“Don’t assume your galling temerity allows you to know shit about what I see.”
“I know enough about the legendary Campbell True. The photographs on the diner wall, at your cousin’s gallery, in the newspaper. Kit even showed me one of your books. Landscapes. Your specialty, right?”
Campbell studied her, hoping his expression came across as vacant, because his stomach quivered. “I can make arrangements, if my specialty is of interest.”
He saw her roll her eyes before she tilted her head, the protective bill of her hat shading her face. “The master of roadside seduction returns.”
“He never left,” Campbell murmured as thunder echoed in the distance. “In fact, he’s all there is.”
Her gaze glittered in the moonlight, her expressionunreadable. “There are several sealed boxes in Celia’s closet that need going through, especially with the house sale coming up. You might want to handle those yourself. Say, if there are anycompromisingphotos taken by a celebrated photographer, he’d probably prefer to be the one to reclaim them.”
For a moment, time seemed to suspend. The air around them thickened, charged with more than an impending storm.
Blinking hard, his throat tight, Campbell did a rare thing: he walked away from a battle.
Turning on his heel, he stalked toward the gazebo, the mist swirling around his feet. When he reached it, he dropped to one knee beside his brother, gently brushing a tangled lock of hair from Kit’s brow.
“Mr. True, I—” Fontana caught up to them, jerked her hat off, and whipped it against her thigh.
“Away,” Campbell growled, dismissing her with a sharp glance. He slipped his arms beneath Kit, lifting him, tucking the boy against his chest.
Kit blinked sleepily, mumbled “Camp” in a dreamy voice, and dropped his cheek to his brother’s shoulder.
Complete trust in repose.
“He loves you,” she whispered, a lone raindrop, the first of the storm, sliding down her jaw like a tear.
Campbell’s gaze briefly swept over her before settling on the boy in his arms. “I think he does. Disappointed?”
“Surprised,” she replied, lifting her arm before letting it fall with a soft sigh. “I’m always amazed by a child’s ability to forgive.”
“You sound like you speak from experience. Believe it or not,Ialso speak from experience.” His gaze flicked to the ankle she favored, the slight limp she couldn’t quite mask. He was curious, but fuck if he was going to ask. “Care to give me an accounting of your past? I’d be more than happy to point out your mistakes, the places you veered off courseat those proverbial forks in the road. A complete character overhaul, no charge. I’m an expert in corruptible behavior and the consequences of indecision. Excellent qualifications for advising others on how to run their lives.”
“I said I was sorry,” she whispered, the patter of raindrops against the gazebo’s roof nearly drowning out her words. “I care about Kit, and my conscience spoke for me. Maybe it doesn’t know the whole story.”
“To hell with your conscience, Quinn.” Campbell studied her garden, lingering for one pulsing moment on the bounty she’d created before he started up the rocky path to the house. “And to hell with mine.”
chapter
four
Mysterious Ways–U2
CAMPBELL
His exile was comingto a fast and furious end.
Resigned to his fate, Campbell slowed to a trot, the Rise’s peaked roof emerging from a tangle of muscadine and pine, a bruised sky casting a somber silhouette behind it. On the front stoop, John Nelson sat hunched over a piece of unfinished wood, his knife carving in slow, deliberate strokes.
Campbell kicked a stray limb aside and exhaled, his pulse hammering in his ears. The same scene—a thousand times over—flipped through his mind like cards spewing from a casino’s shuffle machine. His grandfather waiting for him while trying to appear like he wasn’t, advice on his mind.
And the look.Ah, fuck. Campbell could cook that one up without trying. Compassionate. Pitying. Apologetic. Like a needle prick—furtive, but surprisingly painful.
Home.
Needing to hear it, he whispered the word, noting the lazy ease with which it rolled off his tongue. If only his feelingswere as weightless, as tractable. He tipped his head, the branches above snapping in the breeze, the starkness of the morning tempting him to run from the weight of unsettling memories.
The burden of knowingexactlywhat he’d find waiting on a two-hundred-year-old veranda.
