Mary Sullivan - No Ordinary Home

If wishes were horses, she would either really be in Italy, or she would live in the home of her dreams, nothing grand, just a roof over her head and regular meals. Despite her upbringing, she wasn’t spoiled. She really did need very little, only the basics. Food .

Now so close to the end of her odd, self-imposed lifestyle, she had reached her limit. She could no longer tolerate the moving, having no place to call home, without anchor, companionship or loved ones. In her travels, she’d envied each and every couple she met and the homes they lived in, whether large farmhouses on rural land, or tiny urban bungalows on postage-stamp lots.

She wanted to belong, but on her own terms, and so she kept on traveling.

She’d been on the move for too long and it exhausted her, but what else could she do? She had only one talent and had already tapped it dry. Too early. A burnout and she wasn’t even thirty yet.

Crap, she was tired. She closed her eyes to rest. Just for a minute.

* * *

“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?” Finn eyed Austin across the restaurant table with the mulish jut to his jaw that had been there since Austin had picked up Gracie. Finn was a good guy in general, solid, salt of the earth and all that, but he could get mad like nobody’s business. “Haven’t you had enough of taking care of a woman? You need to cut yourself some slack and just have a good time.”

Austin figured Finn had a right to be angry. This was their buddy fishing vacation. They’d both needed this for a long time and had turned themselves inside out to make sure it happened, Finn by getting a veterinarian from the next county to cover his calls, and Austin by dealing with his mother.

“Let it go, Finn.”

“I can’t. You’re being irresponsible.”

Austin couldn’t have heard that right. “Irresponsible? Me? I’m the most responsible guy on the planet.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe that was the wrong word. How about impulsive?” Finn amended.

Impulsive fit. It never had before, but it did where Gracie was concerned.

Her hunger, her need, resonated with him, but there was more. He liked the fight within her, her drive for independence and her refusal to give in. He even kind of understood why she’d stolen from him. But, cripes, the woman needed a long-term goal to get herself into a safer life.

“You shouldn’t be doing this, man.”

No, he shouldn’t, but Finn had his own thing going on, too.

“What about you?” Austin asked.

“What about me?”

“We’re on vacation, but you’re going to see a girl you knew nearly twenty years ago. Why?”

“She needs help.”

“So does Gracie.”

“Gracie is a stranger.”

“So’s your friend.”

“Nope. We’ve been in touch for ten years.”

“But you haven’t seen her in twenty.”

“So what? When I told her we were going to Denver, she asked me to stop in on the way.” He picked at his food. “Don’t you remember how great she was?”

“I wasn’t in your orbit at that time. I was a year younger than you and you were new in town. I heard a bit about it, but not much.” He’d been too busy trying to find sustenance and keep body and soul together.

“But you know the story, right? It was huge. The paper carried it for a week.”

Austin didn’t remind Finn that the only newspapers he ever saw as a kid were at the bottom of trash bins covered in garbage. He shook his head.

“Her mom was driving past my dad’s ranch just as a deer jumped out. She crashed into the tree at the end of our driveway and the car caught fire. Man, I’ll never forget how brave my dad was that day. Melody’s mother got thrown from the car, but Melody was trapped in the backseat. Dad didn’t hesitate. Just reached right into the fire and pulled her out. Saved her life.”

The waitress hovered ready to pour more coffee, her eyes on Finn. He’d inherited his dad’s good looks.

“That’s cool.” Finn’s father was cool. Austin, yet again, felt the lack of a father figure in his life. Every boy should have a father. Austin had had two of them. One had died when he was only six and the other hadn’t wanted him.

Not that he cared.

Really.

For the tenth time, Finn glanced across the street.

Austin checked out what he kept looking at. Storefronts. What was so interesting? Ah. The apartments above them.

“She’s in one of those, isn’t she? That’s why you chose this restaurant?”

Finn nodded.

“Are you going to see her after dinner?”

He shook his head. “She isn’t expecting me until tomorrow. I’ll go across after breakfast.”

Finn had a lot of confidence. So why the edginess? “Why are you nervous about seeing her?”

“She left town suddenly. One minute she was there and the next gone. I never had a chance to say goodbye.”

“You’re angry about that?”

Finn’s mouth angled grimly down on one side. “You know what? You see too much.”

“I had to learn to be perceptive.” Living with an alcoholic did that to a kid.

“Yeah, I’m still angry,” Finn admitted, “but I want to see her, too. We’ve been writing letters for over ten years. Well, she writes letters. I email my responses. Had enough writing in college.” He placed his cutlery across his empty plate and pushed it away. “Melody’s no stranger. And she isn’t a pickpocket. There’s no similarity between our situations.”

Austin shrugged. Maybe not.

He felt Finn watching him. Finn knew him about as well as anyone did. He probably thought he knew what Austin was thinking.

“This has nothing to do with my mom.” Even to Austin’s own ears, he sounded defensive. “This is nothing like dealing with Mom.”

“No? You take your first vacation ever. We’re barely more than a day away from home, and you pick up a stranger. A mighty sad one, I might add.”

He thought of Gracie taking small sips of the soup he’d ordered when he knew she wanted to gulp it down. He thought of her tears when she’d lost the last of her lunch. Yeah, sad, for sure. But strong, too, with a lot of pride. He liked that about her.

“She’s got problems, Austin. That woman is trouble. Why’d you bring her here?”

Good question.

Figuring he might as well be honest with his best friend and himself, he answered, “I don’t know.”

* * *

FINN STOOD IN front of his hotel-room door and watched Austin walk down the hallway to his own room, hating this tension between them. They’d been best buds for a dozen years. They weren’t normally like this.

It was that woman’s fault.

“Hey!” he called, not sure why except wanting to get back on good terms with his buddy.

Austin turned around, walking backward to his room at the end of the corridor. “What?”

“Don’t forget to keep a hundred bucks handy for when I catch the biggest fish on this trip.”

“In your dreams.” Austin grinned and spread his arms. “That hundred bucks has my name on it.”

Austin entered his room and Finn stepped into his own, breathing a little easier. Things were good. No permanent damage done.

He should have been honest with Austin. He wasn’t nervous about seeing Melody. Nope, not nervous. Terrified.

Holy freakin’ Batman was he scared.

Ever since the day a couple of weeks before his twelfth birthday when he’d watched his dad pull Melody out of a burning car, he’d been fascinated by her.

Every kid had pivotal moments in his childhood. That had been one of his. Man, oh, man, to see Remington Caldwell as a hero. To see that girl pulled out alive, but with her hair afire. To watch his dad put out the flames with his bare hands.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known at the time that the guy was his father. He had been a hero to Finn ever since. What a bonus it had been to learn, a couple of weeks later, that the great courageous man was also his dad.