Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (6 page)

After the bell had finally released him from his torment, he’d started off on his route home. They’d lived in a crappy apartment only a few blocks from the school. But he hadn’t turned in on their street. He hadn’t been finished walking.

By the time he did make it home, he’d walked for more than an hour, and his mom was a terrified basket case. But he’d felt better.

That night, when she’d sat on his bed and asked why he’d gone so far, he’d talked to her about his day and told her he’d just needed to walk. He hadn’t understood it yet, but she’d seemed to. That weekend, she’d walked a route with him that kept him in their neighborhood, a path she’d deemed safe, and asked him to let her know when he needed to have a ‘walkabout,’ and always to come home.

He’d been moving ever since, on feet or wheels. Usually, he went at night, when the world was calm and quiet, and he often went without telling anyone.

But he always came home.

That day, just needing to escape the happy volume and activity of the house, not feeling angry so much as hemmed in, he walked away from the front door, headed down the long driveway, and turned onto the gravel road. As noisy as the house had been, the world outside held the cold silence of Christmas, when everyone everywhere was indoors enjoying the company of those they loved.

He’d only walked about twenty minutes before his toes were freezing inside his boots, so he turned around.

When he got back to Badger’s driveway, which was packed with cars and trucks, he saw that the hatch of Rose’s little blue Subaru was up, and somebody was leaning into it. Expecting Rose, he walked up without a second thought, but it was Iris who stood.

“Hi,” she said when she saw him.

He was too close by then to do anything but go to her. “Hey. You need some help?”

She reached up and brought the hatch down, latching it with more force than was probably necessary. “Nope. Just packing up some gifts. Rose is driving back to Chicago tonight, so she wants to motor soon.”

“You leaving, too, I guess?”

Iris turned and leaned on the back of the car. “No. I’m staying here. I got a job on Main Street.”

“You’re going to live in Signal Bend? With your dad?”

“Well, yeah. For now, anyway. I guess I’ll get my own place at some point.” She tilted her head, and her blonde hair swept over her shoulder. “Do you have an opinion on my living in Signal Bend, Nolan?”

The way she asked the question, it was pretty clear that she was asking something else as well. He took a step toward her, put his hand on the hatch, and leaned in a bit. “Straight talk, Iris?”

“That would be cool, yeah.”

Iris just seemed to take life the way it came. He kissed her, she liked it, she leaned in. He told her he didn’t know why he had, she called him on it, told him to stop. He showed up standing next to her sister’s car, she said hi. He offered her the truth, she said yes please. Nolan didn’t think he’d ever known anyone like that, who just stood still and accepted life as it happened.

“I like you. I liked kissing you, and I seem to want to do it a lot. But you and me is a bad idea, for a whole lot of reasons.”

“My dad.”

“Well, yeah, he’s one. But that’s not really it. It’s me. I don’t…” He stopped, not sure how to explain. But he’d offered her straight talk, so he said, “I don’t think I’d be good at being in a couple, and I don’t think us just hooking up is smart.”

“I don’t want to hook up with you. That would be too weird.”

“I agree.”

“Why don’t you think you’d be good at being in a couple? Or was that just your way of being nice and not saying right out that you wouldn’t want to be in a couple with
me
?”

There was no accusation in her voice, nor any passive aggression. She sounded simply curious.

“I wasn’t being nice. Truth is, I’ve been thinking about you a lot the past few days, so I’m not just being nice. I’m being real. I…I don’t feel much. About anything. I don’t have much to give. So I’m better on my own.” He’d never actually said that aloud to anybody except his mom, once, and it hurt a lot more than he’d anticipated.

He didn’t add that the one emotion he was still capable of feeling acutely was anger. He knew it would hurt him more for Iris to know that.

She studied his eyes for several seconds, and then she put her hands on his face and pulled him close. She kissed him, just an innocent, soft little thing, almost a peck. He closed his eyes and felt how soft her lips were, smelled the flowers of her perfume.

“I’m sad for you,” she whispered.

“Pity is not something I want.” He stood straight, and she dropped her hands.

“That’s not what I said. You seem sad a lot, and now you tell me you don’t feel much, and that makes me sad. But I don’t pity you.” She chewed on her lip, then added, “If you want to just hang out, be friends, that’d be cool. Everybody else I know in this town is a lot older, a lot younger, or a twat like Mindy Jasper.”

Nolan laughed at her last comment. Mindy was definitely a twat. But he didn’t understand Iris’s reaction. “You’re not mad? Or hurt?”

“I like you, Nolan. I think you’re one of the good guys. I’d be good with seeing if we could work together. But I didn’t fall head over heels because of a couple of kisses. I have more sense than that, thank you very much.”

She was smiling up at him, and Nolan felt that stirring in his chest again. He might have accidentally kissed her again except that just then, there was a loud cough behind him. He turned and saw Show and Bart on the porch, watching the whole scene.

“Fuck.”

Iris laughed. “One, we’re grownups. Two, we weren’t doing anything. And three, if he’s mad, it’s you he’s going for, so I’m good.”

“Great. Thanks.” They turned and walked toward the house together. As they got close, and Show’s eyes hadn’t left them for a second, Nolan noticed that Iris looked a lot less confident than she’d sounded. Her cheeks were bright pink, and she hadn’t been blushing over at the car.

He smiled and followed her up the porch steps. Show stepped up, stood to his full height—a good four inches or more above Nolan’s—and looked down his nose at him.

“Daddy, don’t be a jerk,” Iris muttered as she walked into the safety of the house. Show held his position for another beat, then relaxed and walked in. Bart, with the wry grin of somebody who thought he knew it all, waved Nolan to head in before him.

Inside, Christmas was still happening at full volume, and now Nolan was glad for the distraction.

Each time he was with Iris, he was bummed when it was over.

But everything he’d said to her was true.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Any questions?” Geoff set the receipt book on the desk and smiled at Iris.

“Is there a reason you still use a paper receipt pad?” She pointed at the digital tablet propped on the desk. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“For credit card purchases, we have the square, but I find that it’s a lot easier to write on paper than to try to type in a detailed sales record or even use the stylus.” Geoff shrugged. “I just like it better. Call me old-fashioned.”

Iris grinned. “You’re old-fashioned.”

Geoff grinned back. “Be that as it may, Miss Iris, but I ask you: what better place to be old-fashioned than an antique shop?”

“Good point.”

On her first day of work, a couple of days after Christmas, the shop—and Main Street itself—was pretty quiet. All the shops had Christmas clearances going on, but these weren’t the kind of businesses that had people lining up outside the doors before they opened. Iris knew that Main Street would have a busier Monday than normal, but it wouldn’t be crazy.

Geoff hadn’t offered much Christmas-specific stock in any case, so he didn’t expect to do a big day at all. It was a good day to learn her new job. She had gotten the full tour and an explanation of the sales recording process before the gargoyle bell had tinkled even once.

When it did, Geoff turned to her. “Why don’t you take the book and wander around the shop, get to know the stock and where it came from. A big part of selling what we sell is being able to talk about it. Let me know when you have questions.” Then he headed up to talk to the customer.

Iris reached to the shelf under the desk and pulled up a heavy, old-fashioned ledger. Geoff had already shown her how he logged in every acquisition and gave it a number, based on its chronological order in the ledger. The tags on the items for sale included that number and the price. When the item was sold, the final sale price was added, and then a line was penciled through the entry.

The ledger was a bit cumbersome, but Iris cradled it in her arms and wandered through the shop, beginning at the sales room farthest back, which was windowless and full of rugs and paintings. Taking a methodical approach, she found an item to start with and then studied each item nearest it in sequence. It would probably take her a whole week, at least, to know everything in the shop, but she found the task fascinating.

Geoff had explained that most of his profit was made in private sales rather than in the store, so he focused on deep knowledge of his stock and rapport-building with his clientele. His notes in the ledger showed where, when, and how each item had been acquired, gave specific details about the history and provenance of each item, and sometimes had notes about the people who’d given or sold the item to him. She felt like she was doing research for a paper or something—something she’d always enjoyed.

Iris had loved school, but she’d never quite understood the drive to pick a major in college that was only about getting the best job possible. She’d tried that at first, because it was what her mother wanted, but she didn’t have a good idea about a career she’d like. There truly wasn’t anything she felt driven to do. Rose, on the other hand, perfect, precious Rose, had known before she’d even gone to college that she wanted to work in fashion. She’d picked her major right away and charged forward into a career that let her shop professionally.

Their mom had wanted Iris to get a business degree, saying again and again that it was the best chance for a lucrative career. So, with no better idea, Iris had tried that. But business classes were boring, and when she was bored, she couldn’t focus. Her grades showed as much.

What she’d found interesting was anthropology and literature and history—the way people made their world. Those classes she’d excelled at. But she hadn’t really wanted to be a teacher or anything like that, either. She’d thought about going to graduate school, but her flailing as a business major, and then, briefly, a psychology major, had hurt her GPA too much. And anyway, more school would have been fun, but grad school was expensive, and she hadn’t known what she’d do with a Master’s any more than she’d known what to do with her Bachelor’s.

Iris just wanted to have a good life. To be happy. She didn’t really think her job would be the thing that would determine her happiness.

But sitting on the floor in Jubilee Antiques & Curiosities, reading in the ledger about a rug that had been in a woman’s family since that family had come over from Norway two hundred years ago, Iris thought that maybe a job could make her happy after all.

~oOo~

She had moved from the rug and painting room and had just started in the room she’d already developed the habit of calling ‘Edgar’s Room’—where she’d found Shannon’s Christmas present. She was going through the drawers of butterflies and moths. So far, they’d all come from the estates of the same few collectors. The blue butterfly she’d bought for Shannon had actually been pinned by the man from whose estate Geoff had acquired it. And the bell jar as well. Mr. Frederick Jergen had traveled the world hunting for specific butterflies. She now knew that Shannon’s—which her stepmother loved—was a Violet-spotted Emperor butterfly that Mr. Jensen had found in South Africa.

“What do you think?”

Iris looked over her shoulder and saw Geoff leaning against the door jamb, smiling at her.

“I think you have the best job in the world.”

Geoff’s smile went wide. “I think so, too. When the weather is a little warmer, we’ll go hunting together. That is, by far, the best part. You know, it’s almost noon—I was thinking I’d call in a pick-up order at Marie’s. If you fly, I’ll buy.”

“Yeah? Thanks! Sure, I’ll go get it.”

“Excellent. I’ll call it in. What would you like?”

~oOo~

When Iris was a little girl, lunch at Marie’s was busiest around ten-thirty or eleven in the morning. Most of the customers then had been farm folk, whose days started before dawn, so noon was late for lunch. But things had changed a little since then, and there were more people, and more different kinds of businesses in town, so lunch started early and kept going until the afternoon. Back in the day, Marie’s had been strictly breakfast and lunch, opening in the dark of the predawn and closing for the day in the afternoon. But since Marie had retired and the Sachs family had taken the diner over, it was open for supper now, too.

It was a couple minutes shy of noon when Iris opened the front door and headed to the counter to pick up the order Geoff had placed. The wind had picked up, and she paused a moment to get her hair out of her eyes.

At one of the booths nearest the door sat a crew from Signal Bend Construction: Cox, Tommy, Kellen…and Nolan. They must have all turned when she’d opened the door, because now they were all looking at her.

“Hey, Iris,” Kellen called with a nod.

They were Horde, her family, so she didn’t exactly have a choice about whether to go over and talk for a minute. Not that she had a mind to duck them. After that weirdly sweet conversation with Nolan on Christmas Day, Iris had decided not to make too much of anything he did. She didn’t know if she believed his whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ deal, but it didn’t matter. If they were just friends, it was fine. She liked him a lot, and she didn’t mind letting him know that, but she had never been one to pine after things she didn’t have.

“Hey, boys. You working on the houses today?” Signal Bend was building its first-ever subdivision, Signal Bend Station. It wasn’t much, as far as subdivisions went, nothing at all like the place on a golf course her mom and stepdad had in Little Rock, but it was kind of weird to think of a subdivision here in town, anyway.

All four nodded in answer, but Nolan answered with words, too. “Yeah. Just some interior work. You want to join us for lunch?”

They were four men in a diner booth, so she wasn’t sure how he thought that would happen, unless he planned to pull her onto his lap. Knowing that wouldn’t be the case, she smiled. “Thanks, but no. I’m picking up lunch for work.”

“Yeah, Nolan said you were working on Main Street,” Kellen said—and then he put his hand around her wrist and tugged gently. “Where at?”

Iris stared down at his hand. That was a strangely affectionate gesture from Kellen, who hadn’t, as far as she knew, paid her any extraordinary attention before. She lifted her eyes from his hand gripping her wrist and up to his face, and yeah, she thought she saw flirtation happening there.

Kellen was cute. He was blond and cut, and he had nice eyes. But he wasn’t all that bright. She’d heard her father say a few things about Kellen’s tendency not to think. He was also well known for his wandering dick. And she thought he was pushing thirty, which seemed a bit old, as far as she was concerned. There was a long list of men she’d be more interested in than Kellen Frey. The one sitting across from him was on the top of that list.

That said, she wasn’t above playing up a little flirtation while Nolan was watching.

So she gave Kellen a flirtatious smile back and, with her free hand, flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Jubilee.”

“That’s that weird shop across from Fosse’s.” Kellen’s thumb brushed over her arm, and that made Iris uncomfortable. She didn’t actually want to start anything with the guy.

“Yeah. I started today. Well, I need to go pick up our order. You boys have a good afternoon!” She eased her hand from Kellen’s grip and turned toward the counter. On her way by, she thought she saw a dark look on Nolan’s face. Good.

George Sachs—or, as he was known in the Horde, Saxon—worked the grill, and his sister, Kari, stood behind the counter, prepping a fresh batch of coffee.

“Hey, Kari.”

“Hi, honey. What can I getcha?”

“Picking up an order for Geoff at Jubilee.”

“Got it right here,” Saxon called through the prep window. “Hiya, little girl.”

Saxon had always called her ‘little girl,’ even though he wasn’t all that much older than she was. She’d never minded.

“Hey, Saxon.”

He leaned on the window. “I ask you: what kind of man is allergic to onions?”

“I’m guessing Geoff is?”

“Yeah—have to clean the damn grill just for him. He’s a good tipper—otherwise, I’d just poison him with a Bermuda.” Saxon grinned and winked at her.

“Shut up, George. You would not.” Kari took a bag from him, added one of her own, and handed both to Iris. “Bottles of Coke and napkins in the bags, too. I put a couple of pieces of Marie’s pumpkin pie in there, too. You’re all settled up, so you have a good afternoon.”

“You, too. Thanks, guys.”

She turned and nearly crashed into Nolan. He reached for her bags, but, in an act of instinct more than anything else, she yanked them away.

He frowned. “I was just going to offer to carry them to your truck for you.”

“Thanks, but it’s two bags. I think I can handle it.” He didn’t move, and he was blocking her passage, so she huffed her irritation. “Excuse me, Nolan. I need to get back.”

“You know Kellen fucks everything that looks his way twice, right?”

He was jealous. Interesting. “I’m aware of his reputation. I don’t know why it’s relevant to me needing to get back to work, though.”

A long, steady stare, those dark blue eyes boring into her plain blue ones.

“Nolan. I need to go.”

He swung to the side and made way.

~oOo~

Shannon held to her chest an emerald-green sweater shot through with metallic threads and considered herself in the standing mirror. “What do you think, ladies?”

Iris and Millie sat side by side, cross-legged at the end of Shannon and their dad’s huge bed. Iris turned to her little sister, who had one of her mother’s fancy scarves wrapped around her head. “What do we think?”