Three

 

 

 

 

 

“Don’t worry. When I talked to Jordan I took full responsibility for not showing up tonight,” Naomi explained between bites of cheesy pizza.

“Did Nick fire you over the phone?”

Laughter escaped from deep in the belly. “No. But Drea’s upset that I stood her up. Her ex showed up and I wasn’t there to help her deflect the awkward moment.”

“No way on earth to please everyone.”

They sat on the dock as the water lapped against the pier and pilings and watched the sun go down. They’d taken off their shoes and let their feet dangle over the current.

“Did your friends really drag you here against your will?”

He smiled. “I don’t really do much against my will. My friends thought I was…in a bad place at the time…back in De La Cruz.”

“De La Cruz? Where’s that?”

“New Mexico.”

“Were you? In a bad place?”

“Maybe. I’d been drinking a little too much.” It was painful to admit that now. “After mustering out of the Army, I’d pick up odd jobs working in construction. They thought I wasn’t taking care of myself.”

“Who’s they?”

“Simon and Cord. Oh, and Nick was in on it, too. They act like a freakin’ gang when it comes to sticking their noses into your business. I’m surprised we all don’t pick out colors together.”

Naomi snickered. “Then I guess it’s okay to tell you that Heidi’s been spreading rumors about you.”

Colt grimaced. “Me? Who’s Heidi?”

“One of our tellers. She’s convinced your stint in the military also included working for the CIA.”

Colt winked at her. “Sugar, as I see it, that’s not too surprising since I’m new in town. It’s been my experience that people love to have someone to talk about. They build up someone’s past and make it into something it’s not.”

As denials went, it wasn’t much of one, but Naomi sipped her drink and decided Heidi had it all wrong. “I suppose that’s true. They ask me all the time why I moved here and left my roots behind. It’s hard to explain to people who’ve always stayed in the same place. They invariably want to know why you feel the need to pick up and move somewhere else, why you’re hoping for a new start. So why sixteen years in the military? Why not stay in for four more years and retire with a pension?”

He leaned in and whispered, “Sugar, do I look like I’m the pension type to you?”

Laughing again, she shook her head. “Not exactly. Question. Do you always refer to every female within arm’s length as Sugar?”

“Guilty. It’s a habit. You don’t want me to call you that, I’ll try not to.”

“Most women like it when you use their given names.”

He bobbed his head in agreement. “Fine. Naomi it is.”

Having settled that, she went on to another question. “Did you ever get shot…in the Army?”

“I got shot in the arm. Once or twice. Wanna see my scars, Naomi?”

“You’re moving awfully fast, Colt. Who gave you the name Colt?”

“Good question. One of the few things I came with when I got to the boys’ home. I think.”

“I thought it was an orphanage?”

“It was known by many names. Boys’ home. Children’s home. Institution. Asylum. School. Academy. Anything but what it was. Officially it was known as the De La Cruz Home for Boys. My favorite one was something a news anchor gave us. She called it an ‘effective children’s community center.’ That sounds so…benign, like sending your kids away to camp. Which was a far cry from what it was. But the tag seemed to make for a decent public persona to soothe any concerns of what was really going on there.”

“There were more sinister activities?”

“Child labor was just the tip of the iceberg.” Should he mention the rest?

Naomi stared at him. “You’re talking about abuse, aren’t you?”

When she saw he wasn’t going to answer, she sensed he wanted to go on but felt embarrassed. She wasn’t sure why, but she decided to provide that tidbit she almost always kept to herself. “My entire family was wiped out in one night…by a fire.”

He suddenly went very still. “What happened?”

Naomi opened her mouth to speak, her voice barely above a whisper. “It was so hot that night, so sticky and humid I could hardly breathe, let alone sleep. We’d been out all day at the State Fair manning our booth, the one we’d owned for decades, going all the way back to the 1950s. It was tradition. My family sold corn on the cob every single year of my life during that fair. It was a part of my life I took for granted…until that night.”

Colt took her hand, squeezed her fingers until she went on.

“My mom was exhausted after a long, hot day on her feet. We all were a bit cranky. So as soon as we piled out of our old station wagon and hit that door, Mom ordered all us kids to bed. My sister Shelley dropped right off to sleep. But I couldn’t. It was so hot that night that my nightgown was sticking to the sheets. I remember sweating like a pig and thinking if only we had air conditioning. Anyway, I decided to get up and sneak out to the kitchen to grab a popsicle out of the icebox. The heat was so stifling. To this day I still remember it vividly. Maybe because August in Nebraska means the humidity hangs around in the nineties, even at night, especially without the luxury of AC. Our farm was no different than most of our neighbors’. Air conditioning was a luxury. We had fans in every room, though, but they barely stirred the air. That didn’t do much to help you sleep.”

“And you were restless?” Colt provided to keep her talking.

“I was. Maybe it was all the cotton candy I’d had. Maybe I was amped up on sugar. Whatever the reason, I wanted that popsicle. After grabbing it out of the freezer…it was grape, by the way, I took it outside on the sun porch to eat it just to catch a slight breeze if there was one. That’s where I must’ve been when I fell asleep. I woke to smoke…and screaming.” She put her hands up to her ears. “I’ll never forget how they screamed.”

“Oh, baby.”

“I remember waking up and seeing the orange wall of fire behind me. It took me almost a full minute to realize the house was engulfed in flames. I tried to run back inside, tried to make it into the kitchen to wake up my parents, to get my sister and brothers out, but the fire was already too far gone. Instead, I ran out into the backyard and tried to find the hose in the dark. I tripped over toys we’d left out before I reached the water hydrant. But by that time the side of the house erupted like everything else. I realized right then, at that moment, it was too little, too late.”

Huge tears ran down her cheeks. “My sister Shelley was ten, I was eight. My brother Harry was twelve and little Lance just six.”

“Come here, you’re shaking.” He pulled her closer, his arms folded around her shoulders, and he kissed the top of her hair.

“I haven’t told that story since that awful week when it happened, and I had to go live with relatives. I’d lost everything. And I don’t mean clothes or possessions. I’d lost my entire family and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on.” She stared into his face. “I suppose it was better than being sent to an orphanage.”

“Losing your family like that is…was terrible. I never had one to lose.”

“I had eight years of sibling rivalry and…normal. You didn’t even have that.”

He felt the need to change the subject back to her. “Did they ever figure out how the fire started?”

“That’s just it. About six weeks later the police arrested a man who they said followed us home that night from the fair to rob us. They never told me why he had to set the place on fire, though. I never understood that.”

“There’s no understanding that kind of evil. Were you happy living with your relatives?”

“I wouldn’t use the word unhappy. But it was…different. My aunt and uncle weren’t my mom and dad. They had kids of their own who were almost grown. It seemed all the attention was heaped upon them. Personal achievements. Graduations. Weddings. I was an afterthought.”

“Did they ever send you to get counseling?”

“Not until that winter when I started having bad dreams. I went to therapy until school was out. After that, I didn’t seek another therapist until I was in college.”

“Did they address your survivor’s guilt?”

She smiled. “Not until much later.”

“That’s why you don’t like fireplaces.”

“And gas stoves. I picked up certain quirks along the way. What about you? What did you learn growing up in the orphanage?”

“Not to get too attached to people or things.”

“Were you ever placed for adoption?”

Colt shook his head. “No one ever left De La Cruz Home for Boys because no one was ever deemed ‘adoptable,’ not to my knowledge anyway. Why do you think I spent eighteen miserable years there before I left? I tried to run away once, but they brought me back. The punishment was so severe I never tried it again.”

She rubbed his back. “Do you have any good memories at all?”

“Not really. My earliest one starts around four or five. That’s when I realized I was truly all alone in the world. It seemed wrong, you know. It was a crushing blow to my spirit. And then later, when I celebrated my tenth birthday I was savvy enough to know that us kids were being used as props, window dressing anytime the grownups wanted an excuse for a fundraising event. Those were the times we were trotted out where the adults were asked to throw money into the institution without ever really seeing what was going on in there. By the time I was in my teens I realized love didn’t really exist within those walls and I needed to get out.”

She tapped him on the arm. “That’s the way I felt living with my aunt and uncle. It seemed like love existed for everyone else, just not for me, at least not on the same level. Sure, I got birthday presents and Christmas gifts, but I always felt they were simply going through the motions, something you did because you had to, because it was expected, not because you wanted to do it. There was no love attached to the gesture. It wasn’t from the heart. Is that why you joined the military? To get away from that awful place?”

“It started in that last year. When I turned seventeen I decided to put away all those nightmares into the same drawer where I’d kept all my other awful childhood memories of that place. I compartmentalized and started strategizing what I’d do when I was on my own. The day I turned eighteen I walked out of the De La Cruz Home for Boys and hitched a ride to Albuquerque. I found the nearest Army recruiter and signed up. I never looked back.”

“And yet you did,” Naomi pointed out. “That’s where you gravitated to as soon as you got out. I bet I know why.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the only place you knew to go.”

“Well, we’re both here now. And miles away from our miserable memories.”

“I like you, Colt Del Rio. You’re easy to talk to.”

He grinned. “Sugar…Naomi,” he quickly corrected. “I like you, too.”

“And I trust you with my brand-new kitchen. That means a lot. If you’ve only been in town a week, mind my asking where you live?”

“That’s kind of tricky. My buddy Simon offered me a room in his house. But since he’d just formed a little family of his own, I nixed the idea of moving in with them right away. I’d just be a third wheel in the middle of a brand-new relationship.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“And then Cord offered me some little studio across from the animal clinic. I turned that down, too. Then there’s Nick and Jordan, who offered me the use of their apartment over their garage.”

“I’m beginning to see a pattern.”

“Yeah. When it comes to living arrangements there’s only so much charity a man can swallow before he has to stand on his own two feet without help from his buddies. So I took matters into my own hands and found a piece of rental property at the edge of town away from the prying eyes of my friends.”

He looked out at the sinking sun as it was swallowed up by the horizon. Dusk set in, turning the sky into streaks of pinkish-orange hues.

She prodded him to go on. “Prying eyes? Because they care about you?”

“Just because we’re a tight-knit bunch doesn’t mean I want them keeping tabs on me twenty-four/seven.”

“I see. That would get old fast.”

“Exactly.”

“So, where’s this house?” When he didn’t answer, she bumped his shoulder. “You’ve seen mine.”

“South of here, at the junction before Ocean Street turns into Highway 1. It’s a fixer-upper, too. You’d feel right at home there.”

“I’d like to see it. How’d you find it?”

“Cord’s wife Keegan put me in touch with the owner, a guy by the name of Russell Dennis. He recently married a woman he’d been dating for several years and was looking to find a renter. I think Keegan understood how much I needed my own space, someplace that wasn’t butting up against the veterinary clinic or the B&B and therefore wasn’t so close to certain busybodies.”

“Like Cord. Or Nick. Or Simon.”

“Yeah. You should’ve seen the size of that little guest house where they wanted me to squat. I swear it seemed smaller than the trailer back in De La Cruz, more like a claustrophobic jail cell. I just couldn’t do it. If I’d moved into any of those places they offered me, I’d’ve been back to drinking within the week.”

“Why are you drinking?” When he sent her a disgusted look, she pushed on. “It’s a valid question. Have you asked yourself that? Because until you find the answer to that one major thing, it seems to me it won’t matter where you live. You’ll still drink.”

“Maybe. But sometimes a good shot of whiskey is all you need to dull the pain.”

It suddenly made sense to Naomi. “You’re drinking to forget what you saw while you were in the Army. Or maybe the CIA.”

This time Colt could hear genuine curiosity in her voice, as if she’d already made up her mind about it. There was little he could say to stem the tide and he wasn’t sure he wanted to undertake the effort. “War is messy. Some people are quick to form a parade and forget all about the chaos.”

By this time the stars had come out to play. Colt looked up at the darkening sky before turning to stare at her. “I’ll start building the new cabinets tonight.”

“But it’s so late. You don’t have to do that.”

“Might as well. Nothing else to do. It’s better to keep busy.”

She stood up. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yep,” he said quietly, getting to his feet.

“Don’t work too late.”

He took a step closer. “Naomi, what do we do about this attraction between us?”

She blew out a breath. “I need some time to…”

In one smooth, quick move, he grabbed her around the waist, bringing her into his chest. The kiss he planted on her lips went on for several long minutes before he let her go, leaving her breathless. “Maybe you could think faster.”

“I’m…I will. Maybe we could have dinner tomorrow night.”

He ran a finger down her cheek. “That’d be a start.”

 

 

After Naomi left, instead of jumping straight into a cold shower, he worked like a fiend until one in the morning to finish the work he’d promised. Bone-tired, he put away his tools and locked up the shop.

A fat moon greeted him outside. A few wispy clouds scurried past the huge orb of light and guided him to his ride, a vintage red 1952 Ford pickup, one of the original F series, that he’d bought four years after joining the Army. Since it was his first set of wheels, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. Maybe that’s why during all his tours of duty, he made sure the vehicles he owned were stored in immaculate, temperature-controlled facilities that had no chance of any weather-related mishaps, like flooding.

He rarely drove the 1968 silver SS Chevelle he’d found abandoned at a salvage yard outside Albuquerque or the seafoam green 1969 Camaro four-speed he’d found at an auction house online.

Like the old pickup, those cars had been fully restored to their original showroom quality and were still housed back in New Mexico. It wasn’t lost on him that his choice of transportation represented some part of his teenage years, years he’d missed out on.

He’d have to wait and see how things went here before he trucked the muscle cars out to California. No sense going to the added expense if this move turned out to be a bust. A holding pattern, he mused, one of many he’d experienced in his life.

He jammed the key into the truck’s ignition and listened to the engine purr like it had just rolled off the assembly line.

Making the right turn from the parking lot, he headed down Ocean Street toward his rental, noting Highway 1 was deserted this time of night.

Immediately south of town his headlights framed the twisty ribbon of blacktop as he followed the fence line built for keeping cattle off the roadway. He braked for a little red fox—maybe a pup separated from its mama—as it darted from underneath the man-made barrier, a fence that did little to hold back wildlife like a fox with the speed and cunning of a canine.

It reminded him how hard Cord had been needling him to adopt one of the strays at the clinic. But watching the crafty fox avoid human contact, Colt wondered if having a dog would impact that—the idea of catching a glimpse of coyote or wolf in their natural habitat so close to his house. He’d noticed right after moving in that wild animals seemed to gather on the cliffs. For a kid who’d been raised without pets as part of a normal household routine, wildlife had always fascinated him. Not that he’d admit that to Cord.

He changed course and swung the wheel into a bend in the road and ended up on an old dirt lane that led to the property, a slice of isolation away from prying eyes or nosy neighbors.

Russell’s house wasn’t much to look at. But what it lacked in curb appeal it made up for with the view. Located fifty yards off the highway to the west, it was nestled in a green valley, a natural glen with gently rolling land that sloped upward. To Colt, it looked like a picture postcard. He’d fallen in love with the area at first sight, a little magic right in front of him that made the move seem so much more tolerable.

He often walked the cliffs at odd hours just to think. With the wind in his face as he looked out into the ocean below, it was his own little piece of heaven—for now anyway.

He came to a stop in front of a rustic cabin built out of pine. It had a wide porch, two dormer windows up top and a tin roof. The property had several outbuildings, a workshop and a shed along with a ramshackle garage where Colt had shoveled out years of Russell’s garbage just so he had room to park his truck in a sheltered space. He hoped to God it didn’t one day decide to crumble and fall down on his precious pickup.

Mounting the old creaky steps to the front door, he sensed he wasn’t alone before he ever slipped the key into the lock. The rocking chair to his left moved, causing the old wood beneath it to snap and buckle. One glance had him sucking in a breath as Scott Phillips appeared from the shadows.

It wasn’t the first time he’d encountered the guy who’d died in Iraq. Hell, it wasn’t even the first ghostly face he’d seen since leaving the Army.

“It’s late,” Colt grunted, stepping inside the cabin and into the front room. “I’m tired and not in the mood to debate your need for attention.”

He slammed the door shut only to see Scott’s image appear in the living room. The ghostly Scott simply dropped into an overstuffed side chair and got comfortable.

“Why can’t you take a hint?” Colt said, his voice rising in frustration.

“Have we finished our little temper tantrum yet?” Scott stated in a calm but determined tone.

Colt responded by muttering an obscenity before inhaling long, measured breaths to calm himself. “I told you before. Leave. Me. Alone. Go peddle your advice somewhere else. I’m not interested.”

“Sure you are. You’ve spent a lifetime searching for the family you never had. Don’t ignore the circle of friends that are right here, within two miles of where we are, friends who are willing to fill that role. There’s Simon. Nick. Cord. Ryder. Family. Family doesn’t have to be blood, you know?”

“Stop. Those guys have their own families to take care of, they have their own significant others, kids even. They don’t need the likes of me worming my way into their neat little lives they’ve crafted for themselves. Good for them. I’m thirty-six years old and I don’t expect at this late date to suddenly find a soulmate hiding in plain sight. It’s unrealistic.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Circumstances change all the time. Just ask Nick.”

“You don’t get it, do you? I’m not asking anybody, anything. I want to be left alone. Give me room to breathe, will you? Is that asking too much?”

“You’ve always wanted to be left alone.”

“That’s not true. Not when I was a kid. I yearned for someone to reach out and hug me. No one ever did. I got used to it.”

Scott let out a sigh. “No, you didn’t. Get used to it, that is. Once upon a time you had hope that things would turn out better.”

“Once upon a time?” Colt questioned. “Like a fairy tale? Yeah. Right.”

“All kids dream.”

“If you say so. I’m going to bed. Make sure you lock up when you leave,” Colt snarled, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he moved toward the bedroom.

This time, Scott let him go without more nagging. Although his face winced when Colt slammed the door. “Like a petulant child,” Scott uttered, facing the fact, yet again, that he hadn’t been able to get through to the stubborn hard-headed man. But it didn’t mean he would give up. With the holidays approaching, this might be the first time in a long time that Colt wasn’t forced to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas alone. Opportunity was here and now. Colt’s tendency to resist any help was the obvious downside.

He still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

And he intended to use every one of them to his advantage.