“Wright-Roper,” the woman corrected.
“Didn’t realize you were married,” Chase said.
“Widowed,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Chase apologized, sounding as if he meant it.
The pretty woman shrugged but Raney could tell that the pain was still there. But she lifted her chin and extended a hand in Raney’s direction.
There was a history between Chase and Trish but Raney couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Not lovers. But something. She shook the woman’s hand.
“Been to the old place yet?” Trish asked.
“Nope. Just got into town.”
“You’ll have your work cut out for you,” she said. “It’s gone downhill in the past few years.”
Chase shrugged as if the news didn’t bother him. But Raney saw him swallow hard. “Not planning on staying there long,” he said.
“Well, don’t be a stranger while you’re here,” she said. “I know Summer would like to see you. She works the day shift.” Trish grabbed two menus from the counter and led them to a table in the corner of the café. Raney noticed that Chase didn’t make eye contact with anyone else in the room.
They sat down. “Old friend?” Raney murmured, opening her menu.
He nodded. “I’ve known Trish since I was a kid. My older brother, Bray, dated Summer, Trish’s sister. I always thought they might get married someday but he enlisted in the marines right out of high school and she married some other guy.”
“How long since you’ve been in Ravesville?”
“I came back once, about eight years ago, when my mother died. Other than that, thirteen years,” he said. “What are you having for dinner?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.
So he hadn’t come for his stepfather’s funeral. That was why he hadn’t known whether it was big or small. But he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t care. She didn’t need his life story. She just needed a place to stay where she’d be safe. Someplace in the middle of Missouri was as good as any.
When Trish returned, pen in hand, Raney closed her menu. “I’ll take a salad with grilled...” She caught a glimpse of her reflection and almost jerked back in surprise. The change was almost too much to take in. If Sandy had been more forthcoming about the intended results, she’d have probably bolted from the chair.
But she was glad that she hadn’t. She liked the new look. Had never considered going blond but now she might never go back.
One thing she could thank Harry Malone for.
“Actually,” she said. “No salad. I’ll take a bacon cheeseburger. With fries.”
Chase ordered the meat loaf. Once Trish had walked away, he looked at her. “Salad just wasn’t going to cut it?” he asked, obviously trying to think of something to say.
She was going to shrug it off but then decided that if they were going to live together for the next month as husband and wife, she needed to be honest with him. “That would have been BHM. Before Harry Malone. Now I pretty much treat myself to whatever I want, when I want it.”
Come to think of it, maybe that was why she was digging the new haircut and look. It fit the new Raney Taylor. The Raney Taylor that she was molding.
He studied her, then spoke quietly but with conviction. “If it’s any consolidation, the son of a bitch is going to pay. He’s going to go to prison and, trust me on this, there will be somebody there that will make his life a living hell.”
She was counting on that.
When Trish delivered their food, it looked delicious. She picked up her burger, squished the bun so that it would fit in her mouth and took a bite. A bit of sauce leaked out and she licked her lips. And then swallowed too quickly when she realized that he was watching her.
“Ouch,” she said, pressing on her esophagus.
“Careful,” he said.
She always used to be. And look where it had gotten her. “So what did you do to earn your reputation as the town bad boy?” she asked.
He scratched his head. “A little of this, a lot of that.”
“And you became a cop to redeem yourself?”
“I became a cop because the St. Louis Police Department was hiring and I needed a way to support myself and my younger brother. Fortunately for me, it was a good fit. Maybe because of my troublemaking youth.”
She took another bite, smaller this time. “There wasn’t much you hadn’t seen or done.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Trust me on this. I might have made some people talk here in Ravesville but what I was doing was kid’s play in comparison to what I saw my first six months on the street.”
“So you were just naughty enough to cause your parents some angst.”
His very nice amber eyes clouded over. “Something like that.”
They ate in silence. Trish swung by and picked up their dirty plates and left a check. Chase pulled some bills out of his pocket and tossed them on the table.
“Ready?” he asked.
* * *
WHEN HIS WIFE nodded that she was good to go, he almost said, Hell no, let’s have some cheesecake. Anything to delay a trip back down memory lane.
But he wasn’t going to make it any better by putting it off. He led her back to the car and drove a mile and half farther on the highway before taking a right on Mahogany Lane. The road turned to gravel and he slowed his SUV. He passed the Fitzlers’ house and noticed that there were lights on. Was it possible that Old Man Fitzler and his wife still lived there? Or maybe they’d moved on to one of those assisted-living centers and one of their daughters had moved in.
Damn, he’d envied those girls.
He didn’t think Mr. Fitzler had ever even raised his voice, let alone his hand.
He slowed the vehicle even more and turned into the driveway. His lights picked up the details of the old house.
Over a hundred years old, the two-story white farmhouse looked sturdy enough. It had been the traditional four rooms down, kitchen, dining room, living room and bath, and four rooms up, three bedrooms and a bath, until sometime in the mid-1960s. The owner had pushed out the back wall and added to the downstairs, putting in another large bedroom and private bathroom. They’d done a nice job with the construction and the addition seemed to fit nicely with the rest of the house.
When Chase’s parents had looked at the home some ten years later, it had seemed perfect to the young couple who were anxious to have a family. Chase always figured that once three boys had come along, his mother had been eternally grateful that she could ship them upstairs.
There were a few changes, Chase noted dispassionately. Brick had added green shutters at some point in the past eight years. They hadn’t been there when Chase and his brothers had come home for his mother’s funeral.
The wide wraparound porch looked the same, down to the hammock that was strung in the corner. He’d slept in that more than a few times. Nights when it was warm and he chose to. Nights when it was cold and Brick had banished him from the house. Those were the nights when he’d wanted to keep walking, to wake up somewhere else, but he would not do that to his mother, to Cal.
The bushes near the foundation were wildly overgrown and as he pulled closer, he could see that the paint on the house was peeling and the front steps looked as if they were rotting away in places.
He chanced a glance at Raney.