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Wishes At First Light
Joanne Rock
Starting over, one wish at a time…Gabriella Chance has devoted her life to helping others overcome traumatic events. Now it’s her turn. Gabby's come home to Heartache, Tennessee, to finally face her past. She finds solace in an unlikely ally, her high school crush, Clayton Travers. But while Clay wants to be Gabby’s refuge, he’s returned to Heartache to face his own demons. With so many painful secrets in their past, can they hope to wish for a happy future…together?


Starting over, one wish at a time...
Gabriella Chance has devoted her life to helping others overcome traumatic events. Now it’s her turn. Gabby’s come home to Heartache, Tennessee, to finally face her past. She finds solace in an unlikely ally, her high school crush, Clayton Travers. But while Clay wants to be Gabby’s refuge, he’s returned to Heartache to confront his own demons. With so many painful secrets in their past, can they hope to wish for a happy future...together?
“Is there anything I can do for you to make this easier?”
Gabby locked on his gaze, taking comfort in knowing he was there for her. With her. Holding his hand made the years they’d been apart disappear. Made all the unsettling nightmares that she was about to face in that courtroom fade in significance.
It was just her and Clay. The guy who’d always had a way of making her feel special.
The words leaped out before she had a chance to measure them, a true wish from her heart: “Just keep holding my hand...”
Dear Reader (#u7e944694-1abf-5ee2-a48f-d321a2b2c475),
Welcome back! I’ve been eager to share the next story in the Heartache, TN series with you. It seems that once I started pulling at a thread in this town—uncovering the awful things a local villain had done over the years—I discovered a lot of people hurting because of it.
Gabriella Chance thinks she has a good handle on her past, and her efforts with a website for victims of cyberbullying have been healing for a lot of people. But when she returns to her hometown for the trial of the man who hurt her, she runs into someone else who has another sort of claim to her past: a man she never forgot.
Clayton Travers would have never returned to Heartache if not for the news of his half sister, but as soon as Mia is settled with a new foster family, he’ll gladly put small-town Tennessee in his rearview mirror. Gabriella Chance is an unexpected reason to stick around, but a sizzling attraction might not be enough to overcome their different views about what’s best for his troubled teen sibling.
Happy reading,
Joanne Rock
Wishes at First Light
Joanne Rock


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Four-time RITA® Award nominee JOANNE ROCK has penned over seventy stories for Harlequin. An optimist by nature and perpetual seeker of silver linings, Joanne finds romance fits her life outlook perfectly—love is worth fighting for. A former Golden Heart® Award recipient, she has won numerous awards for her stories. Learn more about Joanne’s imaginative Muse by visiting her website, www.joannerock.com (http://www.joannerock.com), or following @joannerock6 (https://twitter.com/joannerock6) on Twitter.
For Bernice and Ernie Rock, the most wonderful in-laws I could have ever imagined.
Thank you for treating me like family from the very first time I sat down at your dinner table as Dean’s girlfriend. Little did I know back then how much I would come to look forward to those meals and evenings spent at your house for many years to come.
When I count the reasons I’ve been blessed in life, you are always on my list.
Contents
Cover (#u8b2f368f-4729-517e-94cb-f80fcfa16ba7)
Back Cover Text (#u6ca49271-192d-5dfb-b740-32876c8e7738)
Introduction (#uddd3e450-270c-582c-8b5c-968609472e95)
Dear Reader (#ua83e72e3-fbea-527a-9799-85e069e08bd4)
Title Page (#ub21d87cf-bbc2-5a55-b77c-b2b393f48fd0)
About the Author (#u3bcc7a17-e9e8-53cd-b601-4d9d399daef8)
Dedication (#u6c3dbce1-069f-5296-8874-e8ce3bea72ef)
CHAPTER ONE (#uacaee034-d4b3-56f6-a01c-d7e45d04d858)
CHAPTER TWO (#ubd179870-9258-5d5c-ab19-22e3fffdb989)
CHAPTER THREE (#ud2928741-9adf-509a-9a2c-5d69c3fbc64c)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ud5babb35-06d2-5202-8415-c41a74c3a841)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ue902ae69-679f-5bac-a2a2-113ab26791b5)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u7e944694-1abf-5ee2-a48f-d321a2b2c475)
THERE SHOULD BE a limit on the number of times the same dream could haunt her.
Even knowing she was dreaming didn’t rob the memories of their power as they flickered to life behind Gabriella Chance’s closed eyes again. Each image burning. Hurting. Opening old wounds that had never healed.
The day unfolding in her mind was so familiar by now, every moment etched in her memory. How many times had she dropped into that buttery leather office chair in front of her father’s big desktop computer in the house where she’d grown up? How many more times would she secretly open a chat window to talk to the boy she had a crush on, the thrill of doing something forbidden giving her almost as much pleasure as imagining Clayton Travers on the other end of the chat window?
Been thinking about me?
In the dream, she typed the words one key at a time, mindful of her older brother’s best friend nearby. Samuel Reyes seemed far older than his seventeen years. He was Mr. Responsible, and determined not to let her have any fun, somehow deciding to be her watchdog anytime her older brother wasn’t around. So Gabby typed quietly and quickly when Sam wasn’t looking, desperate for company from a boy who would gaze at her with heat in his brown eyes.
Clayton.
The messaging program lit up with a new icon as a response popped up.
You’re all I think about.
The butterflies in her stomach went crazy. Wings fluttered at hyper-speed, her nerve endings jumping to life at the thought of Clayton sitting in his foster family’s den, thinking about her. Usually he wasn’t on the computer at the same time as she was, so there would be a delay in their chats. But tonight it was like he was sitting there just waiting for her to type something.
The butterfly flutter in her belly took on a dark, foreboding chill. But Gabriella knew that sensation was just a product of the dream over time. When that first message had popped up on a bright blue chat window a decade ago, she’d simply been thrilled that Clayton was thinking about her. She hadn’t had a clue what was about to happen.
Or that she hadn’t been talking to a sixteen-year-old boy at all.
Legs tangling restlessly in her covers, she fought the onslaught of nightmare memories. The conversation had taken a heated turn that had been confusing but exciting at the time. Afterward she’d understood how thoroughly twisted it all had been.
Are you wearing a dress?
How short?
The chill in her belly spread, encompassing her hips and freezing out her sensuality. That chill had happened later, too—the past and the present getting all mixed up in the dream world. At the time, she’d been warm and excited about the things Clayton—she’d thought it had been Clayton—had said to her. Things that should have been merely a hint of the forbidden coming from someone in her high school. Not anything dangerous. She’d been excited to see him, her teenage exuberance tinged with her immature sexual feelings.
It had all been delicious—a welcome distraction after the hell she’d gone through with her family earlier that year. Her father had been carted off to jail. Her mother had defected emotionally from the family, caring more about Gabby’s dad than her two teenage offspring, leaving Gabriella feeling like the world’s biggest outcast.
Those chats with Clayton had distracted her with happier thoughts, and that night’s talk had been the best yet.
He wanted to meet her.
But that natural sensual awakening had been terrified out of her by a brute who threw her down in the woods later that night. A big, hairy grown man who knew where she’d planned to meet Clayton. Not an innocent teenage flirtation at all. The man had been masked. He’d ripped the short dress. Called her names that still haunted her even more often than the dream.
Slut. Whore.
Screaming at the injustice of the words, the attack, the loss of emotional innocence if not her virginity, Gabriella punched her attacker in the face. Again and again. That part only happened in her dreams, since in the real-life episode, Samuel Reyes had come to her rescue and been the one to pound her attacker into submission long enough for them to escape.
Now she took her defense into her own hands, pummeling the masked face while she cried.
Only then did she finally awaken, crouched on her knees on the sagging mattress in a motel cottage off Interstate 65 in Tennessee. The pillow she’d been thrashing was now wedged between the headboard and the box spring while her knuckles throbbed where she’d scraped them against the wood. Face wet with tears and chest heaving from fear and exertion, she levered herself out of the bed and padded across the hotel carpet in sock feet.
Gabriella turned the squeaking metal knob for the faucet to splash cold water on her face and wash away the last vestiges of the dream. Toweling off with the threadbare white cotton cloth draped over a thin silver rack, she stared at her face under the harsh flicker of greenish fluorescent lights. Her skin was pale beneath the red irritation around both eyes. The best of her family’s genes had gone to her older brother, Zach, leaving Gabriella with hair that could only be described as dishwater blond, and plain features that benefitted from makeup or candlelight. Preferably both.
But that was okay. Because Gabriella Chance’s beauty didn’t come from the sum of her outer parts. And it sure as hell didn’t have anything to do with the length of her skirt. Her jaw flexed, the muscle working as she ground her teeth at the old memory.
No. Any appeal she held radiated from her strength of character, evident in her burning, raw knuckles and her clear blue eyes that saw the world for what it was.
A dangerous place, yes. But a place she had survived. She forged on, slogging through the endless loop of her nightmares to fight another day. More important, she survived to help other victims of cyber stalking to move on with their lives. If that was as much as she accomplished in her life, it was something to be proud of.
Yet, as she sidestepped her suitcase on the floor on the way back to her bed, Gabriella couldn’t deny a small part of her heart longed for more than that. No matter how many times that dream reminded her of her past, she couldn’t stop longing for a normal life. A normal love. A man who would recognize her real beauty and strength, and help her find it on the days when she forgot where she’d hidden it.
But now that a whole decade had passed without giving her any peace, Gabriella knew that wasn’t going to happen. She’d returned to the city of the assault—her hometown of Heartache, Tennessee—to witness her assailant finally go to jail. While she was here, she planned to check on a local bullying victim she’d helped through her support group online—sixteen-year-old Mia Benson. But once she’d taken care of the at-risk girl and she had the satisfaction of seeing her own attacker’s face while he was sentenced to life in prison for a whole string of crimes since he’d hurt her, then Gabriella would close this chapter of her life forever.
Flipping over the lumpy, squashed pillow in the motel outside Heartache, she knew that she was almost done with the past. The nightmares had been slowing down in the last two years. It was only because she’d heard that actual Clayton Travers was back in town that she’d traveled the dream path again tonight. She’d never told him what happened that night, and a short time later she’d fled town with Samuel Reyes and her older brother, Zach. She’d built a different life after that.
But sometimes she wondered what Clayton had heard about her or what he thought had happened. No one else knew that Gabriella believed she’d been chatting with Clayton online before her attack. There’d been other times that year when they’d exchanged messages for real, and she hadn’t wanted Clayton to get in trouble for the content of those notes if the police looked back at them.
Clayton had been in the foster system, and those messages might have put him at risk of being booted out of the Hasting house where he was happy. So Gabriella had said nothing, a silence that had always weighed on her.
And now, completely by accident, she’d learned Clayton Travers was back in Heartache.
As she closed her eyes to try and fall back asleep, Clayton’s return was the one thought that filled her mind. She couldn’t help but wonder if she talked to him, told him about what had happened that night, would it finally stop the dream once and for all?
Damn it.
It wasn’t what she wanted. But given that her attacker was finally going on trial two days from now, his conviction certain since the police finally had damning evidence, and yet the night terrors remained as potent as ever, Gabriella needed to think about other ways to address the fears of her subconscious. This was no way to live—caught in an endless loop of bad memories. And if speaking to Clayton might give her the peace to keep moving forward, she’d damn well try.
* * *
AS A TEEN, Clayton Travers would have given his left nut for the chance to set foot inside Gabriella Chance’s home.
Ironic that now he’d been sleeping there for a week.
After spending the last nine years in Memphis, Clayton had come back home to the small town of Heartache for a reunion of his foster family planned by his foster brother, Samuel Reyes, who was now the town’s sheriff. Since Clayton had a private investigations business, he had done Sam a favor by staying in the Chance household, which was now occupied by Zach, Gabriella’s older brother and also the mayor of Heartache. Zach had needed some extra eyes on his fiancée, Heather Finley, after the woman was the target of an attempted kidnapping. Clayton didn’t mind collecting a paycheck while he was in town, so he’d gladly taken the easy gig for a week. But now, with the threat confirmed to be behind bars, Clayton would find somewhere else to stay until the Hasting family reunion later that week. He packed his duffel at dawn to leave the Chance house, his eyes lingering on an old photo of Gabriella on the sleek, mission-style dresser in the bedroom where he’d slept these last six nights.
She stood in front of a big pink castle in a California theme park, her arm around a huge stuffed panda that must have been a game prize. She wore a long dress too big for her, making her look sort of lost inside it. Wisps of blond hair from her ponytail blew in a summer breeze as she smiled, but there was something off about the photo. It wasn’t a real smile—not like the ones he remembered from the few times they’d ended up staying after school together. She’d been a math genius, helping kids as a student tutor, and she’d been cool about it, too, even though Clayton had been taking algebra when everyone else in his grade had moved on to calculus or trig. It wasn’t that he was totally clueless, he just switched homes and schools too fast to patch together the right credits. He’d fallen behind trying to learn math from teachers who’d taught it with really different methods. Gabriella never made him feel like the flunky foster kid.
Far from it.
Too bad she hadn’t lived in Tennessee for the past decade, walking out of this very house one long-ago summer and never looking back, leaving Clayton to finish his senior year by himself. Sam, the foster brother he’d roomed with at the Hastings’ house, had left town the same time as Gabriella and her older brother. The only way Daniel and Lorelei Hasting, Clayton and Sam’s foster parents, had avoided a full-scale child protective services investigation was that Sam turned eighteen shortly afterward, making him an independent adult.
“Dude, don’t tell me you’re packing up?” Zach Chance appeared in the bedroom doorway, a cup of coffee in one hand and a phone in the other.
Besides being mayor, Zach ran his own digital security firm and was probably worth a small fortune, but Clayton wouldn’t have guessed it if he hadn’t seen the downstairs office full of high-tech equipment and dozens of computer screens. Zach had opened his home to him like they were old friends, making it all the more awkward now that the guy had caught Clayton gawking at a photo of Zach’s sister.
“I am.” He tossed a pair of socks into the duffel and zipped it. “Freeloading isn’t one of my services, even though it’s tempting when the hospitality is this good.”
Leaning a shoulder on the doorjamb of the spacious suite, Zach shook his head, keeping his voice low.
“And that hospitality is all because of Heather. It’s been great having her live under the same roof as me.” He sipped from the steaming cup before continuing. “I hope she doesn’t get the idea she should move out, too, once she sees you’ve left.”
Zach had convinced Heather to stay with him while there were threats circulating around town against people who might testify against Jeremy Covington, the guy who’d tried to kidnap Heather.
“I think she digs you, Mayor,” Clayton assured him, shouldering the duffel while the scent of coffee filled the room. “You’ll think of something to keep her here.”
“I hope so. With the Covington trial starting tomorrow, we’ll be staying in Franklin for at least the first week to be closer to court.” He sipped his coffee. “This house is going to be empty anyway and Sam said there have been some break-ins around town lately. Now that the Covington trial is set, he’s going to start looking into them more closely.”
“I heard about the break-ins,” Clay said, ready to move on despite the offer. “But you’ve got the most kick-ass security system in town, I hear.”
Zach chuckled. “I’d better, right? It’ll put me out of business if my house gets robbed with a company name like Fortress. Even if my business is more digital security than anything.” He straightened a rumpled throw rug in the hallway with his toe. “But what about you? Are you going to stay at your foster mother’s house?”
“No. There’s a lot of activity over there and I don’t want to be underfoot.” He remembered what it had been like at Lorelei Hasting’s foster home. Fun and noisy with kids coming and going, the house had been a refuge for people like him for almost fifteen years. He didn’t want to crowd the place this week with one more body. “I’m thinking I’ll grab a nice little motel on the outskirts of town so I can play my guitar where no one will hear me.”
“That good?” Zach grinned.
“I only play for the love of it.” And to keep his stress level down. Strumming a tune—even if it wasn’t pitch-perfect—helped dial back his agitation faster than any of the meds they’d tried putting him on as a kid. With his biological dad in and out of the hospital and asking to see him, Clayton was going to need all the self-help he could wrangle this week to face the old deadbeat who’d shit all over Clayton’s life. “I think there are some places out on the interstate that should fill the bill.”
“For sure. If you don’t want to do the Heartache B & B, the motels on the highway are your only options. That is, if you’re really sure I can’t convince you to stay?”
“I’ve heard your fiancée play a guitar.” Clayton grabbed his own instrument, which he’d never even taken out of the soft-sided case since arriving in town. “No way am I going to start banging out tunes in front of the local music teacher.”
Zach backed out of the doorway, leaving Clayton a clear path.
“She’s a talent. There’s no denying that.” Zach followed him into the kitchen toward the back door where Clayton’s bike was parked.
Clayton waved off offers of coffee and breakfast, ready to move on. The domestic bliss of the Chance household with new lovebirds Heather and Zach might have been charming if Clayton hadn’t been so decidedly single and in a dark place right now. He looked forward to the Hasting fosters’ reunion, but he dreaded seeing his biological father as much as pulling out a sliver embedded under a fingernail. He wouldn’t do it if not for the fact that his dad had another daughter—Clayton’s half sister—still living with him. Clay hated that he hadn’t known about this sibling, Mia Benson, until two weeks ago when his father called with a request that Clay pay him a visit. Clay had about blown a gasket—with his dad for failing to mention yet another kid he hadn’t taken care of. But also with himself for not keeping better track of the old man’s offspring. Then again, like most of Pete Yancy’s kids, the girl didn’t bear his name and hadn’t spent much time in his household.
Still, if Clay had known about the girl before his dad’s bid to win custody, he would have lobbied against the move. His father was just trying to soak up an extra assistance check for housing a kid, and the girl would be better off out from under the Yancy influence. Clayton credited any success he’d had in life to his foster family and their encouragement in settling him down.
Hunting for his missing half siblings had been the start of his PI career. To this day, reuniting families was his specialty. But he’d failed Mia Benson when he’d stopped looking for his own brothers and sisters, assuming his father was done sowing his seed. Apparently failing eight times over at parenthood—with five different women—hadn’t been enough for the old man.
After shaking hands with his host, Clayton walked out of the huge Craftsman-style house and fired up his motorcycle in the damp November fog. With his duffel strapped to the seat and his guitar on his back, he wasn’t the most aerodynamic of riders, but his old Harley wasn’t that kind of ride anyhow. Roaring out of the driveway and heading toward the interstate, he planned to play his six-string for as many hours as it took to unkink the knot in his gut.
He didn’t want to see his father. But he damn well wanted to know his half sister, if only to see with his own eyes that she was okay. The firstborn of Clayton’s parents had died of crib death while the two so-called adults drank themselves into a stupor. Their next kid was Clayton, and it had taken him half his childhood to get into the foster system, a golden ticket out that he’d only learned about after his drunken, jobless, abusive parents had birthed kid number three, a boy Clayton loved with all his heart. When Eddy was four years old, child protective services took him away after a neighbor called to complain about seeing him unattended on the playground.
Of course, Eddy hadn’t been unattended for any moment of the day when Clayton was around. But the neighbor probably hadn’t considered a seven-year-old brother to be adequate supervision. Why CPS claimed Eddy at that time and not Clayton remained the biggest injustice of Clayton’s life. It had separated them for the next twelve years until Clayton figured out how to find people. By the time he’d gotten himself taken out of his home—not that difficult to do, but still, there was a process—he’d bounced to a different foster home every year, finally winding up at the Hasting house, where he’d graduated school and aged out of the system.
His life had ended up better than Eddy’s. And on that sobering note, he ground his teeth together.
Now, with the wind plastering his jacket to his chest, he tried not to think about his brother’s fate, his long-dead older sister and the smattering of other kids his parents had brought into the world—some as a couple, others with equally crappy partners as parents. It bothered Clayton to think he’d missed Mia, but she’d lived with her mother until a two-year stint in foster care, during which she’d lobbied her birth father to spring her from the system. Somehow Pete had gotten clean and sober enough to fool the social worker into giving him one last chance to be a dad.
Mia was sixteen now, he’d heard, and had been living with their father for the last eight months, helping to care for the old man as he grew weak from cirrhosis and heart disease.
Clayton planned to make sure she knew she had a way out of her father’s house. That alone was worth going to see Pete Yancy—aka the negligent jackass—one last time. Clayton would have gone as soon as he’d arrived in Heartache, but he’d been tapped for bodyguard duty by his friend. He would put in an appearance at his dad’s place after school that day and cross his fingers she’d show up, too, so he could fulfill his obligations in Heartache and head back to Memphis once the reunion was done.
Steering his vintage low rider along the road that ran parallel to the interstate, Clayton slowed down as the Owl’s Roost came into view, a diner he remembered from when he’d lived in town. Nostalgia and hunger lured him off the road and into a parking spot to grab some breakfast since it was early to book a motel room anyhow.
The figure of a woman walking across the Roost’s front porch flagged his attention as he locked up the bike and his bag. Keeping the guitar strapped to his back, he turned to watch the slender form half covered by a big, black hoodie that hid her profile. He wasn’t sure what it was that caught his attention. The quick, sharp walk. Long, elegant legs that a pair of loose pants couldn’t fully conceal in the late-autumn wind.
Something about her made him pay attention.
So it happened that he was staring right at her when she stopped and turned to look out into the parking lot, her pale blue eyes landing on him.
The delicate features hadn’t changed. A wisp of dark blond hair fluttered across her cheek in the breeze.
“Clay.” She said his name softly.
Or he imagined she did. Her mouth moved with some comment before she raised her hand to cover her lips. As if she could retrieve whatever she had murmured.
“Gabriella Chance.” His feet were already heading toward her, his gaze not able to let her go. “I wondered if I’d ever see you again.”
CHAPTER TWO (#u7e944694-1abf-5ee2-a48f-d321a2b2c475)
CLAYTON TRAVERS STOOD in front of her, like a vision conjured out of a dream.
Seeing him hit her, whoomp, a thump to her chest, robbing her of air for a split second. Over the years his long, lanky body had filled out into a man’s lean frame, his shoulders wider than she remembered. Brown hair tinged with gold grazed the collar of his dark leather motorcycle jacket. Worn-in jeans suited him well, as did the scuffed boots. But it was his face that intrigued her most, his deep brown gaze roaming over her with interest that warmed her even in the crisp bite of a November wind.
With his high cheekbones and a cleft chin, he had become an extremely attractive man. The furtive look in his eyes that she remembered from his teens had been replaced with an easy confidence. A half smile curved his full, sensual lips.
And just like that, the attractiveness worked on her with a strange alchemy that drew her even as it chilled her again. Her feelings for him had grown oddly complicated over time.
“Clay,” she said semi-awkwardly. She might have hugged him if there hadn’t been a wooden porch rail between them. And, on second thought, that probably wasn’t the appropriate greeting for an old high school friend who’d been the recipient of her earliest flirting attempts. She wasn’t some starry-eyed teen anymore. “It’s great to see you again after all these years.”
Actually, it was sort of terrifying given the role he’d played in her past. A role he was completely oblivious to.
But she’d wanted to face him and here he stood.
“Good to see you, too. Time has been...really nice to you, Gabriella.”
Before she could recover from that latest whoomp to her lungs, he continued, “Are you meeting anyone for breakfast?” He nodded toward the Owl’s Roost. A couple of guys in bright orange vests lumbered past, to-go cups in their hands as they emerged from the diner.
“No. I’m staying at the motel next door and was lured by the scent of coffee and bacon. The in-room coffeepot left something to be desired.” She stuffed her fists deeper into the pockets of her hoodie, trying to separate the past from the present and focus on the moment. “Are you, uh, free to join me?”
No time like the present to get over the butterflies with him. She’d be leaving Heartache as soon as Jeremy Covington was in jail and she had the chance to check on Mia Benson.
“Sounds like my lucky day.” His grin was completely disarming. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm.”
Half an hour later they sat across from one another at a big wooden booth in one of Heartache’s best-known eating establishments. The owner, Rodney, was on the town council, and he and his wife had been running the place for as long as she could remember. There was a comfort in that, a place with some happy memories for her since her parents had taken her here a few times to celebrate birthdays in the good years before her father went to prison.
Still, it felt incredibly strange to sit across from Clayton. His guitar occupied the seat beside him in the booth, the instrument easily identifiable in the black nylon case.
She ordered a vegetable scramble and coffee while he got the “Big Buck” platter with some of everything on it. His appetite hadn’t changed. He’d always been a bottomless pit at mealtime. Familiarity felt good in the middle of so much change in him.
“I thought you were lured here by the scent of bacon?” he said when the red-headed waitress departed with their menus.
“I’m actually a vegetarian. Just because I don’t eat bacon doesn’t mean I can’t love the smell. I think it’s universally the most missed food of the vegetarian world.”
The waitress returned with two mugs and a coffee carafe, pouring them each a cup before hustling off to the next table. The place was busy with most of the tables filled and a half dozen uniformed wait staff serving the crowd. With a backwoods theme heavy on pine logs and willow branches in the decor, the restaurant hadn’t changed since the last time she’d been here, right down to Rodney and his wife holding court at a table near the kitchen with some other local old-timers including Mrs. Spencer and Harlan Brady. The two looked to be an item now, judging by the way he kissed her ringed fingers and whispered in her ear.
So sweet. Mrs. Spencer had been a widow for a long time even when Gabriella left town.
“In that case—” Clayton raised his coffee mug and clinked it to hers on the table “—cheers to your restraint.”
“Cheers.” Picking up her own cup, she saluted him briefly before taking a sip. The strong java soothed her nerves for a moment and gave her an excuse to plot a course of action with him. How much should she say over breakfast? She sure as heck couldn’t blurt out her past in the middle of Heartache’s most popular breakfast joint.
First, she’d do some fact-gathering. Get to know what he’d been up to these last years. Then maybe she could ask to see him another time. Privately.
Even thinking about it made her jittery all over again. Hot and cold. She swallowed hard and took another long swig of her coffee.
“So I just left your brother’s house.” He eased back from the table to sprawl one arm along the back of the booth. “I was staying with him to keep an eye on his fiancée after she was threatened, but it seems like Sam has nailed down where the threats were coming from.”
The mention of the threats made her struggle not to wince from the old guilt about not coming forward. But she needed to repeat the mantra from the counselor she’d seen. It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t responsible for the actions of others.
Easier chanted than believed.
At least she wasn’t caught flat-footed by what Clay had said. Gabriella had spoken to her friend Amy Finley, who’d given her the heads-up that Clayton was in town, sparking last night’s bad dream. She hadn’t spoken to her brother much since his fiancée’s frightening ordeal with Covington, but it didn’t surprise her that Zach had hired someone to help protect the woman he loved.
“That was good of you. I haven’t called Zach yet to let him know I’m back in town. I just got in yesterday.” She had been on a speaking tour these last two weeks and had taken a last-minute engagement in Nashville prior to her trip to Heartache, putting her in town a bit earlier than she’d anticipated since she’d decided it wasn’t worth flying back home first.
And while she should have known, at least in a peripheral way, that Clayton might end up in Heartache for the Hastings’ family foster reunion, she hadn’t really expected he would show up until Amy had told her the news. For one thing, he had always looked forward to putting distance between himself and his birth father, who lived just outside Heartache. He’d made it clear he was never setting foot in this town after graduation. Besides, she’d probably only added to his reasons to dislike Heartache when she’d left without saying goodbye. Then again, maybe it was silly of her to think that her leaving town abruptly might have affected him one way or another.
“Did you come for the Covington trial?” he asked, his jacket drifting open to show off the gray tee underneath it and more muscles she didn’t remember.
The trial? Tough to chant the mantra with so many dark shadows lurking around every corner here. Her counselor had also told her if the mantra didn’t work, find a positive distraction. Lucky for her, she had one right across the booth.
If she’d just met him today for the first time, she would have never gotten up the nerve to flirt with him. He’d turned out far too handsome. She’d been a lot braver as a teen before her world fell apart.
“Yes,” she answered tightly, uncertain how much he knew about what happened to her. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard about that night I left town. But if you’ve been staying with Zach...” She let the words hang, hoping he’d fill in the blanks.
It would be strange having the whole town know her long-kept secrets. Once her testimony against Jeremy Covington was made public during the trial, the truth about her past would be common knowledge.
“Your brother told me you’d been cyber stalked and ran into trouble at the quarry with a masked man.” His jaw flexed. “Sam roughed up the guy he now knows must have been Covington and you left Heartache with Sam and your brother to prevent Sam from being brought up on charges since he’d had run-ins with the law in his past.” He summarized it neatly, his eyes steady on hers and giving her no reason to believe he knew more than he was telling.
Or that he thought badly of her for running away without telling anyone. Later in life, she’d learned some of her mother’s family thought she and Zach were highly ungrateful children for leaving their mother in “her time of need” after their father went to jail. What her mother wanted had been the last thing on her mind at the time. Gabriella had done all she could do to keep herself together. Two weeks after that attack, she’d overdosed and was lucky to be alive.
“Right.” Gabriella leaned back from the table as their food arrived, the plates still steaming as the waitress set them down on the plank table. “My brother came back to town a couple of years ago to find some closure. Since we didn’t report the guy to the cops at the time, we’d always worried what if it wasn’t an isolated incident. Turns out, it wasn’t. And now they’ve finally caught Jeremy Covington.”
“A former town council member and a prominent local business owner.” Clayton shook his head as he tossed some pepper on his eggs. “I couldn’t believe the story when I read it in the Memphis newspaper. I didn’t find out until I spoke to Zach that you’d been a victim, too.” He set the shaker down and reached across the table to cover her hand with his. “I’m so damn sorry, Gabby.”
The contact was brief, but the sympathy in his gaze lingered. And even after all this time, she welcomed that. Appreciated his words.
“Thank you.” She cleared her throat and willed away the sudden emotion. “I’ve done a lot of healing since then with the help of a good counselor, but I’ve been back here a few times and it is always a mixed blessing for me.”
“I’ve never been a fan of this town myself. But I hear you’ve got a home out on the West Coast.” He speared a forkful of pancake and focused on his food, a kindness that helped her get her emotions back under control.
She took a bite of her veggie scramble and tried not to think about all she wasn’t saying. All the ways Clayton figured into that life-changing night that sent her running in the first place.
“It’s a town home in San Jose with a rooftop garden that lets me pretend I still have a yard and can grow things.” Her mind drifted home while he shoveled through his breakfast. She loved that garden, opening it up to the town home association residents as a community garden. Some of her neighbors had started plots of their own. “I also created a website for cyber stalking victims that helps disseminate information about the different laws in various states to help people protect themselves.”
She needed a real job soon. Her website was not-for-profit, along with all the work she did for the organization she ran under her legally changed name. Her California friends all knew her as Ellie to protect her identity. She did some freelance work for her brother’s digital security company, administrative duties that didn’t have anything to do with the coursework she’d done in psychology at online universities over the years. The freelancing paid the bills, but it had always been temporary until her life was more settled. Now with her stalker in jail, she needed to consider her next steps.
“There aren’t many people who could take a frightening experience like that and turn it into something that helps others. Good for you for creating something positive out of what you went through.” He nodded at the uniformed policeman who walked by their table. The officer must work with Sam given the Sheriff’s Department patch on his sleeve. “I hope you aren’t stuck in a motel on the edge of town because I was staying at your brother’s place.”
“Absolutely not.” She shook her head, remembering how easy it had always been to talk to Clayton. Some of the nervousness in her stomach had eased, allowing her to eat most of her breakfast. “He knew I was going to take a motel room since I thought I might need a private place to retreat at the end of the day as I sit in on the Covington trial.” She hesitated. “Zach has gotten used to being protective of me, which is nice, of course. But sometimes I need to deal with things on my own terms.”
Realizing all they’d done since they sat down was talk about her, she felt her cheeks grow warm. She wasn’t good with men or social chitchat.
“Well I hope you won’t feel too crowded if I take a room at your motel.” Clayton waved over the waitress to top off their coffee mugs and thanked her.
“You’ll be staying at the same motel as me?” She tensed, knowing she’d be getting even less sleep if that was true.
She really did need to find a time to speak to him privately. See if she could put those bad dreams to rest by sharing the story with Clayton, who had figured in that night so prominently for her, even if he was completely unaware.
“I was on my way to book a room since my work for Zach is done. I’m staying in town for the Hasting family reunion on Saturday and after that—” he tossed his napkin on the table and shoved aside his plate “—I’ll be heading back to Memphis.”
“Oh.” Not sure what else to say, she gulped the fresh coffee, sizzling off a few taste buds in the process. Ow.
“Would you rather I stay somewhere else besides the motel? Is that too close for comfort?” he asked, raising a dark eyebrow.
Was it just her overactive imagination, or was there a wealth of innuendo in those words? Their flirtatious online chats came to mind. How many of them had Clayton actually authored? She knew for sure he hadn’t been the one to send her those last messages. Jeremy Covington had impersonated Clay online, deceiving Gabriella into meeting him out at that quarry.
She remembered Covington vaguely from her teenage years. His wife taught at the high school and he’d been an assistant coach on the school’s football team. Since she’d learned that he was her attacker, she remembered that in his work with the football team, he would have seen her and Clayton together when they met after school near the bleachers. The football players often practiced on that field at the same time. Covington must have known enough about the fledgling relationship to impersonate Clay.
“No. Of course not.” She wished she could hide behind her cup. She had no idea how to read him and suddenly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. How many times had she confused his words with her attacker’s in her dreams? “Just surprised you aren’t staying at the Heartache B & B,” she finished lamely.
“Really?” He tossed bills on the table before she could fish her credit card out of her wallet. “Time hasn’t changed me all that much, Gabby. I’m still not a center-of-town kind of guy. And outside of the B & B there aren’t many habitable choices. Which is how we’re ending up neighbors of sorts.”
For a moment the shared smile brought her a small amount of comfort. A reprieve from memories that time had filtered, altered and amplified.
“It’s been a long time since we knew each other.” She set her credit card next to his cash, needing to pay her own way. “The years have changed me, as I’m sure they have you.”
Her independence had been hard-won.
“You’re right about that. Up until last week I thought you ran away with Sam that night.” He let the waitress take both forms of payment, putting her more at ease. “Did you know that was the word on the Crestwood High School grapevine at the time?”
“School was the last thing on my mind,” she told him honestly, flinching when a table full of deep-voiced men broke out into laughter.
Heartache made her jumpy. Or maybe it was the upcoming trial. She really needed to see that bastard Covington in jail and move forward with her life.
“Hell.” He hung his head for a second before giving her an embarrassed grimace. “That was an idiotic thing for me to say, and totally unnecessary.”
“No. It’s a credit to my brother that he kept the whole story about what happened on lockdown like I asked him to. For a long time, you thought I ran away to live the party life or join the circus or...have a wild affair with Sam. I can’t resent that when that’s exactly what I wanted people to think. I was too much of a kid to realize who I might hurt by hiding the truth.”
The waitress returned with Clayton’s change and Gabriella’s receipt, but he didn’t move to take it. He frowned at Gabriella.
“You had to do what was best for yourself, Gabby.” He sounded fierce on her behalf. Indignant.
“I know.” She took her time stuffing her credit card and her receipt in her purse. “But it’s strange having the truth circulating now after all this time. I have shared what happened with my support group in San Jose, but people in Heartache are only just starting to hear the truth. I’ve been back twice since it happened, and it’s certainly nothing I ever shared.”
He leaned forward, one muscular arm braced on the table. “They’ll all find out once you testify against Covington, though, right?”
“I submitted a written statement, but I don’t know how important it will be in the big scheme of things. I haven’t been called to testify yet since they have far more damning testimony than mine. Most of it in the form of his computer records.” Gabriella had been shocked to learn that Jeremy Covington’s wife had turned over all the computers she had access to in their home to the prosecution, but apparently the woman had had enough of his cheating and crimes. “Still, I sent a personal letter to the judge. I want to share my story.”
“You said Covington was cyber stalking.” Clayton nodded thoughtfully. “Was he watching your movements online?”
The question cut right to the heart of what made it so damn difficult to sit across the table from Clayton.
Her throat dried up. Cold clamminess broke out over her skin in a panic that had everything to do with her dream world and nothing to do with the handsome and decent man across from her.
“I—” She was at a loss for what to say. “Actually, Clay, do you mind if we catch up another time?” Her heart beat faster. She stood to leave before thinking how rude that would appear. “I’m sorry. I just remembered I was supposed to meet my friend Amy this morning. I don’t know where my head is today.”
“Let me walk you out—” He was already reaching for his guitar.
But Gabriella didn’t hear the rest. She’d fallen into dream mode—that place where the past and her fears mingled, growing larger than life—and she needed a breath of fresh air. She hadn’t experienced a panic attack like this in years. Shoving her way through the entrance to the Owl’s Roost, she nearly ran into a big, burly man carrying a toddler into the restaurant.
“Sorry,” she apologized, never slowing down.
The cold wind blasted over her face, tugging strands of her hair across her cheek and drying some of the dampness from her skin.
Pausing at the porch rail, she took big, gasping breaths of air into her lungs.
She would plan a private time to speak to Clayton Travers again. She hadn’t been emotionally prepared to see him this morning, and it was so early in the day she still had one foot in her unsettling dreams from the night before. But she was in Heartache to put the past to rest for good. She would see Jeremy Covington go to jail. And she’d share with Clay the truth about the conversations she’d thought she had with him over that summer. There was a chance she’d only been talking to him half the time she thought she had been messaging with him.
True, it all happened a long time ago. But she owed it to herself to find out how much of that online relationship Clay had participated in over those weeks she’d been falling for him—and how much of that time she’d been talking to Jeremy Covington. It was just one more step in the healing, and not anything to do with the fact that Clayton Travers still made her heart skip a beat.
* * *
IT HAD BEEN a long time since a woman had run from him.
Ten years, in fact. And the last perpetrator was the same as today’s—one Gabriella Chance.
Walking more sedately out of the Owl’s Roost, Clayton knew he was attracting stares. The people in the booths nearby were probably wondering what piece of crap man would send a woman sprinting for the door by herself. More than a little on edge by the time he made it through the exit, he was surprised to see Gabriella still on the front porch.
Her back to him, she gripped the rail so hard it made her shoulders and arms rigid. The late-autumn wind tossed a few strands of dark blond hair, her loose pants fluttering against her legs. As he neared, he could see she took deep breaths that lifted her whole chest, exhaling through her mouth like she was doing yoga breathing.
“I’m in a sticky social situation here,” he noted wryly, standing a few feet away and staring out over the parking lot the same way she was doing. “Do I give you the space you seem to crave and walk past you? Or do I stop and try to be a gentleman because you seem distressed?”
“Is it that obvious?” she asked, her voice tinged with a dry sarcasm he hadn’t expected. She puffed out an audible breath.
“My dining companions don’t usually head for the exit like they’re setting a land speed record.” He kept it light, curious as hell what was going on with her but not wanting to push. He’d realized within seconds of seeing her again that he was still attracted. Time hadn’t faded her appeal in the least.
So it bothered him even more that she hadn’t wanted to linger after their shared meal.
They remained quiet for a moment as a young woman walked by, holding the arm of a stooped man shuffling a walker across the wooden plank floor.
“I think I’m having a recurrence of panic attacks since the Covington trial starts tomorrow,” she confided once the entrance closed behind the incoming restaurant patrons. “As much as I think seeing him go to jail will give me closure, it’s also stirring up some old fears. I didn’t sleep well last night. Not well at all.”
“That, I understand.” He moved closer without touching her, trying to offer the comfort of his presence without making her feel overwhelmed or crowded. “I’m staying in town long enough to meet with my biological father for the first time in years and it’s got me restless at night, too.”
“Is Pete still living close to Heartache?” She seemed to forget her troubles as he mentioned his own, her shoulders relaxing a bit when she turned to face him.
“I can’t believe you remember my loser father’s name.” He shook his head, surprised she would recall ancient conversations they’d had over the card games she insisted would help him with his math. “Pete is feeling the effects of cirrhosis by now, so maybe that’s got him sentimental that he wants to see me. But he lives just outside the town line heading toward Franklin.”
She nodded, her golden brown hair lifted by the chilly breeze. “You know that’s where the trial is being held? In Franklin?”
“Yes. Your brother filled me in while I was keeping an eye on his fiancée. I plan to sit in during Heather Finley’s testimony. Zach seemed to think it would give her courage to see friendly faces in the courtroom.”
Besides, he had a vested interest in seeing that bastard Covington behind bars. The sick creep had hurt the girl he’d started to care about, someone he’d wanted to know better. Gabriella had just started flirting with him, warming to the idea of seeing him, when she’d disappeared.
While Clayton had moved on, dated plenty of other women, he’d never forgotten about her. And being in this town again had a way of bringing the past back to life.
“That’s kind of you.” She finally looked at him, an admiring light burning in her eyes, an expression he recalled from their old conversations. When the rest of the school had been quick to look his way as a potential suspect for any misdeeds since he was the newest Hasting foster kid, and therefore “troubled,” Gabriella had given him the benefit of the doubt.
“I want to support Sam, too. It sounds like he put his whole life on hold for a while to pursue the guy, even before he moved back here to become sheriff.”
She bit her lip, once, twice, before speaking. “He did. And that’s half the reason I want to be there, too. He sacrificed a lot to protect me and then, later, to find the guy who did it.”
Which brought him right back to the question he’d asked her inside the booth at the Owl’s Roost. What kind of interaction had she had with the guy online? Why hadn’t she been able to identify him if he’d been stalking her even before the incident in the quarry when he’d assaulted her?
But he kept it on lockdown for now since those were the last words out of his mouth before she’d broken out into a cold sweat. Clearly there were a lot of rough memories associated with that time. While her brother said she hadn’t been sexually molested she had been assaulted.
“Then if you ever want to share a ride, let me know because I’ll be making the trip in every day.” He pointed to his motorcycle. “Although that’s my only means of transportation, so if you don’t like bikes—”
“Really?” She sounded intrigued. “I’ve never ridden on one.”
“They’re great for clearing your head.” Maybe that was a little self-serving of him when she’d admitted she was tense and had trouble sleeping. “I have an extra helmet. It’s not glittery pink or anything, but it’s safe.”
She folded her arms, and a smile turned one corner of her lips.
“In that case, I’m staying in Unit 3 at the motel.” She pointed toward the shabby little set of cottages where he planned to book a room, too.
“Great. I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow morning.”
Just like that, the moment sent him catapulting back to the past when she’d said she would meet him under the bleachers for a math lesson that he’d hoped would be more than just math.
Except she’d never shown. And for reasons far more complicated and painful than his teenage mind could have imagined. Hell, teens assumed rejection was personal.
And his assumption had cost her comfort when she’d needed him most. Damned if he would let her down again.
CHAPTER THREE (#u7e944694-1abf-5ee2-a48f-d321a2b2c475)
GIRLS’ SALON NIGHT at The Strand!
Walking down Heartache’s main thoroughfare with her hood up to protect her from the wind, Gabriella double-checked the text from her soon-to-be sister-in-law, Heather Finley. Normally, Gabriella wasn’t the girly-girl type who spent time at spas or invested her small earnings on expensive salon highlights. But the invitation had been sent to all the local women who would either be testifying against Jeremy Covington or who had given statements to support the district attorney’s case against him.
The intent of the Salon Night was plain. An evening of rah-rah sisterhood to boost each other up before they had to sit across a courtroom from the man who’d hurt them. As much as she wasn’t the spa type, Gabriella knew she couldn’t refuse. Because even though a manicure and pedicure wouldn’t make her feel any better about facing Covington tomorrow, her presence might help someone else rest easier tonight. If it made Heather feel better—or any of the other girls that sick ass had hurt—then Gabriella wanted to be there. She carried a bottle of red wine under her arm as she passed Last Chance Vintage and found The Strand. Warm light from inside the salon poured out through the windows onto Main Street since it was the only business open at this hour except for the Hasting family’s pizza parlor farther down on the corner.
Hesitating outside the door, Gabriella could hear the eighties pop music playing inside, two of the women dancing around a dryer chair as they sang into hair brushes. The image tugged a reluctant smile from her. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a hardship to have her nails painted. She couldn’t deny a small thrill at the idea of looking her best tomorrow when she hopped on the back of Clayton’s motorcycle. And yes, that made her feel like a giddy teenager again.
She hauled open the door before she could change her mind, the electric guitar music spilling out along with laughter and the scent of hair chemicals and nail polish remover.
“Gabby!” The slender woman standing closest to the door greeted her with a warm smile.
“Amy.” Gabriella opened her arms to the youngest of the Finley family, a woman who’d been absent from Heartache for as long as Gabriella herself.
Amy had been dating Sam Reyes, Zach’s best friend, the summer that Gabriella had been assaulted. Sam felt forced to leave town—and Amy—without explanation, and Gabriella had always felt guilty about that, especially during the years when she’d convinced herself she had a crush on Sam.
Sam had been safe to crush on at a time when she’d been so mixed-up about men and sex. Gabriella had known she was safe with him and he’d never returned her affections. But Amy and Sam were back together now, and Amy didn’t seem to hold it against her that she’d dragged her boyfriend to the West Coast with her.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Amy whispered fervently in her ear as she returned the hug. “Everyone else is talking about sulfate-free hair conditioners and nail art, and it’s like Greek to me. Nail art?” Leaning back, Amy shrugged her narrow shoulders, her all-black jeans and sweater broken up by a light green scarf that set off her auburn hair and green eyes. “It took me two whole minutes to realize they weren’t talking about something you make with an air nail compressor.”
Gabriella laughed, welcoming the levity. The Finley family owned a building supply store in town, and Amy was embroiled in a renovation project that involved turning a hunting cabin into a beautiful, two-story home. The woman had studied to be an accountant, but her do-it-yourself knowledge was off the charts. She could hang her own Sheetrock and install a toilet, for crying out loud.
“My makeup routine revolves around petroleum jelly for my lips and pinching my cheeks to put color in them.” Setting down the bottle of wine she’d brought on the reception desk, Gabriella watched as the hairbrush-singing duo ended their tune and sank into chairs across from one another, a blue light aimed at their toes. The pair was clearly younger—high school or college age. “Who are the teenagers?”
“Megan Bryer and Bailey McCord.” Amy lowered her voice, pointing first to the brunette dressed in a flannel shirt and skin-tight jeggings, then at her blonde friend with a purple butterfly T-shirt. “I only know that because Heather was held against her will the same time as Megan. And Bailey’s mom had the affair with Covington and then—when he cheated on her, too—convinced Covington’s wife to turn over the family computers that are going to be the man’s total undoing.” Shaking her head, Amy gave a wry grin. “But I don’t normally keep up with the soap operas, so that’s the extent of my information.”
“I’m impressed.” Gabriella knew of both girls in a peripheral way, having kept up with the case as Sam tracked the man who assaulted her. But she hadn’t spent much time in Heartache, so the faces weren’t familiar. “You may not know your sulfates, but I’m coming to you for all my gossip. Can you tell me anything about the town break-ins I’ve been hearing about?” She was only half kidding. It unsettled her to think of more crime in her small hometown. Especially while she was staying here.
But before Amy could answer, someone turned down the music.
“Ladies!” A tall beauty with caramel-colored hair hurried over, carrying a basket of bakery treats. “No lurking in corners! I’m having a mixer over at the nail polish bar and I’m luring you there with cupcakes.” She waved the basket under their noses, showing off gorgeous confections with frosting in every imaginable shade. “Gabriella, I’m Nina Spencer, Mack Finley’s significant other.”
Again, Gabriella knew that and remembered her vaguely from high school, but she appreciated the reminder of where she fit into the Finley family. The town’s former Mayor Finley had two sons—Mack and Scott—and three daughters, Erin, Heather and Amy, making a big crew to keep track of. Plus, they all had spouses or significant others, and Scott and his wife, Bethany, had a daughter who would be in college by now.
“Nina, you were on the varsity soccer team when I played as a freshman and I thought you were the coolest girl in school.” Gabriella grinned as she chose a yellow cupcake with pink frosting. “And since you went on to own a restaurant and bake things like this, I obviously knew the right kind of woman to idolize.”
“Ha!” Nina gave her a one-armed hug. “Aren’t you sweet? You need to move back to Heartache. But for now, will you convince Amy to choose a nail polish color for toes that have never been touched by paint?”
“I’ll have you know I bought a bottle of ice-blue polish and put it on my toes once. It made me look like a corpse.” Amy grabbed a chocolate-on-chocolate cupcake. “But I will choose something because I am a team player and I’m here to be beautiful.”
“That’s the spirit.” Nina moved on to introduce a few newcomers, letting her basket lead the way, its pink gingham ribbons flapping in her wake.
Together, Amy and Gabriella headed toward the wall of nail polish colors where an older woman held court from a black leather chair, a little Pekingese dog at her feet in a leopard-print carrier.
“You look like you’re in need of a primer for this,” Amy observed, nudging Gabriella after they’d taken just a few steps. “Do you remember this group?”
“That’s Mrs. Spencer, right? Nina’s grandmother?” She nodded in the direction of the Pekingese owner. The woman was famous for her jellies and pies. No doubt that was where her granddaughter got her skill with cupcakes, which were the best thing Gabriella had ever tasted.
“Daisy Spencer.” Amy nodded, confirming her guess. “And you know Erin and Heather, my sisters? Well, duh. Of course you know Heather since she’s been engaged to your brother for a week.”
“That’s Erin?” Gabriella would have never guessed, but then she recalled both Erin and Heather having long red curls like a pre-Raphaelite painting. Heather had kept hers, but Erin had a sleek copper-colored style with a dark streak around her face.
With her cartoon cat tee, a long, full skirt that looked like it came straight out of the fifties and dark leather combat boots, she had an ease and sophistication that Gabriella envied.
Amy nodded. “I know, right? When I left town, she was a total tomboy obsessed with building birdhouses for fun, and now she’s Ms. Elegant with her vintage clothing store.” Amy pointed to the shop next door and Gabriella recalled passing Last Chance Vintage on her way into The Strand. “And she does a huge Dress for Success event seasonally with a traveling bus that goes to rural places in Tennessee to bring women clothing when they’ve fallen on hard times. She’s pretty great.”
“She married the Cajun television producer.” Gabriella knew that, too, since Zach had been at the wedding. But she hadn’t seen any photos.
“Right,” Amy confirmed. “Remy. I haven’t met him yet either, but Erin wrote me all about it.”
“There’s a face I remember,” Daisy Spencer called, gesturing them to come closer. “Gabriella Chance, it’s good to see you again, honey. Do you remember coming out to the farm with your mother to buy jelly?” She laughed merrily, twisting the daisy pin on the lapel of her pink running jacket while the Pekingese wagged its tail. “Oh me, you were just a little one then and I had a whole lot less gray.”
They reminisced for a minute while Amy caught up with her sisters. And in the warmth of that shared memory with the older woman, Gabriella forgot to be an introvert. She was glad she came. Glad to remember she’d been a part of all this once. In the same way that being at the Owl’s Roost had reminded her of happier times with her mother, Daisy Spencer brought back more pleasant flashbacks to her youth before things took a nosedive. She remembered sitting in the Spencers’ big farm kitchen with an ancient stove unlike anything she’d ever seen before. With the wrought-iron apple peeler clamped to a wooden counter and the scent of pies baking in that huge oven, the Spencer home was firmly ingrained in her memories.
Over the course of the next twenty minutes, she was introduced to Tiffany McCord, Bailey’s mother and Jeremy Covington’s former girlfriend who’d turned evidence against him, as well as Kate Covington, Jeremy’s wife, who—Kate confided—was soon to be his ex-wife. Gabriella noted that the two women remained on opposite sides of the room. No doubt this was an awkward collection of women assembled here, including several people she hadn’t met yet, but it impressed her that so many of them had shown up, united in a common cause.
“If I can have your attention, please?” Nina Spencer Finley’s voice interrupted as she moved to the center of the room. Her cupcake basket gone, she addressed the more than twenty women. “Welcome to Salon Night and thank you to Trish for hosting us at The Strand.” She paused while everyone clapped for the hair salon owner. “I’m not much of a public speaker, so I’ll make this short. I wanted to do something for you all tonight to thank you for the role each and every one of you is playing in the trial of Jeremy Covington.”
The room quieted even more. It seemed even Daisy’s dog stilled at the mention of the man’s name. Gabriella swallowed hard, looking around at the women whose lives had been hurt in one way or another by him. Amy, too?
Gabriella wondered if her old friend had given some kind of testimony that she didn’t know about.
“I’m sure there are some of you who don’t consider yourselves public speakers, either, and yet you’re raising your voices to point out a monster in our midst to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else. Thank you for being brave enough to do that.”
Erin Finley cheered and slung an arm around her sister Heather. Amy silently rubbed Heather’s back. Maybe Amy and Erin were just here to support their sister.
“I read a book recently,” Nina continued, her expression grave. “And the author wrote that it only takes one voice—at just the right pitch—to start an avalanche.”
“Amen,” Daisy Spencer said softly.
“I want to thank you ladies for starting the avalanche that’s putting away Jeremy Covington for the rest of his days,” Nina continued. “Now, go get your nails done, have a cupcake and some champagne to celebrate your awesomeness.”
Gabriella ended up doing all those things. Over the next hour she had her fingers and toes painted in rose-petal pink since she wasn’t the artsy type like Erin, who painted a checkerboard on her index finger and all the other nails in alternating white and red.
But as Gabriella finally retrieved her coat to go home, she had to admit that she liked how her fingers looked with the pink nail polish. She’d had fun tonight. She liked hearing about what was going on in Heartache recently. And she even took a bit of pleasure learning how her brother had beat up Jeremy Covington when he and his son, J. D. Covington, were trying to kidnap Heather. Zach had downplayed his role when he’d shared the story with Gabriella, but Heather’s version was far more exciting.
Maybe she’d find healing here during this trial after all. If she wasn’t called to take the stand, she would benefit from being here when her attacker was convicted. And she’d promised herself she would speak to Clayton privately in the hope that confiding in him about the role he’d unknowingly played in that night would ease some of her old phobias about men and sex. It had taken her a long time to lose her virginity after that night, and her counselor had explained that her brain had associated sensual feelings with pain. She’d been too young to have positive sensual feelings prior to that awful night.
Although she’d successfully had sex—nice, normal, not painful sex even if it wasn’t anything to write home about—she still dealt with a strange and sickening mental cross-wiring of the sensual and the terrifying. If clearing the air with Clayton had any chance of helping her to heal fully, it was worth the embarrassment of wading through those old chats to untwine his real messages from the ones her stalker had sent.
Making quick work of her goodbyes, she edged through the salon door and out into the empty street. She’d parked a few doors down and by now, the only cars out here belonged to the women who’d attended the salon night. So it wasn’t like she worried about walking that short distance alone in the dark.
There were streetlights and she’d gotten over those old phobias about strange men launching themselves at her from dark corners just beyond her peripheral vision. Truly, she had. It’s just that she was back in Tennessee. And she’d been talking about Jeremy Covington. And Clayton.
Gulping in deep swallows of night air, she hoped some yoga breathing would settle her pulse rate. Maybe she should see if Clayton was still awake. It would be easy enough to spot his bike in front of one of the motel cabins.
She reached for her car door, pausing long enough to look up at the stars overhead in the cold night. A streak of light flashed through the sky almost as soon as she tipped her head back. A shooting star.
She made a wish on it without thought. Wishing for the first thing that came to mind.
Opening her eyes, she had to laugh. She could have wished for healing herself. Or a good trial outcome. Peace of mind for all the great women she’d visited with tonight.
Instead, she’d wished for a single, uncomplicated kiss from Clayton Travers.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u7e944694-1abf-5ee2-a48f-d321a2b2c475)
CLAYTON SAT OUTSIDE his motel cabin long after sunset, ignoring the fact that his fingertips were going numb in the cold night air. It wasn’t good for his guitar, he knew, to play in this kind of weather. Changes in temperature caused the wood to expand and contract. But banging out a tune was more for relaxation than anything. He liked to think his two-hundred-dollar pawn shop purchase helped him avoid the shrink’s chair, mellowing him out when he was wound too tight. His foster mom had helped him find ways to regulate the frenetic energy that churned through him after he’d gone nuts at his guidance counselor’s suggestion he try medication.
In theory, he knew the meds helped some people. But as a kid, he’d been scared spitless that any drug would be a gateway to turning into his parents. What kind of chance did he have of avoiding addiction given his genetics?
Guitar picking was safer. If a little tougher on the ears of unsuspecting neighbors.
Holding the last note of a sixties folk tune that Bob Dylan made famous, Clay debated going inside for the night. With his feet propped on the narrow porch rail and his back jammed into a corner on the wooden chair he’d borrowed from the dinette set inside, his joints had gone stiff from staying in one position for too long. Or from the cold. He pulled his feet off the railing just as a car turned off the interstate and into the parking lot.
The white Ford sedan had out-of-state plates. A rental, he guessed. And since there weren’t many guests staying in the motel cottages, he paid attention to who stepped out of the vehicle and under a streetlamp.
Gabriella.
“Are you going to play anything or is that just for show?” she called as she strode his way, a warm smile on her face.
She looked pretty. Dressed up a bit, like she’d been out to dinner with friends. Pale hair skimmed her shoulder where it fell loose from a ponytail. She wore a long gray dress belted over dark tights, plus a lightweight trench coat. Shiny earrings bobbed in the porch light as she leaned on his railing.
“I guarantee that if I play for you, it’ll be the last time you ask me to play.” Setting the guitar aside, he clapped a hand on the arm of the wooden rocker. “You’re welcome to have a seat if it’s not too cold for you.”
He asked because it was the neighborly thing to do. And because he was more than a little curious about her. But he was surprised when she joined him without hesitation.
“Thank you.” Stepping up onto the narrow planks, she seated herself carefully. There was a slow deliberation in the way she moved, as though she never rushed into anything. “I’m glad for the fresh air. I went to a Salon Night in town for a bunch of the women who are giving testimony in the Covington trial and it’s good to clear my head from the scent of fingernail polish.” She waggled her shiny nails, studying the pink polish. “I’m not usually one to spend time in a salon, but it was fun.”
She wore no ring. He’d noticed that over breakfast, too. And it occurred to him he wasn’t usually the kind of guy whose eye gravitated to a woman’s left hand.
“Pretty,” he observed lightly. “And probably a good distraction tonight when everyone is keyed up before the trial.”
“About that.” She tugged on the cuff of one loose sleeve of her coat, fingering the dark button that decorated a taupe-colored strap. “I’m definitely keyed up, which is part of the reason I ran out at breakfast this morning. I’m so sorry about that.”
She sounded both genuine and distressed.
“No need to apologize. It wasn’t a big deal.” He didn’t want her to worry about it. Hell, he’d rather have her thinking about reliving happier times when—he’d thought—they’d been on the verge of acting on an attraction.
“But I was actually planning on seeking you out tonight to tell you the other reason I left the table abruptly this morning.” She bit her lip, her pale forehead furrowed. “It’s awkward. And embarrassing.”
A breeze toyed with the loose strands of hair around her face, and his hand itched to smooth away the silky pieces. Put her at ease somehow.
“I wish it didn’t have to be. Are you sure you don’t want to sit inside where it’s warm?” The motel cabins were tiny, but each unit had a kitchenette. A small sofa.
“I’m fine.” She shook her head, but wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her coat tighter to her body. “I wouldn’t mention this at all, but I hoped if I talked to you about it, maybe it would put some unsettling parts of my past to rest for me.”
Concern rooted him to the spot. “You’re worrying me. I hope I don’t have anything to do with unhappy parts of your past, Gabriella.”
Beyond the parking lot, a tractor trailer whizzed past, rumbling the whole porch under his feet and sending the foliage of a few overgrown bushes whipping against the small cabin.
“Not through any fault of your own.” She shook her head slowly.
Sadly.
“I don’t understand.” Defensiveness fired through him. He’d been a perfect gentleman where she’d been concerned. “We were young. What we shared was perfectly innocent—”
“Was it?” She asked the question as if she really needed to have it confirmed. As if she didn’t already know the answer.
“Hell, yes—” he started, sitting forward in his seat.
Gabriella laid a hand on his arm, a new confidence radiating from her that had been missing this morning. She seemed calmer tonight. Maybe the Salon Night was her equivalent of guitar picking.
“Because, Clay, I thought I had a lot of not-completely-innocent conversations with you online that summer in chat rooms.” Her clear blue eyes were focused on his as he felt the floor drop out from under him.
“What?” He shook his head. Confused.
“And it turned out,” she continued, barely pausing to take a breath. “That night I was attacked? I thought I’d spoken to you online just before the incident. It was you I was planning to meet in the quarry.”
The revelation seemed to hang suspended in midair between them, not really permeating his brain. He’d heard the words. But they made no sense.
“Gabby—I sent you a couple of emails that spring, I remember. I know you got them, because you answered them.” They’d spoken about it during a math tutoring session. She’d sent him some sample problems that way. “But I don’t think I even knew how to find a chat room back then.”
Unlike most of his generation, the techno-revolution had missed him. He’d been poor to start with, so it wasn’t like his parents had bought him laptops or game systems at Christmastime. He’d been lucky to get new socks. A sweater, maybe. Later, when his alcoholic mom had run off and his alcoholic father had given up completely on parenting, Clay had moved into nicer foster homes with access to more technology, but he’d been low in the pecking order of kids waiting to use an internet connection for homework.
Gabriella folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself as she stared up at the fat full moon overhead for a long moment. There was something so vulnerable about her and strong at the same time. Willowy slim, she had a delicate, feminine grace, but the determined set of her chin and shoulders suggested she would walk through fire if the need arose.
“I knew, of course, that you couldn’t have been the person I communicated with that night.” She blinked and drew a deep breath before continuing. “Those messages came from the man who attacked me. He was just pretending to be you when he sent them, so I believed that it was you who wanted to see me.”
He wondered what the exchange had been about that it had drawn a sixteen-year-old girl out of her home late at night. And damn, but it sent a surge of cold fury through him to think her attacker had impersonated Clay to get at her.
“That night wasn’t the only time you thought we exchanged messages online?” He had all new reasons to attend that trial for Jeremy Covington tomorrow.
Seized with the need to see the man pay for his crimes, Clay wondered if it was too late to charge him with impersonating Clay in addition to the long list of felonies that including numerous counts of cyber stalking, stalking, assault, sexual molestation, soliciting a minor and attempted kidnapping. Clayton remembered there was at least one impersonation charge on the long list he’d read in the paper, but that had been in conjunction with another incident involving a local teen he’d lured out by pretending to be a mutual friend of Heather Finley’s.
“No.” Sitting forward on the wooden seat, Gabriella tucked her feet around the front rail of the chair as she shook her head. “We chatted five or six times before that in the two weeks prior to that night—or so I thought.”
Clay couldn’t believe the gall of the guy—a respected man in the community, a coach on the high school football team with a kid and a wife—to contact a local girl repeatedly, pretending to be a teenage foster kid. It made sense that Covington would have known about Clay’s fledgling relationship with Gabriella, though. They’d met under the bleachers during football practices.
“For how long?” He couldn’t wrap his brain around it, but he realized he should be comforting her instead of focusing on how wronged he felt. How robbed. But damn it, Clay should have been the one enjoying those conversations with her online. “I mean, how extensive were these conversations? And what did he talk to you about?”
He sat forward in his chair, too, closer to her. Belatedly, he remembered he’d brought his motorcycle jacket outside earlier and he grabbed it off the back of his chair to drape across her shoulders. The flannel he wore over a sweatshirt kept him warm enough.
“Thanks.” Her eyes met his in the moonlight, clear and blue even though the darkness grayed out most colors. “This is where things get awkward for me. I was kind of hoping when I confided this to you that you would have been on the receiving end of at least some of those messages I sent you.”
Her gaze darted away again, searching the parking lot as if she’d rather look anywhere else. Across the lot at the diner, a couple of staffers closed the back door for the night, turning off the last of the lights in the building.
Clay’s attention returned to Gabriella. Her pink fingernails flashed along the zipper of the brown bomber jacket, tugging the leather tighter while her words sent his brain on a kind of wild ride. Just what sort of things had she believed they were saying to each other in those chats?
“I understand where that realization would be unsettling.” He nodded, starting to put the pieces together. “But consider my side. I can’t help but wonder why you were messaging with me, Gabby. I only remember a few cursory exchanges online about times we were going to meet for math tutoring when I wanted to know you so much better. I was pretty much crazy about you back then.”
She went still. Slowly, her eyes tracked back to his.
“That helps, actually, to hear you say that. So, thank you.” She shrugged awkwardly in the big jacket, the fabric weighing down the gesture so it was just the slightest movement. “Because our conversations were fairly flirtatious. I looked forward to those chats, because I liked you, too.”
And just like that, Gabriella Chance got under his skin all over again. He’d pinpointed the attraction between them alive and well earlier today. But right now, with her soft confession drifting on the night breeze, and her loose ponytail sliding along the shoulder of his jacket as she looked at him with trusting eyes...
She tapped into a spot in his chest that he hadn’t cracked open in a good long while.
Her cell phone vibrated on the porch rail, the light and the sound startling her. She reached for it.
“Sorry to check this,” she said a little too quickly, breathlessly. She flipped over the screen, and the light illuminated her face as she scrolled the pages. “I only leave the notifications on for family and for messages from the hotline for my victims’ support group, so it could be—”
She went silent, lips pursed as she read.
“Something wrong?” He admired her for using her own experiences as a victim of cyber stalking to help others, even if it interrupted a conversation that had captured his undivided attention.
“There’s a local girl I’m planning to check on while I’m in Heartache—someone I’ve communicated with off and on over the last two years through my online group.” Gabby worked the keypad on the screen while she spoke. “I’m really worried about her. She’s so young and she’s alone taking care of her dying—” after an awkward pause, she stopped typing to peer up at Clayton, her eyes widening with what looked like a “lightbulb” moment “—father.”
“What is it?” He’d been behind the eight ball from the beginning of this conversation, so it was no surprise he’d missed a step somewhere.
“Her father is dying of cirrhosis and he lives just over the town line. Heading toward Franklin.” She frowned. “And you had mentioned that Pete—”
The truth slammed into him.
“You’re meeting my half sister Mia?”
* * *
NOT EVEN CLAYTON’S warm leather jacket could ward off the chill that his words sent skittering over Gabriella’s skin.
Gabriella had communicated with Mia Benson for two years online. And although she hadn’t built up enough trust for the girl to confide her name until a few months ago, Gabriella never had any reason to connect her to Clayton.
They didn’t have the same last name, for one thing. Then again, Mia wouldn’t be the first offspring that didn’t share Pete Yancy’s surname.
“You know her.” She repeated the fact only because she was still having trouble making sense of it. “She’s your half sister?”
Clayton gave a clipped nod. “Yes, she’s my half sister, but I didn’t even know about her until very recently. But why are you worried about her? Is she being bullied? You met her through that victims’ group you run?”
He fired the questions fast. Impatiently.
“She’s not being bullied,” Gabriella assured him honestly, although she could kick herself for mentioning anything about the girl, even if she hadn’t used her name. “But I’m not at liberty to say anything more without her permission. I had no idea you would know her, Clay. I swear. She was in the foster system.”
And just how on earth had Mia ended up in foster care when she had an older brother who might have stepped in? Defensiveness on Mia’s behalf simmered.
Gabriella needed to call the girl back, but since Mia hadn’t flagged the message as urgent, Gabriella couldn’t walk away from this shocking conversation with Clayton just yet.
“I had no idea she existed until Pete told me about her two weeks ago when he called to say he didn’t have long to live.” Clayton shoved out of the wooden chair he’d been seated in, edging past her on the narrow porch to stalk freely around the patch of grass in front of his motel cabin. He paced like a tiger—trapped and not happy about it.
“I’m surprised the foster system didn’t—”
“So am I.” Cutting her off, he swung back toward the railing between them, grabbing the wood in two hands as he leaned closer, his knuckles turning white at the tight grip. “And you know what’s really messed up about that, Gabby? I made it my mission to find all my half siblings after I graduated high school. I ended up being so damn good at it—unearthing one heartbreak story after another in the form of my sad and disjointed family until I had eight of us accounted for.”
The haunted expression on his face made it clear that not all of his siblings had navigated through childhood as successfully as he had. And Gabriella remembered firsthand how rough his experience had been. He’d told her once about getting separated from a younger brother when social services removed the boy from Clay’s father’s house.
“It was good of you to look them all up. Provide a sense of family for them.” She’d relied on her brother so much since her father went to jail and her mother wasted away waiting for him. Her mom had moved to the tiny town in Kansas where her father sat in a federal penitentiary.
If not for Zach, Gabriella wouldn’t have a family.
“Yeah. A real hero. Except that I stopped looking after I accounted for eight kids. As if the old man had suddenly given up going home with strangers and fathering more children he had no intention of supporting.” Clay’s bitterness came through every word, although it wasn’t clear if he was more upset with himself or his father. “I guess I resented the old man so much that once I was done with that job, I didn’t look back. Didn’t visit. Didn’t write. Didn’t ask how many other kids he planned to shove out into the world with no means of support before he finally kicked the bucket.”
With that, he pushed away from the porch rail. Straightening, he walked away from the cabin, out into the moonlit parking area. She watched as he sucked in one long breath after another, before turning on his boot heel to stalk back toward her.
She waited until he was close enough to hear before she spoke.
“I’m glad to know that Mia has you now.” She reached over the rail to take his hand, willing him to look at her. “I’m sure she felt alone and reached out to me because she didn’t know she had you. But things must have changed for her since you came into her life.” Gabriella had been frightened at the references Mia made to much older men back in the days when she was under her mother’s care before social services stepped in. The girl had joined the support group after that, to ask for help dealing with a teenage boy at her first foster home, but she had wound up resolving the issue and moving into a better home before Pete got himself together enough to get her out of the system.
Or so she said.
Still, Gabriella got the impression that Mia had enough dealings with her mother where she was still exposed to some unsavory types.
“That’s kind of you to think, Gabby.” Clay squeezed her hand where she’d taken it, his warm, callus-roughened palm sending a surprise thrill through her despite the grave nature of the conversation. “But since I haven’t even met Mia yet, I’ve been exactly no help at all to her.”
“You said you found out about her weeks ago.” She slid her hand away from his, regretting the loss of warmth but wondering how well she knew Clayton Travers after all. Protectiveness for Mia rose inside her, and yes, a sense of identifying with the confused teen. Gabriella knew how it felt to be abandoned by a parent. “I guess I thought you would have already gone to see her.”
“I needed some time to research more and find out if Pete had any other offspring I’d overlooked.”
“And?”
“Mia is the last one—the only one I’d missed. She lives with my father. And while I resent the old man bitterly, I thought they had a peaceful relationship if she chose him over the stability of a foster home. I figured he must have mellowed with age and his illness since the hospital forced him to get sober,” Clay explained. “But if she’s still reaching out to a victims’ support group, maybe life in the Yancy household sucks as much as ever. I’ll make sure she knows that there are good homes in the foster system that will give her more stability.”
There was a cold finality to the words.
“You’d send her back into foster care?” She couldn’t believe the boy she once knew could have grown so heartless. “What about you? You could take her in. You would be a good role model—”
“Me?” He sounded shocked she would consider it. He shook his head. “I’ve made enough of a mess of my own relationships. I wouldn’t be any help to a girl her age.”
“You’ve dealt with so many of the same things and gone on to be a successful adult.”
“Because I broke away from my messed-up family.” The jut of his chin told her how much he would stake on that belief. “I wouldn’t be doing Mia any favors to invite her back into the screwed-up legacy that is her genetic birthright. Better for her to find a good foster home like I did, with people who are committed to understanding at-risk teens.”
“She had very different experiences in the foster system than you. It’s hard for her to trust anyone.” Gabriella understood that much about the people who called her hotline or emailed her privately looking for help. Victims of stalking and bullying were less inclined to trust.
And although Mia wasn’t currently being bullied, that was the situation in her first foster home when her foster mother’s teenage son had tried to coerce her into sex in exchange for extra privileges in the house.
Of course, Gabriella couldn’t share any of that with Clay. It was information protected by the privacy policies of her support group. And although the policies were more flexible where the underage participants were concerned, Mia had shared the information with her caseworker. And for her part, Gabriella would do what she could to protect Mia’s privacy for as long as she could.
“That, I understand. But I will explain to her how getting out from under the dark cloud of the Yancy influence helped me.” His dark eyes glittered with determination, his square jaw set. “She’ll be far better off in the system with experts watching out for her.”
Standing, Gabriella realized their conversation had come to a definite stalemate. She’d worked through enough of her past tonight without taking on Mia’s future, too. She would save that for another day, when she had time to think over her best course of action.
Besides, she wanted to talk to Mia and make sure she was okay.
“It seems we did a good job of surprising each other tonight.” She slid off his jacket and laid it gently over the wooden railing for him, the scent of the leather—of him—lingering along with the warmth. “You had no idea I was baring my soul to you online ten years ago. And I had no idea you were the kind of man to return a teenage sibling to the foster system.”
She walked away without waiting for a response. She heard him call out to her, but she was too tired and upset to continue a heated discussion tonight. Not with the trial starting tomorrow.
Besides, if Clayton Travers wasn’t concerned about Mia going back into state custody after Pete’s death, that was his business. But for her part, she planned to call the girl and see if she could help.
Gabriella understood all too well what it was like to have the people you counted on abandon you.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u7e944694-1abf-5ee2-a48f-d321a2b2c475)
MIA BENSON CROSSED her fingers against the worn leather bench seat of Davis Reed’s vintage Ford pickup truck as he slowed down on a gravel back road and pulled off to one side of a hayfield on the way home from their first date.
Davis—not Dave, as he made clear to everyone—was a band geek. A tall, skinny drummer who wore a plumed hat at halftime during the football games at Crestwood High where they both went to school. Surely a band geek with enough guts to strap on that loopy hat every week was not stopping at an obvious hook-up spot to do anything more than...kiss?
She’d had a decent time on this first date so far. She wasn’t falling for Davis Reed or anything. Obviously. But she also hadn’t spent the last three hours plotting how to get away from him, which had happened enough times in her dating career that most girls would have just given it up as an exercise in futility. But what else was there to do in a small town on a Sunday night? Sit at home and watch her dying father’s jaundiced skin turn a deeper shade of yellow?
Mia was grateful to the old guy for bailing her out of the foster system and everything, but she wasn’t his caregiver. Eww. Bad enough she had to think about what would happen to her once Pete Yancy croaked. But she would not complicate her messed-up life even more by getting too attached to the father who hadn’t wanted her for the first thirteen years of her life.
“Not much of a view, is it?” She hid her crossed fingers under a filched makeup bag of her mother’s that Mia had used for a purse ever since leaving the Drunken House of Horrors that was her mother’s outwardly nice life in the Nashville suburbs.
She’d take the jaundiced, clueless dad—who at least pretended to care—over the cold and unfeeling mother who didn’t want to hear that her last boyfriend had cornered Mia in the laundry room demanding things that weren’t fatherly in the least.
“I like the view just fine.” Davis turned toward her with a shy half smile as he switched off the ignition and killed the headlights.
His attempt at flirting, she guessed. And since he didn’t seem to be undressing her with his eyes, she let the comment slide. If he was warming up for a kiss—that was fine. She could deal.
Anything more than that and Davis Reed was going to find out what she was made of.
“Seriously.” She debated unfastening her seat belt. Better mobility if she needed to ward him off. But the act of unfastening anything around a teenage boy was like a flashing neon sign screaming “come and get it.”
“My dad’s night nurse leaves at eleven. I need to get home.”
Davis wore khakis and a white button-down. Preppy leather boat shoes. With his dark blond crew cut and freckles, he had a friendly face. He got good grades, too. All of which had played into her decision to go out with him tonight to escape the new machines installed at her father’s bedside last week. Machines that buzzed and beeped in a way that seemed to count down the remaining seconds of a life she needed to last for at least another nineteen months.
When she would turn eighteen.
“For sure.” Davis made a point of checking his watch in the dark, the little blue light popping on inside the digital readout when he turned his wrist.
Must be nice to have cool toys.
She listened to the engine tick as it cooled down, alert to any movement on his side of the pickup. She’d been lost in her own thoughts on the way home from the theater, not really paying attention to what direction he was driving because this was Davis and not some testosterone-fueled horndog from the wrestling team who thought they could take whatever they wanted after winning back-to-back state championships.
Now she wondered if she’d been an idiot once again.
She didn’t mind walking home in theory. But she wasn’t even sure which way “home” was. Besides, she’d heard there had been a string of break-ins around Heartache lately. Kids in her school whispered that teenagers might be behind it.
She didn’t want to run into people like that in the dark.
“Where are we?” she asked, hating the nervous jitter in her voice. It was important to remain in control in situations like this. Remind the guy you were a force to be reckoned with and not some twit who had been staring out the window like this could just be a normal date.
“Almost home.” He waved in a general direction. “The main road is just up there. We’re, like, ten minutes from your place.” He slid over toward her, his knee brushing hers. “I figured it’d be a good spot to say good-night.”
Mia hated this moment. Hated the vulnerability of it. Hated suspecting any guy she ever dated of turning into a creep at the slightest physical contact.
It didn’t help that she had the genetic disadvantage of sporting the breasts of a stripper by the time she was thirteen. As her mother so eloquently put it with a wink, “Them tatas turn men into animals, honey.”
Unfortunately, her mama’s moment of wisdom hadn’t been accompanied by any advice on how to tame the male beast. Draw a bitchy line in the sand now? Or hold out and see what happened? If all Davis Reed did was kiss her good-night, Mia would call this a good date.
“I had fun.” She was still trapped by her seat belt. But she wasn’t unbuckling now. She gave him a warm smile but she finally uncrossed her fingers in case she needed her hands. “Thank you, Davis.”
“You’re so pretty, Mia.” He said it reverently, as if it was something to be proud of.
Why didn’t guys ever say, “You blew me away with the way you defended your position on the Crimean War in debate today”? Or, “Mia, you make the best chocolate chip cookies ever”?
Which was true. Her former foster sister, Nicole, had told her so, and little kids didn’t lie the way the rest of the world did.
“Pretty is as pretty does,” she drawled, one of her mother’s favorite sayings to be sure Mia never thought too much of herself.
She hated having her mother’s voice in her head right now. The mother who never lifted a finger to help Mia when she’d really needed her. But she was too busy calculating her next move to think up a more original answer to a supremely unoriginal remark.
Poor Davis.
He went in for a kiss with all the finesse of a fullback, more or less ramming her into the seat with the force of his lips. But that might just be youthful enthusiasm. Davis Reed had no game.
Carefully she pressed the button to free her seat belt, knowing the time had come to ensure she had full mobility if she needed it. Except that was when things went horribly wrong. Because when she tried to grapple with the buckle, her fingers brushed his thigh. And possibly...something more.
“Oh yeah,” he breathed against her mouth, grabbing her hand in his and pressing it to a handful of the something more in his pants.
Turning her blood to ice.
“Let go,” she told him clearly. Loudly. She tensed her hand into a claw and she would have scratched him if he’d been naked, but through the khakis, he probably didn’t even notice.
“I heard you liked this.” Oblivious to her words, Davis all but fell on her, his chest hitting hers while he kept her hand on his crotch. “I was afraid to believe it, but oh, man—”
She kneed him. Hard.
Watched as his expression turned from ecstatic to pained. And then, furious.
But she was already slipping out from under him, her heartbeat thundering so loud she couldn’t hear much else.
“I said, let go.” She levered open the door handle poking into her spine. “I said it clearly. And loudly.”
She enunciated the words carefully because it was hard to talk when you were scared. She’d learned that way too young. But she wasn’t thirteen anymore. Shoving open the door to the truck, she slid out, half falling before she awkwardly got her feet underneath her. Even through the rubber soles of her tennis shoes, she could feel the crunch of dead, stiff brush. The branches of a sapling clawed at her hoodie.
Ready to run, she spared one last glance at Davis Reed. Illuminated by the dome light, he was hunched over—writhing, really—in obvious pain. Curled in a ball on the front seat, he clutched his groin.
Crap.
She was torn between the voice in her head that said, Don’t be a sucker—suckers end up raped. And the quieter one that said, What if I overreacted?
Considering she was on her feet and ready to flee while he appeared incapacitated, Mia decided she wouldn’t be a total sucker to at least make sure he was going to live through his injury.
“Davis?” Her legs trembled beneath her.
“You...grabbed...me.” He took shallow breaths between each word as he turned accusing eyes her way, his cheek mushed against the leather truck seat. “I was only going in for a kiss. It was you who took things to DEFCON 2.”
“I didn’t mean to. I was trying to get to my seat belt buckle so I could unfasten it. I couldn’t feel where it was.” She shivered as a cold gust blew over her. She was going to freeze with only a hoodie on if she had to walk home. “And besides, I told you to let me go.”
Her heart still pounded fiercely, but some of the fear had leaked away. And not just because Davis looked like he couldn’t make a grab for her if he tried. They were talking. And he could very well be telling the truth.
“At the time—” he paused to clear his throat, his voice still tight with pain and his words careful “—the combination of disbelief and euphoria were making the blood pound in my ears too hard for me to hear anything.”
Mia covered her mouth to smother a sound that was half laugh and half cry of regret. He must have heard, though, because his eyes narrowed.
“It’s not funny.”
“No.” She shook her head. Just a misunderstanding that would embarrass them both forever. “I know. But I was really scared.”
“I’ll say.” Shoving upright on the seat, he scrubbed a hand over his pale face. His skin looked clammy. “I’ll be lucky if I can still have kids after that.”
She bit her lip. “Sorry. I’ve had...bad experiences with guys.”
She tried to gauge his expression as he stared back at her, but what she saw was wariness. Not anger.
But then he heaved out a long breath and swiped a hand across his forehead.
“You think you can drive a stick?” He nodded toward the driver’s seat. “I could use a few more minutes to recover, but I know you need to get home.”
“You want me to drive?” She hopped from foot to foot to warm up.
“I think we’ll both be glad for whatever gets us home fastest.” He fell back against the passenger seat and stared out the front windshield, not even looking at her.
“Can I ask you a question first?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “When things started to get ugly a minute ago, you said, ‘I heard you liked this.’ What the hell was that supposed to mean?”
“Mia. You’re a smart, smart girl. I thought that before I asked you out. And I know now it’s true after getting to know you more tonight.” He slanted a glance her way, peering down at her. His freckles stood out all the more against his too-pale skin. “So I’m going to guess you know exactly what I meant because you have to be aware of your reputation at school, right? You’re a favorite topic of discussion among the male population of Crestwood.”
His words hit her like a pile of books falling off the top shelf of her closet. She fumed even though a small part of her was glad he thought she was smart.
“And the consensus is that I like grabbing guys’ crotches?”
He didn’t even pick his head up where it lolled back against the headrest, but she could see him roll his eyes.
“Not in so many words. But—whether it’s true or not—guys want to believe the hottest girl in school is also...attainable. I never paid much attention to it, honestly. But when I thought you grabbed me—like, well, like you wanted me—libido took over. So sue me.” He gave a bark of laughter. “On second thought, don’t. You already had your revenge. Now can you drive a stick, or not?”
Cold and eager to put this night behind her, Mia nodded. Padding around to the driver’s side of the truck, she tugged open the door and dropped into the seat behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition.
“I don’t know the way,” she reminded him, slamming the door behind her while she fired the engine to life.
“Back out to the gravel road, and left when you hit the main county route.” He tugged on his seat belt, his legs sprawled to take up the whole passenger side. She noticed he’d taken the to-go cup of soda from the movie theater and wedged it between his thighs.
The ice must help.
“Can I ask another question?” She nearly stalled the truck shifting it into gear, but got it under way, the headlights spilling out over empty hayfields in either direction. “What made you think I was smart before tonight?”
She’d heard the whole “hottest girl in school” bit before and didn’t ever care to hear it again. Those words were like a teenage ode to the high, firm 34DDs on a frame too small to carry them. They didn’t have anything to do with the girl inside.

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