could find another teaching position. She did have good credentials, after all. She’d left her last school on good terms. Had even helped find her replacement. She’d been planning on marrying. Martin had wanted to travel. See the world. He was forty-five and more than financially able to take an early retirement. Giving up her job had been perfectly understandable, considering the circumstances.
There was no earthly reason why she had to return to Lucius. The junior choir would survive without her intervention. Mrs. Cuthwater could keep on substituting for third grade. Laurel could contact that attorney—Mr. Newsome—and put him in charge of disposing of her father’s house and personal effects.
She didn’t have to go back.
The worst memories of her life lived in Lucius.
But so did the very best memories.
When she went up the ramp of plywood that covered the perilous porch steps at her father’s house, she couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t chosen to return willingly.
None of it had anything to do with Shane, of course. Heavenly days, no. Where would be the sense in that?
Whether or not he admitted it, at worst the man thought she had a screw loose. At best he thought she needed coddling to make sure her screws didn’t come loose.
So she unlocked the flimsy lock and went inside, leaving the door open for the fresh summer air. Even after only a half a day of being closed up, the house felt stuffy and close.
In her marathon cleaning sessions before the funeral, she’d managed to rid the house of its suffocating layer of dust, but instead of making the house look better, she’d only managed to make its rundown condition more evident. Yes, the windows were clean and shining again, but the cracks only glistened more. Yes, the cobwebs were gone, but the walls and ceilings now screamed for fresh plaster and paint.
She dropped her suitcase on the couch. She knew she needed to get to work on the place. She’d done enough vacillating. Whether she fixed the house up to remain in it or fixed it up to sell it, either way the work needed to be done.
While in Billings, she’d called Martin and asked him to sell her car. It wasn’t worth much, but it had been reliable enough for her needs. Going all the way to Denver to retrieve it though seemed more effort and expense than it was worth. His son from his first marriage—a high school senior—had been begging for a car for a year. Now he’d have one. She’d hung up feeling better and worse. Better that she’d made a productive decision. Worse because Martin was simply too good. He hadn’t deserved her treatment, and she still felt badly about it.
But not badly enough to go through with a marriage that had put her in the worst panic attack she’d had since she’d been a patient at Fernwood
She’d left Denver. She had no intention of going back. She’d had friends, but no one—other than Martin—who’d been truly close. Aside from him, she’d spent nearly all of her time teaching. Teaching during the regular year. Teaching during the summers.
And dwelling on it all accomplished nothing.
Martin was sending her money for her car, and she’d find something economical in Lucius. On Monday she would open a bank account in town, have her funds transferred from Colorado. She’d have enough to tide her through the summer, hopefully enough to accomplish the most necessary repairs on the house, if she was careful. And then…and then, she would see.
Concrete plans. Achievable goals. Such behavior had gotten her through a lot of years. She could do this.
She would do this.
“Laurel?”
She started, pressing her hand to her heart when it jolted. She turned to the doorway. She hadn’t seen Shane since she’d gone to his office. “What do you want, Sheriff?”
She didn’t need to see his expression clearly through the screen to know he was irritated. The way he yanked open the door and stepped inside told her that quite well enough.
He swept off his dark-brown cowboy hat and tapped it against the side of his leg. “What are you doing here?”
“Where else would I be?”
“You left town this morning.”
“How’d you know that?”
“The grapevine is as active now as it was when you were a girl. More so, I ’spose, considering half the town has cell phones now. You drove out of town and word spread.”
“And I wasn’t allowed back?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
She felt herself flush when she realized she was staring at his legs, strong and long and clad in fading blue jeans that fit extremely well. He looked delectable and she looked…as if she’d just spent a few hours on a bus. “I had to return the rental car in Billings.”
“How’d you get back to Lucius?”
“The bus.” Looking at his dark-blue pullover didn’t help her any, either, because the fabric did little to disguise the massively wide chest beneath.
She settled for focusing on the faint dent in his stubbornly square chin.
He tossed his hat and it landed unerringly on the corner of the coffee table, right next to a footed glass bowl of ugly plastic purple grapes. “For crissakes, Laurel. You could have called someone.”
She sank her teeth into her tongue for a moment. “Is it the bus you object to, or the fact that I didn’t remain out of town?”
“I never wanted you to leave town in the first place.”
“No, leaving was what you liked to do.” Her words seemed to hang in the air, giving her mortification plenty of time to set in good and deep.
If she’d wanted to prove that the brief past they’d shared was completely irrelevant to her now, she was doing a miserable job of it.
“Leaving is what I had to do,” he said finally. “If I’d have stayed, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands to myself again. Not after we’d—”
“Stop.” Heat filled her face. She had only herself to blame for opening up the matter, but she really didn’t want to go into those details. “It was a long time ago. No need to rehash it.”
“Maybe not for you. I always meant to tell you that I was—”
“Please, this isn’t—”
“Sorry.”
“—necessary.”
He frowned at her, looking very much as if he had plenty more to say. After a moment, though, he just raked one long-fingered hand through his hair, ruffling the deep gold into soft spikes. “So you really do mean to stay while you work on this house.”
She could feel her scalp tightening. “Yes.”
“Despite what happened here.”
There was no possibility of pretending she didn’t
