His Rebel Heart

Spring air greeted her. Drinking it in, she veered around the silver buckets of blossoms and the chalkboard easel she’d set out announcing today’s sale. By the time she reached the worn wooden door of Tavern of the Graces, she was muttering to herself.

The bar was empty. Her footsteps echoed in the absence of boisterous conversation and jukebox rock that usually blasted through the tavern. Knowing where to find her friend Olivia, Adrian made her way behind the counter and past the swinging doors. The first door to the left in the hallway beyond was open, the light streaming out.

Blowing a relieved breath, Adrian entered Olivia’s office with its cluttered desk, large wall safe and sagging, green couch. “I have a problem,” she announced, then stopped short, feet halting when she saw her friend sitting in the desk chair, hands on her knees, head hanging.

“Liv?” Adrian asked, alarmed when Olivia didn’t look up or stir. “Are you okay?”

Olivia lifted a hand. The fingers trembled a bit. “Fine. I just...oh, crap.” Her head lowered farther between her knees, her blond curls falling forward as she braced her hands on the arms of the chair. “Hang back... I may hurl on your shoes.”

“What’s wrong?” Adrian asked, taking a step into the office.

“Oh, just sick as a damned dog.”

“The flu’s still going around,” Adrian warned her. “Maybe you should go home.”

“I’m not contagious.”

“Are you sure?” Adrian narrowed her eyes.

Olivia waved it off and finally, after some hesitation, sat up, slumping against the back of the chair. She looked pale, tired, but the corners of her lips twitched in something of a smile. “What’s up? I need a distraction.”

Adrian scanned Olivia closely. Her friend still looked a little green around the edges, but despite her weary movements, her eyes were alert and her eyebrows raised in expectation. Adrian cleared her throat and went ahead. “You won’t believe this, but...do you remember what I told you last November? About how Radley isn’t really Kyle’s dad. It’s—”

“—sexy James Bracken.” Olivia’s expression warmed several degrees. “Oh, yeah. I remember.”

Adrian took a deep breath, as if she were about to plunge deep underwater. Then she blurted, “He’s here.”

Olivia’s smile faded after a moment. “Who’s here?”

“James!” Adrian exclaimed. “James Bracken. He’s back—in Fairhope!”

Olivia’s brows drew together and she lifted a hand to rub them, closing her eyes as she did so. “Wait a minute. James is here? He’s been gone, like, eight years.”

“I know that,” Adrian pointed out, fighting impatience. “I’m telling you, Liv, that he is, at this very moment, moving into the house next door to mine.”

Olivia’s jaw dropped. “Holy crap, Batman.”

“Yeah,” Adrian said with an asserting nod, resisting the urge to pace Olivia’s office. “Olivia, what do I do?”

Olivia’s eyes scanned Adrian’s face closely and she rose carefully from her chair. “Okay, first of all, you need to calm down. Here. Maybe you should be sitting.”

Adrian shrugged off the offer. “No. I need to dosomething about this. I need to call whoever it is who’s in charge of selling that damn house. If they knew who they were selling it to, they’d back out. Escrow might not have closed by now. There’s a chance they could—”

“What?” Olivia demanded to know. “The worst thing James Bracken ever did was run his car off the road into your parents’ nursery, and he paid that debt. Getting you pregnant and leaving you high and dry was shitty, sure. But, for one, he didn’t know about the baby. And two, it’s not a criminal offense to sleep with someone and never call them again. If it were, he and I would both be repeat offenders. Plus, for all we know, he’s a model citizen now.”

Adrian snorted in disbelief. In rare moments through the years, low moments, whenever she had ventured to think about James Bracken, she’d imagined him in some seedy, twenty-first-century equivalent of a brothel. Her bitterness might have also conjured for him a handlebar mustache and a beer belly like Nutsy the Squirrel’s.

Thinking back to the man who had come to the door of the house next door, she frowned. The lower half of his face might have been covered in hair, but the full beard hadn’t looked cheesy. It made James look manly—even sexier than the clean-shaven seventeen-year-old she’d fallen in love with. And he’d definitely not been hiding a beer belly under his sweaty T-shirt. There had been more than a faint impression of pectoral and abdominal muscles...

Adrian shook her head, forcing her thoughts back to the dire situation at hand. “So, what do you suggest?”

Olivia braced her hands on her hips. “Talk to him?” When Adrian looked horrified, Olivia shrugged. “Unless you’re willing to pick up and move within the next few days, there’s nothing you can do about living next door to him. And ask yourself this—would you rather he find out about Kyle from you or on his own?”

“Kyle?” Adrian shook her head. “No, no. He can’t find out about Kyle.”

Olivia’s expression went blank. “Huh?”

“He won’t know about Kyle,” Adrian repeated, determined. “I’ll send Kyle to live with Mom and Dad at The Farm before I let James find out about him.”

Olivia’s brow creased. “Adrian, think about this. Kyle’s his son.”

“He left!” Adrian shouted, unable to hold back the dangerous tidal wave of desperation and anger a moment longer. “If James wanted to know about the baby, he would have stuck around. He would have stood by me. He would have done all those things he told me he would.”

“Like what?” Olivia asked.

“Like...” Adrian stopped, breathing hard, and brushed the hair out of her eyes. They had been silly, sweet things that James had said, she thought, looking back now with a bit more clarity. There had been few promises for the future, but she’d been certain James wanted to be with her beyond that summer. For a time, she even thought he was as in love with her as she’d been with him.

Olivia seemed to deflate as she read Adrian’s helpless face. “Okay, let’s try approaching this from another angle. How did you find out it was him moving in? Did you see him, face-to-face?”

Adrian nodded, wordless. She thought of the pie lying facedown, ruined, on James’s front porch. So much for the warm welcome.

“So he knows it’s you, too?”

“Yes,” Adrian admitted. Unfortunately.

“And?” Olivia asked. When Adrian only looked at her in question, Olivia lifted her shoulders. “How did he look?”

Adrian frowned deeply. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just indulge me,” Olivia insisted.

Sighing, Adrian gave in and lowered to the arm of the battered couch. “He looked...like a grown-up.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he was different,” Adrian said, rubbing her hands together. They were sore. During her anxiety attack, she had clenched and unclenched them over and over. “He used to be long and lean and...well, he’s still long and he’s in good shape, damn it. But he’s bigger here.” She lifted her hands to either of her shoulders. “His hair’s thicker, a bit shaggier. And he’s got a beard and tattoos.”

Olivia raised an interested brow. “Oh?”

“A whole sleeve of them, from what I could tell,” Adrian said. “And one here.” She pointed to her neck. “Though I couldn’t see what it was exactly.” Taking several, calming breaths, she frowned at the floor. “He looked good. The bonehead.”

Olivia looked as if she was trying very hard not to smile. “You know...this could very well be a good thing.”

Adrian’s frown deepened as she saw the gleam in Olivia’s eye. “Don’t even think about it.”

Again, Olivia’s shoulders lifted as she feigned innocence. “What am I thinking?”

“That this is Briar and Cole all over again and you’re going to fix James and me up and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives driving each other crazy.” Adrian rose and walked to the door. “It’s not gonna happen for me, Liv. Especially not with a deadbeat asshole like James Bracken.”