Tender Absolution

  “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  “Don’t you get it? I don’t know what I want and I was about to do something that might take away all of our options! Hell, what a mess!”

  Cheeks inflamed, she adjusted her clothing and walked away from him to the cliff. Staring over the tops of trees, she saw the glimmer of water.

  She heard him approaching and tensed when he wrapped his arms around her waist to link his hands beneath her breasts. “Hey, look, I’m sorry. Things were just moving too fast for me.”

  “I wasn’t the one—”

  “Shh. I know. Believe me, I take all the blame.”

  With a sigh, she leaned back against him and wrapped her arms over his. “No blame,” she said. “It just happened.”

  “And it will keep happening unless we use our heads.” For a second he was silent and she felt his breath ruffle the hair at her crown.

  “You see the lake?” he said, as if trying to change the subject.

  “Mmm.”

  “Now look to the south. Over here.” He moved, rotating her body. “The town.”

  The first lights were beginning to twinkle from the valley, shimmering up against the darkening sky.

  “If you look hard enough, or with binoculars, you can see the railroad trestle bridge, city hall and the sawmill.”

  She followed his gaze and noticed the railroad tracks cutting through the valley. The trestle bridge spanned Gold Creek just on the outskirts of town.

  “I didn’t think you’d been up here before,” she said, once her heart had stopped drumming and she could trust her voice again.

  “I’m just telling you what I heard from some of the guys who come into the store. Come on. We’d better get back.” He rummaged in his backpack, drew out a flashlight and started leading her down the trail.

  Night settled over the forest and by the time they returned to Ben’s truck, they were following the steady beam of his flashlight. Carlie heard bats stir in the trees, felt the breeze as they flew low, but she wasn’t afraid. Probably because she was with Ben.

  Silly, she told herself, but she trusted Ben. It came as a shock to realize that if she didn’t stop her runaway emotions, she might just end up falling in love with him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “COME ON. IT’S not every day I get the afternoon off!” Carlie said, insisting that Rachelle drop the magazine she was reading as she sat on an old patio chair on the back porch of her mother’s house. “I’ll buy you French fries and a Coke.”

  “What if I want lemonade?”

  “Whatever!” Carlie blew her bangs out of her eyes and waited as Rachelle told her mother what the girls had planned. Rachelle found a way to avoid dragging her little sister, Heather, with them and they drove into town with the windows down. Carlie’s T-shirt clung to her back as she parked her car near the Rexall Drugstore.

  Kids on skateboards zoomed along the sidewalk, while mothers pushed strollers and adjusted sunbonnets. Heat waved up from the sidewalk and street.

  Inside the store, ceiling fans whirred, but did little to lower the temperature. Carlie fanned herself with her hand as they looked into a glass case filled with costume jewelry.

  “You’re seeing Ben Powell?” Rachelle repeated, lifting her eyebrows as if she hadn’t heard her friend correctly. “But I thought—”

  “I know. You thought I was dating Kevin. I did for a few weeks. We went out a couple of times and it didn’t work out. I thought I told you.”

  “You didn’t say anything about Ben.”

  “I didn’t know Ben.” Carlie paused at a rack of sunglasses and tried on a pair with yellow lenses.

  “Not you,” Rachelle advised.

  “I know.” She replaced the glasses and turned her attention back to the jewelry case. She fingered a set of turquoise-and-silver earrings, held one of the big hoops up to her ear and frowned at her reflection. “I just met him the other night, at a party. Then…well, we took a drive into the mountains.”

  “Are you going out with him?”

  In the mirror, Carlie saw her own eyes cloud. “He hasn’t called. It’s been nearly a week.”

  Rachelle tossed a shank of auburn hair over her shoulder as she eyed the pieces of bargain jewelry on the sale rack. “So you haven’t actually dated him.”

  “Not really,” Carlie said. Her time with Ben in the mountains hadn’t been much of a date, and yet she’d remembered each second so vividly that even now she tingled a little. She was determined to see Ben again. She’d always been a little boy crazy, or so her mother had claimed, but she’d never been quite so bold. Usually boys had sought her out, as in the case of Ben’s older brother, but this time, it looked as if she would have to take the bull by the horns and do a little pursuing. The thought settled like lead in her stomach and she wasn’t particularly comfortable with the role. But it was long past the days when girls sat by the phone praying it would ring. Women’s lib wasn’t a new concept. So it was time to push aside the traditional roles and go for it. Right?

  They walked through a section of paperback books and magazines and ended up sitting on the stools at the back counter. The menu was a big marquee positioned over the soda machines with interchangeable letters and numbers that were backlit by flickering fluorescent bulbs.

  Carlie waved to her mom, glanced at the menu, but ordered her usual, a chocolate Coke and large order of fries.

  “I’ll have the same,” Rachelle said, “except I’d like a cherry Coke.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Carlie teased and she noticed Rachelle shudder as if the thought of mixing chocolate and cola in a drink concoction was disgusting.

  “I thought you had to work today,” Thelma said to her daughter as she scribbled their orders onto a pad, ripped off the page and clipped it to a spinning wheel for the fry cook.

  “There wasn’t much happening at the studio, so Rory gave me a few hours off.”

  “Are you going home? You could start dinner….”

  “I, uh, already have plans. I’m meeting some kids at the lake.” She noticed the lines of strain around her mother’s eyes and lifted a shoulder. “But I could swing by the house first.”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure.”

  Thelma busied herself making milk shakes for a crowd of preteen boys. The shake machine whined loudly.

  “What’s so special about Ben?” Rachelle asked.

  “Everything.”

  “Come on. You can be more specific.”

  “I wish.” Carlie couldn’t even explain her fascination with him to herself. “I just saw him a couple of weeks ago and really noticed him. I’d seen him before, of course, but never really paid much attention.” She blushed a little. “You know I’ve never been shy—”

  “Amen.”

  “So…I came up with a way to meet him.” She gave a quick version of crashing the party by the lake and Rachelle’s good mood seemed to fade, as if she were reliving the night of the Fitzpatrick party.

  “I thought you’d learned your lesson.”

  Carlie grinned. “I guess not.”

  “So your interest in Ben has nothing to do with the fact that he and Kevin are brothers?”

  “Believe me, I wish they weren’t.”

  Thelma placed dewy glasses of soda in front of them. “Fries will be up in a sec,” she said with a wink. Carlie fingered her straw until her mother was out of earshot again. “I know that being interested in Ben is…well, kind of strange.”

  “Crazy is the word I’d choose.”

  “But I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “You?” Rachelle smiled and Carlie knew what she was thinking.

  While Rachelle had barely gone out, and had spent most of her time with her nose in a book, Car
lie had dated most of the guys on the basketball and swim teams. Not seriously, of course. She’d never “gone” with any boy for over two months. That had been the problem with Kevin. He’d started talking about the future, their future, here in Gold Creek. When she’d mentioned her dreams of seeing some of the world, he’d pouted, told her that she was setting herself up for a fall, that she should get real and realize that the best she could expect was a small house in Gold Creek, a good husband who worked in the mill and a couple of kids.

  No, thank you. She wasn’t ready to settle down yet. There were places to see, people to meet and then, someday, maybe, she’d come back. She had the rest of her life to get married and raise a family….

  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 r
ecognized 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.