Chapter Two

“You could have called me.”

Neal smiled at the woman chastising him. Despite the fatigue bruising under her eyes and the tiny frame that furthered the illusion of fragility, he knew she would have come had he called.

Dana Oliver had spent her sophomore year in his American History class. She’d spent her junior year giving birth to a daughter, Laura, now four. Because she lived next door, Neal knew that through hard work and determination Dana had managed not only to attain her GED, but also take several college courses while working a day job as receptionist for the largest law firm in town. Her goal was to earn a paralegal license. He also knew she kept a clean house and an eagle eye on her daughter.

Still, that stigma of being a single, teenage mother stayed with her. Small town expectations, Neal thought, rarely changed.

“There’s nothing you could have done.” And when would you have had the time, he wanted to ask, but respect for everything she’d accomplished, and continued to do, kept that censure silent.

“I guess.” Dana studied the framed photo before she shifted her gaze from the bag to the white roses sitting center of the cocktail table. Her lips curved into a small smile while her green eyes shadowed with longing. “Looks like this picture isn’t the only gift you received today.”

Neal passed them off with little more than a wave of his hand. “Candace sent them to me. As thanks,” he hurried to explain, “for being on the youth center committee.”

“Of course she did.”

“She sent flowers to all the members of the committee.” He had to believe she’d told him the truth.

“Coach, a woman doesn’t send a man flowers as a thank-you. At least not for being on a committee.”

He resisted the urge to hunch his shoulders when Dana released a dreamy sigh. Neal wondered how a single mother could still believe in the fantasy of love and flowers. But then, his mother had never given up hope that she’d find a man to give her the life she wanted, the life she believed she deserved.

“She sends them because she’s interested.”

“Dana, Candace and I are not dating.”

“Why not?”

“We have nothing in common.”

“I never realized you’re such a snob, Coach.”

And hadn’t Candace accused him of much the same just this morning? “I’m being realistic and practical.”

Now Dana’s sigh held a note of sadness. “Don’t you ever get tired of being realistic and practical?”

“We’re working on the committee for the youth center, along with several other members. That’s all.”

“Are you going to report finding this?”

“And say what? That someone left a picture in my truck?”

“You should tell someone so you’re protected, in case something happens.”

Neal managed a smile. “You’re beginning to sound like a lawyer.”

“Occupational hazard.” Dana stared at him a moment. “Still, if it were me, I’d rather err on the side of caution rather than be sorry.” She glanced down at the picture. “It can’t hurt to tell someone.”

Neal sighed and then relented. Friendship took many forms and twists.

“I’ll talk to her brother.”

****

“They’re in the back booth,” Lou—for no one in town dared call her Louisa—informed Neal as soon as he stepped into the restaurant later that day. “I’ll have your platter out in a little while.”

“How do you know what I want?”

“I’ve always known what you want.” Lou glanced over her shoulder as she paused in front of the swinging doors leading to the kitchen. “What I don’t know is when you’re going to realize it.”

Puzzled by that comment, Neal wove his way toward the back of the restaurant, pausing at one table to speak to a couple of students and a set of parents at another table.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded once he arrived at the back booth.

Candace glanced up from where she sat on the bench seat opposite Ben and his fiancée, Tara. From his peripheral vision, Neal realized Ben and Tara stared at him, surprised by his curt demand. He continued to look at Candace.

She’d changed clothes and now wore a T-shirt in royal blue. Silk, of course, he thought, until it crossed his mind to question if she’d paired it with shorts. The blood that had earlier run cold at the thought of her being in some sort of danger, even if it was little more than Dana’s exaggerated caution at work, now flashed heat at the thought of her bare legs beneath the table.

Slowly—beautifully, damn her—her mouth curved into a full and bright smile. “We’re celebrating,” Candace explained. “I just signed the papers on my new house.”

“You live with your grandmother,” he shot out, making it sound more like an accusation than a statement.

“Only for another week or so.” Her big brown eyes clouded over with distress when she glanced at Ben and Tara. “Grandmother has accepted it’s time I have a place of my own.”

“Of course, what else would Candace Hart expect but for everyone to give her what she wants.”

She shook her head before Ben could voice an objection. “You’d be surprised, Neal, by just what it is that I do want.”

Because her gaze seemed to be full of regrets, the kind he imagined that would follow a failed marriage, he felt bad about lashing out at her. It wasn’t her fault he had this itch for her. He simply had to hold it in check until she recognized how impossible it was for the two of them to be together.

“I’m sorry.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It’s been a lousy day.”

“Then join us,” Candace invited, accepting his apology with the ease that always surprised him. A gesture of her hand indicated room on the bench beside her. As if issuing an unspoken dare, she didn’t scoot over to give him extra space. For all intents and purposes, they would be hip to hip on the wooden bench.

“Move it or lose it,” Lou cracked behind him. The aroma of fried onion rings rose from the tray she balanced on her skinny hip.

Neal sat, struggling not to appear obvious as he did his best to balance on the edge farthest away from Candace. Tara immediately snatched up several steaming onion rings. Neal stared in disbelief when Lou placed a long-neck bottle of ice-cold beer in front of Candace.

“You don’t drink beer.” It made her too accessible, within reach. It was bad enough that with her hip damn near pressed against his he had thoughts along that line. He preferred to have her pigeonholed in the safe distance of a society princess who drank only champagne.

“There’s another one of your famous misconceptions,” she returned, mimicking his earlier accusation. Her lips still curved in amusement, she tilted her bottle toward Tara’s in a toast of sorts before she took a long swallow.

“I told you, Neal.” She met his gaze squarely, directly. That same serious intensity had been present in her eyes when she told him she was courting him. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“And she’s got the mortgage to prove it,” Ben inserted.

Needing a distraction, Neal plucked an onion ring from the platter. Anyone looking at them would see four people sharing a meal and friendship. Not so different from other times in their past. Today no one would suspect the sweat rolling down his back or the lust pooling in his gut for the woman sitting beside him.

“So where is this house?”

“Thousand Oaks.”

“No kidding.” Although it was the hottest development in town, and well run, he admitted it was envy more than scorn he felt with her choice. “On the Back Forty?” he asked, naming the exclusive section of the development noted for its acre-size, waterfront lots.

“The Pasture,” Candace corrected, referring to the newest segment of the development. The homes there were of a much more modest size than he expected would appeal to someone with her upbringing. They also weren’t the usual cookie-cutter design, with enough yard that you didn’t feel as if your neighbor stood in your back pocket. “I wanted people around me, to be closer to town. And schools.”

While Neal dealt with the uncomfortable image of another man as the father to her children, Ben grinned at his sister.

“Public transportation,” he suggested. “When anyone has as many speeding tickets as you do, they need to be prepared for the day when they can no longer drive to work.”

“Candace is a very careful driver,” Tara defended.

“Thanks, Sis,” Candace said with a grin. “It’s so nice to be able to call you that again.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Ben said. He lifted a hand to Tara’s cheek and leaned over to kiss her, lingering long enough to have Neal squirm on the bench. Until his bare thigh brushed against Candace’s.

Soft. The sensation shot through his mind and headed straight for his groin in the instant before he shifted a little more distance between them. He reached for his mug of root beer and downed half of it in one swallow.

“At least Tara never got three tickets in one week,” Ben said with a grin for Candace. “I worried Anthony would…” He trailed off as his mouth thinned into a straight line.

“Anthony was more embarrassed than furious,” Candace said of her ex-husband in a subdued voice that had the hair on the back of Neal’s neck rising. “Temper would have been easier to deal with rather than the frigid accusation of his silence.”

She shook her head a little, as if dismissing both the mood and her marriage. “We both would have been better off if we’d never married in the first place.”

“Sounds as if you put more thought into buying a house than you did choosing a husband,” Neal suggested.

“I did.” Candace looked at him, and her eyes were shadowed with a mixture of relief and self-loathing. “I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.”

Despite his physical attraction for her striking harder and faster than he was comfortable accepting, Neal wanted to erase those shadows from her eyes. He lived with what it was like to be haunted by the past, knew how it felt to always question if there was something you could have done differently to change the path of your life.

He would always question if the angry words he’d thrown at his mother that last morning had somehow contributed to her death.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” he comforted. “Some are just harder to live with than others.”

“Very true.” She cocked her head and considered him. “What mistakes haunt you, Neal?”

“We aren’t discussing me.”

He drew back, only now realizing he’d leaned in closer to her. Close enough to smell the soft scent she wore. Damn near close enough to press his mouth to hers. Slowly her lips curved, almost as if she had read his thoughts.

“We never talk about you.” Her lips, and her eyes, turned serious, concerned. “Why is that? Why do you give so much to everyone you care about and ask for so little in return? What are you so afraid of, Neal?”

Disturbed by her questions, and more by the innate understanding of him that her questions implied, Neal struggled to regain control of the conversation. He needed to remember why he was here, to concentrate on the implied threat left behind in his pick-up. With that in mind he looked across the table, hoping to find an avenue of escape in Ben and Tara, only to discover the couple had slipped from the booth and moved to the pinball machine standing at the back wall.

“It’s good to see them together again,” Candace commented.

“Yeah.”

Because he valued his friendship with both Ben and Tara, Neal knew he wouldn’t mar their upcoming wedding by mentioning the note left in his truck. Even though he had reservations about the validity of any kind of danger, he would keep an eye on Candace himself.

An eye, he swore, and nothing more.

“Have you decided on a wedding gift yet?”

“Gift?” Neal looked at Candace. “They said they didn’t want gifts.”

“Fine.” She finished the last of her beer, caught Lou’s attention and gestured for another. “I just thought that if you were interested we could go in together on this idea that I have.”

“What can we possibly give them that they can’t buy themselves?”

“It’s the thought that’s more important than the price of the gift,” Candace corrected.

“And you’ve thought of something?”

“Oh, yeah.” That low sultry agreement was like a punch in his gut. “I’ve thought of a least a dozen different—”

“Don’t go there, Candace.”

Before she could counter, Lou brought him another mug of root beer along with the beer Candace requested. “You two look as if you’re up to something,” she commented with an approving wink before turning away to deliver a platter of chicken wings to a nearby booth.

Candace remained silent as she looked at Neal with the steady glance he seemed to be having a harder time turning from lately. He could easily refuse her suggestion of going together on the gift. But a reluctant part of him admitted he wanted to do whatever this idea of hers was—and do it with her.

What was it about today? Why all of a sudden did he have trouble thinking of Candace as simply a friend? Wanting her to be more? Neal shook away the disturbing thoughts, and hot images, from his mind. Nothing good would come of this kind of thinking.

Hoping to thwart his wayward thoughts, he looked over toward the pinball machine. Ben stared at him, an eyebrow quirked in question and concern. Even his own damn best friend could see that Neal had no business being around Candace. For once the attitude pushed him to be reckless. Maybe he had more of his mother’s needs inside of him than he wanted to admit. Right or wrong, he simply could not turn his back on this opportunity.

“What did you have in mind?”

****

“I know I raised you better than to believe you’re going out in public dressed in an outfit like that.”

Though she couldn’t prevent the jerk of surprise as she came out of the kitchen, Candace managed to hold back the oath that skidded along the edge of her tongue. She turned toward the beverage cart set up in front of the French doors leading to the small patio.

“Good morning, Grandmother,” she said while pouring coffee.

Anita Hart sat at the head of the dining room table designed to easily seat twelve, every strand of her iron gray hair in place, elegantly dressed in a suit of ice blue. The fact that a woman planned to spend Saturday at home was no excuse, according to Anita’s strict beliefs, to look less than a perfect lady.

Quite a contrast to the shorts, red tank top, and tennis shoes Candace wore, along with her hair being pulled back in a teenager’s ponytail. A baseball cap her brother Dawson had sent her from Wrigley Field waited in the foyer alongside the gardening gloves and small tools she’d purchased yesterday.

A steeping pot of tea and a platter of pecan-topped cinnamon buns rested on the table before her grandmother. While Anita preferred Earl Grey tea to Candace’s coffee, both grandmother and granddaughter shared a weakness for breakfast pastry. After a sip of the bracing brew, Candace crossed the room and leaned down to kiss her grandmother’s cheek.

The smell of lilac-scented powder was there, as she expected, as it had been for nearly every morning of her life. She had missed the familiar comfort of her grandmother’s one vanity during those unsettled, searching months Candace had spent in Italy.

“Yes, Grandmother. I am going out in public dressed like this.”

Candace sat to her grandmother’s right and served herself one of the breakfast buns. In her own home, she would enjoy the luxury of eating the gooey pastry with her fingers, delight in licking the icing that ran from the bun onto her fingertips. She pictured herself sitting on the patio or in the kitchen rather than in the stiff atmosphere of a dining room.

For now, after spreading a linen napkin across her lap, she cut into the still warm bun with a silver fork. A silver fork that, like so many other family heirlooms that were a habitual part of her past, she would no longer have use of once she moved into her own house. The upside was she would have the pleasure, and the challenge, of selecting items that would convert her house into a home.

She fully intended for Neal to be the major centerpiece to giving her and her home a sense of love and permanence.

“What exactly are your plans?” Anita asked.

Candace finished chewing, followed by another sip of coffee. Though tempted, she resisted glancing at the time. Neal would show up. He’d promised.

“After going by the nursery to pick up the supplies I ordered earlier this week, I’ll be spending the day doing some landscaping work,” Candace explained. “Neal and I are going to plant some flowers and bushes in the east corner of Ben and Tara’s back yard. It’s my and Neal’s wedding gift to them.”

“Neal Barrows?”

“Yes.”

Candace refused to wrap her hands around the security of the warmth of her coffee cup. Instead she met her grandmother’s gaze. She expected the disapproval, had thought she’d grown beyond the wish to have her grandmother’s support. She’d never quite understood her grandmother’s dislike of Neal.

“Neal is…” She trailed off as the doorbell rang. “Here.” Candace rose, and then looked down at her grandmother.

“I let you pick the man in my life once, Grandmother. We both know what a disaster that turned out to be.” Because it shamed her to see the flinch of guilt and pain in her grandmother’s expression, Candace softened her voice. “I know you wanted the best for me.”

She placed a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. Her heart melted further when she realized her grandmother trembled slightly. “Just as I know you’ll be lonely without all of us living here together the way we once did.”

“I wouldn’t be alone if that brother of yours would quit his drifting all over the country and come home and fulfill his family duty.”

The ache that always pressed down on her when she thought of how much she missed her younger brother sprang to life. “Dawson will come home when he’s ready.” Candace’s hand squeezed lightly. “And when he does, you need to let him decide what he wants to do with his life.”

“All I’ve ever wanted was for you, all of you, to be happy.” Anita covered Candace’s hand with her own. “That’s all.”

“I know.” Candace leaned down to kiss her grandmother’s cheek, this time out of affection rather than duty. “I love you, Grandmother.”

Straightening she discovered Neal in the doorway. Her heart kicked hard enough in her chest that it took her breath away for a moment. She’d known this man her entire life, had been attracted to him for more years than she could remember. Lately, however, that attraction seemed to demand more and more of her attention.

A white T-shirt emblazoned with the high school mascot spread across his impressive chest and topped a pair of gray knit shorts. Without benefit of socks, he wore a pair of tennis shoes that looked as if they’d already done endless mornings of yard work.

“Good morning.” He nodded at her grandmother. “Mrs. Hart.”

“Mr. Barrows.” Ever the gracious hostess Anita gestured toward the table. “Would you care for some coffee or a cinnamon roll?”

“Thank you, but I had breakfast before I left my house.” He looked at Candace. “Are you ready?”

Her lips twitched with the need to say something that would scandalize her grandmother. “Yes.” She took a step forward.

“Do you have all the paperwork we’ll need to pick up the order at the nursery?” he asked.

“Oh. Well, I have it, of course. It’s just, I left it upstairs.” She couldn’t help it; nerves forced her hands to tangle together. “I can’t imagine we’ll need it.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and get it? I’d rather be safe than sorry.” He smiled. “I’ll wait here.”

Neal waited as Candace reluctantly left the room. He suspected she worried about him remaining behind with her grandmother. Anita Hart had never made a secret of her disapproval of him and his background specifically. He accepted part of her disapproval stemmed from his mother’s reputation, but he also knew it was simply her manner to find fault. After all, the woman had had a hand in Ben and Tara’s first marriage failing and in Dawson staying away from home for so long.

Still, for Neal’s immediate concerns, the woman could be an ally he might need.

He would never have thought he was the white knight kind of person, doubted whether or not he could actually be much help or protection. Certainly he should know better than to keep in such close contact with Candace. He still harbored doubts about any worry of a threat in Candace’s direction, but he also wasn’t willing to take the chance and ignore her safety.

“Mrs. Hart, there is something I would like to discuss with you.”

He crossed the room and took the seat to her left. Keeping in mind that Candace would not be gone long, Neal gave only a passing glance to the elegance of china and silver as opposed to his own use of stainless and stoneware. He gave Anita Hart a quick, thorough run-down about the photo left in his pick-up, adding he believed the computer-generated script was directed more at him than Candace.

“I understand your point, Mr. Barrows, however I also believe a degree of caution is in order,” Anita said. “We shouldn’t make any assumptions, especially with Candace moving into a place of her own. If I thought it would do any good, I would ask her to stay here.”

“You and I both know once Candace makes up her mind about something there is no more stubborn, unmovable woman in the world.”

“Yes.” Anita nodded. For an instant Neal saw a quick, proud curve to the old woman’s lips. “And I appreciate you withholding this information from Benjamin and Tara.”

Anita angled her head, looking even more regal than before. “Tell me, Mr. Barrows, is this potential danger the only reason behind your interest in spending time with my granddaughter?”

Neal blinked in surprise, both at the unexpected question and the immediate denial that sprang to mind. He didn’t want to admit there was any other reason for spending time with Candace. And yet he quite simply could not forget the roses, the long steady looks she gave him, or the intent she voiced about courting him. He could not dismiss wondering what it would feel like to know the taste of her lips and the press of her body.

“I assure you that I will keep Candace’s safety in mind at all times, Mrs. Hart.”

Anita said nothing, just considered him a moment longer. “There’s a reception sponsored by the Cultural Arts Society the week after Ben and Tara’s wedding. I’ve been trying to convince Candace to attend. It’s a fundraiser for the City Orchestra.” She paused and sipped from her cup of tea. “There will be people there you could speak to about contributing to the renovation of the youth center the two of you are working on.”

Neal had no doubt but Anita added that last bit simply as a means to stop his knee-jerk refusal.

“The reception is black tie,” Anita said.

He didn’t bother to swear, but he did meet her gaze straight on. “I happen to own a tux, Mrs. Hart, so you don’t have to worry that I’ll embarrass either you or Candace.”

“See that you don’t.”