Born in the Valley Read online

  Shane carefully took the plastic, turning completely, holding it over the container before dropping it in—as though making sure he’d aimed right.

  “Besides,” she added, “it’s not your responsibility to clean up my messes.”

  “I know.” He nodded, frowning slightly as he surveyed the charred remains and started on a shelf that was too high for her to reach without the discolored and misshapen stepstool next to the shelving unit. “I just want to help.”

  “You are helping,” she told him, going to work on a lower shelf. “A lot.” She wasn’t even sure what exactly she was clearing away. There’d been a foot-high metal cabinet with twenty or thirty plastic drawers for screws and picture hangers and other little essentials. The drawers were melted shut. Bonnie tossed the whole thing.

  “And, anyway,” she told Shane, “no one was allowed in here until the investigators finished up their work this afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  They worked silently until the shelving unit was nearly empty. Having Shane around calmed her. She didn’t have to keep up appearances with him.

  And being with her seemed to calm him, too.

  “This is going much more quickly than I expected, thanks to you.”

  He grunted, looking embarrassed, and then slowly smiled. “I’m glad I can help you.”

  Bonnie turned back to the job at hand with a twinge of guilt.

  Keith had offered to come and help with clean-up duty after work. Beth had said she’d take Katie home with her and Ryan. Wednesday night was macaroni-and-cheese night, and Katie loved it almost as much as Ryan did. Bonnie had sent Katie home with Keith, instead. The little girl had missed her bath the night before and had had a long day.

  And Bonnie had needed a break from them.

  She would rather die than have Keith know she was dissatisfied with the life they’d built together—a feeling that had been oddly exacerbated by the events of the past twenty-four hours.

  She just needed a little time to get herself back in line.

  “Do you know who started the fire?” Shane asked, each word spoken deliberately.

  Shaking her head, Bonnie shrugged. “People from the sheriff’s office said somebody threw a book of lit matches in through that vent up there.” She pointed to the outside wall of the closet.

  Shane stared blankly toward the ceiling. “How do they know that?”

  “Because it landed on the wet mop and didn’t completely burn.”

  He took a full minute to process that. Then, “Do they know who did it?”

  She felt a surge of pity at the obvious struggle he was having. Conversation was difficult for him.

  “No,” she said. “I guess there was too much fire and water damage for fingerprinting. It was probably just kids, playing a prank.”

  “Why would someone play a prank on you, Bonnie?”

  “After looking at things today, my brother, Greg—who’s the sheriff now—doesn’t think they were going after me. There’s not much chance they knew that the vent led into the Little Spirits supply closet.”

  “Oh.”

  Yeah, and an even bigger “oh” was the fact that Bonnie had been a tiny bit disappointed that Greg hadn’t seen the fire as a premeditated act aimed at her. She’d almost had an excuse to move on.

  Bonnie stopped, shaking, hands on the edge of the garbage can she was peering sightlessly into.

  An excuse to move on? Where on earth had that thought come from?

  She had nothing to move on to. Nowhere she wanted to go.

  She loved her husband to distraction. Would give up her life for her daughter. Little Spirits had been a far greater success than she’d ever dared hope.

  And still, she was consumed with a nebulous need for more. It made no sense to her.

  How could she suddenly resent the very things she’d spent her life dreaming of, praying for, building?

  “Are you okay?” Shane’s words pulled her back.

  “No,” she told him, walking back to the closet.

  She couldn’t prevaricate with Shane. It would be too cruel to this man who was trying so hard to make sense of an already bewildering world. And she didn’t need to pretend with him. In Shane’s mind, what was, was. He wanted predictability, craved patterns and rules, but there was no analysis of motivation, no judgmental thought, no opinion of what should be. Only an acceptance of the environment around him.

  Most importantly, her confusion wouldn’t hurt Shane.

  “People were talking to you today like you were sad. I saw them when I was waxing floors.”

  “I know they were.” They were standing, one on either side of the mangled shelving unit, tilting it to get it out the closet door. “You may not remember, but Little Spirits is something I’ve talked about my whole life and I’ve worked really hard to make it successful. Most of the people in this town know that. So they think it would be really disturbing for me to have it intentionally vandalized. Or even damaged by accident.”

  He stopped, stared at her, his gaze intent. The brown depths of his eyes had always been compelling.

  “I remember.”

  Bonnie didn’t know how to respond. When Shane had suddenly reappeared in her life a couple of months before—her new handyman, instead of the high-powered financier she’d heard he was in Chicago—she’d immediately accepted the man he’d become. Never probing for traces of the man he’d been.

  Beyond acknowledging to her landlord that they knew each other, they’d never once referred to their personal past.

  The two of them deposited the ruined unit by the emergency exit door.

  “What do you remember?”

  “That you always wanted to take care of people.”

  Yeah. He was right about that. Was that all he remembered?

  “And now you don’t?”

  Breaking eye contact, she shrugged, dipped back into the closet to start clearing rubbish from the corner. “Of course I do.”

  He was hauling out what was left of the vacuum cleaner Beth and Greg had bought her for Christmas.

  Bonnie scratched her cheek, felt the slimy wetness of soot from her fingers and wiped her face with her shoulder. She’d brought sweats and a T-shirt with her to work that morning to wear for closet gutting. She was glad she had. She’d probably be throwing them away when she got home that night, because of their smell alone.

  “What’s wrong, Bonnie?”

  She piled a few more pieces of unidentifiable trash on her outstretched arm.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sighing as she dumped it into the rapidly filling can. “I love this place. It just…doesn’t excite me like it used to. I’m feeling differently about a lot of things lately, and that kind of scares me.”

  “Different about what things?”

  She dumped and gathered more mostly unrecognizable residue. What the fire hadn’t destroyed, the sprinkler system had. “My life, my work, my marriage, Shelter Valley.” She rattled on as she worked. “It used to be that those things filled my every waking thought. They gave me strength and incentive.” Now it almost felt as if they were holding her back.

  “I think you wanted to be married and stay in Shelter Valley and take care of people.”

  His words were slow, deliberate. His work, focused on one task—cleaning everything out of the closet—with no decisions to be made, was quick and efficient.

  “I think I did, too.”

  “Do you like being married?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Do you like your husband?” His back was turned as he asked the question.

  Staring at those broad shoulders, Bonnie thought of the hundreds of times she’d wanted to tell Shane Bellows what a great man she’d found after he’d left her.

  Like the realization of her lifelong dreams, the fulfillment of that wish was hollow.

  “I adore him.”

  Which was why she was finding all this so hard. How could she possibly need more than Keith and the life they
’d built together?

  Pulling a rag from his back pocket, Shane wrapped it around the sharp edge of a broken jar of buttons she’d forgotten was in there.

  “You love the kids,” he said after disposing of the jar. “I see you laugh with them a lot.”

  Those big hands picking up tiny little buttons gave her pause.

  “You’re right. I do.”

  “Then are you okay now?”

  “I think I’m just tired.” Shaking her head, Bonnie tossed some spare floor tile she’d found behind the shelves they’d removed. “I never thought I’d start to resent this place.”

  “I never thought I’d be a blue-collar worker.” Shane’s tongue dragged around the last word.

  He stopped on one side of the closet, facing her as she stood on the other. The space between them was almost empty, but not quite.

  These times, when he seemed as clear-minded as she, disconcerted her. She didn’t know how to respond.

  “I used to be powerful,” he told her, his voice sounding at that moment as though he were still the man handling fortunes bigger than Bonnie would ever dream of having.

  “I know.”

  “I remember it,” he said. “I remember Chicago.”

  Her heart ached as she listened to him. She couldn’t imagine the hell his life must be. And felt miniscule and petty as she stood there, discontented with her own.

  “What do you remember best?” she asked, hoping the question was okay, that it wouldn’t distress or confuse him.

  “All of it.”

  A more typical nonanswer. Because he couldn’t sift through the memories and make a decision?

  “I remember going to work,” he said, his words slow again. “I remember my office, how I could understand and fix anything that came in. I was really good,” he told her with that strange combination of the intelligent and successful man he used to be and the more childlike creature he’d become.

  “I know you were. We used to hear about the great things you were doing.”

  “I still look at the stock reports and know what they mean,” he told her. “I even play the market.”

  Bonnie frowned. “Is that a good idea, Shane? You don’t want to blow your savings.”

  “Now that I can’t earn as much?” he asked. He didn’t sound bitter. Instead, he sounded like a little boy who’d just been told he couldn’t go on the big camp-out. Disappointed. Sad.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Bonnie broke off.

  “It’s okay,” he said, his voice switching back to that of the man he’d once been. These sudden changes were disturbing, even after months of getting used to them. “I got some insurance money from my accident.” The voice was still deep, but with the tenor of a little boy again. “I just kept some of it for me and most of it my friend in Chicago is handling for me.”

  Bonnie hoped to God his friend was honest and taking good care of Shane.

  “So how’ve you done with the money you kept yourself?” she asked, smiling at him.

  Bonnie’s heart lightened when Shane grinned back. “Good,” he told her. “I’ve tripled it so far.”

  “No kidding!” She stepped closer, laying a hand on his forearm. “I’m proud of you.”

  “That makes me happy, Bonnie.”

  “I’m glad.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “You know I’m here if you need anything, right?”

  “Yeah.” Bowing his head, he almost mumbled. “You talk to me, Bonnie. Like I’m a real guy…”

  Bonnie replayed their conversation over and over as she drove home more than an hour later. She’d helped Shane, made a difference. And that felt damn good.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HE’D NEVER WORN pajamas to bed. Just boxers. It was one thing that hadn’t changed.

  Keith was hard inside his shorts as he climbed in beside his wife almost a week after the fire. It amazed him, that ready reaction, which happened much more often than he would’ve expected after more than six years of sharing the same bed with Bonnie.

  She hadn’t been there long. The sheets were still cool.

  “’Night,” she said softly before he’d even settled in.

  The next day was Tuesday. Keith had a governing-board breakfast meeting. And Bonnie was always up at the crack of dawn taking care of Katie and getting to work earlier than the rest of the eight-to-five world.

  Still…

  He opened his mouth to reply in kind, but then didn’t. With every casual good-night, he could feel her slipping farther away.

  He lay down. Fought with himself for all of two seconds. Nudged her backside with his hips. The low, welcoming moan that came quietly from deep in her throat righted his world.

  “You make me crazy, woman,” he growled against the side of her throat, kissing along her neck and collarbone. His hand slid beneath the short cotton top of her pajamas.

  And the pressure of her butt against him increased perceptibly.

  “What do you want?” he whispered in her ear, feeling her shiver. “Top or bottom?”

  Wrapping her arms around his middle, she pulled him on top of her. A silent reply. There’d been too many of those in these last confusing months.

  “I love looking at your eyes in the moonlight,” he told her. He loved how they glistened with the intensity of her passion.

  Tonight she closed them.

  Moving past the disappointment, he bent to kiss her, long lingering openmouthed kisses they’d perfected over the years.

  Her mouth opened. But her tongue didn’t dance.

  “Something wrong?” he asked, raising his head only far enough to see her face.

  Bonnie lifted her hips against his groin, inviting him. As badly as he needed her, Keith was hesitant.

  “Talk to me.” He couldn’t make out her expression. “Please?”

  “I…”

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said, her gaze settling at about his nose. “I’m just tired.”

  In almost seven years, tired had never made their lovemaking a silent affair. Not even in those first months after Katie was born and they were both doing double duty with full-time jobs and night feeding. Their conversation during sex was what made sleeping with Bonnie different from the few other women he’d been with.

  She pulled him down to her, enticing him with her tongue along the edges of his lips, enticing him with other things.

  Keith wasn’t sure he should finish what he’d started.

  More and more he’d come up against this strange vacancy in Bonnie. This refusal to tell him what she was thinking. But this was the first time it had translated itself into their sex life.

  “Bonnie?”

  “Yeah?” Her voice was languorous, as though she was giving herself up to passion, as though she wasn’t even aware of the chasm deepening between them.

  He was tempted to give up for tonight, to enjoy whatever communication remained between them.

  “Why won’t you talk to me? Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Her hands didn’t move from around his neck, her hips still pressing against him. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  He wanted to believe that. “You seem kind of…distant.”

  “I’m really just tired, babe,” she said, her voice full of the intimate warmth that had made him her slave from the very beginning. “I’ve spent the entire week reassuring parents. They needed to hear for themselves that there really was no danger to their kids, that Greg’s official report said the arson was a random act. And no one was satisfied until they’d heard it directly from me.”

  She reached up to kiss him and his body started to respond again.

  Keith rose on his elbows.

  “So I’ve just imagined the distance growing between us these past couple of months?”

  It was a subject he’d broached often.

  “I’m right here, Keith. Loving you and Katie every bit as much as I always have.”

  Keith stared down at her. That was t
he kind of frustrating nonresponse he received every time. Instead of giving him a real answer, she countered with something good and affirming.

  And he knew from experience that if he pushed, he’d just get more of the same.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She pushed a lock of hair off his forehead, running her fingers through to the ends, which rested at the bottom of his neck. “Don’t understand what?”

  “Why I’m battling this fear that things are slipping away and you don’t even seem to be aware of anything changing.”

  Fear wasn’t an emotion he was all that familiar with. Certainly not one he’d ever admitted to before. It was probably only because he was still lying intimately on top of her, her arms around him, that he could own up to it now.

  “Keith.” She held his face with her hands. “Things are not slipping away. You have my word on that. I’m right here. I’m going to stay right here. I love you very, very much. I don’t even want to contemplate what life would be like without you. Okay?”

  Slowly Keith nodded, all the while feeling a sense of defeat. How in hell did you communicate with someone who refused to acknowledge the problem?

  And how could he fix whatever was broken when he couldn’t find out what it was?

  Or maybe she couldn’t acknowledge the problem because it was him? And it couldn’t be fixed?

  Staring down into green eyes that looked almost black in the darkness, Keith knew he wasn’t going to be able to rest easy that night. “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong that you aren’t telling me? You aren’t sick or anything?”

  “I’d tell you if I was sick, you know that.”

  “And business at the day care is good?”

  “Amazingly so, especially considering the fire.”

  “What about Katie? Is there something wrong there you aren’t telling me about?”

  “Of course not! I tell you everything about Katie.”

  About Katie maybe. But then, Katie had always been a source of joy between them. Caressing Bonnie’s cheek softly, he remembered how Bonnie’s pregnancy had brought them so much closer when he’d already thought they were as close as two people could be.