Chapter Three

“I’m supposed to meet some buddies in Manhattan, if, uh, you want to, uh…” Evan trailed off.

For someone who seemed so confident in his outward appearance, the guy sure had a hard time stringing simple sentences together.

“Going to scam on college girls?” Evie quipped. She leaned back against the arm of her chair, her legs curled up on the seat.

He grinned sheepishly. “I am sure we can scrounge up some college boys for you.”

She shot him a disgusted look.

“Or girls!” he held up his hands. “Whatever you want.”

“I think it would be good for you to get out of the house,” he father called through the open kitchen window.

She should have known they were eavesdropping. She started to protest, but he came through the door.

“Have you even left the house this week?”

Evie opened her mouth, but quickly snapped it shut, again. After some contemplation, she nodded. “I brought you lunch on Tuesday.”

“You didn’t even get out of the car.”

“No, but I did have to walk through the rain to get to the car.”

“It hasn’t rained in two weeks.”

“Fine, the heat and humidity, which is practically the same thing.”

“How do you figure?”

“Both are extreme conditions.”

Evan watched their exchange with bewilderment, his gaze bouncing back and forth between the two of them like those of a tennis spectator. “So, does that mean…?”

“She’s going,” Jamie answered before Evie could get a word in edgewise.

She pursed her lips. “And my father is picking up the tab.”

Jamie crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. “I’ll pay for your cab home.”

“Oh, I’m designated driver, sir.” Evan held up a hand. “Low man on the totem pole and all that…” he trailed off.

Jamie’s gaze didn’t leave Evie’s. “I’ll give you a fifty.”

“A hundred.”

“Sixty.”

“One ten.”

“That’s not how bartering works,” Jamie said with wry amusement.

Evie shrugged. “I haven’t been out in months. I’m in no rush.”

“Seventy-five,” Jamie sighed.

“Eighty and we have a deal.”

The colonel nodded and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a couple of bills and handed them over. “I expect change.”

Evie swiped the two fifties and shoved them into the pocket of her jeans. “Sure thing, Dad.” She turned to Evan. “Ready?”

Evan nodded dumbly and stood. “Thank you for having me, Sir. Mrs. Blair,” he added as Laena remerged from the kitchen.

“It was our pleasure, Evan. Please come back. Any time.” Laena hugged him, patting his back.

Evie rolled her eyes. “Let me get my purse,” she muttered and disappeared into the house. She returned and walked out the screen door, leaving Evan to follow.

Outside, the deep-throated frog calls mingled with the whine of cicadas in the waning light. The sun had nearly set, turning the sky a vibrant, electric blue run through with shards of purple and pink. Evan led her down the street to a large, pristine pick-up truck sitting under a leafy oak. He pulled open the passenger side door, offering his hand so she could climb up. She hated to admit she even needed the assistance, but the step up was high and balance was no longer her star subject.

Anxiety climbed up her spine like an angry phantom as she pulled the seatbelt snugly around herself. Every time she strapped herself into a car, it gripped her, but the acceleration of her heartbeat was always quickest when she wasn’t behind the wheel. Giving up control was a difficult task, even when it was to her own parents, but placing her life in the hands of someone she hadn’t known in almost twenty years had her nails digging into the supple leather armrests.

“So, you told them you were bringing a date, didn’t you?” she asked after as Evan maneuvered the truck away from the curb and down the tree-lined street.

He had the good sense to try to look like he had no idea what she was talking about. “What? No, I would never—”

“Save it.” She waved. “What if I had been hideous? What if I had to drag my leg behind me like a horror movie villain? What if I drooled?”

He kept his gaze on the road, but blinked a few times. “Uh…”

She crossed her arms over her chest and sank a little further down into the seat. “You just mentioned my father’s name, right?”

He turned bright red, the color growing up from his ears until it covered his perfectly smooth scalp. He almost looked like a red billiards ball.

“Look, I’m just the new guy.” He shot a glance her way. “And you didn’t even want to come in the first place. The col—your dad had to pay you to get you out of the house.”

Evie smirked. “Yup.”

“So, me asking you to come out benefited you quite a bit. You should be thanking me.”

Oh. There was the muscle-guy confidence. It came complete with self-appreciative grin and painfully blinding teeth.

Evie sighed. “All right. What do you want?” She released the armrest to point a finger at him. “And don’t you think for a second I have forgotten about your little mustard stunt.”

“I thought that was behind us,” he grumbled. “Just pretend like you don’t completely hate me?”

“Now you’re asking for the impossible.” She sighed.

“Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.”

She laughed and relaxed a little.

His was one of the only cars on the road, only a few headlights running in the opposite direction, a pair of red brake lights glowing in the distance. The drive would have been nice if darkness hadn’t snuffed out the rolling green hills. For someone who was so new to the area, Evan seemed to know exactly where he was going.

She shouldn’t have been surprised; he was a single male in his early twenties living and working within twenty miles of a college town. It was like a moth to a flame. A paperclip to a magnet. Her mother to paperback romance novels. Every imaginable cliché rolled up into one.

He turned up the radio as they cruised into town and took a residential street toward the campus. The bar where they were meeting his coworkers was a block away from the football stadium in a little area filled with local restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and bakeries. Evan searched for a close parking spot, but had to park around the corner, the only available space near the bar being too small for the truck. He didn’t think much of it until she joined him on the sidewalk, her limp more pronounced than usual due to being stuck in the same position in the car.

He stopped short as she joined him on the sidewalk, stiffness from the long ride making her limp more pronounced. “Oh, shit, I didn’t even think, I’m sorry, do you want—”

She waved him off. “It’s fine.”

“Are you sure? I could carry you?”

She chuckled and lifted an eyebrow. “You want to carry me?”

“Well, if you need me to, I can.”

She shook her head. What ridiculous offer. “I’m fine. Really.”

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and they continued in companionable silence down the sidewalk. As they approached an Irish-themed establishment, four leaf clover logo painted on the brick wall, Evan trotted ahead to pull the door open for her. Inside, the décor was exactly what she expected of a college town: billiards tables, dart boards, and a wall full of dollar bills. She followed Evan to a crowded table of short-haired men and a single female.

Evan introduced Evie around, but she could barely hear any of the names. She held her hand up in greeting and shook a few offered her way. Only one avoided looking at her, his head bent over a beer, one hand cupping the sweaty sides.

She pulled out empty chair next to him.

His gaze shifted beneath hooded brows to take her in as she looked up at Evan. “I’ll take whatever beer’s on tap.”

She lifted an eyebrow when the stranger continued to eye her around his long, straight nose.

“I’m Evie,” she half-yelled at him over the noise. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

His gaze shifted again, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “Iain.”

“Do you work with Evan?” she asked. She hated sitting back and feeling uncomfortable. She would rather talk and feel uncomfortable.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Oh. Well… what do you do?”

He stared at her for a beat too long, his brows pulled low over his eyes. “I’m a scout.”

“Oh.” She chewed on her lip. “I have no idea what that means.”

He shrugged and turned away, giving her the back of his head.

“Okay,” she mouthed and huffed out a breath.

Swiveling in the chair, she scanned the bar for Evan. He leaned against the bar, his head bent toward a girl with a long, sweeping curtain of black hair. The other woman matched him in height and regarded him through heavily-made up lashes. A short dress hung from her mostly exposed shoulders, the silhouette just shy of elegant.

She had once been that girl.

Evie sighed and looked down at her soft jeans and simple blue shirt. Not anymore. Not with her scars.

She turned back to face her momentary companion then dropped her chin into her palm. “Well, I guess I can give up the expectation that the beer would be cold,” she muttered as she reached for the drink menu.

“I take it that means you aren’t really his date.” Iain canted his head in her direction.

“Is that what he told you?” she asked slyly.

“He intimated as much,” he said with a shrug.

“Yeah, well… No. I am here giving him the moral support only a friend can give.” She fluttered her eyelashes in his direction, but couldn’t even muster a bland upturn of the lips.

She shouldn’t have agreed to this, even if it did make her a wad of cash she really didn’t need.

“And you? What is it you do?” Iain yelled over the loud humming conversation around them.

She waved her hand off-handedly. “Oh, you know, just the proverbial leech on society.”

His expression didn’t change, but he watched her, waiting for her to explain.

Evie sighed, propping her elbow on the table and dropping her chin into it. “I’m sort of taking a break from life right now.”

“Taking a break from life? That doesn’t sound like a thing.”

She grimaced. “I was in an accident last year. I’m living with my parents while I recover and, you know, figure out what the hell I am supposed to do next.” She let her empty hand drop and it smacked onto the smooth surface of the table.

“I would imagine you just pick up where you left off.”

“Mm, not that easy.” She looked back over toward Evan, wondering if he would ever bring a beer. He was still enthralled by the black-haired girl and her long, slender limbs.

“Oh? And why not?” He turned in the direction of the eager young lieutenant and smirked before returning his gaze to Evie.

How much did she really want to tell him? On the one hand, she hated talking about it. Hated remembering it. But on the other, it was one of the rare opportunities for her to tell her own story to someone who hadn’t already received the highlights from her mother.

“I was engaged,” she finally answered. “He was driving and… didn’t make it.”

How did she sound so collected? How was her voice so even and emotionless? She still felt like she was being pulled apart on the inside, the pain no different than it had been the moment she learned she would never see Calum, again. She hadn’t talked about it. With anyone. Not her mother, not her father, not the therapist she now refused to go to, the loss of Calum was something she kept locked inside.

It was a pain she felt she was owed for being the one to live. And she kept her punishment to herself. Not that anyone had really tried to get her to open up about the good ole days, anyway. It felt oddly liberating to have told someone—anyone—about her engagement and subsequent loss.

“I’m still trying to figure out if I should strike out and do something completely new, go back to plan A, or just give up, entirely.” She let out a shaky breath.

“Giving up sounds like a cop-out.” There was a bite to his tone. A challenge.

“Oh, really? I take it you’ve lost a lot of fiancées in your time?” She scoffed.

He didn’t look at her. Instead, he kept his gaze on the glass in front of him, his fingertips running over the condensation, his thumbs wiping at it absently.

Evie wasn’t sure he would ever answer her when he turned his attention back, his eyes steely.

“I just see a fire in you. It would be a shame if you snuffed that out.”

“You see that, huh? After five minutes?”

“Some people just make it obvious.” He took a sip of his drink, gaze moving back to an invisible spot on the wall behind the bar.

Or perhaps it was the model-thin beauty who was wrapping her arm around Evan’s neck.

“What was Plan A?” he asked after a moment.

She shrugged. “Grad school. I was going to finish my PhD, sit in a dusty office, and read all day.” She couldn’t help the small smile that pulled at the corners of her lips.

“So why not do that?”

“It would just be hard to go back there.”

“It might not be as hard as you think.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re awfully philosophical for a scout.”

But he only regarded her with an amused twist of the lips.

****

She couldn’t shake what Evan’s coworker had said.

Evan disappeared from the bar sometime around midnight. He never made it back from the bar with her beer, instead standing with his head bent close to the leggy beauty.

Around midnight, she finally broke away from his group of co-workers to look for him, but he was nowhere in sight. So much for being the designated driver.

She had to call a cab, anyway.

The night out had done her good. She almost felt like the Evie she was before the accident. The Evie who went out for drinks at the local pubs. The one who planned day trips to Edinburgh or nights doing club crawls. The one who agreed to go to Monaco with her flat mate last minute. The Evie who smiled and laughed and played. The Evie who didn’t watch daytime television and hid in her room.

She leaned her head against the window in the cab’s backseat, gaze fixed on the stars hanging in the sky. They were fairly bright in the middle-of-no-where, Kansas, but not as bright as they were at the end of the pier in St Andrews.

They’d sat at on the edge of the stone, staring up at them the night Calum kissed her the first time. It had been cold, but the sky had been clear as the waves lapped below their dangling feet. They left the Chinese restaurant for a stroll down the old streets, talking about, well, everything. Her irrational fear of volcanoes, his obsession with orange chocolate. Her newfound love affair with Scottish war history, how he had grown up in St Andrews, the only child of a single mother. And then she was teasing him about the way he dropped half of his consonants, and he was kissing her.

They were interrupted when her mobile phone went off, singing out into the near silence of lapping water and calling seagulls. Calum gave her a quizzical look and made fun of her taste in music as she had answered the phone to her incredibly drunk flat mate.

The corners of Evie’s lips lifted at the memory, and then regret flooded over her, cold and heavy. She hadn’t talked to Sarah since she left Scotland. Sarah was always calling and emailing, but Evie found it difficult to reciprocate. What was she supposed to say? “Glad you’re doing well, my life is shit?” She wondered if she had let it go for too long, if she could contact Sarah and not have it be weird.

Before she could regret it, she dug her phone out of her pocket and pulled up her email. A few taps of the screen, and “I miss you,” buzzed through the airwaves to the other side of the world. She didn’t expect an answer, but… Maybe she would get one.

The cab dropped her off in front of her parents’ house, the front porch light still glowing. She expected they went to bed hours before, but when she let herself in, it was to find her father sitting in the living room, a book open, his glasses perched on his nose. He didn’t wear them often, only for reading, watching television and at the movies. Jamie took the wire rims off, folding them up and setting them on the side table when he saw her. He shut the book, but didn’t stand up.

“Have fun?” he asked.

She gave a little shrug of one shoulder, but her lips crept up at the corners.

“Where’s my change?” He grinned.

She made no move to pull out the change stuffed in her back pocket. “Can I borrow your car, tomorrow?”

“Sure, kiddo. What’s up?”

“Nothing, I’d just like to get out, I think.”

“You got it.” He rose and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m proud of you, Kiddo. See you in the morning.”

“Night, Dad.”