At Wild Rose Cottage. Callie Endicott
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were busiest in summer, she didn’t think that was the sole explanation for him being at Wild Rose Cottage.
Trent Hawkins had another motive.
* * *
AS TRENT CHECKED the wall, his gaze flicked over the spots he had patched as a kid. The house had been a war zone when he’d lived there. His dad would walk in the front door, drunk, and before long he’d start punching—furniture, walls, his family, it hadn’t made much difference to Gavin Hawkins. He’d been known for his charm all over Schuyler, but he’d never brought it home with him.
His mother had been afraid that people would guess, and that the landlord would throw fits at the damage, so Trent had learned to repair whatever got broken.
It turned out that holes could disappear faster than bruises. His first patching jobs had been rough, but he’d quickly become skilled at covering up the evidence of his family’s rotten little secret.
Now it was years later and a number of walls were scheduled to come down, along with all the crap he’d stuffed inside of them. But he wasn’t going to start while Emily was watching, so he went into the kitchen to help remove cabinets. They couldn’t be salvaged, having being poorly made and abused for decades.
Normally Trent deplored not being able to recycle, yet there would be a curious satisfaction in ripping them down and sledgehammering them into pieces.
He just wished his memories could be disposed of so efficiently.
MIDMORNING THE SQUEAL of brakes signaled a large truck had stopped outside the house. Trent went to look through the front windows and nodded with approval. Alaina had arranged for a large Dumpster to be delivered and it had arrived on schedule. He stepped out and gestured to the spot in front of the house where he wanted the container.
Emily had dashed outside as well and stood watching as the large metal box was put in place. She winced as a lilac bush was crushed.
“Sorry about that, ma’am,” the truck driver said when he came around to check the container’s placement.
She sighed. “I guess there wasn’t any other good place for it.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Let’s shift it out a little and the bush might come back,” urged the second employee, who gave Emily a broad, appraising smile. Trent had seen Billy come on to women often enough to recognize his typical moves.
Annoyed both by the delay and Billy’s propensity to waste time flirting, Trent waited while the two city employees shifted the container. It seemed unlikely the mangled bush would survive, but Emily appeared to appreciate the gesture. Then he opened the end of the Dumpster and lowered the wall, hinged at the base, to the ground. This way, much of the debris could be walked in and stacked.
Trent took the clipboard the truck driver offered and signed for the unit. Big Sky owned a number of roll-away containers for use at commercial building sites, but Schuyler required city-owned Dumpsters to be used in residential areas.
Billy was still courting Emily’s attention. “Say, are you new in town?” he asked.
“About four months,” Emily told him.
“Don’t know how I missed such a pretty newcomer.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
Her tone was neutral and Trent couldn’t tell if she was buying Billy’s line.
“By the way, I’m Big Bill Halloran.” He winked at her in a way that suggested the “Big” referred to more than his height. “How about letting me buy you a drink tonight as a welcome to Schuyler?”
“Thanks, but I’m pretty busy right now.”
“Another evening?” he pressed.
“We’ll see.”
The driver cleared his throat noisily, so Billy tipped his cowboy hat, climbed into the cab and the truck drove away.
“In case you haven’t guessed it already,” Trent said, stepping closer to Emily, “Billy chases after everything and anything female.”
He regretted the warning as soon as the words left his mouth. At times, his protective instincts jumped forward, despite his intentions to keep them contained. But Billy had caused a lot of damage in Schuyler and it didn’t seem fair not to warn a newcomer.
“Forewarned is forearmed?” Emily asked, still in neutral tones.
“That always seems best.”
“Sure.” She turned and headed for the house. Idly he noted that she was wearing a comfortable T-shirt paired with a light full skirt, similar to what she’d worn the other times he’d seen her. It stood out in a town where both men and women tended to don jeans.
Trent glanced at the roof. At appropriate intervals he could send the whole crew up there to work, giving him privacy for what he needed to do inside the house. Granted, it wasn’t likely that anyone would even look at most of the things inside those walls—they’d just shovel them into the Dumpster. But what if they did, or what if Ms. George got curious?
And then there was his father’s old handgun... If someone found that, there’d be questions and possible revelations that could upset a whole bunch of lives. He should have turned the gun into the police when he was a boy, but he’d wanted to protect his family. If he’d had more time to think about it, he might have changed his mind. But Gavin Hawkins had died and nobody could send him to prison posthumously.
Maybe it wouldn’t be an issue, though. The estimate showed question marks on two walls—including the one where Trent had hidden the handgun—with the annotation that the client was undecided about which to remove, so there was a chance it would be okay.
On the other hand, if he could pull the wall down and retrieve the gun, he’d never have to think about it again.
* * *
BILLY CHASES AFTER everything and anything female.
Emily tried not to be offended by Trent Hawkins’s blunt statement.
After all, he’d tried to be helpful by warning her about a local good-time boy. But she also couldn’t miss the fact that he’d seen no particular reason why Billy would chase her—she was classed with anything and everything female. Nobody would say that kind of thing to her sister, Nicole, or question why a guy would want her.
She stopped and looked at herself in the dusty wall of gold-splotched mirror tiles someone had once decided were a good idea for the dining room wall. Medium brown hair, medium brown eyes, medium height, medium everything... She wasn’t ugly, but she also wasn’t a woman Billy would kick himself for missing. Average was the best description, which should be okay, except that she’d grown up in a world where anything except drop-dead gorgeous was inadequate.
At least she has brains, her mother had sighed to her friends, often when her eldest daughter was within earshot. Paula George embraced the school of thought that it was best to be honest with your children about their limitations, so they wouldn’t develop unrealistic expectations. Personally, Emily thought her mother was just secretly embarrassed to have one stunning daughter and one who wasn’t, and wanted to acknowledge the contrast before anyone else.
Nicole was dazzling. Not that it had given Emily an inferiority complex...or at least not much of one. She was smart and by no means bad looking, but she’d learned that most people preferred the glamorous beauty her sister possessed...including her former fiancé. On the other hand, there were plenty of guys who’d said they liked the person she was, so she should be grateful for small favors.
Emily impatiently pushed the thought away and considered what to do with her morning. Originally she’d expected to leave the Big Sky crew to work on the house while she went to her store, but now she