Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(3)

But he’d sure as hell take whatever reprieve he could get.


*


The pain in the voice at the other end of the phone sliced through Charlotte Harris like a shard of glass. Three seconds ago, when she’d seen her best friend’s name pop up on her phone, she’d answered with a chipper, “hi!”

Her greeting was met with a beat of silence, followed by a deep, male response. One hollow, broken syllable; the nickname he’d given her a year ago.

“Ace.”

Her heart dropped to her stomach, her extremities going instantly cold in spite of the warm nighttime air. There was something registering in his tone that sent fear spilling into her bloodstream.

“Evan?”

A beat of silence, then, “Yeah.”

She stood from the chair she’d been lounging in and paced to the three steps leading from her porch down to the inky, still surface of the lake. In the background, a pyramid of pine trees climbed the hill in the distance.

“What is it?” This from her boyfriend, Russell, who stood from the porch swing behind her.

She held out a finger to tell him to wait a minute.

“What happened?” she asked into the phone. Something. She and Evan were friends, but not call-each-other friends. If he was calling her now, it had to be because there was a problem. With Lyon, or—

“Rae.” His voice cracked, a painful sob shattering the airwaves and sending an adrenaline rush through her bloodstream. He drew in an uneven breath. “Jesus, Ace.”

Unable to hold herself up any longer, she sank onto a step and issued the understatement of the year. “You’re scaring me.”

“She’s gone, Ace.” His voice went hollow, into a dead tone she never wanted to hear again as long as she lived.

“Gone…” False hope she’d recognize later as denial leaped against her chest, borne of desperation to find a reason other than the obvious for this almost-midnight call.

Maybe Rae went shopping. Maybe she and Evan had a fight and Rae went to her parents’ house. Maybe—

“Gone,” his whisper confirmed.

That’s when the tears choking her throat pulsed against her eyes. That’s when Russell took the phone from her hand. And that’s when she knew.

Rae Lynn Downey, her very best friend, more like a sister than her actual sister, wife to the long-ago besotted Evan Downey, and mother to a dimpled three-year-old Lyon Downey was… gone.

It took five days for that fact to settle in.

For her to see Rae’s physical body in the casket, for her to notice Evan’s formerly bright eyes weary and bloodshot, for her to witness firsthand the devastation of Rae’s parents and the somber expressions on Evan’s family’s faces.

For her to accept what “gone” meant.

Gone was permanent. Gone was forever.

Gone was unfair.

Standing over her body, Charlie vowed to Rae she’d watch over her family. She kissed her fingers, placed them on her best friend’s cold cheek, and whispered to the woman she’d never see alive again, “Sorry, Rae.”



Wheels crunched along the gravel outside her house, bringing Charlie out of the memory clouding her head and back to her living room. She dropped the open magazine she’d been staring unseeing at for the last however many minutes and swiped a single tear from her eye.

Then she cleared her throat, closed the magazine, and bucked up. Because Evan and Lyon couldn’t arrive and find her mourning Rae. There was no reason to darken this occasion with melancholy. Them moving here was a good thing. The best thing for them all. Their coming here had reminded her of the promises she’d made, the pain they’d gone through. The loss they’d endured.

She peeked between the curtains and confirmed the tires on the gravel did not belong to Evan’s SUV. Releasing a pent-up breath, she watched a blue pickup climb the hill and vanish into the trees.

Not them.

Evan had texted her—she checked her phone, then the clock—forty-six minutes ago, to say they were ten minutes away and since then she’d sat anxiously by the front window. Knowing him, and she did, he probably stopped at Dairy Dreem for an ice cream the moment they set foot in town.

She snapped up her iced tea, frowning at the ring on the coffee table. Where was her head today? She swiped the water ring with one hand and turned for her back porch, pausing first to slip on a pair of flats.

Charlie’s house was the most modest on her street—she liked to tell herself it was because the house was built before Evergreen Cove had become a vacation destination. She and her boyfriend, Russell Hartman, had purchased the small, white clapboard because of its view of the lake and the fantastic porch. At the time, she believed that buying a vacation home as a couple was a sign of permanence.

Wrong.

But she had no regrets about the house. Since she worked from home, she’d outfitted the family room facing the lake at the back to hold her desk, computer, and a few shelves for her supplies. She’d kept the couch, and yes, the television, in the room. Her office connected to the kitchen where she had a small table and chairs, but the real prize of her home was the porch. The wide, covered expanse, befitting of a Georgia plantation five times her home’s size, was where she ate most of her meals, entertained, or just sat and enjoyed the view.

Rather than stare out the window for the arrival of the Downey boys, she tracked out back to the swing hanging by a pair of chains, smoothed her dress, and sat.