One Frosty Night

“I...excuse me. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

“You looked upset.”

She smiled weakly. “It hasn’t been the best of days.”

Her feet should be moving, but they weren’t. He stood there looking down at her, apparently in no hurry even though it was the middle of a school day.

Her heart cramped, as if she hadn’t already felt like a walking advertisement for Prilosec. Why did he have to look so damn good?

She had always noticed Ben. Mostly from a distance, until her first day as a freshman at the high school. He’d turned away from his locker and smiled at her, and she’d stumbled, dropped the backpack she’d just unzipped and spilled everything in it on the floor right in front of him. Lunch, pens, new gym clothes and athletic shoes. The rings on her binder had sprung open, compounding the mess. Her finest moment. When he’d helped her pick everything up and asked if she was all right, her crush metamorphosed into something a lot scarier.

The amazing thing was, he seemed to feel the same. He asked her out, she went. They fell in love. Made love. Talked about the future. Only, of course, she still had two years of high school left when he graduated, so he went off to college first, where there were lots of pretty girls his own age. She should have expected it, but she’d been stupidly naive and hadn’t. He’d broken her heart, and, nope, seeing him right at this particular minute in time was not making her feel better.

“I need to get back to work,” she said. Feet still not moving.

His dark eyes were penetrating, and his hands hadn’t left her upper arms. “You don’t look like someone who should be going in to work. Is it about your dad? I saw you were with your mom...”

Olivia laughed, a corrosive sound that had his eyebrows lifting. “Dad? Oh, sure. And Mom, who is apparently ready to throw off the old life and begin a new one.” Now, finally, she tried to shuffle sideways to go around him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Really, I need to go—”

“You need to vent,” he said firmly. “I’m here and willing. Plus, I’m discreet.” He looked momentarily rueful. “On my job, you get good at keeping secrets.”

Somehow she was letting him steer her to his Jeep Cherokee, which was right there at the curb. He must have just gotten out of it.

“Wait.” She tried to put on the brakes. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere we can talk. We can run through the Burger Barn drive-through and get drinks, then go park.”

The last time they’d parked... Not going there, she decided. They had “parked” a lot during their two years and five months as girlfriend-boyfriend. But the last time was when he’d said the devastating words: “I’ve met someone else.”

“No, I really should—”

“Olivia, you don’t want to go back to work looking the way you do.”

She closed her mouth on her protest. Even if she locked herself in her office, someone was sure to track her down. And she’d have to walk through the store to get to the stairs that led up to the loft where the offices were. She’d be waylaid ten times before she got that far.

Yes, but Ben Hovik...

There were worse people to talk to. Despite everything, she did believe he would keep a confidence. And he knew her parents, so he’d understand her bewilderment.

After a moment, she nodded and got in once he’d opened the door. From habit, she fastened the seat belt as he went around and got in, too.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mother backing her Saab out of a curbside slot—which so happened to be right in front of the Home & County Real Estate office. Had she already listed the house?

Olivia’s coal of anger burned hotter.

Ben saw her mother driving away, too, after which his gaze rested thoughtfully on Olivia’s face and her hands clenched on the seat belt. Without saying anything, he put his SUV into gear, signaled and then slowly pulled out, going the opposite direction from her mom.

Neither of them spoke until he stopped in the Burger Barn drive-through. She was suddenly starved. Anger was apparently good for her appetite, when shock hadn’t been.

“I want a cheeseburger and fries. Diet cola.”

His eyebrow quirked, but he ordered for her and added a coffee for himself.

“You’ve already eaten,” she realized.

“At home,” he said.

“Did you have an errand in town?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

“Nope. On my way back to the high school. Just spotted you and your mother, both of you freely projecting hostility.”

“We weren’t.”

“If it wasn’t hostility, it was a close relation.” He turned his head when the young woman reappeared in the take-out window with bags. He handed over money before Olivia could reach for her wallet, accepted the food and drinks and started driving forward.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly.

“You’re welcome.”

She asked if he minded if she ate; he said of course not. He took a few turns but, thank heavens, didn’t head for any of the popular parking spots. Instead, he chose a lane that led to a now snow-covered field, turned around and set the emergency brake. He was nice enough to leave the engine running so they still had heat.

They sat in silence for a while, until she noticed he was amused by the way she was gobbling her French fries. Flushing, she wiped her fingers on a napkin.

“I noticed at the funeral that the two of you weren’t standing near each other,” he said, instead of remarking on her gluttony. “I figured you were both trying to keep your composure and were afraid you’d set each other off. But that wasn’t it, was it?”

She both wanted and didn’t want to talk. Why was Ben the only person who’d noticed something was wrong? Or had other people, but he was the only one with the nerve to be so nosy?

Or the only one who cared enough?

No, she couldn’t believe that. Whatever relationship they’d had was long past. Those words, I’ve met someone else, had been said sixteen years ago. Half a lifetime, for her. They’d hardly spoken since.

If she could just think of him as a high school friend...

“You know what Mom and Dad were like,” she said. “So obviously in love even after all these years.”

Ben nodded. Everyone noticed.

“It’s probably why I’m not married. High expectations, you know?”

He nodded again, but she noted, when she sneaked a peek, that his face was particularly unreadable. Did he think she was slamming him for dumping her?

Ancient history, she told herself impatiently.

“After his first heart attack, Mom was so scared,” Olivia continued. “But three months or so ago, something happened. They practically quit talking. Mom moved into the guest bedroom. Neither of them would tell me what was going on.”

Now Ben looked surprised. “Your parents?”

“It was...weird. I think Mom was the one who was mad. Is mad,” she corrected herself softly. “But what could Dad have done? I mean, he’d hardly left the house since they released him from the hospital. I was running the business, so it wasn’t anything related to that.”

“I can’t imagine.” Ben frowned. “Besides, your mother must have known he was living on borrowed time.”

Olivia stared straight ahead through the windshield. “Even when he died, I could tell she was angry. Grieving, but not the way you’d expect. They’d been married thirty-eight years!” She shifted in the seat to look at Ben. “We buried him four days ago. Four! Do you know why we were having lunch today? So she could announce that she’s putting the house on the market.”

He stared. “Already?”

“That’s what I said! Then she said, ‘I’m a widow now, and I’m ready to downsize. Is that so bad?’ We’ve barely washed the sheets from their bed!”

“Did she move back into their bedroom after he died?”

Olivia shook her head. “I think selling the house is her way of leaving him. Too late for a divorce, but she has to reject him somehow. And apparently, she can’t stand to wait another minute.”

He watched her, expression troubled. “You don’t have any idea what it could have been.”

“No.” She looked away. “He died right after—”

“I know when he died.” One large hand pried the small container of fries out of her hand, and she realized she’d been squeezing it in a fist. Ben set it between the seats. “Maybe attending the funeral got to him.” He hesitated. “It was a cold day. That couldn’t have been good for him.”

“What you really mean is, he looked into that hole in the ground and saw his own mortality.”

“It’s possible,” he said gently.

Olivia’s shoulders sagged. “He was acting...strange. I tried to talk him out of going.”

“Your mother didn’t go.”

She made a face. “They weren’t speaking. How could she?”

“Is she mad at you, too?”

Olivia pondered his question for a minute and finally had to answer truthfully, “I don’t know. She doesn’t like me pushing for answers. But also...I was always kind of Daddy’s girl. A tomboy.” Like he didn’t know that. “More interested in the business than I was in clothes or homemaking.”

From the minute she’d been old enough, she had worked part-time at the hardware store, full-time in the summer all the way through college. It’s why she’d been able to step in comfortably after his heart attack.

As a wounded sixteen-year-old, she hadn’t been able to help wondering if she just wasn’t feminine enough to keep Ben’s attention. In Crescent Creek, his options had been limited, but once he was surrounded by beautiful college girls, the girlfriend he’d left behind would have been cast in new relief. A giraffe—tall, skinny, lacking enough curves. Better with a circular saw than she was with a mascara wand.

Feeling impatient, she told herself it had been too long ago for her to still be wondering.

“So your mother believes you were on his side.” Ben sounded thoughtful now. “Or thinks you’d be sympathetic to him on whatever their issue was.”

“Issue?” she echoed. “That’s a mild way of describing something that would split them, of all people, apart.”

“Maybe they weren’t as solid as they seemed.”

“A few months ago, I’d have laughed at that suggestion. I know my parents.” More softly, she amended, “I thought I knew my parents.”

“You know she’ll talk to you eventually.”

“Do I?” Olivia sighed. “If she was only hurt, I’d agree, but she’s harboring so much anger. And that’s not like Mom.”

This time he didn’t say anything. After all, he didn’t know her parents the way she did.

She turned her head and really looked at him. “You haven’t heard anything, have you? You know... Rumors. If you have, please tell me. Don’t think I’m better off not knowing.”

But he was shaking his dark head long before she finished. “I haven’t, Olivia. Not a word. People are feeling really bad for your mom.”

She went back to staring out at the snowy landscape. “She wants me to help clean the house out. Get it ready to sell. I said, ‘Gee, that sounds like fun. Let’s have a garage sale, why don’t we?’”

Ben gave a rough chuckle. “Bet that went over well.”

“Oh, yeah.” Her mouth curved into a reluctant smile. “So that’s the story. Wow. Now I can’t decide if I’m hungry enough for that cheeseburger after all.”

He laughed again. “Didn’t eat a bite at Guido’s, huh?”

“I poked and stirred.”

“Eat.” The bag rustled when he reached into it, and he even partially unwrapped the burger before handing it to her. “Go on. You’ll feel better.”

Feeling calmer for no good reason, she did. Halfway through the cheeseburger, she felt the need to break the silence.

“What you did for that girl... It was nice.”

His shoulders moved. From his profile, she thought she’d embarrassed him.

“If I hadn’t started that fund, someone else would have.”

“Maybe. I’m not so sure. The thing is, you did it for the right reasons. In Guido’s I heard people talking, and it made me mad. It was all about TV coverage and feeling self-satisfied.”

The skin beside his espresso-dark eyes crinkled. “You were already mad.”

“Well...yeah.”

“Damn, Olivia.” The timbre of his voice had changed. “I’ve missed you.”

“Sure you did.” Appetite gone, she rewrapped the remaining half of the cheeseburger. “I really do need to get back, Ben. Thanks for listening.”

She felt him studying her. Her skin prickled from her acute awareness.

“Okay,” he said, in seeming resignation. He released the emergency brake and put the Jeep into gear. “I am sorry.”

She bent her head in stiff acknowledgment, not daring to ask whether he was sorry about her present turmoil—or because he’d hurt her all those years ago. “Thank you.”

Neither said anything during the short drive back to town. Only when he double-parked in front of the hardware store did she remember the lunch. “You should let me pay—”

Ben’s expression shut her down.

“Thank you,” she said again and hopped out, taking her drink and the leftovers in the sack with her.

“Good seeing you, Olivia,” he murmured, and, once she’d shut the door and retreated to the curb, he drove away without looking back that she could tell.

Her heart slammed in her chest, and she felt a yawning emptiness deep inside.

CHAPTER TWO

CARSON CALDWELL LEAPED to knock the shot away; then, when the ball soared over his head, he turned to watch it sink through the net. Whish. Really pretty.

I should have stopped it, he told himself furiously. He’d hesitated too long, not starting his jump until the ball was already leaving Bearden’s fingers. Too late, not concentrating.

This isn’t a game.

No, but Coach was watching. If Carson wasn’t careful, he’d find his ass sitting on the bench tomorrow night when Crescent Creek played Arlington High School.

He ran back down the court with the rest of the team, the sound of their feet thundering on the gymnasium floor. A shoulder jostled him hard, knocking him off balance. He flicked a glance at Coach, who paced the sidelines but didn’t see. A lot of this shit had been happening.

Wham. The ball hit Carson in the chest and fell away. Finkel snapped it up and tore back down the court, making an easy layup.

The whistle blew, echoing shrilly off the concrete block walls. “All right,” Coach called. “That’s enough for today. Hit the showers. Caldwell, I want to talk to you.”

Oh, shit, oh, shit.

Momentarily he was surrounded as they all walked over to grab towels and water bottles. There was another hard bump that had him cracking his shin against the bottom step of the bleachers.

“Mouth shut.” For his ears only.

Dylan Zurenko, senior, starting center and all-around asshole. It was another senior, Dex Slagle, who’d jostled him on the court. The two were tight. Carson had been flattered when they had accepted him into their circle.

He knew why they’d decided now he was the weak link. Daddy the principal. Stepdaddy, actually, but what was the dif?

Hearing the receding footsteps, voices and friendly taunts, he mopped his face with the towel, then draped it around his neck and took a long drink of the now lukewarm water.

“Your head isn’t on the court,” Coach McGarvie said from right beside him.

He closed his eyes for a moment, scrubbed the towel over his face again and faced his coach. “I guess it wasn’t today.”

“Hasn’t been since the season started.”

“I scored fourteen Tuesday night.” It had been only the second game of the season. The first game, right before Thanksgiving... Well, he’d mostly been shut out, but he thought he’d partly redeemed himself Tuesday.

“Good assists. You also fell over your own damn feet.”

He felt the flush climb his neck to his face. He had. Right here, in this gymnasium, in front of the entire student body. He had tripped and crashed down. People laughed. Afterward, he’d pretended his laces had come undone.

He couldn’t blame Zurenko for that one. His feet had grown two sizes since April. He was growing, too, but not keeping up with his feet. He wore a twelve now, but was only six foot one. He had dreams of the NBA, which meant he wanted to keep growing, but lately signals seemed to be taking too long to get to his hands and feet.

He stayed stubbornly silent. Like he had a choice.

Coach was about his height, not a big man. He’d played for some Podunk college—Ben said it was actually a fantastic liberal arts school, just not big-time where sports were concerned—and now taught history as well as coaching boys’ basketball. Last year, Carson had liked him. This year, McGarvie was all over his ass.

“Are you going to talk to me?” his coach asked.

He clamped his mouth shut. He couldn’t talk. Not about what was bothering him. It was...too big. And if he did, he’d be in deep shit. “Then I’m starting Guzman,” Coach said flatly. “You’re not concentrating, Carson. You’ve got all the ability in the world, but this season your heart isn’t in it.”

He couldn’t seem to help the surly reply. “I thought you said it was my head.”

McGarvie looked at him as if he was crazy, shook his head and walked away toward the locker room.

Carson went the other direction, past the bleachers, to where he could smack both hands on the porous wall of the gym hard enough to sting.

God. What am I going to do? he begged, with no more idea than he’d had since the morning after what he’d thought was the best night of his life.

Pride had him finally walking to the locker room. If he was lucky, everyone else would have showered and he could be alone while he took his.

* * *

BEN STOLE A glance at his stepson in the passenger seat where Olivia had been earlier. He could still smell her French fries and wondered if Carson could, too.

“Anything you want to talk about?” he said finally.

Carson shook his head, then grimaced. “I’m not starting tomorrow night.”

“What?” Ben hoped he didn’t sound as startled as he was.

“I’ve just been...I don’t know,” the boy mumbled. “Clumsy.”

“You have been growing fast.”

Head down, he shrugged.

“Let’s stop and get a pizza. I’m not in the mood to cook.” He’d almost suggested the Burger Barn, but that would make him think about Olivia, and he didn’t want to right now. Something was going on with Carson, and he needed to find out what it was.

The boy’s head came up. “Uh, sure. Cool.”

Four and a half years since the divorce, and he and his stepson were still feeling their way, or sometimes that’s how it seemed.

Ben waited until they’d been seated at Rosaria’s Pizzeria, agreed on their order and received their drinks. Then he asked casually, “Heard from your mother lately?”

Carson looked surprised. “No. Not since...I don’t know. Like, August?”

Ben had spoken to Melanie briefly that time, so he only nodded. Her life had been a mess, as usual. He refused to own any part of that, but he always worried that she’d succeed anew in sucking her son in. After her initial noble gesture—ceding custody to Ben—she’d tried a few times. Once, the second year, Carson had run away because he was sure she needed him. After he’d been hauled back, he and Ben had done a lot of talking, and Ben thought his stepson was doing well at letting go of an unrealistic sense of responsibility. Nothing in his expression now suggested he’d even been thinking about his mother.

So that wasn’t the problem.

He tried another not-so-random sortie. “You mad at Coach McGarvie?”

Hunching his bony shoulders, Carson didn’t want to meet Ben’s eyes. “Not really,” he muttered. “I haven’t been together. That’s not his fault.”

“Anything I can help with?” Ben asked. Years of practice kept his tone easy, not too pushy. Kids this age didn’t respond well to pushy.

Carson sneaked a look at him before his gaze skidded away. “Nah.”

Was that some kind of shame or embarrassment he was seeing? Ben wondered. Hard to tell in the dim lighting.

“You know, I’ll listen anytime you want to talk,” he said.

“Yeah. This is—” He hunched again as much as shrugged. What “this was” remained unsaid.

A girl? Carson was sixteen, a junior in high school. What could be likelier? Ben watched more closely than he let on, though, and he hadn’t seen any particular yearning looks. Not the kind he’d been directing Olivia’s way on the rare occasions when he saw her, he thought ruefully.

He heard himself say, “You must wonder why I don’t date.”

His son looked at him in alarm. Ben worked to keep his amusement from showing. A parental figure planning to talk about sex? What kid wouldn’t be panicked?

“I figured, um...” Carson’s throat worked. “It was, you know, because things were so bad with Mom. And maybe because you have me...”

Ben reflected on what was actually a pretty darned perceptive answer from a teenager. “I guess at first it was because of your mother. And it’s true I wouldn’t want to set a bad example for you.” He’d never been the woman-of-the-week kind of guy anyway, though.

“Grandma was whining the other day. She said she wanted, um, more grandkids.”

Seeing the fleeting expression of pleasure on the boy’s face, Carson gave silent thanks to his mother. Both of his parents, really. They’d accepted Carson without question as family. They openly called him their grandson. Even if Ben married and his wife started popping out the babies, neither of his parents would ever act as if the new, related-by-blood grandkids were any more important than the one he’d already given them. And because of that, he hadn’t regretted for a minute returning to his hometown, even if it meant he had to keep seeing Olivia and face her complete indifference to him.

If she really was indifferent.

No, he was kidding himself. She’d retreated at warp speed today when he tried to get personal.

“Hey, here comes our pizza,” Carson said, recalling Ben to the present.

They’d ordered an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink pizza that would probably have Ben suffering from regrets a few hours from now, but, damn, it smelled good. Carson fell on his first slice like a starving dog. Ben wouldn’t have wanted to risk his fingers trying to take it from him. He grinned crookedly, remembering that age when it seemed he couldn’t ever get full. And Carson, he suspected, might end up several inches taller than Ben.

Mel had never talked much about her son’s father; in later years, Ben came to suspect she didn’t actually know which of many men had fathered him. The fact that she hadn’t put a name on Carson’s birth certificate seemed to corroborate that theory. Whoever the guy was, he had to have been tall and likely a good athlete, too, since Mel had never seemed inclined that way.

Ben had taken only a few bites when Carson reached for his second slice. Unexpectedly, though, he set it on his plate rather than immediately stuffing it in his mouth. “So, how come you don’t date?” he blurted.

Had there been a good reason he’d raised the subject? Ben asked himself. Oh, yeah—to open up the possibility of talking about girls and sex. It suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea.

“Waiting for the right woman, I guess,” he said with complete honesty.

Carson’s eyes were a bright blue, his hair a sandy brown that, like most of the other boys, he wore spiky. Right now, those blue eyes were sharp enough to make Ben feel like squirming. “There aren’t that many single women in Crescent Creek. I mean, your age.”

The last was a little condescending. Middle age wasn’t exactly looming, damn it; Ben was only thirty-five. But what Carson had said was right: most of the really appealing women his age were already married. More so in rural Washington than would have been true in the city, but he didn’t get to the city much anymore.

Ben braced himself for Carson to ask about Olivia, since he did know they’d gone together in high school, but instead his stepson picked up his slice of pizza, then set it down again.