This Time Around Read online

  Absolutely perfect.

  Although, yes, the last time he walked into her home he’d discovered an unnerving number of framed photographs of her previous boyfriend lining the hallway. One was so candid of the man walking to his car, sunglasses on, you could almost, almost wonder if she’d snapped it from across the street. And sure, judging the bizarre shift in neckline from blue to green in that framed snapshot at the end of the hall, you could almost, almost be led to believe she’d photoshopped him into the family Christmas photo, Santa hat and all.

  But what was photoshopping a person into a photo besides a noble desire for inclusion? And what was snapping a photo in broad daylight without the subject’s knowledge but one mere step beyond affection? Skew it a bit one way and it might require a restraining order, sure, but skew it the other and she was the world’s best girlfriend.

  Right now, she was the world’s best girlfriend. Theo couldn’t think of one person he’d rather be sitting with at this moment.

  Well, one. But that person was fourteen years and 2,629 miles away, and he had learned a long time ago how to carry on with a good life despite the ever-present memory of her in the back of his mind.

  Ashleigh glanced up from the menu and caught his gaze. Her lips, pink as the roses decorating the tables, parted slightly. Her cheeks warmed as her eyes slipped back to the menu, no doubt attempting to hide similar thoughts behind her long black lashes. But the secret was out, had been out for a few dates now. She was enjoying herself as much as he was, and neither of them was interested in playing games.

  At this rate, they’d be shopping for rings by June.

  “You know,” Theo said, placing the menu and its lines of French descriptions on the crisp white linen tablecloth. “Fiddler on the Roof is opening on Saturday. I wondered if we could watch the performance, take Bree and Chip out after the show to celebrate her role as Golde—”

  “You mean voluntarily sit beside our exes so we can reexperience at what precise moment Chip lost interest in me?”

  Ashleigh delivered her polished words with nothing but serenity as she gazed at the menu, although he could’ve sworn he saw her left eye twitch.

  She set her menu down and reached out to give his hand a lighthearted squeeze. “I will be forever grateful to those two for setting us up, Theo, but that doesn’t mean I can forget so easily. You, however, are a wonder.”

  She held his hand until he bowed his head with a nod.

  “Of course. My apologies. I brought it up too soon.”

  He hadn’t lied. By soon, he just meant relative to the life span of a two-hundred-year-old bowhead whale.

  It had been more than a year since Chip and Bree had said their “I dos,” almost two since Theo and Ashleigh each had to endure “the talk” with their former significant others. Despite the unpleasant conversation, Theo had understood Bree, both then and now. The heart wanted what it wanted. Openness to heartache, unfortunately, came with the dating landscape. Through it all, Theo had maintained a friendship with both Bree and Chip. The weekend prior he even celebrated with them at their baby shower.

  Baby steps. Ashleigh just needed to take baby steps.

  Like removing the framed photographs of her entwining her arm with someone else’s quite-possibly-photoshopped husband. That would be a good start, particularly before any unfortunate incident whereby Chip or Bree happened to see it one day.

  Theo’s pocket vibrated just as the waiter stepped up to the table. The man gave a short dip of the head. “Good evening, ma’am. Sir. Are you ready to order?”

  “You go ahead, Ashleigh,” Theo said as he slipped his hand into his pocket and peeked discreetly at his phone. His occupation often leaked into his life after hours, but he did his best to remain courteous in the company of others. Especially Ashleigh.

  But one glance at his phone and he paused.

  The name hovering on his screen wasn’t from Harris, calling about the upcoming company merger, or from gubernatorial candidate Lee, wanting reassurance about how the investment into Quicken would affect his future and reputation. It wasn’t even his frequent after-hours caller, multimillionaire Hardy, announcing he’d “accidentally” purchased another Jaguar while on vacation and needed to hide the diminutive expense on the account report from his wife.

  No, it was a name much more important. One that caused him to do something he’d never done in the middle of their meals—slip from his seat with a “Forgive me, I have to take this” to Ashleigh and the waiter.

  The caretaker of his family’s Christmas tree farm.

  The caretaker himself.

  Skye’s father.

  Chapter 2

  Skye

  “You have to go to the hospital.” Skye struggled to keep hold of her father without hurting him further as she eased him into his recliner. Carefully she undraped her arm from his shoulders. “This is going to be one of those nonnegotiables. Like paying taxes. Stopping at crosswalks.” She waved a hand at his slumped shoulder. “Seeing a doctor when part of your body has been crushed into a thousand tiny fragments.”

  He looked at her as though she’d just pushed a three-weeks-expired crab cake into his mouth. “Nonsense. It’ll heal itself—”

  Skye glanced down to his shirt. “Is there something poking out of your arm right now—”

  “My arm’s just like a starfish—” her father continued.

  “Dad? Is your bone coming out of your body?”

  “It’s made to grow back on its own.”

  “That is incredibly inaccurate. You are welcome to look at any amputee as a living example—”

  “Just need to give it time.” He exhaled sharply as he pulled the lever with his good arm and the recliner popped back. He nodded to her. “You go look it up, honey. You’ll see. I’ll not be wasting my time on a bureaucratic system trying to take my money.” He picked up the remote and flicked on the television. “Won’t fall into their trap . . .”

  Skye threw her hands out as she spoke over the television. “Sure. I bet all those doctors hard up for money were just lying in wait to push your tractor over while you weren’t looking. It’s probably some grand ploy happening all over the country. The headlines will be splashed across the news tomorrow: ‘Desperate Surgeons Discovered Hiding in Cornfields from Sea to Sea.’”

  He nodded, his eyes on the TV. “Now you’re starting to think.”

  Skye bit her bottom lip to keep from wasting her breath on a fruitless response. It was time to get her mother.

  She’d been inside her parents’ house almost every day for the past three months; before that, years had passed since she left her childhood home. The strangest thing about being gone and coming back, however, wasn’t how much things had changed. It was how much things hadn’t.

  The blue-and-white wallpaper, the pale-pink couches, the old flamingo table lamps—these were all as they had been when she left for Seattle fourteen years ago. The same lemony Pine-Sol smell permeated the air. Even the flickering television, boxy and crying out to be used as a prop on some set for an I Love Lucy musical, was the one she had watched through high school. Everything in Skye’s life had changed in the past fourteen years. But for her parents? Nothing.

  Well, nothing except for the dozen landscape oil paintings covering every square inch of wall space above the couch.

  Skye’s eyes drifted to the glimmer of a poker chip on the shag carpet, now visible beneath her father’s reclined chair. She frowned. Frowned deeper as she picked it up and the words Bristol Casino glinted against the lamplight. A one-hundred-dollar chip.

  Terrrrrific.

  Nothing here had changed at all.

  Her father’s attention and expression shifted as he realized what she held. He started to reach for it, winced, and settled back again.

  “Now how’d that get there?” he said gruffly, eyeing it as if it had slithered in like a lizard and taken post beneath the chair of its own accord. “Must’ve slipped out of my pocket and been stuck in this chai
r for ages.”

  Sure. Because her mother—tidiest woman in all of Appalachia—would’ve let a single day go by without vacuuming under the furniture.

  No, if that coin was under the chair, he’d gone today. Maybe last night.

  She’d only recently come to terms with the reality of her parents’ extreme financial situation. It was the very reason she’d packed up her successful, vibrant Seattle life three months ago and headed back to Whitetop, Virginia, population 412—now 413. At the moment she was going to have to remember the stubborn man was missing some very critical functions in his limbs.

  Medical attention first, Skye. Kill him second.

  “I’ll take that.” He held out his hand, grinning at her as though she were a kindergartener who’d accidentally picked up a cigarette.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” Skye replied with a tight smile, clamping the coin deep inside her fist and then shoving it into her back pocket. She gave his knee a heavy-handed pat as she spoke. “You. Just. Leave. It. To. Me—”

  A rapping on the front door cut her words short. Skye’s eyes moved from the door to the clock on the wall to the blank expression on her father’s face. Her parents always had their little church group over on Thursdays, but who would be knocking on their door at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night?

  “Are you expecting someone?” Skye said, crossing the old, familiar carpet. She opened the door. “Theo?”

  The television in the background dimmed as Skye spoke the name she’d refrained from speaking for just about as long as the carpet beneath her feet had been in existence.

  The yellow porch light shone on the man who wore a two-piece suit as if he were entering a fine establishment instead of her parents’ double-wide. Mist settled on the broad shoulders of his beige overcoat. He belonged in a boardroom, not on a porch with green outdoor carpet and aluminum chairs.

  And yet his clean-shaven chin still carried the lightning scar where he’d fallen off that log and into the creek years ago. Whereas the world beyond was matte black, his skin beneath the porch light was shades of elm-wood brown. His eyes, onyx and wide as they looked down at her, were the same ones she’d looked into the whole of her childhood.

  And in those eyes, one very clear expression.

  He was just as shocked to see her as she was him.

  “Skye.” Her name was a whisper before he cleared his throat and tried again. “Skye . . . I . . . didn’t expect to see you. How is he?”

  Despite asking about her father, his eyes stayed on hers, probing, as though he expected her to vanish at any moment.

  They’d done their best to avoid each other for fourteen years. And yet here they were. It had finally happened.

  “He’s . . . good.” She shook away the bombarding thoughts and questions as she pulled the door open wider and waved a hand to showcase the man in the recliner. She could do this. She could act normal.

  “Theo,” her father said, looking just as startled as Skye as he scrambled for the remote.

  “Considering he got knocked over in a tractor without a seatbelt while isolated out in the middle of nowhere, then dragged himself the length of the farm to get home, he’s okay. A bit delusional, believes he’s some type of arm-growing starfish who doesn’t need medical care. I expect it’ll take about two, maybe three days tops for him to bleed out.”

  “What?” her father said.

  “Hm?” she replied.

  It was bizarre. She was actually managing to keep a cool tone, as though years hadn’t lapsed since she’d seen Theo face-to-face. As though she hadn’t wondered a hundred times in the past three months—as she looked out the airplane window at the blanket of clouds, as she dusted off the mantel of her new fireplace, as she unpacked each cardboard box and set each book in its place—how this precise moment would go.

  The moment she bought the plane ticket, she knew she was going to run into him eventually.

  Theo swiped a raindrop off his brow as he stood on the mat. “Bleeding out. How unfortunate.”

  “And unnecessary. Come on in.” Skye pressed her hand to her rib cage to still her nerves as she stood back.

  “Theo. I didn’t expect you.” The recliner creaked as her father pulled the lever, lowered his feet, and attempted to stand, his elbow supported by his other hand. Her mother appeared and pressed him back into the chair.

  “Ralph, sit down,” Skye’s mother said, pushing gently on his good shoulder until he dropped back down. “I called him.” She shot a sugary smile across the room to Theo.

  Both Skye and her father held the same expression as they watched her cross the room to land a peck on Theo’s cheek. Why?

  As if hearing their question she continued: “Under Section 3A of the Workers’ Compensation policy, employees should notify employers of personal injury—both to self and property—within a reasonable timeframe. And of course”—she slipped off Theo’s overcoat—“Theo would want to know how Ralph was doing, wouldn’t you? Now, dear, how was the circuit? I know you must be so relieved to get tax season behind you.”

  Theo touched his freshly exposed cufflinks with a bit of a startled smile. Her mom, quick as a flash, had settled his coat on the hook and was standing before him, waiting patiently for his reply.

  “It was . . . tedious, I have to admit.” He smiled around the room, his eyes landing on Skye’s only for the span of a blink.

  “Mr. Calhoun didn’t try to pull the wool over your eyes again, did he?” Mom said as though she spent her nights and weekends handling the finances of Southwest Virginia’s elite.

  Theo laughed.

  Skye’s mother laughed back, then went into the nearby kitchen.

  “I’ll be glad to get my weekends back, I’ll say that much. It looks like I’ve missed quite a bit. How are you holding up, Mr. Fuller?”

  “As I told Maggie a hundred times, I’m fine. Just a bit of bruising.” He grunted as Skye’s mother returned and dropped an ice pack onto his shoulder. “You needn’t have come all this way on account of me.”

  Skye felt the old unease rising in her stomach as she watched her injured father try to wave away the ice pack and struggle to stand. Her chest tightened as she watched his eyes rove every crook and cranny of their small living room, checking for anything amiss, things Theo might notice. He pushed several magazines into a neat stack, moved the can of beer onto the coaster beside it. It was behavior her father rarely displayed, behavior she loathed almost as much as the casino coin in her back pocket.

  He was ashamed. In his own home. The one Theo himself—charming as he may be—was responsible for.

  How everyone in this house acted oblivious to this fact was the most infuriating thing of all. Or possibly worse: nobody in this house knew she knew the truth.

  She was alone in her mother’s kitchen last December, sore from neck to fingertips as she stirred the fifth batch of snickerdoodle cookies for her parents’ church’s annual Christmas banquet. The scent of hairspray wafted down the hall as her mother sprayed her curls in place. Her father was finishing up another long day at Evergreen Farm, loading some of the last trees onto cars for the season. The dough was giving Skye such fits that the old wooden spoon cracked clean in half. As she looked for a replacement, she almost didn’t open that last drawer—what would traditionally be called the junk drawer in other homes but was too immaculate for such a slur. And yet on impulse, she did. But instead of a stirrer, the item that caught her eye, folded neatly beside scissors and tape and sewing needle, was an open piece of mail with the letterhead of Evergreen Farm—glinting just like that coin in her pocket—and a statement of her father’s yearly salary typed neatly in the body of the letter. The low number was jaw dropping.

  At the bottom of the cover letter was Theo’s signature.

  She packed up her bags in Washington and moved back to Virginia the following week.

  Be calm, Skye. Be cool.

  “Have a seat, Theo,” her father said. “Let me get you a drink—” He let go of his a
rm and made to push aside a couple couch throw pillows, then groaned as he gritted his teeth and doubled up his grip on his elbow.

  “Sit down, Dad.” Skye moved around the coffee table and lowered him to the couch before he could protest. The firmness in her own voice must’ve startled him enough to obey. She sat on the edge of the coffee table, eye level. “That’s it. You’re going to the hospital. Now.”

  “I’m fine—”

  “You’re not fine. You’re clearly not fine and if it’s broken you’ll need a cast, maybe even surgery—”

  “Oh, and I’m sure you would’ve thought my knee needed surgery fifteen years ago, too, but look at ’er now.”

  Skye squeezed her eyes shut as he slapped his knee, the same knee with the torn ACL that slid out on occasion and caused him to fall and roll on the ground like an NFL player with—well, a torn ACL. “All it needs every now and again is a little tune-up—”

  “Rubbing Vaseline on your knee every six months isn’t a tune-up, Dad. If I had a word to express how unhelpful that is—”

  “Inutile would serve well, I believe,” her mother chimed in as she passed them, handing Theo a cup of lemonade, then moving toward the closet.

  “You bet your bottom dollar it isn’t helpful,” her dad said, giving it another slap. “In fact,” he said, struggling once more to rise, “I think I’ll give it a little tune-up right now . . .”

  Skye felt the groan growing within her, threatening to erupt any moment. She clenched fists and teeth as her body tightened. She was going to have to do it. She was going to have to haul this man over her shoulders, throw him into the truck, and drive him down the mountain. Or worse, call an ambulance.

  “Mr. Fuller, did you get a chance to pick up that Lowe’s order I requested?”