Cole looked to her and they exchanged proud, bittersweet smiles before his eyes found Adrian’s. “She did it for Kyle.”
They made a picture, the two giggling children. Adrian’s heart gave a little squeeze.
“She loves him,” Briar said when her daughter held her arms up insistently for Kyle and he obliged by picking her up with a “Hoorah!” for her efforts. “Every time she sees Kyle, she lights up. And no wonder. He’ll be a bona fide heartbreaker before long.”
“I know,” Adrian muttered sadly. “What the heck am I going to do?”
“I’m still trying to get over the fact that my baby’s eating solid foods,” Briar said woefully. “I can’t imagine her growing up, dating, getting married...”
“Liv’s right. Denial works wonders sometimes,” Adrian told her. “I’ll be sticking to it.”
Cole walked to her, the proud papa smile not quite worn off. “Everything all right?” he asked, seeming to read past the nostalgic gleam to Adrian’s troubles.
Adrian patted him on the arm. He was a damn good man. It hadn’t taken long for her to grow to love him, too. “Nothing a trip to Olivia’s tavern won’t cure.”
His expression sobered as he narrowed his eyes on her face, a glimmer of doubt flickering in his dark eyes. “What do you say we all meet there tomorrow night? Liv mentioned it’s Monica’s night off, so Briar’s helping out behind the bar and her dad’s coming by to spend a few hours with Harmony.” He wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders, bringing her in close to his side. “I know we could both use a night out.”
Adrian could, too. “I’ll talk to my parents, see if one or both of them can watch Kyle for a few hours. Anyway, it’s getting late. I know you’ve got to put Harmony down for the night and bedtime is fast approaching for her knight in shining armor, too.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Cole offered. He followed them to the door of the inn. When Kyle bounded ahead down the front steps of the porch, Cole grabbed Adrian’s arm. “You sure you’re okay?”
She hitched the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder, avoiding his gaze. The man could spot turmoil from a mile away. Probably because he’d been through the worst of it. Adrian had a fair sense that if she told him not just what was bothering her but who, he’d go storming off to take care of her business for her. “I’m fine, Cole. I promise.”
Unconvinced, he searched her face. “You know if you need anything...”
“I know,” she said with a small smile and patted his hand. “Good night.”
CONCENTRATINGONANYTHINGbut his son proved to be problematic for James, even with the grand opening of Bracken Mechanics right around the corner. The morning following the bombshell at Flora, James met Priscilla Grimsby at the offices of the local newspaper to talk about Fairhope’s newest business venture.
Fortunately, the reporter skimmed the more sordid details of his past, even after she learned that he had been born and raised there. Though she did seem interested in the fact that his father had once been the town preacher.
James frowned as he drove back to the garage, wondering just how many of those gritty details about his past would end up in Priscilla’s business column. Like her brother, Byron, she’d seemed quite interested in generating as much positive press as possible for Bracken Mechanics. He hoped for the best and put it out of his mind.
The latter part proved easier than the first with Adrian and the blue-eyed child they had made together lurking at the forefront. He hadn’t the first clue how to prove to Adrian that he could be a good father, much less that he deserved her respect and trust.
Regret was a barb he’d come to know all too well—regret over his father’s death, over how badly he had let things get between him and his father before the accident, over how far James had gone to avoid the resulting grief and loss...
However, none of it compared to the regret he felt now knowing that Adrian had had to raise their son alone while also dealing with the heartbreak and humiliation she’d spoken of the day before. She’d faced it all on her own. Suddenly, his leaving looked an awful lot less like doing what was right and a lot more like the coward’s way out...
Hell, if only he had known. Things could have been different. He would have made things different.
His thoughts circled and spiraled, then circled again until the sun was hanging low in the west and he’d done all he could at the garage for the day. Scowling, he took one last look around. It was coming together, no mistake. Still, there were things that needed to be done, including hiring a couple of guys to help out. A fellow mechanic. A tow truck driver. Maybe somebody to man the phone and handle administrative tasks.
As he locked the doors and pulled the grate over them, a mud-caked Dodge pulled into the parking lot and parked next to the tow truck. James noted the gun rack in the truck bed and the two nuts hanging by a silver chain loop off the back exhaust pipe. He crossed his arms as the driver door opened and a familiar figure jumped to the ground from the raised cab. James scanned the faded jeans, the plaid shirt and the red-bearded face and shook his head. “I’ll be damned,” he said as a smile stretched across the man’s mouth.
Dustin Harbuck took off his sunglasses as he approached James in dirty work boots. “Jim Bracken,” he greeted James. Dustin wore a battered camouflage baseball cap with a shiny, silver fishing hook clipped onto the front of the bill. Stretching out a large hand, he pumped James’s fist. “Been gone long enough, brother?”
They weren’t brothers. In fact, they’d only been friends for a brief stretch of time. All the Harbuck boys were more than a little rough around the edges and daredevils to boot. A few of them had even served time behind bars, but over the months between the fateful wreck that had changed James’s life and his departure from Fairhope, James had grown to rely on Dusty and his bad influence to cope with life as it was then. Through their shared antics, they had grown as close as two small-town rebels could.
In fact, it was Dusty James had gone to at the end of that fateful summer. Dusty hadn’t hesitated to give James enough money to get him as far away from Fairhope as he could manage on a limited budget. He hadn’t asked questions, either.
James looked at Dusty and saw the first friendly face of all those ghosts he had left behind. Without a word, he embraced him hard. “It’s good to see you, buddy,” he said, and meant it.
Dusty thumped him on the shoulder. He stepped back and surveyed the beard and tattoos that covered James and laughed. “The big, wide world’s left its mark on you.”
“Seems so,” James muttered, turning his tattooed left hand until the art on the underside was revealed. “How’s life been treating you?”
“Decent enough,” Dusty said with a nod. He glanced over James’s shoulder at the locked garage. “Clint told me he’d heard a rumor you were back in town. As shocked as I was to hear that, it wasn’t anything compared to how I felt when I heard you’re trying to throw together a new business.”
James looked at the garage. “I heard Witmore was retiring. I couldn’t let the old place go to waste.”
Narrowing his eyes, Dusty pushed the bill of his cap up with his knuckles, then used them to scratch the spot where the hat had been rubbing just below his red hairline. “And, just like that, after eight years, you come flying back into town to rescue it?”
James lifted his shoulders. “Why not?”
“I ain’t