His Rebel Heart

Olivia turned to watch her walk out. “Aren’t you just a little bit curious about what he’s been up to all this time?”

“No,” Adrian replied. “And you know why? Because he left. He had better things to do than stick around and be with me. Why should I care what he’s done with his life or made of it?”

“I don’t know. For Kyle, maybe?”

Adrian’s hackles rose. Then she realized it wasn’t so much a low blow on Olivia’s part to say so as it was clear-cut sense. Kyle knew that Radley wasn’t his real father. Adrian had worked to find the right time and the right words to tell him just that. She’d told him very little about the man who had fathered him. She’d believed there was little chance James and Kyle would ever meet so she had let Kyle’s imagination fill in the blanks.

Every so often, Kyle would ask a question about his father...questions Adrian didn’t know how to answer. Even though she’d remained ambiguous through the years, she knew that Kyle’s curiosity about his paternal heritage was a barely contained bud she didn’t have the heart to suppress completely.

Olivia trailed Adrian from the office into the hall as she headed for the back door that led out onto the inn’s lawn behind her greenhouse. “What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Adrian said wearily. Damn it, she had enough to worry about on a day-to-day basis without a dilemma this size obstructing life in general. “I’ll...think of something. I have to.” She stopped, propping the door open with her shoulder and knee as she glanced back. She noted the way Olivia was leaning against the wall, the bags under her eyes. “Is Gerald home?”

“Yeah, writing. Why?”

“You should go. Have him take care of you. Seriously. You look like shit.”

Olivia frowned over the sentiment. “So long as we’re being honest...does it strike you as coincidence that James is moving in next door to you?”

“What do you mean?”

Olivia lifted a shoulder. “Maybe he already knows what you don’t want him to know. Maybe he’s trying to edge his way back into your life—to be a dad, a man. Not the screwup he was eight years ago.”

Adrian pressed her lips inward, rubbing them together as she thought back to their abrupt reunion. James had seemed as surprised to see her as she was him. Though, could Olivia be right? Did James know something about Kyle already? The thought made Adrian’s heart race like something preyed upon.

There was no way anyone was going to get to Kyle. There was no way anyone was edging their way into her life and taking her son from her.

Adrian raised her chin. “If that is the case, then he can kiss his chances goodbye. It’d take a heck of a lot more than a new house to convince me that James Bracken has become an honest man, much less daddy material.”

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9509ddb3-aa0f-5714-8d35-2701789d3b58)

ADRIAN CARLTON. UNBELIEVABLE.

After the movers left him alone with the boxes and furniture, James went over to the little cottage next door. It was a charming yellow clapboard house with a well-tended yard and picket fence. He knocked on the red-painted door a few times, then returned home, disappointed, when no one answered.

She must have gotten home late that night. He hadn’t seen or heard a car pull in. And she must have left early the next morning, too, because after he rose, showered and had what he could find for breakfast in the nearly empty pantry, he’d gone over again to knock. No answer.

Put off by the fact that she had evaded him again, James got in his sportster and drove into town. The garage on Section Street was another work in progress. Still, it was in better shape than the house. It was an old service station in desperate need of a paint job and some TLC. James had wanted it from the moment he heard it was for sale.

He’d already had several of his old cars brought down from North Carolina, some favorites he had collected over the years of good fortune. He pulled in next to the cherry-red Shelby he had bought to replace the one his father owned—the one James had plowed hood first into the office of Carlton Nurseries. As he got out of the sportster and walked around the Shelby, his hand automatically reached out to graze the restored hood. He veered around the tow truck the previous garage owner had generously left him and, digging the keys from the pocket of his worn jeans, rounded the front of the building.

Bending over, he unlocked the latch at the bottom of the steel door and, grabbing it from the bottom, shoved it up over his head. The door rolled up and bright morning sunlight spilled into the garage, revealing the automotive and mechanic’s tools James had already started to arrange around the room. Taking off his sunglasses, he moved past rolling toolboxes, a couple of jacks, the electric car lift he’d recently spent a weekend installing and even a rough-hewn table covered in wrenches, wipe rags and the Corvette engine he had finally finished restoring after starting the project with his father in his early teens.

James had kept the engine around for luck, mostly. Over the years, it had served him well. He would need that luck to get his fledgling small business off the ground. And it also reminded him of why he had bought the run-down garage in the first place. Back in those early, simple days of adolescence when Zachariah Bracken had still been alive, father and son had talked about opening a garage together when James grew up.

His father might have given up alcoholism and tinkering with boats and automobiles to devote his life to God and join the ministry. James, however, had held on to that dream, and it had never really left him. Not even after his father passed away and James buried himself in seedy, reprehensible pursuits to get away from that reality.

His father was long gone. And those shady years after had left their mark. But James still had a love for cars and all things automotive. His passion and knack for mechanics had served him as well as the lucky Corvette engine through the years. He was to the point in his life where he didn’t need money or cars anymore—he had plenty of both. What he needed now was closure. Peace. He had a good sense that launching Bracken Mechanics in Fairhope, the place he began, would be a big step in that direction.

As he set the duffel he’d brought from the house on the work counter beside the dusty screen of his service computer, James caught himself scrubbing a hand over his sternum and the wooden cross that hung beneath his black T-shirt. A tinge of regret flared to life in his chest. He’d been meaning to visit his father’s grave since his return. He hadn’t yet found a moment to do it. Maybe some part of him was avoiding the painful errand. He hadn’t even ventured into the cemetery since the funeral—the funeral he hadn’t been man enough to sit all the way through...

He would do it, he thought, squaring his jaw. He just needed a bit more time.

Ghosts. The memory of Zach Bracken was just one of those lurking around Fairhope. His mother still lived here, though he hadn’t summoned the gall to show up at his old childhood home. There were too many hurts to make up for between the two of them, and he needed to mull a little longer on how best to approach that situation. Anyway, James had found yet another ghost staring him in the face yesterday afternoon in the form of Adrian Carlton.

No, he hadn’t been able to forget Adrian. The memory of their summer together was burned into his mind, into his skin. She looked a good deal different, undoubtedly a woman now. She’d cropped her hair short. Eight years ago, it had hung down her back. He remembered how he’d wrapped it in his hands, a thick, red silk rope.

The short hair suited her. It left the fascinating angles of her face to answer for themselves. And answer they did. It made her eyes look bigger, deeper—saucers of dark chocolate. That was exactly what he had thought the first time he’d lost himself in them.

As a seventeen-year-old, Adrian had been built like a waif. Not too thin but with more angles than curves. As James watched her retreat from him yesterday in puzzlement, his eyes had latched onto the line of her hips, more rounded now in womanhood. He’d wanted nothing more than to chase after her, place his hands on either side of her waist and soothe the stark, white panic he’d seen on her face.

Clearly, he hadn’t left things well between them, but James had known that before he encountered her on his front porch. The thought of Adrian had troubled him deeply as he skipped town all those years ago. It didn’t matter that he’d been doing the right thing at the time. The right thing for her, at least. But he couldn’t understand the sheer level of terror that confronting him again had obviously caused her. Anger would have been a great deal more justified and characteristic of the Adrian he’d known. But fear? James couldn’t make sense of that.

He needed to make sure she was okay. Hell, he needed to know how life had treated her. When he decided coming back to Fairhope was the right decision, he’d thought of her, of course. Though he’d figured there was little chance she’d still be living here. Fairhope had seemed far too small a town for both of their wild teenage selves. As they grew to know each other over the course of that summer, one of the commonalities that had struck a fast bond between them was the mutual desire to one day put as much distance as possible between their hometown—and the people in it—and themselves.

Thinking about the firebrand version of Adrian he’d known back then, James caught himself smiling. He scraped the back of his middle and index fingers over his mouth to chase it away and turned at the sound of an approaching vehicle.

Sunshine shot off the black hood of the car. James squinted as the light beamed into his eyes, raising a hand to his brow to shield them as he watched the 1969 Camaro Z28 with white racing stripes pull into the parking lot. He let out a low whistle. “Nice car,” he called as he walked from the garage to greet the man who unfolded himself from the driver’s seat.

“Thanks.” The visitor appeared to be in his midthirties with dark hair growing over the collar of his black business suit. As he approached James, he stood tall and straight. “That’s a nice Shelby GT350 over there. You wouldn’t by any chance mind a stranger taking her off your hands, would you?”

James cracked a smile. He looked over at the Shelby, reaching back to scratch his neck. “Sorry. She’s got sentimental value.”

“That’s a damn shame.” The man offered a hand and shook James’s in a firm grip. “Byron Strong. I heard someone bought ol’ Cy Witmore’s place and had to come by to see for myself.”

“James Bracken,” James greeted him. “I take it you were one of Witmore’s customers?”

“Since I moved over from Mobile several years ago.” Byron nodded. “Every once in a while, he’d let me help out around the place. Not that I’m a certified mechanic or anything.”

“No kidding,” James said. “My dad and I used to come up here when I was a kid and hang out with Witmore. But this was back when he kept glass bottles of Coca-Cola to sell to his customers and his old coon dog, Scout, was still loping around after him. You lookin’ for a job? I could use a tow truck driver.”

Byron lifted a shoulder. “My day job keeps me busy enough. I’m an accountant. The other reason I came by is because my sister, Priscilla Grimsby, is a reporter for the local newspaper. She has a business column. I thought you’d like to get in touch with her, see what kind of publicity the two of you can generate for this place. I’d sure like to see it do well again.”

James took the business card with Byron’s sister’s name and number on it. “I appreciate it.” He scanned Byron’s face. “You play any poker, Byron?”

A smile wore into the corners of Byron’s mouth as he relaxed his stance and crossed his arms over his chest. “When the occasion strikes.”

“I just got back into town,” James admitted. “When I get settled in, we should get a game together so that I can repay you for this...” he lifted the card, then gestured to the Camaro “...and for letting me take a peek under your hood.”

Byron considered for a moment before his smile widened. “Sounds fair.”

Byron even went a step further and let James fire the Camaro up. He revved the Z28 and listened to the ponies work, impressed. The two of them drooled over the engine for a while. Byron obviously knew his way around one. It was no wonder ol’ Witmore had let him hang around occasionally.

It wasn’t until Byron closed the hood and stepped back toward the open driver’s door of the Camaro that he said, “There’s already some talk about you in town, you know.”

“Huh.” James could imagine what residents were saying about him. Eventually talk would lead back to those ghosts of his who still lived and thrived. Not just Adrian, but also his mother. His stepfather. James fought off the shadow that thoughts of his relatives brought about. “Word of mouth’s as good promotion as any.”

“True,” Byron acknowledged. “Word is you were the town riot back in the day.”