Chapter Eight #3
“Not at all.” He shifted sideways, toward her, his elbow resting on the back of the seat.
“Back home in Arizona, there are vortexes—or the more proper term is vortices. Anyway, these sites are believed to have healing energy. So it only makes sense that if there are these positive vibes, there would be places with negative ones as well.”
She hadn’t expected an answer like that from him, but then perhaps she’d been so busy paying attention to the rule-following military side of him, she’d missed the nature-loving warden side. “Do you miss Arizona?”
“Not particularly,” he said, taking off his hat and placing it on the dash. “I was a military brat, so I grew up all around the world. Dad’s last station was in Arizona while I was in high school. He and Mom decided to stay.”
“Any siblings?” she asked, pressing for more from him. Curious if he had any more surprises locked behind that handsome face.
“One sister. She’s in the air force, married with two boys. They get Mom and Dad at holidays since I’m childless. The grandkids are a big draw.”
How . . . sad. “I’m sorry.”
“I could always buy a plane ticket and join them,” he said practically, without a hint of hurt or anger. “Maybe if I’d lived in Arizona longer, I would have felt differently.”
“I’ve been in Bent Oak since I was six, and I can’t wait to leave.” The beach was calling her name. Less forest. Fewer negative force fields of memories to flatten her.
Martin stretched his arm ever so slightly and brushed back a lock of her hair. “No high school beau holding you back?”
“A beau?” She laughed, lightly punching him on the arm. “Who says beau anymore?”
He grinned, rubbing the top of his arm. “I thought it sounded Southern. I guess I missed the mark.”
“Well, bless your heart,” she said with a wink.
The air crackled in the minuscule space between them. Maybe it was all the talk about a positive vortex. “I didn’t have a boyfriend until the twelfth grade.”
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Were the boys at your school idiots?”
“You sound like Aunt Winnie.” The highest compliment she could pay anyone. “Anyhow, my new beau seemed so nice, almost too nice. I figured there had to be a catch.”
“Ah, man, I get the feeling I’m going to have to kick some ass after this story is finished.”
“Actually,” she said, angling to face him more fully, her knee hitched on the seat, “he turned out to be every bit as nice as he seemed the first time he sat beside me at lunch. I thought he felt sorry for me because I was alone that day, thanks to the resident mean girls, Sissy and Missy.”
He shook his head. “Some people don’t change.”
She laughed and he joined in, their sounds twining. The rain on the roof softened until she could hear only the two of them. A month ago, she wouldn’t have expected to find an ally in Martin, but then he’d surprised her these past couple of weeks.
“My ‘beau’ was one of those super-religious guys who walked the talk. I hadn’t met many of those sorts.
” In her early days in Bent Oak, she hadn’t been able to envision what a “good guy” would even look like.
“Beau—for the life of me I can’t recall his name now .
.. Anyhow, Beau and I had been dating for about six months when he invited me to his youth group at church.
I was so nervous. I put on my best jeans—no holes in the knees—and I buttoned up my shirt all the way to my neck. ”
Martin laughed softly with her, not at her.
Encouraged, Bailey Rae leaned closer. “By the time I got there, my nerves were chewing me up alive. It didn’t help that Sissy and Missy belonged to the same youth group. But this was important to Beau, and he was important to me. So I decided to bite my lip and stay quiet.”
“How long did that last?” he asked, grinning while the rain continued to drum the roof in a steady downpour.
“Not long. The youth leader was telling about how if your hand offends you, cut it off, if your eye offends you ... and so forth. Then he said something about being careful who you keep company with, and I could have sworn Sissy or Missy—I never could tell them apart—was staring a hole in my back—”
“Remind me to write them a ticket.”
Bailey Rae clapped a hand over her mouth for a moment before continuing, “The next thing I knew, I blurted, ‘Poor guy. Who does that? Because if he looks at the wrong woman, I wonder what they’ll cut off him next.’ Needless to say, that was the end of my budding romance with Beau.”
“Now I would pay good money to have seen Missy and Sissy’s faces.” His sense of humor was surprising. “Did you tell Winnie?”
“Oh, I didn’t have to. She’d already heard about it from three different sources by the time Beau dropped me off.
” The rest of the story unfolded in her memory, how Winnie told her she didn’t have to go back anywhere she didn’t feel welcome—which pretty much left nowhere to go except Winnie and Russell’s.
But that part of the tale sounded too sad, and she wanted more of Martin’s smiles.
“Aunt Winnie located a nondenominational church with a youth group where I could wear my ripped jeans and favorite rock band T-shirts. I never sat alone at school again.”
When had his arm stretched farther along the back of the seat, until her shoulder brushed his bicep?
She’d had enough dates—real boyfriends—since Beau to know that the draw between them was a moment away from leading to a kiss.
A great big complication at a time when she needed her life streamlined.
Except she wanted that kiss from him. She wished she could ask Winnie for advice, which was a ridiculous thought. If Winnie were still alive, Bailey Rae wouldn’t be leaving. So she was on her own with this decision.
A squawk blared from the computer, startling them apart and saving her from deciding anything. The lights on his laptop flickered with a weather update full of warnings, but for the next county over.
Martin scrolled along the screen. “Seems like there’s a break in the storm long enough that I can get you home if we leave now.”
Was he asking her if she wanted to stay here and explore that attraction? Or testing the water to see if she would invite him over?
Before she could finish thinking that possibility through, much less draw a conclusion, he turned away and put the truck into drive again.
Pulling back onto the road, he said, “After I drop you off, I need to head into the office and catch up on paperwork. Let me know if you hear anything from Gia.”
Just that fast, he’d dismissed her and whatever they’d almost shared. For the best. Because she didn’t need anything interfering with her plans to leave. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being that high schooler in her buttoned-up shirt who’d been judged as lacking.
Her mama had it all wrong expecting a man to fix the emptiness, but Yvonne had been right about one thing. The importance of knowing when to pull up stakes and move on to the next town. Preferably one without the opaque river that served as Winnie’s final resting place.