Everything She's Ever Wanted

He snorted. Admit it, Seth. You couldn’t keep your eyes off her, much less your hands. Or anything else, when all was said and done. At the time, she’d been the hottest bit he’d seen in his entire life. Oh, yeah. She had burned him good.

Three months of fun. Three months of sex. Then one morning, she’d stood on his doorstep, informing him she was pregnant. He still recalled gawking at her like a lummox. Sowing your oats didn’t mean forgetting safety between the sheets.

Except he had. Once.

Five minutes of play in the backseat of his old Impala had transformed into sixteen years of pain.

Not that he’d shirked the responsibility for what they’d done. No. Exit shock, enter love overload when, in mere months, a small toothless being with big blue eyes stared up at him. Seeing Hallie had sent his dreams into overdrive.

Dreams dumped in the mud of his marriage.

He, who worked earth and stone, who wore boots and dripped sweat, hadn’t been good enough. Not for Melody’s daddy, or her.

But her belly had cultivated his DNA. His sweet Hallie. Tying him forever to Melody.

He thought of the woman tonight— Breena of the crafts shop—and recollected her quiet, rueful voice. Her soap scent. Her long black hair. All, different from Melody. So damned different.

He strode to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. Forget the woman. Forget Melody. Only Hallie mattered.

In the fridge, he found a mixture of vegetables and leftover meat loaf and arranged them on a plate, then shoved the entire concoction into the microwave.

Hallie returned, resignation in those summer-blue eyes so like his own. She shrugged off the Gore-Tex jacket he’d bought her last April, tossed it over a chair. “She wasn’t there.”

What could he say? Your mother is an idiot? Better yet— Your mother needs to accept she has a teenager living in her house?

Mouth shut, he set the table, hauled out the bowl of food when the microwave buzzed. In silence they sat and ate. Finished, he took the plates to the sink and flipped on the tap.

Hallie came beside him, catching the tea towel hanging on the oven door. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

His heart rolled, sweet and painful. Wish and you might receive. How many times had he yearned for her to voluntarily choose him? Though not through distress.

He looked down at her dark head just shy of his shoulder, at her smooth, pale forehead, the slant of her small, straight nose. “You don’t have to ask, Hallie. This is your home, too.”

She dried both plates together, set them on the counter. “Mom’ll stay at Roy-Dean’s, anyway.”

“She do that a lot? Leave you alone overnight?”

“Just since she’s been dating him.”

In other words, since last August, when Melody, his daughter in tow, had relocated to Misty River from Eugene. Two months.

Why hadn’t Hallie told him before?

Roy-Dean Lunn, eight years younger than Melody.

A pretty boy she paraded through town like a talisman for her aging face.

Lunn worked road maintenance, fixing highways and secondaries; winters, he ploughed snow in northeast Washington and Idaho. Down times, he blew his money on women and booze. Now he blew it on Melody while she blew off her responsibility—her legally assigned responsibility—to Hallie.

Whose fault is that?

Mine, dammit. I should have fought harder when I had the chance.

Except, he had fought hard—as much as his meager savings had afforded a decade ago. But Melody stemmed from second-generation money and politics and influence; her daddy owned Misty River Chev Olds and Seth, standing in front of a female judge who pitched her tent in the mama-bear-protecting-her-cub camp, had lost his footing.

Hearing she’d won the full right to raise their daughter, Melody had volleyed tears in front of the judge and Seth, seeing his ex’s wet gratitude, could only bow to the decision. Hallie was five years old. Much as it killed him, he knew his work hours weren’t conducive to a tot in kindergarten. His baby girl needed her mother, and that was that.

In the end, he got “visitation” every Sunday and was awarded joint legal custody, which granted a say in the child’s education, health care and other major facets of her life.

Then, five years ago, Melody—wanting her “last big chance at life”—had moved to Eugene, near her brother. A three-hour drive away. Where visitations with Hallie were chewed up by motel costs and travel time that disintegrated her belief in him. Even his phone calls couldn’t rectify the ever-widening gap between him and his daughter as she trudged through her teen years. His fault, of course. All his fault.

Well, he couldn’t alter the past, but he could do something about Roy-Dean Lunn.

“From now on when he shows up,” Seth said, “call me and I’ll come get you.”

Hallie tossed the utensils into the drying rack. “It’s okay. I can crash at Susanna’s or Grandma Owens when I know he’s coming. Tonight we… Mom wasn’t expecting him, that’s all.”

Seth drained the water. “I want you to come here, Hallie. Don’t bother your grandmother or your friend.” You’re mine, not theirs.

“Dad, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” He faced her. “It’s not okay. You page me or call my cell phone or leave a message with Wanda at the office.” Her face, a river of emotion, had him setting a hand on her shoulder. “What was the fight about?”

She dropped her chin. “Nothing.”

“You walked here.”

A shrug. “I was mad.”

He gathered that. Tugging the towel from her hands, he hung it over the oven handle. “Wanna tell me why?”

Her lips were plank-straight.

Okay, he wouldn’t push. She’d tell him in her own good time. He stacked the plates in the cupboard, laid the utensils in the drawer.

She eyed him. “Aren’t you going to hassle me?”

“Nope.”

“Mom always does if I don’t tell her.”

He leaned against the counter, arms folded across his chest. “Want to watch some TV or play a game of chess?”

Another shrug. “Sure. Whatever.”

He chose chess. They played in the living room while logs burned and crackled in the fireplace, and she beat him.

“Guess I’m a bit rusty.” He smiled and got a sheepish one in return. His chest ached. “Want another round?”

A little smirk. “Want to lose again?”

“Ha! You’re on.”

This time, he won.

“Luck,” she told him, and grinned. His heart tumbled.

“That so? Make it two out of three.”

She had him checkmated within forty minutes.

Damn, he was proud. She was an admirable opponent, this daughter. He wanted to reach out, stroke her ponytail. His hand lifted, dropped. Too much, too soon. He couldn’t recall the last hug, the last kiss. Had she been five? Ten? I miss you.

Something must have shown in his face; she gathered the board and players back in the box, got up to return the game to the bedroom she used whenever it was his turn for “parenting time,” a new term for visitation rights. That was another thing he wished were different. Now that Hallie was older, he wanted her to visit on her own. Not when he asked, or when the system deemed it correct, or when arguments sent her running.

Squatting by the fire, he replaced the disintegrating logs. Spruce sap sweetened the room.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, honey?”

She stood just beyond the coffee table, a slim, shy figure, hands burrowed in baggy denim overalls. His throat tightened.

“Mom doesn’t want me dating.”

The fight. “I see.”

Her eyes, full of need for him to understand. “It’s not fair. She started dating when she was thirteen and I’m— I’m already fifteen.”

“Barely four months, Hal.”

“Still fifteen,” she persisted, those eyes growing more determined. “I’m older and more mature than a lot of my friends and they’ve been seeing guys since they were like twelve.”

Seth hung the iron poker on the hearth and rose. “Want some hot chocolate?”

“No. I want to talk about this.”

The topic had him itching to pace. He wanted to help her— God, he wanted to help her. But how? He said, “We can talk while it’s brewing,” and returned to the kitchen, where he set the milk on the stove to warm. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hallie crouch beside Roach, stretched out in the mudroom doorway. As she stroked his broad head, the dog thumped its stubbed tail on the linoleum, and watched her every move with guarded eyes.

The sight prompted a memory of the Quinlan woman the moment Seth had removed the groceries from her cold arms on the shoulder of the highway. Caution: it flashed across her face before she climbed the ladder into the cab and again when he took her keys for her truck at the back door of the shop.

In the months after he’d found Roach hiding under his front porch, he often speculated on the animal’s past. Why had the dog slunk on its belly to sniff his hand, then crawled quick as a light-affected bug back into its dark cavern?

Tonight, Seth wondered what lurked in the lady’s past that had her on a speedy retreat into that little hovel of a shop. And how long would it take to coax her out…

She’s not a stray, Seth. You can’t cure her ills.

Nor did he want to. Last thing he needed to do was worry over some woman he happened to offer a ride. Irritated with his thoughts, he said briskly, “Milk’s ready.”

In the pantry, he found packages of marshmallows and Oreos, put them between the mugs on the old oak table. Easing into one of the four chairs, he said, “So, who’s the boy you wanna date?”

“I didn’t say there was a boy.”

Seth lifted his eyebrows.

“Okay,” she said, with a sheepish smile. “There’s this guy… Tristan.” She shook a few marshmallows into her mug. “He’s really cute and wants to go to the matinee tomorrow. It’s not that big a deal, but Mom wants to come, too.” Hallie raised her head. “Can you imagine what everyone would think?”

He could. Kids, ten and up, whispering for months about how Hallie Tucker was chaperoned by her mother—her mercurial, wild mother—to an afternoon movie. Yeah, he could imagine, big time. And while he wasn’t crazy about the idea of Hallie alone with a boy, he was less enthused about Melody tagging along.

In a skirt the size of a belt.

Moody lips scored in ho-red.

Give-it-to-me stilettoes hiking her petite frame.

“She won’t even listen,” Hallie continued. “All she keeps saying is, ‘I was a teenager once, too.’ Like she’s the queen diva on puberty or something.”

No surprise there. The woman had been born snapping gum. Still did, if Seth had anything to say about it. Which he didn’t.

Tread carefully, man. You don’t want Hallie storming off, believing you won’t come through for her. Damn. He stood between a rock and a hard place. “How ’bout if I talk to your mother?”

“She won’t listen to you. She doesn’t listen to anybody.”

“Maybe she will this time.”

“She won’t. It’s either her way or the highway.” Across the table, Hallie observed their reflections in the night window. “I hate her.”

“You don’t mean that, honey.”

“Yes, I do. She’s getting so weird. I hear kids giggling behind her back whenever she comes to the school. The way she acts, the way she does her hair, the way she dresses. Since she got those implants last spring, she only buys tops that show—”

“Hallie.”

“It’s true! Like she’s so ho—ot.”

“Hallie.”

“I don’t care.” She turned away, but he caught the hurt. “It’s like we’re in a contest or some dumb beauty challenge. It’s totally stupid.”

“She’s your mother, babe.”

“Yeah, well, I wished she wasn’t. The way men look at her, it’s like she’s a…a bar tramp.” Her bottom lip quaked.

A vice gripped his chest.

There was nothing more to say. She was right; they both knew it. “Drink your chocolate,” he told her.

Chapter Two

Coffee mug in hand, Breena stepped onto the front porch of Earth’s Goodness at eight-thirty the next morning. The wind from the night before had faded and, under a soft sun, the quiet spice of fall crisped the air. She didn’t miss Frisco. Didn’t miss the snarl of traffic, the bitter smog, her joyless marriage.

She’d make it in this Oregon town, yes, she would. The next twelve months would prove it in ways the last thirty-five years in California hadn’t. If worse came to worst, Misty River was still a good place to hole up until she mended her heart.

The sound of a motor turned her head. Her Blazer, the sun glinting off its maroon roof, stopped in front of the shop. A young man climbed from the driver’s side.

“G’morning,” she called.

He gave a short wave and came around the hood as she went down the steps. They met at the gate. “You people work fast.” The name Tristan and The Garage Center were stitched in orange above the left pocket of his jade coveralls.

“Yep.” Under a Red Sox ball cap, the boy—no more than eighteen—grinned. “Bill opens at seven.”

Breena studied the truck. “Does he always deliver?”

“It’s policy,” Tristan said with pride, “if we can’t give the owner a courtesy vehicle.”

Possibly it was more Seth Tucker’s policy, but she wasn’t about to argue the fact. She took the clipboard the boy offered. “What was wrong with it?”

“Busted fanbelt.”

She checked the total at the bottom of the page and her mouth opened, then closed. In the city, the tow alone would cost triple. “Did Mr. Tucker have anything to do with this?”

“Uh…which Mr. Tucker?”

“Seth. Seth Tucker.” She held out the form, pointed to the low figure. “Did he have anything to do with this?”

“Don’t think so, ma’am.” Tristan’s forehead scrunched. “Bill’s the one did the tallying. Is there a mistake?”

None. None at all. “I haven’t had such—” Generosity? Decency? “—a nice surprise in a while.”

The teenager spruced his shoulders. “Glad we were of service.”

“Would you like to come in while I write out a check?”

“Hey, sure.” A wide grin.

Inside, she offered him coffee. He declined the brew but chose one of her home-baked sugar cookies sitting in a pretty clothed basket beside the till. One of her alms to the store.

“Nice place,” he called when she hurried to the back room for her checkbook.

“This your first time here?”

“Yep. Never had the need before.”

She signed the order copy and the check while Tristan remained rooted to the welcome mat as if walking across the floor in workboots would sully the varnish on the planks. She returned his clipboard. “Can I give you a lift back to the shop?”

“Nah. We’re just around the corner a ways. I’ll jog.”

Just around the corner. In a town of a thousand, a forty-minute walk encompassed the entire municipality. Friends and neighbors, greeting each other at every corner.

They stepped back into the sunshine.

“It was nice meeting you Miss—”

“Hey, there, Tristan.”

The boy turned. His smile faded. “Hi, Mr. Owens.”

Pot belly leading the way, Delwood Owens swaggered across the street. “Truck’s all fixed, I see.” Pursing his lips, he sized up the vehicle. Eyed Breena. “Saw Seth bring you home last night.”

What else is new? Old turd likely had an astronomy telescope on his bedroom balcony. “Yes,” she said. “He did.”

“Know him well, do you?”

She clamped her tongue.

Owens went on, “Upstandin’ citizen, Seth is. Damn hard worker. Has a wife.”

A wife. Of course he has a wife.

“Wouldn’t want people getting the wrong idea, know what I mean?”

“No, Mr. Owens, I don’t know what you mean.” He knew she lived in the rear rooms of the shop, had seen her coming and going for over three weeks. If he wanted to mark her as Misty River’s streetwalker, she’d deal with it. But he had no right to smear Seth in the process. “My truck broke down and Seth was the gentleman who saw me home safely. That’s all.”

Owens thrust out thick lips. “Wanted to make sure you knew.”

Liar. You thought I’d gasp and sputter at your news.

So Seth Tucker had given her a ride home. So he had a wife. He and every man on the planet did not interest her. In the least. “Would you excuse me, I have a shop to open. Take care, Tristan.” Careful of the walkway’s heaves and gouges, she headed for the porch.

“Um, Miss?” Behind her, the gate creaked. “You forgot your keys.” Tristan trotted back up the walk.

“Oh.” She felt like an idiot.

Owens walked around her truck, the veritable car dealer he was. Tristan glowered at the man. “Don’t pay him no mind, ma’am,” he murmured. “He used to be Seth’s father-in-law. Guess he figures he’s still got a say in his life.”

Used to be. “Thanks, Tristan. Seth seems like an honorable man. He doesn’t need to be humiliated by gossip because of me.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Never, ma’am. You’re like—you’re a lady.” He blushed. “And the gossip, well, it’s ’cause you’re new and—-and sort of a hottie. For an older woman. I mean…” Deeper blushing. “Oh, hell.”

“An old hottie, huh?”

“Sorry. Junk tends to come out of my mouth.”

“No,” she said, grinning. “I like it.”

“You do?”

“Hey, I’d rather be an old hottie than an old hag.” She patted his shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Tristan.”

“Same here, Ms. Quinlan.” He secured the cap on his head, nodded. “You take care now.”

“I will.”

Humming, she went up the porch steps. The morning held favor after all.

With a Cape Cod roofline, the small house Delwood Owens had bought for his daughter when she’d married Seth—then had rented out when she moved to Eugene—appeared the same. Tiny yard, overgrown shrubs, flowers that needed winterizing. Melody was no gardener. That chore she’d left up to Seth in those early years.

Turning the pickup into the driveway Saturday morning, he said to Hallie, “Looks like your mother’s home.” Under the yellow maple guarding the left corner of the house, Melody had parked her sleek silver Mazda Miata. Delwood still came through when his daughter wanted new wheels. Too bad he didn’t hire her a gardener.

Hallie grunted. “Usually she doesn’t get home before lunch the next day when she’s with Roy-Dean.”

Anger sucked away his breath. Melody would consider Hallie old enough to stay alone for a night and half a day, but not old enough to go to a movie with a boy her own age.

He climbed out of the truck. “Want me to come in?”

Her head jerked around in surprise. The last time he’d stepped inside this house had been shortly after their divorce, when Melody complained about the living room TV going wonky and begged him to fix it after he dropped Hallie off.

“That’s okay.” She slipped from the seat. “I can handle it.”

He believed she could. She’d been “handling” it since she’d been five, since he’d moved out, since Melody had relocated them to Eugene. The anger dissipated and guilt claimed its stake.

“You should go, Dad,” Hallie said when he simply stood between the two vehicles, mulling over his conscience. “Mom’ll be anxious. She always is after visits. It’ll be worse this time because I went without her permission.”

Anxious? He wanted to ask what that meant, but Hallie headed up the drive, toward the backyard. She disappeared around the corner of the house, to the rear entrance.

For a moment, he debated whether to leave or follow. With visitations, he always stopped at the curb to pick up or drop Hallie off, the chronic delivery man, then drove away with his heart bumping along behind.

Yesterday, she’d changed that. Yesterday hadn’t been a court-assigned day. Hallie had come on her own.

Anxious. The word spurred him into the small rear yard.

For the first time since his divorce, he saw what years could do to a plot of ground. The old pine that had towered above the single-car garage in his day was gone, a two-foot stump in its place. Along the back, the wooden fence tipped and heeled in a patch of fireweed. Once the place had been home—small-scaled, but neat and tidy and wholesome.

The ideal place to raise a little girl.

Dispirited, Seth turned from the deterioration and started for his truck.

The back door squeaked. Melody stepped barefoot onto the cracked cement stoop. She hooked the screen with one hip, then let it whap closed.

Had he caught her in the guise of sleep? Or…in the guise?

A faded red robe matching her dyed hair skimmed the base of her butt. He wondered if she wore underwear. Knowing his ex, he figured not. Where was Roy-Dean, boy wonder? Behind the door? Ready to stumble out, frown matching hers on his Brad Pitt face?

Melody plucked a lighter and cigarette from one big pocket; lit up. Seth’s brows jammed together. Lunn’s influence?

“Well, now.” Her mouth spoke clouds of smoke. “Look what the puppy hauled home. Fixing to leave already?”

“’Lo, Mel.”

She jacked an elbow on her folded arm, gusted a blue ring. His stomach clenched.

“Whaddya want?”

He thought of the Quinlan woman. Gentle, easy on the eyes. Damned easy. A thousand-light-year gap separated her from this woman who’d once been his wife. Tough as a pavement compactor, that was Melody. A toughness, he knew, that in the past few years had begun stifling Hallie. “When’d you start smoking?”

“A while ago. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“What affects my daughter is my business.”

“Don’t worry.” Melody cocked a hip, levered the robe higher. “I don’t smoke inside. Kid won’t let me.” She eyed him. “So. What is it you want?” she repeated.

His pulse kicked hard. Some role models they were for their child. Him a taciturn father who worked 24/7; her a… What had Hallie said? A bar tramp? He wouldn’t go that far, but in this second he half agreed with his daughter.

“Am I making you anxious, Mel?” he asked, vocalizing Hallie’s term.

“You?” She laughed, but her hand shook when she brought the cigarette to her lips. “Why on earth would I be anxious?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Maybe because last winter when you forgot to give Hallie lunch money for a week,” he enunciated forgot, “I meant what I said.”

Melody scoffed. “Right. You’d take me to court and get back those custody rights you signed away ten years ago.”

“Not by choice.” Your old man took me to the cleaners.

“Whatever.”

“It would be a different story this time, Mel. I’m not scraping the bottom of the bucket anymore.”

“No, but you’re still working forever and a day. The judge would put her in foster care before he’d give her to you.”

He let the words settle and brand. Melody was good at branding. Foster care. Where he’d spent three long, lonely years bouncing around, after his mother burned his father to death in the shed behind his family’s home. He’d had enough of foster care and social workers to last ten lifetimes. They’d have to kill him before he’d let one near Hallie or have her humiliated by a court battle that could see her carted off to some unknown pair deemed “caring and responsible” by The System.

“You know damned well,” his ex was saying, “she’s better off with me than in one of those places.”

He did know. That was the crux of this whole situation. Had been for years. But he also knew her words were a lot of hot air. If Hallie moved anywhere, it would be into his house. He’d see to that.

“Anyway, if Hallie’d told me,” Melody went on, “you know I would’ve left her the money.”

His jaw ached from clenching. “Actually I don’t. But I do know this. Leaving our daughter alone overnight is wrong. She’s not all grown-up. If you can’t be there for her, I will.”

“Big talk from a guy who’s never home himself. Least I work a nine to five most days.”

Only because your daddy bought you Cut ’n’ Class hair salon.

He ignored his thumping blood, zeroed in on the reason he’d come to this door. “Hallie wants to go to a movie this afternoon without a chaperone. I don’t see it as a problem.”