“I think so.”
“I don’t remember that far back. I was a toddler.”
Shane merged into traffic as they got on a main interchange,
and he could finally go faster than the winding roads allowed. “The only thing
I can think of is that my mom didn’t realize she was the other woman, and when
she did, she tried to break it off.”
“You lived in New York?”
He shook his head. “When my grandmother was alive, she used
to travel for work. And I think one of the places was in New York. I just don’t
know where.”
“I don’t know much about my father. Just that he was
bicoastal for work. He traveled a lot. Evidently a perfect way to have more
than one woman in his life.”
The bitter edge to her voice sliced at him. “I don’t know,
Kendall. I do know that he wasn’t a part of my life until I was eight. All of a
sudden my mother said we were moving into this house in California. And she
wasn’t sad anymore. The only thing I remember about the time Larry came into
our lives was that my mom went to the hospital a lot.”
Kendall looked up at him sharply. “Hospital? Was she sick?”
“They never talked about it. I was a kid. How was I supposed
to know if she was sick? She went to the doctors a lot, but it wasn’t cancer.
She always seemed so frail to me, but then again, she was even tinier than you
are.”
Her voice quieted. “I was always afraid to ask my mother
about Lawrence. She’d get so sad when I talked about him that I just stopped
doing it. He never came back after he left that one day. He didn’t even say
good-bye to me.”
Shane popped his knuckles. Her voice was toneless. None of
that made sense to him. The day he’d moved in with Larry, there had been only a
booming laugh and kindness. He’d never felt like a burden. Hell, he’d ended up
calling Larry Dad within the first six months.
Had his mother’s sickness really drawn Larry away from his
other family? Just how sick had she been? And why the hell didn’t he know about
it?
Larry had loved his mother; of that he had no doubt. They’d
always been laughing, the two of them in their own little world. Sometimes
Shane felt separate from them, but the love had been there. And when his mother
died, all Larry’s focus had gone to him.
It still didn’t explain why Larry had cut Kendall out of his
life.
“Even after my father left, my mother never stopped loving
him. I heard her cry every night, but she smiled every morning for me.
Eventually she stopped crying and we went on with our lives. There must have
been some money coming in, or he’d left her with some, because she didn’t work
until I was about ten years old.”
Shane scraped his palm down his jeans. “We never wanted for
money. Some years were better than others, but I couldn’t remember a time when
Larry ever complained about finances.”
“He must have stopped giving my mother money in the lean
times, because she went to work while I was at school and started taking on
boarders at the house. When I was sixteen, I convinced her to turn it into a
bed-and-breakfast to earn extra money.”
He tried to picture Kendall with strangers around her all
the time. And he found that it wasn’t a stretch to imagine. She took people in
and made them feel comfortable. She never lacked in kindness and never lost her
temper with anyone other than him.
They lapsed into silence, her attention on the landscape and
the endless rows of trees in varying colors between gold and red. They pulled
into a rest stop just outside the New York state line.
While he refilled their cooler with sodas, ice, and a few
sandwiches, she chased a puppy in the parking lot. Of course she’d made friends
with a teenager, running the dog around between two lanky boys.
Kendall didn’t even think twice about asking. And the
good-natured sixteen-year-old boys had been dumbfounded when she’d turned her
lethal grin in their direction. They probably would have handed over the dog to
her if she’d asked.
Shane was glad the sadness was out of her chestnut-brown
eyes. She fell into a heap in the middle of a small patch of grass as the
exuberant puppy licked her face and neck. Her laughter rang out in the waning
sun.
He nursed a soda and watched her for a few more minutes
before he waved to her. She waved back and jogged to him.
“Sorry I got so morose in the truck.”
“I’m sorry Larry dropped the ball so bad.” He tucked a loose
lock of hair behind her ear. “I wish you’d known him the way I did.”
“As I said, I had a good childhood. What we didn’t have in
money, my mom made up in creativity and love.”
He cupped her face and dropped a soft kiss on her mouth.
Instead of spiraling out into a hungry meeting of lips like they usually did,
they kept it leisurely paced and sweet. A stiff wind blew across the flat
landscape, and she burrowed into him.
Her warm breath puffed against his neck, and he watched the
clouds roll forward, heavy with snow if he didn’t miss his guess. “I smell
snow.”
“Oh, really? The California boy smells snow?”
“Hey now, I ski.”
She laughed, and the sparkle was back in her eyes. “Good to
know. I can add that to the brochure.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I don’t have the patience to
teach people how to ski. You know that.”
“You can learn patience.”
“Doubtful.”
She tucked her icy fingers under his shirt, and he hissed.
“We’ll see.”
“Let’s get on the road. Bradley waits.”
He opened her door and sighed, handing her his soda. She
grinned and climbed up, her mouth already on the lip of the bottle.
The rest of the drive was uneventful, but he still didn’t
like the look of the sky. He hoped they could outrun the storm that was
brewing.
The lake effect dumped a good six inches of powder on them
before they made it into Buffalo.
Kendall worried the power cord to her phone. “Do you think we’ll
make it home by Thanksgiving?”
“If we can get away from this snow, we should be fine.”
Kendall studied her phone with a frown. “I’m not sure we’re
going to get that lucky.”
He looked up at the clear skies. “Why?”
“We’re heading through Syracuse if we stay on 90. They’re
getting fourteen inches, and we’ve already been set back two hours with
traffic.”
He sighed. “I’m doing everything I can to get you there.”
“I know. I just have a bad feeling.”
“How far is Bradley from Syracuse?”
“Two and a half hours.”
“We’ve got a ways to go.”
She nodded, her phone clenched in her hand as she curled her
arms around her knees. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
The tension in the car slowly grew as the thruway clogged to
a standstill. Instead of the stony gray, the air went orange.
“What is up with the sky?”
She laughed. “Welcome to New York, Shane Justice. The sky
gets iridescent like this when we’re really going to get slammed with snow.”
Wednesday blurred away into gridlock traffic and the
increasing potency of snow. He’d been in a few storms at ski lodges over the
years, but nothing like the pummeling force of the Northeast. His windshield
wipers couldn’t cut the ice-and-snow mix fast enough, and his headlights made
the chaos of the flakes even harder to see through.
Cars pulled off to the side of the road, and he was past an
exit before he could even make out that one had come up. His shoulders were
locked as tight as his grip on the wheel. It was two a.m., and they were still
in central New York.
“We need gas, Kendall.”
She sat forward in her seat. “I think the next rest stop is
in fourteen miles. Is that okay, or do we need to get off at the next exit
instead?”
He looked down at the needle. “Shorter would be better.”
“The next exit is Rome. About five miles ahead, I think.”
“Rome?”
She smiled faintly. “Not even close to impressive.”
“Well, if they have a gas station and a restroom, I’ll be
happy.”
They did indeed have a gas station and restroom. A small
diner sat across the street with three cars and lights blazing. Kendall had
about all she could stand on the highway. What should have been ten hours had
lengthened into sixteen, and they still weren’t close to home.
The early nor’easter wasn’t surprising. In fact, she’d been
expecting them to hit weather far more than they had. But here in her backyard,
Mother Nature was giving her a hard time. As if she weren’t already a mess
about Shane seeing the Heron for the first time.
Maybe a blanket of snow would cover up the dingy landscape
and turn it into a winter wonderland.
She barely stopped the snort as they left the truck at the
gas station and trudged across the street. The snowdrifts came up to her knees,
and the whiteout was complete. There was no way they could drive anymore
tonight.
“Maybe we can make it in by the afternoon.”
She nodded. “It’s okay. I’ll just give my mom a call. Who
says we can’t have Thanksgiving on Black Friday instead? Not like we’ve got the
funds to go shopping, right?”
He frowned; she wrestled open the door against the wind and
the quickly piling snow. “I’m kidding.” The blast of heat in the diner felt
amazing. The rich scent of turkey and gravy and all the fixings cramped her
belly. “Oh my God.”
Shane took a deep breath as well, his eyes lighting with
interest. “Is the diner taking pity on us?”
A redhead came around the register. Her hair was just as
wiry as she was. It stood out around her head like a singed dandelion with a
reindeer antler headband pushing it all back. “Yes, we are. Come in out of that
snow. We couldn’t get home, so we figured we’d bring the Thanksgiving dinner to
anyone that managed to get in here.”
Kendall stomped her feet on the mat inside the door and
shook the snow off her hoodie. “Hi.”
“Hello, hello. Welcome to Benny’s. I’m Benny. Sit where you
like.”
There were a dozen people scattered around the room in
various booths. The only thing they all had in common was the pile of food on
their plates and the hungry clink of silverware. Oh, and they all looked
whipped.
She collapsed in a booth by the window and put her head down
on the table. “Everything hurts.”
Shane sprawled into the seat across from her, his long legs
invading her space. His knee bumped hers. “We’ll get back on the road as soo—”
“No, we’ll just blow through another tank of gas idling on
the highway. It’s stupid.”
He covered her hand with his. “I’ll get you home.”
She looked up. The man was a total pussycat under all the
grump, and this just proved that. “I’ll talk to my mom and let her know we’ll
get there when we get there.”
She didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving without her mother,
but that didn’t seem to be an option. Again, one more option out of her
control. This was not a habit she was looking to make.
Benny slid a plate of rolls and butter on the table and two
large glasses of water. “You two want the special?”
“If it tastes as good as it smells, then yes.”
Benny cackled. “You got it, sugarplum.” She turned to Shane.
“And you, hot stuff?”
Kendall snickered when he simply raised a brow. “Don’t mind
him. The special for us both.”
“Coming up.”
Kendall sipped her water, then broke open a roll. Yeasty
goodness made her mouth water. “I could eat our tires I’m so hungry.”
Shane grunted. “I could eat.”
Twelve hours in a snow-covered box was wearing on both of them.
Conversation had been at an all-time low. Just directions and road conditions
updates between them. Shane was driving remarkably well for never having dealt
with a nor’easter. But then again, there wasn’t much that Shane didn’t do well.
A few minutes later Benny brought back steaming plates full
of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and corn with a liberal dose of
gravy over the entire thing. Kendall’s mouth watered before it landed.
“Eat up, my darlings. I expect empty plates and room for pie.”
Kendall grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
They both dug in, and conversation was a low murmur in the
room. Benny kept a table full of kids happy with construction paper, crayons,
and hand-shaped turkey headbands.
The giggles of the kids and the tired murmurs of families
finally dissolved the last of her bunched muscles. When Benny came back with
the check, they both left a huge tip and got directions to a hotel.
So they’d make it home a little later than expected. At this
point all she cared about was a bed. “There’s no point in trying to make it
through this snow. If we let them salt and plow, it will be a faster drive.”
“Won’t that take forever?”
“Not around here. We’re used to the snow. It’ll be gone by
morning.”
He crowded in on her, dragging the backs of his knuckles
along her midriff. “A bed sounds good to me.”
She slid her nails up his forearm, holding him against her
middle. “Very good.”
They trudged across the street to the truck and had to push
four inches of snow off the windshield. Fortunately the hotel was close. It
still took ten minutes to skid their way there even with Shane’s powerful
truck.
“Shower,” she mumbled as she hopped out of the truck.
“I’ll grab the bags. See what you can get us for a room. Big
bed.”
She nodded, too tired to tease him about the use of that big
bed. Right now she just wanted to wash the grit out of her eyes and collapse
for five straight hours. When she walked into the lobby, a perky blonde smiled
from the check-in desk.
“Hello. Can I help you?”
“Do you have any rooms with a king-size bed?”
She nodded, and her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Just
yourself?”
“No, my…” Hell. What was he? Friend? Lover?
Shane came up behind her, rubbing her back absently. “For
two.”