“AND THAT—” MARA pointed to the tilted neon sign that read The Slippery Slope “—is the town bar where everyone goes on Friday nights. Of course, it’s only Thursday so no big crowds tonight.” One of the green Ps was burned out, along with the word The on the sign, just as it had been when Mara was a teen. Some things never changed. The thought was comforting, especially considering the amount of change she was bringing to Slippery Rock.
“There’s a church on either side of it and one across the street, too.” Cheryl laughed. “God, small towns are great.”
“If the beer doesn’t save you, the brimstone sermons might,” Mara agreed. It was Cheryl’s last night in Slippery Rock, and Mara had convinced her to come out and really see the town. She used an online service to find a local babysitter for Zeke, a teenage girl who didn’t seem to associate the Mara Tyler she was working for with Tyler Orchard outside town.
Mara and Cheryl had dinner at the Rock Café overlooking Slippery Rock Marina, and had been walking around for the past few minutes while Mara pointed out the local landmarks. They weren’t due back at the B and B for another hour.
“If you want to see real small town, you have to go inside the Slope. Mahogany everything, a jukebox from the 1970s that still has mostly old stuff on it and enough neon to light up downtown.”
Cheryl grinned. “I’ll buy the first round, and if I go for a second, remind me I’m driving to Tulsa at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning.”
“I make no promises,” Mara said, holding up her hand.
The bar was mostly empty when they walked in. A few old-timers sat at the tables scattered around the dance floor. No one noticed Mara and Cheryl as they entered. Mara went straight to the bar.
“Do you still have the best apple shandy in southern Missouri?” she asked the older man behind the bar.
Merle flipped the dishrag he always carried over his shoulder as a grin split his face. “Did you get kicked out the one time you tried to con some salesman passing through to buy for you? Never tried that one again, did ya?”
“I’m a fast learner, and now that I’m legal, I’ll have the shandy.” Merle came around the bar quickly and wrapped his arms around Mara’s waist, squeezing her tight. He’d been one of her grandfather’s best friends, and although he readily allowed her and the guys in back in the old days, he’d never served them. Not even the shandy, which was more apple juice or cider than beer.
“Me, too,” Cheryl added, hopping onto a stool at the bar.
“I’ll make it two,” he said. “I hadn’t heard you were back in town.”
That was surprising. Mara had figured CarlaAnn and her gossiping cronies would have spread the news of Mara’s near arrest all over town by now.
“I’m here for work,” Mara said.
“Come to think of it, some civic-minded soul might have mentioned you and a package of stolen cookies?” Merle winked at her as he slid the drinks across the bar. Mara shook her head. She would bet money CarlaAnn or another of her ilk were spreading the news.
“It was a misunderstanding. I’m actually working on Mallard’s security system.”
Merle shrugged and went back to work. Mara took a good look around. A few of the neon signs had changed, but the juke was the same, and the polished dance floor still gleamed in the dim light. Juanita roamed among the tables, waiting on her customers.
“This place is exactly what I thought it would be,” Cheryl said as she turned in her seat. She sipped from the frosty glass. “And the drink is better.”
“He won’t tell anyone his secret, and I’ve never had a better one. Not in any of the überhip clubs, not in the dive joints and not in any of those bottled options you find at grocery stores.”
The jukebox turned on and a wailing, twangy tune warbled through the bar’s speakers.
“You’re not really leaving at the crack of dawn, are you?” Mara asked.
“By ten, that way I’m home by early afternoon. No rush-hour traffic.” Cheryl didn’t like driving in heavy traffic. She’d gotten around as Zeke’s nanny because Mara usually chose to stay in downtown areas where everything was in walking distance.
“You’ll call when you get in?” Mara asked.
Cheryl nodded. “And you’ll call when...well, when the little man does anything of consequence? Or not of consequence?”
“Yes.” Mara would not get maudlin. Cheryl leaving was a good thing. She would love her job with the school district, the wedding planning and the trip with her father. Mara was a grown woman with a good job who could easily hire another nanny for her child if she needed to. Hiring someone as good as Cheryl, that was the problem. Of course, there was the other option. The staying-in-Slippery-Rock option.
She wanted... God, it didn’t matter what she wanted. It mattered that Zeke was well cared for, and she was equipped to do that caring, even after her job took her to another strange hotel in a distant town. A town that didn’t have a decent apple shandy, or a bar that might have been caught in a time warp.
She slid a few bills across the bar but didn’t finish her drink.
Staying in Slippery Rock wasn’t really an option, it was a pipe dream. A second thought, and this wasn’t the time for second thoughts. She’d given in to enough of them over the past two years. She’d nearly called James a dozen times early in her pregnancy, and again after Zeke was born. But telling the man he was a father over the phone seemed wrong, and she had known she wasn’t strong enough to do it in person. Even after her therapist assured her she should face this last demon, she’d told herself that she was too busy, that Zeke was too little, that “later” would have to do.
Cheryl’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You’re going to be okay, you know. You and Zeke, you and your family.”
“I know.”
“Don’t run, not now.”
Cheryl knew almost everything about Mara’s past. She knew about the pranks and graduation night; she knew about the neglect that marked Mara’s first few years of life. She knew everything except who the father of Mara’s baby was, but she had probably guessed it was someone from Slippery Rock.
Mara took a deep breath. “I’m not going to run. I ran from here once before, but I’m not going to run this time.” Mara took one more sip of her drink. “I just want to.” Because not telling James would be so much simpler than telling him.
James with the perfect family history, the perfect job and the ability almost always to do the right thing might never understand why she’d walked away from him. Why she had needed finally to confront those first few years of her life, and why she needed to do that without him in her life.
“Are you ready to leave?” she asked Cheryl. “We haven’t been to the marina yet, but you’ll see most of it from the street.”
Cheryl nodded, and as they started for the door, she left Mara with her thoughts, seeming to understand that she needed to think.
Samson and Maddie Tyler were horrible parents. They had been too wrapped up in one another to give any attention to their children. She could remember many times in whatever cramped apartment Samson was renting when she and Collin had stayed alone while their parents went out. When Amanda, their younger sister, was born, Samson and Maddie were gone even more often. Mara never doubted that her parents loved one another, but the lack of love they had for their children had scarred her. Even after the three of them came to live at the orchard with their grandparents, Mara would worry when Gran would go to the grocery store or when Granddad was late coming in for supper.
As a teen, she covered that worry with a carefree attitude, and in all of her personal relationships, she did a good job of keeping people at a distance. All except one: James Calhoun. She’d never told him the worst of what had happened before she and Collin and Amanda came to Slippery Rock, but she had told him other things.
It was a chance meeting during her first year in grad school and his year at the police academy when things between them went further than friendship. When she’d started thinking of James not just as one of her brother’s cute friends but as a man who made her stomach do funny little flips, and whose touch made her skin burn. After that first weekend, it had been hard to separate herself from him, hard to keep things light and easy between them.
How many times had she heard Maddie on the phone with one girlfriend or another, talking about how crazy she was for her husband, how he made her stomach clench and how his touch burned? Those were the same feelings she had for James, and the knowledge made her nervous.
James was part of the reason she chose the job with Cannon. He made her want things that she knew she couldn’t have, and if she lived on the road while he was tied to Slippery Rock, it was simpler to keep things easy between them. To convince herself that her feelings for him were the result of really good sex or the fact that seeing him only sporadically kept things fresh.
Mara didn’t want her entire life to be wrapped up in one person. She wanted a career, financial security and to know she could take care of herself. When she found out she was pregnant, she went from scared to terrified in a heartbeat.
“Which way?” Cheryl asked, pulling Mara out of her thoughts as they exited the bar.
“Right,” she said, and they started toward the marina. Mara pointed out the pontoon boats and speedboats in the marina and the ample dock space available. Obviously some of the tourists were still staying away after the tornado.
“The air is so clean here,” Cheryl said, breathing deep. “I’m going to soak in as much of it as I can before I head to Tulsa.”
“I’ve always thought they should bottle it. Pine and lake and, I know it’s only my imagination, but I swear there is a hint of fruit under it all.”
“I’m just glad there is no undertone of manure. Didn’t you say there is a big dairy farm here?”
“Other side of town, and out in the country so—” Mara walked into a solid wall of muscle as she spoke. A hint of sandalwood joined those other scents, sending her senses into overdrive. She knew that scent, knew the feel of the muscles under her hands. She tilted her head up and saw those same chocolate-brown eyes that had glared at her less than twenty-four hours ago. “Hi, James,” she said, stepping carefully away from him and his muscles.
“Mara.”
“Are you on patrol?”
“Do you need to be arrested?” His voice held a teasing note, but then his gaze caught on something—or someone—to her right and narrowed. “Hello,” he said, using the voice she associated with his professional side. Kind, courteous. The way he’d spoken to CarlaAnn at the grocery store, not the way he spoke to friends.
“I’m Cheryl—”
“This is Cheryl,” Mara said at the same time Cheryl stuck out her hand. “Cheryl is my n—” She hadn’t told James about his baby on the phone or in the middle of him almost arresting her, and she definitely couldn’t tell him about the child on the sidewalk after visiting a bar. “My friend,” she said, insisting to the quiet voice inside that it wasn’t a lie. Cheryl was her friend, in addition to being her nanny.
“I’m just in town for the night,” Cheryl added helpfully, “and Mara was showing me around a bit.”
Tension crackled between Mara and James. Even in the darkening evening, she could see his eyebrows draw together and his lips form that thin line they’d had at the grocery store the day before. Which was silly. It wasn’t as if Mara was not allowed to have a friend, or she and her friend had been doing anything illegal. Even if they had been, James wasn’t in uniform, which probably meant he was off duty.
“Another security expert for the grocery store?” he asked.
“No, I’m a na—”
“Cheryl works for a school in Tulsa,” Mara said. “She decided to hook up with me before she gets roped into her sister’s wedding plans.”
Cheryl raised an eyebrow at Mara’s explanation. Then understanding dawned in her expression. She turned her attention to the man before them, probably comparing his features to the baby waiting at the B and B. After a moment she nodded like she understood everything.
“I’m going to finish my walk while you two—” she pointed her finger between them “—get reacquainted.”
Mara wanted to call her back, but that was silly. She could exchange a few pleasantries with James in the twilight, with the last rays of sunlight shooting golden flecks into his brown hair. She swallowed.
“So, I guess CarlaAnn is outing me as a kleptomaniac around town,” she began, keeping her voice light.
James watched Cheryl walking down the street for a moment, and the interest in his gaze hit Mara hard in the belly. He couldn’t be interested in Cheryl. That would just be too... What did Mara care who he was interested in? She’d spent the past two years getting over James Calhoun. She didn’t want to get under him again.
“I guess going back into the store to reassure her Mike did hire you, or at least your company, and that you weren’t an actual shoplifter didn’t do the trick.”
“Did you really think the truth would stop CarlaAnn’s rumor mill? But, thanks. You didn’t have to do that.” His gaze remained trained on Cheryl. Annoyed, Mara snapped her fingers. “Hello, I’m over here.”
“What?” He turned to Mara as if realizing she was still standing before him. Just the confidence booster her vanity needed. “Sorry, I just... Is she...” He pointed to Cheryl, who was halfway down the block already. “Are you and she...”
“Friends? Yes, I believe I introduced her as my friend.”
“So that’s it.” The words sounded almost excited, and Mara couldn’t figure out why.
“That’s what?”
“You’re friends. That’s it.” James shook his head. “This is weird. Should I apologize?”
The conversation seemed to be going around in a circle that Mara couldn’t see.
“Aplogize for what?”
“You’re friends. And I kept coming around—”
“Yes, we’re friends. I don’t know what is it about that fact. And why should my having a friend mean you shouldn’t have come around?” This circle talk was making her dizzy. Maybe she hadn’t been ready for Merle’s apple shandy.
“Not that you have a friend. That you have a friend,” he said, emphasizing the word. “I always wondered what made you walk away like that. Now I know. It wasn’t me.”
Mara’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Not a friend. A friend. James thought she was, what, bisexual, and that made her walking out on him okay? “I don’t know what you think you understand, but you are completely and totally off base—”
“It’s okay to be a lesbian—”
“I’m not a lesbian.”
“Okay, a bisexual—”
“If that look means you think you might be joining in a little three-way action now that I’m back in town, think again, Deputy Doofus. I’m not bisexual and I’m not a lesbian. I am a straight, CIS-gendered female who likes men.”
James blinked. “But she’s... And you’re... You said she was here to hook up with you.”
“I didn’t mean hook up hook up. God, why do men assume women can be friends with one another only if they’re also hooking up?”
“It was a natural assumption from the way you introduced her.”
“Are you sure you passed that police academy test? Your deductive reasoning could use a little work.”
“Yes, I’m sure I passed it, and my deductive reasoning isn’t flawed. You insinuated—”
“—that she was my friend. She’s also my employee, and no, that doesn’t mean I pay her for sex.” Mara intentionally lowered her voice even though there were no other people on the sidewalk. “There is no sex between Cheryl and me. I thought you’d already gotten the memo that my preferences lean toward men.”
“I didn’t know friends randomly meet up with other friends in strange towns where one or the other of them is working.”
“Then you obviously don’t have very good friends.” Mara crossed her arms over her chest. “Or you live in a town with a single stoplight, and so do all your friends.”
“Touché.” James put his hands in his pockets. “You look good.”
“So now that I’m not an attached lesbian-slash-bisexual, you’re going straight into hook-up mode?”
James grinned. “It was a statement of fact,” he said, “not an invitation for either of us to go jumping into whatever lake we were swimming in up until two years ago.”
Two years ago. Zeke. Fatherhood. Arguing with James about her sexuality was another no-no in the parenthood talk they needed to have. “Yeah, well, that was a pretty deep lake.”
“I was thinking it was kind of shallow,” he said, reaching to curl a lock of her hair around his finger. “We kept things light and simple, and you walked away.”
She could feel his heat even across the distance between them. Wanted to feel the soft pads of his fingers against the skin of her cheek. Wanted to drink in that sandalwood smell that was James Calhoun. “I...thought you wanted simple.”
“What the hell did I know about what I wanted? Other than more time with you,” he said, and his brown eyes seemed to darken. Mara closed her eyes. She could lean forward just a little bit, could stand on tiptoe and her lips would meet his. She would have him, one more time, in her orbit. God, she wanted that.
She snapped her eyes open. That was not how this was going to happen. She was not hooking up with James one night only to tell him he was a father the next. She couldn’t do that, not to him. Not to Zeke. She was better than this, stronger than the kind of person who let herself get wound up in a man and forgot about all the responsibilities in her life.
Like the baby in her room at the B and B.
“Cheryl is my nanny,” she said, blurting the words out as she took a deliberate step away from James. His eyes widened and she immediately wished the words back.
“You have a nanny?” He cocked his head to the side, confusion evident from the slight drop in his jaw.
“Technically, my son has a nanny. I employ a child care provider who also happens to be a friend.”
“You have a son?” James pulled away from her, both physically and emotionally. She watched it happen in a smooth motion that started when his hand dropped from her hair and ended when his eyebrows beetled in that cold cop expression she’d seen the day before. The same cop expression his father used in any number of school assemblies and during “conversations” with her outside the principal’s office in high school. James was just as good at that condescending look as his father, but coming from Jonathan Calhoun, the look had never hurt like this. Like a bomb had exploded in her belly.
“He’s fourteen months old,” she said, forcing her voice to remain crisp and clear. She could pretend to be just as calculated and cold as he; she would not break in front of him. Mara closely watched his expression as he counted back. Fourteen months, plus nine for the pregnancy, would land him at the conference he’d attended in July in Nashville. She’d been writing a new security protocol for a musical publishing company in Nashville. That was the last time they’d seen one another until this week. Realization hardened his gaze into an impenetrable brick. “Yes,” she said, “I got pregnant in Nashville.”
James took another step back, putting more breathing room between them. “We used protection,” he said, his voice wooden. “Every time.”
“Condoms break. The pill isn’t one hundred percent effective. Even used together, things can happen.” Mara started to reach for him but quickly drew her hand back. He wouldn’t welcome her touch, not now. Maybe not ever again, and she was going to have to deal with that. She hadn’t wanted to tell him in the middle of the street, but she’d felt cornered. She’d used their son to put a wall between them, and she hated herself for that.
Her hands itched to touch him, to comfort him. She crossed her arms over her chest, and tried to put all the remorse she felt into her voice. “I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was almost five months along.”
“And, what, between that five-month mark and now you couldn’t pick up a phone?”
His expression closed. No anger, no annoyance. Not even panic at finding out he was a father. There was nothing, and the nothing made Mara’s chest ache.
“I couldn’t tell you on the phone,” she began.
James snorted derisively. “No, you didn’t want to tell me on the phone,” he said and spun on his heel.
“James, wait,” she called after him, but he kept walking. She couldn’t move. At the corner, he turned. When he was gone from her sight, it was as if an engine turned on inside, making her legs move to follow. She hurried after him, but he had disappeared by the time Mara reached the corner. “Damn it,” she whispered, and smacked her hand against the brick of the building. She winced and shook her hand. “Damn it.”
* * *
JAMES PACED THE living room of the small house he’d bought overlooking the lake. It sat on the far western edge of Water Street, and the view of the calm lake never failed to center him. To remind him of the things he wanted. A good career. A family. Making his parents proud. Being a good friend.
Tonight the calmness of the water mocked him. He had a son. A son he had never met because, when Mara walked away, he let her.
There were things he could have done to find her, but instead of going after her, instead of forcing her to talk to him, he’d let her walk away.
And tonight he’d walked away from her because he didn’t know what to do with any of this. Her coming back to town. How she made him feel, even after two years. The child he didn’t know.
Dear God, he had a son, and he didn’t even know what the child looked like. He didn’t have Mara’s phone number to call her to apologize.
To ask her if he could meet the kid. Did he want to meet him?
James didn’t have to think, he already knew the answer to the question. He wanted to meet his child.
The sky had turned a brilliant orange, the last rays of sunlight glinting off the surface of the lake like a million tiny diamonds. Like the diamond he’d bought two years ago. The one currently hidden in the oak credenza that had belonged to his great-grandfather when he was sheriff of Wall County.
James had fooled himself, thinking that the on-again, off-again relationship with Mara went off simply because of the distance. That weekend in Nashville, when they had wandered Music Row for hours, when their bodies had come together like puzzle pieces, had been different from their other encounters. Mara was softer that trip. She’d talked a little more about missing her family. He made the mistake of believing her homesickness was about him as well as her grandmother and siblings. A sunset not unlike this one had made him think of the family he wanted, and for the first time he added a face to the shadowy figure of the woman he’d always envisioned by his side.
It was always Mara.
And then she was gone, and a hotel bellhop arrived to pack her things. James had searched the airport and train station, but hadn’t found her. He’d called at least a hundred times before getting that first ‘this number is no longer in service’ message. That was when he tried email. Over and over and over until he realized she wasn’t going to answer.
James pulled open the small desk drawer next to the envelope slot. The little black jeweler’s box had dust on it, but he didn’t bother to wipe it off. Instead, he shut the drawer a little too hard, and a small corner of wood popped off the drawer face. He picked up the shard and tossed it into the trash can.
This was not what he wanted, not what he needed. Not now. Two years ago...he had been crazy in love enough to try to make it work, at least. But now there was too much at stake. James grabbed a beer from the fridge, then crossed to the back porch to drink and watch the sun go down. The beer was icy, the last rays of sun hot, yet they didn’t soothe him. He was still twisted up over Mara’s revelation.
He might still be attracted to Mara, but he’d gotten over loving her long ago. He was now the acting sheriff, and she’d nearly been arrested yesterday. It wouldn’t matter that she’d done nothing wrong. Perception was what mattered, and thanks to CarlaAnn the perception was that Mara Tyler was caught shoplifting her first day back in town.
Then, there was the complication from their graduation night escapade.
Over all of that was the baby. He wasn’t in love with Mara, and he wasn’t foolish enough to think only people in love could raise a child together, but did he even register in her thought process over the past year? He had gone along with Mara’s insistence of keeping things light and friendly. He hadn’t chased after her when she walked away. There was no way he could walk away from a child, though, and there was no way he could trust that Mara wouldn’t disappear on him again.
Everything about seeing her, about this situation was a mess.
The fact that Mara hid the baby from him for more than a year, and the fact that their years-long series of booty calls led to a baby? Those things would lead to gossip, and gossip about the present would quickly reignite gossip about the past, which could lead to his part in the school bus prank.
Thousands of dollars in damage had been inflicted on the bus fleet because, instead of just leaving the lights on as Mara had planned, James took it upon himself to deflate the front tires on several of the buses. The weight of the vehicles on the wheel wells had warped them beyond repair. The cost of the repairs pushed what would have been an annoyance for the school district into the realm of felony. James had anonymously paid restitution for the bus damage, and the statute of limitations was long past, so he couldn’t actually be charged with the felony. Still, who would vote for a sheriff who’d committed a felony—even an uncharged felony?
Who would want even a deputy with that kind of history, and without a job, what kind of father could he be?
He finished the beer and let the bottle hang from his fingertips while the porch swing gently swayed in the evening air.
There was the possibility the baby might not be his. James didn’t like to think of Mara with other men, but the fact was, the two of them hadn’t been in an exclusive relationship. They hadn’t been in a relationship at all. They’d hooked up throughout the Midwest whenever they were in the same areas. But then he returned to Slippery Rock and she went on with her hotel-hopping life. She could have had a man in every town.
James rolled his eyes. Now he was acting like some cheated-on wife in a bad movie. Mara was a lot of things, but she wasn’t the type to have a man in every city in the Midwest. If Mara said the baby was his, then it was, and he would have to deal with that. Would have to deal with the schmucks her parents had been and the damage they’d done to her. Would have to deal with her envy of his traditional childhood. Would have to deal with his parents, who had very specific ideas about what the life of James Calhoun should look like. He doubted those ideas included a woman like Mara.
The sun sank past the pine and spruce and oak trees lining the lakeshore, throwing the water into darkness.
What either of his parents thought about him having a child with Mara Tyler, though, didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had the child. Mara was the mother. James was the father. It might not be the family he’d envisioned when he bought this house, but it was the family he had.
He would figure out a way to make this work.