He carried her easily down the stairs and set her in the stupid wheelchair, gripped the dog’s leash and they were off.
The moment they hit the sidewalk, Claire wanted to tell him to turn around. She only needed a pair of granny glasses to look just like an old lady being pushed around the yard of her nursing home, especially with the wool pashmina tucked around her shoulders.
She glanced at her watch, the chunky beaded one Owen had made her, and saw it was past 8:00 p.m. Families on Blackberry Lane were settling down for the night, working on homework, relaxing in front of the television. As the sun slid down behind the mountains, the air took on a bit of a nip, as nights did here even into July and August.
“Tell me more about your plans for this benefit,” Riley finally said after they reached the corner and turned toward the mountains.
She tensed, the echo of his harsh words still loud in her ears, then forced herself to relax. She didn’t want to fight with him. Not tonight when the evening was so quiet and peaceful.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she suggested. “What’s been the toughest thing to get used to again about coming back to Hope’s Crossing?”
“Old friends who ignore my questions. Seriously, I want to hear about the benefit. Is this a one-woman show or are you setting up committees?”
She turned her head to look at him but found no trace of sarcasm in his expression or his voice. He sounded genuinely interested. “I’m organizing the auction portion of the evening and the service project side of things. Alex agreed to arrange the food for the dinner, with her contacts among the local restaurant scene. Evie’s handling the decorations and, uh, Holly, Jeff’s wife, insists on doing the publicity.”
“You seriously just came up with this whole thing today and now you’ve got a full raft of committees, and on the very day you returned to work. How is that humanly possible?”
“I told you, once we started talking about it at the store, everything sort of snowballed and everyone jumped on board to help. Everybody we talked to has been really excited about it.”
“Except me.” His voice was low in the cool air and in the hazy light, she couldn’t see his features clearly.
“Was it the benefit you objected to or just my involvement in it?”
“Neither.” He grew silent as they approached the twenty-foot waterfall and she could hear the muted rumble. “I’m a cynical jerk, Claire. What you’re doing sounds nice and noble on the outside. I’m just not sure it will make any kind of difference in the town or the way people are dealing with the accident.”
“I can’t say whether it will make a difference or not, but what’s the harm in trying? I only know whenever I’m serving some need outside my own inherent selfishness, I always feel better.”
He pushed the wheelchair to the small weathered bench some civic-minded person in years past had placed here where it had a lovely view of the falls in one direction and the city slightly below them in the other.
Riley sat down on the bench facing town and the flickering pinpricks of light in the gathering dusk. Chester sniffed around the bench, in full hound-dog mode.
“St. Claire. Always so willing to see the good in people.”
“Not true,” she protested. She thought of her tangled relationship with Holly, how she tried very hard to like the other woman but just couldn’t seem to move past her negative feelings to be truly friends.
“Nobody’s all good or all bad, Riley. I’m sure you’ve seen that in your line of work.”
“Yeah, point taken. I’ve seen hardened criminals sob their beady little eyes out at those made-for-TV movies on Lifetime.”
She smiled, enjoying the cool night and the rippling sound of Sweet Laurel Falls and Riley’s company.
“Is that really true?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “When have you ever known me to stretch the truth?”
She laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. How about the time you told Alex and me you heard on the radio every New Kids on the Block had been killed in a plane crash? We cried for an hour until we turned on the news and figured out you made it all up.”
“All right, I may have prevaricated on that one. Give me a break here. I only wanted to make you notice me.”
“I think you only wanted to torment your sister and I was just collateral damage.”
He shook his head. “No, Claire. It was you. It was always about you.”
His words curled around her like the May breeze. She didn’t know how to answer as that slow, sultry tension eddied between them again.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything back then?” she finally asked.
“What was I going to say? You were three years older than me.”
“I still am. Thank you for the reminder.”