A whoosh of shock stole his next words as a figure winding through the orchard grounds seized his attention. Lucas twisted his body sideways, pulling Haddie along with him, gaze straining. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but that imposing, rigid stature—ever a soldier’s gait—and that sharp profile . . .
No. Flagg wouldn’t come here. Not when he knew how carefully Lucas separated his two worlds. If Kit knew where Lucas really was all the months when she thought he was down in Mexico working on a fruit farm, nursing his wounds—
“Luke?” Beckett’s voice rose from below. “You ready?”
He took a breath and tore his focus away from the man who wasn’t Flagg. He patted Haddie’s back with one hand and, with his other, released his hold on the wall to cling to the cable. “Here we go.”
With a huff, he pushed away, his palm scraping against the line as his weight sent him gliding until his feet hit the wood planks once more. Beckett slackened the rope and Lucas pushed off again.
Moments later, he landed in the grass. He unclipped the carabiner from Haddie’s harness then crouched to let her slide free. But she lunged for him all over again, kissing his cheek and squeezing his neck.
“Someone has a fan club.”
He glanced up to meet his sister’s smirk. “Well, I did rescue her.”
“Didn’t mean her.” Kit folded her arms as Lucas rose and Haddie skipped away to her mother. “I meant them.” She nodded her head toward a group of teen girls gathered near the parking lot.
Beckett stepped forward to take Lucas’s harness. “I give it two minutes before one of them comes over, makes the climb, then pretends to get scared at the top—just so Superman here can race to the rescue.” He slipped his arm around Kit and kissed the top of her head. “Installing the climbing wall was genius, Mrs. Walker. Good for business and for your brother’s image.”
Lucas pasted on his best scowl. “You guys are ridiculous, you know that?” Not to mention they acted as much like newlyweds as ever, never mind they’d been married almost two years.
Which was exactly why he’d been staying at the Everwood B&B all spring and summer instead of the orchard farmhouse he’d grown up in. ’Course, it helped that all his friends lived there at the moment, too—Mara in the owner’s private living quarters on the first floor, and Sam, Marshall, and Lucas in a row of rooms upstairs.
Even Jen had taken to staying at the B&B in recent weeks. She said it was to avoid the overbearing mess of the house she’d inherited from her parents, but he had a feeling she just didn’t want to be left out of their little group. After all, she was the reason they were all so connected in the first place. She’d befriended each of them separately, eventually stitching individual threads of friendship into something sturdy and complete.
Speaking of, he had somewhere to be soon. “Beck, you okay to man the wall on your own now? I’ve got that engagement party tonight, but I want to check the hitch on the tractor before I head out.”
“It’ll disappoint your fan club to see you go, but yeah, I can handle it from here. Kit can help if any more rescues are required. Or my dad—he’s around here somewhere.”
Lucas turned to his sister. “Kit, today was perfect. You’ve built this place into something incredible. Grandma and Grandpa would be proud.”
“Lucas, I . . .” She paused. “I can’t decide whether to tear up because of how sweet it is of you to say something like that or go into shock over you going to any kind of party at all.”
“I’m not a total hermit.”
“Says the man who routinely disappears for more than half a year at a time. And when he is home, chooses to live in a B&B instead of with family. And treats extended silences like first-rate entertainment.”
Was it just him or was there an underlying hint of . . . something he couldn’t decipher in his sister’s tone? But as quickly as he detected it, she shook it off. “Go on. I’ll help Beck at the wall. He’s my first-rate entertainment.”
Lucas played up his scowl. “Gross. And you wonder why I don’t live with you guys.” At Kit’s laugh, he turned, still smiling . . . but froze before taking a single step.
Arthur G. Flagg stood not ten feet away, thick eyebrows raised. “Danby.”
Lucas thrust a glance over his shoulder to Kit. For once, he was grateful for her constant adoration of her husband. Meant she was too busy flirting with Beckett to notice Flagg, entirely out of place in his starched slacks and crisp shirt and tie.
He marched forward and motioned for Flagg to follow. More strands of hair escaped his ponytail and the wind whipped the ends of his shirt. He scratched at the scars underneath his sleeves as he walked. “What are you doing here?”
“You called me three times this week. Would’ve thought I might get a warmer welcome.”
Yes, and if Flagg had actually come all this way instead of simply returning his calls, he must have bad news to deliver. Was he cutting Lucas from the elite team? Moving him back to basic contractor status? “My family doesn’t know—”
“Lucas.”
Every muscle in his body clenched at Flagg’s granite tone and the steel in his eyes and what it must mean. At the realization that whatever it was he’d begun to feel here in Maple Valley, it was only wishful thinking. A false hope.
No match for the truth that his past could always, always find him. If not in his nightmares, then right here where he stood.
2
It was the letter that finally made her do it.
Crinkled yet unopened. Scribbled words faded, blue ink smeared. Return to Sender.
Jenessa’s final attempt, as fruitless as all the others.
When she’d spotted the envelope peeking out from the pile of mail on her newsroom desk, something inside of her—the last of a decades-old brittle hope—had snapped.
So here she stood, swallowed up in the long, late-afternoon shadow of Belville Park, feet rooted to the sidewalk just outside the wrought-iron gate. Her childhood home peered back at her from yawning windows evenly spaced between slabs of white-gray stone, braided ivy climbing the west wall.
It waited, stately and still, as if sensing the coming goodbye—this house that had never been the same after Aunt Lauren disappeared.
“So, are we going in?” Paige Parker’s thick Southern drawl did little to veil her curiosity, anticipation swimming in the younger woman’s eyes.
Probably a normal reaction for anyone taking in Belville Park for the first time. After all, the massive house and surrounding grounds looked like the kind of estate that belonged on the outskirts of a wealthy New England neighborhood or, better, the English countryside . . . not in the middle of small-town Iowa.
“I should warn you it’s not as impressive inside. I mean, yeah, there’s twenty-four rooms, including a master suite that’s bigger than the whole Maple Valley News office, but my parents weren’t exactly up to Marie Kondo standards by the end.”
A hoarder’s paradise—that’s what Lucas had called the house once.
He wasn’t wrong.
Although, it wasn’t fair to entirely blame Mom and Dad for the state of the house. While it was their shared four decades’ worth of possessions cluttering the mansion, Jenessa was the one who’d left half-packed boxes and bags strewn about the place before giving up on the overwhelming task of sorting through their things.