Confessions: He's the Rich BoyHe's My Soldier Boy

  Carlie swirled her straw in her drink. Thelma dropped two plastic baskets of French fries onto the counter. “I’m not supposed to say this around here,” she said, “but these are a nutritional disaster.”

  Grinning, Carlie plucked a hot fry from the basket and dipped it in a tiny cup of catsup. “That’s why they’re so delicious.”

  Her mother winked at her. “Don’t forget dinner.”

  “I won’t.”

  She chatted with Rachelle and Carlie until the next wave of patrons came in. “Uh-oh, looks like duty calls.” With a friendly smile, she whipped out her order pad and offered coffee to a couple of men who looked as if they’d just got off the early shift at the mill.

  Carlie knew why her dreams of leaving Gold Creek were so important to her. Her mother had told Carlie time and time again not to make the same mistakes that she had. “Not that I regret anything, mind you,” she’d told her daughter one night as she rubbed a crick from her lower back and reached in the medicine cabinet for the Bengay. Thelma Perkins had once had dreams of being a dancer, but she’d fallen in love with and married Weldon Surrett. She’d gotten pregnant with Carlie and put away her ballet shoes forever.

  Rachelle munched on a fry. “Don’t you think it’s a big mistake getting involved with brothers?”

  “First of all, I wasn’t ‘involved’ with Kevin and secondly...” Carlie plucked the cherry out of her drink and dropped it into her friend’s glass. “Well, it shouldn’t matter.”

  “It matters when you go out with a guy’s best friend. It has to be worse if they’re related.”

  “So now you’re the authority.”

  Rachelle smiled sadly. “I just know that I wouldn’t want to share anyone I cared about with Heather.”

  “Heather’s not the type to share.”

  “Neither am I,” Rachelle said and Carlie wondered if Rachelle was thinking of Jackson Moore, the only boy she’d ever cared for. “The way I see it, if they’ve both dated you, it’s got to cause some kind of friction between the two brothers.”

  She did have a point, Carlie silently conceded, and truth to tell, she’d been concerned about the same thing, but she didn’t want to think about it. “I told Kevin it was over weeks ago.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “Well, it took him a while, but, yeah, he got the message. He’s dating someone else now. Some girl from Coleville.”

  “Ben tell you that?” Rachelle wiped her fingers on a paper napkin.

  “No, I heard it from Brenda.”

  “Ahh, the source of all truth,” Rachelle teased.

  “Of all gossip,” Carlie corrected as they finished their drinks and French fries.

  * * *

  HOW SHE FELT for Ben didn’t have anything to do with his brother, she told herself later as she gathered her hair into a ponytail and made a face at her reflection. After washing her hands, she started on dinner as she’d promised her mother, but she had trouble concentrating.

  Ever since being with Ben in the mountains, she’d thought of little else. She had never let another boy touch her—not that way—and she remembered each graze of his finger against her skin, his breath in her hair, the way he cradled her breasts.... “Oh, stop it!” she snapped, causing Shadow to look up from her nap on one of the kitchen chairs.

  Carlie threw herself into the task at hand. The chicken was cooked and she was supposed to piece together a potato salad. Not too difficult.

  She sliced the already-boiled eggs and added them to the bowl of chopped onions and diced potatoes before starting on the dressing.

  Maybe she should just forget about Ben. After all, he hadn’t called. He probably wasn’t interested in a girl he considered his brother’s castoff. Besides, she really didn’t have time to get involved with a boy from Gold Creek.... But who was she kidding? She was already involved. Up to her eyeballs!

  Muttering to herself, she added salt, pepper and paprika to her concoction of mayonnaise and cream. She tasted the dressing and wrinkled her nose. Not quite like Mom’s, but it would have to do. Snapping off plastic wrap, she covered the salad and shoved her efforts into the refrigerator before racing upstairs to change.

  For Ben.

  Not that he even wanted to see her.

  However, Carlie was impulsive and she believed in going after something she wanted. Right now, be it right or wrong, she wanted Ben Powell. Despite everyone’s advice to the contrary, she knew she’d do whatever she could to make Ben notice her.

  Knowing she was asking for trouble, she drove to the Bait and Fish, a small general store perched on the south side of the lake. Built in the 1920s, the store was flanked by a wooden porch and a covered extension that housed two old-fashioned gas pumps. Faded metal signs for Nehi soda and Camel cigarettes were tacked onto the exterior as was an outdoor thermometer.

  So this was it. Do or die, she thought when she recognized Ben’s pickup parked in the gravel lot. Her fingers were suddenly sweaty on the steering wheel. She parked her car, wiped her hands on her shorts and reminded herself that there wasn’t a law against buying soda. She hadn’t been in the Bait and Fish for half a year. Pocketing the keys to the car, she walked up the front steps and shoved open the screen door.

  A bell tinkled as she stepped inside. Three large rooms connected by archways wandered away from the central area near the cash register where Tina Sedgewick, a spry woman nearing sixty, was working.

  Carlie saw Ben from the corner of her eyes. Balanced atop a ladder, he was fiddling with wires to an old paddle fan. He glanced her direction as the door opened and a half smile curved his lips. As if he’d been expecting her! She felt suddenly foolish, but there was no turning back.

  “Well, hi, stranger,” Tina said, catching sight of Carlie. She’d been seated on a stool behind the register and working on a piece of needlepoint. With blue-tinged hair and a weathered complexion, Tina had worked at the Bait and Fish longer than she’d been married to the owner, Eli Sedgewick, which, according to Carlie’s mother, was close to forty years.

  “How’re you, Mrs. Sedgewick?”

  “Can’t complain, though, Lord knows, I’d like to.” She set her needlepoint aside and prattled on, asking about Carlie’s folks, her job in Coleville and her plans after the summer was over. Carlie tried to keep her concentration on the conversation but she could feel Ben’s gaze hot against the back of her neck.

  “Don’t suppose your ma is with you.” Tina glanced out the window to check the parking lot, as if she expected Thelma to appear.

  “She’s at work.”

  With a sigh, Tina clucked her tongue. “Work, work, work, that’s all everybody does anymore. You tell her to come up and visit us once in a while. Eli—hey, look who’s come visitin’.”

  Eli Sedgewick was leaning over a glass display case of fishing equipment, loudly discussing the merits of gray hackles, some kind of fishing fly, with an older man Carlie didn’t recognize.

  Two other men sat around a potbellied stove in the corner, swapping fishing tales.

  Eli, fishing hat studded with different flies, straightened, squinted through thick glasses and smiled as he recognized her. “Well, Carlie girl, about time you showed your face around here,” he said. “Your pa retired yet?”

  “Not quite.”

  The customer asked Eli a question and he turned back to his serious discussion.

  Carlie walked to the coolers at the rear of the store, eyed the variety of sodas and settled on ginger ale. As she walked back toward the cash register, she stopped at Ben’s ladder. “So now you’re an electrician?” Carlie asked, her stomach filled with a nest of suddenly very active butterflies.

  “Jack-of-all-trades, that’s me.”

  “Or a soldier of fortune?”

  He hopped lithely to the ground and dusted off his hands. “Absolutely.” Offering her a smile that caused her heart to turn over, he snapped the ladder shut and yelled toward the fishing lure section, “You can try it now, Mr. Sedgewick.”


  “What? Oh, well, yes...” Sedgewick disappeared behind an open door and flipped on the appropriate switch. The paddle fan started moving slowly.

  “What’d I tell ya?” Ben asked, obviously pleased with himself.

  “I’ll never doubt you again.”

  His grin widened. “I’ll remember that.” He turned his intense hazel eyes in her direction. “You come here lookin’ for me?”

  “No, I...just stopped in for a soda.” To prove her point, she flipped open her can of pop.

  “Come on, Carlie. You haven’t been in the store in months,” he said and she couldn’t argue, not after he’d obviously overheard her conversation with the Sedgewicks.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, tossing her hair off her shoulder defensively.

  “I’m just telling you what it looks like to me.” He carried the ladder back to a storage closet and tucked it inside. Carlie, embarrassed, wondered if the conversation was over and if her relationship, what little there had been of it, with Ben was over, as well.

  She paid for her soda and walked outside. She’d been a fool to come by here. She’d known it and yet still she’d come, irresistibly drawn, as if a powerful magnet had forced her to wheel into the Bait and Fish.

  “Idiot,” she muttered as she climbed into the hot interior of her car. She jammed the keys into the ignition and the motor turned over.

  “Hey, wait!” Ben strode out of the store, the screen door slamming behind him.

  “For what?” She eyed him through her open window and wondered why she didn’t ram the little car into gear and roar out of the lot in a cloud of dust and righteous indignation.

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “Well, you did.” She just wanted to get away from him. Enough was enough. She couldn’t chase him forever and let herself look like an idiot.

  “I’m sorry.” He stopped by her car and leaned down so that he could stare into her eyes. “I’m glad you came by.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Carlie,” he said and his voice was like a caress on the soft-blowing breeze. “Look, can we start over?”

  She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to see the kind side to him, not when she’d made a fool of herself. “Maybe we should just finish. It would be easier.”

  “But not as much fun,” he said and the streaks of silver in his eyes seemed more defined. “I’ve been meaning to call you—”

  “But,” she prompted, ready for a string of excuses.

  “But I’m working two jobs and well...I didn’t know if it was such a good idea.” He didn’t have to mention the passion that had flared between them whenever they were alone, but there it was, still thick in the air, hovering between them. He leaned both arms on the edge of the window and kicked out a hip so that he could stare at her. His fingers grazed her arm and her pulse jumped in anticipation. “I really am glad you stopped by.”

  She didn’t want to hear any platitudes. Not now. “I’m on my way to the lake. I should really go.”

  Frowning, he checked his watch. “I don’t get off until seven. How long are you staying at the lake?”

  “Until six-forty-five.”

  He cocked an interested dark eyebrow. “Not another fifteen minutes?”

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” she said, repeating his words and mocking him. With a sigh and a lift of her shoulders, she threw her little car into gear. “I’ve got to be home for dinner.”

  “Is that right?” He didn’t believe her. The cocksure grin told her he knew she was lying, but he didn’t call her on it. At least not yet. Straightening, he slapped the open window with his bare palm. “Well, I guess I’ll have to catch you another time.” With that he turned on his heel and dashed up the two steps to the porch, leaving Carlie to seethe in her car and wonder why she couldn’t just forget him. He was trouble. No two ways about it. She should listen to Rachelle’s advice and forget him.

  She ripped out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel and imagined Ben laughing at her. So what was she doing chasing after him like a lovesick puppy? He was just playing with her and she certainly didn’t need the aggravation. So he’d kissed her. Big deal. Lots of boys had kissed her and she hadn’t fantasized about it, made it seem as if the sun and the moon and stars were involved in a simple touching of lips. But she hadn’t been willing to let any of the other boys strip her of her blouse or loosen the straps of her swimsuit. No one else had put his lips to her breasts and— “Forget it!” she told herself as she stepped on the gas and pushed the speed limit of the winding road around the lake. At the public boat landing and park, she nosed her compact car into a sliver of a parking space. “Forget him.”

  She grabbed her towel and beach bag, locked the car and started down the trail through the trees to the swimming hole. She’d cool off, talk with some friends for a while, swim, then go home before seven o’clock! She had to forget him. Anything else was just begging for emotional suicide.

  * * *

  “SHE’S A PRETTY thing, ain’t she?” Mrs. Sedgewick said to the world in general as Ben strode back into the store. He didn’t comment but saw the old lady swallow a smile at his reaction. Why was everything so complicated when it came to dealing with Carlie? Yes, she was a pretty girl. Yes, he was interested in her. Yes, he’d like to date her. And yes, he couldn’t pry her from his mind, try as he might. But all his instincts told him to turn the other way and run anytime he came in contact with her.

  Kevin had warned him about her and yet, try as he would, Ben couldn’t seem to get the girl out of his blood. Kissing her had been a mistake, a kick-you-in-the-gut kind of mistake that messed with his mind.

  He had enough trouble without Carlie. His father had never been the same since his divorce, and his sister, Nadine, seemed about ready to bolt to the altar with Sam Warne, her boyfriend of the past few years. Kevin, well, he was already screwed up. Ever since he’d lost his basketball scholarship, he hadn’t been the same.

  Ben needed to keep his wits about him. He was the only Powell left with a lick of sense.

  “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” Tina suggested. “Not much business this afternoon.”

  “You sure?” Ben was surprised.

  “Hell, yes!” Eli said as he straightened a few ten-pound sacks of dog food. “It’s slow today.”

  Ben didn’t need any more encouragement. Between his hours working in the woods during the week and his weekend job at the Bait and Fish, he didn’t have much time for himself. Not to mention the matter of Carlie Surrett. He should avoid her like the plague, but as he waved to Tina, walked outside and noticed the sun lingering over the horizon, he knew he’d follow Carlie to the lake. “Just like the stupid lemmings,” he thought as he ground the gears of his old truck and headed to the public easement where most of the kids hung out.

  He saw her car in the parking lot and smiled inwardly. Pocketing his keys, he almost whistled. He had the rest of the day off and didn’t have to be back at the tackle shop until noon tomorrow. He considered the ragged pair of cutoffs he kept in a bag on the floor of the cab and decided they’d have to suffice for a swimming suit. Well, Miss Surrett, he thought as he climbed out of the hot interior of his old truck, you’re in for one helluva surprise.

  * * *

  LIKE A MIRROR, the lake reflected the forest and surrounding mountains. Speedboats pulling water-skiers, dinghies drifting with fishermen and motorboats trolling through the smooth waters caused the only ripples to appear on the lake’s glassy surface.

  Carlie ignored a group of kids huddled around a cooler and a radio and walked to the end of the dock. She kicked off her sandals, sat on the edge and dragged one toe through the cold water. What was she doing getting herself tied in emotional knots over Ben Powell? As soon as she had enough money saved, she was leaving Gold Creek and she didn’t need any complications—romantic or otherwise—holding her down. Closing her eyes, she pressed her palms to the sun-baked boards of the pier
and lolled her head back.

  Tranquillity had just settled over her when she felt footsteps reverberating on the tired boards of the dock. She was about to turn around when a pair of hands clamped possessively over her shoulders, thumbs to her back, fingertips resting on the slope of her breasts.

  “I didn’t think you’d come this early,” she said, and a deep-throated chuckle was her response. Blinking open her eyes, she stared upward, where the sun silhouetted the handsome face of a man...but not Ben’s. The smell of cigarette smoke and stale beer floated on the breeze. She froze as she recognized Kevin.

  “Expecting someone?” he asked with a grin.

  She scooted away from him. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I was with some friends, saw you and thought I’d say hello.” He rubbed his chin. “We need to talk.”

  She tried not to be wary. He was, after all, Ben’s brother, as well as a man she’d recently dated. She should give him the benefit of the doubt. Squinting up at him, she said, “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Us.”

  Her throat closed. “There’s nothing more to discuss.”

  “I miss you, Carlie,” he said, his expression lifeless.

  “I thought you were dating someone else.”

  “It didn’t work out.” He shoved a hand through his brown hair and scowled down at the water.

  This was getting complicated and she felt a little guilty. “Look, Kevin, I’m seeing someone—”

  “Ben. I know.” His expression hardened and the look in his eyes was as cold as the depths of the lake. “Hell, don’t I know?”

  “I don’t understand what you want from me, Kevin,” she said, wrapping her towel around her shoulders as she stood and faced him. He was tall and intimidating, but he didn’t scare her. Kevin wasn’t a bad person, just confused.

  “I don’t know, either. I know it didn’t work for us and I suppose I’m as much to blame as anyone, but I’m not sure I can deal with you being Ben’s girl. I loved you, Carlie. More than anyone else ever could.”