The House On The Creek Read online

  The shoes had definitely seen better days, and the shorts made her mouth go dry.

  He turned when he heard the car, and stopped the mower. Leaning on the handle, he watched her as she climbed out onto the pavement. Abby couldn’t read his expression.

  “Looks like hot work,” she said in greeting. Sweat slicked his brow and collarbone. “Guess I supposed you’d hire someone to do the yard.”

  He shrugged. “I like my privacy. And every man should mow his own lawn.”

  “Yeah, well. You’ve got one front and back, and they’re both huge. Take you all day. I should know.”

  She crossed her arms, tucking fists under her elbows to squash a nervous urge for knuckle cracking. “Where’d you get the mower? It looks like a relic.”

  “Hardware store in town.” Everett regarded her with veiled impatience. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Abby.”

  “I came looking for you.” She gritted her teeth at his raised brow. “Obviously. Got a minute?”

  “Let me finish up here.” When she started to protest he tilted his chin toward the house. “Go inside. Get something cold to drink. I’ll be up in a moment.”

  She knew he wanted to annoy her. She nodded anyway and started up the drive.

  Her tulips were doing well. And the climbing rose she’d planted alongside the chimney was already starting to lean against the bricks.

  “Abby?”

  Distracted by the heartening maroon shoots on her rose, she glanced back. “What?”

  “Take off your boots before you go inside. Leave them on the porch. Looks like you’ve been tromping through a pig sty.”

  He managed to prick at her even when he wasn’t trying. “They’re my work boots!”

  But he’d already turned his back and started the mower.

  She found she couldn’t look away.

  He’d grown muscle in the last twelve years. Of course he would, Abby knew that. He’d gone from boy to man. But the beauty in that change surprised her.

  Lean cords of sinew and tendon moved whip tight along his spine as he pushed the mower over grass. More muscle bunched along his shoulders and knotted in his calves. Perspiration glistened at the small of his back and stained the waistband of his shorts.

  Something tightened deep in her belly, and Abby had to swallow hard to keep from licking her lips.

  “Stupid,” she warned herself. “Stupid, stupid.” But she couldn’t quite turn away.

  He was just as dark skinned as she remembered, and the blond hair was still a shock. The coloring was his mother’s, Abby supposed as she watched him strain against the mower. She’d never met the first Mrs. Anderson, but Edward had been pale and redheaded, the result of a tenuous Irish heritage.

  Everett turned the mower and started to lap back. Abby shook herself hard, and clunked up the front steps. She shed her boots on the doormat, and rolled up the soiled cuffs of her jeans. Then she pushed open the front door and stepped into the house.

  She had almost managed to forget how much she loved the old building.

  Sunlight spilled across the walls, and the curving banisters still smelled of lemon polish. She’d labored hard to keep many of the old leaded glass windows and all of the period light fixtures.

  The house had been a pain to work on, but the result made her heart sing.

  Swallowing a nostalgic sigh, Abby walked slowly down the front hall. She took a side door through the butler’s pantry and into the kitchen.

  She didn’t see any sign of habitation. She guessed Everett must have dumped his belongings in the upstairs master. Even the kitchen was spotless, which surprised Abby. She had never known a man who picked up after himself so thoroughly. Especially a man living alone.

  She wiped a finger along the counter and found it clean. Maybe he’d been eating it out every night, or ordering pizza in. Abby felt a pang of regret. She wanted the beautiful kitchen she’d so lovingly restored used daily and with passion.

  When she opened the fridge, searching for a cold drink, she saw evidence of a man’s stomach. Cold cuts, potato salad, and a mangled chunk of ham waited on an uncovered plate. Her pride was soothed some when she noticed the nearly decimated pie.

  He’d replaced the beer she’d stocked with a brand of his own. And way back behind the ham, on an oval platter she didn’t recognize, she found sliced water melon. The thick pieces made her smile.

  You could take the boy out of Virginia, but Virginia always stuck with the boy. She didn’t know a house in the state without fresh watermelon in the summer.

  Abby grabbed a beer, and dragged the platter of watermelon from the fridge. She carried both with her onto the back porch.

  He’d watered the plants she’d potted, and arranged around the deck, and swept up after the rapidly growing honeysuckle vine she’d urged along the railing, but the white Adirondack chairs appeared unused. Kernels of dried honeysuckle blossom drifted across the streets, nudged by a sluggish breeze.

  Abby brushed the petals free and settled into the nearest chair. The sun had begun to dip at last on the horizon and the air felt cooler, pleasant. The beer chilled her tongue, and she let go a sigh, beginning to relax.

  She helped herself greedily to the watermelon, and studied the lawn at the back of the house. She noted where the plantings were doing well, and where they were not, and she considered the pile of tools and the canvas tarp piled next to the gazebo. In the distance she could still hear the faint rumble of the mower.

  She was almost dozing by the time Everett came through the kitchen and onto the porch. He grunted when he saw the melon, stole a slice, and then dropped into a chair. When Abby offered him her beer, he shook his head.

  He smelled of healthy, over heated male. Sweat sculpted runnels in his cheeks and painted the prow of his nose. His eyes were narrowed against the sunset, and he ate his watermelon with a fastidiousness that was close to obsessive.

  When had that developed? Abby wondered, and caught herself staring.

  Everett turned his head and met her eyes, and what Abby saw there made her look down and away.

  “Thought we were done with each other,” he said at last. He sounded indifferent, but Abby felt the heat of his gaze on the top of her head, and tried not to squirm as a frisson of reaction sped along her spine.

  “You made me mad,” she replied carefully, swallowing a mouthful of beer. “You were rude, and out of line, and...childish. About as rational as my preteen son.”

  “So you’ve come for more?”

  Abby thought she detected reluctant humor in his tone. Surprised, she lifted her head. But he was watching the woods, licking watermelon juice from his thumb.

  “We always used to drive each other nuts. Come to blows. Almost kill each other.” She cocked the neck of her beer bottle in his direction, knowing he watched her even if it appeared his attention was on the trees. “But we always made up, after.”

  “You want to make up?” He still wouldn’t look at her, but Abby saw the corners of his mouth curl upward and relaxed.

  Then she remembered that last summer’s preferred manner of ‘making up’, and felt the blood rush from the tips of her toes to her hairline.

  “I want to explain.”

  Everett leaned forward in his chair. He rested his forearms on his knees, and scowled vaguely in her direction. “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

  Abby squelched a sudden strong urge to stroke the lines from his brow.

  She set the beer bottle at her feet and stood up, taking four steps across the deck to the porch rail. She set her back against the slats, tenderly avoiding honeysuckle vines, and faced him down much the same way she would a confrontational client.

  “Chris is not Edward’s child.”

  His mouth set into mocking lines. “Boy’s a dead ringer, Abby.”

  The man was surely hopeless. “There are other blue eyed men in this town. Twenty, maybe thirty. Maybe several hundred. Most of them are about three million times more desirable than Edward
ever was.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s a dead ringer. I can see the old man looking right back at me.”

  Abby felt her resolve soften, and firmly shoved sympathy aside. “Only because you see his ghost everywhere. You always did, even when he was alive. Can’t you let him go?”

  He rose in a fluid motion and paced to her side, and then abruptly away again.

  Abby watched him retreat to the far corner of the porch. The bunching of his bare shoulders spoke of pain. Abby wanted to go after him, but knew better. He had never enjoyed her pity.

  “You’re saying I’m crazy.” The growing breeze carried his muttered words back to her, and stirred the honeysuckle. Abby inhaled the sweet scent and closed her eyes.

  “All I’m saying is that Chris is not Edward’s son. He’s mine.”

  “What about his daddy?”

  “Lives in Richmond,” Abby said slowly, eyes still shut. “He’s an investment banker.”

  She heard his cough, and smiled at the back of her lids. “Too straight laced and upstanding for me, I know. But he wasn’t that way when I met him. He was wild and funny and great with his hands.”

  The air shifted again. Abby opened her eyes and Everett stood at her side, hands curled around the porch railing. He studied her face across his shoulder.

  “Where did you-” He cleared his throat, and shook his head in annoyance.

  Abby considered the faint pinching of his nostrils, and found that she could answer without the old embarrassment. “In the back seat of Mom’s Mercedes. Three weeks after you ran away. He played varsity football, he was a senior. He had a great body, and he knew how to sweet talk a girl. And he was going places, you could see the fire in his eyes...”

  She shrugged. “I was mad at you, Ev. And lonely. You ran off on me and you didn’t even bother to say goodbye.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” For the first time some of the cynicism around his mouth eased, and she caught a glimpse of pain in the clenching of his fists. “You know it wasn’t.”

  He took a deep breathe and blew it out through his nose. “It was the best thing, you knew that. I thought you knew it.”

  Abby looked out to the Creek so she wouldn’t witness the slump of his shoulders. “Anyway. I made a mistake. I got pregnant. And the football hero grew up and went to college on a scholarship, and became an investment banker, and married an Amazon-tall blonde with long legs, and decided it would be best to forget he’d ever had a son or a past.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat, and dug for humor. “He had very blue eyes, by the way. Chris’s father. And muscles you wouldn’t believe. Everyone knew he could press his own weight.”

  “Must have been an arrogant sucker. And stupid to boot.”

  Surprised, Abby drew her gaze from the trees. Her heart turned over. He was smiling and it was the old self deprecating smile she remembered, promising mischief, half a dare.

  “Stupid?”

  He reached along the railing, and smoothed her ruffled hair with the palm of his hand. His touch and the perfume of the honeysuckle made Abby pleasantly dizzy.

  “For leaving you behind.” His hand lingered on the crown of her head.

  He muddled her brain but Abby retained sense enough to try and explain. “It wasn’t like that, not really.”

  “How was it, then?”

  “It was just sex in the back of Mom’s car. It felt good, and I enjoyed it. I never bothered to wonder what he thought of me, or even what he thought of anything.”

  “Sex in the back of your ma’s car.” Exasperation made his drawl long and dry. “Abigail, you have any idea what I would have given to get you in the back seat of any car?”

  His hand drifted down to cup her chin. Abby couldn’t breathe. She opened her mouth on a snappy reply, but managed only a wordless murmur.

  His eyes were wide and green as the Creek. His breath tickled her ear. He smelled of sweat and summer, and he made Abby remember lust.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” Everett said, calm and matter of fact as you please, but Abby felt the shuddering rise and fall of his rib cage.

  “No.” She lifted her hands in protest but it was too late.

  This time his kiss was long and slow. He took her mouth gently, tasting, exploring. Teasing until she opened to his tongue.

  She felt longing burrow low in her stomach and spread through her veins, blossoming into blatant want. A sharp, sweet stab of need took her behind the knees, and she nearly pitched forward.

  He shored her up, held her beneath the honeysuckle, and let her taste the flavor of his desire. His hands drifted beneath her the thin cotton of her t shirt - stroking, teasing. She felt the flick of his finger across one taunt nipple, and groaned into his mouth.

  “Jesus Christ.” He broke away, breathing quickly, and drew her up against his body until her bare feet nearly left the deck. “Christ, Abby. Come inside.”

  She knew where that would lead. To the big antique bed she’d installed in the master bedroom, to the linen sheets and the soft, stuffed duvet. She saw the intent in his fierce expression and in the trembling of his hands where they gripped her shoulders, and she felt it in the length of his body pressed against her own, in the corded tension that threatened to snap.

  “No,” she said again, although her insides had gone liquid at the thought of what he might do to her in the embrace of that antique bed.

  But he was already pulling her across the porch, his lips burning across her brow, his fingers stroking the curve of her arm. “Abby.”

  She squirmed away and set her feet firmly on the deck.

  “Everett. I said no.” Although her body throbbed in protest.

  She watched as his eyes began to clear. He rubbed a shaking hand across his face, and took a deep breath. He didn’t reach to pull her in again, but his fingers lingered on her arm.

  Abby remembered the clasp of his grip around her wrist three days earlier, and wanted to reassure.

  She couldn’t let herself. Because he had broken her young heart so long ago, and even after so many years she still remembered the grinding pain of that betrayal.

  “I,” she swallowed, hard. “I haven’t finished explaining, yet.”

  “I’ve heard enough, Abby. The rest can wait.”

  She closed her eyes against the hunger on his face, and shook her head quickly. “Everett. You called me your father’s whore.” That particular recollection was less painful than a young girl’s shattered heart, but it still smarted enough to make her flush up again in remembered temper.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “You didn’t. You never said it.”

  “I am. I am sorry, Abby.”

  “Then you believe me?”

  He hesitated a fraction of an instant, and then nodded. “Abby, please. Come inside.”

  It as only a fraction of an instant, but it nearly broke Abby’s heart all over again. Blinking back foolish tears, she made herself look at her watch, and was both relieved and astounded to see how much time had passed.

  “I have to go. Chris hates it when I’m late.”

  “Abby.”

  “Not now. Later. Just, not now.” She wouldn’t let him see how much he could still hurt her.

  “All right, later.” He followed her into the kitchen. “Tonight. Let me take you to dinner.”

  “Chris and I already have plans tonight.”

  “Lunch, then. Tomorrow.”

  “I’m working.”

  He stopped her in the hall, and stepped across hardwood before she could reach the door. Fading sunlight gilded his face and made Abby shiver.

  He was beautiful. Gawky Everett Anderson had grown beautiful and his old wildness, his awkward tenderness, had changed into something she wanted to touch, to taste, to sample.

  He was almost beautiful enough to make her forget the past.

  “Lord,” she breathed, and reached past him to the door.

  “Abby. Dinner tomorrow. You owe me that much.”


  “I owe you?” She whirled on him, ready and willing to shout. Maybe a good, wholesome fight would clear the lust from her belly.

  But he was grinning, so obviously and fleetingly at ease with himself and the world around him that Abby wanted to freeze the moment and keep it forever. “Hell, yes, you owe me. Sex with Abby Ross in the back seat of her ma’s Mercedes should have been mine. You gave it away without a thought to my wounded feelings.”

  “You left me.”

  “And now I’ve come back. And you owe me dinner, at the very least.” His eyebrows quirked upward, self mocking and expectant.