Chapter Twenty
Colt wasn’t answering his phone.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, Holly pushed open the driver’s door.
His truck waited in the drive and Ralph ran circles around the backyard, so he was home.
Casting a glance at the parcels stacked in the back seat, she swung the door closed.
He could help her unload once she ran him to ground, although some of that probably needed to be at her house.
Really, keeping two households was crazy, since they spent their nights together at one house or the other. They should pick a permanent base and move in together. The idea warmed her and provoked a simultaneous sense of terror if her mama found out.
Mona would die.
Pondering all the creative ways she could keep Mama from realizing she was living with a man in sin – and a lot of what they did together was purely, wonderfully sinful – she let herself in, the cabin quiet and dim. “Colt?”
On the rug in front of the hearth, Polo thumped her tail on the floor but didn’t bother to get up. Spoiled little princess.
“Hey, sweet girl.” Holly crouched to rub Polo’s soft ears. Maybe he was in the shower.
She rose, casting a glance around. He’d dumped his clubs by the door, golf shoes a haphazard sprawl next to the bag. She frowned at them on her way to the bedroom. The man was obsessively tidy, always had been, and that really wasn’t like him. She paused in the doorway.
“Colton.”
No sound of running water from the en suite, his keys, wallet and phone dumped on the bed.
Foreboding crept down her spine. He always dropped his keys and wallet in the handcrafted leather bowl on the dresser, the one with the brass plate engraved with his initials, the one that had been a gift from his mama.
His sweater and golf pants lay crumpled against the far wall, like he’d flung them.
What on earth?
Her heart kicking a fast tattoo in her chest, thudding a sick rhythm beneath her jaw, she spun and hurried to the kitchen. Empty, dishes in the drainer, exactly how they’d left it that morning. At the back door, she peered down to the vacant dock.
Oh, she didn’t like this, the comforting quiet of the cabin transformed into something brooding and strange, making her think of Mrs. Lenora’s house in the days after Will had died. That house was never quiet, and silence had hung in the shadowed rooms.
“You’re just being fanciful, Holly Noelle,” she whispered, eyeing Ralph as he nosed along the fence. “Everything is fine.”
She touched her phone through the denim of her back pocket. No point in texting Tick, although they’d swapped short messages off and on all day like always.
Colt hadn’t replied to a single text, but with his phone lying on the bed, that made sense now.
Golf had not gone well, obviously, but Tick wouldn’t tell her anything if she called him.
With a happy yip, Ralph raced to the shed in the far corner of the yard, the small cedar building Colt had constructed first and used to store his tools while he worked on the cabin.
Relief trickled through her, leaving her next exhale shaky, so she felt silly for overreacting.
He had to be in the shed, and his being a little messy didn’t mean anything was horribly wrong.
If she told herself that often enough, maybe she’d believe it.
She let herself outside, and Ralph bolted across the grass and up the steps. She bent to love on him a moment, ruffling his fur, then straightened, set her shoulders, and set off for the shed.
Fear knotted her stomach, and she rubbed circles over her abdomen, trying to will the sensation away.
The cedar door, crafted from planks taken from a tree that had fallen during a storm at D and Sue’s, stood ajar. The river rock around the door shifted, crunching a little under her light steps. A long scratching sound itched over her senses. She pulled the door open, one hinge creaking.
Bent over a worktable in the middle of the room, Colt didn’t look up. He marked off a square line on a short cedar plank, tossed it aside and picked up another to repeat the mark. “Said I didn’t want to talk about it, Wally.”
With heady relief holding her throat hostage, Holly brushed her bangs away from her eyes. Clad in athletic shorts and a t-shirt, calf muscles flexing above his running shoes, he was filthy, sawdust clinging to dried sweat on his skin.
She took a step forward, gaze darting about the room she’d never set foot in. A frown pulled her brows together. What in the world? She ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip and fixed her gaze on his profile. “I’m not Wally.”
His shoulders jerked, once, like he’d been shot, but he didn’t lift his head, didn’t pause in the rhythm of marking cuts. “Hey.”
“What aren’t you talking about?” She took another step inside, eying the array of projects, finished and half-finished – a small box, a gleaming cake stand, a charcuterie board with a river of blue running through it – all lovingly and carefully crafted from cedar.
Something about the box rang familiar.
Frowning, she paused next to the table along the wall and ran a finger over the board and its stunning flow of blue. “How long have you been doing this?”
Another board hit the small stack. “Does it matter?”
The hint of attitude in the words hit hard, and she narrowed her eyes at the back of his head. Did he seriously think that would fly?
A bowl – had he carved that? – held tiny drawer knobs, each one the same and yet slightly different than the others. She sifted her fingers through them. She’d seen these before, hadn’t she? Rolling one between her fingers, she sought the source of the familiarity.
Grandma’s memory chest.
Lifting a small knob to study the woodwork — had he carved these by hand? — she shot a glance at the stern lines of his face. “You made Gran’s chest with all the little drawers.”
“I did.” He scratched off another line, carpenter’s pencil clenched in his hand.
Now she understood why the chest looked like Chuck’s work, but not. His pieces held notes of joy, while Grandma’s chest whispered with a melancholy voice, like someone who knew what it was to be sad and isolated.
Lonely.
“Seriously, Colton.” She trailed a fingertip around the edge of the gorgeous stand. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Well . . .” He reached for another board and lined up his square. “I took woodshop freshman year.”
She released a silent exhale. Of course he was going to be a smartass.
The box highlighted the grain in the cedar, gold against red, and she stroked that smooth surface, too. “Do you do this with Wally?”
“No.” And there went another dark mark across red cedar. “I do this, and Wally harasses me.”
A smile tipped the corners of her lips. She could see that.
“Hence why you thought I was Wally?”
One shoulder lifted in a shrug, although he never broke his concentration on the repetitive task in front of him. “He’s the only one who hangs out in here with me.”
“Because I didn’t know about this.” She started to heft onto the table running along the back wall, thought better of it, and leaned instead. Biting her bottom lip, she watched the muscles flex in his forearms. “Am I intruding?”
That earned her a break in his focus and a quick look over his shoulder, his brows twisted together. “No.”
She nodded, folding her arms over her midriff. “So it’s not a big secret.”
“A secret? No.” He shook his head, reaching for his knife to sharpen the pencil. “Private, yeah, but not a secret.”
“You donate your work.” She inhaled, glancing sideways at the blue-infused board again. “Anonymously.”
“I do.”
So complicated, layers and layers of emotion and meaning. She didn’t always know how to read him, especially when he was as spare and elliptical as Hemingway. She ran a fingertip along that river of blue again. Spare and elliptical, but as rich and detailed as Fitzgerald. Talented. Gifted, maybe.
He said she wasn’t intruding, but being here felt like stepping on his sacred ground. He hadn’t invited her here, but rather she’d simply stumbled upon the moment. With a last caress over the smooth wood and resin, she pushed off the table.
“I’m going up to the cabin to chill a while.” He must love how she acted like she already lived here. She almost lifted her thumb to bite the nail. Instead, she brushed her bangs to the side and smiled. “Take your time here. Maybe we can go to dinner later.”
He flicked a sideways glance at her. “Yeah. Maybe.”
With a smile, she walked out, melancholy a sharp tug at her heart. Sometimes his loneliness came into sharp focus, moments like these where the years of being by himself lined up like a museum display of shadowy portraits.
But not completely alone, since he allowed Wally into this part of his life.
Sighing, she made her way back to the driveway, collecting the parcels that could live here. He’d had a resolute quality to his stance, too, something still and steady, and what had happened during this golf game, anyway?
Conscious of the slight weight of her phone in her back pocket, she leaned over Polo to stack the boxes on the hearth.
She would not call Tick and interrogate him.
One, they had a no-interference rule. Two, he’d only stall her.
And three . . . doing so involved violating Colt’s privacy.
He’d tell her when — or if — he wanted her to know.
She stepped back, studying the fireplace and furniture arrangement.
A nice fir would fit into the left corner in front of the window.
Sue would probably show her how to fashion a garland from cedar swags and magnolia leaves, so tomorrow, she might drag him into the woods along the river.
And lights . . . she had plenty, boxed up carefully in her garage.
She could light up the porches, front and back.