The Promise of Paradise (6 page)

“Sorry,” Ash called
over, and her cheeks pinked. “I gotta go.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll come out and
see you at the bar if I get a minute,” she added.

“Hey, sweetheart!”

Eddie cut another
glance across the room and didn’t like what he saw: a middle-aged
guy with red cheeks and bloodshot eyes, and two friends who looked in
about the same condition. All three wore plaid shirts with the
sleeves rolled up and expensive-looking watches.
They aren’t
locals.
They’d probably stopped in Paradise on business or
signed up for a two-day seminar at the junior college.

“I’ll see you
later.” Ash raised the tray above her head, winding her way through
tables until she got to the three idiots.

He watched her go,
backing toward the bathroom after a minute, though what he really
wanted to do was stay and make sure those guys treated her okay. He
didn’t like the way they were looking at Ash, with grins splitting
their faces apart and winks behind her back. As he watched, biting
back a comment, they made her get them fresh napkins, fresh drinks,
and extra plates before one of them finally ran a hand down her bare
arm and let her go.

* * *

“So who’s the guy?”

Ash looked up from the
salads she was making. Lacey, the other waitress, stood with one hand
on the coffee pot.

“What guy?”

The twenty-year old
college student clicked her tongue. “C’mon. The one who just ran
you over in the dining room. The one who was talking to you.” She
filled two mugs and headed for the door. “He’s cute. Is he your
boyfriend?”

“God, no. Just my
housemate.” Ash crooked her neck, trying to work out a kink. Thank
goodness she was only working until eight. Already she’d had enough
of drunken customers hitting on her to last through the summer.

“Cool. So is he
available?”

Ash watched the young
girl’s eyes light up. She had to admit Eddie looked good in his
polo shirt and shorts. Who wouldn’t fall for those dimples, the
hard body, that sensual voice? She straightened. Not her, that was
for sure. It didn’t matter how good Eddie West looked. She wasn’t
about to get involved with someone who lived downstairs from her.
She’d learned that lesson in her first year of college.

“Ash?” Lacey stood
in the doorway, waiting. “Do you know if he has a girlfriend?”

“Um… I don’t
know. I don’t think so.”

“What’s his name?”

“Eddie West.”

Lacey’s brows flew
up. “That’s Eddie West? Geez, one of my roommates was talking
about him the other day. Said she took her car in to get fixed and
this gorgeous guy spent the afternoon hitting on her. Said she’d go
out with him, too, if he ever called.”

Ash laughed. “Did
he?”

“No. I guess he’s
like that. You know, a player.”

Ash swallowed. “Yeah?
Could be. I really don’t know him. I mean, we both just moved in…”

Lacey bumped the door
open with one hip. “Well, I don’t care. Guy looks like that, he
can play with me all he wants.” She laughed, a little chirp that
hit Ash the wrong way.

Ash watched the door
swing closed and returned to her salads.
See? That’s one more
reason you need to make sure you and Eddie stay just friends. He’s
already got a reputation a mile long. And if he’s looking at you
like…well, like he wants something more, remember that’s what he
does with any woman he meets.

She took another couple
of minutes, hoping Eddie had made it back to the bar, before she
headed into the dining room.

“Hey, sweetheart!”

Ash stiffened. When
were those guys going to leave? Did they have any idea who she was?
Who her father was? She pressed her lips together and turned around.

“Can I get you
something else?”

One of them, the
heaviest, ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “Sure can.”

How about the check?
she almost said as she made her way over to their table.

Before she could stop
him, the guy wrapped one arm around her waist and yanked her into
him. “How about you give me your phone number, good-lookin’?”

Ash’s hipbone pressed
into the spongy flesh of his belly as she tried to pull away. “Um,
listen…”

“C’mon. Sweet
little thing like you probably tastes even better than she looks.”
The other two guys at the table guffawed. “What time do you get
off?”

Ash shoved a palm
against his shoulder. “Let go of me.”

But he wouldn’t.
“What’s wrong? You got a boyfriend or something?”

“No, but – ”

“Take your hands off
her.”

The voice, low and
angry, came from behind her. Startled, the guy unwrapped himself from
her waist, and she almost fell into Eddie in her rush to get away. He
put one hand on her shoulder, and her legs turned wobbly with relief.

“You okay?” he
breathed into her ear.

A tingle ran down her
arm.
Uh-oh.
Tingles weren’t good. Well, they were, but not
in this case. She wasn’t supposed to let her neighbor knock her off
her feet with desire. Ash took a step back to catch her balance and
nodded. Eddie glared at the guys, who’d turned back to their nachos
with sheepish faces. He lowered his voice another degree, so that his
next words came out as a clear threat.

“You touch her again,
you even breathe wrong when you’re asking for a glass of water,
I’ll make sure you don’t walk straight for the next week.”

“Whatever,” one of
them muttered.

Eddie strode over to
the table. Biceps flexed as he put both hands on the back of an empty
chair and squeezed. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing, man,” one
of the other guys said. “We’re leaving anyway.”

“Good idea.”

And as Ash watched,
Eddie stood there with arms crossed as she brought them the bill and
collected their tab, plus an extra twenty for her tip.

“You didn’t have to
do that.”

He shrugged, the angry
look melting away as the three finally stumbled out of the
restaurant. “They were being assholes.”

She walked over to him,
thankful down to the tips of her toes. Without letting herself think
too much about it, she planted a kiss on Eddie’s scarred cheek.
“Thank you.”

“Ah, it wasn’t
anything.” But he didn’t move and neither did she, until a crowd
of people came into the restaurant and she had to help Lacey with the
order. The next time Ash checked the bar, Eddie was gone.

The following week, Ash
dragged herself back to Lycian Street after a hectic lunch shift. A
toddler had managed to spill iced tea down her legs, and her right
sock had turned a strange yellow color. Her arms ached. Her legs
ached. And it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. Thank God she
had tomorrow off.

The sun beat down on a
mid-June day that felt more like the heaviness of August. She checked
her cell phone. Her mother had called once in the last week, leaving
a teary message that pleaded with Ash to return to Boston.

“We need the whole
family together,” Mamie Kirk wept on the voicemail. “Please,
Ashton. Your father needs to know we all support him.”

But did they? Ash
didn’t know what to believe. She didn’t know who was telling the
truth and who was making up tales. She slowed as she passed Lou’s
and breathed in the aroma of fresh bread and garlic. Two cars drove
by. A mother with her baby in a stroller jogged down the sidewalk.
The church clock chimed the hour.

The muscles in her neck
unclenched, and her fatigue eased.
It’s so different from
Boston,
she thought for the umpteenth time. True, Paradise had
only one grocery store, no movie theater, and no Wal-Mart. It had a
single stoplight that turned to blinking yellow after midnight. It
did have a train station, but it seemed as though more people left
the town than returned to it. It sat shrouded by low mountains, a
stone’s throw from one of the largest cities in the country, and
yet sometimes Ash felt as though she couldn’t have been more
protected, more isolated, than if she’d moved to the moon.

“It’s nice,” she
said aloud.
And I don’t want to go back to Boston. Not now. Not
yet.
She just had to figure out how to explain that to her
mother.

Reaching her street,
Ash turned the corner and dug into her pocket for her keys. After a
hot shower, maybe she’d see if Eddie was in the mood for some
Chinese food. Though they hadn’t seen too much of each other in the
last few days, she’d heard him down there, blasting his rock music
and rearranging furniture. Since moving in three weeks ago, they’d
shared a couple of early dinners and a beer or two on the porch.
Other than that, their paths didn’t cross too often. Still, she
liked knowing he was there. It made the house a little more full, the
nights a little less lonely, when she curled into bed and tried not
to dream of Colin.

A breath of air moved
around the corner, blowing strands of hair that had fallen from her
ponytail. The weekend stretched out ahead of her without so much as a
single lunch shift to keep her busy. Anxiety bubbled inside her
chest. She needed something to keep her mind off her mother’s
calls. Off her father’s predicament. Off the heartache that
wouldn’t go away.

Man, she hoped Eddie
was home. She hoped he didn’t have plans for dinner.

“Hey, stranger.”

He sat on the front
porch, a six-pack between his feet and a lazy grin on his face.

“Hey, yourself.”
She smiled and dropped to sit on the top step. “You’re home
early.”

“Yeah. Frank’s
going outta town for the weekend, closed at two.” He flipped the
top off a bottle and handed it over.

“Thanks. How’d you
know that’s exactly what I need?”

Eddie took a long pull
on his own bottle. “Figured you’d be pretty beat. Fridays always
get a big lunch crowd down at the restaurant.”

Ash cocked one eyebrow.
“Thanks for giving me a heads-up. You could have let me know.”
She leaned against the porch railing. Nothing moved. No cars turned
down their block. No joggers ran by; no kids played in the park
across the street. She closed her eyes and welcomed the silence.

“So how was work this
week?” she asked after a while.

“Same as always.
Crazy customers want to know why we can’t fix their cars in an
hour, when they’ve been driving around for two weeks with the
problem.”

Ash smiled. “Yeah,
people are funny that way.”

“So what’s for
dinner?”

She turned. “Whatever
you’re making.”

He laughed, and she
noticed that his goatee had grown a little more in the last few days.
Thick and dark, it caught the light and turned a reddish-brown in
places.
Not like Colin or anyone else I ever dated.
All her
past boyfriends had smooth faces and baby-soft cheeks. For the first
time, she realized she liked the look of stubble on a man. Hot.
Rugged. Rough in all the right ways.

She dropped her chin,
hoping Eddie couldn’t read her thoughts. “I was thinking about
ordering Chinese.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“You don’t have
plans for tonight? It’s Friday. ”

“Nope.”

“No hot dates?”

“Not until tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Ash studied
the stain on her sock. With one hand, she reached up and loosened her
ponytail, damp with perspiration. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

Eddie cleared his
throat. “Cheri Ryerson.” Long pause. “Don’t think you know
her.”

Ash got up, sticking
her empty bottle back inside the cardboard carrier. “Don’t think
I do. She live in Paradise?”

“Next town over.”

“Well, lover boy, I’m
sure you’ll have a good time.”

He stood too, following
her to the door. “I’m sure I will.”

They were halfway
inside when Helen called to them from across the street. Ash had one
hand on the doorknob, and Eddie was picking up the empties, when the
woman hobbled over.

“Ashley!” Helen’s
voice scratched on the syllables, and her breathing came in great
gasps. “Edward!”

In slow motion, Ash
turned. She didn’t like the tone in the woman’s voice: eager,
gossipy, dangerous. She took a step back, meaning to create some sort
of excuse and head upstairs. But Eddie had already loped down the
steps, a playboy grin on his face.

Helen stopped in the
middle of the sidewalk, hands on her hips. “I was downtown today,
getting my hair done.” She stopped, drawing in a deep, rattling
breath. “And a newspaper reporter came into Hair Heaven. From
Boston.”

Oh, God. Ash took two
steps across the porch and tumbled down the stairs, straight into
Eddie’s back. Into Eddie’s strong, tall, incredibly muscular
back. He turned and grabbed her with both hands before she knocked
the two of them over.

“You okay?”

She blew out a long
breath, conscious of his hands on her even as she looked at her feet
and willed Helen away. “I’m fine. Just tired. Sorry.”

The white-haired woman
looked as though she hadn’t even noticed. “He was asking about
someone named Ashton Kirk.” Her beady eyes stared at Ash. “I told
him I’d never heard of anyone by that name.”

Eddie shrugged. “Guess
it sounds a little like Ash’s name, but – ”

“But it’s not,”
Ash finished.

“Of course it’s
not.” He let his arm drop around Ash’s neck, looping it across
her shoulders. “Why was he all the way up here, anyway?”

Helen pulled a crumpled
tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. “I don’t know. Said he
was looking for Senator’s Kirk’s daughter.”

“In Paradise?”
Eddie began to laugh. “Why? Don’t those types stay close to
home?”

Something like a stone
sank inside Ash.
Those types…

“That’s what I told
him,” Helen said. “Said there wasn’t any reason for a stuck-up
politician’s daughter to get her hands dirty way up here in New
Hampshire. I guess he had some kind of lead. Thought maybe she
skipped town to get away from the family mess.”