Something to Prove Page 3

  Who is this man, and what has he done with my uncle? “Real trouble? Defacing town property wasn’t real trouble?”

  Uncle Dave waved him off. “It was just teenage mischief, and not even maliciously done. And, anyway, I’d been trying to get the council to approve the funds to repaint that tower for months. Helena helped me along. Once she painted over her artwork, the rest of the thing looked so bad, the council had to release the money.” He raised an eyebrow. “Speaking of which . . . it’s looking like it could use a fresh coat again.”

  Ryan was still stuck at the dismissal of Helena’s petty-crime spree as “teenage mischief,” so it took him a second to catch up to the conversation. “I’ll add it to the list,” he managed.

  “Good.” Uncle Dave pushed himself to his feet. Now that he had said his piece, his visit was over. “And when you see Helena again, you tell her I said welcome home.” With a wave, he was gone.

  Ryan sat back in his chair and scrubbed a hand across his face. This had been the oddest morning.

  But he didn’t have time to mull it over, as his phone was buzzing and he had to stop for supplies before meeting his crew at the Jones place. And he didn’t have the time now to look up Helena, either, as curious as he was, and that annoyed him more than he expected.

  He stopped by Julie’s desk to return the signed papers, but Julie merely nodded and waved, her attention more focused on whoever was on the other end of the phone balanced between her ear and shoulder. Her voice was low, but he still heard “Helena” and “unbelievable.”

  He smiled. He could get supplies, go to the Jones place for a while, and then stop by the post office in a couple of hours. By then, the grapevine would have done its job and Anna Grace would have all the available information on Helena Wheeler, down to her shoe size, ready to share.

  Living in a small town had its perks.

  Chapter 2

  Helena cursed as the download failed again and reached for her beer. Grannie might be able to function with a dial-up modem that dated from 1996, but Helena was going to have to get the cable guys out here with some technology from this century. She always bragged about how she was fortunate enough to be able to work from anywhere—assuming that “anywhere” had high-speed Internet access. But that wasn’t Grannie’s.

  Frustrated, she shut down the laptop. Tomorrow, she’d go in search of somewhere with free Wi-Fi. Maybe that coffee shop Tate mentioned would have it.

  Leaving the laptop on the table, she took her beer to the front porch. Pretty much all the houses looked the same here, all built in the mid to late sixties after Hurricane Betsy flooded the area in 1965. The beach-style clapboard bungalows had wide porches and postage-stamp-sized yards, and only the paint colors and different flowers in the beds made it possible to tell them apart. There were children playing ball in the street while parents washed their cars in the driveways, and she could smell hamburgers grilling not far away. Idyllic. Charming. Monotonous.

  I miss my life already. She’d only been away from it for a day, but the long weeks she’d spend here, in Magnolia Beach, stretched ahead of her like a desolate desert highway.

  Oh, there were other things she could be doing—she had a nice, long list—but she closed her eyes and set the swing in motion instead. It was hard to dredge up a real sense of urgency when she was still pitying herself for having to be here at all.

  Misha, the friend who was keeping her plants alive in Atlanta, had taken on the role of life coach, earnestly encouraging her to use this time to both reconnect with her past and discover something new about herself. It had been all she could do not to laugh in Misha’s face. She didn’t want to reconnect with her past. Hell, that Helena felt like a completely different person, a stranger—self-centered, selfish, and really angry at the whole world. That wasn’t someone she’d like to get to know again. A lot of it had been relatively harmless adolescent trouble, the consequence of the dangerous mix of small-town boredom and a still-developing frontal lobe, but there was a line, and she’d been dancing right along it. No one wanted to be the one to send Ms. Louise’s granddaughter off to juvie, though—and she’d been smart enough not to do anything too damn dumb or felonious—so she’d done a hell of a lot of community service. So much of it that it was practically her first job. She could still remember that horrid orange safety vest she’d been forced to wear—and the mocking attitude of the deputy when he’d written Hell-on-Wheels across the back in black permanent marker.

  She vaguely wondered if that vest was still around someplace. She snorted at the thought. They’d probably tucked it inside her permanent record.

  Hence her avoidance of Magnolia Beach, a small town with an ability to carry a big grudge. The cards had been stacked against her from the get-go: Her mother had been an unknown entity, some wild thing her father found and knocked up on a trip to Jacksonville, and most people worried that even the influence of a God-fearing, good woman like Louise Wheeler might not be able to counteract Helena’s questionable DNA. Her mother hadn’t lasted long in Magnolia Beach after her father died, leaving when Helena was just a couple of months old, but those few months had made an impression on the local population—and not in a good way. The first time Helena stepped out of line, all her mother’s sins had been remembered and reexamined. And since everyone claimed apples didn’t fall far from their trees, most people assumed Helena was on the exact same path of trouble and bad news. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  She’d been lucky, though, getting it under control before her life became a cautionary tale suitable for an after-school special, but there was no pride or triumph in her story. She just wanted to forget it.

  As for discovering something new about herself . . . That was a laugh. She’d been on that journey, thankyouverymuch. There was only so much introspection a person could do. Parental rejection leading to anger issues and attention-seeking behavior, blah, blah, blah—she’d done the therapy and had a shelf full of self-help books. She owned a business, paid her taxes, and donated to charities. She might not be respectable, but she was about as close as she was going to get. And that would just have to be enough for these people.

  So, at best, she was going to discover how long she could survive being back in a town where the traffic lights went blinky at eleven o’clock—all three of them.

  With a sigh and a strong mental shake, she drained the last of her drink. She could sit here and feel sorry for herself, or she could just deal. Since hosting a pity party wasn’t going to change things, she’d deal.

  Just like she’d always done.

  But one look around Grannie’s house, full of fifty-some-odd years’ worth of stuff, was almost enough to send her back for another drink or a hide under the covers. “Clean out the sunroom” seemed like a manageable-enough task on paper, but in reality . . .

  The knock at the door seemed like a small gift from God. She could postpone without feeling like she was procrastinating. Getting estimates from Ryan Tanner would also count as being productive.

  But it was Tate at the door, not Ryan, and he greeted her with another hug that lifted her off her feet.

  “Someone’s been working out,” she teased. “Come on in.”

  Tate looked around and smiled. “I haven’t been in here in so long. It looks exactly the same, though.”

  She nodded. “Grannie’s not one for change. Can I get you a beer? Can you stay awhile?” She sounded desperate, but perhaps she was. Just being back here was messing with her head. Plus, it was too quiet: The sound of children playing in the streets was actually a little creepy for someone more used to the city and traffic noise of her neighborhood.

  “I was actually going to see if you wanted to go get that dinner I promised you.”

  That sounded divine, but . . . “I can’t. I’m waiting on Ryan Tanner to come by to give me some estimates.”

  “When?”

  “Som
etime after five.” She looked at the clock, saw it was five forty-five, shrugged, and went to the fridge. Tate shook his head when she offered him a beer, so she poured him a glass of tea instead. “He’s worse than the cable company.”

  “Well, he’s got football practice, so there’s no telling what time he’ll get here.”

  She leaned against the counter. “Isn’t he a little old for that?”

  “Ryan’s one of the coaches now.”

  “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.” He probably runs a scout troop, too. Wonder what the adult equivalent of “teacher’s pet” is? It was a little scary how quickly she’d reverted to her seventeen-year-old self. She took a long swallow of her beer.

  “Hey, now, we’ve been to the state championships twice since he started coaching—something that hasn’t happened since . . . well, since Ryan was still playing, probably.”

  “Go, Pirates,” she deadpanned.

  “Still not a football fan, huh?”

  “I could not care less if I tried.”

  Tate gasped, hand to his chest in fake horror. “That’s unnatural.”

  She made a face at him. “I actually want to hear about you, and what you’ve been up to, Dr. Harris.”

  “That’s really all I’ve been up to. I was in school forever, then came back here and took over Doc Masters’s practice when he retired last year.”

  “I’m so proud.” He gave her a look, so she clarified, “No, I really am proud of you. That’s great.”

  He accepted that with a nod. “And you?”

  “I do graphic design. An online one-woman thing.”

  “I knew you’d end up doing something artsy.”

  “I’ve got pretty steady work, so I’m lucky. I love it and it pays the bills.”

  “Perfect combo.” He tapped his glass against her bottle.

  “Exactly.” She stared him down. “But you . . . no wife, no kids? What’s up with that?”

  He nearly choked on his drink. “I could ask the same of you,” he said, deflecting the question.

  She shook her head in mock sadness. “Alas, the state of Georgia won’t let me have a wife.”

  Tate laughed. “Then we’ll just call that a topic neither of us wishes to discuss.”

  “Good call. What about Ellie and Sam?” She was suddenly hungry for news, which was strange. She hadn’t even thought about most of these people in ages, and now that made her sad. And a little ashamed.

  “Ellie’s in Mobile—married, two kids, happy. Sam got divorced last year and moved back here. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

  Tate had practically raised his sisters, and she could hear in his voice that he still adored them. “That’s great, and I’d love to catch up with Sam if there’s time.” Carefully, she asked, “What about your parents?”

  “Mom’s still in the same place. The old man died about eight years ago,” he said flatly.

  Glad to hear it, she thought, but said, “I didn’t know,” instead. She wouldn’t offer sympathy, and she knew Tate didn’t expect it. Mr. Harris had been an evil, hateful man who only got worse when he drank. And it was a well-known secret how he took it out on his kids. She wasn’t the least bit sorry the man was dead, and she wouldn’t mouth platitudes she knew Tate didn’t need or want to hear.

  Tate quickly changed the subject. “So when are you going to let me take you to dinner and show you the sights of Magnolia Beach?”

  “Magnolia Beach has sights?” she teased.

  “A few. You’ve probably seen most of them, but we do have some nice restaurants now and a bar with live music three nights a week.”

  “Goodness, when will we have time to fit it all in?” At Tate’s shrug, she added, “Well, my dance card isn’t exactly full these days, so pretty much whenever is good for you. I should probably wait to make any concrete plans until I hear what Ryan’s going to do and when he’s going to do it. . . .” On cue, she heard Ryan call her name from the porch. “Speak of the devil. Come on in,” she shouted as she headed back that way.

  Ryan already had one foot in the door. Another difference between life here and in Atlanta. She’d already quit locking her door, and the only thing strange about a man letting himself into her house was that it actually wasn’t strange at all. That, and the fact she’d reverted back to old habits so quickly. Hell, that was downright disturbing.

  “Sorry I’m running late,” Ryan said with an apologetic grin. “The boys were acting up, and there were laps that had to be run. . . .” He trailed off and cocked his head sideways. “Tate. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  Tate’s nod was brief and quick. “Ryan.”

  There was an odd moment of tension Helena didn’t quite understand. “What? Surprised there’s at least one person who’s glad I’m back?”

  “Oh, there are several, I’m sure,” Ryan said wryly. “Some might even surprise you.”

  She laughed. “Well, that would be a pleasant surprise, indeed.” Setting down her beer, she turned to Tate. “It’s my turn to cut things short. Sorry.”

  “No problem. Thanks for the tea.” Tate set his glass on the table next to hers, then leaned in to plant a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow about that dinner.”

  “You’d better.”

  With another of those brisk nods in Ryan’s direction, Tate was gone. Ryan watched him leave.

  Helena picked up the list of work for Ryan she’d started earlier. “Okay, let’s start with the—”

  “That was fast.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re back less than twenty-four hours and you already have a date with Tate Harris?”

  That was so far out of left field that she laughed. “What—are you jealous or something?”

  Ryan’s head snapped around. “Huh?”

  “Unless you have a thing for Tate, why would you even care?” she asked.

  “Tate Harris is considered quite the eligible bachelor in Magnolia Beach. You’ll make a whole new set of enemies if you poach him.”

  It hadn’t occurred to her that Tate would be an “eligible bachelor,” but it did make sense now that Ryan mentioned it. He’d grown up to be downright adorable and successful. “I’m not ‘poaching’ anyone. And even if I wanted to poach, Magnolia Beach’s womenfolk could have him back in just a few weeks.”

  An eyebrow went up. “Just a few weeks, huh?”

  “Believe me when I say I do not intend to stay a second longer than absolutely necessary. I have a life in Atlanta, thank you very much, and I can’t wait to get back to it as soon as humanly possible.”

  “Ah, well, that’s the spirit.”

  The sarcasm grated. She held the list in his direction. “Shall we?”

  He nodded at the bottle in her other hand. “Are you not going to offer me a beer first? Tsk, tsk, what’s happened to your manners?”

  “The rest of the world doesn’t normally offer alcoholic beverages to random tradesmen, you know.” But even as she said it, she was already heading to the fridge.

  Ryan accepted the bottle with a nod of thanks, and she held the list in his direction again.

  This time, he took it, but he didn’t bother to look at it. “Let’s start at the front of the house.”

  She followed him out the front door onto the porch, but before he could start talking, he was interrupted by a high-pitched yapping bark. A small black smudge jumped out of the open window of Ryan’s truck and ran to sit at his feet, growling a warning at her. She jumped back a step. “What the hell?”

  Ryan inclined his head toward it. “And that’s Tank.”

  Tank was quite possibly the strangest-looking dog she’d ever seen. He was one of those hairless breeds, which gave him a rather ratlike appearance. He had a bit of an overbite and the little-dog antsiness that made his toenails click against the woo
den planks as he danced around Ryan’s ankles. He was tiny, maybe five or six pounds, tops, and he alternated between shooting her dirty looks and staring adoringly up at Ryan. “Tank?”

  “Tank doesn’t let his size affect his ego. He thinks he’s bigger than he is.”

  Tank couldn’t do her any real damage, but those teeth looked sharp nonetheless and would probably hurt if he got ahold of her. “He belongs to you?”

  “I think I belong to him, actually. He just showed up on my porch one day, and when I opened the door, he wandered in like he owned the place.”

  “That’s sweet.” Especially since Ryan seemed more like a yellow Lab kind of guy. “Hysterical, but sweet.”

  “He comes with me to work sometimes, but he’s happy hanging under the truck in the shade. He won’t bother you. So, you’ll need a ramp. . . .”

  Over the next half hour, Helena developed a grudging admiration for Ryan. He obviously knew his stuff—pointing out missing items on her list and coming up with different ways to solve the most obvious problems—and some of the not so obvious ones, too. For what seemed like the fiftieth time, she said, “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, you know. We have a lot of retirees down here, not to mention the snowbirds who arrive every October. Adaptations to accommodate an aging population are a booming business.” He looked at his notes. “Do you have a budget in mind?”

  “Of course.”

  After a moment’s pause, Ryan added, “And that number would be . . . ?”

  His attitude gave her great pleasure to be able to say, “Something we’ll discuss after I’ve seen your bid.”

  “You think I’ll inflate the numbers?” Insult was stamped across his face.

  She shrugged. “I think it’s unwise to tell anyone how much you’re willing to pay until you’ve seen how much they want to charge.”

  “Wow. There’s some trust issues for you.”

  “It has nothing to do with trust or the lack thereof. It’s just good business. Or didn’t they teach you that up at Auburn’s business school?” It was all she could do not to laugh at the look on his face. “I made a trip to the post office for some stamps. The new girl—Anna Grace?—is a true font of information.”