He’d been the one to end it that day, pulling away from her, telling her she was right, that she had a pageant to prepare for, and she needed to focus on that. Even then, a week before they’d broken up, he’d been drawing the line in the sand between them.
Aunt Betty greeted him, and Jack said hello back, but his attention stayed on Meri.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
His gaze flicked to Betty, then away, and a shade dropped over his features. She could see him shutting the door, clear as day. Typical Jack—shut her out to whatever was going on inside his head.
“I’m surprised you’re still in town,” Jack said, instead of answering her question.
She bristled. “I just got here, Jack. I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
“Good.”
The single word surprised her, undid the ready fight in her head. “Why do you say that?”
“Because Ray won’t admit he needs a mother hen, but he does. And you’re the perfect person to tell him what to do.”
“Are you saying I’m bossy?”
A half smile curved across his face. “Darlin’, you’ve always been bossy.”
Something about the way he said darlin’ sent heat fissuring through her and made her think of the hot summer nights they’d spent together as teenagers, when temptation was their constant companion.
“I see you still love cupcakes,” Jack said, taking another step closer to her.
Heat pooled in her gut. God, how she wanted to just look into his blue eyes and fall all over again. But she already knew where this led, already knew how he truly felt about her.
She put the cupcake on the counter and swept the frosting from her lips with the back of her hand. Who was she kidding? This wasn’t a chance to rewrite the past or show Jack she had changed. No, she wasn’t here for that. As even Jack had said, her main goal was restoring Grandpa Ray to health. Besides, whatever she might have felt for Jack Barlow when she was a silly teenage girl had evaporated that day in the garage, as fast as rain on hot tar. “I don’t think I ever loved them,” she said. “I just thought I did.”
Jack pounded out six hard and fast miles on the back roads of Stone Gap. The late-evening heat beat down on him, sweat pouring down his back, but he didn’t slow his pace. His punishing daily routine drove the demons back, so he kept on running until his body was spent and his throat was clamoring for water.
What had he been thinking, walking into the bakery yesterday? Did he think this time, finally, he’d get the courage to say what he needed to say? Once a week he stopped in to either Betty’s or George’s, and every time the words stayed stuck in his throat.
Then, seeing Meri with that little bit of frosting on her lip derailed all his common sense. For a moment, he had been eighteen again, half in love with her and thinking the world was going to go on being perfect and pure. Until he’d gone to war and learned differently.
Damn. Just going into that bakery hurt like hell, and he’d let himself get swept up in a past—a fantasy—that no longer existed. A mistake he wouldn’t make again. Add it to the long list of mistakes Jack never intended to make again.
Luke was sitting on the front porch of Jack’s cottage in the woods when Jack got back. “You look like you’re about ready to keel over.”
Jack braced his palms on his knees and drew in a deep breath. Another. A third. “I’ll be fine.”
Luke scoffed, got to his feet and shoved a water bottle under Jack’s nose. “Here, you need this more than me.”
Jack thanked his brother, then straightened and chugged the icy beverage. “What are you doing here? Not that I don’t appreciate the water, but this makes two days in a row that I’ve seen you. I didn’t see you that much when we lived in the same house.”
Luke shrugged. “Mama’s worried about you. Mac is off in the big city, pretending we don’t exist, working his fingers to the bone, so that leaves me as the designated caretaker.”
“In other words, she got desperate.”
“I prefer to call it smart.”
Jack scoffed. He drained the rest of the water, recapped the bottle, then three-pointed it into the recycle bin. “I gotta go to work.”
Luke stepped in front of him and blocked his path. “Promise me you’ll be at dinner on Sunday night. Mama said she’d tan us both if you don’t come.”
“First of all, the last time Mama spanked either of us was when you were six and you stole candy from the general store. You cried, she cried and she never spanked us again. Second of all, I am quite capable of eating on my own. I don’t need to show up for the whole family-meal dog and pony show.”
“Since when has dinner at Mama’s been a dog and pony show?” Luke gave Jack’s shoulder a light jab. “And what’s up with you, anyway? Don’t tell me you like eating those TV dinners on the sofa better than homemade pot roast?”
“Since when did you become my keeper?” Jack shook his head. “I’m busy, Luke. I don’t have time for this. I gotta get to the garage.”
Luke stood there a moment longer, as if he wanted to disagree but had run out of arguments. A part of Jack wanted Luke to drag him to dinner at Mama’s, because maybe being forced to be among the rest of the world would keep that panther at bay. Or maybe it would unleash the damned thing and Jack would ruin the only good he had left in his life.
“Fine, have it your way,” Luke said. “Enjoy your Hungry-Man dinners.”
His brother left, and Jack headed into the little house on Stone Gap Lake that he’d rented when he came home from the war. It wasn’t much as houses went, but it was set in the woods at the end of a desolate street, a mile as the crow flew from Ray’s house. If there was one thing Jack didn’t want, it was friendly neighbors who’d be popping by with a casserole or an earful of gossip. His mother had wanted him to stay in the family home, but the thought of being around all that...caring suffocated him. He’d rented the first house he found, and told his mother he’d be fine.
He heard the crunch of tires on the road and readied a sarcastic retort for Luke as he headed back onto the porch, where the word died in his throat. Meri sat behind the wheel of a dusty Toyota, sunglasses covering the green eyes he knew so well, her hair tied back in a ponytail. She pulled into the drive, rolled down the window, but didn’t turn off the car.
“I need your help. Grandpa Ray is fixing to climb a ladder and clean out the gutters, and refuses to wait for you to help him. He wouldn’t let me so much as touch the ladder, and I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself.”
Jack let out a curse. “I told him I’d do that tonight, after I got done at the garage.”
“You know him. When he wants something done, he wants it done now.” She tucked the sunglasses on top of her head. Worry etched her face, shimmered in her eyes. “Can you help? I mean, if you’re busy or something—”
“I’m not busy.” Not busy enough, he should have said. Never busy enough. But Ray needed him, and if there was one man Jack would help without question, it was Ray. And with Meri looking at him like that, as though she’d pinned all her hopes on his shoulders...a part of him wanted to tell