A Fourth of July Proposal, page 6
Ryker had told her he was two years sober. It could help him hang on to his sobriety if the town would support him a bit.
She stopped at the gate to the parsonage.
If her plan worked, maybe she could do that. Help people to see that he wasn’t like his dad and his brothers. It was easier for people to keep the same image of him that they’d had for years. That didn’t take any effort.
They should make an effort. They needed to think.
She had already done that with Jean, on a small scale, when she’d made it clear that Ryker wasn’t getting a free meal for nothing. Maybe she could do more of that kind of thing. If Ryker wanted it. Surely, he didn’t want people glaring at him, misjudging him for however long he was here?
And maybe...maybe she could ask him to help her change?
Her whole body flushed at the thought. She still had this stupid crush, and spending time with Ryker wouldn’t help.
Or would it? She’d made up his character in her head. She didn’t really know him.
He’d been divorced twice. That meant he had some problems with relationships. Maybe, spending time with him, she’d find out what it was that ended those marriages. Things that would kill this crush.
And she could shed some of her nice reputation. The guy with those tattoos and the leather jacket? Yeah, he knew about not caving in to other people’s expectations.
Was she being stupid?
Maybe. But it might be a way to deal with this seething unrest that was building up inside. Before she wrapped a car around a tree.
Was she bold enough to try?
* * *
MARIAH SENT AN EMAIL to both Ryker and Rachel, and Rachel sent back some sketches. And, in an email that did not cc Mariah, she asked Ryker if they could meet and talk.
Ryker had managed to clean up the one laptop and explained to the owner about cookies and viruses and was confidently expecting to see the machine back for another cleaning before long. He’d checked out the other two, run some scans and then paused.
If he agreed to set up their websites, he was committing to stay for a while. He wasn’t sure yet that he wanted to do that.
He’d intended to get in and out as quickly as he could. Most of his memories of Carter’s were not good. Especially the ones tied to the house he was supposed to prepare for sale.
Somehow, over the week or so he’d been here, he’d remembered other, more pleasant things.
As the snow was finally overcome by the rising temperatures, signs of life were springing up. There was a smell he remembered as spring in the air. In the city, with so many competing and conflicting aromas, he’d forgotten what that was like.
He didn’t go out much in Carter’s and didn’t like the reaction he often got when he did, but it was quiet, and sometimes even relaxing here. As long as he didn’t think about the house, he was more at peace than he’d been for a while.
Benny was a good guy. Whatever had made him act out, years ago when Ryker was still around, that was long gone. He’d been through some bad stuff but had a better attitude about it than Ryker did, and Ryker hadn’t lost use of his legs.
Ryker didn’t have a place to go back to whenever he did leave Carter’s Crossing. Before he’d come here, his landlord had wanted the apartment he rented for a kid who was boomeranging back home. Ryker could find another place, but he didn’t have one ready right now. He freelanced, so could do most of any work that came in right here, from his laptop.
He was in limbo, for the moment. His sponsor was back home, but Mr. G had stepped into that role.
Maybe he should take some time here, take his time with the house. If he could stay mostly inside, where he didn’t interact with the general population of Carter’s Crossing, that would be great.
Maybe he needed this time to figure out what he was going to do with himself now. After two years of sobriety, he was finally in a headspace where he could trust his decisions. Maybe, then, people might be able to trust him, as well.
Rather than make that call right now, he agreed to talk with Rachel. She offered to pick him up. It was still cold to be driving around on the bike.
He was curious what she wanted to talk about, but knew he’d soon find out. He didn’t spend much time thinking about it, as he waited by the bottom of the stairs to his new place. Patience was possibly his one virtue.
She stopped her car in front of the repair shop, and he opened the passenger door and slid in.
Rachel gave him a nervous smile. “Hey, Ryker. Are you okay if we go someplace private?”
Ryker paused. With many women, he’d know what that meant. With Rachel? He had no idea.
“Or not. I mean, I didn’t want to talk at the diner, but I’m not trying to kidnap you.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’m a little nervous. I thought we could go out to Nelson’s farm. He and Mariah are busy today, so we’ll be alone. It’s nice out there.”
He could see the tension in her grip on the wheel. He couldn’t imagine what was making Rachel so nervous, but he wasn’t afraid of her. If she felt better talking at some farm, he could live with that.
“Where is Nelson’s farm?” He knew the Carter family—everyone in town did. But they hadn’t had a farm property that he’d ever heard of.
“It’s the old Abbott place.”
The Abbotts had moved away before Ryker was born. The place had been falling to pieces.
But he knew where it was. “That should be fine.”
Rachel nodded. “Good.”
She shifted the car into gear, checked over her shoulder and her mirrors and pulled out onto the road. They drove past the mill, the one Abigail Carter had closed, where he saw signs of construction, then on out to the highway.
“Nelson Carter bought the Abbott place?” Ryker was long away from news of Carter’s Crossing.
“When he moved back, yeah. He has rescue horses out there.”
That sounded like the town golden boy, Nelson Carter.
“Where did he move back from?”
“He went to school in California, then was down near Richmond, working in a veterinary practice that specialized in horses. After his wedding fiasco, he moved back here, opened his own practice and bought this place.”
Ryker didn’t pay much attention to the professional part of Nelson’s history. It was a given that a Carter would be successful.
“What happened at his wedding?” This was the interesting part.
Rachel fidgeted in her seat. “I don’t gossip.”
“Is it a secret?”
She sighed. “Not really.”
“Did it involve you?”
She turned her head, startled. “Me? No, of course not.”
She turned back to the road, her cheeks flushed.
“I always thought you and he might end up together.” They’d spent a lot of time with each other, back in high school, as he remembered.
For some reason, that made her jaw clench.
“Nelson and I have no romantic interest in each other. He was engaged to someone in Richmond, and she didn’t show up to the wedding. Her dad was one of the partners at his practice, and it got really messy. So he came back here.”
Rachel gripped her mouth tightly shut, so Ryker knew he wasn’t going to hear any more.
“And there’s still nothing between you and Nelson?” Was that why she was so upset?
“No. Nelson and I are just friends. We’ve always been friends. People can stop thinking there’s anything more. He’s engaged to Mariah now anyway.”
Ryker digested that information. Mariah had been wearing a ring, but he hadn’t wondered where it came from. Mariah was pretty, but he hadn’t been interested. He had a spectacularly bad history with relationships, so had cut that idea out of his plans.
He did wonder how Rachel really felt about Nelson, and Nelson engaged to Mariah. She was obviously close enough to Nelson to be comfortable at his place when he wasn’t there.
If she did care about Nelson, that might explain why she wanted to leave town. Couldn’t fault her for that. In Ryker’s opinion, Rachel’s kindness would be a bigger asset in a relationship than Mariah’s more obvious beauty, or planning abilities, but he wasn’t Nelson.
After two failed marriages, he had a better idea of the traits that would make a relationship last. Not that anyone was asking him.
Rachel pulled into the driveway to the Abbotts’ old place.
The house was still falling down, while the barn looked well maintained.
“Does Nelson live here?” Would Nelson live in the barn? Because no one was living in that house.
Rachel laughed, some of the tension gone now that they had arrived.
“No, he has an apartment over the carriage house at Abigail’s. He didn’t like the idea of his grandmother living alone there.”
“None of the other Carters are still here?”
Ryker hadn’t paid any attention to Carter’s Crossing after he’d left. He’d wanted to forget his past, and he’d severed all ties to the town. Back now, after all these years, it was easy to assume things were the same. It might look like nothing changed, but apparently, some things did.
“No. Everyone else moved away. Nelson’s the only one who’s come back.”
Ryker felt an eyebrow lift. That surprised him. There had been a lot of Carters, and they seemed to have it good here. But he’d grown up in a run-down house, outside town, with an alcoholic abusive father, little food and less money. He didn’t know anything about the world the Carters lived in.
Rachel braked near the barn and turned off the car. Ryker saw five horses in the field.
She undid her seat belt and opened the door.
“We can go in the barn if it gets cold. But it’s quiet out here. It’s a good place to think.”
Ryker nodded and followed her to the fence. The five horses turned to watch them, and then started over. Rachel reached into her pocket and pulled out some carrots.
“You come here a lot?”
She shrugged. “Not a lot, but enough.”
She propped her arms on the fence and waited while the horses approached. One hung back, but the others all pushed their heads toward her, eager for the carrots.
Ryker didn’t know horses, but even so, these weren’t pretty. They mostly looked old and the worse for wear. They wouldn’t have a lot of homes queueing up to take them, if Nelson decided to close the farm down.
Ryker had always been resentful of the town boys, the ones with money and nice homes. But Nelson was doing something good. Maybe he’d lost some of that entitled confidence he’d worn when he was in high school.
With the carrots gone, the horses started to wander away. Rachel turned around, arms still propped behind her on the top of the fence. Her gaze was focused inward, and she drew a breath.
She was finally ready to get to whatever she needed to say, out here where there was no one else around.
Ryker had no clue. He couldn’t begin to imagine what Rachel wanted to talk about. He shoved his hands in his pockets and waited.
She met his gaze, then dropped her own to look at the ground in front of her. Her foot was tapping.
“I should have asked you this first. How long are you staying in Carter’s—I mean Cupid’s Crossing?”
Every time Ryker heard the name Cupid’s Crossing he wanted to ask if the speaker was serious. It was a stupid name. He got the connection with the romance business the town was trying to generate. He was doing the website for it, after all. But he was glad he never had to tell anyone in his unit he was from a place called Cupid’s Crossing.
Rachel’s toe started to dig into the slushy snow in front of her.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
He wasn’t sure what she wanted, but he wasn’t making promises.
“But you’re here long enough to do the town website. And to get your home ready to sell.”
House, not home. It hadn’t been a home for a long time.
He shrugged. “I can do the website remotely. I don’t have to be here for that.”
“How long will it take to get the house ready?”
He gazed out over the pasture. There were two answers to that question. The actual hours it would take to do the physical work. And then, the added time for him to deal with the parts of the job that weren’t physical, that involved memories and emotions. He didn’t know how long that part would take.
He glanced back at Rachel, who was watching him.
“I don’t know.”
She kept watching him. “Would you like me to help?”
He took a step back. He had no idea why she would want to involve herself in cleaning up the mess in the house, but it was a terrible idea. Probably enough gossip had spread around town after they’d had to send an ambulance to get his father out of there, but he had no desire for more talk about how his father had let things go.
“Only if it would help. I’ve done this kind of thing before, helped when someone had to go into a home. It can be a difficult thing. What to keep, what to get rid of, what there isn’t room for...”
For some people, that would be the problem. Not for him. As far as he was concerned, everything was going to the dump. There was nothing there he was interested in keeping. And he didn’t care if his father wanted anything. The old man had never cared about what his kids wanted.
Rachel took another long breath and closed her eyes. “Not to push, but everyone knows things were bad at your place. And I don’t know your story, but the fact that you’re going to AA makes me think that maybe there are things in that house that could be a problem for you. I’m just saying, if I can help, I’d be happy to.
“Because there’s something I want you to do for me.”
* * *
RYKER INTENDED TO say no. It was hard to ask for help. He’d worked on it in AA. He’d had to admit sobriety wasn’t something he could handle on his own.
Having Rachel go through the dump he’d grown up in was too much.
He knew the kind of home that Rachel had been raised in. The kind where parents cared. They came to school events. They noticed if you skipped school. They made sure you had food, and clothes and a clean, safe place.
She had probably seen some of the other side thanks to her father’s job. But that didn’t mean he wanted her to see how bad it had been in his place. He didn’t need more pity. Especially not from her.
There’d been a time, back in high school, when she’d looked at him as if he was someone, as if he wasn’t a troublemaking kid on the fast track to failure. She’d almost made him believe he could be different.
Time had proven otherwise. And he needed to guard against her insidious optimism.
He didn’t want Rachel to see the place. But he didn’t say so. Not when she wanted something.
What could she want from him?
His assets were few. He traveled light. He’d learned to hurt people and defend himself in the air force, but that wasn’t anything he connected with Rachel. Was she secretly being threatened?
He could work with computers. Did she want a website?
She was waiting for him to respond.
“What do you want me to do for you, Rachel?”
If she wanted a website, they didn’t need to come somewhere private to talk. That left his skills from when he’d been enlisted. He had hoped he’d put his violent days behind him. If someone was hurting Rachel, though...
Rachel stared at the horses, not him.
“I need to leave Carter’s. If I stay here, I’m going to spend my time filing papers for my uncle, organizing my father’s life and eventually living with fourteen cats. I want a life.”
Ryker had left Carter’s, and he’d searched for a life. It hadn’t worked out well. Rachel had better odds in her favor, but that didn’t mean she’d find what she was looking for. The problem with leaving to change things was that you were the same person when you arrived at the new place. Your problems tended to piggyback along with you.
As if she’d heard him, she continued on.
“If I leave, I think it will be easier to set better boundaries and find things I want to do. I need to say no to people, and it’s hard to do that with people who gave you peppermints in church. But I also need to change myself, or I’ll keep doing the same things in a new place.
“I’m a boring person, with no backbone. I can’t leave until after Jaycee’s wedding this summer, and I can’t do everything at once, but for these next few months, I want to start changing. That’s what I want your help with.”
Ryker could have been relieved that she didn’t want him to be her bodyguard, or some kind of superhero from a movie, but this didn’t sound a whole lot better.
“How do you think I can help you with that?” He kept his distance, as if she could weave a spell on him if he got too close.
She looked at him then. Her brown eyes were intent, her cheeks flushed from the cold or embarrassment. The tension in her shoulders and the grip of her hands on the fence showed she wasn’t at ease.
“Ryker, you’ve lived about three times more of a life than I have. You’re not boring, and you’re not nice. I’m both.
“You can shake off what people think about you, while I’m a chronic people pleaser.
“I’m about to turn thirty, and I’m tired of wasting my life. I want you to help me become more like you.”
Ryker hadn’t felt a sense of danger like this since he’d been deployed. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising, and his fists were clenching in his pockets.
“You don’t want to be like me.” He didn’t want anyone to be like him. He hated to think of what Rachel would have to go through to get anywhere close to what he was like.
She sighed. “I don’t want to be exactly like you, and I couldn’t be. But I want to move closer to your side of the scale.”
