“No. South, maybe. To start.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the house. He would have sworn it was watching him, judging him. Waiting. “I’ll send money when I can.”
Though he felt as though someone were wrenching off one of his limbs, Jared merely shrugged. “We’ll get by.”
“You have to finish law school. Mom wanted that.” Rafe glanced behind, to where the shoving match had progressed to wrestling in the weeds. “They’ll handle themselves okay once they figure out what they want.”
“Shane knows what he wants. The farm.”
“Yeah.” With a thin smile, Rafe took out a cigarette. “Go figure. Sell off some of the land, if you have to, but don’t let them take it. We have to keep what’s ours. Before it’s over, this town’s going to remember the MacKades meant something.”
Rafe’s smile widened. For the first time in weeks, the gnawing ache inside him eased. His brothers were sitting on the ground, covered with dirt and scratches and laughing like loons.
He was going to remember them that way, he promised himself, just that way. The MacKades, holding together on rocky ground no one wanted.
Chapter 1
The bad boy was back. The town of Antietam was buzzing over it, passing fact, rumor and innuendo from one to another, the way the guests at a boardinghouse passed bowls of steaming stew.
It was a rich broth, spiced with scandal, sex and secrets. Rafe MacKade had come back after ten years.
Some said there would be trouble. Bound to be. Trouble hung around Rafe MacKade like a bell around a bull’s neck. Wasn’t it Rafe MacKade who’d decked the high school principal one spring morning and gotten himself expelled? Wasn’t it Rafe MacKade who’d wrecked his dead daddy’s Ford pickup before he was old enough to drive?
And surely it was Rafe MacKade who’d tossed a table—and that fool Manny Johnson—through the plate-glass window of Duff’s Tavern one hot summer night.
Now he’d come back, a-riding into town in some fancy sports car and parking, bold as you please, right in front of the sheriff’s office.
Of course, his brother Devin was sheriff now, had been for five years last November. But there’d been a time—and most remembered—when Rafe MacKade spent more than a night or two in one of the two cells in the back.
Oh, he was as handsome as ever—so the women said. With those devil’s good looks the MacKades were gifted—or cursed—with. If a female had breath in her body, she’d look twice, maybe even sigh over that long, wiry build, that loose-legged stride that seemed to dare anyone to get in the way.
Then there was that thick black hair, those eyes, as green and hard as the ones in that little Chinese statue in the window of the Past Times antique store. They did nothing to soften that tough, sharp-jawed face, with that little scar along the left eye. God knew where he’d gotten that.
But when he smiled, when he curved that beautiful mouth up and that little dimple winked at the corner, a woman’s heart was bound to flutter. That sentiment came directly from Sharilyn Fenniman who’d taken that smile, and his twenty dollars for gas, at the Gas and Go, just outside of town.
Before Rafe had his car in gear again, Sharilyn had been burning up the phone wires to announce the return.
“So Sharilyn called her mama, and Mrs. Metz got right on her horse and told Mrs. Hawbaker down at the general store that Rafe maybe plans to stay.”
As she spoke, Cassandra Dolin topped off Regan’s coffee. The way snow was spitting out of the January sky and clogging streets and sidewalks, there was little business at Ed’s Café that afternoon. Slowly Cassie straightened her back and tried to ignore the ache in her hip where it had struck the floor after Joe knocked her down.
“Why shouldn’t he?” Smiling, Regan Bishop loitered over her mulligan stew and coffee. “He was born here, wasn’t he?”
Even after three years as a resident and shopkeeper of Antietam, Regan still didn’t understand the town’s fascination with comings and goings. It appealed to and amused her, but she didn’t understand it.
“Well, yeah, but he’s been gone so long. Only came back for a day or so at a time, once or twice in ten whole years.” Cassie looked out the window, where the snow fell thin and constant. And wondered where he had gone, what he had seen, what he had done. Oh, she wondered what there was out there.
“You look tired, Cassie,” Regan murmured.
“Hmm? No, just daydreaming. This keeps up, they’re going to call school early. I told the kids to come straight here if they did, but…”
“Then that’s what they’ll do. They’re great kids.”
“They are.” When she smiled, some of the weariness lifted from her eyes.
“Why don’t you get a cup? Have some coffee with me?” A scan of the café showed Regan there was a customer in a back booth, dozing over his coffee, a couple at the counter chatting over the stew special. “You’re not exactly overrun with business.” Seeing Cassie hesitate, Regan pulled out her trump. “You could fill me in on this Rafe character.”
“Well.” Cassie nibbled on her lip. “Ed, I’m going to take a break, okay?”
At the call, a bony woman with a frizzed ball of red hair stuck her head out of the kitchen. Sparkling-framed glasses rested on her scrawny chest, above her bib apron. “You go ahead, honey.” Her low voice rasped from two packs of cigarettes a day. Her face was carefully painted from red lips to red eyebrows, and glowed from the heat of the stove. “Hey there, Regan. You’re fifteen minutes over your lunch hour.”
“I closed at noon,” Regan told her, well aware that her clocklike schedule amused Edwina Crump. “People aren’t looking for antiques in this kind of weather.”
“It’s been a hard winter.” Cassie brought a cup to the table and poured coffee for herself. “We’re not even through January, and the kids are already getting tired of sledding and making snowmen.” She sighed, careful not to wince when the bruise on her hip ached when she sat. She was twenty-seven, a year younger than Regan. She felt ancient.
After three years of friendship, Regan recognized the signs. “Are things bad, Cassie?” Keeping her voice low, she laid a hand over Cassie’s. “Did he hurt you again?”
“I’m fine.” But Cassie kept her eyes on her cup. Guilt, humiliation, fear, stung as much as a backhand slap. “I don’t want to talk about Joe.”
“Did you read the pamphlets I got you, about spousal abuse, the women’s shelter in Hagerstown?”
“I looked at them. Regan, I have two children. I have to think of them first.”
“But—”
“Please.” Cassie lifted her gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right.” Struggling to hold back the impatience, Regan squeezed her hand. “Tell me about bad boy MacKade.”
“Rafe.”
