Viv shook her head. “How a woman is supposed to uphold the law and raise three little ones I’ll never know.”
Turner gave Viv a quick kiss on her cheek, then turned to look at Candy. “Ready?”
Candy froze. She felt her breath go shallow. Her hands started to sweat. She clenched her thighs together, squeezing the life out of Sophie. Ready? Ready for what? Ready to admit that Turner Halliday suddenly turned her on like all hell?
“Yes,” she said, clomping down the steps in her sling-back sandals so fast she nearly lost her footing. “Let’s go.” She reached back for Turner’s hand and pulled him to the sidewalk.
“Y’all have a good time tonight! I won’t wait up!”
Viv’s words echoed, then rattled around in her head with sentiments like Oh, hell, and Oh, damn, because Turner’s hand had just latched onto hers and it was big and warm and she didn’t want the touch to end.
This was not possible. Candy had absolutely no desire to complicate her life. She wasn’t even sure it could get any more complicated! A man was the last thing she wanted. Sex might be nice every once in a while, but a relationship was out of the question. Especially with someone like Turner—a decent guy, a guy with ties to this town, a guy who’d been widowed at the age of twenty-six. He deserved more than a fling. He deserved a lot more than Candy could ever give him.
They got to the SUV. Turner opened the passenger door for her and she climbed up, acutely aware of the view she must be providing him. She shouldn’t have worn a skirt.
And she suddenly wondered … how many times over the years had she switched her ass in front of Turner? How many years had she pranced around him in a bikini without a second of self-consciousness? Had he ever noticed her? Had he ever thought of her as anything but his buddy?
Turner came around and hopped in the driver’s side, immediately starting the car. He gave her a sideways glance. “Seems every time I see you, you’re running away from someone.”
She laughed, a little uncomfortable with that observation, since it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. “I can’t stay with Viv. I’ve been there a matter of hours and she’s already driving me nuts. She tried to pimp me out to Tater Wayne in exchange for him working on my car. And just before you showed up, she made me a skillet of scrambled eggs, telling me I’d need something on my stomach in case Cheri’s recipe didn’t turn out.”
Turner swung the SUV onto Wilamette Avenue, waving good-bye to Viv. “Well, I’ve got a spare room at my place, if need be. Just give me enough notice to clear out some of the junk. I swear I won’t try to pimp you or make you eggs.”
Candy turned her head away to look out the window, feeling her eyes bulge out at the thought. Yesterday, that offer might have seemed perfectly innocent, and even doable. Today, it caused her to break out in a sweat.
“Thanks, but I’ll figure something out.” It embarrassed her that her voice sounded smaller than she’d intended, maybe smaller and sadder than she’d ever heard it. That was probably because she was thinking the unthinkable—that she might actually attempt to stay with her mother for a little while. After all, she’d survived in the same house with her for eighteen years. What would a few more weeks hurt?
Turner cleared his throat. “Hey, listen, we’ve known each other a long time, Candy. We all go through rough patches now and again and I know I couldn’t have made it through mine without my friends. All I’m saying is if you need anything, I’m here.”
Slowly, Candy swiveled around. She found Turner looking at her, those impossibly beautiful lips turned up slightly, those gentle hazel eyes shining under the brim of his hat. And she knew that whatever she might be struggling with was nothing compared to the heartbreak Turner had experienced in his life.
Candy could always make money again. Junie was never coming back.
She returned his smile and nodded in silent understanding, holding out her hand to him should he accept it. He did, and Candy took his big hand in both of hers and squeezed tight. She couldn’t stop the wave of emotion suddenly crashing through her chest and belly.
“I am so sorry about Junie,” Candy said, her lip trembling.
He shrugged and said nothing, but he kept his hand in hers as he kept an eye on the road.
In silence, Candy contemplated Turner’s offer to help her with anything she needed. He couldn’t live up to that promise, of course, since what she needed most was to magically turn back the hands of time to early that morning, so she could remember to flip on the damn headlights.
It would have made everything so much simpler.
Chapter 3
Red, yellow, and orange flames flickered from the fire pit and sent sparks into the night air. Turner stretched out in the lawn chair and let the pleasure of the moment sink deep into his bones. He’d enjoyed a fine meal with his oldest friends. Tom Petty tunes wafted from the iPod dock on the porch. And suddenly, he found himself caressed by waves of female laughter so sweet it made his skin tingle. That was a sound he didn’t get to hear much these days. It was a sound he sorely missed.
There were countless things about Junie that Turner longed for, but the loss of her laugh had been particularly painful. Sometimes it seemed a hole had been punched through the world with the absence of that sound. The ring of Junie Pickett’s laughter was what first drew his attention from across the college dining hall, a joyous sound that was clear and rhythmic. It sure didn’t hurt that when he tracked down its source he found a sweet, open face the color of mocha, a head of shiny black curls, and a curvy, petite body. And later, he would discover all the things about Junie that lived under the surface—her capacity for love, her ability to forgive, and her fierce dedication to teaching.
It had always amazed Turner how much Junie loved her rowdy middle-schoolers—the most awkward and unlovable stage any human being could go through, in his opinion. Those kids were drowning in hormones, their bodies and brains growing too fast for them to keep up. But in the three years she was given to teach, Turner knew Junie made a difference in the lives of those young people, especially those living in the worst kind of poverty. She’d finagled food donations from the local grocery stores and sent her kids home with boxes of canned goods. She managed to conjure up clothing and shoes. And she often drove out to the homes of her students to “sit a spell” with the parents, just to tell them she was there if they needed anything.
Junie’s love of children meant she looked forward to having her own someday. Of course, they’d both been beyond thrilled to find out she was pregnant, and that’s why Junie headed to Chicago the very day after school let out for the summer. She wanted to share the news with her family in person.
Turner leaned his head back and gazed at the starry night sky above him, taking in a breath of lake air and wood smoke. For over four years now, Turner had carried the sickening truth on his shoulders. The weight pushed down on him every morning when he woke up, every day while he worked, and every night when he tried to sleep. He was supposed to have gone with Junie to Chicago, but canceled at the last minute because of work. He would have been behind the wheel that day. He could’ve handled whatever caused Junie to lose control and plummet into the ravine. He should have been there.
For more than four years now he’d known that if he’d chosen family over his job—just that once—Junie would still be alive, and his world would still be intact.
He would still have a family. He would still have a world.
A raucous wave of female laughter dragged Turner back to the moment. He looked up to see J.J. shaking his head and chuckling, obviously enjoying the tale the two women were recounting from their glory days in Tampa. Turner hadn’t been paying much attention to the thread of the story, but he thought it had something to do with a real estate open house gone horribly wrong. Candy and Cheri had left Bigler after high school and never looked back. They went to college, started careers, and eventually made it big in the Florida real estate bubble. They lost it all in the crash, and both had com
e crawling back home, Cheri first, and a few weeks later, Candy.
From what Turner could tell, Cheri was well on her way to rebuilding her life—she’d taken over the reins of the Bugle when her grandfather retired, then got engaged to J.J. For Candy, however, the transition hadn’t been so smooth. In fact, it seemed she was barely keeping it together.
But she could laugh at herself, and her lightheartedness was contagious. Turner found himself smiling as they wrapped up their story.
“And everything was made worse by how flippin’ hot it was that day,” Cheri said. “Do you remember? Without the air-conditioning, it had to have been over a hundred and ten in that house.”
“Oh, damn, at least!” Candy said. “I swear I was so hot I could’ve grilled a panini between my thighs, right there in the master suite.”
The women busted out into guffaws, and J.J. chimed in. Turner laughed, too, but in the back of his mind all he could think was that he was damn jealous of that sandwich. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d fantasized about the friendly confines between those long and luscious thighs, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
As subtly as he could, Turner spent a moment simply appreciating everything about Candy Carmichael. She glowed in the firelight, her skin golden, her blue eyes flashing as she laughed, all that thick blond hair curled tighter by the humidity, those gorgeous legs crossed at the knee. She was at least five foot ten. He’d heard her described as “statuesque” over the years, but he’d always thought that word suited a woman with sharper edges, the kind of woman who fell just short of being flat-out feminine. Okay, so she was tall, but Turner always thought Candy was too soft, too curvy, too pretty for a word like that.
He’d always seen her as juicy. Ripe. A succulent blond sex bomb.
Turner shook his head at his own idiocy, damn glad Reggie wasn’t there to witness his drooling over Candy Carmichael, all these years down the line. After the fiasco of his junior year in high school, his big brother hadn’t hesitated to set Turner straight. He’d taken Turner outside to the backyard, pointed for him to sit on the fence rail, and said simply, “Let it go, little bro. That girl’s daddy would skin your black ass just as soon as he’d give you the time of day. Ain’t no tail worth that kind of grief.”
Neither of them had to point out the irony of Reggie’s advice. Their own parents hadn’t taken an easy road—his mother was black and their daddy white—but the boys learned early that in backwoods North Carolina, the rules got a whole lot stickier the other way around.
Things were different now, of course. The country had a biracial president. Turner and Candy were adults, not kids. And that bastard Jonesy Carmichael had died many years before, taking his bigoted ways with him to the grave.
But, Turner wondered, were things different enough? This was still the western boonies of North Carolina, after all, and as the county’s first black sheriff, he knew he had no room for error. His only option was to play everything perfectly straight, all day, every day. Even if he were ready for a woman in his life, Candy Carmichael wouldn’t be the smartest choice he could make. She would only bring complications. Trouble.
Suddenly, she turned his way and her smile softened. She must have felt his gaze on her body, because he didn’t miss the flash of embarrassment in her pretty blue eyes. J.J. had been right—this was going to be awkward. Unless Turner addressed the situation head-on and talked to Candy about that kiss.
“You sure I can’t get you another beer, Turner?”
“Naw, man, thanks. One was my limit tonight.” Turner nodded subtly to Candy before he moved his focus to J.J. “In fact, I probably should be heading out. I gotta get a little rest before I go back to work.”
Turner pushed himself up from the lawn chair, hugged Cheri, and thanked her for a lovely evening. He slapped J.J. on the back and told him he’d see him tomorrow. Turner felt Candy’s eyes on him.
“Would you like me to drop you back in town?” he asked her.
“Oh! Sure. That would be great.” Candy grabbed her bag and hugged J.J. and Cheri good night. They walked together to Turner’s SUV and he opened the door for her, averting his eyes from the backs of her bare thighs and the luscious curve of her ass as she climbed up.
God damn, she had it going on.
Candy remained silent during the ten-minute ride through the dark woods. Turner knew that it would be up to him to start the necessary conversation.
“Please don’t feel uncomfortable about what happened this morning. I understand completely, Candy.”
Very slowly, she turned her head and shot him an undecipherable look. “You do?”
“Sure,” he said. “You were relieved that I didn’t cite you. You didn’t mean anything by that kiss, and I didn’t make more of it than it was.”
“Okay,” she said, not entirely convinced.
“I mean, right?” A flash of alarm went through Turner’s body. It had been a long time since he’d tried to decipher a woman’s way of communicating, and perhaps he’d lost his ability. Was she toying with him? Was she trying to tell him something without actually saying it? What was going on here? He tried again.
“What I’m saying is you made it clear to me a long time ago that you weren’t interested in me that way—you know, as someone you’d want to date—so I figured the kiss was just a … well, you know. A fluke.”
Candy made a clicking sound with her tongue that sounded to him like annoyance. She was annoyed with him? He almost burst out laughing.
“What the hell are you talking about, Halliday?” She turned abruptly in her seat to face him. “You and I never discussed the possibility of dating. It never even came up. You always seemed perfectly happy being my friend, so I figured that’s what we’d always be.”
He tried not to choke as he peered at her in the dim light. The thing was, Candy looked perfectly sane and she sounded completely rational, like she believed the words she’d just spoken. How a person could be that delusional and look so normal he had no idea. “So that’s how you remember it, huh?”
Candy swung her arm up over the back of the driver’s seat and leaned closer to him. Her blue eyes were huge in the glow of the dashboard. “What exactly are you getting at?”
Turner chuckled, turning the vehicle down Main Street into Bigler. He knew Viv’s house was no more than two minutes away. There would be no way they could sort out this mess by then, but he couldn’t stop himself from setting her straight.
“I’m talking about that night I called your house and your father answered.”
Slowly, a puzzled frown pulled at Candy’s brow. She shook her head very slowly, sending her pale curls brushing across her shoulders. A stray lock slipped down over the top of her breast. “You called my house all the time, Turner.”
“I did, but it was usually to tell you where we were all headed or what time we’d swing by to pick you up. The night I’m talking about was different.”
Turner didn’t see any sign of recollection in her expression. She tipped her head to the side and lowered her chin. Still nothing. Was it possible she really didn’t remember that conversation and the fallout from it?
His mouth fell open in disbelief. “It was May of junior year. You actually don’t—”
“No.” She shook her head definitively. “I don’t know what night or what phone call you’re referring to. It’s obviously a big deal to you, and I’m sorry if I’m forgetting something major, so just tell me what you’re talking about.”
Turner turned onto Wilamette, stunned. And angry, truth be told. “We’ll talk about it some other time.” He pulled the truck into Viv’s driveway, and he could’ve sworn that damned bleached-out stable boy was giving him a “what the fuck did you expect?” kind of look. “I really gotta get some sleep.”
Candy removed her arm from the seat back and pulled away. As she moved, the sweet scent of perfume and female flesh flooded Turner’s nostrils. It occurred to him that maybe the best way to handle this was to not handle
it at all. Maybe he should just stay away from Candy. Period. Not even try to maintain their friendship. Just forget about the kiss. Forget about the past. Forget about her. Maybe he should just decline any future invitations out to the lake and wait for her to get tired of her little hometown reunion experiment and hit the road, which probably wouldn’t take long.
Maybe her friendship wasn’t even worth the effort—especially if one of the most painful moments of Turner’s life had meant so little to her that it had slipped her mind.
He hopped out of the SUV and jogged around to the passenger side, knowing he couldn’t get Candy out of his vehicle fast enough. “Good night,” he said, holding the door open for her, avoiding eye contact. “Take care.”
Candy was frowning as she swung her long legs to the side, bent one knee, and dropped a sandaled foot to the asphalt. She shook her head at him and walked away. “Good night, Turner,” she whispered.
As he drove away, he saw Candy glance over her shoulder. She was still shaking her head.
Chapter 4
Cherokee Pines Assisted Living was a single-story, redbrick complex with razor-sharp landscaping, a grand semicircular drive, and a white-pillared portico framing the main entrance. A network of white-pebbled walkways led from the main building to the gardens, tennis courts, and swimming pool. The property was surrounded by towering old evergreens that had likely inspired its name.
Candy blinked in surprise. She had no idea Jacinta’s retirement home was this posh. Then it hit her—her mother might have to move out when she realized her nest egg had been fried to a crisp.
She parked the beat-up Chevy at the far corner of the parking lot, making sure it was hidden behind a line of senior citizen vans. She didn’t want anyone making note of the condition of her car. Or of its contents. That morning, as soon as Tater Wayne had it running again, Candy began loading all her crap back into the trunk and the backseat. She’d had no choice. When she’d walked in the house after that incredibly strange drive home with Turner, Viv was lying in wait. The conversation that followed had been the last straw.