One Summer (2 page)

“Miss Grant.” He didn’t smile as he gave her a thorough once-over. The look was almost offensive in its bold assessment of her femininity, and it threw her mentally off stride. It was not the kind of look that she as a teacher expected to receive from a male student, or former student, for that matter. Respect was not in it.

“J-Johnny. Welcome home.” It seemed absurd to address this hard-faced man as she would have addressed the high school boy, but his name came automatically to her
lips, just as, apparently, he had also slipped by force of habit into the remembered form of addressing her.

“Home.” His lips thinned as he glanced around. “Yeah, right.”

Following his gaze, she saw that Jeff Skaggs, eyes wide and Coke can suspended halfway to his mouth, was gaping at the pair of them. The news of Johnny Harris’s return would be all over Tylerville by suppertime, Rachel knew. Idell Skaggs, Jeff’s mother, was the biggest gossip in town. Not that Rachel had ever thought to keep Johnny’s return a secret. There were no secrets in Tylerville, Kentucky, at least not for long. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. Still, she had hoped to give him a chance to arrive and get himself reoriented a little before the inevitable storm of protest broke out. If certain segments of the population had known in advance that Johnny Harris was coming back to Tylerville, they would have raised heaven and earth to keep him out.

Now they knew, or very soon would know, but it was too late for them to do anything about it. There was going to be a huge outcry, and much of it was going to be directed at her. But she had known that ever since she had read his letter asking for a job so that he could win parole and she had written back to say yes.

She hated controversy. She especially hated to be at the center of a controversy. But she had felt strongly that the boy she remembered deserved a better shake than he’d gotten. She still felt that way.

Only the tall, surly-looking stranger beside her was not the boy she remembered. That nearly insulting glance proved it, if anything more than his altered appearance were needed.

The driver stepped down, turned to open up the belly of the bus. Rachel took a firm grip on her composure.

“We’d better get your things.”

He laughed. It was a sound of derision rather than amusement. “Miss Grant, I’m holdin’ ’em.”

A stained canvas duffel bag that he’d been dangling over one shoulder was swung around for her inspection.

“Oh. Well then, shall we go?”

He said nothing. She turned to lead the way to her car, feeling oddly disconcerted. Of course she had not really expected the eighteen-year-old boy she had taught to step off the bus, but she had not been prepared for the man, either.

More fool, she.

Trying not to panic, Rachel reached her car, a blue Maxima, opened the door, and glanced over her shoulder just in time to catch Johnny Harris flipping Jeff Skaggs the bird. The sight of that long middle finger pointed obscenely skyward was all she needed to confirm her suspicion that where Johnny Harris was concerned, she just might have bitten off more than she could chew.

“Was that really necessary?” she asked in a low voice as he approached.

“Yep.”

He walked around the car, opened the rear door, threw in his duffel bag, then slid into the front passenger seat. Rachel was left with nothing to do but get in herself.

She did. It was amazing how small her usually roomy Maxima seemed now that Johnny Harris was in the bucket seat beside her. His shoulders were broader than the gray plush seatback, so broad that they seemed to infringe on her space. His legs, too long to stretch out, sprawled apart. One jean-clad knee rested against the gear console between the seats. His proximity made her uncomfortable. He turned his head in her direction, and his eyes (they were a deep, smoky blue—funny she hadn’t remembered that) moved over her again. This time there was no mistaking the nature of his glance.

“Put your seat belt on, please. It’s the law.” Rachel had to fight an urge to hunch her shoulders forward to shield her breasts from his view. She was not usually ill at ease with men. In fact, for the last several years, she had tended
to scarcely notice them. Once, long ago, her foolish heart had loved madly, as she had always expected to love a man. He had taken all the love she had had to give, and all the mindless young passion, too, and dismissed it as a gift of little value. She’d survived but in the process she had learned that it was safer to shut men out.

But there was no shutting out Johnny Harris. His eyes—no, she was not imagining it—lingered on her breasts. Instinctively, Rachel glanced down at herself. Her sleeveless dress of white cotton knit with bold purple hydrangeas splashed across it had a high, round neckline and a skirt that swept her ankles when she walked. It flattered her slender figure while being both ladylike and modest. There was nothing about the way she was dressed to provoke that disturbing glance. Still, with his eyes on her like that, she felt hideously exposed, almost naked, and she didn’t like the feeling one bit. Ignoring his behavior took an effort, but she could think of no other way to handle it, so ignore it she did.

“We sure wouldn’t want to break the law, now, would we?”

If there was a jeer hidden somewhere in his words, and Rachel strongly suspected there was, at least he pulled the seat belt around himself and fastened it. No longer feeling his gaze on her person was a palpable relief.

By this time, Rachel was so rattled that her fingers shook as she inserted the key into the ignition. It took three tries before the key went home and the engine turned over. Hot air blasted out of the wide-open air conditioner vents, nearly choking her. Fumbling for the buttons, she rolled down the passenger side window and her own. The air outside was no cooler, and she could feel beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

“It’s hot, isn’t it?” A good, safe topic of conversation, she thought.

He grunted.

So much for that. She shifted gears, lifted her foot off
the brake, and pressed down on the gas. But instead of driving forward out of the lot, the Maxima shot backward. It was brought to a jarring halt by a telephone pole that sprouted from the grassy strip separating the bus depot from Callie’s Laundromat next door.

Apparently she had put the transmission into reverse by mistake. Rachel swore silently.

For a moment after the impact neither of them moved. Rachel was still recovering her presence of mind when Johnny slewed around in his seat to survey the damage.

“Next time, try drive,” he said.

Rachel said nothing. What was there to say? She put the car into drive and pulled away. If she had a dented bumper, which she probably had, examining it could wait until Johnny Harris was out of her car.

“Am I making you nervous, Miss Grant?” her passenger asked as Rachel somehow managed to pull out onto the two-lane road that bisected the town without hitting any oncoming traffic. The humid air rushing through the windows whipped strands of her usually smooth, chin-length brown bob in front of her eyes, making it difficult to see where she was going. Distractedly, she pushed her hair back from her face and held the foremost sections at her crown with one hand. Coping with Johnny Harris while at the same time trying to drive only
seemed
like mutually exclusive activities, she told herself. With a little concentration, she could surely manage both.

“Of course not,” she said, and forced a smile. She had not taught high school for thirteen years for nothing. Keeping her cool in the face of constant chaos and occasional disaster was second nature to her by now.

“You sure? You look like you’re wondering whether I’m about to jump your bones.”

“Wh-what?” Rachel was so taken aback that she could scarcely get the word out. The hand that had been holding her hair out of her face dropped to the steering wheel as she shot him a shocked glance. She knew what the expression
meant, of course. It was teenage slang for “have sex with you.” But she couldn’t believe that he would actually address such a remark to her. She was five years his senior, and even in her youth had been nobody’s idea of a boy-toy. Besides, she had been his teacher, for goodness’ sake, and was trying her level best to be his friend now.

Although being Johnny Harris’s friend was turning out to be altogether more difficult than she had anticipated.

“After all, it’s been ten years since I’ve had the pleasure of a woman’s—oh, sorry, in your case I guess I should say a
lady’s
—company. You might be worried that I’m kinda horny.”

“What?” This time it was more a gasp than a question as she stared at him in disbelief.

“Damnation, woman, watch the road!” The unexpected roar made Rachel jump to obey, even as his hand shot out to grab and jerk the steering wheel. A heavily laden coal truck thundered past, causing the small car to shiver.

“You nearly got us killed! Jesus H. Christ!”

Heat and tension combined to make Rachel nauseous. She pushed the buttons that rolled up the windows. The flow from the vents was now blessedly cool. For a moment she enjoyed the feel of the chilled air on her overheated face.

“For God’s sake, who the hell taught you how to drive? You’re a menace!”

When she didn’t reply, he slumped back into his seat. His hands, which were clenched into fists in his lap, were the only outward sign of tension he betrayed. That, and the way his eyes were now fastened on the road.

At least she had found a solution to the problem of warding off his lewd glances. But ignoring the issue was probably a mistake. The only way she or anyone else had ever been able to deal with the youthful Johnny Harris was to stand up to him. If he thought he could walk all over someone, he did.

“You can’t talk to me that way,” she said into the tense silence. “I won’t allow it.”

Both her hands grasped the steering wheel as she spoke, and she kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road. Stay cool, calm, and collected, she told herself. That was the way to handle him. Unfortunately, the bus depot was on the other side of town from their destination, which was still some ten minutes away. Traffic on this Thursday afternoon was surprisingly heavy. Even under the best of conditions she had a regrettable tendency to let her mind wander from the road. She was always building castles in the air, to use her mother’s exasperated description, instead of keeping her feet planted firmly on the ground and her mind affixed to her business. As a result, she had suffered untold numbers of fender benders.

These were not the best of conditions.

“What way? Oh, you mean the part about my being horny? I was just trying to reassure you. You don’t have to worry about being attacked or anything. At least, not by me.”

This innocent-sounding statement was accompanied by another sliding glance that made no effort to disguise its purpose: a blatant appraisal of her body. It was almost as if he were deliberately trying to make her uneasy in his presence, though if he was, Rachel couldn’t imagine why. At this point, she was just about the only ally he had left in town, if not in the world.

“Are you determined to make things difficult for yourself, Johnny?” she asked quietly.

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t come all teacherish with me, Miss Grant. I’m not in high school anymore.”

“Your manners were better then.”

“So were my prospects. They’ve both gone to hell since, and you know what? I don’t give a big goddamn.”

That shut her up, as it was no doubt meant to.

In silence they passed the Wal-Mart, the Burger King, the Kroger, and the cluster of antique shops that had
sprung up on the corner of Vine and Main. With their destination now near at hand, Rachel began to relax a little. Just a few more minutes, and she would be rid of him. She concentrated on pulling without mishap into the parking lot at the rear of Grant Hardware, which her grandfather had founded just after the turn of the century and which she now oversaw.

“There’s an apartment over the store. It’s yours. Just go around to the side and up the stairs.” Rachel stopped the car and put the transmission into park as she spoke. Reaching into the door pocket beside her, she handed him a single key dangling from a round metal ring.

“Here’s the key. The rent will be deducted from your paycheck each week. As I told you in my letter, the hours are from eight in the morning till six at night, with an hour for lunch, Monday through Saturday. I expect you to be on the job at eight in the morning.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good.”

Still he sat, the key dangling from his fingers, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher.

“Why’d you offer me a job, anyway? Aren’t you just a little bit afraid of a man who’d rape and kill a teenage girl?”

“We both know that you were innocent of raping Marybeth Edwards,” Rachel replied crisply, though such plain speaking caused her hands to close tightly around the steering wheel. “I, for one, am perfectly willing to believe that the two of you had consensual sex, just as you claimed. And that she was alive when you left her. Now, would you please get out of my car? I have things to do.”

To Rachel’s secret relief, he opened the door and slid out without another word. How she would have ejected him had he proved difficult, she couldn’t imagine. Putting her foot on the brake, she carefully moved the gearshift down to drive. When she looked up again he was beside
her, his arm resting on the roof of the car as he pecked with one finger on her window.

Lips compressing, Rachel pushed the button that rolled the window down. The heat assaulted her anew.

“There’s something I gotta tell you,” he said in a confidential tone as he leaned toward her. His face was close to hers, too close. He was making her uncomfortable again, as he no doubt intended.

That notion stiffened her spine.

“What?” she all but snapped.

“I had a major case of the hots for you when I was in high school. I still do.”

Rachel’s mouth dropped open in shock. He grinned at her cockily and straightened.

It was only as she watched him saunter away that she realized her mouth was agape. She closed it with a snap.