Lynnette Kent - The Last Honest Man

Heading out to Phoebe’s, he wondered—as he had since it happened—whether he should apologize for that almost-kiss or just ignore the incident altogether. The impulse had felt right at the time, but almost immediately he knew he’d been out of line. She was his therapist. He needed her expertise to make his run for mayor a success. His impulse to take refuge at Swallowtail Farm had been a mistake, one he would have to avoid in the future. Neither of them could afford to complicate their relationship with emotions. Or even just simple physical desire.

Easier said than done, though, when she came out of her house barefoot, wearing a light linen dress that skimmed her curves—very nice curves—and left her well-shaped arms bare. Her hair hung in a braid over her shoulder, with curls escaping at her temples and behind her ears. Adam had a sudden vision of a darkened room and himself slowly unlacing that braid, running his fingers through her loosened hair, over the soft skin underneath…

But this was not that kind of therapy.

As he got out of the truck, he noticed the dogs were stationed under the apple tree again, watching his arrival but not coming any closer. Somehow, Phoebe had trained them to stay out of his way. He hated the idea of himself as a person who didn’t like dogs or small children. And that wasn’t the case, anyway—he did like dogs, as a species, and he wasn’t afraid of them. He just didn’t have room for them in his life.

“Good evening,” Phoebe called. “Come on in.”

As he got close, he noticed that her gray eyes were wary, a little distant. Her smile said “professional.” Regret slapped him, then relief. They really did need to keep their interaction strictly business.

The session quickly turned into a disaster. He was too aware of Phoebe’s caution, too aware of his own body language, and so his stutter became impossible to manage. Containing his frustration wound the tension to the breaking point.

“Read this one,” she said, handing over another card of paragraphs specifically composed to twist his tongue.

Adam looked at the words, assessed the preponderance of Bs and flipped the card across the kitchen table. “I d-don’t think s-s-so, thanks.” His chair scraped the wooden floor as he pushed back from the table. “I’m c-calling it a n-night.”

SAM HADN’T INTENDED to put Adam DeVries under surveillance. The situation arose simply by accident. In a town the size of New Skye, you couldn’t get through a day without seeing people you knew—at the grocery store, at the dentist’s office, or at a stoplight somewhere on the streets.

So she wasn’t surprised, late Tuesday afternoon, to find herself sitting behind Adam’s truck as they waited for the light to change. She wasn’t surprised to find herself going in the same direction—he had a building site on the south side of the city and she liked to get fruits and vegetables at a roadside stand nearby.

But Adam drove straight past his project without so much as slowing down. While puzzling over that, Sam missed the turn for the vegetable market. She shrugged and, out of curiosity, followed the truck at a safe distance. The evening ahead promised her a solitary dinner in front of the TV and, if she got really energetic, hours of research on the Internet. A country drive couldn’t hurt.

She might have thought twice if she’d realized how far into the country he was going. The four-lane highway narrowed to two lanes, and still Adam drove on. Just past the new low-income housing project, though, he finally put on his turn signal. Bower Lane. Had he started a new project out here in the boonies?

A mile or so down the narrow little road, the white truck flashed another turn signal. This time he turned onto a private gravel drive, which left Sam grinding her teeth in frustration. Swallowtail Farm, the sign read. What was that? She couldn’t follow him onto someone’s property without a really good excuse. Simple nosiness wouldn’t cut it.

She parked on the shoulder of the road, deciding what her next move should be. Just as she cut the engine, her cell phone rang. Her editor kept Sam on the phone for almost twenty minutes, going over changes for a story scheduled to run in the Saturday paper. All the while, Sam never moved her eyes from that driveway.

After hanging up, she gave in to her curiosity and decided to investigate. Dirt and gravel sifted into her sandals as she slipped down the lane, staying behind the trees that lined it as much as possible. The drive was much longer than she’d imagined it would be, and she hadn’t come dressed for exercise. But a good story would more than pay for dry-cleaning the sweat stains out of her silk blouse.

She came up yet another rise and saw—finally—a house in the distance. Four horses grazed in the pasture in front of the house, watched by a man and a woman standing close together at the fence. Three big dogs lay under a tree nearby.

Dogs. Sam went cold. If they caught her scent, she’d be lucky to get out alive, let alone unseen.

Hesitating a moment longer, she looked back to the couple by the fence…and found them holding hands, staring intently into each other’s eyes. The next moment, she was sure, would bring a kiss. And whether from sheer jealousy or an aversion to voyeurism, Sam wasn’t about to watch.

This could be a real scoop, though. Adam DeVries had a girlfriend out of town. Who was she?

Thinking of sources for that information, Sam turned to go back the way she’d come and promptly turned her ankle over a rock hidden by the grass. She kept her balance, didn’t fall, didn’t say more than “Ow.”

In that instant, all hell broke loose as the three dogs cried out the hunt. Sam heard them come after her, barking, whining, roaring, it seemed, as they streaked down the drive. She ran. They ran faster. She wasn’t sure whether they had a greater distance to go to reach her than she had to reach the gate, but she had a feeling they would all find out.

The front fence came into sight as the dogs rounded the curve just behind her. Sam sprinted, grabbed hold of the heavy steel gate and pulled it closed just as the three hounds arrived within biting distance. Though the dogs could have slipped through the widely spaced bars, they were so excited they didn’t think about it. They circled at the gate, still barking, panting and jumping on one another, while Sam put the chain through the bars and around the wooden post, linking the ends with the open padlock. Throwing a quick glance in each direction to check for oncoming traffic, she dashed across the road and slammed herself into the car. Only then did she dare to breathe.

And only when she’d driven farther along Bower Lane, with no real clue as to where she would end up, did she start thinking about the possibilities for her story. Summer was a slow time for news. A budding romance involving a mayoral candidate was sure to spark some interest.

She thought about Tommy Crawford and his insistence that nothing needed to be said until Labor Day and the official announcement.

“Sorry, Tommy.” Sam drove through the country twilight, grinning at the prospect of a good story. “You’ve got your job to do.

“And—come hell, high water or everlasting love— I’ve got mine.”

ADAM HAD ALMOST REACHED his truck when Phoebe caught up with him and grabbed his arm. He let her stop him, though he could have jerked free easily enough.

“You’re confused about who’s in charge here,” she said. “I’m the therapist. I say when the session ends.”

“Ph-Phoeb-be.” He dropped his chin to his chest for a second. “I c-can’t even s-say your n-name. L-l-let it g-g-go f-f-for to-night.”

She softened her grip. “You c-can’t leave d-def-feated.”

Brows drawn together, he glared at her. “You w-wouldn’t t-t-taunt me. You s-stutter?”