LATER THAT EVENING, after dinner and visits from both Duke and Delores that had left Keegan less than cheerful, Carrie sat on the sofa reading her book.
“I don’t know what Delores thinks is going on in here,” Keegan said. “She was clucking over you like a mother hen and staring at me like she was a bull and I was wearing red.”
“She’s just a caring person,” Carrie said.
“No. She’s a suspicious, nosy old troublemaker, and I hope you’re not giving her a false impression.”
“I’m not giving her any impression. I’m sure if she’s drawing any conclusions at all, it’s because she already knows you so well.”
Keegan harrumphed, picked up the remote and said, “Mind if I watch the news channel?”
How could she mind? This was his house, and watching the news was what he did. “Of course not. Anything special we should know about in the world today?”
“No, but there’s a broadcast leading up to the New Year. The station is showing the biggest stories from the new millennium.”
“That should be interesting,” Carrie said, turning a page in her book. “I can put in my earbuds.”
He gave her a quirky smile.
“What’s so funny?”
He chuckled. “You just said the program would be interesting, and then you figured out a way to avoid hearing any of it.”
“You’ll let me know when the good parts come up, right?” She plunged a soft plastic bud into each ear.
After about thirty minutes, during which time Keegan had been glued to the screen with a cup of coffee in his hand, Carrie glanced at the television. She recognized the distressing scenes of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. She’d been in her last year of high school when the storm occurred, and felt so sorry for all the misplaced people. Jude had been terribly upset about the animals that no longer had homes. Between the two of them, they’d managed to badger friends and neighbors for donations which they sent to the Red Cross.
Carrie pulled the buds from her ears and laid them on her lap. “I remember this so well,” she said. “How horrible that must have been. I understand parts of the city are still suffering from the effects.”
Keegan’s face was grim. “It was horrible, all right.”
Surprised by the depth of emotion in his voice, she wondered if he had done more than watch the disaster on television like she had.
And then the file footage shifted to the New Orleans Superdome which had gained an infamous reputation as a last-resort shelter for residents with nowhere else to go. A camera scanned the interior of the arena, capturing bedrolls and cots side-by-side taking up the entire space normally reserved for sports games. Reporters interviewed folks who protested conditions in the Dome but had no alternative since city officials had locked them inside.
All at once, a voice, deep, controlled, impassioned and, of all things, familiar, caught her attention. She slipped off her reading glasses and stared at the TV as a reporter asked a question. The camera was focused on the protester, and only showed the back of the reporter’s head and his dark, collar-length mussed hair.
“Well, enough of this,” Keegan said, reaching for the remote.
“Don’t you dare turn that off,” Carrie said. “That reporter…” The camera swiveled around to show the man’s face, younger, wrinkle-free, and oh, so handsome. “That’s you! You were in the Superdome!”
“I got caught same as everybody,” he said. “Thought I’d do some amateur storytelling as long as I was there.”
“Nonsense. Your questions are rehearsed, well thought-out. And you’re on a national news broadcast. Amateur, my great-aunt Fanny!”
“‘Great-aunt Fanny!’” He pretended shock. “Such language.”
“Never mind. Who are you?”
A line appeared at the bottom of the screen indicating the source of the interview, the name of the reporter, and his position as “special correspondent.”
Forgetting her leg, Carrie pushed herself off the sofa and winced in pain. “You’re Patrick Breen! I thought I recognized something about you, your voice. I’ve seen you lots of times. You’re famous.”
He frowned. “I thought you didn’t watch much news.”
“I’ve watched enough to recognize you!”
He lowered the volume. “Okay. I used to be Patrick Breen,” he admitted. “Now I’m just Keegan.”
“But…but…” She couldn’t come up with the words. “You had a fabulous career. You went everywhere, the Middle East, China, Israel, even New Orleans as it turns out.” She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes glued on her target as if he might fade from sight as an apparition would. “Weren’t you the subject of a special a couple of years ago?”
“That?” He tried to minimize his importance. “It was just a small segment.”
“—about a reporter who took any assignment, no matter the danger to himself. I saw part of that documentary.” She shook her head in disbelief. “And now you’re here in Ohio, on a campground in the middle of nowhere.”
He shrugged. “Looks like it. And don’t get excited. This isn’t my first rodeo to places in the middle of nowhere.”
“For heaven’s sake,” she said. “This explains a lot.”
“I don’t know why it should,” he said.
“For one thing, it explains your interest in the news. I’m thinking it also explains your obsession with the computer. You’re still writing.” She tapped her fingernail on her upper lip. “What it doesn’t explain is why you’re living here.”
He smirked. “A lot of people retire from their jobs just like I did.”
“No, not just like you did. Most people get their gold watch and buy a set of golf clubs. You disappeared. You went off the grid.” She suddenly remembered references Keegan had made to his past and all the pieces fell into place. “All that talk about injuries you mysteriously sustained that didn’t make sense until now. And you live like a hermit because you don’t want anyone to find you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Carrie, isn’t that why anyone lives like a hermit?”
“Quit making this sound like you’re just one of many people. You’re not.” She paused. “And it explains…” She suddenly cut off her words. She was going too far.
“Explains what?” he said. “Go ahead, say it.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll say it for you. It explains why I was such a crappy father and husband.”
She slowly nodded her head. “Yes, it does. You were always off somewhere, not knowing if you’d make it back or not.” She sat down and tapped her foot on his floor. “I think you craved the excitement above all else. You’re a danger junkie.”
“I was a danger junkie. Now I’m a quiet, respectable, law-abiding hermit.”
“Whose only excitement these days is rescuing people from snowbanks. Quite a comedown, I’d say.”
Again the shrug. “I’m not complaining. I’ve come to appreciate the quiet life.”
“Have you? Have you really? How does someone like you give it all up and settle in a defunct campground?”
Her eyes widened as she realized her heart was beating rapidly. “Keegan, tell me this isn’t another story. You’re not hanging out here because there’s some escaped madman on the loose? Should I be watching for danger around every corner of this cabin?”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be here if there were danger, Carrie. I’m done with all that. I’m leaving all the madmen and the war-torn corners of the world to the younger reporters.”
“Well, you’re not really old, but okay. And what about this property… Is it really yours?”
“Yes. I’m not a squatter. This land belonged to Robert Sean Breen, the Irish immigrant who settled right here when he got off the boat at Ellis Island in the late thirties. And he left his empire to me, his only grandson.”
“And this grandfather…you knew him well?”
Keegan’s voice lowered. “Very well. You might say he was my best friend growing up.”
“And you’re going to repay him for his kindness by selling out to a hotel chain?”
He scowled. “We’re not getting into this again, Carrie.”
“But my guess is, you don’t even need the money. It’s none of my business, but you must have put away a nice retirement amount by accepting the most dangerous assignments and going to the most hazardous places on earth.”
He shook his head, and she worried that he would shut her out now. Her last comment had been rather personal. “It is none of your business, but overall, I got paid well enough, especially for a freelance reporter,” he said.
“So why did you even come here? Why not hire a Realtor and sell the land through a third party? If you have no interest in your inheritance…”
He held up a finger. “I never said I had no interest. When I had the opportunity to come here, I took it. I’d spent many happy weeks here as a kid, and I wanted to come back. I was pretty much a loner when I was growing up. My mom worked crazy hours. My dad was gone. But I’m not a kid anymore, and now my reason for staying here for the last year has been a desire to, as you put it, stay off the grid. Peace and quiet, Carrie, just like you must experience around your beloved trees. I needed it. I found it. Here.”
Finally he’d said something she could relate to. She valued every quiet moment she spent in a forest. She relished the feel of her hands in damp soil when she planted a sapling on a street undergoing renovation. She could almost convince herself the trees cared as much as she did. Maybe she and this embattled man had something lasting in common after all. Except he didn’t seem to have any regrets about leaving his legacy and walking away.
“Those injuries you’ve talked about—why do you limp in the mornings?”
“Gunshot, but not serious. Just grazed. Wrong place, wrong time.”
Recalling his activity the last couple of days, she said, “If you’re no longer reporting, do you mind if I ask what you’re doing on your computer all these hours?”
He scratched the back of his neck while nearly a full minute went by. “I’m no longer reporting, but, like you said, I am still writing. I’m working on my memoir.”
“Your memoir?” The word made him sound much older than his years. But many famous people wrote autobiographies. Why should he be any different?
“Yeah, but I don’t flatter myself into thinking that anyone will want to read it. I’m mostly getting my experiences down on paper as a sort of catharsis, if you know what I mean.” He paused, frowned. “Sometimes my experiences get muddled in my brain. Writing about them brings a certain clarity to what I experienced.”
And from what she knew of him, he’d experienced a lifetime of living in just a few years. So if he truly didn’t think anyone would read his words, then his writing wasn’t a means of earning additional money. The autobiography was a way of bringing clarity to his life, but also, possibly, a sort of soul cleansing of the terrible things he’d seen. At this point, seeing the dark shadows cross his eyes, she could only assume that the latter explanation held a lot of truth.
Who could say for sure? What did Carrie know of danger junkies anyway? The most dangerous activity Carrie pursued was breathing the open air through her troubled lungs. Even Jude’s fiancé, who once a year took off on an adventure somewhere with his friends, always planned and prepared. She assumed a reporter in a war zone didn’t have the luxury of even planning his next meal.
“What about Duke and Delores?” she asked. “Do they know who you are?”
“Duke does. He has nothing to do but watch television, so he recognized me right off. Delores just thinks I’m a crackpot who never remembers to badger her about her rent. She’s happy believing that…and providing me with scones masquerading as rocks.”
Carrie smiled. “So what now? What are your plans for the future?”
“Oh, I’ve got some,” he said. “Like for instance, right now I’m going to bed.”
Carrie glanced at her watch. Nearly two hours had gone by since she’d read a word in her book. And she was no longer interested in the story. The novel couldn’t compete with the real-life journey she’d just heard. “Take the bedroom, Keegan.”
He started to protest, and she waved off his argument. “I insist. You need a good night’s sleep, and I’ve done nothing but sleep, so the bed is yours.” Patting the sofa cushion, she said, “I’ll be fine right here. And besides, I’m not ready for bed yet.”
“Okay.” He stood and ambled toward the bedroom. “Call me if you need anything. Otherwise I’ll see you in the morning.”
“We can give Grady a call then,” she said. “See if he’s had any luck with the car part.”
He smiled. “Sure, we’ll call him, but I’m getting kind of used to having you around, so if you’re stuck here awhile longer, don’t worry about it.”
“You don’t mind my constant questions?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but as a former reporter, I can hardly blame you for probing into my past life and being generally nosy, now can I?” He stopped at the door. “But maybe soon we’ll turn the tables and I can ask you a few questions.”
He shut the door and she turned up the volume on the TV so she could hear the next day’s weather forecast. If it was going to be a nice day, she’d spend it outside and possibly avoid any questions he might ask.
* * *
KEEGAN HAD TO admit his bed felt pretty wonderful. Maybe it was the expensive mattress he’d invested in. Or maybe it was the lingering scent of lavender left by the previous occupant. Carrie did smell good. The subtle, breathe-deep kind of floral headiness that made a man’s mind wander—to where it probably shouldn’t.
He was beginning to enjoy having company in his lonely cabin, not just any company, but this cheery save-a-tree, save-the-planet optimist who would like nothing more than to change his mind about his future plans. He grinned to himself. Carrie Foster wouldn’t succeed in getting him to cancel the sale of his property, but it was miracle enough that he was willing to listen to, and even enjoy, her low, seductive voice trying to get him to.
Wow, where did that come from? Seductive? He didn’t fool himself into thinking she was in any way a female he should be interested in. No. She was his opposite, a nature-loving, peace-seeking woman-child inexperienced in the kind of world that had shaped his personality. He’d seen the worst of people. She probably refused to admit there was a worst.
He hadn’t always been like this, though he couldn’t remember a time when his glasses were rose-colored. During his childhood he’d been on his own, scraping coins from the sofa to buy a soda. The experience had made him a curious realist most of his life. Unfortunately his years as a correspondent had changed him from a realist to a pessimist and taught him that evil existed and couldn’t hide its ugly underbelly from inquiring minds determined to expose it.
Still, there was Carrie, and he couldn’t deny the influence she’d had on him in just a few days. He had to admit that she was the one person in years who had half a chance of changing him back into the person he used to be, the less jaded, less wounded Patrick Breen who enjoyed his summers at his grandfather’s campground.
“Don’t even think about it, Breen,” he said into his pillow. “You’ve left too much heartache in your wake to risk spoiling something so good.” But he could dream, couldn’t he? He could imagine that he was worthy of someone like Carrie. He wondered if she’d had many relationships. Somehow he doubted she had. Despite the fact that she had a killer smile and bottomless blue eyes that didn’t let a guy turn away, she wasn’t the type to sacrifice principles for casual fun. For some reason, while she appeared to enjoy the company of men, she seemed above the fray of mortal males who took without fully giving back.
He rolled onto his side, stuffed a pillow between his knees to ease the ache of an old surgery which had removed a piece of shrapnel from his hip. He should be dog tired. He wanted to sleep. He needed to, but he didn’t want to sleep so soundly that the nightmares would come back.
Some nights, when the past haunted him beyond what was rational, he stayed up all night so the ugliness of what he’d witnessed wouldn’t cause him to wake in a sweat, with the moans of a suffering populace coming from his own lips. No, that was not the experience he would want to expose to someone as sweet as Carrie. That was the part of living like a hermit he hadn’t confessed to.