Worth the Risk (Pine Valley Book 1) Read online

  One night he’d even written an email with a long apology, not even sure that her email address was still active, but then he never sent it. He decided that too much time had passed. They’d both moved on, and he thought he could get over the guilt; but apparently it had never truly left.

  “Can you shut that thing off?” Paige’s voice penetrated his stormy thoughts.

  Jeff glanced up. Paige was a beautiful woman, but he’d learned her beauty only went skin deep. “Are you ready to order?” he asked, trying to deflect irritation.

  She scoffed. “What does it look like?” Her menu was on the table and her arms folded.

  Jeff set down his phone and picked up the menu. He made a pretense of scanning the menu, even though he was no longer hungry. “I think I’ll have the braised chicken. What are you having?” It was practically torture to keep his tone light and calm.

  “The salmon,” she said, her heavily made-up eyes narrowing. “Haven’t you listened to a thing I’ve said?” She reached over and snatched his phone. “I’ll keep this until dinner is over.”

  Jeff stared as Paige slipped his phone into her purse. He didn’t react for a moment, because he was so stunned. Yes, he should be more polite and stay off his phone, but he wasn’t a twelve-year-old kid either, and this was a crucial week in his career. He was about to let a judge decide if his cousin owed him thousands of dollars. His ears felt hot.

  Paige had lifted her chin and was looking at him with a sardonic smile. If he thought she was just teasing him, trying to be funny, he might have laughed. But Paige wasn’t a teaser. She wanted his attention on her. All. Of. The. Time.

  This was it, he decided. Tonight was the last time he’d see her. Even a guy like him who’d done a lot of idiot things couldn’t ditch a date on Valentine’s right in the middle of a restaurant. So, he reached for the ice water that had been brought at some point and drank half of it down.

  “That’s better,” Paige crooned, propping her elbows on the table. “You work too much, sweetie. We should go on a vacation. Someplace where there’s no cell service.”

  Jeff rubbed the back of his neck, hard, hoping the pressure would keep his temper down. “My busy season starts in about three weeks,” he ground out.

  “Perfect.” Paige waved her hand, flashing her fake sparkly nails. “We could spend a week in Hawaii. Or . . .” Her already big eyes grew bigger. “Italy. I’ve always wanted to go there. And since you like Italian cars, it will be perfect.”

  Fortunately, their waitress showed up just then to take their orders.

  “Wow,” Paige said, when the waitress left. “Gwen sure checked you out.”

  He frowned. “Who’s Gwen?”

  “The waitress,” Paige said. “She was practically all over you.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. The waitress had taken their order and left. She might have smiled at him, but that was standard, right? He could only remember that she had blonde hair twisted into some sort of messy bun, but didn’t remember much else, let alone her name.

  “You can’t tell me you didn’t notice her staring at you like she wanted to have you for her dinner,” Paige pressed. “She’s probably one of your ex-girlfriends. You’ve got like eight in this town.”

  Jeff and Paige had confessed all about their exes on their second date when too much wine had been involved. He more than regretted it now. But instead of snapping back like he wanted to, he exhaled slowly. “I didn’t notice the waitress. I don’t know her, and she’s not my ex. Pine Valley is a small town, but it’s been growing like crazy the past couple of years. There are a lot of new faces here. You can’t assume that every woman who gives me a second look was someone I dated.”

  Paige pushed her lower lip out like a small child might when not getting the ice cream she wanted. Jeff was seriously questioning his judgment in women. His dating life had been a disaster for the most part. Once things went beyond the first few dates, Jeff found that he wasn’t up to the task of being in an actual relationship.

  “You’re so mean sometimes,” Paige said, her pout still apparent for everyone in the restaurant to see if they cared to pay attention.

  Mean? How was he being mean now? Oh, he could tell her stories, but he’d refrain. “I’m not trying to be mean,” he said, glancing around the restaurant, wondering if he could signal the waitress to put in a rush on their meal. Then he caught sight of her. Alicia was escorting another couple to their table. She’d always been tall, but her legs were a mile long in those heels of hers.

  Before he could tear his gaze away, she looked over at him, and their eyes connected.

  Jeff quickly refocused his attention on Paige, who was, thankfully, looking down at her phone. Ironic. Then he noticed that her brow was furrowed.

  “Is something wrong?” It was his turn to ask. He sort of hoped there was something wrong—not too serious of course, but just enough to cut their date short.

  “My call time was moved up to 7:00 am tomorrow,” she said.

  Jeff waited.

  She looked up, her pouty face in full force. “That means I need to go home early. I can’t have bags under my eyes for the photoshoot. My agent will kill me.”

  Jeff nodded. “We don’t have to go to the movie. I’ll take you home after dinner.”

  She didn’t react for a moment. Then she smiled. “All right.”

  And just like that, her mood was better, and she stopped picking on him. The food arrived, and the rest of the meal went better than he expected. Paige talked about the upcoming photoshoot most of the time, and Jeff was more than happy to let her carry most of the conversation.

  He saw Alicia come into the main restaurant twice more—at least, that was the number of times he allowed himself to look up when she entered the room.

  “Do you want dessert?” he asked Paige, even though he knew the answer would be no. Models didn’t eat dessert.

  “Hardly,” she said, her tone soft. She always became a nicer person after a meal. “Let’s go. I should probably change my nail color too. No sparkles.” Another pout.

  Jeff slipped a hundred-dollar bill into the bill fold the waitress had brought. He was thankful he’d brought cash and didn’t have to wait for a credit card to be processed. He stood, then helped pull back Paige’s chair as she rose. He helped her into her jacket and led the way out of the restaurant.

  As they neared the hostess stand, Jeff saw that Alicia stood there, and no one was waiting to be seated.

  It would be rude to walk past without thanking her, and Jeff knew from experience that Paige wouldn’t be the one to speak up.

  “Our compliments to the chef,” Jeff said as they walked past the hostess stand.

  Alicia looked up from where she’d been texting someone on her phone. Her eyes settled on him, and Jeff wished that Paige wasn’t with him—that he could form a coherent apology, even though it was ten years overdue.

  “I’ll let him know,” Alicia said with a smile.

  The smile wasn’t for him, and Jeff knew it. Her smile was a hostess’s smile, one she likely gave dozens of times a night. But it still made his guilt wedge even deeper as the memories of her smiling assailed him. When they’d been friends. When he hadn’t broken her heart yet.

  Jeff had spoken directly to her. He hadn’t said her name; he hadn’t acted like he knew her other than as a patron speaking to a hostess at a restaurant; but Alicia knew. She knew he had recognized her. The glances she caught from him at the restaurant had been enough proof. As she drove home from the restaurant through the dark night, her mind and heart buzzed with memories.

  It was nearly 11:00 p.m. when she pulled into the cracked driveway of her mom’s home. Most of the lights were still on in the house, which meant her mom was still awake, waiting and hungry. Alicia gathered up the take-out boxes and climbed out of her car.

  She tried to talk herself into a pleasant mood, even though she was exhausted. Now wasn’t the time to feel sorry for herself and regret all the th
ings she’d given up to move back home. She had a college degree in marketing and had been working for a surf shop chain. Even though they’d said they could hold the job for her, she didn’t think it was fair to make them do that. She didn’t know how long she’d be in Pine Valley.

  So, she’d paid an extra month’s rent to her roommate Josi and told her to find a new roommate. There hadn’t been a boyfriend to leave. She and David had broken up right after Christmas last year, and all her dates with other men after that had been one-time dinners. Alicia knew it was because David had cheated on her, and she had trust issues to overcome. Since moving to Pine Valley, the last thing on her mind was dating.

  Alicia found her mom at the kitchen table with her paper plate, plastic fork, and knife set out. Only about a third of the table was usable—just enough room for two people to sit and eat. The rest of the table was stacked with old magazines and boxes of picture frames.

  “Hi, Mom,” Alicia said in a cheerful tone.

  Her mom said nothing, just stood with her hands on her hips as she watched Alicia set down the bag and take out the boxes. Her mom shared the same hair color with Alicia, although hers now had plenty of gray strands in it. At age fifty-nine, Lila Waters was a ghost of who she’d been before. Her thinness was nearly skeletal, her skin pale from rarely going outside.

  “I have spinach ravioli and salmon,” Alicia continued. Her mom’s silences were worse than her yelling. “I also brought a can of soda, although you might not want that much sugar this late at night.” She stepped back from the table.

  Her mom sat down, pulling her ratty bathrobe about her. Even though she had four or five newer ones stuffed in her closet, she insisted on wearing her old blue floral one day after day.

  When Alicia tried to sneak and wash her mom’s things in the middle of the night, her mom would throw a major fit the next day. Alicia moved back from the table as her mom started to eat. Then she quietly went about her routine, turning off lights and locking doors. If her mom was left to her own devices, she’d keep all the lights on throughout the night. It seemed that even though Alicia had been later than usual, her mom was in a calm mood.

  But Alicia knew better than to bring up anything that would distress her mom, so she didn’t remind her that tomorrow the social worker would be coming to the house. It wasn’t as if her mom would let Alicia clean up the place anyway. Any throwing away that Alicia did had to be done when her mom was asleep, and Alicia had to make it look like nothing was missing.

  Now, Alicia walked down the hall, lined with stacked boxes, some of them unopened. They contained her mom’s latest purchases, which were probably fuzzy blankets—her mom’s newest fetish. Yes, it was cold outside, and Pine Valley had seen a decent snowfall this season, but the heater worked fine, and they already had plenty of blankets.

  Alicia unlocked the door to the back bedroom that she’d lived in as a child, and more recently when she moved home in the summer after her mom’s run in with the law. Alicia had to keep her mom out of her room somehow, or things would go missing, or even worse, end up stacked in here too. In contrast to the rest of the house, Alicia’s room was sparse. A twin bed, a single side table, a scuffed desk, a small closet with her clothes and shoes. A bookshelf full of her childhood stuffed animals and mementos . . . things from when her life was normal. When Jeff was her best friend. When her parents were still married. When her mom hadn’t been a hoarding recluse.

  Changing her clothes into her winter pajamas, which amounted to yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, Alicia thought about how her life used to be so simple. How she used to be happy and how routine her days were. She turned off her light and climbed into the cold covers. Her body heat would warm them up in a few moments, but she shivered as she waited. The sounds of the house were quiet, which meant that her mom had gone to bed without incident.

  Alicia reached for her cell and double-checked that her alarm was set for 4:30 a.m., when she’d get up and clean her mom’s dinner mess. She’d also find other things to throw away. Then she’d sneak out of the house with the garbage bag and walk it to one of the neighbor’s trash cans, or better yet, find a public dumpster. If she deposited any garbage in their own trash bin, her mom would just pull it out.

  Alicia exhaled. How had her mom become like this? Alicia had done some research on hoarders and discovered that they usually started hoarding, or getting worse, when they experienced a great loss. Had the loss been her parents’ divorce? Or had the loss been when Alicia had chosen her dad over her mom? It wasn’t really choosing. Alicia had graduated high school, lived and worked at home for a few months. Her mom had become more and more lazy, skipping work, rarely cleaning, and not spending time with friends anymore. At first Alicia thought maybe her mom was depressed, and they even went to the doctor together to get a prescription for anti-depressants.

  But her mom’s moods were even more bizarre on the medication, and she never got a refill. Since her mom was getting alimony from her dad, Alicia hadn’t completely worried about her mom missing work, but worried more for her mental health. Not only did her mom isolate herself, but she wanted to isolate Alicia too.

  At nineteen, Alicia had determined that she wasn’t going be trapped in her mom’s house, and so she decided to go to college near her dad’s home in Sacramento. The visits back home to her mom’s had become shorter and more unbearable. The hoarding had become more obvious after Alicia had been gone a while, since it had started to spread to the rest of the house.

  When social services called her last summer and told her that her mom had been cited for taking garbage out of the neighbors’ trash bins, Alicia had come home to meet with the social worker. She was told, point blank, that if her mom trespassed again, she could be looking at jail time. It was then that Alicia decided to move back home to see if she could get her mom some help. But as the weeks went by, it was clear that the best way to keep peace was to let her mom go about her hoarding and for Alicia to get rid of stuff on the sly.

  Alicia took her mom to therapy once a week, but even that tapered off when her mom refused to leave the house. The therapy appointments were reduced to phone conversations in which her mom did little talking at all. Alicia’s only escape from her mom was her job, and the occasional night out with Gwen. Whenever she ran into anyone from high school, Alicia just pretended things were great and that she was helping her mom, who was sick. She never went into the true details of her mom’s condition.

  Closing her eyes, Alicia tried to relax and let her mind drift off, away from issues with her mom and away from the memories of Jeff Finch. She needed to sleep, and she was exhausted, so why would her thoughts not fade? Seeing Jeff with a date at the restaurant should have been no big deal. Ten years was a long time to still be affected by him. He’d looked older, but in a good way. More serious, more mature, more . . . everything. His family had sold their house years ago, his parents moving to some fancy retirement place, and Jeff lived who knew where—probably in one of the new subdivisions at the base of the mountain. Wherever he lived, was no concern to her. So what if he was single? She didn’t need to analyze why; he was obviously living the bachelor lifestyle and dating gorgeous women.

  If social media could be relied on, it meant Jeff Finch was definitely out of her league. She’d seen pictures of his Lamborghini, and it hadn’t been hard to miss the many pictures of him with his rich clients and beautiful dates. Here Alicia was, living in her childhood bedroom, in the middle of squalor. She blew out a frustrated breath. Hopefully by the morning she’d forget how great Jeff looked in his suit and how beautiful his date was. And how everyone seemed to have a better and happier life than she did.

  Jeff sat in his Land Rover outside of his childhood home. He couldn’t sleep, and now it was four o’clock in the morning. So he’d given up and started his day, which led to putting together real estate comps for some of his clients. When he’d finished a few, he’d decided to go for a drive and ended up here, in his old neighborhood.
r />   Earlier that night, he’d dropped off a pouty Paige, who was worried that she’d eaten too much at dinner and would be bloated for her photoshoot. When Jeff asked if it was a swimsuit shoot, she’d glared at him and told him it was for a sunglass company and only her head would be showing, but bloating could be seen in a person’s cheeks.

  Who knew?

  Jeff couldn’t drop her off fast enough. He’d walked her to the door, and when she’d invited him in, he reminded her that she had to get up early. He gave her a quick hug, but no kiss. If she noticed how distant he was being, she didn’t pick up on it. He’d wanted to break things off then and there, but he wasn’t sure if she was a crier. And what if she cried? And then her eyes became puffy and ruined her photoshoot? He didn’t know much about bloating, but he knew a little about puffiness.

  So he’d left her without breaking things off, though he was determined that the next time they spoke, he’d tell her. It would have to be soon. Later today, probably. He’d learned his lesson well with Alicia. And he’d prided himself in being more upfront with the women he dated. If he didn’t see it going anywhere beyond a few dates, then why drag it out?

  So why was he sitting in his Land Rover, across the street from his old house, in the middle of the night? A quick search on the MLS real estate system told him that the house had been through three owners since his parents had retired and moved. Another search told him that Alicia’s mom, Lila Waters, was still the listed homeowner on the house next door. And there were lights on.