His Rebel Heart. Amber Leigh Williams

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER THREE

      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 СКАЧАТЬ