Redemption Road: Jackson Falls Book 5 (Jackson Falls Series) Page 15

  Colleen’s arms went around her sister and of their own volition, her lips spoke the words, “I love you, too.”

  “Come on, Sis.” Casey stepped back, threaded fingers with hers. And with her own tears falling, said, “Let’s bring down the house.”

  And that was exactly what they did.

  ***

  She leaned against the side of her sister’s house, filling her lungs with crisp, cold air. Inside, the party was still going full-force. Beside her, Harley Atkins said, “If the two of you were singing like that when you were eight years old, I sure wish I’d been there to see it.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Do you have a cigarette? I need a cigarette.”

  He patted empty pockets. “Sorry. I never picked up the nasty habit. You smoke?”

  “Not since 1979. But I could use one right now. I can’t believe I did that.”

  “You were wonderful. Both of you. Who knew you had this secret talent?”

  “It’s all Rob’s fault. He tricked me into it. Come Monday morning, I’m spiking his doughnuts with arsenic.”

  “Remind me to stay on your good side.”

  She eyed him levelly. “What makes you think you’re on my good side?”

  “You’re as transparent as window glass. And since I’m a free man tonight, let’s blow this joint. Do something really radical, like pie and coffee at the diner.”

  “Do you have any idea how pathetic that sounds? Saturday night, and neither one of us has anything better to do than hang around the Jackson Diner, eating pie and drinking coffee?”

  “What are you talking about, Berkowitz? We both had something pretty damn exciting to do tonight. You were the belle of the ball. This is just a little après-ball snack. A nightcap, if you will. And you won’t have to worry about turning back into a pumpkin if you stay up past your curfew.”

  His offer was tempting. Too tempting for a recently-widowed woman who found him irresistibly attractive and who had no intention of staying beyond the middle of April. “I really shouldn’t.”

  “What are you afraid of, Colleen?”

  At the sound of her name on his tongue, something happened inside her. Like sap on a warm spring day, her juices started to rise. Had he ever called her by her first name? Surely, she’d remember if he had. Because she didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. Didn’t like the intimacy of it. Didn’t like the way her body responded to his voice, didn’t like the goose bumps that had popped up in some very inappropriate places. Hated the way her stomach felt all jangly and nervous because of his nearness. She couldn’t let this happen. Irv had only been dead for seven months. She had to give it a year. Twelve months. That would be an acceptable mourning period. After a year, she could start dating again. Could start thinking about scratching that itch again. Just five more months. She could hold out that long. And by then, she’d be long gone from here. There would be other men, men who didn’t bring out the cavewoman inside her. Men she didn’t feel driven to touch and taste. Men who aroused only the most civilized of feelings in her.

  Men who weren’t Harley Atkins.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.” And without saying goodbye, she turned and fled, down the porch steps, down the flagstone walkway, down the drive that led to the studio.

  His voice followed her. “Colleen! Goddamn it, Colleen, don’t run away!”

  She kept going. She didn’t have a choice. He was her kryptonite, and everybody knew how dangerous kryptonite was. Her entire future hinged on her ability to avoid commitment, to avoid permanence, to avoid him.

  She thundered up the stairs to her apartment, opened the door, and slammed it shut behind her. Turned the lock, then leaned against the door, her chest heaving and sweat pooling beneath her arms.

  Self-preservation. It was a narrow line she was walking, but somehow, she’d managed to catch herself. Somehow, she’d managed to prevent herself from falling as she teetered on that line without a safety net. She should be relieved. Should be pleased by her ability to run her own life. Should be proud of being clever enough to avoid the pitfalls and the potholes that the universe placed in front of her, hoping to entice her and trip her up.

  She hadn’t tripped up. She should feel good about that. She should be flipping ecstatic right now.

  So why did she feel so much like crying?

  Mikey

  In the midst of chaos, he’d found himself a quiet spot on the back stairs that led from Aunt Casey’s kitchen up to her second floor. This staircase wasn’t wide and elegant and open, like her beautiful oak front stairs. These stairs were narrow and enclosed and carpeted, the entire staircase taking up only a small area as they climbed a third of the way, reached a landing, and turned back on themselves. Climbed another third, reached another landing, and turned again. They reminded him of the stairs in his dorm at Stanford, but on a much smaller scale. Casey had insisted on them, she’d told him, for multiple reasons. Her grandmother—which would be his great-grandmother—had owned a house with a back staircase like this, so there was the nostalgia factor. They also provided easy access from the master bedroom to the kitchen, and an additional exit for the upstairs bedrooms in case of fire.

  He was sitting hunched over with a Coke in his hand, contemplating the mess that was his life, when he felt a light hand on his shoulder. He turned, and Paige’s face swam into view. “Hey,” she said softly.

  Just looking at her took his breath away. Mikey rubbed his thumb up and down the neck of his Coke bottle to calm the sudden hammering of his heart. “Hi,” he said.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  He scooted over as far as he could, and she squeezed in beside him. She didn’t take up much room; she’d inherited her father’s tall, lanky build, with hips so narrow they barely existed. He should know. He’d spent enough time obsessing over those hips. Not to mention the rest of her. “That was some performance,” she said.

  “Yeah. Crazy. Who knew they could sing like that?” He turned his head and met her green eyes, open, frank, guileless. Her body heat slowly suffusing him with warmth, she reached out and captured his Coke, lifted it to her mouth, and took a long drink. He watched her throat moving as she swallowed.

  She handed the soda back to him. “So,” she said.

  “So.”

  “I’ve given this—us—some thought.”

  He cleared his throat. “And?”

  “And I’m ready to hear the rest of what you have to say.”

  The dark cloud that had been hanging over him since the last time they’d spoken burst like a popped balloon, and the sun came gushing through. He tried to curb his enthusiasm, reminded himself that this didn’t necessarily mean anything. Paige was the most unpredictable person he’d ever known. Who knew what kind of response she’d have? Just because she’d agreed to hear him out didn’t mean she wouldn’t laugh in his face and ask him what he’d been smoking.

  But attempting to rein himself in was pointless. He was eighteen, in love, and invincible. Nothing was going to stop him now. Not until he’d said what he needed to say. “Can we talk in private?” he asked.

  Paige bit her lower lip, studied him, then nodded. “Come on.” She took his hand and led him up the stairs to her bedroom. “We have to be quiet,” she said. “If Dad catches you up here, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  He wanted to yank her into his arms, wanted to kiss her senseless. Instead, he settled for looking around her room. It was tidy, the colors muted, the décor classic Paige. She wasn’t a girly girl. There were no floral prints, no frou-frou ruffles. On the wall by the window was a poster of David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Her bedspread was pink, but not a pale, girly pink. Instead, it was bright enough to knock your eyes out. Her curtains were simple and sheer. On the window seat beneath the bay window lay her guitar, surrounded by an untidy scatter of music paper, notes and words scribbled in pencil. On the dresser, her cosmetics were lined up neatly. Foundation, eye liner, lipstick. A bottle of perfume. That surprised
him. He’d never known her to wear perfume. A pain like a hot poker stabbed into his gut as he imagined her wearing it for some other guy.

  A single Polaroid photo was tucked into the mirror frame. He moved closer to look at it. The woman was young, dark-haired, and somber. Pretty. He tried, and failed, to find anything of Paige in her. “Your mom?” he said.

  “Yeah.” She stood, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, waiting. A trickle of sweat ran down his spine. He’d rehearsed his speech a million times, but now that the time had come to give it, his mind was a complete blank.

  Mikey turned away from her, back toward the mirror. Met his own eyes, saw the fear in them. If she said no—if she turned him down—it would be over. Finis. The end. If she agreed, then warm, red blood would continue to course through his veins.

  He took a deep breath. Met her eyes in the mirror. And said, “Please, just hear me out before you say anything. Promise me that?”

  “Fine. Just…please get on with it. This waiting is making me crazy.”

  He nodded. Picked up the perfume bottle and sniffed it. There was nothing frail or flowery about it. Like Paige herself, it was bold and strong and spicy. “I know we’re both young,” he said, putting the bottle back down. “You haven’t even finished school. But the way we feel about each other—” He turned, examined every line and angle of the face that watched him without any display of emotion. Correcting himself, he said, “The way I feel about you, and the way I’m pretty sure you feel about me—”

  She nodded for him to continue. “I tried putting a whole continent between us. Hoping I’d forget. Hoping I’d get over you. It didn’t work.”

  She rearranged the arms she held so tightly over her chest. When she did, the sharp point of her collarbone was visible above the scooped neck of her sweater. He swallowed hard. “I’m going away again,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving soon. I don’t have much time. Paige, I want you to come with me.”

  “Jesus, Mikey, you know that’s not—”

  “You promised to hear me out.”

  Her mouth, agape like that of a fish, flapped shut. “I did,” she said.

  His hands were shaking, and he closed them into fists because men didn’t shake like little girls, and he was a man who didn’t want to be lessened in her eyes. “I love you,” he said. “I know I’ll never feel this way about anyone else. We belong together. I know it, and I think you do, too.”

  He took a step toward her, reached out to touch her cheek, discovered that she was trembling as hard as he was. “Do you know why I came back here?” She shook her head. “I came for you. You’re the only reason I’d ever come back to this lousy town. I know they’ll all want to kill me over this. My parents. Yours. The whole damn family will be in an uproar. I’ll never dare to face your father again. But I know what I want, and what I want is you.”

  “Mikey.” His name came out softly, half word, half sob.

  “Shh.” He ran a finger softly along the bow of her lip, brushed a single tear from her cheek. Pressed a gentle kiss to her chin, that strong-willed chin that had haunted his dreams for the last year.

  And said, “Marry me, Paige.”

  Casey

  When her husband came into the bedroom, Casey was curled up on her side, still fully dressed, her head resting on one arm. “Look at you,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re wiped out. This was too much for you tonight.”

  She studied him, head to toe, this beautiful green-eyed man who had become her love and her life, the better half of her. “The first trimester’s always exhausting,” she said. “Once I’m past that, I’ll start to feel better.”

  He held out a hand. “Sit up, Miss Muffet. I’ll help you.”

  Like a dutiful wife, she took his hand and let him pull her into a sitting position. He crouched beside the bed and grasped one booted foot in his hand. Unzipped the boot and gently tugged it off. She studied him in silence while he repeated the action with her other foot. “You really don’t have to undress me,” she said. “I’m not helpless.”

  He released her foot, glanced up, and waggled his eyebrows. “You usually like it when I undress you.”

  “Brat.” She lightly cuffed his shoulder, then slid her hand up to touch his cheek. Leaned forward and, cradling his face in both hands, pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “I love you,” she said, “so very much.”

  He rocked back on his heels. Playing with a strand of her hair, he said, “I love you, too, buttercup.”

  “That’s a new one, MacKenzie. Will the time ever come when you stop calling me silly names?”

  “I promise to call you silly names until one or both of us is dead.”

  “Which, according to our marriage contract, won’t happen until I’m ninety-four. By then, I’ll probably be tired of you anyway.”

  He broke into spontaneous and off-key song, a couple of lines from a Beatles classic, When I’m Sixty-Four. Being his own unique self, he of course substituted Ninety-Four for Sixty-Four. “We’ll see how that goes,” she said. “Meanwhile, I can take it from here.”

  Once they were both undressed and had found each other under the covers of their big, soft bed, she lay her face against his chest and said, “Thank you.”

  His hand, busy stroking her hair, paused mid-stroke. “For what?”

  “For tonight. I know it was all your doing. Colleen would never have come up with an idea like that on her own. I don’t know what kind of magic—or coercion—you employed, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Because it was the exact right thing to do for my sister. It was exactly what she needed.”

  “I might’ve lied a little. I might’ve told her that you were the one who needed it.”

  “Robert Kevin MacKenzie! You lied? I bet your nose is growing, even as we speak.”

  “It wasn’t really a lie, though. This was what you needed.”

  “It was. How it is that you always know what I need?”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times before. I’m a wizard. Wizards know everything.”

  “I think Colleen and I made a breakthrough tonight. A baby step, but every journey begins with a single step. Something changed between us tonight. I think we looked at each other and we both remembered how it used to be, back before Mama died and everything in our lives changed. And all because of you.” She kissed a hard, muscled bicep. “What you gave us tonight was priceless.”

  He rolled up on one hip and wrapped his arm around her. “We aim to please.”

  She lay quietly for a time. Then said, “This could just be me, acting hopeful, but do you think there’s something going on between Colleen and Harley? Have you noticed anything?”

  “I haven’t noticed anything, but then I’m not plagued by that infamous women’s intuition you females seem to have.”

  “There’s something. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the vibes are very strong. If they’re not involved, they’re both thinking about it.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “Harley’s a nice guy. I like him. My sister could do a lot worse. But it’s not up to me. I guess we just have to wait and see how it progresses.”

  For a time, there was nothing but the sound of their breathing, the warmth of his skin against hers, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek. She let out a sigh of contentment and said drowsily, “We’ve come a long way, you and I.”

  “Mmn,” he said. “In what way?”

  “He’s not there between us any more.”

  From his side of the bed, there was a heavy silence. It went on for a moment or two. “Rob?” she said.

  “I heard you. I’m just digesting what you said.”

  “It’s just you and me now. Sometimes, it feels as though we’ve been together forever.”

  After a moment, he said, “We have. We’ve been together since you were eighteen and I was twenty.”

  “I suppose that’s true enough. In a sense, we were always t
ogether, weren’t we? Right from the beginning. Sometimes, I look back at all those years I was married to Danny, and it seems as if it happened to somebody else. As though I’m watching a movie, and I know how it ends, and I can remember that I loved him, but I can’t feel it anymore. Is that wrong of me?”

  “It’s not wrong, babe. Time changes things.”

  “It’s not just time, it’s perspective. Being with you gave that to me. I was never really happy with him. Not after the first couple of years. I adored him, and somehow, I convinced myself that I was happy. I didn’t know the difference between that and real happiness. Now I do.” She paused, considered. “Sometimes, it terrifies me, because I know now how quickly it can all be taken away. If I ever lost you, or Emma, I’m not sure I could go on living.”

  “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. I’ve watched life steamroll you, more than once. But every time, you just got back up and kept on going. If anything happened, you’d go on living. Besides, Emma and I aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Promise me that.”

  “I can’t promise. I might be a wizard, but I can’t control fate. I can promise you all my tomorrows, though, however many there are. For now, that’ll have to do.”

  She wrapped both arms around him, brushed the knuckles of one hand up and down his back. Smiled against his chest and told him, “You always know the right words to say.”

  And tangled together like a pair of playful kittens, they slept.

  Mikey

  When he let himself into the apartment, his mother was sitting in the dark, watching TV. He stood there for a time, leaning against the living room door frame, his keys cool and hard against his hand. Funny that he’d never noticed just how sad she looked. And how lonely. Those weren’t words he would ever have thought to use to describe his mother. But tonight, he could see it clearly. Maybe it was the contrast of her sadness with his own elation that brought it home to him with such impact that it dampened his spirits a bit. She looked up, saw him there in the doorway, and smiled. She had a lovely smile, his mother. At thirty-five, she was still a real looker.