Falling for You Read online

  On their final night together before she’d left for assignment in Morocco, and then Germany, she’d brought Thai food to his house. The weather had been gorgeous, and they’d eaten and kissed and kissed and eaten in his backyard under the stars. He’d whispered velvet words into her ears, and she’d been filled with ecstatic intuition that he was the one. Her one.

  Prior to him and after him, she’d dated guys for longer periods of time. But none of her other relationships had scarred her the way that her relationship with Corbin had because the only man she’d ever been wildly, stupidly, disastrously in love with—was him.

  “Thank you for seeing Charlotte,” he said.

  She nodded stiffly and crossed her arms.

  He assessed her as if they were opponents at chess. Coolly. Competitively.

  She’d once pressed her lips to the small scar that faintly marked the skin below his bottom lip on the left side. She’d once touched her index finger to his slightly crooked incisor tooth on the right side and told him how his almost-but-not-quite perfect smile made her swoon. She’d once inhaled the piney scent of his soap when wrapped in his arms.

  “John and Nora are happy together,” he said.

  “They are.”

  “Since we keep running into each other because of them, do you think we should find a way to get along for their sake?”

  “You asked for a word with me because you’re wondering if we can get along for John and Nora’s sake?”

  “That, and to apologize.”

  Was he actually going to say he was sorry? He was more than welcome to grovel—

  “I’m sure it’s been hard for you to get over me.” Cold humor glinted in his eyes. “I’m sorry you’ve had to suffer.”

  Anger shot heat through her bloodstream. “It hasn’t been hard to get over you. And we didn’t run into each other this afternoon. You asked me for a favor—”

  “—on behalf of Charlotte.”

  “Which I foolishly granted. Because I let you bring her by, I’ve had to disappoint a very sweet girl. And now I find myself faced with you and your—your . . .” She couldn’t find a word dire enough. “Nonsense.”

  He cocked his head. “Is that a no to getting along with me?”

  “I’m waiting for you to go back to Texas so that we’ll both be spared the effort of getting along.”

  “I’m not going back to Texas.”

  Everything inside her went still. “What do you mean? You live in Texas.”

  “I don’t have to live in Texas,” he said. “I have four houses in different states, including the one I bought in Shore Pine a couple of months ago.”

  He’d purchased a house in her niche of Washington? No! The Great Bend region of the Hood Canal wasn’t big enough for both of them. “Why did you buy a house in Shore Pine?”

  He shrugged a muscular shoulder. “I have my reasons.”

  “Name one.”

  “The house needs a lot of work, and I need work to do. I’m renovating it.”

  Willow scowled at him as her dearly held hope that he’d soon leave toppled like a California freeway during an earthquake.

  He studied her. “Four years have passed, and you still hate me,” he said.

  “I don’t care enough about you to hate you.”

  “That’s what your voice and your body language are saying. But your eyes are telling a different story.”

  She’d forgotten until now that he’d often told her—and many times proven—that he could read her feelings in her eyes. While he may have had that ability once, he didn’t know her anymore. “Our relationship was a short-lived mistake,” she said. “Ancient history. I don’t hate you, but I’ll always dislike you and distrust you because of the way things ended between us.”

  “I admitted to you at the time that I screwed up and asked you to forgive me. You wouldn’t.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “So, technically, you were the one who ended our relationship.”

  “After you did what you did.”

  “You weren’t exactly blameless.”

  She dropped her arms and gaped at him, astonished at his nerve.

  “Derek Oliver,” he said, by way of explanation.

  She blanched.

  “My point is that we both did things we shouldn’t have,” he said.

  “Yes, but ninety-five percent of those things were things you did.”

  “Seventy-five percent,” he counter-offered.

  “Concussions have ruined your memory if you think you deserve just seventy-five percent of the blame.”

  “My memory of what happened between us is very, very clear. Make me an offer.”

  “You deserve at least ninety percent of the blame,” she said.

  “Eighty percent.”

  “Eight-five percent. That’s my final offer.”

  “Fine. I’ll take eighty-five percent of the blame.” He took a step toward her. She could see banked anger in his dark eyes. He was goading her and enjoying it. “For the record, I dislike and distrust you, too.”

  She stepped abruptly back. “I feel the need to lay down some ground rules.”

  He gave her a grin underpinned with bitterness. “You always did love rules.”

  She was a rule follower, through and through. “Don’t ask me for any more favors, Corbin. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “According to you.”

  “Don’t ask to speak to me in private again. There’s no reason for us to be in a room alone together.”

  “I can think of a couple reasons—”

  “Don’t call me. Don’t text me.”

  “Can I mail you a letter?”

  “No.”

  “Can I toilet paper your house?”

  “No. And that’s another thing. Don’t tease me. I realize that you think you’re hilarious. But many of us don’t share that opinion.”

  “Many of us? I dare you to come up with one other person who doesn’t find me hilarious.”

  “If we do run into each other in the future because of John and Nora,” she continued, “don’t seek me out.”

  “Can I communicate with you from across the room using sign language?”

  “You may not. And last but not least, do not flirt with me.”

  “Flirting is like breathing for me, Willow.”

  “Good. Then maybe when you stop, you’ll suffocate.”

  Quiet reigned over the kitchen for the space of a few seconds. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

  Willow frowned.

  He met her eyes. “Huh,” he finally said.

  “Huh what?”

  “Am I so dangerous that we need ground rules between us?”

  “Yes,” she answered emphatically. “You and the Ebola virus.” She checked her watch. “Well! Look at the time.” At her mom’s desk, she scribbled her email address onto a piece of paper. Then she hurried in the direction of the den, eager to usher out the girl with the mysterious tale of a vanished relative and the man she’d long been desperate to forget.

  Text message from Nora to Willow:

  Nora

  Look, here’s a picture of me at Safeway buying Cherry Garcia. Take extra notice of my sorrowful “forgive me, please” expression.

  Shore Pine Gazette, April 15, 1977:

  Shore Pine resident Josephine Howard Blake hasn’t been seen since the morning of Saturday, April 12. Her husband of three years, Alan Blake, says that she left home at approximately 10:00 a.m. on Saturday after telling him that she had several errands to run.

  When Mrs. Blake hadn’t returned to the Blake home on Overlook Drive by that evening, Mr. Blake began phoning Mrs. Blake’s family and friends. None knew her whereabouts, so Mr. Blake proceeded to drive around town in search of his wife.

  He located her Chevrolet Impala parked on the edge of town, across the road from Penny’s Diner and approximately seventy-five yards from the mouth of the Pacific Dogwood Hiking Trail. Inside her unlocked car, he found her purse with
all contents intact. Her car keys were tucked beneath the driver-side car mat. There was no sign of a struggle. The police were notified and are conducting an investigation.

  “At this time it would be premature to speculate about Mrs. Blake’s whereabouts,” said Police Chief Conrad. “We’re hopeful that Mrs. Blake decided to take a spur of the moment trip and will soon contact her husband or family.” However, when questioned further, Chief Conrad confirmed that the deputies seen dredging Lake Shore Pine on Sunday were indeed doing so in conjunction with the search for Mrs. Blake.

  Mrs. Blake is the eldest daughter of longtime Shore Pine residents Frank and Helen Howard. After graduating from Washington State University, Mrs. Blake has been working as a counselor at the Summer Grove Treatment Center in Shore Pine.

  The police have asked anyone who saw or spoke to Mrs. Blake on Saturday to call the station.

  Chapter

  Three

  The one trait Corbin had never been able to resist in a woman? Calm confidence.

  A pretty face and an attractive body were fine and good. Those things carried a degree of power. But calm confidence was his weakness.

  And Willow Bradford had it in spades.

  After his conversation with Willow yesterday afternoon at the inn, he’d dropped Charlotte off, then driven home. For the eighteen hours since—he was counting the hours when he’d been asleep because he’d dreamed about Willow—he’d been trying not to think about her. Without success.

  Corbin ran an old, weathered plank of wood against his table saw, creating a clean new edge. His hands needed an outlet, and his brain needed something other than a green-eyed beauty to focus on, so he’d made his way to his garage, which he was currently using as a workshop.

  He examined the plank and set it aside. Corbin’s two brindle boxers sat near his feet, eyeballing him. He gave them both a scratch under the chin, then went to the stack of planks sitting outside the mouth of the garage. The wood had come from the two sheds on his property he’d torn down. He’d saved the wood, knowing he could repurpose it inside his house. Before his shoulder injury, he would have been able to carry numerous planks in one trip. Now he was forced to carry just two at a time, and his left arm had to bear almost all of the weight.

  Slowly, painfully, he moved the wood into the garage.

  When he’d finally relocated a large pile, he paused, hands on hips, breathing hard.

  Willow.

  Willow Bradford had always been able to pass, outwardly, for a trust-fund baby. With her creamy skin and elegant clothes, she looked like someone who’d been raised with money and taste. Which, of course, she had been.

  Back when they’d been together, though, she’d never acted like a trust-fund baby. She’d been easy to talk to. Down to earth. Patient. She had a good head on her shoulders. Unlike a lot of the women he’d dated, she wasn’t moody. She didn’t lose her temper easily.

  The two of them had never said I love you to each other. Even so, he would have bet his house on the fact that she loved him.

  If he’d taken that bet, he’d have lost his house.

  The times he’d seen Willow since he’d come to Washington, including yesterday, she’d hit him with a double dose of trust-fund baby. Which only supported the conclusions he’d reached about her after their breakup: that she could be unforgiving when she wanted to be. That she hadn’t felt the way about him that he thought she had. That he’d cared about her far more than she’d cared about him.

  So why hadn’t he been able to control himself better yesterday? Why hadn’t he been able to feel as distant toward her as he’d wanted to?

  He’d sat across from her in the inn’s living room, watching her ignore him while interacting with Charlotte. She moved her hands gracefully when she talked. She listened. She spoke in that familiar voice that warmed him like liquor. Above all, she communicated her trademark calm confidence.

  Willow had far more self-control than most women. Or men, for that matter.

  He had a long memory, though. He knew her outward poise hid passion. Which only made her calm confidence that much more fascinating to him.

  He tugged his work gloves into place, lowered his safety glasses, and fed another plank into the saw.

  Since the fourth grade, he’d been a quarterback. Everything that had come to him through football had come on the strength of his right shoulder and arm.

  For years now, he’d had it laid out in his mind how he wanted his exit from football to go. He’d planned to leave the game on his own terms, at a high point, playing his best.

  Nothing about his retirement had gone the way he’d hoped.

  In the dark days following his injury, his health tanked. The constant pain maddened him. Whenever he’d been sober, he’d been terrified that the mental illness that plagued his dad was coming for him, so he’d gotten un-sober as fast as possible.

  For six gut-wrenching weeks, he’d been unable to accept the fact that the career that had meant everything to him had ended without his permission. No amount of logic or attempted gratitude had helped.

  After a particularly brutal, sleepless night, the Mustangs’ chaplain, Pastor Mason, had visited him at his house.

  Corbin had always considered himself to be a Christian. Not a good Christian. But still. He and his dad had gone to church when they’d visited his dad’s family. Corbin’s grandmother, his dad’s mom, had taken him with her to church on Sundays and Wednesdays when he’d stayed with her for three weeks every summer.

  When Pastor Mason had arrived at his door that morning late last February, a wave of relief had poured through Corbin. He’d known for some time that he couldn’t continue the way he had been and live to tell about it. He’d also known he could trust Pastor Mason. Their relationship stretched back across the thirteen years Corbin had played for the Mustangs. The pastor, who’d played college football himself more than four decades before, had a good sense of humor and a laid-back personality.

  Sitting across from Pastor Mason in his den, Corbin heard himself telling the truth and admitting just how far he’d fallen.

  The pastor informed him that general belief in a religion, even the religion of Christianity, wasn’t enough to save him. He’d said only Jesus could save him.

  On that morning, Corbin had been desperate for saving. After the pastor explained what a prayer of salvation was and what it meant, Corbin had prayed one of his own.

  He’d hoped that the prayer would fix what was broken inside him. Fix his life. Fix his shoulder. Fix his fears. He’d hoped it would make everything better and easier.

  After the prayer, though, he hadn’t felt like the new person the pastor had promised him he was. He’d mostly felt the same. Life had still been hard.

  In the days that followed, however, Corbin’s nose dive slowed. He started praying and stopped drinking. He focused on recovering.

  Seven months had gone by since Pastor Mason’s visit, and Corbin had no idea whether he was going about Christianity the right way or not. He was a veteran at every pleasure the world had to offer. But he was still a rookie Christian.

  On Sundays he went to Bethel Church in Shore Pine and sat in the back. And he was almost finished listening to an audiobook of the Bible. Most days he still felt a lot like who he’d been before he’d prayed that prayer, except that he wasn’t drunk or terrified or so angry he couldn’t think anymore.

  He was still mostly selfish. He continued to battle the same sins and weaknesses he’d always battled. He wasn’t sure if he could trust God completely.

  There were times when he wondered if he’d been crazy to think that a prayer he’d prayed silently in his house in Dallas could have made all the difference. It could be that he’d cleaned up his life himself through simple willpower.

  He reached for another board.

  This past spring and summer, through the loss of his job, two surgeries, two rehabs, and a move, his life had been like an endless brown winter field he’d been forced to walk across. H
e hadn’t asked to walk across the field in the first place. But ever since he’d found himself there, he’d been putting one foot in front of the other in an attempt to reach the other side.

  Sitting across from Willow yesterday hadn’t been anything like walking across a brown winter field. For the first time in what felt like years, the world had seemed full of blazing color and interest again. He’d been filled with conflicting desires and strong emotions—both negative and positive—that he hadn’t experienced for months.

  She’d woken him up.

  Even though he knew he should have kept his mouth shut and simply left with Charlotte after Willow said she wouldn’t help, he hadn’t been able to do what he’d known he should. Instead he’d forced Willow to confront him.

  Why had he done that? Had he needed for her to give him her undivided attention? Why? Because he knew he couldn’t have her? Because she’d been so determined to pretend that he didn’t exist?

  Corbin had no idea. Whatever the reason, he hadn’t been able to make himself leave without talking to her first.

  Over the course of his lifetime, he’d learned how to handle all types of women. Typically, he could smooth a woman’s feathers in under a minute. But when he’d been in the kitchen with Willow, he hadn’t wanted to smooth her feathers. He’d wanted to ruffle them.

  Then she’d set down her ground rules and in response, his old competitive spirit had pounded within him like a thunderstorm. He’d never heard rules that were begging to be broken as much as those rules. She might as well have waved a red cape in front of a bull.

  But just because a bull saw a red cape didn’t mean it had to charge.

  He had no business dreaming up ways to break Willow’s ground rules. Only a fool would set himself up for heartbreak a second time. He wasn’t going to go there with her again. It would be stupid to go there. . . .

  Yet he felt more fierce determination at the idea of breaking Willow’s rules and pushing her buttons than he’d felt about anything since January.