Amber Leigh Williams - His Rebel Heart

She walked to him and touched a kiss to his brow, brushing back the dark hair that was growing over his forehead at a rapid rate. “Take your bowl to the sink. Then get dressed quickly. You don’t want to be late.”

As Kyle slipped by her, Adrian stole one last glance at the house next door. The movers were hauling in what looked like weights and power tools. She frowned at the license plate of the sportster. Out of state, from the looks of it. Though the tall grass was obscuring her view.

She just hoped whoever was moving in got the old eyesore looking somewhat decent again. How they would manage it all, she had no idea.

Only an idiot would buy a house that run-down. Or somebody with some serious ambition. Hoping for the latter, she turned from the windows and went to help Kyle get ready for the day.

* * *

JAMES BRACKENFROWNEDat the cards in his hand. Pocket jacks. He’d always had a knack for knowing what cards were going to show up on the table as well as for reading the people who challenged him to Texas Hold ’Em. Those fine-tuned senses told him that despite the nice, round pile of poker chips between them, his opponent, a scrawny man in a near-to-threadbare work shirt torn at the shoulder, was bluffing.

Scanning the man closely, James wondered when the last time the mover had had a good steak dinner. Not the lean kind of steak. A big, juicy, porterhouse number with fat trimming the edges. He couldn’t have been older than thirty but judging by the deep furrows in his brow and his receding hairline, things like luck and plenty had never been on his side.

After leaving home just shy of eighteen, James had found that the former came far more easily to him than most. For eight years, it had brought him a great deal of the latter. Which was why when the dealer, another mover, this one heavyset around the middle and sweating like a pig in the unaired rooms of James’s new house, flicked the river card onto the table, James took pity on his less fortunate opponent.

Ignoring those smiling pocket jacks, he dropped them facedown onto the siding board laid across two sawhorses to make a makeshift poker table and cursed under his breath. “Nothin’,” he muttered as hope lit in his opponent’s eyes. Reaching for the bottle of water that was sweating as much as their dealer, James lifted a shoulder and leaned back in one of the creaky beach chairs he’d found folded against the wall of the sorry excuse for a two-car garage. “Goddamn, Ripley. The cards love you.”

The dealer—Denning was his name, as James had gathered over the course of the busy morning—barked out a knowing laugh. “Bull. Nothing’s ever loved Ripley. Least of all Texas Hold ’Em.” He reached over to slap Ripley on the shoulder. “Ain’t that right, son?”

Ripley was still blinking in disbelief at the poker chips. He’d gone all-in before he realized he was drawing dead. Carefully setting his cards down, he splayed them on the table and looked up at James. “Denning’s right. I was bluffing the whole time.”

James stared down at the two and the eight. Just as he’d thought. “Hell of a poker face you got there.” It was a lie. James had spotted Ripley’s tell half an hour ago when the lower lid of his left eye twitched after the man wound up with trip nines. It had been his one well-played hand of the game. Ignoring Denning’s answering snort, James pushed the chip pile toward Ripley. “Go on. Count your spoils. I need some air.”

Ripley’s hand paused before it reached for the pot. “You’re gonna finish the game, right?”

James hid a smile by turning to the long line of windows and sliding doors that led out onto the wide deck. This was the reason he’d bought the house. Something about all that glass—smudged and dirty as all get-out at the moment—and that yawning view of the sunbaked deck and the pool and yard beyond it had called to him.

James had always been a sucker for a lost cause. The fact that he’d snatched up this dilapidated house only a short walk from Mobile Bay where he’d grown up was indisputable proof of that. “Sure, I’ll finish the game—after we’ve got all the furniture in.” As nice as the companionship he’d found in Ripley, Denning and the other movers was, James was eager to get a move on—to get started making things right here in Fairhope where he’d left his past and all the ghosts that had chased him away.

The past that had haunted him for eight long years. The past that he’d realized he was desperate to finally make right.

A knock on the door echoed from the entryway and James smoothed over the scowl he saw reflected in the dirty window. Turning back to the others, he said, “That’ll be the pizza. Let’s eat, boys.”

* * *

THEPIEWASCHERRY and it was still warm. With Kyle’s hope for a new neighborhood friend in mind, Adrian had procured it during that morning’s visit to Hanna’s Inn where her friend, innkeeper and adept cook and baker, Briar Savitt, lived and worked alongside her husband, Cole. It wasn’t out of Adrian’s way at all. She owned Flora, the flower shop on the street side of the building next door to Hanna’s, a building that also housed their mutual friend Roxie Levy’s bridal boutique, Belle Brides, and Briar’s cousin and Adrian’s high school friend, Olivia Leighton’s bar, Tavern of the Graces, on the bay side.

As luck would have it the midday lull at the flower shop allowed Adrian to slip back to her cottage a few blocks away. Kyle would need his soccer gear for his practice that afternoon anyway, so she’d be saving herself a trip later if she left her assistant, Penny, in charge of the shop and picked up the duffel bag now, in addition to dropping off the pie.

The day was downright gorgeous—it made the gloom of winter feel far away. As Adrian walked from Flora down the sidewalk along the bay toward home, she watched sunlight kiss the water’s small crests with golden light. The breeze lifted the bangs off her brow. Over the delicious aroma of cherry pie were strong currents of salt and magnolia leaves. Without sunglasses, she had to squint to see the shadow of silver spires and cranes on the western horizon that marked the opposite shore and the port city of Mobile.

She turned onto the street where she had lived since she left her ex-husband in a hurry years ago while Kyle was still a toddler. The trees on either side of the street grew thickly, merging overhead. Shade gathered around her, sunlight choked out by leaves and heavy waves of Spanish moss. She climbed the hill to the cottage, waving to the few neighbors who were out and about.

She hoped her son didn’t have too many memories of those disastrous years she’d spent with Radley Kennard. The man’s presence still lurked like a towering wraith at the edge of her consciousness. Run-ins with him had been fewer and farther between as the years passed, mostly thanks to the restraining order she’d filed against him and the fact that her friend Olivia and her husband, Gerald, had given him a non-too-friendly warning the last time Radley had come calling months ago.

Nevertheless, Adrian never forgot he was around. She’d spent many sleepless nights worrying he might show up, drunk and pounding at her door again. Or that he might realize the one thing that would be most devastating to her—losing Kyle.

Adrian shuddered and was thankful when she broke into a patch of warm sunlight again. Dodging around the big moving van and the sportster at the house next door, she slowed. Checking that no one was around, she did a quick perusal of the vehicle. North Carolina plates. As she rounded the car, she caught sight of a Van Halen CD in the passenger seat.

No sign of a car seat, toys, or anything that would denote the presence of children. It looked as if Kyle was going to be disappointed. The sportster was the only vehicle in sight—not exactly a parent-minded mode of transportation. In fact, it was the kind of car she would attribute to a single man. One more than likely going through a midlife crisis.