Willowleaf Lane (13 page)

Awareness bloomed between them. His muscles tightened with sudden tension and her breasts felt achy, heavy where they pressed against him.

When she lifted her gaze to those hazel-green eyes, her breath tangled in her chest at the heat and hunger there.

No. She had spent all day telling herself she couldn’t kiss him again. She wasn’t a silly girl anymore, desperate for the object of her crush to notice her. She was a grown woman, smart and resilient. She wasn’t going to let him twist her around like this again.

With great effort, she managed to block every impulse that urged her to lift her mouth for his kiss, and managed to slip out of his arms to put a few inches of distance between them.

“I need to go,” she said in a voice that only shook a little. She gripped her door handle and tugged it open. “Dylan’s coming back from Denver tonight and I need to...to make sure Tucker’s ready.”

It was a flimsy excuse and both of them knew it but Spence didn’t call her on it. He only nodded and held open the door for her, then gripped her elbow to help her inside and tucked the crutches in after her.

“Thank you,” she murmured, then closed the door firmly between them, backed out of the driveway and drove the short distance to her own home, telling herself the entire way that she had had a lucky escape.

A few more kisses, and she might find herself exactly where she was at fifteen—hopelessly in love with a man who didn’t deserve it.

* * *

S
PENCE
WATCHED
HER
drive down the street to her house. He waited until she pulled into her garage and he saw the lights come on inside the house a moment later.

He didn’t know what the hell was happening to him.

Every time he was around her, he wanted to yank her against him and kiss her until neither of them could think straight.

He had dreamed about her the night before, slick, heated, erotic dreams that left him aching and frustrated.

Her soft, sweet, almost hesitant response the night before—that hint of innocent desire—had worked on him like nothing else. He couldn’t remember ever being so affected by a simple kiss—or so determined that he couldn’t repeat the experience, as much as he might hunger to do just that.

This was completely crazy. Even if he wasn’t neck-deep trying to rebuild the shattered pieces of his life, he couldn’t start a fling with Charlotte Caine.

She was gentle and kind, the sort of woman insightful and compassionate enough to make a spontaneous gift for a lonely young girl.

She deserved far better than a washed-up baseball player with an ugly past and a disaster of a failed marriage, a man who couldn’t walk down the street without people pointing and whispering.

He hoped that his time here in Hope’s Crossing would help rehabilitate that image a little. If nothing else, he wanted to prove to himself he could do something good and worthwhile that didn’t involve a split-finger curve.

He certainly didn’t plan on sticking around longer than the six months he had been given at the recreation center. He wanted this to be a springboard to other things, maybe help him go into coaching on a university level.

Charlotte was well-liked and popular in town. He had seen the way people talked to her the other night at the café and had a feeling her friends agreed to help with A Warrior’s Hope in no small part because of their friendship with her.

He didn’t think Dermot or any of her brothers—or Harry Lange, for that matter, who had spoken of her highly at lunch earlier—would think kindly of Spence blowing into town and starting something with her, then kissing her off on his way out again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

B
Y
THE
END
of the week, as July eased into August, Charlotte convinced herself her life was slowing returning to pre–Hurricane Gregory normalcy.

In the short time Spencer and Peyton had been in Hope’s Crossing, it seemed as if everything had been in constant tumult. Sprained ankles, new exciting projects, intense kisses that left her aching for something she couldn’t have.

The throbbing in her ankle had subsided to a manageable level and by Saturday morning, she was more than ready to return to some aerobic exercise. Dr. Harris gave her the go-ahead three days earlier to put weight on it again. The pain had subsided considerably. She had even tolerated standing up for a couple hours at a time yesterday at work.

Before that, she had been forced to be creative with her workout, focusing on upper body weights and exercises that strengthened her noninjured leg. It gave her a great deal of appreciation for adaptive sports programs.

Twice that week, she had gone swimming at the recreation center early in the morning and had been grateful each time that she didn’t run into Spence.

She could continue that for a few more days before returning to more aggressive weight-bearing activities, but she thought maybe biking would be a way to ease into her regular routine. She figured she would start out with one of the more level trails that didn’t require a great deal of uphill pedaling but could still get her heart rate going.

Cautiously, she rode down her driveway. Her ankle twinged a little with each rotation of the pedal but seemed to be firmly supported. So far so good. She increased her speed a bit, wishing for a little company. Tucker had gone home several days earlier when Dylan had returned from Denver, and Charlotte didn’t want to admit how lonely her house had seemed without the big dog.

“Hey! Charlotte. Hi!”

She was so busy concentrating on keeping her balance and protecting her ankle from too much exertion that she didn’t notice Peyton standing out on her driveway.

Charlotte hit the hand brake just as she would have passed the house and put her feet to the ground for balance as Peyton walked down to greet her.

“How was your week?” she asked the girl.

“Okay, I guess. The new housekeeper started. Gretel. Like
Hansel and Gretel.
She’s pretty nice.”

“Great.”

“And some of our stuff came from Portland.” She gestured to the garage behind her and Charlotte saw a stack of boxes. “We’re still leaving a lot up there for when we go back but my dad had his assistant send down more clothes and some other things he thought we would need. We’re going on a bike ride, too.”

“Are you?”

At that moment, Spence emerged from around the corner of the boxes rolling one gleaming mountain bike beside him, a smaller one hefted over one shoulder by the frame.

“Finally found them, Pey. No flat tires. That’s a minor miracle. Are you ready to go?”

In that moment, he caught sight of Charlotte and his stride faltered a little. “Charlotte! Hi!”

She instantly wished she had picked something a little cuter to wear for her ride than lycra shorts and an old Sugar Rush T-shirt.

She forced a smile, thinking it was completely unfair how good he could look first thing on a Saturday morning, probably with no effort whatsoever. “Good morning.”

“Our stuff finally showed up yesterday, including the bikes.”

“That’s what Peyton was just telling me.”

“It seemed like a good morning to head out, explore a few of the trails I remember.”

“I’m sure more have been added since you were here. Hope’s Crossing is renowned for its biking trails. We’re no Moab but we have some good terrain for it.”

“Looking forward to seeing what we find out there.” He paused and gave her a considering look. “Are you supposed to be on a bike again, so soon after hurting your ankle?”

Yes. She was supposed to be on it right this moment, riding hard and fast away from him. “The doctor gave me the okay to resume weight-bearing activities earlier in the week. I’m trying not to push it. I thought biking would be a good middle ground.”

“Don’t force it.”

“I plan to be careful.” About bike riding and particularly gorgeous former baseball players, she thought. “You two have fun.”

She lifted her foot back to the pedal, intending to take off. Peyton’s words stopped her.

“Why don’t we just ride with Charlotte?” she suggested to her father. “She probably knows all the good trails, then we won’t waste time trying to figure out where to go.”

Her stomach dropped. Hurricane Gregory had apparently decided to make landfall again.

Spence must have seen some of the dismay in her expression. “Charlotte doesn’t need to play tour guide. I’m sure I can figure out where to go. We could just ride through town, for that matter.”

“My ankle still isn’t very strong,” Charlotte said. “I can’t go very fast, and I probably won’t make it far before I have to turn back.”

“Sounds perfect to me,” Peyton said. “I didn’t even want to go for a bike ride but my dad made me. I can’t have my phone back until I exercise for thirty minutes. How dumb is that?”

She gave her father a look of such dramatic disgust that Charlotte had to fight down a laugh. “Terrible.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a complete tyrant. How brutal, to want my kid to move a little once in a while.”

“Bring on the slow, easy bike ride,” Peyton said. “That still counts, right?” she appealed to her father, who gave a rueful laugh.

“We don’t need to drag Charlotte into this. You and I can find a slow, easy bike path.”

“But I would rather go with her,” Peyton countered and Charlotte thought she saw a spasm of pain flit across Spence’s features.

Charlotte felt torn—she didn’t want to spend more time in Spence’s company than she had to, given how weak she apparently was around him. On the other hand, she sensed the fragile, tense relationship between father and daughter might benefit from a third-party buffer. He had said as much at the café the other night.

“How about this? I’ll help you find a good trailhead and ride as far as I can handle, and then the two of you can go on without me?”

“Sounds great to me,” Peyton said.

“Sure. Okay,” Spence said.

“There’s a new trail that runs along where the railroad tracks used to come out of Silver Strike Canyon. It goes through town and then out into the fields. It’s really pretty and quite level. You could actually ride all the way to the next town over, if you wanted. Does that work?”

“Which direction to the trail?” Spence said.

“Left at the corner. You can take whatever way you want to get there through town. Just head over toward the mouth of the canyon.”

Peyton rode beside her and Spence took off ahead of them, which had the added benefits that he didn’t see her struggling along on her bum ankle—and also that it afforded her a lovely rear view of a well-built male.

She was so busy trying not to gawk at him like some sex-starved housewife at a male stripper revue that she didn’t pay attention to the route they took. He braked abruptly a few blocks from their destination—so abruptly, she almost ran into him.

“It’s gone,” he exclaimed.

She and Peyton stopped their bikes and looked in the direction he was gazing.

“What’s gone?” Peyton asked.

“The house I grew up in was right here.”

He pointed at a new six-unit luxury development that had been built a few years ago.

“William Beaumont bought a bunch of houses in this neighborhood and tore them all down to rebuild condominiums.” And made a fortune, she remembered. One of the units had been on the market the summer before, and Charlotte remembered seeing that the asking price was more than twice the cost of her entire house.

“I forgot you grew up in this neighborhood,” she said.

She
should
have remembered. Why hadn’t she? Really, how many times had she ridden her old ten-speed past his house in the hopes of seeing him outside mowing the scraggly lawn or something?

She could only hope he had never seen her pathetic attempts to look casually unobtrusive.

“Everything is different,” he said, a funny expression on his face.

When he had lived here, the neighborhood had been filled with small clapboard houses, built cheaply and quickly to house workers at the silver and copper mines that dotted the area. She remembered it being a pretty low-income subdivision—small grim houses with shutters hanging off, peeling paint and mostly unkempt lawns.

A few of the original miners’ houses remained around town but they had all been renovated and added to—or, as in the case of Spence’s old house, completely torn down to make way for new developments.

“A million memories have just come flooding back,” he said, gazing at the spot where the house would have been. “I used to climb that tree back there. I guess they chose to keep that. Deer would come down in the winter and browse on those bushes there. I can remember watching them out of my bedroom window.”

He paused, looking at some distant past neither Charlotte nor his daughter could see. “In the summer, my mom used to sit me on the top rung of a step stool while she cut my hair, there on the lawn.”

In Charlotte’s memory, Billie Gregory was a larger-than-life character. When she was sober at work, she was a pretty good waitress who knew just how to make the customers feel comfortable. She was funny and nice and obviously adored her son.

On her bad days, she forgot orders, dropped plates, even fell asleep on the floor of the office once.

“It wasn’t all terrible,” Charlotte said quietly.

He flashed a quick look at her, something dark and disguised in his eyes. “No. Not all of it.”

“What was terrible?” Peyton asked from beside Charlotte. “You were king of the world when you lived here. Star of the baseball team, quarterback of the football team, blah, blah, blah.”

“I did have sports, yeah.” He looked at the space where his house would have been, and Charlotte wondered what else he was seeing. “But life at home wasn’t that great.”

“Why not?” Peyton looked genuinely interested, almost thirsty for knowledge, but Charlotte could tell this particular line of inquiry left Spence uncomfortable.

Had he really never told Peyton about the chaos of his childhood? Why not? Their relationship baffled her. It was almost as if Peyton didn’t really know her father at all. Maybe he had been too busy building his career to spend much time with his daughter.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he said now, every line of his body taut as if he wanted to ride away from this spot.

Charlotte wanted to shake him. Couldn’t he see his daughter wanted to hear about his past? If Peyton knew a little more about Spence and his life in Hope’s Crossing, it might help bridge the distance Charlotte sensed between them.

After her own mother died, at least she had had six older brothers and a loving father to help her through. Peyton had nobody except a distant man she seemed to barely know.

Charlotte wanted to tell him so but knew it wasn’t her place—still, something of her thoughts must have showed in her features. Spence gave her a quick look and after a long pause, turned back to his daughter.

“It was pretty chaotic,” he finally said. “You know my dad died when I was young. My mom took it...hard. Eventually we came to Hope’s Crossing from California to live with my grandmother in the house that used to be right there. My mom, your grandma, started drinking and basically didn’t stop. She drank a lot. She barely held a job through the kindness of Mr. Caine, Charlotte’s father.”

By the time he finished, Peyton looked stunned, her eyes huge and dark amid those slender features. “That’s why you washed dishes at the café? And had a newspaper route? And swept the hardware store?”

He shrugged. “We had to eat, didn’t we?”

She glanced at Charlotte as if for confirmation. Charlotte gave her a half nod.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Peyton demanded. “I always thought you had it so great when you were a kid. All I ever heard about was the sports and stuff.”

“I figured there wasn’t much sense looking back.”

“Your house was right there?”

“Yeah. But it was pretty different. Not much of a house, really—a couple bedrooms, a living room, bathroom and kitchen. My grandparents left the house to my mom so we didn’t have to pay rent but it was falling apart and we—she—never did much to fix it up. The windows were so thin, I could put a glass of water beside my bed in the winter and wake up with a crackle of ice on the top.”

Charlotte had known enough about his situation to guess that life wouldn’t have been easy for him when he was young but her heart turned over at the picture he painted, especially when she contrasted that with the big house she had grown up in on Winterberry Road, full of noise, chaos, food and especially love.

“I think that makes it even more remarkable that you found something you were good at and worked so hard to change your future,” Charlotte said promptly, then immediately wished she hadn’t, especially when he shifted that veiled expression in her direction.

“I guess,” he murmured. She had a feeling he was thinking about everything that came after, the turmoil and scandal of the past two years. “Come on. No sense looking back. Let’s go find the trailhead.”

He took off, leaving her and Peyton no choice but to follow after him.

He maintained a steady pace, turning where she indicated until they ended up on the trail that ran along the old railroad tracks that used to carry ore from the mines. Her ankle throbbed a bit but the rest of her muscles felt loose and relaxed.

“Hey, can we stop for a second?” Peyton called when they reached the trailhead.

Spence complied. “What’s the matter?”

“I really need to use the bathroom. I thought there might be one here before we took off on the trail.”

“No. Sorry. The closest public bathroom is down at Miners’ Park,” Charlotte said. “It’s about a half mile away. We can head there instead.”

Peyton shrugged. “No. That’s okay. I don’t really feel like a bike ride anymore. I think I’ll just go back home.”