Welcome Home, Katie Gallagher - Seana Kelly

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with your phone? Is this some kind of pity mug shot?” He was making fun of me. Man, he was going to be sorry when I became a badass. We didn’t forget shit like that.

      He smirked and returned the phone to his pocket.

      “I wasn’t ready!” Damn, I didn’t scowl or sneer or anything. “Do over!”

      “No.” He pulled out a portfolio and opened it. “You haven’t changed,” he said as he stood, removing his jacket before resuming his seat.

      “You know me?” I wondered over the planes of his face again. Had I met him when I’d visited Gran all those years ago? I considered the dark hair that curled near his collar, the Paul Newman blue eyes, the tall, muscular body, the cleft in his chin... Wait. The eyes, the cleft...those were familiar.

      He tapped his pen rapidly, ignoring my question. “Now, could you tell me why you tortured that poor car?”

      I wilted. Why was I the one in the police station? All I did was take Justin’s expertly fitted and weighted golf clubs to his beloved car. I didn’t lie to him day in and day out. I didn’t betray him. Nope. I broke a thing, not a person. Why the hell wasn’t he the one staring down a cop and answering questions?

      “I’d really prefer not to, and I don’t understand why I should have to. Taking a golf club to your own property is not against the law. It’s not like I went on a spree and destroyed all the cars in the country club parking lot. It was a surgical strike. I was a Tomahawk missile of tactical fury. And anyway, shouldn’t you have to identify yourself before you start asking me questions?” I clenched my trembling hands in my lap, trying to maintain my new, hard-ass persona.

      “Chief Cavanaugh of the Bar Harbor Police Department, ma’am.” He looked down at his portfolio and then back up at me, eyes cold. “You trashed your husband’s car and then fled, is that right?”

      I thought it would be different if I left, if I came to the place where I was the happiest. Even without Gran, I’d imagined being here would comfort me and help me figure out what the hell to do with myself now that I understood, what was apparent to everyone else, that my life was a pathetic sham. I leaned forward, dropping my head to the table. Repeatedly. My brain needed a reboot.

      A large, warm hand settled on my shoulder, the heat seeping into my bones. A shiver ran through me. I looked up through wet lashes, and I saw it. I knew who he was.

      “Aiden?” I sat up straight to better study him. “Aiden Cavanaugh?”

      His hand fell away, and I missed its weight and warmth at once. Unbelievable. How the hell did sweet, oddly geeky Aiden Cavanaugh morph into tall, dark and forbidding?

      “Wow,” I said. “Look at you with your big-boy muscles and your lumberjack build. You must have had one hell of a growth spurt. I knew there was something familiar about you. It was the eyes. You were always cute but holy shnikies. I’m feeling kind of dirty now for some of the things I was thinking about you up on the cliff.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Aiden

      DISTURBING SISTERLY ATTITUDE ASIDE, it was nice to know that the girl I’d obsessed over as a kid appreciated what she saw enough now to mentally grope me.

      I gave myself a mental slap. Women, for more than a couple of hours, were off the table. They couldn’t be trusted, and trust was vital. “Thanks. If we can get back to the destruction of property issue...” I said, and her smile dropped.

      She sighed. “He cheated on me. A lot. I moved out, met with a lawyer, but then...” She looked up at me. “Do I have to tell you all this? Can he really have me arrested for beating up his car?” Her bottom lip quivered before she stiffened it.

      “If you’re in the process of a divorce and you took a golf club to his things? Yes.”

      She looked down into her lap.

      “Would he willingly air the dirty laundry to punish you?”

      She sat up straight, her head cocked, considering. “No. Image is everything to him. The Asshat used to go shopping with me to make sure I dressed like a successful man’s wife.” She paused, her fingers tapping on the tabletop. “I doubt he’d want his clients to know why I did what I did.” She nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

      My hand twitched, wanting to touch her once more. Damn it. I wasn’t going down that road again. Not after Alice. “Are you visiting or planning to stay awhile?”

      “I want to stay. I don’t have anywhere else to go. I know Gran’s gone, but I was hoping—I don’t know. I was happy here once.”

      I laughed. “You were a menace here once, Katie.”

      Outraged, she said, “Menace? I was a sweet and charming addition to this community for two months every summer!”

      Choking, I stood. “Sweet and charming? How many Fourth of July parades did you ruin?”

      “Enhanced. The word you’re looking for is enhanced.”

      Dropping back down in the chair, I fixed her with a stare. “Enhanced? When you stole Old Man Benson’s crickets and released them into the crowd, you believed that it improved their parade-viewing experience?” I paused, considering. “And how the hell did you end up on different floats every year? You were a member of the Kiwanas? The Elks? A volunteer firefighter?”

      She laughed, relaxing. “Good times. The kind and trusting people of this community welcomed me with open arms. It helps that they have short memories. Every summer, I’d promise that I’d learned the error of my ways and they’d let me climb on their floats.” She grinned at the table, remembering.

      “Crickets?”

      “Do you know what he planned to do with those poor little crickets? He was going to skewer them with a fishing hook. I heard him talking to Gramps outside the bait shop. He had a big container of live crickets that he and his buddy were going to use the next day on their fishing trip!” She shook her head. “While they chatted, I grabbed the bin out of the back of his truck and ran to the parade. It was a crime of opportunity. Anyway, I was like seven or eight at the time. Hasn’t the statute of limitations run out on that one?”

      “Perhaps. What about the rubber balls?”

      She tried to hide her guilty expression. “Who doesn’t like bouncy balls?”

      “Off the top of my head, I’d say the guy driving the tractor directly behind your float. When you sent hundreds of bouncy balls in every direction, quite a few bounced into his engine. You broke his damn tractor.”

      Cringing, she said, “Not broke. They were able to fix it. I screwed up the parade, though. It took a while to get the tractor moved so the rest of the floats could go by. On the bright side, people had bouncy balls to play with while they waited!”

      “Where did you even get hundreds of balls?”

      “Brought them with me. It was some kind of ordering mistake at my parents’ university. I think they were supposed to be ordering condoms, but checked the wrong box. I don’t know. I was nine. There were boxes of bouncy balls sitting in the back of the administration building.” She looked at me, wide-eyed. “What was I supposed to do? Just leave them there?”

      “Yes.”

      “Pfft. I filled my backpack and a plan began to form.”

      I shook my head. “Like I said, menace.”

      She waved away my concerns. “I worked all summer at Mr. Sheets’s ranch to pay for the tractor repair.”

      “You did?”

      “Oh, sure.” She grinned. “He was only annoyed with me that first day, though. I went from mucking out the stables and polishing the tools to apple picking and horse brushing.

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