed and warm, even though the evening had cooled.

It had been a while since he’d felt seventeen.

“She attached herself to my father,” he said, his voice still uneven. “I think she has an older man fetish.”

She chuckled, and the husky laughter weakened his legs still further. Keeping her in his arms, he lowered himself to the porch swing. “Of course,” he said, “I’m an older man, too.” He lifted her hand, setting it palm-to-palm against his, and captured her gaze. “Hopefully wiser.”

When he lowered his hand, it drifted, almost as though by accident, against the swell of her breast, and lingered there. He kept the touch light; he could scarcely feel her softness against his skin. Then he kissed her again, a leisurely blending of taste and touch and elusive scent.

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