THE BRIGHT lights cutting through the darkness had been a surprise, albeit a welcome one, after the monotony of mile after mile of nearly undefined countryside. It was a gas station, and one that hadn’t been there the last time Jesse had been on this road. The crack running through the parking lot Jesse turned into said it hadn’t been built too recently, however, though the single line of gas pumps and the brightly lit store still looked surprisingly odd amid the fields and scattered houses that were once all this stretch of road had boasted.
Or maybe it just seemed that way to Jesse. This had been familiar territory once, after all.
A charcoal gray pickup sat on the opposite side of the pump Jesse pulled alongside, although the empty cab and the lingering smell of gas once Jesse opened his door were clear enough indications the driver was already inside the store.
Unless the bathrooms were on the outside of the building. A glance at the glass-covered front of the convenience store made Jesse doubt it, though he would find that out for himself once the tank on his own fuel-efficient Corolla was filled.
His breath formed a thin cloud in front of him as he slipped the nozzle into his tank and locked the pump handle open, and exhaustion began to seep through him as he glanced at his watch. The numbers he saw were identical to the ones that glowed on his dashboard clock. It was nearly three in the morning. The shiver that ran through his body told him it also felt every bit as cold as the temperature reading under the time on his dash indicated. He shoved his hands into his pockets as he turned his gaze back to the empty road and wished his mind would go as numb as his fingers as he took stock of where he was—and where he was going.
He could barely make out the sign stating Bartlesberg was thirty-two miles away, just down the two-lane road leading to his right. Had he been going that way, he would pass it in less than a minute once he pulled back out onto the highway.
But he would be turning left. Which meant the next sign he would see would tell him Miller’s Creek was two miles ahead. If that sign was still there. And it would be, he didn’t doubt that. Probably not the same dented metal plate he remembered from fifteen years ago, but some version of it at least. Once he passed that, then drove the two miles that separated the sign from the town he had grown up in….
The promise he had made to himself fifteen years ago would truly be broken.
Dread clawed its way through his fatigue as the pump continued to run.
Nothing of Miller’s Creek could be seen from this place on the road, yet Jesse could feel its presence as he turned his head to the left. As if it were a living being, some kind of monster waiting in the shadows, though the town was, in truth, little more than a ramshackle arrangement of poor to middle-class homes scattered around a single main street lined with locally owned shops. The school, if it still stood, would be amid the residential streets to the west of Main, while the creek that gave the town its name would form a boundary on the east. Driving in from Bartlesberg made the semi-new gas station the only real landmark from the south. And on the other side of town, at the far reaches of Main and just past the lone grocery store that had been a staple of Miller’s Creek for as long as Jesse could remember…
Lay the cemetery. Jesse brought his gaze back to the pavement at his feet, then closed his eyes against a surge of unwanted memories. Jacob Palmer had never been laid to rest there, but Geoffrey Meyers had been. Near the back and close to the far edge, as if the town wanted separation from Geoff the way it wanted separation from Palmer.
Jesse had only seen his grave once, the day of the funeral, with the dirt newly turned and the coffin set beside it, ready to be lowered. He hadn’t seen Geoff that day, only the polished wooden box, with the heavy partitioned lid closed to the winter air and the shiny brass fittings molded around the corners for decoration. Jesse could see the casket now, while the numbers clicked higher and the steady hiss of pouring fuel swept around him.
The flowers had been white, spread over the top and trailing down the sides, a gift from the church since Geoff’s parents hadn’t thought to—or bothered to—purchase flowers themselves. The awning had been green, set up like a tent, shielding the casket from the intermittent ice pellets spit from the bleak gray sky spread over those gathered for the day of remembrance, though there hadn’t been many. Only Geoff’s parents, standing at the front, and a few of the churchgoers who attended every funeral in Miller’s Creek, regardless of whose or how well they’d known them. None of his teachers, though, and not one of the students who’d shared his classes, and not a single neighbor from the street they had lived on.
Except for Jesse, who had stood between his own parents, listening to the vague references from the preacher as he spoke of the tragedy of a life cut short.
Jesse’s eyes shot open as the lever locking the pump handle released with a thump. His vision was momentarily caught between the bleakness of the service and the numbers on the pump, and several heavy breaths clouded in front of him before the last vestiges of that day in the cemetery finally shattered and fell away. The nearly tangible presence of Miller’s Creek seemed to retreat with it, leaving him aware of the chill of sweat on the back of his neck and the rapid beating of his heart against his ribs. Jesse blinked, then blew out a deeper, heavier sigh as a stray gust of wind tossed a discarded cellophane wrapper across the pavement.
He could already picture the frowns his former therapists would give him if they knew just how strongly the memories of the funeral had pulled him in, just as he could see those frowns deepen if they ever learned the reason Jesse had reached the gas station outside Miller’s Creek at three in the morning instead of at a more reasonable hour.
Fatigue might be one believable excuse for the memories, but wanting only to eliminate the possibility of a second dream of Geoff on the anniversary of their last day as kids in Miller’s Creek was the undeniable truth of the second. It might have meant driving through the night in the cold of early November, but a second glance at his watch confirmed it was now the day after the anniversary of when Geoff had led them to the cemetery. Jesse’s next breath was one heavy with relief.
The rattle of the spout was hollow as he returned the handle to the pump. He then shoved his hand back into the pocket of his coat as he made his way toward the store.
The tinkling of old-fashioned bells heralded his arrival as he pulled the double-paned glass door open, and the surprisingly cheerful smile from the pony-tailed blonde clerk behind the counter met him as he stepped over the dirt-crusted threshold. Her age was more surprising to Jesse than her smile, however—at least if she really was as young as she looked. And even if she wasn’t the high school student working the graveyard shift on a school night that Jesse thought she was, she still wasn’t the type of person Jesse would have expected to see working the graveyard shift alone. At least not in a place like Attingwood.
But Attingwood was hundreds of miles behind him, he reminded himself silently, and Miller’s Creek was apparently as uneventful as ever. Then again, nothing ever really happened in Miller’s Creek.
Save for the massacre committed by Jacob Palmer seventy-five years ago.
And the unintentional murder committed by Geoffrey Meyers much more recently.
Jesse’s mouth tightened as he gave her a brief nod and stepped farther inside.
The familiar arrangements of shelves, coolers, and counters meant he had no trouble locating the bathrooms, as well as the coffee counter along the far wall, with the last already occupied by the apparent driver of the truck in the lot. That the driver was a man was obvious, even with his back to the store. Jesse had to admit that the worn, hip-hugging jeans, loose flannel shirt, and longish dark hair trailing over his collar were attractive as far as it went, so he wasn’t surprised that the clerk had already turned her smile back to him by the time Jesse passed the register. The familiar motions of his hands said he was also in the process of filling his cup from the ever-present carafes on the warmers, and Jesse let his own tired smile form as he stepped around both the counter and the man to head for the bathrooms. That was something Jesse could relate to, and he would be getting his own caffeine fix soon enough.
The bathrooms were set in an alcove, yet despite the pressing matter of his bladder to attend to, Jesse still glanced over his shoulder at the man by the coffee before he stepped inside—and felt his heart skip at the profile he saw.
The view from behind was merely a tease for the strong, masculine lines of his nose and jaw, and the clinging T-shirt he wore under his flannel shirt hinted at a well-defined chest and flat stomach that tempted Jesse’s eyes to travel down. The fact that he wasn’t wearing a coat meant the view was also unimpeded, and whoever the man was, he was a far cry from the usual long-haul truckers he had seen stocking up on coffee during the drive from Attingwood. Younger than the truckers he had seen too, looking somewhat closer to his own age than the age of the experienced drivers, and with just enough scruff on his cheeks to make wanting to feel it a sudden, captivating thought. The clerk had given every indication of a crush the moment Jesse had seen her smile turn to the man, but from what he could see, the crush was certainly warranted. If this store was a bar and this town was Attingwood….
Jesse was startled when the man suddenly glanced up, and he felt his face heat as he forced his feet to start moving. He had seen just enough to know the profile did perfect justice to the man’s face, but this was a convenience store outside Miller’s Creek. Suggesting a hookup here would probably get his ass kicked.
Which was why he was both surprised and a little intimidated when he found the man still at the coffee counter when he returned from the tiny dimly lit bathroom. The small tub of creamer he had popped open said he may not have deliberately been waiting for Jesse to return, though Jesse’s fatigue-clouded mind would have liked to think he was. Exhausted or not, Jesse couldn’t deny the man was good-looking, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from drifting over the man again as he stepped up beside him. The spring-loaded dispenser in front of him snapped as he pulled a cup from the end.
“I’d watch the handle, unless you’re going for decaf.”
The warm, steady sound of the man’s voice stopped Jesse before he fully set his cup on the counter, and he looked over to the see the dark head nod toward the two pots on the warmer on top of the coffeemaker. Up this close, Jesse could definitely understand the clerk’s crush. Something similar grew inside him as he got his first uninhibited view of the man.
The dark hair fell softly over and around the man’s forehead, while the shadow of a beard dusted his cheeks and attractively shaped chin. A perpetual beard, Jesse would bet, growing back within hours of shaving, leaving him almost permanently bristly. Jesse couldn’t help but smile at the thought of it. It looked good on him and certainly added a kind of ruggedness to his appearance, as did the thin scar nearly hidden in the bristles beneath his lower lip—neither of which detracted from his handsomely sculpted features. In fact, his entire face was chiseled nicely enough to produce attractive angles without being overly sharp. Long legs also put him an inch or two above Jesse’s height, while the layered flannel and T-shirt worn over his faded jeans didn’t do anything to hide his equally sculpted slim build. And his eyes—Jesse was caught by the remarkable shade of green, not exactly emerald but bright enough in the fluorescent lights to remind him of the dry rock moss common in Indiana. It was stunning to see that color surrounded by thick, dark lashes, though the expression written in the man’s eyes was friendly. They seemed to grow a little warmer when he flashed a white, charming smile around the coffee stirrer he held in his mouth like a toothpick.
Jesse was still staring when the man pulled it out and pointed it at the orange-handled carafe on the left.
“It’s loose enough to make a mess if you’re not careful.”
Jesse caught his breath as the words jerked his attention from the man to the coffeepots and back again, and he finally set his own cup fully on the counter as embarrassment again heated his cheeks. God, he hadn’t stared like this since his first visit to a gay bar during his second year of college, and the men he had stared at both during and after that night had returned his attention for the sole purpose Jesse had given it. Sex. Not necessarily anonymous sex, and not always limited to one-night stands, but definitely with no strings attached. Even the men he had taken to his apartment as a full-fledged adult knew not to come back without a specific invitation.
Jesse was old enough to know that staring anywhere outside that type of venue wasn’t acceptable, no matter how completely someone had caught your attention. He cleared his throat as he reached for the creamer and focused on the coffee he would need to finish this trip, instead of the dimple in the man’s cheek that said his smile hadn’t vanished. At least the man didn’t seem wary or pissed—thank God. In fact, the man still seemed perfectly at ease as he dipped the coffee stick in the cup and swirled it with one hand, his long fingers drawing Jesse’s attention as much as the heat that seemed to come from the man’s body, despite his not wearing a coat.
Then the warmth in his own body slid decidedly lower when the man lifted the stirrer back to his mouth to suck it clean.
God, if the man had been gay and Jesse had found him in a bar in Attingwood….
“And the coffee’s not going to pour itself, so you might want to go ahead and get after it.” The man’s green eyes slid back to Jesse as his smile made the dimple in his cheek deepen even more. Jesse’s awareness of his own embarrassment grew even sharper at knowing the man had been fully aware of Jesse’s attention.
“Sorry,” he finally managed as he dumped the tub of creamer into his Styrofoam cup. “I wasn’t trying to be rude. I guess I’m just surprised to see someone else awake and on the road this time of night without a tractor trailer close by. And besides, I’m pretty sure I give everything a blank stare until I’ve got enough coffee in my veins to make me human. No offense intended, really.”
He looked up as he said the last and found the green eyes still looking back—warmly back, or so it seemed, with the skin crinkling around them and the dimple becoming more pronounced as his smile became a little more… shy? Jesse was tired enough to know anything he saw in the man right now could be nothing more than wishful thinking, but if he didn’t know better, didn’t want to see what he thought he was seeing, he would swear the man was flirting.
But the man’s words were entirely serious. “I hope you’re not including the road in your blank stares.”
Jesse frowned slightly as the man lifted one hand from his coffee to slide his thumb over the pale scar on his chin, and he felt a twist in his gut as his idle curiosity about the mark was answered.
“I got that a few years ago when I thought I was awake when I wasn’t. It was a good lesson to learn, though it wasn’t pretty.”
The awkwardness Jesse felt as the man dropped his hand nearly made him forget about the maybe or maybe-not flirting from moments before, and his own words were serious as he picked out the only words he could think to say. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I bet it wasn’t.”
It wasn’t a horrible scar, but even if things had gone as he had started hoping they would, he hadn’t intended to prompt the man into giving up the details of his life, and he wasn’t about to pry.
Of course that left him with no idea where to go from here that wouldn’t sound either rude or insulting, depending on how either asking about the accident or ignoring it altogether would be taken by a complete stranger.
Jesse was therefore grateful when the man let him off the hook and did it in a way that brought the smile back to Jesse’s face.
“So, what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?”
Jesse laughed at the expertly recited mantra of a standard pick-up line. He had to give the man credit for breaking the suddenly awkward moment, and the smile he gave as he asked the question made Jesse sure the man was flirting. Either that or Jesse’s judgment was seriously off-kilter.
“I just got here from Attingwood,” Jesse answered. “Long drive, but I guess someone has to do it. So what about you? You live around here?”
Jesse’s question stopped the man in the middle of lifting his cup again, though Jesse couldn’t be sure if it was the question itself or the reaction he obviously got from his flirting that made the man smile over the rim. But Jesse’s question wasn’t entirely small talk. The man was close enough to Jesse’s age that Jesse knew he wasn’t a native of Miller’s Creek. He would definitely remember a younger version of this guy within a grade or two of him in school. With eyes like that in a face that handsome—
“For a few years,” the man answered easily before sipping from his cup again. “Definitely long enough to appreciate the quiet. And the commute,” he added as he flashed his smile again. “So where are you headed this time of night, in this part of Indiana?”
And as fast as that, the blatant reminder of exactly why he was in Miller’s Creek crushed what had been a pleasant conversation. Dread ratcheted up without warning, like a demon answering a summons, and Jesse heard the low hiss of his own breath as he answered with a definite turn in his mood.
“Miller’s Creek.”
Surprise replaced the smile on the man’s face, but Jesse stopped him from asking by answering the next question without hesitation.
“I work for the Attingwood Journal, and I’m here to do a story on Jacob Palmer, the man who—”
“Murdered his family back in the thirties. Yeah, I’ve heard the story.” The man’s voice mirrored just a little of the surprise in his eyes. “People talk about it every year,” he added, sounding strangely cautious as his eyes turned guarded. “And there’s always kids out in the cemetery burning crosses, holding séances and God knows what else every year when November rolls around. But I wouldn’t think it would be big news anymore, at least outside Miller’s Creek.” He lifted his cup along with an eyebrow as he asked blandly, “So you’re a reporter?”
Jesse didn’t answer, but it wasn’t the man’s eyes or captivating good looks that held his attention this time. It was the abrupt change in his behavior that set him on edge. He wouldn’t have thought this man would be among those who looked down on reporters, viewing them as little more than vultures feeding on the trials and tribulations of others for the sake of a buck. It was a reputation Jesse hated, more so because it was one that others in his field had rightfully earned. Yet even if this guy didn’t seem to hold quite the same level of suspicion he had seen too many times in other people, the truth was he had only known this man for the space of a few minutes.
Not even long enough to learn his name. And if there was one thing he did learn only hours before leaving Attingwood, it was that good looks were a poor indicator of anyone’s true being. Douglas Keats was proof of that.
Jesse wasn’t about to let another pair of fantasy-inducing eyes set him up for that kind of reality check again. His smile was gone, but his gaze was steady as he met the man’s squarely.
“Aspiring reporter,” he clarified evenly. “I’ve been with the Journal for six years and cover whatever story gains the interest of the public. In this case it happens to be the story of Jacob Palmer and the massacre in Miller’s Creek seventy-five years ago.” He didn’t add that Geoff Meyers was expected to be a part of that story as well, but he doubted the man would care about that any more than he cared for Jesse’s assignment as a whole. He knew his tone had worked however, given that the man’s expression changed again—though a thread of guilt licked through Jesse’s pride when he saw the apology that replaced the surprise in the man’s eyes. The guilt only grew with the man’s words.
“Hey, look, sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like it didn’t matter,” the man told him, his voice sincere enough for the guilt to nearly become a blanket. “I also know you have a job to do, and you wouldn’t be doing it if you didn’t think it was important. I wasn’t trying to run it down.”
The blanket fell over Jesse completely. He opened his mouth to try to take back his own implications but felt his heart sink when he didn’t get the chance. The second change in the man’s tone in as many minutes made it clear the damage had apparently already been done.
“But listen, unless you’ve actually got something to do right now, there’s a motel a couple of miles down the road you might want to think about. It’s cheap and dirty, and the owner’s cranky as hell, but it’ll do for a night.” He set his cup on the counter and reached for a napkin. “Just don’t start believing it’s haunted no matter how decrepit it looks. If something moves, grab a shoe.”
Jesse nearly snorted at the joke, as well as the particular recommendation, until sheer surprise hit as the words from the man sank in. Oh, Jesse knew exactly which motel the man was talking about. The Hometown Inn had been a fixture on this road into Miller’s Creek since before Jesse was born, but if this man knew it well enough to name it both cheap and dirty and knew enough about its owner to label him “cranky as hell”… he didn’t just live “around here.” He lived in Miller’s Creek.
And he was still getting ready to leave if the way he wrapped the napkin around the barrel of his cup was any indication.
“Hey, listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to start snapping at you,” Jesse began, though the man still picked up his cup from the counter. God, he hadn’t wanted to offend the man, let alone inadvertently end what could at least have been some pleasant conversation with a very handsome partner—at least if Jesse ever got his head out of his ass. “I’m not usually this cranky unless it’s the middle of the night and I haven’t had enough coffee to kick-start my manners.”
It was the plain and simple truth, but the man had his cup in his hand and had already taken half a step toward the register.
“Don’t worry about it, all right? I know how it goes when you haven’t had enough sleep or coffee.” The man’s smile took the sting out of the words, though he still didn’t stay. “But I’ve got to get going anyway. Just give some thought to the motel, all right?”
The vague wave of his cup toward the coffeepot may have been lost on Jesse, but the wink he gave as he made it wasn’t.
“And remember, watch the handle.”
The man started moving away without waiting for Jesse to answer, but Jesse still said a quiet, “Yeah, thanks,” while he silently cursed himself for an idiot. Then swore at Miller’s Creek and Jacob Palmer along with Doug and the Journal as a whole as he watched the man move toward the register and set his cup in front of the clerk. The man had been the best thing he had seen in Miller’s Creek his entire life, and he had effectively stopped him cold with his own ill-placed attitude, if not his words, though his words had been bad enough.
Chatting with the men he met in the bars in his second home city had never ended with him jumping on a soapbox once the subject of his attention got within speaking distance. He hadn’t had trouble finding the right words for anyone once his therapists had fully battered down the wall Jesse had built to keep the world and Geoffrey Meyers at a distance. He couldn’t be at a loss for words if he planned to write more than research articles for the Attingwood Journal.
But he could certainly pick the wrong tone to say them in at the worst possible time in Miller’s Creek, and with the man now engaged in friendly conversation with the seemingly fawning clerk, the time for smoothing things over had passed. Jesse blew out a disgusted sigh at himself as he turned to finish filling his own cup with the store’s house brew, and he listened for both the ringing of the register and the sound of bells over the door before turning with his own cup in hand.
The view through the smudged glass doors showed the man jogging lightly toward his truck, and Jesse watched him pause only long enough to get the measure of his dusty red Corolla before the light of the cab flicked on briefly and the man slipped inside. The gray pickup was pointed toward Bartlesberg, but with the man apparently living in Miller’s Creek and Jesse with no choice but to remain here for at least a few days, he hoped he would at least get the chance to apologize later, even if he had screwed up his chances for anything more than that. Miller’s Creek was small enough to make running into him again definitely not out of the question.
He set his coffee in front of the register at nearly the same moment the brake and headlights of the truck turned on, and he watched the truck pull away before he turned his attention to the high-school-aged clerk behind the counter.
Her name tag read Ashley, and seeing it made Jesse wish he had learned the man’s name. Or at least learned more than that he lived in Miller’s Creek and apparently had his own reasons for filling up on coffee at three o’clock in the morning.
And that he obviously knew the story of Jacob Palmer. He glanced again at the lot—now empty except for his own car—then jerked his eyes back to Ashley as her cheerleader-appropriate voice asked for payment. A single dollar bill covered the cost, and the coins he received in return were still warm.
Brittle air swirled around him as he stepped out of the store, and there was no question that the Hometown Inn would be his next stop, even without the recommendation of the man he had shared space with at the coffee counter. It would mark his first real step back into Miller’s Creek—while the convenience store he was leaving marked his last chance to reconsider before that step was taken.
He glanced at the empty road leading to Bartlesberg as he stepped alongside his car and dug the keys out of his pocket and the thought of following the charcoal gray pickup to Bartlesberg and then home crossed his mind.
He knew Doug wouldn’t accept any explanation he gave if he did so and would likely hand him his walking papers the moment he stepped back into the office.
But he also knew he would lose any chance of running into the man he wanted to know more about if he turned back now. And Jacob Palmer and Geoffrey Meyers aside….
In the end, it was the green eyes far more than Doug’s blue ones that made his decision.
The trash can next to the pumps tumbled to the ground under a sudden gust of wind as Jesse turned his car toward Miller’s Creek.
THE CREAKING of the door was loud in the cold silence surrounding the decrepit Hometown Inn. The hinges probably hadn’t been oiled in decades, and the musty smell of disuse that rolled off room number twelve shouldn’t have been surprising. The damaged wood and faded blue paint stretching the length of the one-level building making up the motel hadn’t changed at all in the fifteen years since Jesse had seen it. Even the sign in the parking lot was the same lopsided blue circle he remembered, with the name depicted in the same exaggerated white letters that Jesse had seen every time he had passed the motel back then, which hadn’t been often. His parents had always had strict rules about how far he could ride his bike and where he could go when he did. He had never ridden this far down the road after dark. At least the white-painted letters still reflected enough light from the bulbs that hadn’t burned out around them to tell him the motel was still in business, even if his car was the only vehicle in the lot.
A brush of his hand along the inside wall found the light switch he was looking for, though the sickly yellow light from the lamp he turned on showed him a room that lived up to—or down to—the condition of the outside of the motel.
Calling it outdated would be kind. Simply naming it cheap would be more accurate. Cheap and uncomfortable, if the appearance of the bed was any indication. But he had been warned, and he would give the green-eyed man from the store enough credit to assume he wouldn’t have suggested this place if there was another option. Even the faded floral bedcover said “old,” and Jesse was sure the scattering of stains darkened under the dim glow of the lamp had as much of a chance of being mold as they did dirt.
Or washed-out blood. Jesse grimaced at that sudden morbid thought as he let his duffel bag slide from his shoulder to land with a low whuff at his feet. The water stains on the ceiling were nearly the same color as the threadbare carpet, but that was as far as the interior decoration went.
“I should probably be relieved this place has indoor plumbing,” Jesse muttered darkly as he lowered the case housing his laptop more carefully. A rusted metal chair shoved into the corner behind a folding card table would give him space to work, though he would have to find someplace else when it came to submitting his articles to the Journal. Mr. Mosely had already bluntly informed him the rooms lacked Internet capability.
A brittle smile crossed Jesse’s face as he stepped fully into the room and closed the heavy door behind him. “Cranky as hell” would have been an accurate description of the man fifteen years ago, and he hadn’t softened one bit in the years since. Jesse could probably credit apathy as much as age for the fact Mr. Mosely hadn’t recognized him when he checked in. Jesse Ellis may have been the talk of the town fifteen years ago, but Mr. Mosely had never really given a rat’s ass about anything outside of the Hometown Inn. At least not as far as Jesse had ever been able to tell. The unfriendliness Mr. Mosely had shown back then had simply been… normal.
But finding Mr. Mosely still at the motel at all—even finding him still alive, for that matter—might be a blessing in disguise, Jesse had to admit.
God knew the man had been a fixture long enough to remember a Miller’s Creek from a time long before Jesse’s birth—and he was old enough that he might remember a time when Jacob Palmer had been alive and well, at least if Abraham Mosely had been born and raised in Miller’s Creek the way Jesse had. Jesse didn’t know that for sure, but it was a place to start.
A deep sigh filled his lungs with stale cold air, and he scowled at the dilapidated metal radiator under the room’s lone window. Dirty blue paint had chipped away in more places than not to show the dark corroded metal beneath, and a single glance at the worn plastic knobs was enough to make him less than certain the thing would even work. He would apparently have to guess as to which way to turn them as well; any markings on the indicators had long since worn off.
The grate of metal as he turned the knob on the radiator set his teeth on edge, but the following waft of warm air was promising, even if it smelled of old oil and gathered dust. He cast a glance at the darkened bathroom on the other side of the bed as he turned his back on the radiator and swallowed the dread of what he would find once he turned on the light in that chilly room. Rusty water in the toilet and the shower, if he had to make a guess, but seeing the truth of that could wait until morning.
Or at least the few hours until daylight. For now he would settle for getting his suitcase out of the car, then steeling himself to sleep on the thin, lumpy mattress under the stained bedcover. He could already imagine how it would feel, though he had yet to turn back the covers.
Cold air swept over him amid the squeal of rusted hinges as he pulled the door open and stepped out.
Maybe he should send Doug a picture of what made up the five-star hotel he obviously thought Miller’s Creek would boast. Or invite him to join Jesse here, since he was suddenly so willing to fulfill the fantasies Jesse had spent six years creating—as long as he could get his own reward in readership. Just imagining the look on Douglas Keats’s face as he found himself surrounded by the mold and mildew inherent in the Hometown Inn had Jesse’s lips curling into a smile.
How quickly Doug’s blue eyes blurred into the green eyes of the stranger made his steps falter on the cracked pavement.
God, he wished that whole conversation had gone differently, but his own mouth had made sure it didn’t. But even without knowing the man’s preferences, let alone his name, even in the cold isolation of the Hometown Inn’s parking lot, picturing him stretched out on the hard, uncomfortable bed with Jesse laid out beside him was a thought he could appreciate. If his touch was anything like the smooth, silken warmth of his voice—
The slamming of the motel door behind him shattered the vision, and the gust of wind that had caught it continued to sweep through his hair to rub the skin of face and hands raw under the unrelenting cold. The fantasy of the green-eyed man might be enticing, but it was still a far stretch from reality, and he drew in a breath and blew it out with a low curse as he started moving again.
Thank God the motel had locks old enough to require physically locking the door from the inside to secure it closed, though he was sure the windows were rickety enough he would have no problem jimmying them open if the door somehow locked on its own. And the keys to the car were still in his pocket. Even in the worst-case scenario, at least he wouldn’t be trapped out here.
The Hometown Inn was just at the edge of Miller’s Creek proper, and Jesse knew he would have to go into the town sooner or later, but it wouldn’t have to happen immediately, and not even in the morning if Mr. Mosely proved talkative. Visiting the cemetery could be put off even longer if he could satisfy Doug with a little history to whet the appetite of the readers he courted. Not indefinitely of course. Doug had already made it clear that Jacob Palmer wasn’t the only story he was expecting out of Miller’s Creek.
But for a little while. For now, that would have to be good enough.
The headlights of his car flashed with the opening of the locks, and moments later his suitcase was on the pavement by his feet. It hit him then, that although Jesse had finally come back to the town of his childhood, he hadn’t come back as a prodigal son.
He had come back as an enemy. It was the only way he could describe digging into Miller’s Creek’s secrets and exploiting them for pay.
Which made him sound more like Douglas Keats than anything he had said to the green-eyed stranger in the gas station. The thought made his stomach give a nauseous twist. He had promised himself throughout the drive to Miller’s Creek that he would never let himself begin putting profit over people no matter how high he rose in Attingwood Journal’s ranks, yet he had all but pronounced the story as the most important thing less than an hour ago over coffee. Doug would no doubt be proud, but Jesse was sickened. Had he really become that much like Doug during the last six years?
The wind kicked up to dig icy fingers beneath his coat as he answered his own question, and he swore he could hear Geoff’s taunting laugh in his ear as he realized it was true.
Perhaps more than he would like to admit.
Gravel rattled against the pavement as he snatched his suitcase from the ground, while his disgust at room twelve of the Hometown Inn had nothing on the disgust he felt for himself.