Redemption Road (Jackson Falls #5) (20 page)

 “My work here is done,” Annabel said. “I bid you both adieu. Have
a lovely evening. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” And she crunched away, her
footsteps growing fainter, until Ray’s crooning eventually drowned them out.

“You used your daughter to lure me here,” she said.

“Guilty as charged,” he said in that soft Georgia drawl that made
her toes curl. “Come on, Berkowitz. I’m getting impatient, all by myself out
here. Feelin’ kinda foolish. Don’t make me come get you.”

She sat on the wooden bench that Mama had always kept in the
upstairs hall, pulled off her boots, and laced up the skates. “It’s been
forever,” she said. “I’m not sure I even remember how to skate.”

“Of course you do, darlin’. It’s like riding a bicycle. You never
forget.”

When she hit the ice, she was wobbly for a minute. Then it all
came back to her, and she flung out her arms, turned her face to the stars, and
in perfect sync with the music, she skated in smooth, flowing circles around
him, thrilled by the intoxicating sensation of flying. How had she forgotten this
feeling?  She’d forgotten, as well, the exhilarating swish of blades against
ice. Above her head, the lights became a blur of color as she circled and
twirled and made figure eights, her delighted laughter spilling out into the night.

She came to a stop in front of him, so abruptly that her skates
threw a fine cloud of ice crystals into the air. He reached out and caught her
by both arms to steady her. The violins swelled and throbbed, while Ray sang
about roads leading home. “Harley Atkins,” she said.

Those blue eyes warmed, and his hand slid down her arm to thread
fingers through hers. “Colleen Berkowitz,” he said. “Shall we?”

She nodded, rested her other hand at his waist, and they began
moving around the ice, a little awkwardly at first, until they found each
other’s rhythm. Then, perfectly in sync with one another, they glided, circling
and twirling in a nebulous waltz, caught up in each other and the music and the
night.

Eventually, they broke apart and skated in tandem, Harley
following her around the perimeter of the ice as she moved in time to the music.
His taste in music was eclectic, from Patsy Cline to Bon Jovi, from Gloria
Estefan to the Bay City Rollers. They criss-crossed each other’s path, then
came back together and moved in wide loops, side by side, hand in hand. He was
good at this, skating with a smooth, flowing style that told her he’d spent
many hundreds of hours on skates. Most guys she knew thought ice skating was a
girly activity.

They paused for breath and stood appraising each other, blue eyes gazing
into blue eyes. Her chest ached from the exertion. His cheeks were ruddy from
the cold. She narrowed her eyes. “You’re very good at this,” she said. “I
thought you were from Georgia.”

He reached up a gloved hand and brushed a strand of hair away from
her face. “Do the words ‘ice rink’ mean anythin’ to you?”

“I don’t know many guys who skate. My brothers refused to learn. They
said it was for girls.”

He raised a single, dark eyebrow. “Are you questioning my
masculinity, Berkowitz?”

She gave him a mischievous smile, turned, and raced away from him,
her laughter floating on the air behind her. He chased her, caught her elbow, and
tugged. When she spun around, too quickly, her right foot tangled with his left.
They performed an awkward, lurching dance and went down hard, landing in a
snarl of arms and legs and skates.

He unsnarled them and flopped flat on his back on the ice beside
her. Breathing hard, he said, “You okay?”

“I may have broken my ass. You?”

“That bad knee’ll probably work again. Eventually.”

They lay side by side, staring contentedly up at the star-splattered
sky. “I played hockey,” he said. “My momma was friends with the woman who ran
the ice rink in our little town. She let me skate there for free. After Annabel
was born, we moved to New York. As soon as she was old enough, I started taking
her to Rockefeller Center.”

“I always wanted to go there.”

“I know. Casey told me.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

She waved an arm. “For all this. For your wonderful homegrown
version of Rockefeller Center.”  She paused. “For giving all this back to me.”

“You’re welcome.”

After a few moments of comfortable silence, she said, “You tripped
me on purpose.”

He rolled up on one hip, his knee dangerously close to her thigh. “Now,
why on earth would I do that?”

Those blue eyes, that handsome face, with its full lips and its arched
brows, were just inches from hers. Trying to still the sudden hammering of her
heart, she said, “I have no idea.”

His laughter spilled out in a warm gust of breath against her face.
He moved closer, cupped her cheek with a gloved hand.

And he kissed her.

A thrill shot through her. His skin was cold, but his mouth was
warm and soft against hers. Instead of the hard, demanding onslaught she’d
expected, his kiss was gentle. Tender. Incredibly exciting in its restraint and
its promise. He tasted of things she’d long since stopped believing in. Hope.
Belonging. A thousand tomorrows. A rightness she’d never thought she would find.
Needing to be closer, she reached out to touch him. But his puffy down parka
made it impossible, and she had to settle for clutching quilted polyester.

He ended the kiss before she was ready. She wanted more, needed
more, the same way she needed air and water. Her breath came in tiny, shallow
gasps. Somewhere nearby, the cassette tape clicked off and the music stopped. He
cleared his throat and said, “Annabel put dinner in the oven just before she
left.”

Wondering how he could jump so effortlessly from kissing to dinner,
she searched for her voice, finally found it. “Left?”

“For the night. It should be just about ready by now.”

***

He’d cleaned the kitchen.

The last time she’d been here, the place had been drowning in
clutter. Tonight, the counters were bare, the table empty except for two place
settings and a single fat candle that Annabel had lit before she left. The
shoes that were generally in a jumble by the door were lined up neatly along
the baseboard. She left her boots in line with his, hung her coat with his on
the rack behind the door. It was the oddest thing; there was a strange kind of
rightness to being here, with Harley, in the house where she’d grown up. As if
she’d come full circle.

“Most men,” she said, “would ask a woman out on a date, instead of
tricking her into it.”

He opened the oven door, took out a pair of baked potatoes and two
roasted chicken breasts that smelled like heaven. “I don’t deal well with
rejection. I didn’t want to chance it.”

He didn’t look too concerned about being rejected. It was quite
possible that he was the most confident man she’d ever met. She tried to feel
indignant, but tonight, it was too much effort. Tomorrow was soon enough for
indignation to surface. Tonight, for the first time in so long she couldn’t
remember when she’d last done it, she would go with the flow.

“I’m not much of a cook,” he said. “But I’m learning. Gradually. There’s
not a lot you can do to screw up chicken breasts and baked potatoes.”

From her shadowy cave beneath the table, Ginger stretched and
yawned. The dog raised her head, wagged her tail, then rested her chin on her
forepaws. “I didn’t even notice her under there,” Colleen said. “What’d you do,
tranquilize her?”

“I’ve been working with her.”  He carefully placed a chicken
breast on a dinner plate. “Sometimes, with a skittish creature that’s been hurt
somewhere along the way, you just have to exercise time and patience, and
eventually they’ll come around.”

Not wholly certain he was still talking about the dog, she crossed
her arms and said, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

He glanced up and smiled. “Just being here’s enough. I hope you
don’t mind canned peas. Annabel always insists that I have to serve a vegetable.
If it was up to me, I’d just serve French fries with every meal. That’s my
definition of a vegetable. Annabel doesn’t agree. I blame her mother for that.”

She hid a smile. “Canned peas are fine.”  She’d grown up on fresh
vegetables from Mama’s garden. But she’d eaten plenty of canned peas during the
lean years before she married Irv. “Are you planning on a garden next summer?”

“Not unless Annabel wants to make it her project. I’m too damn
busy to take care of it.”

Dad had always said the same thing. Mama had been the one who
spent hours on her knees in the hot sun, pulling weeds, with her daughters by
her side. Colleen had hated every minute of it, but the end result had been
worth the backbreaking labor. There was nothing finer than feasting on sweet
baby peas right from the pod. Mama used to say it was a miracle that any of
them made it to the dinner table when it was Colleen’s turn to shuck them. But
she’d said it without any ill will. Mama had been the sweetest, the kindest
person she’d ever known. Certainly nothing like Colleen, with her smart mouth
and her attitude. No, it was Casey who was most like Mama. Ellen Bradley had
been loved by everyone who met her, and Casey possessed that same mysterious
quality that drew people to her.

Colleen was about to say that she’d be glad to help with the
garden. Her mouth was open, the words on the tip of her tongue, when she
remembered that she wouldn’t be here next summer. For the first time, that
knowledge sent a stabbing pain through her midsection.

“Dinner’s ready.”  He turned from the stove, a plate in each hand.
“Sit. Make yourself at home. Can I get you a glass of wine?”

“I don’t drink.”

He set her plate down in front of her. “I know, but a little glass
of wine with dinner isn’t like—”

“Harley,” she said. “I. Don’t. Drink. At all.”

Still holding his own plate, he opened his mouth to speak. She saw
it in his eyes, the instant he comprehended what she was saying. “Oh,” he said.

“Yes. Oh.”

“My apologies. I think I have a bottle of apple juice in the
fridge.”

“It’s fine. Really. I don’t need a drink.”

They both sat. Colleen picked up her knife and sliced open her
potato. Steam poured out of it, and she deposited a pat of butter in its center.
While Harley scraped potato from its skin and mashed it on his plate, she ate a
sliver of chicken. She’d never been one for small talk. Now, with her
enthusiasm dampened by the knowledge that this relationship—if you wanted to
call it that—couldn’t possibly go anywhere beyond the bedroom, she struggled to
come up with something intelligent to say.
The chicken’s delicious.
Oh,
hell. How was she supposed to sit across the table from this man and pretend
she gave a damn about dinner when all she wanted was to take him upstairs, rip
his clothes off, and ravish him?

She cleared her throat and said, “So how did a hockey-playing
lawyer from Georgia end up as a dairy farmer in Maine?”

He glanced up from his plate, opened his mouth, and said, “Shit.”

“Shit?”

“I forgot the damn cranberry sauce. All I had to do was open the
can, and I forgot it.” He shook his head in disgust. “Can’t let me out without
a keeper.”

“I hate cranberry sauce.”

“Really?” He looked so hopeful, she had to laugh.

“No,” she said. “But you sounded so distraught that I thought it
would make you feel better.”

In the flickering light from the candle, she could see one corner
of his mouth turn up in the beginnings of a grin. “You lied to spare my
feelings, Berkowitz?” 

“Forget the freaking cranberry sauce, Atkins, and answer the damn
question.”

He eyed her thoughtfully. “You want the story I tell everyone, or
the real one?”

“What’s the story you tell everyone?”

“My marriage broke up, I got custody of my kid, and I decided
Annabel and I needed a change of scenery.”

Somehow, she knew there was much more to it than this. “All
right,” she said. “Now, let’s hear the real story.”

“I grew up on a farm. Nothing like this one. We had a small herd
of milk cows. Sheep, chickens, a couple of pigs. We didn’t have much money. It
was a hard life. My daddy was a mean old drunk who used to thrash us whenever
the urge hit, which happened entirely too often. My momma used to intercede
when she could, but for the most part, she stayed out of it. She was a scrawny,
colorless woman. Old before her time, every hour of that hard livin’ etched on
her face.”

“Was?”

“She’s gone now. Died a few years back, most likely from a broken
heart. Because she loved the old fool. And I loved her. I haven’t been back
since her funeral.”

Something happened inside her, a softening in recognition of his
pain. Quietly, she said, “And your father?”

His mouth thinned. “Big Earl. Last I heard, the son-of-a-bitch was
still alive, still running herd over my younger sister. Far as I know, she’s
still living with him. I think she’s afraid to leave. There were five of us,
three boys and two girls. My brother Earl and I were close. We still keep in
touch. He’s in Atlanta, with a wife and kids. Doing well. The rest of ‘em I
gave up on years ago.”