Blame It on Your Heart (4 page)

Ellie's throat tightened as she bit back a protest that while she did bear a good amount of the blame, it wasn't that black and white.

Brady's gaze was fixed on the board where he was chopping a small mountain of onions. If he knew anything about her past with Damon, he wasn't letting on.

"Look Ellie, the bottom line is that we need help with this, and you have way more expertise in handling an event like this. And I need a break," Molly said in a pleading tone, pinning Ellie with a look that had never failed to get her to give in to her little sister on anything, whether it was loaning her a favorite dress or giving up her last piece of Halloween candy. "You know I'm trying to plan the wedding, and I swear to God if I don't get Josh to the altar by Christmas I'm afraid it will never happen," she said with a weak little laugh.

She might have been able to resist if she hadn't heard that laugh, the fear and doubt that underscored the forced mirth. For better or worse, Molly had been chasing after Josh Patton since middle school.

"Oh and what a tragedy that would be, to lose a prince like that," Brady muttered, leaving no doubt of his opinion of Josh.

Though she adored her little sister, secretly Ellie had to side with Brady on this one. As far as she was concerned, it didn't bode well for a future together if Molly had to corral him to the altar. Though she'd long since given up on trying to change Molly's mind about him after running up against that brick wall dozens of times over years.

And to be fair, given her experience with marriage, she wasn't in any position to give anyone advice on their love lives.

"I'll let you know when I need your opinion, soldier boy," Molly said in snide tone Ellie hadn't heard her sister ever use before.

It had to be stress, she thought, both from keeping the struggling restaurant afloat and planning a wedding with a fiancé who didn't seem to have much interest in making it to the altar. Ellie had been so wrapped up in her own problems she hadn't even realized how much her sister was struggling.

"You're right—you do need a break. I'm sorry I forget sometimes how hard you have to work to keep this place going. And if you need any help planning the wedding, I can do that, too."

Molly smiled and grabbed her in fierce hug. "Thanks. For now you can promise to be my maid of honor when the time comes. "

"Anything."

"So does that mean you can help Mom out tonight so I can meet Josh over at the Foundry?"

"So your man can treat you to a reheated TV dinner? You must feel like a queen," Brady's gravelly voice came from behind the counter.

"Why don't you mind your own fu—"

Ellie jumped in before Anthony could learn any new vocabulary words. "Of course, I'm happy to help. Now go," she said with a shooing motion.

As the door swung closed behind her sister, Ellie turned to Brady. "What the—"

Her question died as she saw Brady staring at the place her sister had just stood, a faraway look in his stormy gray eyes. Like he was searching for something. Like he was yearning for something.

"Mommy, fries!" Anthony's insistent bellow echoed through the kitchen.

"Manners!" she said, as Brady seemed to snap out of his trance.

"Coming right up, buddy," Brady said as she leaned down to remind her son exactly how one asked for something.

She intercepted the plate of steaming fries, holding it over her head until Anthony offered up the proper 'pleases' and 'thank yous,' and even threw in a 'sir' for good measure.

As Anthony dug into his fries, she leaned a hip against the stainless steel countertop while Brady went back to hacking up the onions on the other side.

"Anything I can do?" she asked after several moments.

Brady paused his rapid knife strokes. "You serious about that offer?"

She shrugged. "Feels weird to be back here and not working on something."

"Those carrots need to be washed and cut up for the soup tonight," he said pointing his chin at a crate full of dirt coated carrots with their tops still on. “You know how to do a
jardinière
?"

Ellie did a mental search of all the cooking knowledge she'd gleaned from her mother and an addiction to
Top Chef.
"I think so. It's like little sticks, right?"

He grunted in what she assumed was affirmation and went back to his onion. As she cleaned and cut up the vegetables she found herself curious about this rough looking army vet who threw casually threw around French cooking terms.

"Did you go to culinary school?"

"Just for a year. Right after I got out of the army."

"That's how you and Damon know each other."

"Yep. Met the first day of basic."

Thirteen years. He'd known Damon for the thirteen years when his absence in her life was like a yawning black hole in her chest. Though she tried not to indulge it, she was wildly curious about what his life had been like since the day he'd left her house under a cloud of hurt and anger.

"Army, like you were a soldier?" Anthony burst in, and Ellie told herself she welcomed the interruption. Another couple of seconds and she would be asking Brady all manner of probing questions about Damon she had no business asking.

"Exactly like that," he said with a fleeting smile.

"Cool," Anthony breathed, dark eyes shining with hero worship. Despite the fact that Anthony and his friends in New York were strongly discouraged from playing with toy guns or engaging in what his teachers had obliquely referred to as combative role play, he was, like most five year olds, obsessed with anything having to do with guns, soldiers, and war.

"I was an Army Ranger," Brady said and tugged up the sleeve of his T-shirt to reveal a tattoo of menacing black skull with two crossed swords. "So was Damon who you just met."

"What did Auntie Molly mean when she said you dumped him?"

"What?" Ellie replied, startled. She supposed she should be used to Anthony's rapid changes in topic, but she still found herself the victim of mental whiplash at least once day with him.

"Damon. She said you dumped him."

She felt her cheeks flame as Brady abruptly turned around and made a big production of pulling a huge stock pot from the rack above his head and setting it on the stove with a metallic clang.

"It's just something grownups say, sweetie," she said, attacking the bunch of carrots in front of her. "It's nothing you need to worry about."

"Is it like you put him in a dump truck and hauled him away?" Anthony pressed.

Brady's harsh chuckle cut off the reply forming on her lips. "I imagine that's pretty much what he felt like, kid."

Chapter 3

The muscles across his back burned as Damon swung the sledge hammer again. It landed with a satisfying crash against the tile that surrounded his living room fireplace and continued out three feet onto the floor where it met the polished maple boards.

He braced himself against the shock of the blow, rippling up the muscles of his arms, shoulders, grunting as he swung the heavy tool back for another blow.

He paused at the sound of his front door slamming heavily, followed by the sound of footsteps tapping down the short hallway that led to the kitchen.

"Damon, where are you?"

"In the living room, Mom," he called, stifling a sigh. As much as he loved his folks, sometimes he wished his mother didn't feel quite so comfortable walking into his house unannounced. But when it came to her boys, boundaries were the last thing on Vivian Decker's mind.

"I brought you some cookies," she said. "Oatmeal chocolate chip. In case you needed cheering up." She walked through the archway that led from the small dining room into the living room and stopped short when she saw the pile of ceramic shards that had once been the border to his fireplace.

"I don't need cheering up," he said as he reached for the beer perched on an end table nearby.

"Oh yeah, so that's why you took a sledge hammer to your fireplace?"

He took a sip of his beer and shrugged, deliberately casual. "I always hated the brown, you know that."

"And you thought today of all days would be the perfect time to start this particular renovation?'

"Why not? It's the middle of summer. I'll have plenty of time to get it finished before the weather turns cold again."

"Really?" she asked, cocking a dark, arched eyebrow as she set the plate on his coffee table. She picked her way over to him, careful to avoid the bigger tile chunks in her sandaled feet.

She squared off against him, arms folded across her chest. "So you're telling me you wanting to smash through walls doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Ellie Tanner arrived in town today?"

Though she was tall for a woman, he still had a good eight inches on her and she had to tilt her chin to look him in the eyes.

"Of course not," Damon said, mirroring his mother's folded arm stance as he held her dark, intense gaze that she said she wasn't buying his bullshit for a minute. Once upon a time, that look would have had him caving in seconds, dropping a dime on himself for infractions he hadn't even committed yet.

Now he forced himself not to flinch under that probing stare, reminding himself he was no longer an eleven year old with a guilty conscience over stealing a candy bar from the Gas N Go.

Just as he was no longer a foolish eighteen year old, so high on hormones he was too stupid to imagine a future that didn't have Ellie Tanner—no, she was Ellie Franklin now—playing a central role.

"So you're telling me you didn't feel anything when you saw her earlier today at the restaurant?"

"Adele must have tripped over herself getting to the phone," he said, reaching once again for handle of the sledge hammer.

Muscle memory,
he told himself. That was the only explanation for the way his heart had seemed to seize in his chest at the first sight of her. The way it seized in his chest now at the memory of her drawn, too thin face, her eyes shadowed and devoid of the spark he remembered.

It was the only explanation for that nearly overwhelming urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her until her frown disappeared, promise her he was going to make everything okay, the way he always did.

It was only natural, he told himself, since from the second he'd met Ellie to the second she ripped out his eighteen-year-old heart and left it bleeding on the ground, Damon had lived and died by the tilt of Ellie's smile.

"Yeah, and she told me you're going to be working with Ellie on this party Jane's throwing for Deck."

"So?" he said as he hefted the hammer over his shoulder and slid his safety glasses back in place. This renewed urge to pound something into smithereens had nothing to do with the prospect of working side by side with Ellie for the next several weeks. "You might want to step back."

"So if you saw Ellie, you must have met her son. Cute kid, isn't he?"

Tiles exploded with a crash as he swung so hard he thought he might have cracked the concrete base underneath. "Adorable," he said, clenching his teeth hard enough crack his molars. He didn't want to think about Anthony, the way his eyes crinkled and the dimple that appeared at the right corner of his mouth when he smiled, and that glint in his eye that was pure Ellie.

There was so much of her in Anthony, he could almost pretend the kid got here through immaculate conception.

Someday we're going to have a daughter who's just like you, and she's going to turn you gray before you're forty.
His own words echoed through his head echoed through his head, followed by Ellie's reply.

I'm not worried. You'll keep her in line for me.

His fingers tightened around the smooth handle, and he shoved the memory away, telling himself it was the half beer he'd drunk on an empty stomach that made his stomach feel like he's slugged back battery acid.

"Poor little guy, growing up without a father. And the way he left Ellie high and dry like that."

Damon kept quiet and continued his smashing. And so what if he was picturing Troy Franklin's face superimposed over the tiles. Because that selfish fucker had screwed over his young son.

Not because the asshole had treated Ellie like shit.

Any protective instincts Damon had for Ellie had been obliterated that long ago afternoon. "She made her choices." And she hadn't chosen him. "She went into that marriage with her eyes wide open."

"You think she should be punished, for what she did to you?"

Damon let the hammer fall with a clatter and turned and pinned Vivian with a glare. "Whatever she did to me happened about a hundred years ago. And I could give a good God damn what happens to her good, bad, or otherwise."

She shot him a deadpan look that said she wasn't buying it for an instant.

But it was the truth, Goddammit. It had to be. Otherwise he didn't know how the hell he was going to survive the next weeks, months—however long it took before Ellie decided to pick up and run again.

At least he could take comfort in that. Because one thing he knew for damn sure that there was no way Ellie was sticking in Big Timber for the long haul.

###

Ellie lay on her back, staring into the darkness, as the sound of the clock on the night stand echoed through the room. Though she knew it wouldn't do any good, she turned to look. The hands glowed faintly, showing the time to be three seventeen a.m.

She'd fallen into bed at nine, right after she put Anthony to bed in Molly's old room. Despite her exhaustion, emotional and physical, she couldn't get to sleep.

How could she, with her stomach churning and her brain echoing with Molly's words. "I don't get what you're so upset about. You're the one who dumped him."

Those two sentences brought up a whole tangle of emotions she'd spent the last thirteen years trying not to feel. Guilt. Grief. Anger.

To this day, even to think about the look on Damon's face, to remember how she'd treated him after, was enough to make her face flame and her stomach sink with that gut deep knowledge that she'd fucked up. Big time.

Then again, so had he.

Still, that didn't blunt the guilt or change the fact that she'd hurt somebody she'd loved. Someone who had loved her back with his whole heart, who would have done nearly anything to make her happy.

Nearly.

Her stomach tightened and her skin bloomed with perspiration that had nothing to do with the temperature of her childhood bedroom. Even in the dead of summer, the breeze blowing off the mountains and through her window was cool.

No, this was the nasty burn of knowing how badly she'd wronged him. How badly they'd wronged each other.

Coward that she was, she did everything she could not to dwell on the memory of that day, or the years of happiness that led up to it.

But seeing Damon again, the man he'd become—the man she could have had—combined with Molly's casually delivered remark, obliterated the wall she'd built around the memories of that time, the people they'd been, the mistakes they made. Now it was all bursting forth, overwhelming her.

It was May 2000, the night of Damon's high school graduation. Jimmy Bain's parents had let him throw a rager for the seniors, complete with a keg and a barrel of jungle juice.

They didn't stay long. Ellie hadn't even made it through her first cup of the ever clear-spiked punch—under the very disapproving eye of Molly, who at fifteen had no business being there much less giving her the stink eye. But her boyfriend was Jimmy Bain's cousin, so naturally she'd tagged along.

Despite the glares, Ellie didn't worry too much about Molly busting her for drinking. Molly had bigger problems on her hands, in the form of 230 lb Josh Patton who, despite his size, was already showing the effects of the half dozen beer bongs he'd already done.

"Let's get out of here," Damon said, sliding his hand around her waist as he plucked the cup from her hand.

"The party's just starting," she protested.

"We can have our own party," he said, pulling her close with that wicked grin that never failed to make her knees weak and her skin tingle.

"Is that all you ever think about?" she said with a playful slap, doing her best to sound offended. Truth was, ever since she and Damon had exchanged virginity two summers ago, it was almost all she could think about too.

And when she wasn't thinking about the way his hands, lips and body could drive her to the brink of insanity, she was thinking about everything else involving Damon. Like what her wedding dress would look like, the house they would build on that piece of land out by the old girls’ school.

"It's hard not to, when you're so sexy," he said, nuzzling her neck before capturing her mouth in a slow deep kiss. It only took a few seconds before the cat calls and shouts of "get a room!" started.

He gave her one last peck and pulled away. When she looked into his eyes again, the wicked glint was gone, his gaze serious in the way that meant he had something big on his mind.

"What is it?" she said softly, her stomach clenching with worry. "Is it your dad?" This past spring his dad had ruptured a disk in his back while working in his auto repair shop and been unable to work for several weeks while it healed. Though Damon pitched in to cover as much as he could, without another full time mechanic the shop had suffered severe losses.

"No, but I do have something important to talk to you about. Let's go somewhere and talk."

She put her hand in his, though she couldn't escape the niggle of unease tugging at her. She shoved it away, chalking it up to the slight buzz she'd acquired from the punch. This was Damon, who, almost from the moment they'd met, had looked out for her.

Loved her.

Whatever was on his mind, no matter how serious, it couldn't be anything bad.

Still, she could sense his tension as she rode shotgun in the cab of his pickup. "Are you going to give me a hint what this is about?" she prodded as they turned towards the abandoned school house up off Thompson Road.

"You'll find out soon enough."

"Please?" she wheedled as she reached out to stroke her hand up his thigh. "I'll be extra nice."

He chuckled as he covered her hand with hers, stopping it short before it reached her target, but not before she could feel the heat emanating from the thickening bulge between his legs. "You're going to make me drive off the road," he said and firmly took her hand off his leg, pressing it into the seat next to him.

Snatching her hand back, she gave a little huff of frustration and folded her arms across her chest.

"Don't get in a snit."

"I'm not in a snit," she snapped. "But if it's so damn important, you could at least give me an idea what it's about.

"Patience, grasshopper."

"You know me too well to ask for that," she said with a roll of her eyes.

"Good thing I have enough for both of us," he said and slid his hand across the seat to capture hers.

She tried to snatch it away. Unperturbed, Damon threaded his fingers through hers and held it firmly in his grip. Within seconds her bloodstream was flooded with familiar warmth, breaking down her front offense.

Sighing, she slid across the bench seat and rested her head on his shoulder.

They really were perfectly matched, she mused as they bumped along the dirt road in companionable silence. Filling each other’s holes, complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Although, she had to admit, the weaknesses were mostly on her side. Impatient, impetuous, impulsive. That was Ellie in a nutshell.

Lucky for her she had Damon to back her up, steadfast, logical, willing and able to pull her out of the many jams she'd gotten herself in. And never once did he make her feel stupid or incompetent. Like the time she'd nearly ruined the engine of her mother's Jeep Cherokee by accidentally filling the fuel tank with diesel. Her own mother had rolled her eyes back into her head and wondered aloud how she'd managed to birth a daughter with no more common sense than a goat. Damon had quietly salvaged the car's abused engine and explained why it was important to fill your car with only the type of fuel specified.