Page 6

chapter

three

Come As You Are – Nirvana

FONTANA

The urgent knocking jolted Fontana awake, a lingering unease clinging to her like morning mist. As she stumbled to the door, she stubbed her toe against a chrome chair she’d picked up at a flea market last week.

The vinyl seats needed reupholstering, but at five bucks apiece, she figured it was a fair trade.

“Coming,” she called, surprised she was even considering answering the door at eleven at night. Most in Promise didn’t bother locking theirs, but she always did. A habit she couldn’t break, thanks to her father. She glanced around for a weapon, freezing as a second round of pounding shook the door.

“Quinn? I apologize for the late hour, but I need to talk to you. It’s Campbell True.”

“Oh, shit.” Fontana stalled, her toes curling into the warped linoleum.

She spared a brief glance at her attire: pink tank top, navy sweatpants.

Angry at herself for considering her appearance, she grabbed a baseball cap from the kitchen counter and shoved her tangled mass of hair inside.

Sliding the latch, she eased the door open.

Back to her, he stood at the edge of the narrow patio, his booted foot tracing a streak of black on the cement, his outstretched arm braced against the wrought iron railing.

She smelled the peppery trace of his cologne, watched the cords in his shoulder flex when he dragged his hand free of his pocket.

Without the shelter of a suit coat, the musculature of his build surprised her.

Lithe arms, broad chest, lean hips. A runner, she would bet.

“Mr. True,” she said, focusing on a point beyond his left shoulder, “what are you doing here?”

Startled, he tilted his head, a shaft of moonlight catching him like a strike across the jaw.

Stubble darkened his cheeks, fatigue dulled the skin under his eyes.

Behind oblong silver frames, they glittered, beneath them, his lips tightened.

Turning, he moved forward, uncaring or— please, let it be this —unaware of his effect on her.

“Where is he?”

She blinked. “Who?”

His hands clenched into fists at his sides. He had changed and wore all black like the damned devil. “ Where , Quinn?”

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Slapping at the screen door, she stepped outside, slightly pacified when he backed up. “Coming to my house in the dead of night and?—”

“Kit.” Campbell tugged his hand through his hair, those gorgeous dark strands. “I’m looking for Kit. Have you seen him?”

His chest rose with each staggered breath.

Had he run through the field separating her house from his?

Did she imagine the alarm in his voice? One way to find out.

“Looking for your brother? My goodness, Atlanta, have you managed to lose him already? What’s it been, five hours? Bravo.” She clapped .

“Listen”—Campbell slammed his palm against the archway above her head, hemming her in—“I’ve been searching for that kid since I got here.

Took a little detour giving an ungrateful Hellcat a ride to the mechanic, which made me even later getting home.

I finally located John Nelson at Zoozie Hamilton’s, and he said Kit practically lives here, so you understand why I’m standing on your broken-down doorstep after dark. ”

“You’re the landlord. If anything’s broken, fix it.”

He paused, his shoulders slumping. He ejected a puff of air through parted lips. “He’s here, isn’t he? John Nelson said you’re very close to him. You’d be worried if you didn’t know where he was.”

“In the gazebo,” she admitted, this show of concern not what she’d imagined coming from the man Kit laughingly called the Invisible Brother.

“Gazebo?” His brow furrowed, glasses slipping down his incredibly perfect nose. “What gazebo?”

“Out back. In the garden.”

“My mother never had a garden.”

She laughed softly, twisting a strand of hair that had gotten loose from her cap around her finger. “Your mother doesn’t live here. I do. Come on, I’ll show you.”

She retraced her steps through the house, the glow from a dangling bulb inside the pantry providing enough light.

She didn’t want him—this stranger who owned her house and looked like he’d stepped off a European runway—to see dirty dishes in the sink or nursery catalogs spread across the scarred pine table.

“Kit has a sleeping bag. An insulated one my sister gave him for his birthday. And a battery-operated lantern your grandfather gave him for Christmas. He likes to read and search for UFOs. When he sleeps here, he has a firm bedtime. I don’t usually let him stay out this late, but…

” She shrugged and nudged a potted calla lily she was nursing back to life from he r path.

“It’s not that he seemed upset, but I didn’t want to rock the boat. ”

“Fine. Sure. Whatever you say. Thanks for hiding him from me.”

Fontana swiveled, her shoulder catching him in the ribs.

“Let’s get something straight. I don’t know you.

And what I know, I don’t like . Kit’s senseless mother and his only sibling have horribly neglected him, leaving a befuddled old man and an impoverished neighbor to care for him.

That’s what I’ve seen for the two years I’ve lived in this—what did you call it?

—decrepit shack. So, if I don’t bestow what you consider due respect, at least give me credit for not being a hypocrite. ”

Fontana believed in honesty, had always been a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” kind of girl.

This attitude had caused nothing but trouble with her father, among others.

And the pain that sketched across Campbell True’s face was tangible enough to send her back a step, making her wonder if she’d judged him too harshly, too quickly.

CAMPBELL

Campbell circled around her, intent on getting outside before her soulful blue eyes gobbled him up. The scent of honeysuckle—he’d finally identified the fragrance— told him she was following closely behind. And he’d recalled her name. A unique one .

Fontana .

He was disconcerted, itchy, feeling as though he were outside his skin. Like he wore a shirt two sizes too small. He owed her. When Campbell True never owed anyone anything. After talking briefly with John Nelson, he’d realized he had to give this woman credit—and lots of it.

She’d been there for Kit when neither he nor Celia had been. And for some reason, he found it impossible to utter even a simple thank you.

Still playing the arrogant part he’d been born to.

Locked in and holding.

“Excuse the mess,” she said, tucking a strand of golden hair into her cap, her gaze flicking to the cluttered table. He wished he didn’t think she looked adorably tousled, a little sleepy, and, frankly, kissable as hell.

“Looks fine,” he murmured, glancing away from temptation.

It looked more than fine. Resurfaced wood caught stray moonbeams, throwing them against energetic pastel walls.

Patterned rugs of various sizes were scattered about in no particular arrangement.

Cozy, in a threadbare, quilt-and-junk-shop way.

Dozens of potted plants, tasseled pillows, framed posters, and stack upon stack of books.

It made him want to stop and take a quick peek at the spines.

What did Fontana Quinn—hypersensitive, determined, and openly unaffected by his practiced smile—read? “You’ve done a lot with the place.”

Fontana grunted, clearly unappreciative.

Strange woman. Intriguing, but strange.

Campbell had deliberated about her all the way over, sprinting through the field separating her cottage from the main house. How had a long-limbed, slender, relatively impressive specimen of a woman ended up with the name of a sage, the disposition of a tigress, and his mother’s art studio?

Strike relatively impressive . She was stunning in nothing but a shopworn baseball hat and tattered sweatpants. The combination of delicate curves and masculine bravado packed a wallop.

“Outside,” she instructed, “to the left of the house.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to erase the brief sight he’d gotten of her round bottom, looking even better than it had in overalls. Damn, he liked a woman in clingy sweatpants. He didn’t know why exactly, but there you had it.

“Around the corner,” she said, gesturing with a sweep of her hand.

“I couldn’t do much near the oak. The roots run almost the length of the yard.

So, I cleared another area after I moved in.

Graded the land two, maybe three, percent.

It gets ample sunlight and mild wind. And more than adequate drainage.

The worst problem I’ve faced is a slight nitrogen deficiency, which is correctable. ”

Puzzled and grappling with responses he had no time for, the smell of fresh-cut grass and blooming flowers nearly overwhelmed Campbell.

He nudged his glasses and squinted, the crescent moon supplying enough light to see but not well.

Milky gray mist enveloped his feet as he made his way along a rock path, embedded firmly enough that it felt like walking along a dry riverbed.

“Careful, Atlanta. Dew slicks these up.”

He curbed the urge to look back as he listened to the slap of her bare feet against stone. The path leveled, and he paused to secure his balance, taking a step forward when he was sure.

When the area came into full view, he halted, his lungs releasing in a burst.

Wooden benches and ivy-covered fences, beds of ferns, and wild splashes of color.

Red berries on shrubs that must bud year-round.

Dazed, he crossed beneath a trellis banded by wrist-thick vines, snagged his sleeve on a thorn, and pulled away, not feeling the scratch in the least. To the left, bricks edged a dense assemblage of azaleas and some kind of deep green plant he couldn’t identify; to the right, violets surrounded a large birdbath, situated perfectly beneath a towering dogwood.