LET ME CALL YOU SWEETHEART Read online

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

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  Chapter 1

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  Nothing energized a small town like whispers of scandal.

  Before noon, no fewer than two dozen of Sweetheart's finest found their way into Rare Finds, Bess Carrey's used and rare bookstore, hoping to rehash old rumors. In Bess, they encountered a stone wall. Always admired for her closed-lipped approach to gossip, she could be darned frustrating when the talk turned as juicy as this new topic. Of course, Bess was friends with Melody Crandall and even with her brother Zach, himself, before he'd fled town in disgrace, but that didn't give her leave to be so sour on the source of the locals' excitement. Not in a town where last night's rainfall usually dominated conversation.

  The news had traveled like wildfire on the lips of Alice Barbor, the town's acclaimed gossip. Even the cable news networks couldn't break a story faster. Bony features flushed, she had burst in on Bess the moment she'd unlocked the door to open her shop. Behind Alice's magnifying glasses, bright eyes glowed, homing beacons focused upon the tidbit of the day.

  "Guess you've already heard."

  Tempted not to pick up that dangled bait, Bess resigned herself to the inevitable. "What's that, Alice?"

  "That no-account Crandall boy is back."

  If it hadn't been nine in the morning and a comfortable seventy-five degrees, Bess would have blamed sunstroke for the sudden faltering of her system. Her knees refused to lock, going all rolling and wobbly beneath her knife-pleated skirt. Heat and emotion of Vesuvian proportion swelled up inside, threatening to blow as contrasting ice settled in the shaking fingers knotted about her bag.

  "Fletch, Ross or Jordie?" Had that weak thread of sound come from her? Bess held her breath, waiting to hear Alice pick one of the younger Crandall brothers, even as her heart hammered out another name.

  "I'm talking about Zach. You graduated with him, remember? Or would have if he'd stayed in school."

  Did she remember? A chill of gooseflesh swept along her arms. Zach Crandall with his icy blue eyes shooting lightning bolts of intensity. Zach with his John Travoltaesque strut, cigarette dangling from the corner of a cynically curled smile, attitude sneering, "I'm good for nothing but bad." He'd roared out of Sweetheart on a cloud of motorcycle fumes and mystery over a decade and a half ago.

  He was the last person on earth its citizens would welcome back. And he was the only person who could stir sparks in Bess's long-barren heart.

  "Zach? I can't believe it."

  She needed to sit down before she fell down.

  Bess wove a kamikaze path down the center aisle and collapsed on a corrugated carton of Shakespeare's sonnets delivered too near closing time to be shelved. Alice followed, gabbing excitedly while her audience grew pale as the parchment in her old books.

  "I couldn't believe it, either. He's got some nerve, that's for sure."

  Dizzying impressions shivered to Bess's soul. Faint from the overload of sensations, she whispered, "Why?"

  "Why?" Alice blinked owlishly behind her thick trifocals, not understanding the question that broke the smooth flow of her story.

  "Why has he come back?" But she wasn't really talking to Alice. She'd almost forgotten the other woman's presence as she seized upon the earth-shattering fact.

  Did it matter why? He was home.

  "They're letting his mama out, from what I hear," Alice rattled on, never missing a beat. "Seventeen years. A whole lifetime lost for something she should have gotten a medal for … if she did it at all."

  That mutter of speculation shook Bess back to the present with a jerk. A familiar defensiveness pressed for release, but, as always, she swallowed it back behind a mild smile.

  "I've got to open my register, Alice."

  So caught up in the drama she almost missed the brusque dismissal, Alice nodded absently, already planning her next stop. "I'll drop in later if I hear any more."

  For Bess it was anything but business as usual.

  The next hours went by in a haze, broken only briefly by visits from her neighborhood grapevine. Zach. Her pulse wouldn't stop pounding, as if she were again that seventeen-year-old girl infatuated with the first boy to look her way; the only one.

  Smart and serious back then, as now, she hadn't been the type to inspire thoughts of romance. Homemade clothes of plain, unflattering cut, hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, no makeup, no trace of teenage vivaciousness, she had more in common with her peers' parents than the schoolmates who'd overlooked her.

  Zach had been her one bright light, and oh, how hot he'd burned against the somber tones surrounding her. A fiery comet shooting across her horizon, leaving a glittering trail of memories even after the glow faded.

  Memories still as bittersweet as the day they were made.

  Now that he was back, would he light up her heavens again? Would he even remember her?

  She bent to her work. Books to unload, count and shelve. Pain lanced her heart, slicing through it the way her utility knife slit packing tape on the shipping carton. Just because he was the most monumental force to affect her life, what were the chances that she'd made a dent upon his? In seventeen years, he'd never made a single attempt to contact her. No note to say where he'd gone. No card on holidays or her birthday. Not even a whisper of gossip to say he hadn't fallen off the face of the earth when he'd crossed the town limits. She jerked the box flaps apart with unnecessary force, spilling several of the weighty volumes out onto the floor. She stared at them blankly, her mind a world away from the musty odors of old paper and cracked leather.

  Where had he gone? What had he done? Many times she'd started to ask Melody about him. She knew the other boys kept in touch with their sister. But Zach, the oldest, Melody's childhood champion, rarely did. Silence said it all. There was nothing in Sweetheart he wanted to remember.

  Chiding herself for being a fool, Bess tried to shift her attention to the packing order. Zach Crandall hadn't come back to rekindle their ill-fated teenage romance. If she figured in his plans at all, wouldn't he have called her upon his return to town? It wasn't as if she'd be hard to find in a place the size of Sweetheart. She still worked in her mother's store. She still lived in her mother's house. Nothing had changed except that instead of rubber bands, she used tortoiseshell combs to hold back her baby-fine hair.

  Had he changed?

  Clutching one of the leather-bound volumes to her breast, she tried picturing how an extra seventeen years would wear on Zach. Certainly not like they had on most of the boys in their graduating class, who held up protruding bellies with their plate-sized belt buckles and hid thinning hair under John Deere green ball caps. They'd all rooted deep in the rich Iowa soil and grown with a solid predictability. But not Zach. He'd been transplanted to parts unknown. Had he found someplace to root? Had he … married? Did he have children who called him Daddy?

  The achy heaviness in her chest kept growing. It wasn't fair for her to dislike the idea of his happiness. She'd given up her right to be a part of his life. Had she expected him to go on in some selfless vacuum, as lonely and isolated as she'd let herself become? Zach with a wife and children … settled down to domestic bliss. Someone else living the only dream she'd ever had. Hurt and confused, she blinked fiercely, denying the feelings that claimed she'd been mourning him since the night he'd gone away.

  Why couldn't she just put him aside and move on?

  But nothing about Zach had ever been easy. He was a tornado over their placid plains. And she was being sucked up and swirled around all over again. Used to stability, the feeling of not having her feet on the ground was as s
cary to Bess as it was exhilarating. She didn't know whether to cling or let go and enjoy the wild ride.

  Maybe clinging all those years ago had been her biggest mistake.

  With a sigh of regret, she stood and brushed at the dust circling her knees. Maybe what she needed was someone to come along and brush the dust off her before she became as dull and dried out as the books she secretly abhorred. Those staid, moralistic classics mocked her lonely existence. No one read them anymore because the plots were well-known and held no mystery. Flashy, action-packed pulp fiction was what sold, not the plodding prose lining her shelves.

  She heard the door to her shop open and mentally girded herself for the ordeal of listening to yet another rush of gossip. The need to snap, "Can't you mind your own business?" tugged at her firmly set lips as she turned.

  And she froze.

  For there in her doorway stood a man where the boy had once been.

  He hadn't changed at all.

  But the moment that giddy thought surfaced, she knew it wasn't true. He was different. Seventeen years had lent a hard maturity. On Zach Crandall, it was an exciting change.

  Gone was the lanky whipcord strength of youth. In its place stood a sturdier form, one of purposefully hewn muscle and latent power packed inside faded denims and snug black T-shirt. Hung on a rack of impressive shoulders was the expected black leather jacket with sunglasses dangling from the pocket where he'd used to carry a pack of smokes. In younger years it made him look like a throwback to the rebellious fifties. Now it gave a sleek, dangerous air. Dangerous was a word that always described the eldest Crandall boy. A boy no longer.

  His features held a magnificent patina of years. Smooth, unshaven contours became compelling angles and stubble-shadowed hollows. Black hair once worn indifferently shaggy now sported a crisply cut aggressive bristle. Slashing black brows offset the familiar laser blue of a stare made more intriguing by the network of lines fanning from the outer corners. Dramatically shaped lips remained unsmiling, hoarding the wide, dimpled smile that was capable of charming any member of the female gender out of her virtue, when he chose to exert its hundred-watt dazzle. Age had brought a tough edge of character to his always startling good looks. And just the sight of him tripped an earthquake of emotions.

  "Hello, Bess."

  Her breath expelled in a noisy shiver. "Zach."

  Silence stretched taut, as his icy gaze roamed over her. She tingled beneath that assessing sweep, every fiber coming alive, shaking off seventeen years of dormancy.

  "You look great," he said. A blunt, factual delivery.

  She'd never been able to modestly deny his compliments because they weren't meant as flattery. He stated observations with a flustering directness. Words she would have scoffed at from others were always believed when Zach spoke them. He didn't play manipulative word games. He said what he thought. That was the one thing that always got him in the most trouble. Except with her.

  "I—I heard you'd come … back." She'd meant to say home, but how could he consider this town home after the way it had turned its back on him—the way she'd turned her back on him? Guilt twisted in her belly, adding to her agitation. "It's been a long time."

  "Well, nothing in this place ever changes."

  Truer words couldn't be spoken. Time stood still at the boundaries of Sweetheart. Days, months, years passed with monotonous predictability. She could have told him the bank now had drive-through windows and that the library had a link to the Internet, but those weren't the changes he referred to. He meant the heart and soul of Sweetheart; the attitudes of its people. And, no, they hadn't changed. Small towns had a way of fostering past prejudices and excluding anything outside the norm. Zach had been more than outside. He'd been on another planet. And that's where the town preferred he stay.

  He left the doorway, coming farther into her store. Bess watched him move, fascinated as always by his potent animal-on-the-prowl swagger. Other men strolled, sauntered, stomped. Zach strutted, shoulders shifting with aggressive sensuality, hips rolling with an arrogant, "I'm the cock of this walk. Get out of my way or prepare to be moved." Back then most of the citizens of Sweetheart had scrambled to give him room. The few who hadn't usually had regretted it. Timid little Elizabeth Carrey was the only one who hadn't given way. She'd held her ground because she recognized that attitude for what it was: posturing, all for effect. The really dark and dangerous aspects of Zach Crandall weren't on the outside for everyone to see. They were deep and personal. And to Bess, very frightening.

  He frightened her now. With his blatant sexuality. With his takeover intensity. With the way she quivered on command right down to her sensible loafers. No one but Zach had ever had that kind of control over her; the kind that was threatening yet voluntarily given. She'd given him everything once before. This time she vowed to be more cautious. There was much more at stake than a naive teenage heart.

  She relaxed a little when he came to a stop just out of arm's reach. His penetrating stare left her and roved the crowded bookcases. Cold contempt settled in his gaze. "Still shut away in this tomb." Then he surprised her with his directness. "Where's your mom?"

  Taken off guard, she faltered. "She—she's dead. Almost three years ago."

  His stare snapped back to fix on hers. "Oh." No "I'm sorry," because she knew he wasn't. He wasn't a hypocrite. He could have easily said "Good." Instead, he studied her for her reaction, assessing what difference that fact had made in her life. Summing it up flatly. "And you're still here."

  His comment said volumes. It said she was still the dependent daughter, afraid to take a risk, afraid to defy opinion, afraid to live. Knowing he was right in all those assumptions made her prickle up defensively. How dare he come back after seventeen years and make any judgments about her life.

  "It provides a comfortable living for me."

  "Comfortable," he echoed with a soft disdain. "Good. Good for you." But not for him. He would never settle for comfortable. Or safe. Or respectable. And that had always scared her, too.

  It felt so strange, his presence crowding this room, her mother's bastion. Was she rolling over in her no-nonsense casket at the knowledge of him invading her sacred space? Part of her twitched with distress while another welcomed his bold intrusion. He was shaking off the dust.

  "So, how long are you staying?" Did that sound too hopeful, too desperate?

  "I don't know. I've got some unfinished business. Depends on how things work out." He said it casually, but his stare practically scorched her. Was she one of those loose ends? Was that something she should fear or anticipate? She was never quite sure with Zach. His motives were a mystery. And because she resented the anxious way his vagueness affected her, she struck back with her own touch of ice.

  "Then what? You take off, like before, and no one hears from you for another seventeen years?" Hurt and anger trembled in her tone.

  "Why not?" he answered coolly. His stare dared her to name a reason.

  Bess blinked against the sudden burn in her eyes. She held her head up high to deny that he could still make her cry with the indifferent cut of his words. She didn't want him to see her as the same vulnerable teen, but rather as a woman with some degree of pride.

  "Well, maybe we should just say our goodbyes now and be done with it." She turned away before tears fell in earnest, but he wouldn't allow a dignified retreat. His hand closed about her upper arm. Such strength in those long fingers, power he carefully channeled so as not to bruise her.

  "I'm sorry," he said, this time meaning it. "I'm not leaving anytime soon."

  When she turned, ready to forgive him, he stepped forward, bringing her right into his arms. Arms that curled easily to enfold her close in an unplanned yet instinctive embrace. Arms she'd longed for on many a wakeful evening. Arms that felt better than anything had a right to.

  "I haven't come here to hurt you, Bess." He said that softly, as if he feared she might not believe it. His hands opened wide, between her shoulder blades, at
the small of her back, pressing her into him, her soft swells flattening against his hard lines. Woman into man. The difference those seventeen years made quaked through her. His voice lowered a gravelly notch. "There are a lot of things I'd thought about saying to you, but goodbye wasn't one of them."

  Bess knew she should pull away. It was the smart and proper thing to do. But he felt so good. She breathed in the scent of him. Worn leather, warm man, some woodsy cologne that sparked images of snuggling close in front of a fire. She had loved him for so long, not saying the words was agony. But she didn't say them, not now. She didn't dare.

  Instead, she allowed herself the luxury of enjoying his embrace, losing herself in the storm of sensations as her sensual self was lured out of hibernation. She stroked the soft, cracked leather of his jacket. Zach and leather went hand in glove; both tough and resistant to the harsh things the world threw at them, yet soft and supple when well cared for. She remembered riding on the back of his motorcycle, squeezing her legs to the strength of his thighs, hugging him about the middle, cheek pressed to his shoulder while the wind tore through her hair. The closest she'd ever come to tasting freedom.

  She hugged to him now, smelling the leather, taunted by whispers of freedom, tasting the bitterness of regret and sorrow. Too late to call back those memories. She stepped away from him.

  "It's good to see you, Zach. I missed you." That was the closest she could come to telling him the truth.

  He stared at her, an unsettling stillness surrounding him. "Did you?"

  Before she could answer, the door opened behind them. She gave a guilty start, almost as if she shouldn't be caught talking with Zach Crandall. He noticed the reaction, and the glaze of remoteness she remembered so well sealed his emotions from view.

  "Dare I hope I'm interrupting something?"

  Zach turned from Bess's stricken expression to see a lovely teenage girl assessing him through bold eyes. Fifteen or sixteen, he guessed, pretty and confident of her appeal. A born flirt. She smiled, displaying sassy dimples and a twinkle of blue eyes.