Bad to the Bone

  “Like you’ve ever drummed anything, Teagan.” Shelby’s joke made them all explode with laughter. Except Pru, because her head was spinning. Why wouldn’t her mother tell her she had tutored Trace?

  “Oh, please,” Teagan shot back. “Like you’d know what to do after a kiss.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Shelby admitted. “But I’d like to find out.”

  That got another squeal of hilarity, and a lot of people turned to look at them.

  “Sounds like the natives are getting restless,” Uncle Shane teased from where he and Chloe were talking to some people a few feet away.

  “He’s walking the other way!” Teagan said, elbowing Shelby. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait, Pru can’t leave the table yet,” Brooke said.

  “Sucks to be you,” Shelby said. “Come on, Corinne.”

  Corinne shook her head and looked in the other direction. “I told my parents I’d find them after the parade. I have to go. Good luck with all that drumming,” she joked. She started to walk in the other direction, but Pru couldn’t stop herself from snagging Corinne’s jacket sleeve.

  “Are you sure about what your stepmother said? About the tutoring?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  Because then Mom essentially lied to me. “I didn’t think they knew each other before, that’s all.”

  Corinne looked over Pru’s shoulder. “Well, they know each other now.” She grinned. “You better check your facts about this not being a date.”

  Pru whipped around to see Mom’s head tilting back in her easy laugh, so familiar that Pru could imagine exactly what it sounded like, even though she was too far away to hear it. Mom put her hand on Trace’s shoulder, and whatever she said cracked him up, too, then the dog between them started squirming, and they put it down at the same time, giggling like that was all kinds of hilarious, too. But if they knew each other, then—

  “Hey, Pru.”

  The boy’s voice yanked her back around as effectively as if he’d put his hand on her shoulder and turned her. Then she was staring straight at the unusually large Adam’s apple of Cody Noonan, watching it bob once before she had the nerve to look up and meet his gaze.

  “Oh, hi, Cody. Are you here for information on Waterford Farm?” Where did that come from? She didn’t know, but she thanked God she managed to stay so cool. “We are the largest canine training and rescue facility on the East Coast. Are you a dog lover?”

  His lips curled up. “I’m into cats.”

  “Cats are cool.”

  He narrowed his eyes in a way that might have been an attempted smolder, or maybe one of those long lashes got under his eyelid. Either way, it was kind of cute. “Want to come over and meet mine?”

  She almost choked. “Excuse me?”

  Zach came a little closer, looking at Brooke. “We’re jamming at Cody’s house tonight,” he said. “You guys can be the first to hear Salvation’s Fury.”

  “What’s that?” Brooke asked.

  “Our band,” Cody said. “Some other kids are coming over, too.”

  Right then, Teagan and Shelby closed in on the circle, acting like they were so cool and not absolute Cody stalkers.

  “Can you make it?” Cody asked, looking right at Pru with those insane eyes that were cuter than Harry Styles’s, to be honest.

  “I, uh…” She glanced at her mom again, who was now headed in this direction with the guy she tutored in high school. How could she not tell Pru? “Let me ask my mom.”

  Cody’s eyes flickered like that might have been the lamest thing he’d ever heard, but too bad. She had to ask.

  She slipped past him and walked toward her mom and Trace, who didn’t look quite so close now that they knew she was watching. But they knew each other from before. Why hadn’t Mom told her that? It was key information.

  “Pru, what’s wrong?” her mother asked as she got closer and searched Pru’s face.

  “Is that kid bothering you?” Trace asked.

  She shot him a look and shook her head, grabbing Mom’s arm to pull her aside for privacy.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

  Mom literally paled. She could see the blood drain from her face. “Tell you…”

  “That you tutored him in high school!”

  “How’d you find out?”

  Find out? Why would she use that expression unless she’d been hiding it? “Why’d you lie?” Pru shot back. “Better question.” She heard the hiss in her voice and knew it was wrong, hated that she was doing this, but come on. “Don’t you realize, Mom? Don’t you know? It could ruin everything.”

  Mom just stared at her, as speechless as Pru had ever seen her.

  “Don’t you see?” Pru insisted. “It looks like you got me the project!”

  “Oh…is that all?”

  “Is that all?” Pru’s head almost exploded. “I can’t break the rules, Mom.”

  Mom started nodding, fast and furious. “I get that. I understand. You didn’t. You didn’t do anything to break the rules.”

  Not yet, anyway. “But if you’re, like, with him.”

  “I’m not with him.”

  “Or you knew him before.”

  “We went to the same high school, Pru. The only one in town. I was a year behind him. It was fifteen years ago. More.”

  Pru sighed, realizing she was probably overreacting. “Yeah, you’re right. Everybody went to Bitter Bark High.”

  “Exactly. Is that all you’re upset about?”

  Wasn’t it enough? “Well.” She looked over her shoulder at the kids, knowing the next request wasn’t going to be that easy. “I was wondering if I can go out with friends after this thing is over?”

  “With Brooke?” Mom glanced at the group around the Waterford information table. “And…is that Shelby and Teagan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And those boys?”

  Pru closed her eyes and weighed her options. She could lie. After all, Mom had. She didn’t want Pru to find out that she’d already known this Trace guy. So it would be easy…but wrong.

  “That’s Cody Noonan and his friend Zach. A bunch of kids are going to his house to hear them play. They formed a band.”

  “Cody Noonan.” She bit her lip, thinking.

  “Don’t look at him, Mom,” Pru warned. “Please don’t embarrass me.”

  Mom blinked at that, but then she nodded. “I won’t embarrass you. But I don’t know his parents, Pru.”

  “Mom.” She sighed. “I’m thirteen. I’m not going to do anything wrong. I’ll be with three of my girlfriends you’ve known since I was little. He lives about ten minutes from our house, and I’ll have my phone on with Find My Friends, so you’ll know where I am every minute. Please?”

  Her mother glanced over her shoulder, and Pru turned to follow her gaze. Trace had walked the puppies to the table and was talking to Shane. And… “Is he giving Cody the evil eye? What the heck?”

  “He’s just…” Mom didn’t finish, but took Pru’s arm and got her attention back. “Yes. You can go.”

  “Really?”

  “Keep your phone on and text me every hour or so, and I’ll pick you up at ten.”

  “Ten?”

  “Thirty,” Molly added. “What about dinner?”

  “What about it?”

  “We were all going to go out.”

  All? Like Trace and Mom and Pru? She puffed out a breath. “I shouldn’t go out with my community service project. It might be—”

  “Against the rules, I know.” Frustration tightened her mother’s voice. “Pru, he’s a human being first and a community service project second. Get your priorities straight.”

  “Okay,” she said, burning a little because most kids would have shot back with Get yours straight! But she wasn’t most kids and never would be. “But I’ll grab something with Brooke. I have some money.” She leaned forward to give her a quick kiss. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Pru, wait.” Mom grabbed her jacket. “Do yo
u like him?”

  Pru lifted a brow in response. “Do you?”

  Her eyes widened, and she knew exactly what Pru was talking about. “Pru, I—”

  “Please don’t mess up my project, Mom. If Mr. Margolis thinks I’m working on my mom’s boyfriend’s house, I’ll never win.”

  She could have sworn her mother’s eyes flashed with fear.

  “Didn’t think of that, did you?” Pru asked.

  “He’s not,” she said simply. “He works for Waterford, and I’m his dog’s vet.”

  Exactly what she’d told her friends, but then Corinne’s words came back. “And you tutored him in high school,” she added, then made a face. “In what?”

  “Chemistry.” Mom gave her a little nudge. “You go now. Have fun.”

  She wanted to say, You, too, but couldn’t. So Pru gave a little wave and ran off to her friends, not even looking at Trace Bancroft.

  But something told her that Mom wasn’t telling the truth about him. She did like him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shane took the puppies back to Waterford for Trace, freeing him and Molly up for a long, quiet dinner. Molly suggested Ricardo’s because the wait wouldn’t be too long. The wait for a table, that was. The wait to finally have a quiet, private time to talk about what they’d discovered that afternoon seemed interminable.

  That wait wasn’t over until they’d settled into a booth and each had a glass of wine and, finally, complete privacy.

  Trace lifted his to toast. “To secrets.”

  “And how hard they are to keep.”

  The glasses clinked, and she took a taste of merlot, but the real kick came from the way he held her gaze over the rim of his glass. A steady, still gaze that felt intimate and honest and nice.

  “I found this in one of her journals.” He shifted so he could pull out a wallet, then slid a small piece of paper across the table for Molly to read.

  Annie Kilcannon

  555-492-8749

  2:00 PM B.S.

  “Mean anything to you?” he asked.

  “That’s our old Waterford Farm house number, which was disconnected years ago. We all use cell phones, and there’s a business line now. That’s not my mother’s handwriting.”

  “It’s my mother’s,” he said. “After skimming her diaries, I know that without a doubt. What’s BS? What Annie told her?”

  “My guess is Bushrod Square. A meeting at two o’clock.”

  He inched back. “Nice work, Sherlock.”

  “My mother always met people there. She liked to get coffee, take one of her dogs, and walk the paths in the square.” Molly took another sip of wine. “So your mother must have been the ‘good authority’ who told my mother you were dead.”

  He flinched a little, and Molly immediately regretted that theory, putting her hand over his. “I’m sure she thought she was protecting you.”

  His look said otherwise. “Probably transferring her wishful thinking.”

  Molly’s jaw dropped. “That you were dead?”

  He averted his eyes on an exhale, quiet for a moment. “My father died in prison,” he said, the simple statement nearly taking her breath away.

  “What?” She’d had no idea his father had been in jail, no idea about his father at all.

  “He went in for armed robbery when I was really little, three years old. My mom moved around a lot, but finally settled in Bitter Bark and became…whatever the hell she was. A fake.” He lifted his wine and looked at it, deep in thought. “My dad had a heart attack, or so they say, when I was ten, and my mother started proudly calling herself a widow, which I guess was better than ‘married to a cell warrior.’ But she had a lot of bitterness and resentment, and I guess I look a lot like my old man. Every time she looked at me, it reminded her of the loser she married, and she constantly told me I was like him. Exactly like him.”

  Molly tried—really tried—to imagine being raised like that and simply couldn’t. It also made sense why he never talked about his childhood.

  From across the table, he gave a sly smile. “You look like you’re in literal pain, Irish.”

  “I am. For you. It’s so wrong to have that put on your shoulders as a child. So unfair to you.” She realized she still had her hand over his and turned her fingers to thread them together. “You are not the sum total of that woman’s opinion.”

  He looked doubtful.

  “She stole your self-worth.” Molly spat out the words, and when he didn’t agree, she leaned closer. “Didn’t your therapist tell you that?”

  “Yeah, but do you have any idea the percentage of prisoners who are second-generation? Third? It’s a legacy, Molly, handed down from loser to loser.”

  She pushed back, breaking the contact to cross her arms. “I refuse to believe that, and if it’s true, it’s not nature, it’s nurture. Your daughter wouldn’t know how to break a law if she had to.”

  He conceded that with a tip of his head. “Thanks to her mother.”

  She looked at him for a long time, her heart softening for this handsome, strong, honest man who’d been given such a raw deal. Uncrossing her arms, she leaned closer again. “She’s half yours, Trace Bancroft.”

  His smile was slow, and so real it reached his eyes and then climbed right into Molly’s heart to take residence there. “I couldn’t have picked a better mother for my child.” Reaching across the table with both hands, he took hers and added a light squeeze. “Look, can we change the subject? Can we not talk about my parents or our child or the past or the future or anything like that?”

  She lifted a brow. “What’s left?”

  “Life. Food. Current events. Dogs. Work. The way my heart feels like it might stop whenever I touch you. There’s so much to talk about on our dinner date.”

  She stared at him, the admission about his heart doing the same thing to hers. “So, it’s a dinner date?”

  He didn’t answer, because the waiter showed up with an appetizer to share and chatted with them about the specials like they were any couple on a date during a busy Saturday night in Bitter Bark. When they were alone again, Molly answered his question as she picked up her fork.

  “Yes, Trace, we can talk about anything you like. Will you tell me how you train service dogs? I really don’t know that much about the process.”

  That smile lit his face again, and for the next two hours, they did exactly as he’d wanted. With the exception of the casual reference to Pru or prison as part of the stories they shared, fourteen years fell away as they talked openly, ate heartily, and finally shared tiramisu for dessert.

  By the time they left, Molly felt a glow that had as much to do with the company as the one glass of wine she’d had. They didn’t hold hands as they walked through the square toward Molly’s car, but their fingers brushed, and each time, a little electricity shot through her.

  “Feel that, Irish?” he whispered as they meandered down a path.

  “Yeah.” Why lie?

  “That’s what I was talking about.”

  She looked up at him. “Pretty strong stuff.”

  “Always was with you.” They wandered past the statue of Thaddeus Ambrose Bushrod and past the wrought-iron fence around the Bitter Bark tree.

  “Did you know that’s really a hickory?” she said, nodding to the massive tree. “Talk about dark secrets that this town kept for years.”

  He laughed softly. “This town has really changed,” he noted. “So many tourists. So many more businesses and shops.”

  She looked around, thinking about a meeting that might have taken place in this very square between two grandmothers at two o’clock one day. “When did your mother leave Bitter Bark? And not sell her house?” she asked.

  He thought about it for a minute. “My best guess? Ten minutes after she found out about Pru. The house never sold and when she died, I signed some paper to take it off the market.”

  For some reason, that hurt. “Why would she leave after finding out about Pru?”

/>   “I don’t know.” He looked down at her and slid his arm around her. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”

  “Pru will want to know when we tell her.”

  “Or that. We weren’t going to talk about that, either.”

  “Trace, we have to—”

  “I know, I know.” He added a squeeze. “Don’t ruin my first date in fourteen years by making me worry about stuff I can’t change tonight.”

  “Your first…” She slowed her step and looked up at him, the white lights on the trees behind him blurring in her vision. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

  “I did,” he whispered. “All through dinner, I kept thinking, whoa, this is what I missed. Dinner with a pretty girl in a nice restaurant with great conversation. And thanks to your brother, I could actually pay for it.”

  She smiled up at him. “Was it all you’d hoped it would be?”

  “No.” He slid his arms around her waist, very slowly and deliberately, easing her closer. Their jackets were bulky enough to add a barrier, but he was warm and close. “It was more.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “A good date. Our first.”

  “And you know that no good date is complete without…”

  “A kiss,” she finished for him.

  He inhaled softly, holding her gaze, inches apart, the anticipation almost as thrilling as what she knew was about to happen. She felt suspended in his arms, floating closer, a little dizzy and achy.

  But he didn’t move.

  She bit her lip with a sly smile. “You think you forgot how?”

  “I might need a lesson.”

  She put her cold hands on his face, feeling the angles of his bones and the very first hint of nighttime whisker growth. “First, you get really steady.”

  “I’m steady.” He tightened his grip on her waist. “You feel a little wobbly, though.”

  “You do that to me,” she whispered, letting her gaze drop to his mouth, which was still as beautiful as the first time she’d kissed it.

  “Then what?” he asked.

  She lifted on her toes to get to the right height. “Then you line up.”

  He angled his head one way, then the other, as if finding the right spot. “And?”