Mr. Good Enough, page 5
His gaze darted into the house. “Need help?”
“Can you fix my cable?”
“No, but I can paint.” He winced as if he’d rather be chased naked through a cornfield by a pack of coyotes than get high off paint fumes. “Those are painting clothes, aren’t they?”
“Thanks, but I do my own painting.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets and stared past her. “Guess you’ve changed her too.”
The house. He didn’t want to help. He wanted to see Linda’s old house. Stupid male pride. “If you wanted a tour, you could’ve just asked.”
He hitched a shoulder. “Your brothers might’ve been in there.”
“The invincible Swish Sawyer is afraid of my brothers?”
“You hit harder. They might too.” He smiled at her. Something melted inside of her even as she tensed. The guy could be charming, and he knew it.
Too bad for him, she’d had some time to develop some internal charm-repellant. At least, she should’ve by now.
But he’d been denied everything else today. It would’ve been cruel not to let him in. “Well, you’re in luck. They’re not here. Go get your keys and meet me at the front door. I need to pick up a couple things first.”
He rolled his eyes as if he’d seen enough women’s underwear to not care about hers too, but that wasn’t her concern. She had to make sure her dating profile wasn’t showing.
Chapter Four
I want him only for his (fill in the blank), so it’s okay if he wants me only for my (fill in the blank).
Car; body
Good gene pool; dog
Connections; brain
Body; house
CONSIDERING TRENT’S last few days, he appreciated Maddie being so nice tonight. It was downright decent of her to let him in the house.
Or so he thought until he glimpsed what she’d done to Linda’s house.
He stepped across the threshold, made a sweeping appraisal of the room, and went numb. It was worse than anything he’d ever seen, and in his line of work, he’d seen some ugly situations.
The carpet was gone. No big deal. He would’ve pulled it out and capitalized on the wood floor too. But the walls. The walls were hideous.
He’d sat in this room and tortured Andi’s Barbies with G.I. Joes and Matchbox cars. Now, with the near-black base coat and the haphazard neon rainbow paint splatters streaking across the room, stripper poles and cages would’ve fit more appropriately than Barbie houses and He-Man fortresses. Even the ceiling was black. The only patches of plain color in the entire room were four framed purple sheets hanging at odd angles and elevations throughout the room.
The drapes were strips of tattered, multicolored rags twisted and tied together. When Andi first got sick, before she had to stay at the hospital, they’d sat at the window and she’d made up stories about the people driving by. Now, the whole room made him sick.
In the corner where Linda had put up the Christmas tree, Maddie had a pile of computer junk. Her entertainment system was made out of concrete blocks and rough oak boards and topped with an ancient 20-inch TV. Her yellow and orange flower-print couch and lopsided green recliner must’ve come out of the Salvation Army’s trash bins.
This had been the closest thing he’d known to a real home, and she’d turned it into a redneck goth museum.
He unclenched his frozen muscles, picked up his leaden feet, and pushed past her into the kitchen. He had to know how bad the rest of it was. He couldn’t figure out how to fix it until he knew the extent of the damage.
The kitchen was the polar opposite of the living room, and it was horrific. The original checkered linoleum floor peeled up in the corners. The rest of the room looked like a drunken leprechaun had swallowed a rainbow and puked it up before a herd of purple cows invaded. There were purple ceramic cow salt and pepper shakers and a matching creamer and sugar bowl on the red counter. Purple towels with purple cows hung from the red oven handle. Purple cows with purple angel wings dangled from the new light fixture.
He was almost afraid he’d step in a purple cow patty.
Watching his step, he retreated to Linda’s old room. It was empty, with, thank God, plain white walls. The cans of paint and the drop cloth didn’t give him much hope that they’d stay that way. But the floor. The floor about killed him. He had to swallow twice before he could force the words out. “You painted the wood floor. Painted.”
“Mm-hmm.”
It looked like grass. Damn floor had been painted to look like grass. She’d painted a wood floor. “Your cows gonna graze in here?”
“If they get hungry enough.”
If she’d done it anywhere but the wood floor, he would’ve been impressed. He almost wanted to kick his shoes off and see if it felt as much like grass as it looked. But it was the wood floor. He spun toward the door behind him. What had she done to Andi’s room?
It wasn’t the peachy flowery stuff Andi always liked. Instead, it was sterile and boring, obviously a home office now. Cleaner than her father’s office, the room had a modular, glass-topped desk lining two of the three walls. Two desktop computers and one laptop sat atop the desk. Shelves lined the walls, all with office supplies arranged neatly in baskets and boxes intermixed with reference books that stood on end. Wavy vertical strips of silver, pale yellow, and light purple adorned the walls. Were it not for the twin mattress with purple sheets and a Rainbow Brite comforter on the floor, he wouldn’t have believed Maddie’d done this room too.
Andi still would’ve hated it. It was too grown-up. Besides, she’d always liked the My Little Pony stuff better.
He didn’t want to know what Maddie had done to the guest bedroom, the room he’d spent so many nights in, but he’d already seen most of the massacre. He had to finish it. So he dragged himself down the hallway, following the Picasso-esque gremlins that frolicked on the walls.
The last bedroom overflowed with the tools of her destruction. Dozens of gallons of used paint, boxes of brushes, bags and bags of drop cloths and spare rollers and other crap. The walls had been painted with everything from 90s cartoon characters to pieces of a mountain landscape to a fat, naked woman reclining under a grapevine, all mishmashed together with no rhyme or reason.
He swallowed again. “Y—you destroyed Linda’s house.”
“My house.”
It wasn’t her house. It was the happiest moments of his childhood. Andi was gone. His parents were gone. The Linda he’d loved as a child must’ve been gone, because that Linda wouldn’t have refused to see him. And now Maddie had destroyed the only good thing he had left in this town by dropping a flaming bag of cow patties on it and lighting it up, dragging the joy out puff by stinking puff. He gulped down the fire rising in his chest. “I’ll buy it. How much do you want?”
“For my house?”
“This house. I want to buy this house. How much?”
Her nose twitched. “Not for sale.”
“I’ll give you twenty percent more than it’s worth.” He had to have it. He had to fix it and give it to Linda, and she’d see that they could start over. Embrace what they had left.
Maddie snorted. “Right.”
“In cash.” He’d sell his half of the restoration business to his partner. He’d started from scratch before, he’d do it again.
Her smirk faded. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious. And I think I know dead.”
“It’s not for sale.”
“Everything’s for sale. What do you want for it?”
“Trent.” She must’ve learned that quiet, rational voice thing from her father. “You’ve had a long day. How about you take a breather and sleep on this? You’ve got a lot to process, and buying a house won’t make that any easier.”
“It sure as hell will.”
She leaned against the wall and studied him. “You don’t want this house.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
Despite the dark circles lurking under her eyes, there was something entirely too perceptive about her expression. “Do you?”
“I want this house.”
“Well, you can’t have it.”
That sounded suspiciously like a challenge. “You sure about that?”
With a heavy sigh, she brushed past him into the room. Her arm swung into his, and the warmth from the brief contact spread up his arm and over his chest. He hadn’t been warm in days. If Maddie could do that to him, it must’ve had something to do with the paint fumes.
“Linda left some stuff when she moved,” she said. “She told me to keep it. It’s all in the closet here if you want it.”
He didn’t want stuff. He wanted to go back in time, to save Andi, for Linda to want to see him, for things to be right. “You paint that too?”
“I would’ve if I’d known you were coming back.” She flashed an unrepentant grin up at him, and he found himself getting more pissed that he was thinking how damn cute it was, because Maddie was not cute. She was a pain in the ass. Maybe he should call it quits for the day.
She squatted in front of the sliding closet door. Her pants dipped low on her back, exposing smooth, firm skin. He’d always thought she was chubby, but as she leaned farther into the closet, her shirt inched higher. More firm flesh circled her abdomen. Not chubby. Curvy under baggy clothes.
He snapped his gaze to the window. He didn’t care what she looked like or how much she weighed. He cared that she got out of Linda’s house. He cared that she quit messing with him, acting like his friend one minute and being completely unreasonable the next. She couldn’t even see what a good deal he’d offered.
She shoved a box at him. “It’s not much, but it probably means more to you than it does to me.”
On top, he caught a glimpse of Linda’s Corningware mixing bowls adorned with butterflies. Trent could almost taste the creamed corn casserole Linda used to bake in the small one. She’d mixed cookies in the large one. He’d been banished from helping after he snuck half a broken green army man into a dough ball when he was about seven. Plastic had melted in the oven and smoked up the house so bad it still smelled three days later.
“Thanks.” He practically choked on the word. He wanted more than a stupid set of bowls. He wanted the whole damn house. But she’d handed him a lifeline, and he wasn’t a selfish enough bastard to ignore a kind gesture.
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away. “You’re welcome. Unless you want to see the bathrooms and the basement too, I have work to do.”
He caught sight of dark blue leather beneath the bowls, and something clenched inside his chest. He’d worry about the house tomorrow. Tonight, he had a few more demons to battle. “Sure. I know my way out.”
She eyed him suspiciously, but she kept quiet. He ducked his head on the way out, not all that eager to see the carnage again. When he reached the front door, Maddie stopped him.
She slipped a piece of paper into the box. “In case you want it,” she said. “’Night.”
It was an address. No name, just a street and number. Hope bloomed inside him. Linda might not want to see him, but now he’d see for himself that she was comfortable.
It wasn’t much, but it was all he had tonight.
Tomorrow, though, he would get this house. No matter what it took.
THE HEADLIGHTS of the truck cut through the darkness, illuminating the asphalt in front of Trent and not much else. The dashboard lights provided an unnatural relief from the inky void outside. He’d forgotten how dark the country was at night. The few times he and Ella had gone camping, they hadn’t been far enough from Atlanta to avoid the semi-lit night sky. Here on the outskirts of Wendell Springs the blackness overwhelmed the countryside.
As a kid, he’d liked the dark. He could hide in it, become invisible, pretend he didn’t exist. It’d been a good skill to have in his father’s house. As an adult, with both his parents gone, the darkness was emptier than it should’ve been. No matter what anybody said, this town wasn’t the same one he grew up in. That had him as off-balance as anything.
He slowed the truck and turned onto Fairview Street, driving carefully so as not to upset the box on the passenger seat beside him. He didn’t remember many houses being this far out when he lived here, but Maddie’s handwriting was clear, and Wendell Springs was too small to have to use the same street name twice. He pointed the truck toward a dim light shining up the street and breathed over the rapid firing of his heart.
He missed Linda. Ella’s family had treated him like one of their own, but they’d never known his story. They didn’t know about his parents, about Andi. Linda did. She knew more about him than anyone else on the planet, even his parents. She’d always taken better care of him than they had. He wanted to return the favor. Wanted to make it better, to make her better. He’d do everything he could to fix her, no matter what the people in this town thought.
He’d make up for not coming back sooner. For not being there when she needed him. He didn’t have any good excuses and wouldn’t try to make them. He just wanted to fix it.
The light glowed brighter as he approached, illuminating the surrounding area. He pulled the truck to a stop at the iron arch entrance of a cemetery.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered into the darkness. How had she known the address to the cemetery? Was this her idea of a funny joke? He thought she got it. Thought he’d seen a glimmer of understanding that his family wasn’t the picture of perfection that hers was. And now she thought she had the right to send him to see his mother’s grave?
Who cared that his mother was gone? She’d never helped him with his homework because Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune was on. Her idea of cooking dinner was to toss a frozen TV dinner at him. He learned to read so he could figure out how to cook his own food in the microwave. When his old man came home in one of his moods, she drifted deeper into the couch, into her smoky haze, and let Trent fend for himself even before he was old enough to understand his father was the one with the problem, not him. She’d never gone to his basketball games. How was he was supposed to mourn that?
But little memories prickled at his conscience. A Band-Aid on a scraped knee. A new G.I. Joe on his dresser after school. An occasional smile. Yellow-toothed and thin-lipped, but still a smile.
He blinked and shook his head. That couldn’t have been his mother. Linda was the one who’d signed his report cards. The one who took him shopping for new clothes when he hit a growth spurt. Linda’d hugged and kissed him like a mother was supposed to. She’d listened to him. Treated him like a human being. She made him feel as though he was worth something.
All his mother ever treated him like was a nuisance.
He threw the truck into reverse, backed up, and turned around. Screw her. His mother could rot in her grave for all eternity. She’d died to him the day she refused to stand up to his father and let him help Andi, and visiting a damn cemetery wouldn’t change that.
If this was a reward for his apology, he hoped Maddie had something better than her damn paintbrushes to fight with. Because he wanted Linda’s house, and he’d decimate every single fucking leprechaun and purple cow in it before this was over. No matter how many cow patties he had to step in along the way.
Chapter Five
Trust is an important foundation in a relationship. If your guy won’t look you in the eye, how do you handle it?
Maybe it’s just hay fever.
He darn well knows better than to lie to me.
All will be revealed when the time is right.
If I can’t trust him, he’s toast.
MADDIE’S PHONE jolted her out of an unfortunately familiar dream Saturday morning. She blinked at the white walls, then the Rainbow Brite cupcake still sitting on top of the grass-covered floor.
She hadn’t dreamed about Blake and his bimbos chasing her through her old jungle bedroom in at least a month.
But she hadn’t tried sleeping in her bedroom in at least a month either.
She fumbled for her phone and checked the readout, groaning at Ruby’s number. She rolled onto her back, stretched her feet toward the door, and answered it. “’Lo?”
“Hmph,” Ruby said. “You fall asleep painting again?”
“Magical birthday paint makes everything better,” Maddie said through a yawn.
“Bad dreams again?”
“What can I help you with today, Ruby?”
“Got some business to talk about. You free?”
She was stiff and sore from being up too long and falling asleep on the wood floor, and, now that she noticed it, a little irritated that her rays of sunshine paint had probably dried out. But if Ruby had work for her, she was free. “I can be there in fifteen.”
Maddie disconnected with Ruby, then sat up. Her neck protested the movement. But at least the nightmare had silenced yesterday’s unfortunate soundtrack in her head.
She would’ve preferred silence and amnesia. Instead, she was getting cranky all over again at the reminder of having her ex-boyfriend offer up her old jungle-themed bedroom for a photo shoot with a couple of bosom bunnies who molested him on her bed while a photographer from some supermarket rag captured it all to accompany their article on up-and-coming musicians. Maddie had been at Sunday dinner with her family. He hadn’t even called to tell her he was in town. She’d found out about it with the rest of the world when the issue was published a month later.
She’d thought redecorating would cleanse the room, but four months later, she still hadn’t found her bedroom mojo.
She clamped the lid on the ray of sunshine paint, grabbed it and the blades of grass she’d appropriately used to touch up the floor, and carried them both to her art room, trying to convince herself she didn’t care how Trent had felt about his tour last night. She liked her house, and she liked her paint. Last Christmas, her family held a contest to see who could give her the most obscure color she didn’t already own. Parker won with burnt eggplant.
She’d considered using it in her bedroom after she’d seen the magazine with Blake in it, but she’d found a better use for it. Now if she could get back to using her bedroom for what it was supposed to be used for, she might have reason to turn her art room into a nursery.
“Can you fix my cable?”
“No, but I can paint.” He winced as if he’d rather be chased naked through a cornfield by a pack of coyotes than get high off paint fumes. “Those are painting clothes, aren’t they?”
“Thanks, but I do my own painting.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets and stared past her. “Guess you’ve changed her too.”
The house. He didn’t want to help. He wanted to see Linda’s old house. Stupid male pride. “If you wanted a tour, you could’ve just asked.”
He hitched a shoulder. “Your brothers might’ve been in there.”
“The invincible Swish Sawyer is afraid of my brothers?”
“You hit harder. They might too.” He smiled at her. Something melted inside of her even as she tensed. The guy could be charming, and he knew it.
Too bad for him, she’d had some time to develop some internal charm-repellant. At least, she should’ve by now.
But he’d been denied everything else today. It would’ve been cruel not to let him in. “Well, you’re in luck. They’re not here. Go get your keys and meet me at the front door. I need to pick up a couple things first.”
He rolled his eyes as if he’d seen enough women’s underwear to not care about hers too, but that wasn’t her concern. She had to make sure her dating profile wasn’t showing.
Chapter Four
I want him only for his (fill in the blank), so it’s okay if he wants me only for my (fill in the blank).
Car; body
Good gene pool; dog
Connections; brain
Body; house
CONSIDERING TRENT’S last few days, he appreciated Maddie being so nice tonight. It was downright decent of her to let him in the house.
Or so he thought until he glimpsed what she’d done to Linda’s house.
He stepped across the threshold, made a sweeping appraisal of the room, and went numb. It was worse than anything he’d ever seen, and in his line of work, he’d seen some ugly situations.
The carpet was gone. No big deal. He would’ve pulled it out and capitalized on the wood floor too. But the walls. The walls were hideous.
He’d sat in this room and tortured Andi’s Barbies with G.I. Joes and Matchbox cars. Now, with the near-black base coat and the haphazard neon rainbow paint splatters streaking across the room, stripper poles and cages would’ve fit more appropriately than Barbie houses and He-Man fortresses. Even the ceiling was black. The only patches of plain color in the entire room were four framed purple sheets hanging at odd angles and elevations throughout the room.
The drapes were strips of tattered, multicolored rags twisted and tied together. When Andi first got sick, before she had to stay at the hospital, they’d sat at the window and she’d made up stories about the people driving by. Now, the whole room made him sick.
In the corner where Linda had put up the Christmas tree, Maddie had a pile of computer junk. Her entertainment system was made out of concrete blocks and rough oak boards and topped with an ancient 20-inch TV. Her yellow and orange flower-print couch and lopsided green recliner must’ve come out of the Salvation Army’s trash bins.
This had been the closest thing he’d known to a real home, and she’d turned it into a redneck goth museum.
He unclenched his frozen muscles, picked up his leaden feet, and pushed past her into the kitchen. He had to know how bad the rest of it was. He couldn’t figure out how to fix it until he knew the extent of the damage.
The kitchen was the polar opposite of the living room, and it was horrific. The original checkered linoleum floor peeled up in the corners. The rest of the room looked like a drunken leprechaun had swallowed a rainbow and puked it up before a herd of purple cows invaded. There were purple ceramic cow salt and pepper shakers and a matching creamer and sugar bowl on the red counter. Purple towels with purple cows hung from the red oven handle. Purple cows with purple angel wings dangled from the new light fixture.
He was almost afraid he’d step in a purple cow patty.
Watching his step, he retreated to Linda’s old room. It was empty, with, thank God, plain white walls. The cans of paint and the drop cloth didn’t give him much hope that they’d stay that way. But the floor. The floor about killed him. He had to swallow twice before he could force the words out. “You painted the wood floor. Painted.”
“Mm-hmm.”
It looked like grass. Damn floor had been painted to look like grass. She’d painted a wood floor. “Your cows gonna graze in here?”
“If they get hungry enough.”
If she’d done it anywhere but the wood floor, he would’ve been impressed. He almost wanted to kick his shoes off and see if it felt as much like grass as it looked. But it was the wood floor. He spun toward the door behind him. What had she done to Andi’s room?
It wasn’t the peachy flowery stuff Andi always liked. Instead, it was sterile and boring, obviously a home office now. Cleaner than her father’s office, the room had a modular, glass-topped desk lining two of the three walls. Two desktop computers and one laptop sat atop the desk. Shelves lined the walls, all with office supplies arranged neatly in baskets and boxes intermixed with reference books that stood on end. Wavy vertical strips of silver, pale yellow, and light purple adorned the walls. Were it not for the twin mattress with purple sheets and a Rainbow Brite comforter on the floor, he wouldn’t have believed Maddie’d done this room too.
Andi still would’ve hated it. It was too grown-up. Besides, she’d always liked the My Little Pony stuff better.
He didn’t want to know what Maddie had done to the guest bedroom, the room he’d spent so many nights in, but he’d already seen most of the massacre. He had to finish it. So he dragged himself down the hallway, following the Picasso-esque gremlins that frolicked on the walls.
The last bedroom overflowed with the tools of her destruction. Dozens of gallons of used paint, boxes of brushes, bags and bags of drop cloths and spare rollers and other crap. The walls had been painted with everything from 90s cartoon characters to pieces of a mountain landscape to a fat, naked woman reclining under a grapevine, all mishmashed together with no rhyme or reason.
He swallowed again. “Y—you destroyed Linda’s house.”
“My house.”
It wasn’t her house. It was the happiest moments of his childhood. Andi was gone. His parents were gone. The Linda he’d loved as a child must’ve been gone, because that Linda wouldn’t have refused to see him. And now Maddie had destroyed the only good thing he had left in this town by dropping a flaming bag of cow patties on it and lighting it up, dragging the joy out puff by stinking puff. He gulped down the fire rising in his chest. “I’ll buy it. How much do you want?”
“For my house?”
“This house. I want to buy this house. How much?”
Her nose twitched. “Not for sale.”
“I’ll give you twenty percent more than it’s worth.” He had to have it. He had to fix it and give it to Linda, and she’d see that they could start over. Embrace what they had left.
Maddie snorted. “Right.”
“In cash.” He’d sell his half of the restoration business to his partner. He’d started from scratch before, he’d do it again.
Her smirk faded. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious. And I think I know dead.”
“It’s not for sale.”
“Everything’s for sale. What do you want for it?”
“Trent.” She must’ve learned that quiet, rational voice thing from her father. “You’ve had a long day. How about you take a breather and sleep on this? You’ve got a lot to process, and buying a house won’t make that any easier.”
“It sure as hell will.”
She leaned against the wall and studied him. “You don’t want this house.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
Despite the dark circles lurking under her eyes, there was something entirely too perceptive about her expression. “Do you?”
“I want this house.”
“Well, you can’t have it.”
That sounded suspiciously like a challenge. “You sure about that?”
With a heavy sigh, she brushed past him into the room. Her arm swung into his, and the warmth from the brief contact spread up his arm and over his chest. He hadn’t been warm in days. If Maddie could do that to him, it must’ve had something to do with the paint fumes.
“Linda left some stuff when she moved,” she said. “She told me to keep it. It’s all in the closet here if you want it.”
He didn’t want stuff. He wanted to go back in time, to save Andi, for Linda to want to see him, for things to be right. “You paint that too?”
“I would’ve if I’d known you were coming back.” She flashed an unrepentant grin up at him, and he found himself getting more pissed that he was thinking how damn cute it was, because Maddie was not cute. She was a pain in the ass. Maybe he should call it quits for the day.
She squatted in front of the sliding closet door. Her pants dipped low on her back, exposing smooth, firm skin. He’d always thought she was chubby, but as she leaned farther into the closet, her shirt inched higher. More firm flesh circled her abdomen. Not chubby. Curvy under baggy clothes.
He snapped his gaze to the window. He didn’t care what she looked like or how much she weighed. He cared that she got out of Linda’s house. He cared that she quit messing with him, acting like his friend one minute and being completely unreasonable the next. She couldn’t even see what a good deal he’d offered.
She shoved a box at him. “It’s not much, but it probably means more to you than it does to me.”
On top, he caught a glimpse of Linda’s Corningware mixing bowls adorned with butterflies. Trent could almost taste the creamed corn casserole Linda used to bake in the small one. She’d mixed cookies in the large one. He’d been banished from helping after he snuck half a broken green army man into a dough ball when he was about seven. Plastic had melted in the oven and smoked up the house so bad it still smelled three days later.
“Thanks.” He practically choked on the word. He wanted more than a stupid set of bowls. He wanted the whole damn house. But she’d handed him a lifeline, and he wasn’t a selfish enough bastard to ignore a kind gesture.
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away. “You’re welcome. Unless you want to see the bathrooms and the basement too, I have work to do.”
He caught sight of dark blue leather beneath the bowls, and something clenched inside his chest. He’d worry about the house tomorrow. Tonight, he had a few more demons to battle. “Sure. I know my way out.”
She eyed him suspiciously, but she kept quiet. He ducked his head on the way out, not all that eager to see the carnage again. When he reached the front door, Maddie stopped him.
She slipped a piece of paper into the box. “In case you want it,” she said. “’Night.”
It was an address. No name, just a street and number. Hope bloomed inside him. Linda might not want to see him, but now he’d see for himself that she was comfortable.
It wasn’t much, but it was all he had tonight.
Tomorrow, though, he would get this house. No matter what it took.
THE HEADLIGHTS of the truck cut through the darkness, illuminating the asphalt in front of Trent and not much else. The dashboard lights provided an unnatural relief from the inky void outside. He’d forgotten how dark the country was at night. The few times he and Ella had gone camping, they hadn’t been far enough from Atlanta to avoid the semi-lit night sky. Here on the outskirts of Wendell Springs the blackness overwhelmed the countryside.
As a kid, he’d liked the dark. He could hide in it, become invisible, pretend he didn’t exist. It’d been a good skill to have in his father’s house. As an adult, with both his parents gone, the darkness was emptier than it should’ve been. No matter what anybody said, this town wasn’t the same one he grew up in. That had him as off-balance as anything.
He slowed the truck and turned onto Fairview Street, driving carefully so as not to upset the box on the passenger seat beside him. He didn’t remember many houses being this far out when he lived here, but Maddie’s handwriting was clear, and Wendell Springs was too small to have to use the same street name twice. He pointed the truck toward a dim light shining up the street and breathed over the rapid firing of his heart.
He missed Linda. Ella’s family had treated him like one of their own, but they’d never known his story. They didn’t know about his parents, about Andi. Linda did. She knew more about him than anyone else on the planet, even his parents. She’d always taken better care of him than they had. He wanted to return the favor. Wanted to make it better, to make her better. He’d do everything he could to fix her, no matter what the people in this town thought.
He’d make up for not coming back sooner. For not being there when she needed him. He didn’t have any good excuses and wouldn’t try to make them. He just wanted to fix it.
The light glowed brighter as he approached, illuminating the surrounding area. He pulled the truck to a stop at the iron arch entrance of a cemetery.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered into the darkness. How had she known the address to the cemetery? Was this her idea of a funny joke? He thought she got it. Thought he’d seen a glimmer of understanding that his family wasn’t the picture of perfection that hers was. And now she thought she had the right to send him to see his mother’s grave?
Who cared that his mother was gone? She’d never helped him with his homework because Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune was on. Her idea of cooking dinner was to toss a frozen TV dinner at him. He learned to read so he could figure out how to cook his own food in the microwave. When his old man came home in one of his moods, she drifted deeper into the couch, into her smoky haze, and let Trent fend for himself even before he was old enough to understand his father was the one with the problem, not him. She’d never gone to his basketball games. How was he was supposed to mourn that?
But little memories prickled at his conscience. A Band-Aid on a scraped knee. A new G.I. Joe on his dresser after school. An occasional smile. Yellow-toothed and thin-lipped, but still a smile.
He blinked and shook his head. That couldn’t have been his mother. Linda was the one who’d signed his report cards. The one who took him shopping for new clothes when he hit a growth spurt. Linda’d hugged and kissed him like a mother was supposed to. She’d listened to him. Treated him like a human being. She made him feel as though he was worth something.
All his mother ever treated him like was a nuisance.
He threw the truck into reverse, backed up, and turned around. Screw her. His mother could rot in her grave for all eternity. She’d died to him the day she refused to stand up to his father and let him help Andi, and visiting a damn cemetery wouldn’t change that.
If this was a reward for his apology, he hoped Maddie had something better than her damn paintbrushes to fight with. Because he wanted Linda’s house, and he’d decimate every single fucking leprechaun and purple cow in it before this was over. No matter how many cow patties he had to step in along the way.
Chapter Five
Trust is an important foundation in a relationship. If your guy won’t look you in the eye, how do you handle it?
Maybe it’s just hay fever.
He darn well knows better than to lie to me.
All will be revealed when the time is right.
If I can’t trust him, he’s toast.
MADDIE’S PHONE jolted her out of an unfortunately familiar dream Saturday morning. She blinked at the white walls, then the Rainbow Brite cupcake still sitting on top of the grass-covered floor.
She hadn’t dreamed about Blake and his bimbos chasing her through her old jungle bedroom in at least a month.
But she hadn’t tried sleeping in her bedroom in at least a month either.
She fumbled for her phone and checked the readout, groaning at Ruby’s number. She rolled onto her back, stretched her feet toward the door, and answered it. “’Lo?”
“Hmph,” Ruby said. “You fall asleep painting again?”
“Magical birthday paint makes everything better,” Maddie said through a yawn.
“Bad dreams again?”
“What can I help you with today, Ruby?”
“Got some business to talk about. You free?”
She was stiff and sore from being up too long and falling asleep on the wood floor, and, now that she noticed it, a little irritated that her rays of sunshine paint had probably dried out. But if Ruby had work for her, she was free. “I can be there in fifteen.”
Maddie disconnected with Ruby, then sat up. Her neck protested the movement. But at least the nightmare had silenced yesterday’s unfortunate soundtrack in her head.
She would’ve preferred silence and amnesia. Instead, she was getting cranky all over again at the reminder of having her ex-boyfriend offer up her old jungle-themed bedroom for a photo shoot with a couple of bosom bunnies who molested him on her bed while a photographer from some supermarket rag captured it all to accompany their article on up-and-coming musicians. Maddie had been at Sunday dinner with her family. He hadn’t even called to tell her he was in town. She’d found out about it with the rest of the world when the issue was published a month later.
She’d thought redecorating would cleanse the room, but four months later, she still hadn’t found her bedroom mojo.
She clamped the lid on the ray of sunshine paint, grabbed it and the blades of grass she’d appropriately used to touch up the floor, and carried them both to her art room, trying to convince herself she didn’t care how Trent had felt about his tour last night. She liked her house, and she liked her paint. Last Christmas, her family held a contest to see who could give her the most obscure color she didn’t already own. Parker won with burnt eggplant.
She’d considered using it in her bedroom after she’d seen the magazine with Blake in it, but she’d found a better use for it. Now if she could get back to using her bedroom for what it was supposed to be used for, she might have reason to turn her art room into a nursery.
