Summer Kisses Page 12
Grandpa Ed managed to reach a hand far enough to rest on the top of Truman’s ginger mop. But his gaze was on Flynn’s. “Harmony Valley is the best place for little boys. You can dream big here, no matter if you want to be president or a millionaire.”
Flynn knew it was true.
No matter how he wished he’d learned about it differently.
* * *
“HEY.” BECCA FOUND Flynn on the back porch where the combination of shade from the roof and surrounding trees and the cool breeze off the river did little to cool Flynn’s burning sense of betrayal, if she could judge anything by the way he looked.
Shoulders hunched, head lowered. He ignored the serene view of the river, choosing instead to study the blackberry vines that reached for the rail at his feet.
She handed him a beer. “I thought you could use this.”
Flynn twisted off the cap and took a long pull, continuing his perusal of the brambles on the slope below. “What I could use is a memory wipe. I don’t suppose you have that in a kitchen cupboard.”
What she really thought was that Flynn could use a vacation—someplace warm and sunny where he could lie on the beach and just be. He overbooked every day, was on the move from sunup to sundown, fulfilling his responsibilities to the winery partnership, helping people in the community with honey-do repairs. He barely managed to eke out time with his grandfather and Truman. When did he ever take a moment for himself? Never.
“No memory wipes. No do-overs, either.” She put the house rules on pause and brushed his hair away from his forehead, smoothing his long locks on either side behind his ears. “I suppose now’s not a good time to tell you about hat-hair.”
Edwin still wore Flynn’s hat.
“No.” He didn’t smile. He barely looked at her.
Becca clutched the railing, her body wavering restlessly as if she was moored there during trouble waters, waiting for him to say something. Flynn was always saying something. “Well, I guess I should get back inside.” She didn’t raise anchor. She waited.
He sipped his beer and said nothing.
Flynn without words was extremely troublesome. She tapped the railing. Studied the profile that had been half-hidden by a baseball cap 99 percent of the time she’d seen him.
The hat made him look young. The long hair made him look young. The torment in his eyes aged him.
“Your cheekbones are more prominent without the hat.” They’d never overwhelm the intensity of his blue eyes, though.
Flynn grunted and swigged more beer.
She tossed her braid over her shoulder. “Makes me wonder what you’d look like with a haircut.” Made her want to run her fingers through his hair.
He sighed and slid an arm around her waist, cinching her against him. “Could we just...maybe...not talk for a minute?”
Becca forgot to breathe. Her left arm was trapped between them. To move it around his waist was to disregard the house rules that had bound her status as an employee. She stood stiffly, listening to a bird singing nearby, debating what to do.
He mumbled a curse, set his beer on the railing, then reached behind and between them to drag her hand up and around his waist. “Becca.”
She wasn’t sure if he was chastising himself or her.
He reclaimed his beer with one hand, with the other he rested his fingers over her hip. “Becca,” he murmured again.
This time the note was clear. He’d been chastising her. Maybe she deserved to be chastised. She’d missed the feel of a hard body holding hers. She’d missed holding hands and long walks. She’d missed shared confidences and slow kisses.
Becca stole a glance at Flynn. They fit together standing like this. His arm in the small of her back. Her face so near his that all he had to do was lower his chin to kiss her.
Flynn didn’t take advantage, seemingly content just to hold her.
She let a small sigh slip past disappointed lips, and leaned more deeply against him.
This was what he needed. This would have to do.
“Grandpa Ed raised me when he didn’t have to,” Flynn said after they’d been standing silently for several minutes.
“Points for that. You seem to have turned out okay.”
“He told me not to write my father in prison.” There was pain in Flynn’s words, balled up, crumpled tight. “He told me he’d let me know when Joey was released so I could prepare myself.” Flynn scoffed. “So I could prepare myself for the truth? That my father did want me and my grandfather lied about it?”
“It sounds bad when you put it that way.”
Flynn’s fingers clenched on the beer bottle, clenched on her hip. “Why didn’t he tell me? Why couldn’t he tell me?”
“Maybe they made a deal.” Becca slid a hand over his at her waist, her touch smoothing the curl to his fingers. “Sometimes you give your word not to tell anyone and you keep it, no matter who it hurts and no matter how badly you want to tell someone.” She wanted to tell Flynn about the ring. She did. But if she told him, there’d be no more hand holding, no more hugs and definitely no kisses.
He’d asked for the whole truth. He’d told her not to withhold anything. She had.
He’d hate her. Look how hard he was taking his grandfather’s confession.
“Careful, Becca. Or I might think you aren’t telling me something.”
What she wasn’t telling him was that she didn’t want to take his final paycheck in a few weeks—she didn’t want to move on. And she was dying for a kiss.
She pulled him toward her, lifted up on her toes and kissed him. A quick buss of lips. There was no locking. No exchange of saliva. Lift, kiss, back away.
Her heart pounded as if she’d just done a sprint to the main road and back. Her pulse beat out a warning at her temple, turning her brain back on. Her impulsiveness required a new house rule. “House rule number six—a chaste kiss on a boo-boo makes it all better. Hope you feel better soon.” She took another step back, fully intending to retreat.
“Not so fast.” Flynn tugged her back into his arms. Her body pressed against hard muscle and emotionally distraught man. “I challenge that house rule.”
“On what grounds?” Her hands rested on his chest, same as her gaze.
She knew she should go. She knew she wouldn’t.
It was as if she’d discovered a list Flynn made. A honey-do list.
Honey—do let your arms shelter me.
Honey—do let your lips make it better.
Honey—do let your heart heal mine.
He smoothed her hair, mimicking the way she’d touched him earlier, stray strands tucked behind her ears. His hand caught her braid, using it gently to tilt her face up to his. His blue eyes had darkened and targeted her lips. “Your line of reasoning is unsound.”
“How so?”
“I hurt everywhere when you’re not kissing me.” And then he crushed her to him, his lips claiming hers.
Becca’s hands slid up his chest and over his shoulders until her fingers speared through his hair. His kiss was sultry and blistering, burning away the tension that had been knotting inside her for weeks, until she felt relaxed and renewed and pent up, all at the same time.
A bell went off inside her head. Ringing and ringing and ringing.
She hadn’t set a timer. She hadn’t set an alarm. Although heaven knew she probably should have.
“Becca? Should I answer the phone?” Truman’s voice.
Becca stumbled back, dazed. Flynn steadied her, but the look in his eyes was anything but steadying. It said more. It said now.
The phone rang again.
“Becca?” Truman called with the weary impatience of a child.
“Yes, please.” She took a steadying breath, rationalization and regret preparing arguments against sensat
ion and emotion.
“Yes, please,” Flynn murmured, pulling her closer.
“Uncle Flynn! It’s Mama!”
“We’ll talk about this later.”
Flynn released her and hurried inside so quickly, he couldn’t have heard Becca whisper, “No, we won’t.”
Rationalization and regret won.
* * *
“I KEPT GETTING the machine,” Kathy said when Truman handed the phone to Flynn.
Despite the immense relief in hearing Kathy’s voice, Flynn couldn’t banish the feel of Becca’s lips on his or her fingers running through his hair. But he could form simple syllables. “Uh-huh.”
“She’s not coming home yet.” Truman crumpled at Flynn’s feet, deflated by Kathy’s news.
“I hate to disappoint him. He’s okay, right?”
Flynn’s brain finally slid into a gear that could communicate intelligently. “Kathy, where are you? What’s this all about?”
Becca slipped into the living room. Her black hair was mussed over one ear. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. She walked toward him, and for a moment he thought she was going to wrap her arms around him again. Instead, she knelt next to Truman and, with Abby’s help, encouraged him to get up. The trio went down the hallway.
“Can’t tell you,” Kathy was saying.
“I’ve tried to call your home and cell.” Flynn’s grip on the phone tightened against nearly two weeks of helplessness. The wonder, the worry, the demoralizing what-if scenarios. “Why aren’t you answering?”
Grandpa Ed was still wearing Flynn’s black Giants cap. It made his nose more obtrusive. “Tell her it doesn’t matter what she’s done. We’ll forgive her.”
Kathy huffed into his ear.
Gesturing to his grandfather to keep quiet, Flynn tried again. “What if something happened to Truman? How would I get in touch with you?”
“You can’t. I thought I’d be done with this in a week, but...I need more time.”
Flynn swallowed back his frustration. “More time for what?”
Someone spoke in the background. A man. Deep voice. Assertive.
“I have to go.” No arguments. No bargaining. Complete acquiescence.
The bitter taste of fear lined the back of his throat. She was disappearing, as their mother so often did. “Wait. Kathy.”
But she’d already hung up on him.
Flynn tapped the disconnect buttons in the cradle, but all he got was a dial tone.
“Where is she?” Grandpa Ed demanded. “Can you go pick her up?”
Flynn shook his head. It was his mother all over again. Except...
He gave his grandfather a hard look. “You didn’t pay Kathy to leave Truman here, did you?”
“No!” His reaction was so strong and so immediate that Flynn believed him.
“Uncle Flynn?” Truman stood in the hall, Becca’s hands on his shoulders, Abby at his feet.
Flynn shook his head.
Truman bolted across the living room and into Flynn’s arms. “I’m scared. I put Mama to bed at night. I get her up in the morning. Whose gonna take care of her?”
Becca’s gaze questioned. Flynn wasn’t about to admit he’d heard a man’s voice in the background.
“Your mom is fine. She’s extending her vacation is all.” Flynn stroked Truman’s ginger hair, just like he’d stroked Kathy’s when they were kids.
Truman broke away and bolted for his bedroom.
Where was his sister? Who was she with? Why wasn’t she coming back?
Flynn had the private investigator’s card. He could have Webber find Kathy. And while he was at it, he could have him look into his father’s past. Or Becca’s.
There wouldn’t be any more secrets.
There wouldn’t be any respect, either.
Flynn’s cell phone started to beep and vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and laughed. Finally, something was going right. “The communications tower is up and running.”
“Cell phones? Internet?” Edwin stared at the pictures on the walls. “That’ll rattle these old birds in their cages more than any earthquake.”
* * *
“TRUMAN?” BECCA KNOCKED on Truman’s bedroom door. It wasn’t fully closed all the way, and Abby nosed her way in.
“What is it?” Truman lay facedown on the bed, as if he couldn’t stand to face his mother’s absence.
Abby hopped up with him, laying her head on his back and looking at Becca as if to say: help him.
Becca sat down on the bed near Truman’s feet. She’d taken down the pink curtains and replaced them with beach towels. She’d switched out the pink ruffled bedspread and replaced it with a blue and brown prairie quilt she’d found in the hall closet. She’d had Flynn move Kathy’s dresses and shoes up to the attic. It felt more like Truman’s room now.
She rubbed his back. “Abby needs to go for a walk. Want to come with me?”
He shook his head.
Becca rubbed his little back some more. “Sometimes it’s tough being a kid, isn’t it?”
He moved his head in a way that she took as assent.
“It’s not fair that you have to watch out for your mom all the time and now your grandpa, too.”
He half turned, his knobby knees bumping into her hip, his arm gathering Abby to him like a teddy bear. “What happens if my mom doesn’t come back? She’s out there all alone and she’s scared. I could hear it in her voice.”
No little boy should recognize fear in an adult’s voice. “She might have been more worried about you. That’s what you could have heard.”
“But if she doesn’t come back, what’s going to happen to me?”
“Truman, she’s coming back.” Becca hoped, for his sake.
He didn’t look so sure. “I suppose I’d live here. But there’s no school. I asked. What am I going to do?”
He was such an old soul. She smiled. “Your Uncle Flynn is building the winery so they can reopen things, like the school and the ice cream parlor.”
“But Becca.” He sat up, worry furrowing his little brow, “if they open the ice cream parlor, Juan will be unhappy.”
Abby sat up, too. She licked his cheek.
“Who’s Juan?”
“He owns El Rosal. The Mexican restaurant? That’s where people in town buy ice cream now.”
“If more people move here, more people will eat lunch and dinner at El Rosal. Juan will be happier than if he just sold ice cream.” Although it was a restaurant, El Rosal also sold the bare essentials, like bread, milk and ice cream.
“Oh.” Truman hugged Abby again. “Does Abby really need to go for a walk?”
“Abby always needs to go for a walk. Or learn a new trick. Or meet new friends.”
“Me, too.” Truman scooted into Becca’s lap, cuddling into her arms as if he’d been born there.
Becca’s throat threatened to close. She’d given up on having children, but these days being with Truman had shown her how rewarding motherhood was and what she’d be missing. “You know, when I was a kid and the world seemed like it would swallow up my loved ones—” which it had. She prayed it wouldn’t do that to Kathy “—I used to sit in my special place and sing.”
He cocked his head, clearly engaged. “What song made you feel better?”
She launched into a silly tune, gyrating kookily and shaking him along with her.
He giggled, as she’d meant him to. It was a song her grandmother had sung to her when Becca was in a funk.
“Really. You laugh, but by the time I get done singing that song, I feel better. Want to sing with me?”
Flynn poked his head in the doorway. “Ready to go fix some stuff? We’ve still got a long list.”
Truman squirmed out of h
er lap. “No time to sing, Becca. Gotta go help the neighbors.” He ran past Flynn, Abby close behind him.
Flynn’s stare was smoldering. “We’ll talk later.”
“House rule number seven—never, ever talk about a mistake.”
He frowned, but left her when Truman called him.
Which was a relief. Wasn’t it?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“GOOD NIGHT, AGNES.” Becca closed the front door behind Abby and turned toward the driveway and her motorhome.
Daylight was fading in the valley, but one thing was clear. There was a man leaning against her motorhome door. A man without a hat.
“You didn’t answer my text.” Flynn waved his phone at her.
“I haven’t turned my cell on in more than a week. It’s in the motorhome.” She came closer, trying to think of a good house rule.
“That explains why you haven’t accepted my friend request on Facebook.”
“It’s been a long time since anyone’s sent me a friend request.”
“Then I’m glad I sent you one.” His smile had too much of what her grandmother would have called vinegar, raising her suspicions. “Turn your phone on. I’ll wait.”
“You want me to go inside, turn my cell phone on and read your text? Accept your friend request? Why can’t you tell me what you sent? Or show me on your phone?” She was close enough to make a graceful grab at it.
“Check your text messages.” Flynn slid his phone into his pocket. “Some texts need to be read in private.”
Okay. She was intrigued. “Wait out here.”
“At least leave Abby with me. I’ll throw her ball.”
Who could turn down a deal like that?
It took a few minutes for Becca’s outdated phone to boot up.
The motorhome was hot after being closed up all day. She used the time while the phone did its start up routine to open the windows.
There was only one message.
Walk with me so I can apologize.
Becca opened the motorhome door. “Apologize?” For their kiss? She wasn’t sure if she was touched or offended.