Chapter 5
And here we come to the first unpleasant incident in the story of the runaway children.
—Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Boxcar Children
With each step along the woodchip path the next morning, Clint grew more resentful. His dick wasn’t the only place he’d gone
soft. Despite his best intentions, he hadn’t been able to forget how undernourished she looked. He pulled himself up to the
rear platform and rapped on the door with his free hand.
“Entre” came from within.
He wasn’t prepared for what he saw—Dancy, standing by the kitchen counter, dressed head to toe in Green Bay Packers gear.
She observed the scowl that seemed to have taken up permanent residence on his face since she arrived. “What did I do now?”
“What do you think?” he retorted, eyes on her outfit.
She swept her hand over her Packers T-shirt. “This bothers you?”
“Of course, it bothers me.” He advanced inside. “It’s all about respect. You’ve obviously been living in LaLa Land so long you’ve forgotten your Midwestern manners, or you wouldn’t be wearing Packers gear in front of the Chicago Stars quarterback.”
“And yet the Chicago Stars quarterback owns a very expensive summer home in the evil state of Wisconsin.” She sipped from
one of two stoneware coffee mugs he kept in the cupboard.
“That doesn’t mean I walk around dressed in their team colors.”
“Take a few deep breaths. I’m sure you’ll feel better.”
“I’m sure I won’t.” The oatmeal he’d left on the counter hadn’t been touched, and bathing in the lake yesterday hadn’t brought
color to her cheeks. Her hair was dull and weird looking from washing it with bar soap. She’d snagged it in a low ponytail
that made the bones in her face sharper, and she still had deep thumbprints under her eyes. It was her face—those violet-blue
eyes and that wide, expressive mouth—that made her stand out from thousands of other beautiful, busty blondes.
A ragdoll his niece or one of the Owens kids had made sat on the small wooden table he’d refinished a few weeks ago. He pushed
the doll aside to make room for the foil-covered plate he’d begrudgingly brought with him. He didn’t have a lot of experience
being ruthless off the field, and kicking her out without a meal didn’t sit right with him. “Eat this while it’s hot.” He
bent down to open the refrigerator. The stew he’d left didn’t look as if she’d even taken a bite.
She bristled. “You don’t need to feed me.”
“How else am I supposed to get arsenic into your stomach?” He found a fork and set it by the plate of huevos rancheros he’d
made.
“Clever.”
He pulled off the foil, whipped a bottle of hot sauce from his pocket, and plunked it down. “As I remember, you used to like spicy food.”
“You’re confusing me with another ex-girlfriend.”
“Just eat the damned food.”
She emitted a long-suffering sigh, as if he were inconveniencing her, and studied the two perfectly cooked eggs laid on top
of jarred salsa and the pinto beans he had cooked from scratch because he didn’t like canned ones. “I haven’t seen anyone
else at the house,” she said. “Did you fix this?”
“Rory made one too many disparaging comments about my food, so I talked her into giving me a few lessons. She somehow managed
to turn me into a decent cook.”
“No personal chef?”
“A meal service takes care of me in the city during the season, but I don’t like people around when I’m here.” He paused to
drill the point in.
She uncapped the hot sauce and shook a generous amount on the eggs. “God, you’re still disgustingly perfect.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“It’s like you go around with a personal sunbeam shining down on you from heaven. It follows you everywhere. Walking down
the street. Climbing into your car. And—God knows—it’s right there every time you run out on the field. The music soars, the
cheerleaders lose their minds. And we all know what happens next.”
“Give me a clue.”
She blew an invisible trumpet. “The crowd goes wild!”
He dead-eyed her. “Damn straight it does.”
It wasn’t the reaction she wanted, and she stabbed the egg yolk. “Go away so I can eat in peace.”
If he went away, he doubted she’d eat, and he couldn’t kick her out until she had something in her stomach. “I’ll hang around. We need to have a meeting when you’re done.”
“Still harping on my outfit? Obviously, you’ve never tried to clothes-shop in Lake Isabella. The choices at the souvenir store
are limited.”
This was payback for not having dug deeper into the closet where Rory kept clothes for her visits. “Limited or not, as long
as you’re wearing Green Bay’s colors, you’re taking advantage of my hospitality. Now eat while I look around to make sure
you haven’t trashed the place.”
She gave him the stink eye, but she was too self-centered to be truly offended. As she took her first bite, he climbed into
the cupola and surveyed the view. He hadn’t bought the land because of the caboose, but as soon as he’d seen the old railcar,
he knew he had to restore it.
Using his hands for something other than throwing a ball felt good. His mother sent a few pieces of furniture she’d saved
from his childhood home, and he’d spent a fortune having water and electricity run out here. He didn’t regret a penny. The
kids loved it when they visited, and so did he. He’d planned to start building some steps to the rear platform today, but
he couldn’t do that until she was gone—one more item to add to the list of grudges he held against her.
He called down, “I’m checking the trash before I leave, so I hope you’re not thinking about throwing that food away.” Something
else occurred to him. “Unless you have a serious eating disorder. In that case, I’m in over my head.”
“No eating disorder.” She sounded like her mouth was full. “Merely a preference for drinking my meals.”
“You’re not exactly living a healthy lifestyle.”
“Nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
He started to say that a woman had already died on his watch, and he didn’t fancy that happening again, but he never talked
about Ashley’s murder or its ugly aftermath, and he sure wasn’t doing it with Dancy. “Maybe you should clean up your act?”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
He didn’t like that. Ignoring the ladder, he swung down from the cupola. “This is a train car, not rehab.”
“There’s an untouched bottle of vodka outside, so I might not need rehab. On the other hand, it’s only been there since last
night, and I can’t stop thinking about it.” She rose from the table. “I’ll save the rest of this for lunch.”
She’d left the beans and tortilla, but she’d eaten both eggs, so he counted it as a win. “You do that.”
She carried the plate to the counter. “About this meeting . . . I know you want me out of here, so how about pretending I’m
already gone? No more visits from you. Definitely no more food deliveries. I’ll be invisible. You won’t even know I’m around.”
“That’s too open-ended for me.”
She picked at one of her silver fingernails. “Let’s say a week. Can you do a week for old times’ sake?” She cocked her head
like the flirt she was and then abandoned the attempt. “Forget about old times’ sake. I was a stupid seventeen-year-old who
kept pressing you for sex. You didn’t want to, even though you’d already gone at it with Sophie Jonas, which I’ll never understand
in a hundred years.” Tiny sparks flared in her eyes. “I wanted to make you jealous, so I cheated on you with a boy I didn’t
even like.”
“And lied about it.” He rested his hips against the kitchen counter. “Mick Watkins was a loser. You should have picked somebody who wouldn’t pin your panties to the locker room bulletin board so he could prove to me what a liar you were.”
“You were such a sucker.” The words sounded as if they were sticking in her throat. “If you hadn’t recognized my panties on
that bulletin board, you’d have believed me when I told you nothing happened.”
“You definitely didn’t like having me dump you.”
She met his eyes. “I was awful. Instead of accepting what I deserved, I told everybody you were smoking so much weed you couldn’t
get it up.”
“And that you needed a real man to satisfy you. Yes, I do recall that part.”
“Fortunately, nobody believed me, even before Sophie Jonas called me out as a liar.”
After that, his classmates had turned on her, not on him, and Dancy, the most envied girl in school, had become an outcast,
while he had to spend the rest of the year avoiding Mick Watkins and hiding his broken heart.
Her mouth tightened in a grim smile. “I should have known better than to attack the virility of Mr. Popular.”
“High school’s a war zone, but I still think you should have stood your ground and stuck around instead of running off to
that boarding school to finish senior year. And after you got the lead in Chicago.”
“I’m surprised you remember that. But even a chance to play Roxie Hart wasn’t enough to make me stay around for my well-deserved
public shaming.” She held his gaze. “And remember, I already had all those black marks against me. Richest girl in school.
Best clothes. Most spending money. Least parental supervision.”
“Don’t forget about being the only kid driving a BMW.”
“Colossal mistake on my part.”
“On your parents’ part. I know it’s not right to speak ill of the dead, but you had the most irresponsible mother and father
in Minnesota.” Dancy’s parents had owned a profitable import-export business, which they’d eventually run into the ground,
but not before they’d screwed up their daughter. “They gave you everything you wanted so they could spend their time traveling
all over the world and letting other people raise you. It’s no wonder you’ve taken to alcohol.”
Her dry laugh got to him. She was obviously in bad shape, and just as obviously trying to cover it up. He knew something about
covering up. Sending her away while she was like this made him uneasy, and he hated nothing more than a guilty conscience.
“I’ll give you a week,” he practically snarled at her. “One week. And then you’re gone.” He remembered the pondweed stuck