A Memory Away
A Memory Away
Melinda Curtis
For better or worse, she's family nowDuffy Dufraine just found out he's going to be an uncle. Jessica Aguirre came to Harmony Valley in search of the father of her unborn child, which is by no means him. An accident may have damaged the expectant mom's memory, but he knows his twin is the man she's looking for. But Greg's gone, which leaves Duffy the only family Jess has. And he has to make things right. Offering her a temporary place to stay seems an ideal short-term solution. Until she stirs desires that make the embattled vineyard manager rethink his own long-term game plan. Is he ready to offer Jess and her baby a home to call their own—with him?
For better or worse, she’s family now
Duffy Dufraine just found out he’s going to be an uncle. Jessica Aguirre came to Harmony Valley in search of the father of her unborn child, which is by no means him. An accident may have damaged the expectant mom’s memory, but he knows his twin is the man she’s looking for. But Greg’s gone, which leaves Duffy the only family Jess has. And he has to make things right. Offering her a temporary place to stay seems an ideal short-term solution. Until she stirs desires that make the embattled vineyard manager rethink his own long-term game plan. Is he ready to offer Jess and her baby a home to call their own—with him?
Jess rested her palm on her stomach.
“Did you hear that, Baby?” she asked. “Grandparents are in your future.”
For the first time, Duffy understood Jess. She had no parents. She didn’t want to let her child down as her mother had. What to him was a casual mention of his mother’s involvement was the promise of a special gift to her: family.
“I’m taking this pillow from the bed for me,” Duffy said carefully. “Don’t get any ideas.”
She blinked at him. But it wasn’t the I’m remembering something dazed look he’d seen her get every once in a while. Jess looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. As Duffy, not Greg’s mirror image.
That look touched something deep inside him, something that warmed and eased, something he’d kept locked away and refused to name.
Dear Reader (#ulink_4850fbd1-0e4f-527e-af08-a7da18e782ba),
Welcome to Harmony Valley!
Things aren’t as harmonious here as they once were. Jobs have dried up and almost everyone under the age of sixty has moved away in the past ten years, leaving the population...well...rather gray-haired and peaceful.
But things are changing since three hometown boys made good. They’ve returned home, started a winery, and now the economy is inching its way forward.
Jessica Aguirre has come to town, but not for a job. She’s looking for someone from her past, someone who might help her remember. When she sees a photo of Michael “Duffy” Dufraine in a local newspaper, she’s convinced he has the answers she’s seeking. Duffy is afraid he knows the answers, but Jessica won’t want to hear the truth.
I hope you enjoy Jessica and Duffy’s journey, as well as the other romances in the Harmony Valley series. I love to hear from readers. Check my website to learn about upcoming books, sign up for email book announcements (and I’ll send you a free sweet romantic comedy read), or chat with me on Facebook (MelindaCurtisAuthor (https://www.facebook.com/MelindaCurtisAuthor)) or Twitter (MelCurtisAuthor (https://twitter.com/MelCurtisAuthor)) to hear about my latest giveaways.
Melinda
MelindaCurtis.com (http://melindacurtis.net)
A Memory Away
Melinda Curtis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling author MELINDA CURTIS lives in California’s arid Central Valley with her husband, an ancient Labrador, a “Shorkie” princess and a cat who would be queen of them all. Their three kids are all in college (not in California) so you’re more likely to see posts regarding Melinda’s pets than her kids on social media (for which her progeny are thankful).
Melinda enjoys putting humor into her stories, because that’s how she approaches life. She writes sweet contemporary romances as Melinda Curtis (Brenda Novak says of Season of Change, “found a place on my keeper shelf”), and fun, steamy reads as Mel Curtis (Jayne Ann Krentz says of Cora Rules, “wonderfully entertaining”).
The premise of this story was born at a bar with senior editor Victoria Curran and polished from the brilliance of Kathryn Lye (thanks, ladies!). Margie Lawson challenged me to bring more quirk to Harmony Valley (thank you, Margie!). And Mr. Curtis literally kept me fed as I put the finishing touches on it (thanks for letting me have the “Follow your instincts” fortune cookie fortune, babe, even though that isn’t really a fortune).
Contents
Cover (#u12727141-9304-5e6a-aa1f-6ce4a820df7f)
Back Cover Text (#u48e7b040-ab3f-53e7-834e-096c06732258)
Introduction (#u54d59cd7-91ec-5696-b2dd-777148ddaa78)
Dear Reader (#uf70bf21d-30b1-57bb-a7c0-eb6db860bf23)
Title Page (#u1ee7f450-d069-50be-ba07-b2f980481e72)
About the Author (#u3d52cb2d-9231-59f9-a6bd-10ca1eabcaa9)
Dedication (#u2e57e68f-b6c1-58da-ba28-4c2eea617f43)
CHAPTER ONE (#ue29439d1-080e-54a0-8d16-c69c1ca404ad)
CHAPTER TWO (#u11d7a9fa-20a6-59d4-9a0c-545e655b7397)
CHAPTER THREE (#uf08bc1fe-4591-5aa6-9000-ccbb79c6c59d)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ufbe0b2d7-b5f9-502f-9100-1547aa631b85)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ud8699992-f7af-5dda-a401-804377c887e3)
CHAPTER SIX (#u4da41c5a-d282-5e3f-9073-887e520fa94e)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u3a45b725-ed4e-5e3b-8d40-6cece0c34e68)
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)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8226f66a-3d52-5fce-b94c-bd6f683c33c8)
DID HE LOVE ME?
Jessica Aguirre didn’t know if he loved her. She didn’t know if he knew her.
She stood on a gravel drive in the midst of a vineyard in Harmony Valley. Heart pounding. Head pounding.
Did he love me?
The man in the photograph would tell her.
Jess clutched a newspaper photo, and stared at the group of men and women in front of a two-story farmhouse with a vintage weather vane. There was a man in the back row on the left. He was the one.
She recognized him right away. Recognized dark hair with a curl at his temple. Recognized a straight, no-nonsense nose. Recognized caramel-colored eyes. Those eyes. If only she could remember...
What if it wasn’t him? What if this was a dead end? What if...?
Jess drew a steadying breath against the panic rising in her chest and lifted her gaze to the well-looked-after farmhouse. The day the picture had been taken there’d been big fluffy clouds in the sky above the cupola. Today the sky was clear and blue. The late January air was crazy cold, stinging Jessica’s toes in her sneakers.
The slender woman who’d greeted Jess on this Monday morning hurried down the front porch steps. “He’ll be here in a few minutes. Come inside the tasting room.” Christine was the winemaker for the newly opened Harmony Valley Vineyards, which was headquartered in the farmhouse, the subject of the newspaper article, and where he worked. Christine’s carefree smile told Jess the woman had never lost a moment, a day or weeks from her past. “We have all the amenities inside—hot tea, a bathroom and a place to sit down.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.” Jessica resisted glancing at the clipping again. Would her unannounced appearance be welcome? Or create mayhem?
“It’s no trouble. You’re no trouble.” Christine had the kind of smile that invited you to relax, to open up, to be part of the family. “Come inside. It’s cold out here.”
It was cold. Jessica’s jacket wouldn’t zip up anymore. And family...
In no time, Jessica was sitting at a table cradling a cup of hot tea. The tasting room was elegant in a simple way that fit the farmhouse. Dark wood, intimate tables for two, out-of-Jessica’s-price-range granite slabs on bar tops. But the room was oddly empty.
“Where’s the wine?”
Christine followed the direction of Jessica’s curious gaze to the bare shelves behind the bar. “Barrel aging. I’ll be blending some for limited release soon. But most of our harvest will age another year.”
“Aging wine is all about patiently waiting, isn’t it? Even when you don’t know how it will turn out.” Jessica had become good at biding her time. “Making wine is like waiting for bread dough to rise.” Or babies to be born.
“Exactly.” With a contented sigh, Christine’s gaze lingered on the room as if seeing it filled with bottles of her making.
Outside, the wind whistled past, drawing Jessica to the window in time to see a muddy gray truck pull into the gravel drive.
“There he is.” Christine gave Jessica’s shoulder a sisterly squeeze, and then headed toward the door. “I’ll be upstairs if you need anything.”
Did he love me?
A man got out of the truck. Dark hair. Straight nose. Familiar eyes.
It’s him.
She leaned forward, peering through the paned glass, her heart sailing toward him, over ever-hopeful waves of roses and rainbows.
Jess didn’t usually let herself dream. But now...today...him...
And yet...
He wore a burgundy vest jacket that clashed with a red long-sleeve T-shirt. Worn blue jeans. A black baseball cap.
Instead, she saw him in a fine wool suit. Black, always black. A navy shirt of the softest cotton. A silk tie in a geometric pattern. Shiny Italian loafers...
He took the stairs two at a time, work boots ringing on wood.
Jessica’s heart sank as certainly as if someone had drilled holes in the boat carrying her hopeful emotions. Clouds blocked the sun. The rainbow disappeared. Unwilling to sink, Jess clung to joy. To the idea of him.
He entered without a flourish or an energetic greeting. He entered without the smile that teased the corners of her memory. He entered and took stock of the room, the situation, her.
Their eyes met. His were the same color, same shape, so heart-achingly familiar.
It was the cool assessment in them that threw her off. Not a smile, not a brow quirk, not an eye crinkle.
He came forward. “I’m Michael Dufraine, but everyone calls me Duffy.”
His name didn’t ring true.
Had he lied to her?
She couldn’t speak, could barely remember her name.
The wind shook the panes. The house creaked and groaned.
He smiled. A polite smile, a distant smile, an I-don’t-know-you smile.
Disappointment overwhelmed her. Jess resisted the urge to dissolve into a pity puddle on the floor.
“And you are...?” He extended his hand.
On autopilot, she reached for him. Their palms touched.
Jessica’s vision blurred and she gripped his hand tighter as clips of memory assailed her—his deep laughter, him offering her a bite of chocolate cheesecake, his citrusy cologne as he leaned in to kiss her.
It is him.
Relieved. She was so relieved. Jessica blinked at the man—Duffy—who she vaguely recalled and, at the same time, did not.
She’d practiced what to say on the hour-long drive up here from Santa Rosa. Ran through several scenarios. None of them had included him not recognizing her.
She should start at the beginning. Best not to scare him with hysterics and panicked accusations, of which she’d had five months to form.
Don’t raise your voice. Don’t cry. Don’t ask why.
And don’t lead the conversation with the elephant in the room.
Despite all the cautions and practicing and caveats, she drew a breath, and flung her hopes toward him as if he were her life preserver. “I think I’m your wife.”
* * *
DUFFY RELEASED THE woman’s hand as if he’d accidentally grabbed a rattlesnake. “I’m not married.” And he’d sure as hell remember if he had been.
“Or I was... Or I was your girlfriend...maybe?” She glanced down at her belly. Her very pregnant belly.
Holy in-need-of-a-handrail.
Duffy sat down heavily across from her, still chilled from the winter cold. Chilled now to the bone. “I haven’t... You couldn’t...” He swiped a hand over his face, very much aware that his boss was upstairs and the walls in the century-old house were very thin. “Who are you?”
“Jessica... Jess Aguirre.” There was a quiet beauty about her. Long dark hair, big dark eyes, a smooth olive-skin complexion. Many women shared her physical features. Few carried themselves with a combination of contained dignity and edge-of-her-seat intensity. “You...um...don’t know me?”
“You or your passenger.”
Reality was returning. He could see it in her face. Jessica seemed stricken that she wasn’t his significant other, but otherwise she appeared stable. She didn’t wield a knife, didn’t draw a gun, and she wasn’t screaming to high heaven that he should know who she was.
“But...you have to know me.” Jessica leaned over the table—or as far as she could with that baby bump—and whispered, “We’ve kissed and...” She glanced at her stomach.
And here Duffy had thought he’d taken care of all of his brother’s loose ends. “I’m not Greg.”
“Greg.” She murmured his brother’s name, then repeated it—stronger.
“My twin.” Duffy took out his wallet and handed her a picture he’d only recently started carrying—him and Greg before a Little League game.
She placed the photo on the table next to a crumpled newspaper clipping of the winery staff, her smile as soft as morning dew on a grape leaf. “Greg.” She said the name as if testing it with her tongue and finding it acceptable.
He felt compelled to explain. “We were identical.”
“Were?”
“He died nearly six months ago.”
“No.” She moved a hand to her belly.
“Struck by lightning.” Yes, there was a God. Although, “He was killed instantly and didn’t suffer.” Duffy was proud of the detached way he delivered the news. His brother had been a greedy piece of trash, which some siblings may have forgiven, but not when the target was Mom and Dad. “So if you’re looking for the man who did you wrong, it was him.” Duffy gazed out at the cold, dormant vineyard, which felt much like his heart. “My brother was no saint.”
“I don’t believe that.” She slid Duffy’s picture across the table. “Or you wouldn’t be carrying his photo.”
He wasn’t going to rehash the painful details of his life with this stranger. “Why are you here?”
Jessica closed her eyes. “I came looking for closure.”
“Did Greg steal from you?” The question had to be asked, and he didn’t hide the bitterness. Greg had taken every penny of their parents’ retirement fund. Luckily, Greg hadn’t spent it all before he died. “Did he promise you he’d love you until the end of time?”
“I... I... I can’t remember.”
* * *
HE WAS DEAD.
Whatever Jess had been expecting to find by coming here, it hadn’t been this.
He was dead.
Whoever Greg had been.
He was dead.
There’d be no tearful reunions, no admissions of mistakes, no offered apologies. How foolish she’d been to expect to show up here and find a man who loved her, one who’d fall to his knees as he held her hands and begged for forgiveness.
Sadness for Greg’s death mired her insides, more for her baby—who’d never know his or her father—than for the man she barely remembered. It seemed wrong somehow. The day. The news. The man she was left facing.
The baby kicked her ribs.
“What does that mean?” Duffy asked, pulling her back to the present. “You can’t remember.”
Flashes of memory shuttered in her head with every word Duffy uttered, every shrug of his shoulders, every nuanced flick of his brow. His face was austere, where Greg’s had been amiable. His eyes were care-lined where Greg’s had been carefree. And the clash of burgundy vest with a red-sleeved T-shirt? Greg would never have paired those two colors. Of that, she was certain.
“I was in a car accident five months ago.” Jessica dropped her gaze to her baby barge, needing to swallow twice before she could get more words out. “I have retrograde amnesia. I can remember growing up. I can remember how to make sugar cookies from scratch.” She swallowed again. “But I haven’t been able to remember anything about my baby’s father.” She couldn’t even remember whether they’d once been married or in love. “Not until I saw you.”
“So Greg’s the father?” Even Duffy’s voice was different. His words spoken slower. His tone deeper and filled with cynicism.
“I’m certain of it...now.” She took a drink of her once-hot tea, feeling as cold as the green beverage. How much should she tell Duffy? He wasn’t coming across as the most supportive listener. But what had she to lose by holding back? “You seem so familiar. I remember you kissing me—”
“Greg,” he inserted tersely, staring at her hard. Not only had Greg been unwelcome here, Jess was, as well.
She strengthened her voice. She’d lived too long without answers to walk away from his obstinacy. “I remember us—him and I—laughing.” It was hard to imagine her laughing with Duffy.
“Well, I’m glad he made someone happy.” He’d perfected that unforgiving look.
Greg, what did you do? “But...you were twins...brothers. You didn’t get along?”
“Greg would steal the belt from your waist if he could make a buck off it.” So much anger. It vibrated in the air between them, pressing her back as if he’d pushed her.
Snatches of images. Smiles and laughter. Tender touches and endearing words. She couldn’t believe Duffy’s opinion of Greg. Still, doubt crept up her throat, closing it off.
“Greg took all your money, didn’t he?”
So much weariness in his tone.
It weighed on Jess. She’d felt burdened for so long, she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
It couldn’t have been Greg who’d taken her money. There’d been love between them. She just knew it. Every time she began to question it, a feeling of love would rise up. That feeling was conspicuously absent today. “I can’t prove he took anything.”
“Fess up. There’s something missing.” His gaze probed for the truth, but there was a reluctant slant to his eyes, as if he didn’t want to know.
I’m so sorry, Baby. Jessica’s hand drifted to her stomach. “The only thing I know is that a week before the accident, my bank account was drained.”
“He did it.” Duffy was maddeningly certain.
Jessica shook her head when instead she wanted to shake him. “I can’t be certain of that.”
“I am. I know my brother better than anyone.” His lips pinched upward at the corners, so tense she wouldn’t have called it a smile. “Twins, remember?”
She didn’t want to believe him. There were the recently remembered smiles and kisses.
Duffy stood. His gaze cut toward the door. His feet pointed that way, as well. “Sorry about the memory thing, but I need to get back to work.”
She should never have gotten her hopes up. She should have accepted that the father of her baby was gone and his family wouldn’t want anything to do with her. Being unwanted was her reality.
But something inside of her wouldn’t settle. Not this time. “Wait. Can I see you again?” At his frown, she rushed on. “I’ve recovered quite a bit today just by listening to you talk. For five months, I’ve had nothing.” Desperation seized her and squeezed. “Please. It’s important to me that I remember.”
His jaw worked. He didn’t look at Jess. Clearly, he didn’t want to see her again and be reminded of Greg. But his hesitation meant he wasn’t as cold and uncaring as he might want her to believe. That perhaps somewhere in that closed-off heart of his were memories of Greg he cherished.
Above them, the ceiling creaked.
“There’s no point.” But he didn’t leave or ask her to go.
Hope flooded her chest. “There is. There’s every point. Up until today, I couldn’t remember how I got pregnant. If I’d been abandoned by my husband or raped...” Steady, girl. She squared her shoulders. “I grew up without knowing my father, not even his name. All I’m asking for is a little of your time.”
“I know I’m going to regret this—”
“You won’t.” Jessica gathered her things, anxious to leave before he changed his mind.
“Come back Saturday at six. There’s a restaurant in town, El Rosal. I’ll be having dinner there.” She wasn’t entirely sure she’d heard him because it sounded as if he’d added the words Whether you’re there or not.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e65cfc1a-2650-5937-aca1-cc7360bbd0e7)
THE ONLY THING worse than finding out your brother had left a bun in the oven? Duffy’s new boss hearing all about it. At least Ryan, the assistant winemaker, was off today.
“Sorry for the lack of privacy. That was pretty heavy.” Christine stood in the doorway between the tasting room and the kitchen. “How are you doing?”
Duffy shrugged, watching Jessica walk to her car with carefully measured steps. She tugged the ends of her jacket, trying unsuccessfully to wrap them around her belly, hunching her shoulders against the cold.
So frail. So fragile. Duffy wanted to believe her.
She didn’t remember Greg? How was that possible?
Christine came to stand next to him. “I’m not sure how I’d react to knowing I was going to have a niece or nephew soon.”
I’m going to be an uncle.
Duffy hadn’t processed Jessica’s news in that light. He’d been blindsided by her presence and her pregnancy and her claims of amnesia. He supposed that as the child’s uncle, he had a responsibility—to be a fatherly influence since Greg wasn’t around, to teach the little tyke how to throw a ball and swing a bat, to make sure the kid had some money socked away for college.
Money?
Recently buried worries resurfaced in his gut, sour and unpleasant.
After Greg swindled their parents, Duffy had helped support them. Since Greg’s death, he’d sold and liquidated all his twin’s assets, and given everything to his mom and dad. He’d set them up in a senior living apartment complex, one that could help his mother take care of his wheelchair-bound father. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Duffy’s paycheck was his own. His weekends were his own. His life was his own. All because of the money Greg left behind.
Did Jessica and her baby deserve a share of Greg’s money?
Morals dictated he give Jessica something. But what if she was lying? What if she was exactly like Greg?
Jessica drove away in a dinged and dented four-door sedan. Everything about her said trust me. That’s how he’d felt about Greg, too.
His gut continued its churning. Duffy couldn’t shake off the feeling of being sucked back into a Greg-induced vortex of financial folly.
Trust Jessica? Give her money? She claimed she had amnesia. Greg would have told her that was a hard scam to sell. And Greg had been the king of con artists.
Christine glanced up at him. “You think she’s lying.” It wasn’t a question.
“You know how when you meet someone you give them the benefit of the doubt? How you trust what they tell you is the truth?”
“Yes.”
“You could never trust a word that came out of my brother’s mouth.” Duffy barely recognized his own voice. It was as thick with emotion as the day he’d learned of Greg’s death. “If she and Greg...”
“Don’t judge her so quickly,” Christine said. “If only for the baby’s sake.”
Duffy nodded, but the desire to convict outweighed the compulsion to trust.
Thankfully, Christine’s work ethic intruded. “You mentioned on the phone that you wanted to show me something.”
He had. “Let’s take a drive.” He needed a distraction and he needed to show Christine the extent of the threat on the hill.
The winery had recently purchased several small vineyards around town, ones that had been lying idle and untended for years. One of their properties was on the slopes of Parish Hill and might have a problem. As the winery’s newly hired and first-ever vineyard manager, it was Duffy’s responsibility to restore the vineyards to optimal production.
A few minutes later, Duffy drove them down Main Street. There was little traffic. With a population just reaching one hundred, and barely twenty of those residents below the age of sixty-five, there weren’t many cars around.
Nearly two decades ago, the largest employer in town had burned to the ground. Younger Harmony Valley residents had moved closer to civilization, leaving the town on the brink of extinction. And then three local boys made it big in the dot-com world, returned home to decompress and decided to save the town by starting a winery. The jury was still out on the saving part, but those employed at the winery were optimistic.
“It’s sad about Jessica, isn’t it?” Christine waved to the elderly barber, standing on scarecrow-like limbs in front of his shop.
“I suppose.” Duffy drove slowly around the town square with its ancient oak tree, and took the turn toward Parish Hill and its steep switchbacks.
“I was trying to imagine how I’d feel if I couldn’t recall a part of my life. It must be frustrating and terrifying not remembering who the baby’s father is.” How quickly Jess had pulled Christine into her camp. A strike against her.
Duffy navigated a tight turn. “Can we talk about work?” Always? He liked to keep his private life separate from his professional life.
“You’re one of the few people in town who doesn’t want me to stop talking about the winery.” There was no change in Christine’s voice. No indication that she felt snubbed by his request. “Promise me you’ll never change.”
“Never.” Of course, she might not like what he was about to tell her.
Duffy turned onto a dirt road that led to a small vineyard clinging to the hillside. According to their records, the Cabernet Sauvignon vines had originally been planted in the 1990s. Their trunks were thick and twisted. Duffy parked and led Christine down the vine-tangled hill. The vineyard had shriveled, unharvested grape clusters on the ground.
He stopped at the bottom row of leafless, wintery plants. “Look at this. See how these vines have produced fewer shoots and canes than the next row up?”
“Yes.” Christine’s gaze moved with a scientist’s deliberation. “What do you think? Soil composition? Water drainage?”
“It could be those things. But we also have to consider leaf roll virus.” A grapevine disease that delayed maturity and lowered grape yield. Saying it out loud was like telling a child there would be no Christmas this year.
Christine didn’t like the news. She frowned and shook her head several times before she said anything. And when she did speak, her tone had the serious quality of a winemaker twice her age. “You can’t know that. You’d either have to see it in their leaves come spring or have tested the vines.”
“True.” But he knew the signs, had seen them on his last job, where the winery owners hadn’t wanted to hear the news, either. “Look at this.” He crouched next to the rotted remains of a withering grape cluster. “There are others like it all along this row.” He moved to a row farther up the hill, carefully making his case. “Now look at this cluster.”
“Almost twice the size,” she murmured. Then she shook her head again. “Leaf roll has never been documented in Harmony Valley.”
“I was exactly where you are. Drainage, incline of the hill, even the fact that these vines haven’t been harvested or trimmed back in years.” Duffy tugged on a bare branch. It snapped free, another indication of the poor health of the vines, weakened by years of drought. “I had Ryan pull the data. The last row was planted ten years ago after a fire destroyed part of the vineyard. I couldn’t find any confirmation of it being certified virus-free stock.” He tossed the vine to the ground. “I’d rather err on the side of caution, wouldn’t you?”
After a moment, Christine nodded. “We should test for red blotch disease, too.”
“Agreed.” She’d taken the news better than he’d expected.
They hiked up the hill, the biting wind at their backs.
“I walked the vineyard last fall when we decided to expand.” Christine paused on a rise to take in the rest of the area, sounding resigned, as if she were to blame. “But I can’t remember going that deep into the rows.”
“It’s okay. Maybe I’m wrong.” Duffy prayed it was so.
“If they are diseased,” she said softly, more to herself than to him, “we’ll have to take them out right away. Both leaf roll and red blotch dilute the taste of the grape.” Christine opened the truck door and inspected the bottom of her boots one at a time. “Check for bugs on the bottom of your shoes. Mealy bugs—”
“Spread the disease,” Duffy finished for her, already examining the crevices in his boot lugs. He added in a neutral tone, “You hired me because I know things like this.”
“I’m sorry. It’s a shock.” Her apology was as arrow-straight as the worry furrowing her brow.
“With your approval, we’ll have Ryan take samples and send them to the lab.”
A beat-up green truck backfired as it trundled down the dirt road behind them.
“Rutgar,” Christine said. “I...uh...told you about him, right?”
Sounded like she hadn’t told him enough. “Used to own this property. Likes to know what’s going on.”
“Everyone in town is a bit of a gossip,” she said apologetically. “It’s not something I divulge during a job interview. You’re in the grace period of being new to town.” Christine hesitated, and then her smile turned as apologetic as her tone. “Or you were. Now that Rutgar’s showed up... Well, let’s just say folks’ curiosity can sometimes be trying. Be patient with them. They mean well. And they grow on you.” She quickly transformed into a confident, friendly winemaker greeting the previous owner. “Rutgar! What a surprise.”
A bear-sized man stood beside a rusted truck fender. His gray-blond hair hung inches from his chin and draped thickly across his shoulders like a long, matted mane. “What are you two doing out here?” His accent was European. All he needed was chain mail and a sword to carry off the Viking vibe. “That’s the second time I’ve seen this one up here today.”
This one being Duffy. “We’re discussing the condition of the vines.” Duffy didn’t feel comfortable sharing his suspicions. Instead, he introduced himself. Duffy wasn’t a small man, but Rutgar’s hand swallowed his.
“I want to be informed about what goes on. This is my land—”
“Was.” Christine stepped up to hug Rutgar. “Was your land. You sold it to me, remember?”
“I sold it to your fiancé.” The older man made a noise that sounded like a territorial growl. “I live on top of the hill. Everything that goes on here is my business.”
“Of course, it is,” Christine soothed. “And just so you’re aware, there’ll be workers up here sometime in the next few weeks.”
Rutgar’s sharp blue eyes narrowed. “Workers won’t go any farther than this driveway.”
“The view from the top is spectacular.” Following Christine’s lead, Duffy kept his voice kiss-butt polite. “You can see the entire valley. Why limit access on a public road?”
“Because the top of Parish Hill is my home.” Rutgar’s features twisted into something no one would call a smile. It involved drawn-back lips and bared teeth. “I’ve seen you up there wasting the nice lady’s time.”
“Surveying the land.” Duffy’s patience held. Barely. “It’s easier to keep all the properties straight with a view from above.”
“Wasting time,” Rutgar scoffed. “Winemaking takes months and years, and a lot of effort.”
As did placating former landowners. “Since you’re so interested in what’s going on, can I count on you to help cane?” Given the vineyard hadn’t been cut back in what looked like nearly a decade, Duffy was betting the answer was no.
“You can count on him to watch,” Christine ribbed.
Rutgar shook a finger the size of a sausage at her. “I like you.”
“You’ll like him, too.” Christine gave Rutgar’s shoulder a gentle nudge that didn’t move the large man an inch. “Now back out. We’ve got other vineyards to inspect.”
* * *
“HOW DID IT go yesterday?” Vera yelled over the sound of the mixer’s grinding motor.
It was 4:00 a.m. and the owner of Vera’s Bakery in Santa Rosa was preparing the batter for red velvet cupcakes. They sold hundreds of them in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. The large industrial kitchen was already filled with welcoming, sugary smells from cinnamon rolls and various breads and cookies of all kinds. At the next worktable, several bakers were chattering in Spanish. Jessica’s maternal grandparents had emigrated from Mexico, but Jess didn’t speak more than a handful of words in their native tongue.
Normally, Jess couldn’t wait to begin baking. Contributing to a busy kitchen always made her feel as if she belonged. Not today. Today she felt as if she’d never belong. Not with her coworkers, not with Greg’s family, not with anyone.
“Did you find your baby daddy?” Vera’s white hairnet covered her unnaturally red hair like snow on a high desert mountain.
“He’s dead.” Jess was saddened by Greg’s death. Sad, yes, but since her memories of him were like dandelion fluffs on the wind, it was a detached sadness. If they’d been in love, wouldn’t she feel broken?
For what must have been the thousandth time since she’d woken up in the hospital after the accident, Jess wondered if her baby was a creation of love. But now the wonder-train was on a new track.
What if Duffy’s words were true? What if Greg had used her?
What if? What if? What if? She was at square one again. Too many questions. Too few answers.
“Your baby daddy’s a deadbeat?” Vera shouted, sending her dangling silver cupcake earrings swinging over the tattoo of a rose on her neck.
“No. He’s dead.”
“What?” Vera promptly switched off the mixer and came around to Jessica’s side of the prep table. “Dead? So who was the guy in the photo?”
“His twin brother. Duffy.” His handsome and bitter twin brother.
Vera’s brows shot up accusingly. “You’re sure he didn’t just make up the twin angle? Some guys will do anything to avoid paying child support.”
Jess tied her apron on as she weighed what she’d been told. The man she’d hoped she might be in love with wasn’t Duffy. She was sure of that. “I believe him.”
“That’s a shame. If you can’t find a baby daddy, you’ll need a sugar daddy.” Vera shook a finger in Jessica’s face and asked her something in Spanish she didn’t understand. When Jess stared at her blankly, Vera said, “How can you raise a child alone? Without a man’s steady head and regular paycheck?”
“Women raise kids by themselves all the time.” Jess was more interested in providing Baby with family roots than a secure bank account—although that would be nice, not to mention having a father figure around.
“Yes, but women shouldn’t bring up babies alone. You’re a smart girl. All you need to complete the package is to learn your native tongue to catch a good man.” Her smile and nod indicated Jess was this close to attracting the right guy. “Smart girls always find sugar daddies.”
“I’d just like to find my memories,” Jess said.
Vera muttered in Spanish again and then stared at Jess as if she were a problem child. “I said memories won’t keep you warm at night, but maybe your baby’s uncle can.”
“I have an electric blanket,” Jess deadpanned. “And to be clear, even though I’m having dinner with Duffy this weekend in Harmony Valley, I am not planning on a brother swap so that I can have an insurance policy.”
“You should listen to me. I know what I’m talking about.” Vera laughed and turned on her loud mixer. “You be careful driving out there. Big storm coming in with flooding predicted. It’s bad enough you’ll be on leave soon. I need you every day until that baby is born.”
Given Harmony Valley was sixty miles northeast and at a different elevation, Jessica wasn’t worried about the weather. That was days away. Storms sped up or slowed down, and forecasters often predicted flooded roads during rainstorms and nothing ever happened. Jessica hadn’t seen any roads under significant water since she’d moved to Santa Rosa from Sacramento last summer.
No. Jessica was more concerned with Duffy. Was he going to show up for their dinner? And could his presence help reveal more of her lost memories?
Would she ever know if Greg had loved her?
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_6181b63b-729e-5881-bbf1-bbf506f26f19)
“HOW CAN I tell you this, Eunice?”
Eunice Fletcher braced herself because Agnes Villanova—town councilwoman, president of Harmony Valley’s widows club, manager of the boutique the women in town ran and general town cog—was often the bearer of bad news.
“Who died?” Eunice clutched the yellow cotton pieces of a baby quilt she’d been cutting when Agnes stopped by her house. “Mildred? It was Mildred who died, wasn’t it?” Another town councilwoman.
“Mildred is fine. It’s—”
“It’s Rose.” The third councilwoman. It’d been years since a spot on the council had opened up. “I knew the poor dear was on her last legs mentally.”
“Rose is fine. Sharper than ever.” Agnes ran a hand through her pixie-cut gray hair, and pressed her lips together as if trying to stop herself from saying more.
“Quit beating around the bush and tell me who died. I’m very busy here.” Stitching quilt pieces together at the window that faced the old Reedley place. The two-bedroom bungalow next door was being rented by one of those winery employees. A tall fellow named Duffy, who rose early, made eggs for breakfast with a sprinkle of cheese and liked cream in his coffee.
“It’s you, Eunice. I came to talk about you.”
The yellow blocks fell to Eunice’s lap. “I’m not dying.”
Agnes sighed. “It’s about you.”
Eunice stacked the blocks on top of each other, smoothing out the creases with her liver-spotted fingers. “You need to work on your delivery, Agnes. I thought someone had died again.” Mae Gardner had recently passed. Eunice hadn’t even realized Mae was sick. “What about me?”
“It’s your baby quilts.”
“Are they selling? I’m making them as fast as I can.” She’d make them faster if Duffy was home more often. Sewing gave her an excuse to sit by the window.
“Maybe you should slow down.” Agnes pulled the pink sunflower quilt Eunice had made from her tote and unfolded it. “We can’t sell a baby quilt with Frankenstein stitches.”
Eunice squinted at where Agnes pointed to the fabric. “Frankenstein stitches,” she harrumphed. “Have you seen the way my corners meet? They’re perfect. And my stitches are wonderful.” Her grandmother had taught her how to sew by hand, back before they made fancy machines.
“You can’t see your stitches, can you?”
Eunice didn’t want to admit she couldn’t. The comment about Frankenstein hurt.
A truck pulled into the driveway next door. Agnes turned, blocking Eunice’s view.
“Is that Duffy?” Eunice craned her neck. “His license plate has two eights at the end.”
Agnes gave Eunice a chastising look over her shoulder. “How can you see across the yard and not see the stitches on your quilt? Have you tried reading glasses?”
Eunice suppressed a gasp. “No one in my family has ever needed glasses.” The Fletcher women were beauties, every one.
“You can deny needing glasses all you want—”
“And I will.”
“But until your stitches improve, I need you to make something else for the shop.” Mae’s Pretty Things was a boutique that carried handmade gifts for the tourists, the ones everyone was sure would start showing up soon. Or as soon as there was wine to sell.
Eunice narrowed her eyes. “What other things?”
“That’s why I’m here. To see what other things you can make that aren’t sewn together.”
If that wasn’t the most infuriating statement. “I don’t make other things. I sew.” Over the years, she and Mae had stitched together everything from pot holders to placemats.
“Eunice, you taught kindergarten and youth Bible study. You have to be crafty to have worked with kids all those years.”
And she had been. “We colored. We finger-painted. We glued things.” Not fine art by any means, but it qualified as crafty.
Agnes frowned. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Eunice looked at the sunflower quilt block she’d meticulously pieced together. The corners were square. The angles perfect. She’d never worn glasses in her life. “You want something else? I can color you a picture with crayons. Or create turkey portraits made from painted handprints. Or glue Popsicle picture frames decorated with colored glitter.”
“You need glasses.” Agnes’s words were as short as she was.
“I’m not going to hide my eyes behind a pair of homely frames.” Her mother would spin in her grave at the thought.
“Don’t be vain, Eunice.”
Too late. “My cousin Kim had a great body. My sister Julia had beautiful red hair. Kim gained weight. Julia went gray. But I still have my peepers.” Eunice had violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor. And Eunice was still alive. “My eyes are my best feature. Everyone says so.” She’d made a good living modeling with those peepers. She wasn’t about to cover them up.
“And yet you can’t see.” There was sarcasm in her friend’s words. And impatience. And exasperation. “I’m not asking you to wear glasses all the time. Just when you’re sewing. I’d rather have one of your quilts to sell than an arts-and-crafts picture frame.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Agnes carefully folded the baby quilt and set it in Eunice’s lap. “I’ll make an appointment for you with my eye doctor in Cloverdale. In the meantime, you can borrow my reading glasses and see if that helps.” She dug in her tote and handed Eunice a pair of black rectangular frames.
Eunice accepted them with a two-finger hold, as if they were slimy creatures who might sting. “They’re—”
“Hideous. Yes, I know. But they work. Put them on and see for yourself.”
Reluctantly, Eunice did as Agnes asked, but not before looking up to see if Thelma across the street was sitting at her front window. Thankfully, she wasn’t. Glasses on, Eunice glanced down at the pink baby quilt. The stitches were monstrous. “Blast.”
“Exactly.”
* * *
DUFFY PREPARED HIS coffee by the small light over the stove. He hadn’t slept well. Thoughts of Greg’s baby and Jessica had him counting alarm-clock clicks.
He was thickheaded tired. But it was a workday. He’d rely on his morning ritual to get him going. Drag himself out of bed, check; grind fresh coffee beans, check; make a pot of coffee, check; and stand there waiting for it to brew. The standing and waiting was a waste of time, but he liked not doing anything. He liked the quiet. He liked—
Snap.
Duffy startled. The two-bedroom Craftsman house was ninety years old and prone to the creaks and groans of an older property in California. But this wasn’t a creak or a groan, and it had come from outside.
His entire body tensed as he strained to identify the sound over the hiss of the coffeemaker.
Thunk.
Duffy’s gaze cut to the kitchen window. There was movement. A blur of movement. And eyes. Bloodshot, beady eyes.
Later, Duffy couldn’t recall if he’d released a primal yell or an unintelligible curse, but the kitchen reverberated with sound.
A face pressed to the bottom of the glass. Pale, wrinkled, with grayish-purple-tinged hair in pink curlers. It was his neighbor Eunice. No doubt on her tiptoes considering the house sat on a raised foundation.
Duffy charged toward the front door, grabbing a sweatshirt he’d left on the living room couch.
It was still dark outside. The sky above Parish Hill was tinged orange. Streetlights flickered off as an older woman in a white flowered housecoat and fuzzy pink slippers ran across his driveway.
“Eunice!”
She froze at the hedges marking the property boundary. Shoulders hunched, rollers trembling.
Duffy reminded himself that he was new to a town full of curious old folk. He reminded himself that Eunice was more than a bit of an odd duck. She’d brought him a brussels sprouts, chocolate and bacon casserole as a housewarming gift, and practically done inventory on his belongings. He reminded himself to be patient as he tried to modulate his tone, tried to ignore a voice in his head pointing out he slept in the buff in the hot summer months. “Can I help you with something, Eunice?”
“I was...” She turned around slowly. Her gaze dropped to the Hawaiian boxers his mother had given him last year and then flew back up to his face. “I was just looking for my cat.”
“You don’t have a cat.” There was a man in town who rescued cats. He’d been by a couple of times already to see if Duffy was interested in adopting one, and he’d been vocal in his disappointment that Eunice wasn’t a cat lover.
“I...uh...heard a cat.”
“Eunice.” Over the past few days, he’d been badgered about his past (met with dead silence), his love life (met with deadlier silence) and had his small sack of groceries inspected (met with near-dead patience). And now this.
His toes were frozen. The cold nipped at his restraint. It must be barely forty degrees. It wasn’t good for either one of them to be out here half-dressed. “I’m not an interesting man. I make coffee in the morning. I go to work. I come home at night and make dinner. You know all that.” He’d caught her looking out her window at him a few times.
She tried to laugh. It sounded as fake as he suspected it to be. “You think that I...” Ha-ha-ha. “It was the cat.” That was her story and she was sticking to it.
“Whatever.” He wasn’t winning this battle. “Be careful looking for whatever it is you’re looking for. If you fall in my yard while I’m in the shower...”
Her cheeks reddened, then she mumbled something he didn’t catch and hurried into her dark house.
He’d checked out several homes before deciding on this one. Duffy was only renting with the option to buy the place. It’d suck to move again so soon, but he didn’t relish living next door to Peeping Eunice.
* * *
LATER IN THE DAY, Duffy was managing a crew who were caning the vineyards across the road from the Mionetti sheep ranch. The Mionettis, an elderly couple born and raised in the valley, had sold the property they hadn’t been using to the winery. Now it seemed as if they were selling tickets to watch Duffy and the other workers.
Cars crowded the Mionettis’ long driveway. Several older residents clustered about. They squinted. They pointed. Eunice waved. Mr. Mionetti dragged out folding lawn chairs. Mrs. Mionetti brought out coffee and what looked like baked goods.
“Get used to it,” Ryan, the assistant winemaker, who was recently out of graduate school, came up to explain. He held a pair of long loppers which he used to clip thicker vines. “We’re entertainment.”
“All we’re doing is cutting the vines back and tying the remaining canes to the trellis system,” Duffy grumbled. There had to be close to twenty people loitering on the Mionettis’ lawn. It was another cold day. The sky was a crisp blue and the air bit at exposed skin. Surely at their ages, they shouldn’t be outdoors.
Ryan shrugged his gangly shoulders. “Nothing much goes on in this town, so anything that does happen is watch-worthy. I’m told I’ll understand it when I’m seventy. But for now, the combination of you and activity in the vineyards? It’s like the Superbowl.”
“More like Mardi Gras.” Duffy turned his back on the spectators and snipped off a vine with his battery-powered pruning sheers. There were eleven men in the vineyard—some cutting, some tying, some throwing cuttings into bins. Usually that meant lots of talking or music being played, but today the audience seemed to have thrown the workers off.
A vehicle backfired.
Rutgar pulled into the vineyard’s dirt driveway in his beat-up green truck, blocking Duffy’s car in. Rutgar lumbered out, a pair of binoculars in hand. He propped his elbows on the hood, and surveyed Duffy and his crew. He was close enough, he could have whispered a question as to how it was going and Duffy would have heard him.
The old man’s arrogance. The town’s fandom. Eunice’s peeping.
Duffy felt his anger rising. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He took a step toward Rutgar, only to be held back by Ryan.
“It’s not worth it,” the younger man said. “You want less attention, you hope someone more interesting comes to town. Or you make close friends with someone who lives here.”
From what Duffy had heard, until the winery began selling wine, the chance of anyone new coming to town was slim. “What do you mean, ‘make close friends’?”
“Pick someone in town. Tell them a few things about yourself. They’ll become the conduit for town gossip and you get left alone.”
Eunice in her pink curlers came to mind. Duffy suppressed a shudder. He’d rather recruit someone to move to town. “Hey, you don’t live in Harmony Valley, do you?”
“I live in Cloverdale.” The younger man’s gaze slid away. “With my parents. Student loans, dude. They’re killer.” And then his trademark smile returned. “My moving here wouldn’t make any difference. I have three fairy godmothers—Agnes, Mildred and Rose.”
With effort, Duffy turned away from Rutgar and his binoculars. “Don’t they feed you lunch?”
“Yep.” Ryan gave a peace sign to the crowd. Appreciative shouts and laughter drifted back on a breeze. “And they do my laundry—which my mother refuses to do anymore.”
Hello, mama’s boy.
Duffy clipped a vine. “You’re quite the chick magnet.”
“I’ll get there. I’d like to be debt-free first.”
Having only recently had his financial burdens lifted, Duffy admired Ryan for that.
“Did you have fun in Vegas last weekend?” Ryan asked.
“Yep.” It had been great to decide Friday afternoon to go somewhere on the spur of the moment. Another few weeks and he’d make another trip somewhere. Anywhere. “I can’t wait to get away again.” Duffy loved the lack of pressing family and financial obligations, embraced the idea of leaving just because he could.
What about Jessica’s baby?
Duffy swept the thought aside. Jessica’s baby wasn’t his responsibility or any of his business.
He, on the other hand, was still at the center of these Harmony Valley residents’ business. Increasingly so, much to his annoyance.
He couldn’t wait for someone new to move to town.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_c4446c28-7a5a-5fb7-b307-30b7e4b10688)
“WHAT’S A LITTLE RAIN?” Jessica asked herself sarcastically as she parked on Harmony Valley’s Main Street on Saturday night. The rain had been coming down steadily for the entire drive. Now it was pouring.
She’d located the restaurant the other day before she left town. There’d been almost no one parked on the street then. Tonight, the diagonal spaces along Main were full. She’d had to find a spot a block away from El Rosal.
“Perfect.” It wasn’t. She hadn’t brought an umbrella. With her baby bump, it was enough that she had to juggle her purse and walk. Adding an umbrella to the mix was a bit much for her equilibrium on a windy night. “So much for doing my hair.” For the first time in months, she’d put her long hair in rollers. It tumbled about her shoulders in soft waves that made her feel more like her nonpregnant self.
She gathered her purse and raised the hood on her jacket. Her girth brushed against the steering wheel. Baby shimmied in a way that made her feel nauseous.
Jess counted to twenty, hoping the nausea would pass and the rain would let up. Her stomach settled. The rain intensified. It was nearly six. She couldn’t sit here any longer.
She pushed open the door. Before her feet so much as swung out of the car, she was wet. Rain plastered her face and lap. She walked with lumbering steps toward El Rosal, feet splashing in barely seen puddles.
The wind practically blew her into the restaurant decorated in an overload of primary colors. Red, yellow, green, blue. Walls, tables, chairs. It looked as loud as it sounded. The place was full. The music was blaring. And so had the conversation been, until everyone turned her way and stopped talking.
Duffy stood at a table by the window, looking glad to see her.
People began whispering, and Duffy frowned, maybe not so glad to see her.
She’d never been good at making a graceful entrance, and tonight was no different. Her hair drooped and as usual she’d been unable to close her jacket. The red maternity sweater over her baby bump was wet and clinging. She met Duffy’s gaze, and gestured toward the ladies’ room.
The bathroom mirror revealed a drowned, pregnant raccoon. She wiped at the mascara beneath her eyes, used the hand dryer to blow most of her hair and the sweater over her belly dry and shook the rest of the water from her coat.
An elderly woman with teased, purplish hair and a kind smile entered the ladies’ room as Jess was finishing. “Hello, sweets. Are you all right?”
“Just a little wet.” Jessica stepped aside so the woman could wash her hands.
“I’m Eunice. Duffy’s next-door neighbor.”
Jessica introduced herself.
Eunice took inventory of Jessica’s clothes and belly, but not in a negative way. “Are you Duffy’s girlfriend?”
“No!” The word burst forth with enough energy to heat Jessica’s cheeks.
Someone knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there?” It was Duffy.
Eunice was still waiting for more of an answer.
“I’m, uh...not his, uh...”
“Jess?” Duffy again. Mr. Persistent.
Jess tried to smile. “I’m sorry... I...uh... I have pregnant brain.”
Eunice’s gray brows puckered together.
“Baby steals my brain cells.”
When Eunice still looked confused, Jessica excused herself and hurried out.
Duffy led her across the dining room, looking small-town hip in work boots, jeans and a forest green Henley. “I saw Eunice follow you in.” He pulled out a chair for Jess. “She can be a bit...overzealous.”
She sat. “Eunice was fine.” It was Jess who’d shouted like an angry cockatoo.
He’d ordered a bottle of beer, and had a glass of water for her. Chips and salsa served as the table’s centerpiece.
“You missed a spot of mascara.” He took a paper napkin and gently wiped at her cheek.
Greg ran the back of his hand across her cheekbone. “So beautiful.”
That was love. That was definitely love.
Jess blinked, as Greg’s face morphed into Duffy’s. “Thank you.”
While he sat, Jess took a moment to look around. The clientele was mostly in their seventies and eighties. They studied her with unabashed curiosity. “Is this seniors’ night?”
“No. This is Harmony Valley, average age seventy-five.” He raised his beer bottle in salute.
“That must make for a swinging singles scene for you.”
He almost smiled. She noted his lips twitching upward before he hid behind his beer.
“Why are they staring at me?” It was beginning to creep Jess out.
“They don’t know you.” He seemed half amused and half annoyed as he leaned closer to the woman at the table next to him, and practically shouted, “This is Jessica. She used to date my brother.”
The woman nodded, smiled at Jess and then addressed the next table over and relayed the news.
Duffy righted himself and lowered his voice. “Sometimes you have to use your outside voice. They don’t always wear their hearing aids.”
Was he joking? “Have you been drinking?”
“This is my second.” Of which he’d drank very little. “I’ve been in town less than a month. I’m still the new guy and a curiosity. Most people who’ve moved here recently are either related to someone or grew up here. In a word, known.” There was a sharpness to his voice that hinted at annoyance. “I’m a stranger. And I don’t talk much.”
He was talking just fine to her. Much better than he had the other day.
“They’re still trying to figure me out.” He raised a hand to acknowledge Eunice, who sat on the opposite side of the room with several other older women—all looking their way. “I caught Eunice peeping into my kitchen window the other morning.”
Jess envisioned Eunice framed in her quaint kitchen window on the other side of a white picket fence. “So your houses are close?”
“Nope. Her nose was pressed against my glass.”
He had to be pulling Jessica’s leg. If so, she was glad. She enjoyed this man more than the one she’d first met. Baby must think so, too. Her little bundle of joy was still.
“And Felix over there.” He tipped his bottle toward a barrel-chested man with what looked like cat hair sprinkled on his black polo shirt. “He’d like me better if I adopted a cat from him.”
That didn’t sound so bad.
Duffy nodded toward the huge man across from Felix. “And Rutgar... I think Rutgar believes I’m the advance wave of a subversive group. I’m surprised he didn’t bring his binoculars to keep a close eye on me tonight.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, it didn’t really start until the day you showed up.” He rubbed his hand back and forth over his hair, unintentionally spiking up the cowlick at his temple. “My coworkers at the winery tell me it’ll pass, but after only a few days, it’s starting to get to me. I don’t share my life with strangers.”
And yet, he’d essentially shared a lot with Jess in the past few minutes.
A fact he apparently realized, since he picked at the label of his beer and mumbled, “I told myself I wouldn’t crack under the pressure.”
Of Jessica’s appearance? Or the town’s nosiness?
The elderly woman at the table next to him reached over to touch his arm. “Duffy, we’re all curious about Jessica’s baby.”
Duffy’s eyebrows lowered to storm-warning levels.
“Due in two months,” Jess said impulsively, adding a smile that felt as fake as the time the bakery circuit breakers had blown and Vera had filled her cookie case with store-bought goods.
Jessica’s smile eased as she faced Duffy. His predicament—or more precisely, the serious import he gave it—was amusing. “So you don’t like them prying.”
“Exactly.” He sank back into his seat. “Have you remembered anything else about Greg?” She could tell by his guarded tone that there were many more questions in the wings. For starters, whether she remembered if he’d swindled her or not.
“Not much.”
Outside, the rain came down harder.
“Well, dinner tonight is my treat.”
My treat.
Another rainy night. A flat tire. Hot coffee. My treat. An irresistible smile.
“Greg stopped to help me with a flat tire in the rain.” Jessica’s hopes floated high with the realization. “A random act of kindness.” If that wasn’t an indication that Duffy’s brother wasn’t a bad man, she didn’t know what was.
“Saw you as an easy mark, no doubt.” Duffy stared out at the rain. “A woman. Alone.”
* * *
DUFFY COULD TELL Jessica didn’t like his assessment of Greg.
Her dark eyes cooled, until they were as cold as the stormy night outside.
Oddly, when she’d come in, he’d felt they were in the same lifeboat in the midst of a graying sea. He’d lowered his guard. Not that it mattered much. After dinner, he and Jess probably wouldn’t see each other again. He’d ask to be notified when the baby was born, but otherwise keep his distance.
“What do you do for a living?” Duffy asked after the waiter came by to take their order.
“I’m a baker.”
Greg’s target of choice had been more established, professional women. Jessica lacked the age and paycheck that Greg had preferred. The good news was that the baby wouldn’t lack for birthday cakes.
Jessica’s gaze had grown distant. “Greg liked things with cream filling. Éclairs. Cream-filled cupcakes. Danish.”
“Yes.” Duffy dipped a chip into the small bowl of salsa. “I don’t doubt you didn’t know him.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m just happy to be remembering.” She had steady, dark brown eyes. Trustworthy eyes. The kind a man could look into all night long while they discussed everything from the latest sports scores to the meaning of life. “I’ll try not to share if it bothers you.”
Her memories didn’t bother him as much as the increasing empathy he felt toward her did. He had no idea if she was running a con or not. Until he knew for sure, he couldn’t afford to feel anything but suspicion. Duffy pushed the small bowl across the table. “Salsa?”
“Baby doesn’t like spicy food.” Jess stared at the bowl, and sighed wistfully. “I miss it.”
“Greg hated spicy food.”
A smile curled slowly on her face. “He did, didn’t he? He was a...meat-and-potatoes man. A griller. He had a barbecue!” This last was announced with as much fervor as a fan announcing a game-winning touchdown.
He compressed his lips to keep from smiling. “Top-of-the-line.” Duffy had sold it. Why had Greg needed a grill that could cook forty burgers at a time? Because Greg only bought the best. “Do you remember the car he drove?”
Her slender brows drew down. “Blue. BMW. It had really stiff seats.” She rubbed her forehead as if her head ached. “Don’t ask me any more questions. Tell me something about Greg’s childhood.” She added quickly, “Something nice.”
That gave Duffy pause. He hadn’t thought about his brother in a kindly way for a long time. “He brought home a puppy once.”
“How sweet. A rescue?” Jessica’s eyes roved across his features and seemed to catalog his movements. She looked at him as if he were precious to her.
He suspected she was trying to see Greg in him. It should have been an intense intrusion. But her searching for Greg in Duffy’s appearance and voice touched him. She believed she’d cared for Greg. Duffy was oddly grateful, because sometimes late at night when he couldn’t sleep, he felt guilty for not mourning his brother more deeply.
“We thought the puppy was a rescue.” Duffy cleared his throat, unexpectedly reluctant to destroy her good opinion of his brother even more. “Turns out Greg stole it from a pet store at the mall.” And had tried to blame Duffy. That had been the beginning of the end of their twin bond.
“I wanted to hear something nice,” Jess chastised softly.
It didn’t escape his notice that she wasn’t arguing the fact that Greg had stolen something.
“There must be some memory,” she prompted in a voice so tender, so full of hope, that disappointing her would have been a crime. “One where you think of him fondly.”
It should have taken longer to dredge up something positive. “We both received model airplanes one Christmas. Our cat knocked mine off a shelf and it broke. Greg gave me his.” Duffy had to force the last words out. “Greg used to be generous like that.”
“A plane.” She beamed at him as if he’d given her an unexpected gift. Candy or flowers or something. “Greg took me to the airport once to...to...” Her smile wavered as she reached for the memory. “To watch the planes take off. He said one day he’d fly away and take me with him.” Her smile wavered. “I bet you think that was a line.”
It was hard to believe Jess was a con artist when she seemed so naive. Duffy hated to disillusion her, and so he chose his next words carefully. “Greg could be kind. And in that moment, he might have meant it.”
Her small smile pleased him. It shouldn’t have. If she wasn’t who she said she was, he was making himself vulnerable, becoming a mark.
It’s only dinner. Then she’ll be gone.
Their food arrived as thunder clapped strong enough to shake El Rosal’s foundation. The room echoed with gasps and expressions of surprise.
Shortly thereafter, the sheriff entered the restaurant, calling for quiet. He was one of the few residents Duffy’s age. “The rain is coming down so fast the roads are beginning to flood, especially on the east side of town near the river and the highway. Cal-Trans has issued a warning about the highway being closed between here and Cloverdale.”
People began asking for checks and reaching for their coats. Duffy exchanged a glance with Jessica.
Hers was worry-filled. “The highway’s closed?”
Duffy shared her concern. He called Sheriff Nate over. “There’s no way to get out of town and back to Santa Rosa?”
“Not tonight. And maybe not tomorrow.” Nate’s expression was grim.
But it wasn’t as grim as Duffy felt. “There’s still no hotel in town?”
Nate shook his head. “I hear the Lambridge sisters want to open a bed-and-breakfast, but they haven’t moved back here yet. Are you looking for a place to stay, Miss...”
“She can stay at my place, Nate.” Duffy’d spoken before he realized what he was saying. Had he been played?
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Jessica protested, all wide-eyed innocence.
“It’s that or the jail,” Nate said, glancing at her baby bump, with much the same bachelor wariness Duffy had felt the first time he’d seen Jess.
“I’ll take her home,” Duffy repeated, trying not to let regret seep into his voice. “Finish your dinner.” Although he’d lost his appetite.
Nate moved on to other tables, making sure people had rides home. Given how hard it was coming down and the way some of the elderly residents were unsteady on their feet, walking in many cases was an accident waiting to happen. The sheriff quickly assigned people that had come on foot into car pools.
Eunice pulled up a chair at their table and smiled triumphantly, like the cat who’d eaten the unsuspecting blue bird of happiness. “The sheriff said you could see me home.”
Thunder boomed above them again. The lights flickered.
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c5e24b44-7f0d-5843-948f-71988213baff)
DUFFY WAS A GENTLEMAN.
Not only had he offered Jess a place to stay, but since he’d walked from his house, he’d asked for Jessica’s keys and braved the rain to bring her car to the restaurant’s front door. Jessica waited in the crowded lobby of El Rosal with Eunice and the rest for vehicles to be brought around, hopeful that being stranded meant Baby would have a positive relationship with Uncle Duffy someday.
The sheriff braved the downpour and as vehicles pulled up, he called out the names of waiting passengers. It wasn’t long before he announced, “Eunice and Jessica.”
Eunice held on to Jessica’s arm as they picked their way through the puddles to Jessica’s car. Rain pelted them in big, angry drops, bouncing off the pavement and back at them.
Duffy was scrunched in the driver’s seat, shoulders hunched and knees bent on either side of the steering wheel. “I couldn’t get the seat to go back any farther,” he admitted when Jess noticed. “Good thing it’s a short drive.”
“The last time this happened was 1992,” Eunice said from the backseat. “The roads were flooded for five days.”
Jessica began to feel foolish for ignoring the flood warnings. She didn’t want to be trapped with Duffy for five days. Not to mention, Vera would fire her.
The rain pounded on the roof and the windshield wipers could barely keep their view clear. Duffy drove slowly, but they still created a wake in the rising water.
“When we get rain, we really get rain,” Eunice was saying over all the storm noise, as if she were their personal tour guide. “Sometimes the rain doesn’t stop for days. The clouds can’t seem to make it past the range that starts with Parish Hill.”
Neither Jessica nor Duffy said a word. She could tell by Duffy’s gripping and regripping the wheel that he was having second thoughts about inviting her to stay since it might be for more than one night.
A turn onto the town square, a turn off the town square and they were at Eunice’s house. Duffy pulled into her driveway.
“Thanks for the ride,” Eunice sing-songed. “I’ll see you in the morning, Jessica.”
“Let’s hope we don’t see her while I’m making coffee,” Duffy muttered after he’d escorted the old woman to her door. He waited until Eunice was safely inside her house with the lights on before backing out and parking Jessica’s car next to his truck.
Duffy’s house was a small, old home with gingerbread gables. Most of it was dark and in shadow. The porch light barely reached beyond the front steps.
He waited in the downpour for Jessica to come around the hood, and then took her arm and led her up the stairs to the door. He paused with his key in the lock, gazing down on her with an endearingly sweet smile she’d never have suspected he possessed. “I can’t remember what state the house is in.”
“I don’t care, as long as it’s dry.” She was wet, and starting to shiver.
He opened the door and turned on a light in the foyer. “Stay here while I do a quick run-through.”
“I’m not Eunice. I won’t snoop to see what’s in your fridge or which magazines you keep in your bathroom.”
“I meant...” His grin turned mischievous, making Baby do an equilibrium-busting tummy flip. “I have a tendency to shed my clothes as I come. I usually leave them on the floor like...um, bread crumbs leading to the shower.”
“By all means, pick up your unmentionables.” Jess removed her jacket, hanging it on a coatrack near the door. Next to go were her wet sneakers. She held the damp sweater away from her skin. Baby was hunkered on her bladder. As soon as Duffy gave the okay, she was restroom bound.
The living room had worn hardwood floors and a fireplace with built-in white bookshelves on either side. Beyond that, the main room was classic, out-of-date bachelor pad—a brown leather couch, a black lacquered coffee table and a television mounted over the mantel. The small oak dining room table beneath the kitchen pass-through was in worse shape than Jessica’s. Nothing was hung on the walls, but photos of people were on a couple of shelves.
At the risk of seeming as nosy as Eunice, Jess moved closer.
There were several photos of an older couple with salt-and-pepper hair. The man was in a wheelchair, and had Duffy and Greg’s dark coloring. The woman had their smile, so rarely seen on Duffy’s face. Sometimes Duffy was in the pictures with them, but never Greg. There was only one picture of Greg. He stood with Duffy in front of a Christmas tree. They might have been eight or nine. Slender bodies, pants that were too short for their long legs and T-shirts they didn’t fill out. They were both grinning and holding baseball mitts.
Duffy wasn’t as heartless as he appeared, which meant neither was Greg. Warmth blossomed in Jessica’s chest.
“All clear.” Duffy returned and removed his boots. “The house is only eight hundred square feet.” He began pointing. “Kitchen that way. The three doors over there are my bedroom, the bathroom and my home office. You can sleep in my room.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Jess sat on it, sinking-sinking-sinking, realizing too late she should have taken a bathroom break first. Otherwise, the sleeping-arrangement standoff was going to be short-lived.
“Yeah. That’s not happening.” The mischievous Duffy had gone, replaced by the resolute man she’d first met. “You’ll take my bed. I’ll change the sheets.”
“No. Really. I’ll be fine right here.” She grunted attractively—not—as she lifted her legs onto the couch. It proceeded to swallow her in the crack. “I couldn’t get up if you asked me to.” But she would if Baby bounced one more time on her bladder.
He leaned on the back of the couch and stared down at her with hauntingly familiar, caramel-colored eyes.
“You were sleeping,” Greg said, leaning on the back of the couch. “I didn’t want to wake you.” She’d reached for him and he’d taken her hand...
“Did you remember something just now?”
“Not enough to be meaningful.” Had she looked at Duffy the way she’d looked at Greg? Her body felt as overheated as an oven set to broil. She tried maneuvering into a more upright sitting position so that Duffy could sit, too. The couch almost won the battle. “Greg had a great couch.” Cup holders and everything.
“Sold it.” Duffy knelt by the fireplace, where there was split wood ready to be lit. Again she noticed his economy of movement, even when he started a fire.
When Greg moved, there’d been bold statements and unleashed energy. There’d been excitement and noise. Drama and passion.
Tired and wet, Jess appreciated Duffy’s calm. “So you went through Greg’s stuff and there was nothing about me?”
“Nope.” He stood, leaning on the mantel and regarding her. Steady. Oh, so steady.
She frowned as an image teased the corners of her mind. “Maybe I’m imagining it, but I think I gave him a picture of us at a...um...a local food festival?”
“Nope,” he said again, not pulling any punches.
The image sharpened. “It might have been in a heart-shaped silver frame. On his mantel.” Or was her memory influenced by the pictures in the room and Duffy next to the fireplace?
“I found a heart-shaped frame, but it was in his desk drawer.” His gaze slid to the pictures on his right. He repositioned the Christmas photo. “The frame was empty.”
Jess felt empty, too, as if someone had carved out her heart. “Why would Greg do that?” she whispered, rubbing her belly, where Baby’s little knee or hip was protruding, creating a numb spot.
Duffy was back to studying her. He would have made a good trial lawyer. “Didn’t you find pictures of you two on your phone or social media?”
“I shut off my social media accounts when I went to culinary school because I didn’t want to be tagged in something that would haunt me later.” The few friends she still had from foster care and high school could be irresponsible and post things that could cost Jess a job. “And since I’ve been on a budget, I’ve had a little cheap phone, nothing fancy.”
“You made it easy for him.” Duffy shook his head. “You said a week before the accident your bank account was drained. Greg probably destroyed everything that tied you two together.”
“I don’t want to believe Greg was like that.” That she’d meant nothing more to him than the money he could take from her.
Duffy sank into the other couch corner, but he was tall and had long legs. He didn’t sink as far as she did. “Why is it so important to you that you meant something to him?”
“Because of Baby. Every child deserves to be loved.” She shifted again, but Baby didn’t like it. A round of kicking ensued, delaying her explanation. “Every baby deserves to be created from love.” Jessica had no clue if she’d been created from love or not. Her mother had abandoned her in a homeless shelter when she was nine.
Duffy stared pensively into the growing flames.
Did he agree? Did he think she was a gullible fool? “Say something.”
“I was just thinking that my parents tried for a long time to have a baby and then they had twins.” His gaze landed on her belly. “Do you want the baby? Are you going to keep it?”
Give up Baby? If she could’ve launched herself out of the couch, she would have. “I’m excited to be a mother. I can’t wait to swaddle this baby with love.”
“But children are such a huge responsibility in terms of time and money.” There was more than a note of caution in his voice. There was certainty. And rejection. But not of her.
“Are you saying you don’t want kids because they’re inconvenient and cost a lot?”
He hesitated, staring at her as if weighing how much he should admit to, and then he nodded.
Jess glanced from the pictures of his family, and then back to him. “You never want kids or a family?”
He didn’t so much as flinch. “I might get married someday, but no. I don’t want any additional responsibilities. I don’t even have a dog.”
“Or a cat,” she murmured, inexplicably saddened. “Why not?”
* * *
BECAUSE DUFFY WANTED a break from responsibility. Permanently.
After fifteen years of struggling to make ends meet, the thought of having a child, of being responsible for another life for eighteen years plus, had Duffy’s muscles drawn tighter than a guide wire strung from post to post in the vineyard.
He didn’t have to answer Jessica, but he felt compelled to.
“When I was fifteen, my dad was in an accident at work. It put him in a wheelchair.” Duffy gestured toward the photos on either side of the fireplace. “He qualified for worker’s compensation. And he got a lawyer who sued the company for a long-term settlement. But it took years for that money to come in. Years.” In the meantime, for a teenager there’d been uncertainty, fear and shame as little by little everything he’d taken for granted had been stripped away—nice clothes, dinners out, the promise of a car when he earned his license. “My mom had to hire someone to care for Dad so she could work. I got a job to help out. And Greg... Well, he always said he had a job, but he never contributed money to the household.” The words stung. “He’d come home with things he’d found ‘by the roadside’—a new television still in the box, a microwave when ours broke. You get the idea.”
Jessica frowned, palms cradling her baby bump.
“When Dad’s settlement finally came in, I was incredibly relieved. I’d been accepted to college and I was on the brink of not going because money was just too tight.” Duffy had lost ten pounds worrying about his future and theirs. “But the check came in. Dad paid for my first semester of college and off I went, leaving my brother behind to take care of them.” Or so he’d hoped.
Jessica bowed her head, as if steeling herself to hear the worst.
“Greg offered to help run the household by paying the bills. Dad gave him access to his accounts. Greg said he had a new job, and he bought a new car. Soon he had the latest cell phone and a new wardrobe.” Duffy swallowed, wishing there was a different ending to the story. He hadn’t been smart enough to protect his parents at eighteen, but he could protect Jess by being honest so she’d never get swindled again. “Greg told my parents he was being sent for training in San Francisco. He left the week before Thanksgiving, and then he disappeared, along with the money in my dad’s bank account.” Duffy couldn’t look at Jess anymore. But he had to finish. She had to know. “We didn’t have a lot to be thankful for that year.”
Jessica sat very still. “He wouldn’t.”
“He did.” Duffy forced himself to meet her gaze, to keep the emotion out of his voice, to pretend he was over Greg’s betrayal. “Dad didn’t believe it, either. He refused to file a police report. He thought it was all a big mistake.” That went on for about a year, until his old man could no longer avoid the truth—Greg was a thief. And not even a principled thief like Robin Hood. “I found a job working at a vineyard and kept going to school. I lived frugally—no cell phone, a car I was constantly working on to keep running, borrowing books from friends taking the same classes. Because my parents still needed financial help.”
Outside, thunder rolled. Inside, a log popped. Between them, tension crackled.
It had to be done. If she continued to romanticize Greg, she’d be an easy mark for the next guy. She had to hear all of it.
“I tried to find Greg after I graduated from college. I never located him, but I learned he was quite the ladies’ man, seducing women and taking their money.” Most of the women had been married and didn’t want to admit they’d been played. “I have no idea why Greg filled out next-of-kin papers on his bank accounts or created a living trust for his assets. That’s the only way we found out he’d died.”
“You really think he stole from me?” she asked in a small voice, staring at her baby bump.
“I know he did.”
“So...” Those dark, trustworthy eyes lifted to his. “Some of the money you recovered could be mine.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5e19d089-6b05-5608-b13e-7527167f39fd)
“I’M NOT ASKING for money,” Jess clarified, not only because she meant it, but because Duffy’s face had pinched and paled. “That’s not why I’m here.”
His features hardened like an overcooked scone. She’d ruined scones, ruined pastry with promise, ruined the fragile fabric of friendships. She’d come to Harmony Valley for her memories. She’d found so much more—the possibility of a family for her little one. She didn’t want to ruin this for Baby.
Jess tried again. “I was only pointing out that if Greg took the money—which I’m sure he didn’t—it would have been in his bank account. I’m not asking for anything. I just want my memories back.”
His cool gaze said he didn’t believe her.
Baby decided her bladder made a lovely pillow, one that needed fluffing. Jess wasn’t feeling fluffy or pillow-soft. She was feeling as cold and hard as a lump of stale brown sugar. “I’ve always made my own way. And I’ve owned up to my mistakes. If what you say is true about Greg...” She paused to adjust how she was sitting, so both she and the baby were comfortable, using the time to remove the note of hysteria from her voice. “It’s a mistake I made.”
“Most people would disagree,” Duffy said, as if aware of the tightrope they were walking with army boots on. “How much money did he take from you?”
Enough to buy a no-frills new car or start a great college fund or allow her to spend several months home after the baby was born. “It doesn’t matter.” The door to resentment, the one filled with embarrassing, hurtful memories of a life with no alternative but charity, banged open. And with that bang came a biting rush of outrage at being thought of as destitute. “I spent nine years living in a foster-care barracks with seven other girls. The woman who asked we call her Mother received a good salary to take care of us.” It hurt to swallow the indignity of being boarded like a dog. There’d been no love, no nurturing, just a head count. “She got a salary. To be called Mother.”
“But how much—”
“I won’t ask you for a cent!” She awkwardly pushed herself to her feet. She’d had enough of relationships measured by dollar signs. If she told Duffy a figure, that’s all she’d be to him, that’s all her child would be to him. “I won’t take your money. I won’t even sleep in your bed tonight. The sheriff mentioned I could sleep at the jail.”
Thunder rolled across the valley. It might as well have been resentment rumbling in her veins.
“Somehow, I don’t think the jail will be as comfortable as my bed.”
“I don’t care.” She was shaking. Her hands, her legs, her voice. “I’ve slept in worse places.” On air mattresses and park benches and concrete floors.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He got to his feet, arms out placatingly.
She didn’t see Duffy. She saw Greg. Heard his voice. Wondered if he’d lied. I need a little money to tide me over. You trust me, don’t you?
Suddenly, Jess didn’t feel as if she’d trusted Greg. But she’d loved him. She just knew. She’d loved him.
“Duffy, I want to look after myself and my baby. And to do that, I can’t blame my situation or my mistakes on someone else. I can’t accept a handout.” Her mother’s face came to mind, thin and taut with worry as she stroked Jessica’s hair that last night at the homeless shelter. You’re a strong girl, Jess. You can make it on your own. Jessica had clung to her mother’s words after she’d disappeared, locked them tight in her heart when times were tough. She stepped around the corner of the couch, nearer the door, nearer the bathroom.
“I never said...” Duffy moved to block her path, looking perplexed. “Can we back up the conversation? To somewhere around the time I invited you to spend the night because the road’s flooded?”
“No.” The bathroom was in her sights and Baby was fluffing the bladder pillow again. “I told myself I’d never be like my mother and walk away from a child because there wasn’t enough money. I work hard so that won’t happen.”
But what if she couldn’t make it work? Vera had already begun asking questions about maternity leave and schedules once she returned. She’d hired Jess out of culinary school, and Jess suspected she was the highest-paid baker of the bunch, the only one with formal training, the only one who didn’t speak Spanish, the only one who didn’t fit in.
The tremble in Jessica’s limbs locked her shoulders back.
Duffy was frowning. His frown conveyed doubt. Not suspicious doubt, but a kind of self-doubt, as if he was questioning what he knew. “I don’t know what went on between you and my brother. I don’t know how he got your money. But one thing I do know. You’re never giving up that baby.”
His words touched her, soothed and comforted. She was no longer shaking, no longer on the defensive.
“So you’ll stay.”
She gave him the stiffest of nods, and then beelined to the bathroom.
* * *
HE’D SAID TOO much about Greg and the assets he’d liquidated after his brother’s death. But other than pointing out the money in Greg’s bank account was most likely hers, Jessica claimed not to want anything from him.
Doubt prickled his insides like a porcupine with raised hackles.
His brain whispered, Don’t believe her. She was in league with Greg.
But there was his heart—the part of him Greg had called soft and sentimental more than once—smoothing the hackles of suspicion: She’s not like Greg.
Duffy changed the sheets on his king-size bed. He used the flannel set his mother had given him for Christmas, the ones he didn’t like because they were too warm. Jess needed something soft and warm tonight. Duffy needed something no one could give him—complete faith in Jessica. He wanted to trust her, but there was Greg and there was a history of lies upon lies, twist-tied with lies.
“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Jess stood in the doorway. Her hands pressed into the small of her back as if it ached. “May I have a pillow and a blanket?”
“No.” Clearly, this woman had developed an independent streak nearly as strong as Duffy’s distrust of Greg. “The pillows and blankets stay in this room.”
“I’m pregnant. Baby can sleep anywhere.” Her smile had a you-should-believe-me quality that Duffy found hard to believe. She hadn’t looked comfortable sitting on the couch. How would she sleep on it?
“If my mother hears I let you sleep on the couch, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Jess hesitated, and then asked in a soft voice, “You’re going to tell her about me?”
“Yes.” He hadn’t thought about it until then, but his parents would want to know. Or at the very least, they should be told. He’d held up on telling them about Jess because he wasn’t sure of her agenda in tracking him down. He was still hesitant about the money, but... “My mom’s going to spoil that kid rotten.”
“Do you think so?” Jessica’s whisper was pockmarked with wonder, thready with hope.
Her reaction made him put on a show of confidence. “Please.” Duffy rolled his eyes for effect. “She points out babies to me like other parents point out good job opportunities.” That much was the truth.
Head bowed, Jess rested her palm on her stomach. “Did you hear that, Baby? Grandparents are in your future.”
For the first time, Duffy understood Jess. She had no parents. She couldn’t remember her baby’s father. She didn’t want to let her child down as her mother had done. What to him was a casual mention of his mother’s involvement was the promise of a special gift to her: family.
He hoped he hadn’t misspoken. He hoped his mother would be excited about the news.
“I’m taking this pillow from the bed for me,” Duffy said carefully. “Don’t get any ideas.”
She blinked at him. But it wasn’t the I’m-remembering-something dazed look he’d seen her get every once in a while. Jess stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. As Duffy, not Greg’s mirror image.
That look registered something deep inside him, something that warmed and eased, something he’d kept locked away and refused to name. A feeling he immediately dismissed.
Because Duffy had sworn off taking on any more responsibility, be it community, friends or family.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_fa71bea2-9aa9-5339-af61-17bc49e86851)
AS SHE PREDICTED, the rain rivaled the storm of 1992. All the roads out of town remained flooded.
Eunice cackled. She was thrilled. Jessica wasn’t leaving today.
Eunice was only being neighborly taking over this warm dish for breakfast. It had nothing to do with uncovering what might or might not have gone on last night. The question burning in her elderly mind was: Whose baby was Jessica’s?
“Eunice.” Duffy opened the door wearing blue jeans, a maroon T-shirt and thick wool socks. He stared down on her with a look that would have chilled younger beings. “What a surprise.”
Eunice blinked at him. See my pretty eyes. Be mesmerized by my pretty eyes. Blink-blink-blink. “I brought breakfast.” She stopped blinking long enough to try to peer around him, but couldn’t see a thing. He hadn’t opened the door very wide and his shoulders were so incredibly broad.
“We had breakfast already.”
“Maybe you’d like this for lunch.” She held the warm casserole dish close to her chest, not wanting to hand it to him and lose the opportunity to come inside. “Why don’t I just put this in the kitchen for you?”
There was a coldness to Duffy’s features this morning, as if he’d awoken from centuries of slumber in a block of ice to find everything around him wasn’t as it once was. “You’re not going to go away, are you?”
His direct question took her by surprise. “I live next door.”
The rain beat steadily while he studied her.
“I mean...” He sighed, rubbing a palm over the dark whiskers covering his chin. “You want to come in. Right now.”
“Thank you for the invitation.” She bumped her arm against the door, causing it to swing open wider. Ducking past him, she headed toward the kitchen, raincoat, rain galoshes and all.
Inside, everything was clean. The kitchen. The stove. The living room. From the kitchen pass-through she could see a folded blanket on top of a pillow on the hearth. Cross out the suspicion that they were lovers. Someone had slept on the couch.
“Where’s Jessica?”
“In the shower.” Duffy raised an eyebrow. “Did you come to see if something was going on?”
“No.” Eunice sniffed. Why did the man always seem to know what she was up to? He’d probably ask her to leave next. “I came to be neighborly.”
“You’re dripping all over my kitchen.” He stared at the trail of water she’d made across his hardwood floor, sighed wearily, and pointed toward the door. “Boots and jacket go in the foyer.”
He was letting her stay? A rush of excitement had Eunice scurrying over to shed her wet things.
Duffy dragged a towel across the hardwood floor with his foot. “How’s that cat?”
“I don’t have a...” Too late, Eunice realized she’d been caught.
“Ah, I got you.” He chuckled, but it was a chilly chuckle. He finished cleaning, sat on his couch and picked up the remote.
Shoot-shoot-shoot. “I had a cat. Once.”
His television was tuned to one of those sports news channels that didn’t interest Eunice. The sound was muted, but by the way his thumb roved the remote, she could tell he wanted to turn it back on. Instead, he said, “Cats are independent creatures. Did it run away because it wanted privacy?”
Annoyance elbowed aside the embarrassment Eunice had been feeling. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.” Didn’t he know how to be a good neighbor?
“I’m not in a very nice mood in the mornings, Eunice, not until I’ve had more than one cup of coffee.” A mug rested on the black lacquered coffee table.
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Melinda Curtis
For better or worse, she's family nowDuffy Dufraine just found out he's going to be an uncle. Jessica Aguirre came to Harmony Valley in search of the father of her unborn child, which is by no means him. An accident may have damaged the expectant mom's memory, but he knows his twin is the man she's looking for. But Greg's gone, which leaves Duffy the only family Jess has. And he has to make things right. Offering her a temporary place to stay seems an ideal short-term solution. Until she stirs desires that make the embattled vineyard manager rethink his own long-term game plan. Is he ready to offer Jess and her baby a home to call their own—with him?
For better or worse, she’s family now
Duffy Dufraine just found out he’s going to be an uncle. Jessica Aguirre came to Harmony Valley in search of the father of her unborn child, which is by no means him. An accident may have damaged the expectant mom’s memory, but he knows his twin is the man she’s looking for. But Greg’s gone, which leaves Duffy the only family Jess has. And he has to make things right. Offering her a temporary place to stay seems an ideal short-term solution. Until she stirs desires that make the embattled vineyard manager rethink his own long-term game plan. Is he ready to offer Jess and her baby a home to call their own—with him?
Jess rested her palm on her stomach.
“Did you hear that, Baby?” she asked. “Grandparents are in your future.”
For the first time, Duffy understood Jess. She had no parents. She didn’t want to let her child down as her mother had. What to him was a casual mention of his mother’s involvement was the promise of a special gift to her: family.
“I’m taking this pillow from the bed for me,” Duffy said carefully. “Don’t get any ideas.”
She blinked at him. But it wasn’t the I’m remembering something dazed look he’d seen her get every once in a while. Jess looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. As Duffy, not Greg’s mirror image.
That look touched something deep inside him, something that warmed and eased, something he’d kept locked away and refused to name.
Dear Reader (#ulink_4850fbd1-0e4f-527e-af08-a7da18e782ba),
Welcome to Harmony Valley!
Things aren’t as harmonious here as they once were. Jobs have dried up and almost everyone under the age of sixty has moved away in the past ten years, leaving the population...well...rather gray-haired and peaceful.
But things are changing since three hometown boys made good. They’ve returned home, started a winery, and now the economy is inching its way forward.
Jessica Aguirre has come to town, but not for a job. She’s looking for someone from her past, someone who might help her remember. When she sees a photo of Michael “Duffy” Dufraine in a local newspaper, she’s convinced he has the answers she’s seeking. Duffy is afraid he knows the answers, but Jessica won’t want to hear the truth.
I hope you enjoy Jessica and Duffy’s journey, as well as the other romances in the Harmony Valley series. I love to hear from readers. Check my website to learn about upcoming books, sign up for email book announcements (and I’ll send you a free sweet romantic comedy read), or chat with me on Facebook (MelindaCurtisAuthor (https://www.facebook.com/MelindaCurtisAuthor)) or Twitter (MelCurtisAuthor (https://twitter.com/MelCurtisAuthor)) to hear about my latest giveaways.
Melinda
MelindaCurtis.com (http://melindacurtis.net)
A Memory Away
Melinda Curtis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling author MELINDA CURTIS lives in California’s arid Central Valley with her husband, an ancient Labrador, a “Shorkie” princess and a cat who would be queen of them all. Their three kids are all in college (not in California) so you’re more likely to see posts regarding Melinda’s pets than her kids on social media (for which her progeny are thankful).
Melinda enjoys putting humor into her stories, because that’s how she approaches life. She writes sweet contemporary romances as Melinda Curtis (Brenda Novak says of Season of Change, “found a place on my keeper shelf”), and fun, steamy reads as Mel Curtis (Jayne Ann Krentz says of Cora Rules, “wonderfully entertaining”).
The premise of this story was born at a bar with senior editor Victoria Curran and polished from the brilliance of Kathryn Lye (thanks, ladies!). Margie Lawson challenged me to bring more quirk to Harmony Valley (thank you, Margie!). And Mr. Curtis literally kept me fed as I put the finishing touches on it (thanks for letting me have the “Follow your instincts” fortune cookie fortune, babe, even though that isn’t really a fortune).
Contents
Cover (#u12727141-9304-5e6a-aa1f-6ce4a820df7f)
Back Cover Text (#u48e7b040-ab3f-53e7-834e-096c06732258)
Introduction (#u54d59cd7-91ec-5696-b2dd-777148ddaa78)
Dear Reader (#uf70bf21d-30b1-57bb-a7c0-eb6db860bf23)
Title Page (#u1ee7f450-d069-50be-ba07-b2f980481e72)
About the Author (#u3d52cb2d-9231-59f9-a6bd-10ca1eabcaa9)
Dedication (#u2e57e68f-b6c1-58da-ba28-4c2eea617f43)
CHAPTER ONE (#ue29439d1-080e-54a0-8d16-c69c1ca404ad)
CHAPTER TWO (#u11d7a9fa-20a6-59d4-9a0c-545e655b7397)
CHAPTER THREE (#uf08bc1fe-4591-5aa6-9000-ccbb79c6c59d)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ufbe0b2d7-b5f9-502f-9100-1547aa631b85)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ud8699992-f7af-5dda-a401-804377c887e3)
CHAPTER SIX (#u4da41c5a-d282-5e3f-9073-887e520fa94e)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u3a45b725-ed4e-5e3b-8d40-6cece0c34e68)
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)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8226f66a-3d52-5fce-b94c-bd6f683c33c8)
DID HE LOVE ME?
Jessica Aguirre didn’t know if he loved her. She didn’t know if he knew her.
She stood on a gravel drive in the midst of a vineyard in Harmony Valley. Heart pounding. Head pounding.
Did he love me?
The man in the photograph would tell her.
Jess clutched a newspaper photo, and stared at the group of men and women in front of a two-story farmhouse with a vintage weather vane. There was a man in the back row on the left. He was the one.
She recognized him right away. Recognized dark hair with a curl at his temple. Recognized a straight, no-nonsense nose. Recognized caramel-colored eyes. Those eyes. If only she could remember...
What if it wasn’t him? What if this was a dead end? What if...?
Jess drew a steadying breath against the panic rising in her chest and lifted her gaze to the well-looked-after farmhouse. The day the picture had been taken there’d been big fluffy clouds in the sky above the cupola. Today the sky was clear and blue. The late January air was crazy cold, stinging Jessica’s toes in her sneakers.
The slender woman who’d greeted Jess on this Monday morning hurried down the front porch steps. “He’ll be here in a few minutes. Come inside the tasting room.” Christine was the winemaker for the newly opened Harmony Valley Vineyards, which was headquartered in the farmhouse, the subject of the newspaper article, and where he worked. Christine’s carefree smile told Jess the woman had never lost a moment, a day or weeks from her past. “We have all the amenities inside—hot tea, a bathroom and a place to sit down.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.” Jessica resisted glancing at the clipping again. Would her unannounced appearance be welcome? Or create mayhem?
“It’s no trouble. You’re no trouble.” Christine had the kind of smile that invited you to relax, to open up, to be part of the family. “Come inside. It’s cold out here.”
It was cold. Jessica’s jacket wouldn’t zip up anymore. And family...
In no time, Jessica was sitting at a table cradling a cup of hot tea. The tasting room was elegant in a simple way that fit the farmhouse. Dark wood, intimate tables for two, out-of-Jessica’s-price-range granite slabs on bar tops. But the room was oddly empty.
“Where’s the wine?”
Christine followed the direction of Jessica’s curious gaze to the bare shelves behind the bar. “Barrel aging. I’ll be blending some for limited release soon. But most of our harvest will age another year.”
“Aging wine is all about patiently waiting, isn’t it? Even when you don’t know how it will turn out.” Jessica had become good at biding her time. “Making wine is like waiting for bread dough to rise.” Or babies to be born.
“Exactly.” With a contented sigh, Christine’s gaze lingered on the room as if seeing it filled with bottles of her making.
Outside, the wind whistled past, drawing Jessica to the window in time to see a muddy gray truck pull into the gravel drive.
“There he is.” Christine gave Jessica’s shoulder a sisterly squeeze, and then headed toward the door. “I’ll be upstairs if you need anything.”
Did he love me?
A man got out of the truck. Dark hair. Straight nose. Familiar eyes.
It’s him.
She leaned forward, peering through the paned glass, her heart sailing toward him, over ever-hopeful waves of roses and rainbows.
Jess didn’t usually let herself dream. But now...today...him...
And yet...
He wore a burgundy vest jacket that clashed with a red long-sleeve T-shirt. Worn blue jeans. A black baseball cap.
Instead, she saw him in a fine wool suit. Black, always black. A navy shirt of the softest cotton. A silk tie in a geometric pattern. Shiny Italian loafers...
He took the stairs two at a time, work boots ringing on wood.
Jessica’s heart sank as certainly as if someone had drilled holes in the boat carrying her hopeful emotions. Clouds blocked the sun. The rainbow disappeared. Unwilling to sink, Jess clung to joy. To the idea of him.
He entered without a flourish or an energetic greeting. He entered without the smile that teased the corners of her memory. He entered and took stock of the room, the situation, her.
Their eyes met. His were the same color, same shape, so heart-achingly familiar.
It was the cool assessment in them that threw her off. Not a smile, not a brow quirk, not an eye crinkle.
He came forward. “I’m Michael Dufraine, but everyone calls me Duffy.”
His name didn’t ring true.
Had he lied to her?
She couldn’t speak, could barely remember her name.
The wind shook the panes. The house creaked and groaned.
He smiled. A polite smile, a distant smile, an I-don’t-know-you smile.
Disappointment overwhelmed her. Jess resisted the urge to dissolve into a pity puddle on the floor.
“And you are...?” He extended his hand.
On autopilot, she reached for him. Their palms touched.
Jessica’s vision blurred and she gripped his hand tighter as clips of memory assailed her—his deep laughter, him offering her a bite of chocolate cheesecake, his citrusy cologne as he leaned in to kiss her.
It is him.
Relieved. She was so relieved. Jessica blinked at the man—Duffy—who she vaguely recalled and, at the same time, did not.
She’d practiced what to say on the hour-long drive up here from Santa Rosa. Ran through several scenarios. None of them had included him not recognizing her.
She should start at the beginning. Best not to scare him with hysterics and panicked accusations, of which she’d had five months to form.
Don’t raise your voice. Don’t cry. Don’t ask why.
And don’t lead the conversation with the elephant in the room.
Despite all the cautions and practicing and caveats, she drew a breath, and flung her hopes toward him as if he were her life preserver. “I think I’m your wife.”
* * *
DUFFY RELEASED THE woman’s hand as if he’d accidentally grabbed a rattlesnake. “I’m not married.” And he’d sure as hell remember if he had been.
“Or I was... Or I was your girlfriend...maybe?” She glanced down at her belly. Her very pregnant belly.
Holy in-need-of-a-handrail.
Duffy sat down heavily across from her, still chilled from the winter cold. Chilled now to the bone. “I haven’t... You couldn’t...” He swiped a hand over his face, very much aware that his boss was upstairs and the walls in the century-old house were very thin. “Who are you?”
“Jessica... Jess Aguirre.” There was a quiet beauty about her. Long dark hair, big dark eyes, a smooth olive-skin complexion. Many women shared her physical features. Few carried themselves with a combination of contained dignity and edge-of-her-seat intensity. “You...um...don’t know me?”
“You or your passenger.”
Reality was returning. He could see it in her face. Jessica seemed stricken that she wasn’t his significant other, but otherwise she appeared stable. She didn’t wield a knife, didn’t draw a gun, and she wasn’t screaming to high heaven that he should know who she was.
“But...you have to know me.” Jessica leaned over the table—or as far as she could with that baby bump—and whispered, “We’ve kissed and...” She glanced at her stomach.
And here Duffy had thought he’d taken care of all of his brother’s loose ends. “I’m not Greg.”
“Greg.” She murmured his brother’s name, then repeated it—stronger.
“My twin.” Duffy took out his wallet and handed her a picture he’d only recently started carrying—him and Greg before a Little League game.
She placed the photo on the table next to a crumpled newspaper clipping of the winery staff, her smile as soft as morning dew on a grape leaf. “Greg.” She said the name as if testing it with her tongue and finding it acceptable.
He felt compelled to explain. “We were identical.”
“Were?”
“He died nearly six months ago.”
“No.” She moved a hand to her belly.
“Struck by lightning.” Yes, there was a God. Although, “He was killed instantly and didn’t suffer.” Duffy was proud of the detached way he delivered the news. His brother had been a greedy piece of trash, which some siblings may have forgiven, but not when the target was Mom and Dad. “So if you’re looking for the man who did you wrong, it was him.” Duffy gazed out at the cold, dormant vineyard, which felt much like his heart. “My brother was no saint.”
“I don’t believe that.” She slid Duffy’s picture across the table. “Or you wouldn’t be carrying his photo.”
He wasn’t going to rehash the painful details of his life with this stranger. “Why are you here?”
Jessica closed her eyes. “I came looking for closure.”
“Did Greg steal from you?” The question had to be asked, and he didn’t hide the bitterness. Greg had taken every penny of their parents’ retirement fund. Luckily, Greg hadn’t spent it all before he died. “Did he promise you he’d love you until the end of time?”
“I... I... I can’t remember.”
* * *
HE WAS DEAD.
Whatever Jess had been expecting to find by coming here, it hadn’t been this.
He was dead.
Whoever Greg had been.
He was dead.
There’d be no tearful reunions, no admissions of mistakes, no offered apologies. How foolish she’d been to expect to show up here and find a man who loved her, one who’d fall to his knees as he held her hands and begged for forgiveness.
Sadness for Greg’s death mired her insides, more for her baby—who’d never know his or her father—than for the man she barely remembered. It seemed wrong somehow. The day. The news. The man she was left facing.
The baby kicked her ribs.
“What does that mean?” Duffy asked, pulling her back to the present. “You can’t remember.”
Flashes of memory shuttered in her head with every word Duffy uttered, every shrug of his shoulders, every nuanced flick of his brow. His face was austere, where Greg’s had been amiable. His eyes were care-lined where Greg’s had been carefree. And the clash of burgundy vest with a red-sleeved T-shirt? Greg would never have paired those two colors. Of that, she was certain.
“I was in a car accident five months ago.” Jessica dropped her gaze to her baby barge, needing to swallow twice before she could get more words out. “I have retrograde amnesia. I can remember growing up. I can remember how to make sugar cookies from scratch.” She swallowed again. “But I haven’t been able to remember anything about my baby’s father.” She couldn’t even remember whether they’d once been married or in love. “Not until I saw you.”
“So Greg’s the father?” Even Duffy’s voice was different. His words spoken slower. His tone deeper and filled with cynicism.
“I’m certain of it...now.” She took a drink of her once-hot tea, feeling as cold as the green beverage. How much should she tell Duffy? He wasn’t coming across as the most supportive listener. But what had she to lose by holding back? “You seem so familiar. I remember you kissing me—”
“Greg,” he inserted tersely, staring at her hard. Not only had Greg been unwelcome here, Jess was, as well.
She strengthened her voice. She’d lived too long without answers to walk away from his obstinacy. “I remember us—him and I—laughing.” It was hard to imagine her laughing with Duffy.
“Well, I’m glad he made someone happy.” He’d perfected that unforgiving look.
Greg, what did you do? “But...you were twins...brothers. You didn’t get along?”
“Greg would steal the belt from your waist if he could make a buck off it.” So much anger. It vibrated in the air between them, pressing her back as if he’d pushed her.
Snatches of images. Smiles and laughter. Tender touches and endearing words. She couldn’t believe Duffy’s opinion of Greg. Still, doubt crept up her throat, closing it off.
“Greg took all your money, didn’t he?”
So much weariness in his tone.
It weighed on Jess. She’d felt burdened for so long, she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
It couldn’t have been Greg who’d taken her money. There’d been love between them. She just knew it. Every time she began to question it, a feeling of love would rise up. That feeling was conspicuously absent today. “I can’t prove he took anything.”
“Fess up. There’s something missing.” His gaze probed for the truth, but there was a reluctant slant to his eyes, as if he didn’t want to know.
I’m so sorry, Baby. Jessica’s hand drifted to her stomach. “The only thing I know is that a week before the accident, my bank account was drained.”
“He did it.” Duffy was maddeningly certain.
Jessica shook her head when instead she wanted to shake him. “I can’t be certain of that.”
“I am. I know my brother better than anyone.” His lips pinched upward at the corners, so tense she wouldn’t have called it a smile. “Twins, remember?”
She didn’t want to believe him. There were the recently remembered smiles and kisses.
Duffy stood. His gaze cut toward the door. His feet pointed that way, as well. “Sorry about the memory thing, but I need to get back to work.”
She should never have gotten her hopes up. She should have accepted that the father of her baby was gone and his family wouldn’t want anything to do with her. Being unwanted was her reality.
But something inside of her wouldn’t settle. Not this time. “Wait. Can I see you again?” At his frown, she rushed on. “I’ve recovered quite a bit today just by listening to you talk. For five months, I’ve had nothing.” Desperation seized her and squeezed. “Please. It’s important to me that I remember.”
His jaw worked. He didn’t look at Jess. Clearly, he didn’t want to see her again and be reminded of Greg. But his hesitation meant he wasn’t as cold and uncaring as he might want her to believe. That perhaps somewhere in that closed-off heart of his were memories of Greg he cherished.
Above them, the ceiling creaked.
“There’s no point.” But he didn’t leave or ask her to go.
Hope flooded her chest. “There is. There’s every point. Up until today, I couldn’t remember how I got pregnant. If I’d been abandoned by my husband or raped...” Steady, girl. She squared her shoulders. “I grew up without knowing my father, not even his name. All I’m asking for is a little of your time.”
“I know I’m going to regret this—”
“You won’t.” Jessica gathered her things, anxious to leave before he changed his mind.
“Come back Saturday at six. There’s a restaurant in town, El Rosal. I’ll be having dinner there.” She wasn’t entirely sure she’d heard him because it sounded as if he’d added the words Whether you’re there or not.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e65cfc1a-2650-5937-aca1-cc7360bbd0e7)
THE ONLY THING worse than finding out your brother had left a bun in the oven? Duffy’s new boss hearing all about it. At least Ryan, the assistant winemaker, was off today.
“Sorry for the lack of privacy. That was pretty heavy.” Christine stood in the doorway between the tasting room and the kitchen. “How are you doing?”
Duffy shrugged, watching Jessica walk to her car with carefully measured steps. She tugged the ends of her jacket, trying unsuccessfully to wrap them around her belly, hunching her shoulders against the cold.
So frail. So fragile. Duffy wanted to believe her.
She didn’t remember Greg? How was that possible?
Christine came to stand next to him. “I’m not sure how I’d react to knowing I was going to have a niece or nephew soon.”
I’m going to be an uncle.
Duffy hadn’t processed Jessica’s news in that light. He’d been blindsided by her presence and her pregnancy and her claims of amnesia. He supposed that as the child’s uncle, he had a responsibility—to be a fatherly influence since Greg wasn’t around, to teach the little tyke how to throw a ball and swing a bat, to make sure the kid had some money socked away for college.
Money?
Recently buried worries resurfaced in his gut, sour and unpleasant.
After Greg swindled their parents, Duffy had helped support them. Since Greg’s death, he’d sold and liquidated all his twin’s assets, and given everything to his mom and dad. He’d set them up in a senior living apartment complex, one that could help his mother take care of his wheelchair-bound father. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Duffy’s paycheck was his own. His weekends were his own. His life was his own. All because of the money Greg left behind.
Did Jessica and her baby deserve a share of Greg’s money?
Morals dictated he give Jessica something. But what if she was lying? What if she was exactly like Greg?
Jessica drove away in a dinged and dented four-door sedan. Everything about her said trust me. That’s how he’d felt about Greg, too.
His gut continued its churning. Duffy couldn’t shake off the feeling of being sucked back into a Greg-induced vortex of financial folly.
Trust Jessica? Give her money? She claimed she had amnesia. Greg would have told her that was a hard scam to sell. And Greg had been the king of con artists.
Christine glanced up at him. “You think she’s lying.” It wasn’t a question.
“You know how when you meet someone you give them the benefit of the doubt? How you trust what they tell you is the truth?”
“Yes.”
“You could never trust a word that came out of my brother’s mouth.” Duffy barely recognized his own voice. It was as thick with emotion as the day he’d learned of Greg’s death. “If she and Greg...”
“Don’t judge her so quickly,” Christine said. “If only for the baby’s sake.”
Duffy nodded, but the desire to convict outweighed the compulsion to trust.
Thankfully, Christine’s work ethic intruded. “You mentioned on the phone that you wanted to show me something.”
He had. “Let’s take a drive.” He needed a distraction and he needed to show Christine the extent of the threat on the hill.
The winery had recently purchased several small vineyards around town, ones that had been lying idle and untended for years. One of their properties was on the slopes of Parish Hill and might have a problem. As the winery’s newly hired and first-ever vineyard manager, it was Duffy’s responsibility to restore the vineyards to optimal production.
A few minutes later, Duffy drove them down Main Street. There was little traffic. With a population just reaching one hundred, and barely twenty of those residents below the age of sixty-five, there weren’t many cars around.
Nearly two decades ago, the largest employer in town had burned to the ground. Younger Harmony Valley residents had moved closer to civilization, leaving the town on the brink of extinction. And then three local boys made it big in the dot-com world, returned home to decompress and decided to save the town by starting a winery. The jury was still out on the saving part, but those employed at the winery were optimistic.
“It’s sad about Jessica, isn’t it?” Christine waved to the elderly barber, standing on scarecrow-like limbs in front of his shop.
“I suppose.” Duffy drove slowly around the town square with its ancient oak tree, and took the turn toward Parish Hill and its steep switchbacks.
“I was trying to imagine how I’d feel if I couldn’t recall a part of my life. It must be frustrating and terrifying not remembering who the baby’s father is.” How quickly Jess had pulled Christine into her camp. A strike against her.
Duffy navigated a tight turn. “Can we talk about work?” Always? He liked to keep his private life separate from his professional life.
“You’re one of the few people in town who doesn’t want me to stop talking about the winery.” There was no change in Christine’s voice. No indication that she felt snubbed by his request. “Promise me you’ll never change.”
“Never.” Of course, she might not like what he was about to tell her.
Duffy turned onto a dirt road that led to a small vineyard clinging to the hillside. According to their records, the Cabernet Sauvignon vines had originally been planted in the 1990s. Their trunks were thick and twisted. Duffy parked and led Christine down the vine-tangled hill. The vineyard had shriveled, unharvested grape clusters on the ground.
He stopped at the bottom row of leafless, wintery plants. “Look at this. See how these vines have produced fewer shoots and canes than the next row up?”
“Yes.” Christine’s gaze moved with a scientist’s deliberation. “What do you think? Soil composition? Water drainage?”
“It could be those things. But we also have to consider leaf roll virus.” A grapevine disease that delayed maturity and lowered grape yield. Saying it out loud was like telling a child there would be no Christmas this year.
Christine didn’t like the news. She frowned and shook her head several times before she said anything. And when she did speak, her tone had the serious quality of a winemaker twice her age. “You can’t know that. You’d either have to see it in their leaves come spring or have tested the vines.”
“True.” But he knew the signs, had seen them on his last job, where the winery owners hadn’t wanted to hear the news, either. “Look at this.” He crouched next to the rotted remains of a withering grape cluster. “There are others like it all along this row.” He moved to a row farther up the hill, carefully making his case. “Now look at this cluster.”
“Almost twice the size,” she murmured. Then she shook her head again. “Leaf roll has never been documented in Harmony Valley.”
“I was exactly where you are. Drainage, incline of the hill, even the fact that these vines haven’t been harvested or trimmed back in years.” Duffy tugged on a bare branch. It snapped free, another indication of the poor health of the vines, weakened by years of drought. “I had Ryan pull the data. The last row was planted ten years ago after a fire destroyed part of the vineyard. I couldn’t find any confirmation of it being certified virus-free stock.” He tossed the vine to the ground. “I’d rather err on the side of caution, wouldn’t you?”
After a moment, Christine nodded. “We should test for red blotch disease, too.”
“Agreed.” She’d taken the news better than he’d expected.
They hiked up the hill, the biting wind at their backs.
“I walked the vineyard last fall when we decided to expand.” Christine paused on a rise to take in the rest of the area, sounding resigned, as if she were to blame. “But I can’t remember going that deep into the rows.”
“It’s okay. Maybe I’m wrong.” Duffy prayed it was so.
“If they are diseased,” she said softly, more to herself than to him, “we’ll have to take them out right away. Both leaf roll and red blotch dilute the taste of the grape.” Christine opened the truck door and inspected the bottom of her boots one at a time. “Check for bugs on the bottom of your shoes. Mealy bugs—”
“Spread the disease,” Duffy finished for her, already examining the crevices in his boot lugs. He added in a neutral tone, “You hired me because I know things like this.”
“I’m sorry. It’s a shock.” Her apology was as arrow-straight as the worry furrowing her brow.
“With your approval, we’ll have Ryan take samples and send them to the lab.”
A beat-up green truck backfired as it trundled down the dirt road behind them.
“Rutgar,” Christine said. “I...uh...told you about him, right?”
Sounded like she hadn’t told him enough. “Used to own this property. Likes to know what’s going on.”
“Everyone in town is a bit of a gossip,” she said apologetically. “It’s not something I divulge during a job interview. You’re in the grace period of being new to town.” Christine hesitated, and then her smile turned as apologetic as her tone. “Or you were. Now that Rutgar’s showed up... Well, let’s just say folks’ curiosity can sometimes be trying. Be patient with them. They mean well. And they grow on you.” She quickly transformed into a confident, friendly winemaker greeting the previous owner. “Rutgar! What a surprise.”
A bear-sized man stood beside a rusted truck fender. His gray-blond hair hung inches from his chin and draped thickly across his shoulders like a long, matted mane. “What are you two doing out here?” His accent was European. All he needed was chain mail and a sword to carry off the Viking vibe. “That’s the second time I’ve seen this one up here today.”
This one being Duffy. “We’re discussing the condition of the vines.” Duffy didn’t feel comfortable sharing his suspicions. Instead, he introduced himself. Duffy wasn’t a small man, but Rutgar’s hand swallowed his.
“I want to be informed about what goes on. This is my land—”
“Was.” Christine stepped up to hug Rutgar. “Was your land. You sold it to me, remember?”
“I sold it to your fiancé.” The older man made a noise that sounded like a territorial growl. “I live on top of the hill. Everything that goes on here is my business.”
“Of course, it is,” Christine soothed. “And just so you’re aware, there’ll be workers up here sometime in the next few weeks.”
Rutgar’s sharp blue eyes narrowed. “Workers won’t go any farther than this driveway.”
“The view from the top is spectacular.” Following Christine’s lead, Duffy kept his voice kiss-butt polite. “You can see the entire valley. Why limit access on a public road?”
“Because the top of Parish Hill is my home.” Rutgar’s features twisted into something no one would call a smile. It involved drawn-back lips and bared teeth. “I’ve seen you up there wasting the nice lady’s time.”
“Surveying the land.” Duffy’s patience held. Barely. “It’s easier to keep all the properties straight with a view from above.”
“Wasting time,” Rutgar scoffed. “Winemaking takes months and years, and a lot of effort.”
As did placating former landowners. “Since you’re so interested in what’s going on, can I count on you to help cane?” Given the vineyard hadn’t been cut back in what looked like nearly a decade, Duffy was betting the answer was no.
“You can count on him to watch,” Christine ribbed.
Rutgar shook a finger the size of a sausage at her. “I like you.”
“You’ll like him, too.” Christine gave Rutgar’s shoulder a gentle nudge that didn’t move the large man an inch. “Now back out. We’ve got other vineyards to inspect.”
* * *
“HOW DID IT go yesterday?” Vera yelled over the sound of the mixer’s grinding motor.
It was 4:00 a.m. and the owner of Vera’s Bakery in Santa Rosa was preparing the batter for red velvet cupcakes. They sold hundreds of them in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. The large industrial kitchen was already filled with welcoming, sugary smells from cinnamon rolls and various breads and cookies of all kinds. At the next worktable, several bakers were chattering in Spanish. Jessica’s maternal grandparents had emigrated from Mexico, but Jess didn’t speak more than a handful of words in their native tongue.
Normally, Jess couldn’t wait to begin baking. Contributing to a busy kitchen always made her feel as if she belonged. Not today. Today she felt as if she’d never belong. Not with her coworkers, not with Greg’s family, not with anyone.
“Did you find your baby daddy?” Vera’s white hairnet covered her unnaturally red hair like snow on a high desert mountain.
“He’s dead.” Jess was saddened by Greg’s death. Sad, yes, but since her memories of him were like dandelion fluffs on the wind, it was a detached sadness. If they’d been in love, wouldn’t she feel broken?
For what must have been the thousandth time since she’d woken up in the hospital after the accident, Jess wondered if her baby was a creation of love. But now the wonder-train was on a new track.
What if Duffy’s words were true? What if Greg had used her?
What if? What if? What if? She was at square one again. Too many questions. Too few answers.
“Your baby daddy’s a deadbeat?” Vera shouted, sending her dangling silver cupcake earrings swinging over the tattoo of a rose on her neck.
“No. He’s dead.”
“What?” Vera promptly switched off the mixer and came around to Jessica’s side of the prep table. “Dead? So who was the guy in the photo?”
“His twin brother. Duffy.” His handsome and bitter twin brother.
Vera’s brows shot up accusingly. “You’re sure he didn’t just make up the twin angle? Some guys will do anything to avoid paying child support.”
Jess tied her apron on as she weighed what she’d been told. The man she’d hoped she might be in love with wasn’t Duffy. She was sure of that. “I believe him.”
“That’s a shame. If you can’t find a baby daddy, you’ll need a sugar daddy.” Vera shook a finger in Jessica’s face and asked her something in Spanish she didn’t understand. When Jess stared at her blankly, Vera said, “How can you raise a child alone? Without a man’s steady head and regular paycheck?”
“Women raise kids by themselves all the time.” Jess was more interested in providing Baby with family roots than a secure bank account—although that would be nice, not to mention having a father figure around.
“Yes, but women shouldn’t bring up babies alone. You’re a smart girl. All you need to complete the package is to learn your native tongue to catch a good man.” Her smile and nod indicated Jess was this close to attracting the right guy. “Smart girls always find sugar daddies.”
“I’d just like to find my memories,” Jess said.
Vera muttered in Spanish again and then stared at Jess as if she were a problem child. “I said memories won’t keep you warm at night, but maybe your baby’s uncle can.”
“I have an electric blanket,” Jess deadpanned. “And to be clear, even though I’m having dinner with Duffy this weekend in Harmony Valley, I am not planning on a brother swap so that I can have an insurance policy.”
“You should listen to me. I know what I’m talking about.” Vera laughed and turned on her loud mixer. “You be careful driving out there. Big storm coming in with flooding predicted. It’s bad enough you’ll be on leave soon. I need you every day until that baby is born.”
Given Harmony Valley was sixty miles northeast and at a different elevation, Jessica wasn’t worried about the weather. That was days away. Storms sped up or slowed down, and forecasters often predicted flooded roads during rainstorms and nothing ever happened. Jessica hadn’t seen any roads under significant water since she’d moved to Santa Rosa from Sacramento last summer.
No. Jessica was more concerned with Duffy. Was he going to show up for their dinner? And could his presence help reveal more of her lost memories?
Would she ever know if Greg had loved her?
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_6181b63b-729e-5881-bbf1-bbf506f26f19)
“HOW CAN I tell you this, Eunice?”
Eunice Fletcher braced herself because Agnes Villanova—town councilwoman, president of Harmony Valley’s widows club, manager of the boutique the women in town ran and general town cog—was often the bearer of bad news.
“Who died?” Eunice clutched the yellow cotton pieces of a baby quilt she’d been cutting when Agnes stopped by her house. “Mildred? It was Mildred who died, wasn’t it?” Another town councilwoman.
“Mildred is fine. It’s—”
“It’s Rose.” The third councilwoman. It’d been years since a spot on the council had opened up. “I knew the poor dear was on her last legs mentally.”
“Rose is fine. Sharper than ever.” Agnes ran a hand through her pixie-cut gray hair, and pressed her lips together as if trying to stop herself from saying more.
“Quit beating around the bush and tell me who died. I’m very busy here.” Stitching quilt pieces together at the window that faced the old Reedley place. The two-bedroom bungalow next door was being rented by one of those winery employees. A tall fellow named Duffy, who rose early, made eggs for breakfast with a sprinkle of cheese and liked cream in his coffee.
“It’s you, Eunice. I came to talk about you.”
The yellow blocks fell to Eunice’s lap. “I’m not dying.”
Agnes sighed. “It’s about you.”
Eunice stacked the blocks on top of each other, smoothing out the creases with her liver-spotted fingers. “You need to work on your delivery, Agnes. I thought someone had died again.” Mae Gardner had recently passed. Eunice hadn’t even realized Mae was sick. “What about me?”
“It’s your baby quilts.”
“Are they selling? I’m making them as fast as I can.” She’d make them faster if Duffy was home more often. Sewing gave her an excuse to sit by the window.
“Maybe you should slow down.” Agnes pulled the pink sunflower quilt Eunice had made from her tote and unfolded it. “We can’t sell a baby quilt with Frankenstein stitches.”
Eunice squinted at where Agnes pointed to the fabric. “Frankenstein stitches,” she harrumphed. “Have you seen the way my corners meet? They’re perfect. And my stitches are wonderful.” Her grandmother had taught her how to sew by hand, back before they made fancy machines.
“You can’t see your stitches, can you?”
Eunice didn’t want to admit she couldn’t. The comment about Frankenstein hurt.
A truck pulled into the driveway next door. Agnes turned, blocking Eunice’s view.
“Is that Duffy?” Eunice craned her neck. “His license plate has two eights at the end.”
Agnes gave Eunice a chastising look over her shoulder. “How can you see across the yard and not see the stitches on your quilt? Have you tried reading glasses?”
Eunice suppressed a gasp. “No one in my family has ever needed glasses.” The Fletcher women were beauties, every one.
“You can deny needing glasses all you want—”
“And I will.”
“But until your stitches improve, I need you to make something else for the shop.” Mae’s Pretty Things was a boutique that carried handmade gifts for the tourists, the ones everyone was sure would start showing up soon. Or as soon as there was wine to sell.
Eunice narrowed her eyes. “What other things?”
“That’s why I’m here. To see what other things you can make that aren’t sewn together.”
If that wasn’t the most infuriating statement. “I don’t make other things. I sew.” Over the years, she and Mae had stitched together everything from pot holders to placemats.
“Eunice, you taught kindergarten and youth Bible study. You have to be crafty to have worked with kids all those years.”
And she had been. “We colored. We finger-painted. We glued things.” Not fine art by any means, but it qualified as crafty.
Agnes frowned. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Eunice looked at the sunflower quilt block she’d meticulously pieced together. The corners were square. The angles perfect. She’d never worn glasses in her life. “You want something else? I can color you a picture with crayons. Or create turkey portraits made from painted handprints. Or glue Popsicle picture frames decorated with colored glitter.”
“You need glasses.” Agnes’s words were as short as she was.
“I’m not going to hide my eyes behind a pair of homely frames.” Her mother would spin in her grave at the thought.
“Don’t be vain, Eunice.”
Too late. “My cousin Kim had a great body. My sister Julia had beautiful red hair. Kim gained weight. Julia went gray. But I still have my peepers.” Eunice had violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor. And Eunice was still alive. “My eyes are my best feature. Everyone says so.” She’d made a good living modeling with those peepers. She wasn’t about to cover them up.
“And yet you can’t see.” There was sarcasm in her friend’s words. And impatience. And exasperation. “I’m not asking you to wear glasses all the time. Just when you’re sewing. I’d rather have one of your quilts to sell than an arts-and-crafts picture frame.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Agnes carefully folded the baby quilt and set it in Eunice’s lap. “I’ll make an appointment for you with my eye doctor in Cloverdale. In the meantime, you can borrow my reading glasses and see if that helps.” She dug in her tote and handed Eunice a pair of black rectangular frames.
Eunice accepted them with a two-finger hold, as if they were slimy creatures who might sting. “They’re—”
“Hideous. Yes, I know. But they work. Put them on and see for yourself.”
Reluctantly, Eunice did as Agnes asked, but not before looking up to see if Thelma across the street was sitting at her front window. Thankfully, she wasn’t. Glasses on, Eunice glanced down at the pink baby quilt. The stitches were monstrous. “Blast.”
“Exactly.”
* * *
DUFFY PREPARED HIS coffee by the small light over the stove. He hadn’t slept well. Thoughts of Greg’s baby and Jessica had him counting alarm-clock clicks.
He was thickheaded tired. But it was a workday. He’d rely on his morning ritual to get him going. Drag himself out of bed, check; grind fresh coffee beans, check; make a pot of coffee, check; and stand there waiting for it to brew. The standing and waiting was a waste of time, but he liked not doing anything. He liked the quiet. He liked—
Snap.
Duffy startled. The two-bedroom Craftsman house was ninety years old and prone to the creaks and groans of an older property in California. But this wasn’t a creak or a groan, and it had come from outside.
His entire body tensed as he strained to identify the sound over the hiss of the coffeemaker.
Thunk.
Duffy’s gaze cut to the kitchen window. There was movement. A blur of movement. And eyes. Bloodshot, beady eyes.
Later, Duffy couldn’t recall if he’d released a primal yell or an unintelligible curse, but the kitchen reverberated with sound.
A face pressed to the bottom of the glass. Pale, wrinkled, with grayish-purple-tinged hair in pink curlers. It was his neighbor Eunice. No doubt on her tiptoes considering the house sat on a raised foundation.
Duffy charged toward the front door, grabbing a sweatshirt he’d left on the living room couch.
It was still dark outside. The sky above Parish Hill was tinged orange. Streetlights flickered off as an older woman in a white flowered housecoat and fuzzy pink slippers ran across his driveway.
“Eunice!”
She froze at the hedges marking the property boundary. Shoulders hunched, rollers trembling.
Duffy reminded himself that he was new to a town full of curious old folk. He reminded himself that Eunice was more than a bit of an odd duck. She’d brought him a brussels sprouts, chocolate and bacon casserole as a housewarming gift, and practically done inventory on his belongings. He reminded himself to be patient as he tried to modulate his tone, tried to ignore a voice in his head pointing out he slept in the buff in the hot summer months. “Can I help you with something, Eunice?”
“I was...” She turned around slowly. Her gaze dropped to the Hawaiian boxers his mother had given him last year and then flew back up to his face. “I was just looking for my cat.”
“You don’t have a cat.” There was a man in town who rescued cats. He’d been by a couple of times already to see if Duffy was interested in adopting one, and he’d been vocal in his disappointment that Eunice wasn’t a cat lover.
“I...uh...heard a cat.”
“Eunice.” Over the past few days, he’d been badgered about his past (met with dead silence), his love life (met with deadlier silence) and had his small sack of groceries inspected (met with near-dead patience). And now this.
His toes were frozen. The cold nipped at his restraint. It must be barely forty degrees. It wasn’t good for either one of them to be out here half-dressed. “I’m not an interesting man. I make coffee in the morning. I go to work. I come home at night and make dinner. You know all that.” He’d caught her looking out her window at him a few times.
She tried to laugh. It sounded as fake as he suspected it to be. “You think that I...” Ha-ha-ha. “It was the cat.” That was her story and she was sticking to it.
“Whatever.” He wasn’t winning this battle. “Be careful looking for whatever it is you’re looking for. If you fall in my yard while I’m in the shower...”
Her cheeks reddened, then she mumbled something he didn’t catch and hurried into her dark house.
He’d checked out several homes before deciding on this one. Duffy was only renting with the option to buy the place. It’d suck to move again so soon, but he didn’t relish living next door to Peeping Eunice.
* * *
LATER IN THE DAY, Duffy was managing a crew who were caning the vineyards across the road from the Mionetti sheep ranch. The Mionettis, an elderly couple born and raised in the valley, had sold the property they hadn’t been using to the winery. Now it seemed as if they were selling tickets to watch Duffy and the other workers.
Cars crowded the Mionettis’ long driveway. Several older residents clustered about. They squinted. They pointed. Eunice waved. Mr. Mionetti dragged out folding lawn chairs. Mrs. Mionetti brought out coffee and what looked like baked goods.
“Get used to it,” Ryan, the assistant winemaker, who was recently out of graduate school, came up to explain. He held a pair of long loppers which he used to clip thicker vines. “We’re entertainment.”
“All we’re doing is cutting the vines back and tying the remaining canes to the trellis system,” Duffy grumbled. There had to be close to twenty people loitering on the Mionettis’ lawn. It was another cold day. The sky was a crisp blue and the air bit at exposed skin. Surely at their ages, they shouldn’t be outdoors.
Ryan shrugged his gangly shoulders. “Nothing much goes on in this town, so anything that does happen is watch-worthy. I’m told I’ll understand it when I’m seventy. But for now, the combination of you and activity in the vineyards? It’s like the Superbowl.”
“More like Mardi Gras.” Duffy turned his back on the spectators and snipped off a vine with his battery-powered pruning sheers. There were eleven men in the vineyard—some cutting, some tying, some throwing cuttings into bins. Usually that meant lots of talking or music being played, but today the audience seemed to have thrown the workers off.
A vehicle backfired.
Rutgar pulled into the vineyard’s dirt driveway in his beat-up green truck, blocking Duffy’s car in. Rutgar lumbered out, a pair of binoculars in hand. He propped his elbows on the hood, and surveyed Duffy and his crew. He was close enough, he could have whispered a question as to how it was going and Duffy would have heard him.
The old man’s arrogance. The town’s fandom. Eunice’s peeping.
Duffy felt his anger rising. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He took a step toward Rutgar, only to be held back by Ryan.
“It’s not worth it,” the younger man said. “You want less attention, you hope someone more interesting comes to town. Or you make close friends with someone who lives here.”
From what Duffy had heard, until the winery began selling wine, the chance of anyone new coming to town was slim. “What do you mean, ‘make close friends’?”
“Pick someone in town. Tell them a few things about yourself. They’ll become the conduit for town gossip and you get left alone.”
Eunice in her pink curlers came to mind. Duffy suppressed a shudder. He’d rather recruit someone to move to town. “Hey, you don’t live in Harmony Valley, do you?”
“I live in Cloverdale.” The younger man’s gaze slid away. “With my parents. Student loans, dude. They’re killer.” And then his trademark smile returned. “My moving here wouldn’t make any difference. I have three fairy godmothers—Agnes, Mildred and Rose.”
With effort, Duffy turned away from Rutgar and his binoculars. “Don’t they feed you lunch?”
“Yep.” Ryan gave a peace sign to the crowd. Appreciative shouts and laughter drifted back on a breeze. “And they do my laundry—which my mother refuses to do anymore.”
Hello, mama’s boy.
Duffy clipped a vine. “You’re quite the chick magnet.”
“I’ll get there. I’d like to be debt-free first.”
Having only recently had his financial burdens lifted, Duffy admired Ryan for that.
“Did you have fun in Vegas last weekend?” Ryan asked.
“Yep.” It had been great to decide Friday afternoon to go somewhere on the spur of the moment. Another few weeks and he’d make another trip somewhere. Anywhere. “I can’t wait to get away again.” Duffy loved the lack of pressing family and financial obligations, embraced the idea of leaving just because he could.
What about Jessica’s baby?
Duffy swept the thought aside. Jessica’s baby wasn’t his responsibility or any of his business.
He, on the other hand, was still at the center of these Harmony Valley residents’ business. Increasingly so, much to his annoyance.
He couldn’t wait for someone new to move to town.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_c4446c28-7a5a-5fb7-b307-30b7e4b10688)
“WHAT’S A LITTLE RAIN?” Jessica asked herself sarcastically as she parked on Harmony Valley’s Main Street on Saturday night. The rain had been coming down steadily for the entire drive. Now it was pouring.
She’d located the restaurant the other day before she left town. There’d been almost no one parked on the street then. Tonight, the diagonal spaces along Main were full. She’d had to find a spot a block away from El Rosal.
“Perfect.” It wasn’t. She hadn’t brought an umbrella. With her baby bump, it was enough that she had to juggle her purse and walk. Adding an umbrella to the mix was a bit much for her equilibrium on a windy night. “So much for doing my hair.” For the first time in months, she’d put her long hair in rollers. It tumbled about her shoulders in soft waves that made her feel more like her nonpregnant self.
She gathered her purse and raised the hood on her jacket. Her girth brushed against the steering wheel. Baby shimmied in a way that made her feel nauseous.
Jess counted to twenty, hoping the nausea would pass and the rain would let up. Her stomach settled. The rain intensified. It was nearly six. She couldn’t sit here any longer.
She pushed open the door. Before her feet so much as swung out of the car, she was wet. Rain plastered her face and lap. She walked with lumbering steps toward El Rosal, feet splashing in barely seen puddles.
The wind practically blew her into the restaurant decorated in an overload of primary colors. Red, yellow, green, blue. Walls, tables, chairs. It looked as loud as it sounded. The place was full. The music was blaring. And so had the conversation been, until everyone turned her way and stopped talking.
Duffy stood at a table by the window, looking glad to see her.
People began whispering, and Duffy frowned, maybe not so glad to see her.
She’d never been good at making a graceful entrance, and tonight was no different. Her hair drooped and as usual she’d been unable to close her jacket. The red maternity sweater over her baby bump was wet and clinging. She met Duffy’s gaze, and gestured toward the ladies’ room.
The bathroom mirror revealed a drowned, pregnant raccoon. She wiped at the mascara beneath her eyes, used the hand dryer to blow most of her hair and the sweater over her belly dry and shook the rest of the water from her coat.
An elderly woman with teased, purplish hair and a kind smile entered the ladies’ room as Jess was finishing. “Hello, sweets. Are you all right?”
“Just a little wet.” Jessica stepped aside so the woman could wash her hands.
“I’m Eunice. Duffy’s next-door neighbor.”
Jessica introduced herself.
Eunice took inventory of Jessica’s clothes and belly, but not in a negative way. “Are you Duffy’s girlfriend?”
“No!” The word burst forth with enough energy to heat Jessica’s cheeks.
Someone knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there?” It was Duffy.
Eunice was still waiting for more of an answer.
“I’m, uh...not his, uh...”
“Jess?” Duffy again. Mr. Persistent.
Jess tried to smile. “I’m sorry... I...uh... I have pregnant brain.”
Eunice’s gray brows puckered together.
“Baby steals my brain cells.”
When Eunice still looked confused, Jessica excused herself and hurried out.
Duffy led her across the dining room, looking small-town hip in work boots, jeans and a forest green Henley. “I saw Eunice follow you in.” He pulled out a chair for Jess. “She can be a bit...overzealous.”
She sat. “Eunice was fine.” It was Jess who’d shouted like an angry cockatoo.
He’d ordered a bottle of beer, and had a glass of water for her. Chips and salsa served as the table’s centerpiece.
“You missed a spot of mascara.” He took a paper napkin and gently wiped at her cheek.
Greg ran the back of his hand across her cheekbone. “So beautiful.”
That was love. That was definitely love.
Jess blinked, as Greg’s face morphed into Duffy’s. “Thank you.”
While he sat, Jess took a moment to look around. The clientele was mostly in their seventies and eighties. They studied her with unabashed curiosity. “Is this seniors’ night?”
“No. This is Harmony Valley, average age seventy-five.” He raised his beer bottle in salute.
“That must make for a swinging singles scene for you.”
He almost smiled. She noted his lips twitching upward before he hid behind his beer.
“Why are they staring at me?” It was beginning to creep Jess out.
“They don’t know you.” He seemed half amused and half annoyed as he leaned closer to the woman at the table next to him, and practically shouted, “This is Jessica. She used to date my brother.”
The woman nodded, smiled at Jess and then addressed the next table over and relayed the news.
Duffy righted himself and lowered his voice. “Sometimes you have to use your outside voice. They don’t always wear their hearing aids.”
Was he joking? “Have you been drinking?”
“This is my second.” Of which he’d drank very little. “I’ve been in town less than a month. I’m still the new guy and a curiosity. Most people who’ve moved here recently are either related to someone or grew up here. In a word, known.” There was a sharpness to his voice that hinted at annoyance. “I’m a stranger. And I don’t talk much.”
He was talking just fine to her. Much better than he had the other day.
“They’re still trying to figure me out.” He raised a hand to acknowledge Eunice, who sat on the opposite side of the room with several other older women—all looking their way. “I caught Eunice peeping into my kitchen window the other morning.”
Jess envisioned Eunice framed in her quaint kitchen window on the other side of a white picket fence. “So your houses are close?”
“Nope. Her nose was pressed against my glass.”
He had to be pulling Jessica’s leg. If so, she was glad. She enjoyed this man more than the one she’d first met. Baby must think so, too. Her little bundle of joy was still.
“And Felix over there.” He tipped his bottle toward a barrel-chested man with what looked like cat hair sprinkled on his black polo shirt. “He’d like me better if I adopted a cat from him.”
That didn’t sound so bad.
Duffy nodded toward the huge man across from Felix. “And Rutgar... I think Rutgar believes I’m the advance wave of a subversive group. I’m surprised he didn’t bring his binoculars to keep a close eye on me tonight.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, it didn’t really start until the day you showed up.” He rubbed his hand back and forth over his hair, unintentionally spiking up the cowlick at his temple. “My coworkers at the winery tell me it’ll pass, but after only a few days, it’s starting to get to me. I don’t share my life with strangers.”
And yet, he’d essentially shared a lot with Jess in the past few minutes.
A fact he apparently realized, since he picked at the label of his beer and mumbled, “I told myself I wouldn’t crack under the pressure.”
Of Jessica’s appearance? Or the town’s nosiness?
The elderly woman at the table next to him reached over to touch his arm. “Duffy, we’re all curious about Jessica’s baby.”
Duffy’s eyebrows lowered to storm-warning levels.
“Due in two months,” Jess said impulsively, adding a smile that felt as fake as the time the bakery circuit breakers had blown and Vera had filled her cookie case with store-bought goods.
Jessica’s smile eased as she faced Duffy. His predicament—or more precisely, the serious import he gave it—was amusing. “So you don’t like them prying.”
“Exactly.” He sank back into his seat. “Have you remembered anything else about Greg?” She could tell by his guarded tone that there were many more questions in the wings. For starters, whether she remembered if he’d swindled her or not.
“Not much.”
Outside, the rain came down harder.
“Well, dinner tonight is my treat.”
My treat.
Another rainy night. A flat tire. Hot coffee. My treat. An irresistible smile.
“Greg stopped to help me with a flat tire in the rain.” Jessica’s hopes floated high with the realization. “A random act of kindness.” If that wasn’t an indication that Duffy’s brother wasn’t a bad man, she didn’t know what was.
“Saw you as an easy mark, no doubt.” Duffy stared out at the rain. “A woman. Alone.”
* * *
DUFFY COULD TELL Jessica didn’t like his assessment of Greg.
Her dark eyes cooled, until they were as cold as the stormy night outside.
Oddly, when she’d come in, he’d felt they were in the same lifeboat in the midst of a graying sea. He’d lowered his guard. Not that it mattered much. After dinner, he and Jess probably wouldn’t see each other again. He’d ask to be notified when the baby was born, but otherwise keep his distance.
“What do you do for a living?” Duffy asked after the waiter came by to take their order.
“I’m a baker.”
Greg’s target of choice had been more established, professional women. Jessica lacked the age and paycheck that Greg had preferred. The good news was that the baby wouldn’t lack for birthday cakes.
Jessica’s gaze had grown distant. “Greg liked things with cream filling. Éclairs. Cream-filled cupcakes. Danish.”
“Yes.” Duffy dipped a chip into the small bowl of salsa. “I don’t doubt you didn’t know him.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m just happy to be remembering.” She had steady, dark brown eyes. Trustworthy eyes. The kind a man could look into all night long while they discussed everything from the latest sports scores to the meaning of life. “I’ll try not to share if it bothers you.”
Her memories didn’t bother him as much as the increasing empathy he felt toward her did. He had no idea if she was running a con or not. Until he knew for sure, he couldn’t afford to feel anything but suspicion. Duffy pushed the small bowl across the table. “Salsa?”
“Baby doesn’t like spicy food.” Jess stared at the bowl, and sighed wistfully. “I miss it.”
“Greg hated spicy food.”
A smile curled slowly on her face. “He did, didn’t he? He was a...meat-and-potatoes man. A griller. He had a barbecue!” This last was announced with as much fervor as a fan announcing a game-winning touchdown.
He compressed his lips to keep from smiling. “Top-of-the-line.” Duffy had sold it. Why had Greg needed a grill that could cook forty burgers at a time? Because Greg only bought the best. “Do you remember the car he drove?”
Her slender brows drew down. “Blue. BMW. It had really stiff seats.” She rubbed her forehead as if her head ached. “Don’t ask me any more questions. Tell me something about Greg’s childhood.” She added quickly, “Something nice.”
That gave Duffy pause. He hadn’t thought about his brother in a kindly way for a long time. “He brought home a puppy once.”
“How sweet. A rescue?” Jessica’s eyes roved across his features and seemed to catalog his movements. She looked at him as if he were precious to her.
He suspected she was trying to see Greg in him. It should have been an intense intrusion. But her searching for Greg in Duffy’s appearance and voice touched him. She believed she’d cared for Greg. Duffy was oddly grateful, because sometimes late at night when he couldn’t sleep, he felt guilty for not mourning his brother more deeply.
“We thought the puppy was a rescue.” Duffy cleared his throat, unexpectedly reluctant to destroy her good opinion of his brother even more. “Turns out Greg stole it from a pet store at the mall.” And had tried to blame Duffy. That had been the beginning of the end of their twin bond.
“I wanted to hear something nice,” Jess chastised softly.
It didn’t escape his notice that she wasn’t arguing the fact that Greg had stolen something.
“There must be some memory,” she prompted in a voice so tender, so full of hope, that disappointing her would have been a crime. “One where you think of him fondly.”
It should have taken longer to dredge up something positive. “We both received model airplanes one Christmas. Our cat knocked mine off a shelf and it broke. Greg gave me his.” Duffy had to force the last words out. “Greg used to be generous like that.”
“A plane.” She beamed at him as if he’d given her an unexpected gift. Candy or flowers or something. “Greg took me to the airport once to...to...” Her smile wavered as she reached for the memory. “To watch the planes take off. He said one day he’d fly away and take me with him.” Her smile wavered. “I bet you think that was a line.”
It was hard to believe Jess was a con artist when she seemed so naive. Duffy hated to disillusion her, and so he chose his next words carefully. “Greg could be kind. And in that moment, he might have meant it.”
Her small smile pleased him. It shouldn’t have. If she wasn’t who she said she was, he was making himself vulnerable, becoming a mark.
It’s only dinner. Then she’ll be gone.
Their food arrived as thunder clapped strong enough to shake El Rosal’s foundation. The room echoed with gasps and expressions of surprise.
Shortly thereafter, the sheriff entered the restaurant, calling for quiet. He was one of the few residents Duffy’s age. “The rain is coming down so fast the roads are beginning to flood, especially on the east side of town near the river and the highway. Cal-Trans has issued a warning about the highway being closed between here and Cloverdale.”
People began asking for checks and reaching for their coats. Duffy exchanged a glance with Jessica.
Hers was worry-filled. “The highway’s closed?”
Duffy shared her concern. He called Sheriff Nate over. “There’s no way to get out of town and back to Santa Rosa?”
“Not tonight. And maybe not tomorrow.” Nate’s expression was grim.
But it wasn’t as grim as Duffy felt. “There’s still no hotel in town?”
Nate shook his head. “I hear the Lambridge sisters want to open a bed-and-breakfast, but they haven’t moved back here yet. Are you looking for a place to stay, Miss...”
“She can stay at my place, Nate.” Duffy’d spoken before he realized what he was saying. Had he been played?
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Jessica protested, all wide-eyed innocence.
“It’s that or the jail,” Nate said, glancing at her baby bump, with much the same bachelor wariness Duffy had felt the first time he’d seen Jess.
“I’ll take her home,” Duffy repeated, trying not to let regret seep into his voice. “Finish your dinner.” Although he’d lost his appetite.
Nate moved on to other tables, making sure people had rides home. Given how hard it was coming down and the way some of the elderly residents were unsteady on their feet, walking in many cases was an accident waiting to happen. The sheriff quickly assigned people that had come on foot into car pools.
Eunice pulled up a chair at their table and smiled triumphantly, like the cat who’d eaten the unsuspecting blue bird of happiness. “The sheriff said you could see me home.”
Thunder boomed above them again. The lights flickered.
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c5e24b44-7f0d-5843-948f-71988213baff)
DUFFY WAS A GENTLEMAN.
Not only had he offered Jess a place to stay, but since he’d walked from his house, he’d asked for Jessica’s keys and braved the rain to bring her car to the restaurant’s front door. Jessica waited in the crowded lobby of El Rosal with Eunice and the rest for vehicles to be brought around, hopeful that being stranded meant Baby would have a positive relationship with Uncle Duffy someday.
The sheriff braved the downpour and as vehicles pulled up, he called out the names of waiting passengers. It wasn’t long before he announced, “Eunice and Jessica.”
Eunice held on to Jessica’s arm as they picked their way through the puddles to Jessica’s car. Rain pelted them in big, angry drops, bouncing off the pavement and back at them.
Duffy was scrunched in the driver’s seat, shoulders hunched and knees bent on either side of the steering wheel. “I couldn’t get the seat to go back any farther,” he admitted when Jess noticed. “Good thing it’s a short drive.”
“The last time this happened was 1992,” Eunice said from the backseat. “The roads were flooded for five days.”
Jessica began to feel foolish for ignoring the flood warnings. She didn’t want to be trapped with Duffy for five days. Not to mention, Vera would fire her.
The rain pounded on the roof and the windshield wipers could barely keep their view clear. Duffy drove slowly, but they still created a wake in the rising water.
“When we get rain, we really get rain,” Eunice was saying over all the storm noise, as if she were their personal tour guide. “Sometimes the rain doesn’t stop for days. The clouds can’t seem to make it past the range that starts with Parish Hill.”
Neither Jessica nor Duffy said a word. She could tell by Duffy’s gripping and regripping the wheel that he was having second thoughts about inviting her to stay since it might be for more than one night.
A turn onto the town square, a turn off the town square and they were at Eunice’s house. Duffy pulled into her driveway.
“Thanks for the ride,” Eunice sing-songed. “I’ll see you in the morning, Jessica.”
“Let’s hope we don’t see her while I’m making coffee,” Duffy muttered after he’d escorted the old woman to her door. He waited until Eunice was safely inside her house with the lights on before backing out and parking Jessica’s car next to his truck.
Duffy’s house was a small, old home with gingerbread gables. Most of it was dark and in shadow. The porch light barely reached beyond the front steps.
He waited in the downpour for Jessica to come around the hood, and then took her arm and led her up the stairs to the door. He paused with his key in the lock, gazing down on her with an endearingly sweet smile she’d never have suspected he possessed. “I can’t remember what state the house is in.”
“I don’t care, as long as it’s dry.” She was wet, and starting to shiver.
He opened the door and turned on a light in the foyer. “Stay here while I do a quick run-through.”
“I’m not Eunice. I won’t snoop to see what’s in your fridge or which magazines you keep in your bathroom.”
“I meant...” His grin turned mischievous, making Baby do an equilibrium-busting tummy flip. “I have a tendency to shed my clothes as I come. I usually leave them on the floor like...um, bread crumbs leading to the shower.”
“By all means, pick up your unmentionables.” Jess removed her jacket, hanging it on a coatrack near the door. Next to go were her wet sneakers. She held the damp sweater away from her skin. Baby was hunkered on her bladder. As soon as Duffy gave the okay, she was restroom bound.
The living room had worn hardwood floors and a fireplace with built-in white bookshelves on either side. Beyond that, the main room was classic, out-of-date bachelor pad—a brown leather couch, a black lacquered coffee table and a television mounted over the mantel. The small oak dining room table beneath the kitchen pass-through was in worse shape than Jessica’s. Nothing was hung on the walls, but photos of people were on a couple of shelves.
At the risk of seeming as nosy as Eunice, Jess moved closer.
There were several photos of an older couple with salt-and-pepper hair. The man was in a wheelchair, and had Duffy and Greg’s dark coloring. The woman had their smile, so rarely seen on Duffy’s face. Sometimes Duffy was in the pictures with them, but never Greg. There was only one picture of Greg. He stood with Duffy in front of a Christmas tree. They might have been eight or nine. Slender bodies, pants that were too short for their long legs and T-shirts they didn’t fill out. They were both grinning and holding baseball mitts.
Duffy wasn’t as heartless as he appeared, which meant neither was Greg. Warmth blossomed in Jessica’s chest.
“All clear.” Duffy returned and removed his boots. “The house is only eight hundred square feet.” He began pointing. “Kitchen that way. The three doors over there are my bedroom, the bathroom and my home office. You can sleep in my room.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Jess sat on it, sinking-sinking-sinking, realizing too late she should have taken a bathroom break first. Otherwise, the sleeping-arrangement standoff was going to be short-lived.
“Yeah. That’s not happening.” The mischievous Duffy had gone, replaced by the resolute man she’d first met. “You’ll take my bed. I’ll change the sheets.”
“No. Really. I’ll be fine right here.” She grunted attractively—not—as she lifted her legs onto the couch. It proceeded to swallow her in the crack. “I couldn’t get up if you asked me to.” But she would if Baby bounced one more time on her bladder.
He leaned on the back of the couch and stared down at her with hauntingly familiar, caramel-colored eyes.
“You were sleeping,” Greg said, leaning on the back of the couch. “I didn’t want to wake you.” She’d reached for him and he’d taken her hand...
“Did you remember something just now?”
“Not enough to be meaningful.” Had she looked at Duffy the way she’d looked at Greg? Her body felt as overheated as an oven set to broil. She tried maneuvering into a more upright sitting position so that Duffy could sit, too. The couch almost won the battle. “Greg had a great couch.” Cup holders and everything.
“Sold it.” Duffy knelt by the fireplace, where there was split wood ready to be lit. Again she noticed his economy of movement, even when he started a fire.
When Greg moved, there’d been bold statements and unleashed energy. There’d been excitement and noise. Drama and passion.
Tired and wet, Jess appreciated Duffy’s calm. “So you went through Greg’s stuff and there was nothing about me?”
“Nope.” He stood, leaning on the mantel and regarding her. Steady. Oh, so steady.
She frowned as an image teased the corners of her mind. “Maybe I’m imagining it, but I think I gave him a picture of us at a...um...a local food festival?”
“Nope,” he said again, not pulling any punches.
The image sharpened. “It might have been in a heart-shaped silver frame. On his mantel.” Or was her memory influenced by the pictures in the room and Duffy next to the fireplace?
“I found a heart-shaped frame, but it was in his desk drawer.” His gaze slid to the pictures on his right. He repositioned the Christmas photo. “The frame was empty.”
Jess felt empty, too, as if someone had carved out her heart. “Why would Greg do that?” she whispered, rubbing her belly, where Baby’s little knee or hip was protruding, creating a numb spot.
Duffy was back to studying her. He would have made a good trial lawyer. “Didn’t you find pictures of you two on your phone or social media?”
“I shut off my social media accounts when I went to culinary school because I didn’t want to be tagged in something that would haunt me later.” The few friends she still had from foster care and high school could be irresponsible and post things that could cost Jess a job. “And since I’ve been on a budget, I’ve had a little cheap phone, nothing fancy.”
“You made it easy for him.” Duffy shook his head. “You said a week before the accident your bank account was drained. Greg probably destroyed everything that tied you two together.”
“I don’t want to believe Greg was like that.” That she’d meant nothing more to him than the money he could take from her.
Duffy sank into the other couch corner, but he was tall and had long legs. He didn’t sink as far as she did. “Why is it so important to you that you meant something to him?”
“Because of Baby. Every child deserves to be loved.” She shifted again, but Baby didn’t like it. A round of kicking ensued, delaying her explanation. “Every baby deserves to be created from love.” Jessica had no clue if she’d been created from love or not. Her mother had abandoned her in a homeless shelter when she was nine.
Duffy stared pensively into the growing flames.
Did he agree? Did he think she was a gullible fool? “Say something.”
“I was just thinking that my parents tried for a long time to have a baby and then they had twins.” His gaze landed on her belly. “Do you want the baby? Are you going to keep it?”
Give up Baby? If she could’ve launched herself out of the couch, she would have. “I’m excited to be a mother. I can’t wait to swaddle this baby with love.”
“But children are such a huge responsibility in terms of time and money.” There was more than a note of caution in his voice. There was certainty. And rejection. But not of her.
“Are you saying you don’t want kids because they’re inconvenient and cost a lot?”
He hesitated, staring at her as if weighing how much he should admit to, and then he nodded.
Jess glanced from the pictures of his family, and then back to him. “You never want kids or a family?”
He didn’t so much as flinch. “I might get married someday, but no. I don’t want any additional responsibilities. I don’t even have a dog.”
“Or a cat,” she murmured, inexplicably saddened. “Why not?”
* * *
BECAUSE DUFFY WANTED a break from responsibility. Permanently.
After fifteen years of struggling to make ends meet, the thought of having a child, of being responsible for another life for eighteen years plus, had Duffy’s muscles drawn tighter than a guide wire strung from post to post in the vineyard.
He didn’t have to answer Jessica, but he felt compelled to.
“When I was fifteen, my dad was in an accident at work. It put him in a wheelchair.” Duffy gestured toward the photos on either side of the fireplace. “He qualified for worker’s compensation. And he got a lawyer who sued the company for a long-term settlement. But it took years for that money to come in. Years.” In the meantime, for a teenager there’d been uncertainty, fear and shame as little by little everything he’d taken for granted had been stripped away—nice clothes, dinners out, the promise of a car when he earned his license. “My mom had to hire someone to care for Dad so she could work. I got a job to help out. And Greg... Well, he always said he had a job, but he never contributed money to the household.” The words stung. “He’d come home with things he’d found ‘by the roadside’—a new television still in the box, a microwave when ours broke. You get the idea.”
Jessica frowned, palms cradling her baby bump.
“When Dad’s settlement finally came in, I was incredibly relieved. I’d been accepted to college and I was on the brink of not going because money was just too tight.” Duffy had lost ten pounds worrying about his future and theirs. “But the check came in. Dad paid for my first semester of college and off I went, leaving my brother behind to take care of them.” Or so he’d hoped.
Jessica bowed her head, as if steeling herself to hear the worst.
“Greg offered to help run the household by paying the bills. Dad gave him access to his accounts. Greg said he had a new job, and he bought a new car. Soon he had the latest cell phone and a new wardrobe.” Duffy swallowed, wishing there was a different ending to the story. He hadn’t been smart enough to protect his parents at eighteen, but he could protect Jess by being honest so she’d never get swindled again. “Greg told my parents he was being sent for training in San Francisco. He left the week before Thanksgiving, and then he disappeared, along with the money in my dad’s bank account.” Duffy couldn’t look at Jess anymore. But he had to finish. She had to know. “We didn’t have a lot to be thankful for that year.”
Jessica sat very still. “He wouldn’t.”
“He did.” Duffy forced himself to meet her gaze, to keep the emotion out of his voice, to pretend he was over Greg’s betrayal. “Dad didn’t believe it, either. He refused to file a police report. He thought it was all a big mistake.” That went on for about a year, until his old man could no longer avoid the truth—Greg was a thief. And not even a principled thief like Robin Hood. “I found a job working at a vineyard and kept going to school. I lived frugally—no cell phone, a car I was constantly working on to keep running, borrowing books from friends taking the same classes. Because my parents still needed financial help.”
Outside, thunder rolled. Inside, a log popped. Between them, tension crackled.
It had to be done. If she continued to romanticize Greg, she’d be an easy mark for the next guy. She had to hear all of it.
“I tried to find Greg after I graduated from college. I never located him, but I learned he was quite the ladies’ man, seducing women and taking their money.” Most of the women had been married and didn’t want to admit they’d been played. “I have no idea why Greg filled out next-of-kin papers on his bank accounts or created a living trust for his assets. That’s the only way we found out he’d died.”
“You really think he stole from me?” she asked in a small voice, staring at her baby bump.
“I know he did.”
“So...” Those dark, trustworthy eyes lifted to his. “Some of the money you recovered could be mine.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5e19d089-6b05-5608-b13e-7527167f39fd)
“I’M NOT ASKING for money,” Jess clarified, not only because she meant it, but because Duffy’s face had pinched and paled. “That’s not why I’m here.”
His features hardened like an overcooked scone. She’d ruined scones, ruined pastry with promise, ruined the fragile fabric of friendships. She’d come to Harmony Valley for her memories. She’d found so much more—the possibility of a family for her little one. She didn’t want to ruin this for Baby.
Jess tried again. “I was only pointing out that if Greg took the money—which I’m sure he didn’t—it would have been in his bank account. I’m not asking for anything. I just want my memories back.”
His cool gaze said he didn’t believe her.
Baby decided her bladder made a lovely pillow, one that needed fluffing. Jess wasn’t feeling fluffy or pillow-soft. She was feeling as cold and hard as a lump of stale brown sugar. “I’ve always made my own way. And I’ve owned up to my mistakes. If what you say is true about Greg...” She paused to adjust how she was sitting, so both she and the baby were comfortable, using the time to remove the note of hysteria from her voice. “It’s a mistake I made.”
“Most people would disagree,” Duffy said, as if aware of the tightrope they were walking with army boots on. “How much money did he take from you?”
Enough to buy a no-frills new car or start a great college fund or allow her to spend several months home after the baby was born. “It doesn’t matter.” The door to resentment, the one filled with embarrassing, hurtful memories of a life with no alternative but charity, banged open. And with that bang came a biting rush of outrage at being thought of as destitute. “I spent nine years living in a foster-care barracks with seven other girls. The woman who asked we call her Mother received a good salary to take care of us.” It hurt to swallow the indignity of being boarded like a dog. There’d been no love, no nurturing, just a head count. “She got a salary. To be called Mother.”
“But how much—”
“I won’t ask you for a cent!” She awkwardly pushed herself to her feet. She’d had enough of relationships measured by dollar signs. If she told Duffy a figure, that’s all she’d be to him, that’s all her child would be to him. “I won’t take your money. I won’t even sleep in your bed tonight. The sheriff mentioned I could sleep at the jail.”
Thunder rolled across the valley. It might as well have been resentment rumbling in her veins.
“Somehow, I don’t think the jail will be as comfortable as my bed.”
“I don’t care.” She was shaking. Her hands, her legs, her voice. “I’ve slept in worse places.” On air mattresses and park benches and concrete floors.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He got to his feet, arms out placatingly.
She didn’t see Duffy. She saw Greg. Heard his voice. Wondered if he’d lied. I need a little money to tide me over. You trust me, don’t you?
Suddenly, Jess didn’t feel as if she’d trusted Greg. But she’d loved him. She just knew. She’d loved him.
“Duffy, I want to look after myself and my baby. And to do that, I can’t blame my situation or my mistakes on someone else. I can’t accept a handout.” Her mother’s face came to mind, thin and taut with worry as she stroked Jessica’s hair that last night at the homeless shelter. You’re a strong girl, Jess. You can make it on your own. Jessica had clung to her mother’s words after she’d disappeared, locked them tight in her heart when times were tough. She stepped around the corner of the couch, nearer the door, nearer the bathroom.
“I never said...” Duffy moved to block her path, looking perplexed. “Can we back up the conversation? To somewhere around the time I invited you to spend the night because the road’s flooded?”
“No.” The bathroom was in her sights and Baby was fluffing the bladder pillow again. “I told myself I’d never be like my mother and walk away from a child because there wasn’t enough money. I work hard so that won’t happen.”
But what if she couldn’t make it work? Vera had already begun asking questions about maternity leave and schedules once she returned. She’d hired Jess out of culinary school, and Jess suspected she was the highest-paid baker of the bunch, the only one with formal training, the only one who didn’t speak Spanish, the only one who didn’t fit in.
The tremble in Jessica’s limbs locked her shoulders back.
Duffy was frowning. His frown conveyed doubt. Not suspicious doubt, but a kind of self-doubt, as if he was questioning what he knew. “I don’t know what went on between you and my brother. I don’t know how he got your money. But one thing I do know. You’re never giving up that baby.”
His words touched her, soothed and comforted. She was no longer shaking, no longer on the defensive.
“So you’ll stay.”
She gave him the stiffest of nods, and then beelined to the bathroom.
* * *
HE’D SAID TOO much about Greg and the assets he’d liquidated after his brother’s death. But other than pointing out the money in Greg’s bank account was most likely hers, Jessica claimed not to want anything from him.
Doubt prickled his insides like a porcupine with raised hackles.
His brain whispered, Don’t believe her. She was in league with Greg.
But there was his heart—the part of him Greg had called soft and sentimental more than once—smoothing the hackles of suspicion: She’s not like Greg.
Duffy changed the sheets on his king-size bed. He used the flannel set his mother had given him for Christmas, the ones he didn’t like because they were too warm. Jess needed something soft and warm tonight. Duffy needed something no one could give him—complete faith in Jessica. He wanted to trust her, but there was Greg and there was a history of lies upon lies, twist-tied with lies.
“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Jess stood in the doorway. Her hands pressed into the small of her back as if it ached. “May I have a pillow and a blanket?”
“No.” Clearly, this woman had developed an independent streak nearly as strong as Duffy’s distrust of Greg. “The pillows and blankets stay in this room.”
“I’m pregnant. Baby can sleep anywhere.” Her smile had a you-should-believe-me quality that Duffy found hard to believe. She hadn’t looked comfortable sitting on the couch. How would she sleep on it?
“If my mother hears I let you sleep on the couch, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Jess hesitated, and then asked in a soft voice, “You’re going to tell her about me?”
“Yes.” He hadn’t thought about it until then, but his parents would want to know. Or at the very least, they should be told. He’d held up on telling them about Jess because he wasn’t sure of her agenda in tracking him down. He was still hesitant about the money, but... “My mom’s going to spoil that kid rotten.”
“Do you think so?” Jessica’s whisper was pockmarked with wonder, thready with hope.
Her reaction made him put on a show of confidence. “Please.” Duffy rolled his eyes for effect. “She points out babies to me like other parents point out good job opportunities.” That much was the truth.
Head bowed, Jess rested her palm on her stomach. “Did you hear that, Baby? Grandparents are in your future.”
For the first time, Duffy understood Jess. She had no parents. She couldn’t remember her baby’s father. She didn’t want to let her child down as her mother had done. What to him was a casual mention of his mother’s involvement was the promise of a special gift to her: family.
He hoped he hadn’t misspoken. He hoped his mother would be excited about the news.
“I’m taking this pillow from the bed for me,” Duffy said carefully. “Don’t get any ideas.”
She blinked at him. But it wasn’t the I’m-remembering-something dazed look he’d seen her get every once in a while. Jess stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. As Duffy, not Greg’s mirror image.
That look registered something deep inside him, something that warmed and eased, something he’d kept locked away and refused to name. A feeling he immediately dismissed.
Because Duffy had sworn off taking on any more responsibility, be it community, friends or family.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_fa71bea2-9aa9-5339-af61-17bc49e86851)
AS SHE PREDICTED, the rain rivaled the storm of 1992. All the roads out of town remained flooded.
Eunice cackled. She was thrilled. Jessica wasn’t leaving today.
Eunice was only being neighborly taking over this warm dish for breakfast. It had nothing to do with uncovering what might or might not have gone on last night. The question burning in her elderly mind was: Whose baby was Jessica’s?
“Eunice.” Duffy opened the door wearing blue jeans, a maroon T-shirt and thick wool socks. He stared down on her with a look that would have chilled younger beings. “What a surprise.”
Eunice blinked at him. See my pretty eyes. Be mesmerized by my pretty eyes. Blink-blink-blink. “I brought breakfast.” She stopped blinking long enough to try to peer around him, but couldn’t see a thing. He hadn’t opened the door very wide and his shoulders were so incredibly broad.
“We had breakfast already.”
“Maybe you’d like this for lunch.” She held the warm casserole dish close to her chest, not wanting to hand it to him and lose the opportunity to come inside. “Why don’t I just put this in the kitchen for you?”
There was a coldness to Duffy’s features this morning, as if he’d awoken from centuries of slumber in a block of ice to find everything around him wasn’t as it once was. “You’re not going to go away, are you?”
His direct question took her by surprise. “I live next door.”
The rain beat steadily while he studied her.
“I mean...” He sighed, rubbing a palm over the dark whiskers covering his chin. “You want to come in. Right now.”
“Thank you for the invitation.” She bumped her arm against the door, causing it to swing open wider. Ducking past him, she headed toward the kitchen, raincoat, rain galoshes and all.
Inside, everything was clean. The kitchen. The stove. The living room. From the kitchen pass-through she could see a folded blanket on top of a pillow on the hearth. Cross out the suspicion that they were lovers. Someone had slept on the couch.
“Where’s Jessica?”
“In the shower.” Duffy raised an eyebrow. “Did you come to see if something was going on?”
“No.” Eunice sniffed. Why did the man always seem to know what she was up to? He’d probably ask her to leave next. “I came to be neighborly.”
“You’re dripping all over my kitchen.” He stared at the trail of water she’d made across his hardwood floor, sighed wearily, and pointed toward the door. “Boots and jacket go in the foyer.”
He was letting her stay? A rush of excitement had Eunice scurrying over to shed her wet things.
Duffy dragged a towel across the hardwood floor with his foot. “How’s that cat?”
“I don’t have a...” Too late, Eunice realized she’d been caught.
“Ah, I got you.” He chuckled, but it was a chilly chuckle. He finished cleaning, sat on his couch and picked up the remote.
Shoot-shoot-shoot. “I had a cat. Once.”
His television was tuned to one of those sports news channels that didn’t interest Eunice. The sound was muted, but by the way his thumb roved the remote, she could tell he wanted to turn it back on. Instead, he said, “Cats are independent creatures. Did it run away because it wanted privacy?”
Annoyance elbowed aside the embarrassment Eunice had been feeling. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.” Didn’t he know how to be a good neighbor?
“I’m not in a very nice mood in the mornings, Eunice, not until I’ve had more than one cup of coffee.” A mug rested on the black lacquered coffee table.
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Melinda Curtis
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: For better or worse, she′s family nowDuffy Dufraine just found out he′s going to be an uncle. Jessica Aguirre came to Harmony Valley in search of the father of her unborn child, which is by no means him. An accident may have damaged the expectant mom′s memory, but he knows his twin is the man she′s looking for. But Greg′s gone, which leaves Duffy the only family Jess has. And he has to make things right. Offering her a temporary place to stay seems an ideal short-term solution. Until she stirs desires that make the embattled vineyard manager rethink his own long-term game plan. Is he ready to offer Jess and her baby a home to call their own—with him?