“It’s no surprise that everyone rallied around you, Janey. This was always more your place than mine.”
“You cut the ties, Noah.”
“Dad was still alive and living here, then.”
“And you didn’t want anything to do with him, either. I get that. So do us both a favor and don’t try to make this whole thing my fault. Maybe I could’ve found a way to tell you sooner. If you’d bothered to call me ten years ago.”
He rested his head against the chair again and reminded himself that she was right: holding on to his anger over the past would only make the present situation more difficult. He’d learned that the hard way, not coming back for his father’s funeral because the man had never made room in his life for anyone but himself. Funny, Noah thought, how petty that kind of retribution felt after a decade had passed. Funny how you didn’t want it to happen again. “So tell me about her.”
“Her name is Jessica Marie Walters.”
That brought his attention back to Janey. “Walters?”
“Walters.”
It took him a minute, but he swallowed that, too. “What else?”
“If you call her Jessica, she won’t answer you. The rest I think you should find out on your own.”
“Come on, Janey, give me a break.”
“If I tell you everything, the two of you won’t have anything to talk about, and you were concerned about that.”
“Okay.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “Okay.”
“You should go.”
“Yeah.” Noah stood and rolled his shoulders, looking around the room as if the walls were hiding the answer to the strange way he was feeling. He tucked a hand in his pocket and jingled his car keys.
“I’ll call you tomorrow night. Where are you staying?”
“The Erskine Hotel, I guess.”
“The hotel is being fumigated. Termites.”
Not surprising for a town built almost entirely of wood that hadn’t seen the inside of a tree for a couple centuries. What surprised him was that any of the decrepit old buildings were still standing. But that wasn’t really the point.
The Tambour clock on the mantel chimed once for eight-thirty. Past closing time for a community that started its day before 6:00 a.m. The hotel was the only place in town that stayed open pretty much around the clock, and even then the dining room shut down by ten. “I’ll have to drive to Plains City before I can find a place to stay. That’s fifty miles.”
“Then maybe you’d better get started.”
“Can’t. I was almost out of gas when I saw you and decided to stop. I probably won’t make it twenty miles.”
“At least that would be twenty miles away from here,” Janey muttered. She refused to feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault he’d run his car nearly out of gas when he knew all too well that the streets of Erskine were rolled up promptly at 8:00 p.m. It was one of the reasons he’d been in such a rush to get out of town. She was the other reason.
“Is Max Devlin still around? Maybe I can impose on him for the night.”
“Yes. No! I mean, Max is still here. He came back after college, but you can’t bother him. He just got married.” To her best friend, who would insist on hearing the whole story and then dissecting it as if it were a science experiment. Janey loved Sara Devlin like a sister, but she had no intention of reliving the past. She’d done enough of that for one night, she thought, glancing over at Noah.
He was smiling. At her. That couldn’t be good.
“Then I guess I’ll have to stay here.”
“Uhhh…she said, waiting for her brain to come up with another objection. Eventually she had to close her mouth. She already felt stupid; she didn’t have to look it, too.
“What are you worried about?” he asked, easing back a step, his hands spread out, just as she’d seen every cop on every crime show do with every cornered criminal. Look at me, he was saying, I’m harmless.
Harmless, hah. The man was a walking weapon, from his to-die-for face to the tall, solid body that made her heart pound so hard she could imagine it jumping out of her chest and throwing itself at his feet, leaving behind a flat-haired corpse in paint-spattered clothes. The way he walked was enough to stall the air in her lungs so she could barely breathe, which was probably for the best since not breathing meant not smelling. She’d always been far too susceptible to a man who smelled really good, and Noah Bryant appeared to be a man who’d learned how to balance his cologne with just the right amount of, well, himself.
“You don’t worry me,” she said. No, she was worried about herself. “But you still have to leave.”
“C’mon, Janey, it doesn’t make sense—”
“You can’t stay here.”
“—for me to leave—”
“You can’t stay here.”
“—when I’ll just have to come back to talk to Jessie. Besides, where am I going to go?”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem figuring that out ten years ago.”
“I’m beat, Janey,” he said. “I promise it’ll only be for one night.”
She folded her arms and glared at him, trying to find it in herself to send him packing. But he really did seem to be exhausted, and if she kicked him out she’d only be up half the night worrying about him stranded in the middle of nowhere, sleeping in his car. If he didn’t fall asleep at the wheel and end up in a ditch filled with water, upside down with both his doors jammed shut and his seat belt stuck….
“One night.” She left the parlor and started up the stairs, adding over her shoulder, “Tomorrow you find somewhere else to stay.”
Noah took his time getting to the top, smiling benignly.
“I mean it.”
He pressed his lips together. His eyes were still sparkling at her, but without the grin she could pretend he was taking the whole thing seriously.
She opened the door to the first bedroom she came to and said, “You can sleep in here.”
“Do you mind if I have a shower?” he asked.
“Bathroom’s right next door.” Janey held her hand out, palm up.
He stared at it, clearly puzzled.
“Unless you plan to borrow my clothes, too, you’ll need your suitcase.”
“I’ll get it.”
“No way. Mrs. Halliwell is home by now. I don’t want her to see you walking into my house carrying a suitcase.”
“Won’t she wonder about my car?”
“I can explain that away. You, on the other hand…” She shook her head. “There’s no explaining you.”
“Does that mean she’s not used to seeing men come into your house at night and leave the next morning?”
“Men? That’s not a revolving door down there, you know.”
“Okay, man, singular. You don’t have a boyfriend who does sleepovers?”
“None of your business.”
“It is if he’s going to come storming in here to punch my lights out.”
Now there was a mental picture worth smiling about. “Maybe you should