This Time for Keeps
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Rochelle Alers
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Chapter One
Nicole Campos paced the length of the front porch as she waited for the arrival of the local mechanic to check out why her SUV would not start. Any other time she would not have been so anxious, but this morning was different. She was scheduled to appear at the Johnson County courthouse for a hearing that concerned her nephews.
It had been only two months since she’d assumed the role as temporary legal guardian for six-year-old Luke and eight-year-old Daniel Campos after their father had agreed to check into a residential substance abuse treatment facility for his opioid addiction. It had taken several weeks for her brother to agree to sign the documents giving her power of attorney for his finances and custody of his sons until after he’d completed the six-month program.
The sound of an approaching automobile garnered her attention and she came down off the porch to see a black pickup with Austen Auto & Sons painted on the side door pull up alongside her three-year-old Toyota Pathfinder. Jesse Austen had owned and operated the only auto repair shop in Wickham Falls for decades. There was a running joke throughout the town that every refrigerator door in The Falls had a magnet advertising the business.
Nicole came off the last step at the same time the driver got out of the pickup. Her breath caught in her chest, making it difficult for her to breathe until she was forced to release it. When she’d called and asked for someone to look at her car, the man who’d answered the phone had not told her that one of the owners would come to check it out.
It had been seventeen years since she had come face-to-face with Fletcher Austen. The last time was the day of their high school graduation; what he’d said to her weeks before was imprinted in her memory like a permanent tattoo.
However, she had to admit time had been extra kind to him because Fletcher was more handsome than she’d remembered. His large brown eyes with glints of amber appeared to twinkle in amusement in his lean face with its perfectly symmetrical features. His smooth complexion was reminiscent of golden-brown autumn leaves. Their senior class had voted him Best-Looking and All-Around Athlete.
“How have you been, Fletcher?”
Nicole did not recognize her own voice because it had dropped an octave. It was obvious after so many years that she was still very attracted to him.
He crossed muscular arms over his chest and angled his head. “That’s what I should be asking you, Nikki. How are you doing?”
A slight smile parted her lips. “I’m taking it one day at a time taking care of my nephews.”
Day by day meant she no longer had to think of herself. Now she got up earlier than usual to prepare breakfast and make certain her nephews were showered and dressed before the school bus arrived. Now she spent early evenings and afternoons checking homework and/or driving them to their counseling sessions. She had also accepted a temporary part-time position to assist local attorney Preston McAvoy in clearing up a pileup of cases that had resulted when his partner left for another position.
Her annoyance with the vehicle that wouldn’t start was exacerbated by her summons to appear in court for a matter that could have been resolved with an in-person meeting. Her brother’s in-laws wanted visitation privileges and Nicole would have been more than willing to grant their request without going to court. She knew her nephews’ maternal grandparents asking for temporary custodial guardianship was totally monetary based. As a college assistant defensive football coach, her brother, Reggie, earned a mid-six-figure salary. He had complained to her that he’d felt like a personal piggy bank for his wife’s family, which was why Nicole had convinced him to agree to permit her to manage his finances until his return.
The day she’d received the telephone call that her brother and his wife had been involved in a vehicular accident—after their minivan had skidded out of control during an ice storm—had changed Nicole’s life forever. Her sister-in-law, five months pregnant with her third child, had died at the scene. Reggie had been airlifted to the trauma hospital in the state’s capital with broken legs, head injuries and fractured vertebrae.
Reggie, released from hospital after several weeks, had been transferred to a rehabilitation center. His chronic pain had led to an addiction to pain meds and, eventually, to heroin. Months later Nicole, realizing his dependence on drugs was out of control, had arranged, with the assistance of her parents, for him to enter a treatment facility. She’d stayed long enough to resign her position with the Miami law firm she’d worked for, close up her town home and return to West Virginia.
“I’m really sorry to hear about your brother losing Melissa, and his boys their mother.”
Nicole nodded. She had lost count of the number of times people had offered their condolences and empathy for the horrific event that had changed her family’s dynamics. “Thank you, Fletcher.”
He lowered his arms. “What’s wrong with your vehicle?”
Nicole lifted her shoulders under the suit jacket. “It just won’t start,” she said, grateful he had changed the topic.
Fletcher opened the driver’s-side door and slipped in behind the wheel. He adjusted the seat to accommodate his longer legs. “The radio works, so I know it’s not the battery,” he said.
She took a backward step when he got out and opened the hood, forcing herself not to stare at the slim-cut jeans hugging his hips as he leaned over. He’d rolled back the cuffs on his work shirt to reveal strong wrists and forearms with several tattoos. When he’d crossed his arms over his chest, the muscles in his biceps strained against the fabric of the chambray shirt. The last time she’d seen Jesse Fletcher Austen, he was tall, gangly and an incredibly fast sprinter.
As the wide receiver for the school football team, he had broken and set records for two consecutive years. But now, at thirty-five, it was as if he had acquired a monopoly on virility. He had grown a couple of inches; his upper body had filled out and was powerfully muscled. Nicole knew he had been offered athletic scholarships from several colleges but had rejected them all to enlist in the army, which had shocked most folks in The Falls. He had been that good. Two months following their graduation, Fletcher began basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, as she began her freshman year in the NROTC program at the University of Virginia.
Nicole glanced at her watch. If Fletcher couldn’t start the Pathfinder, she would be forced to call the car service in Mineral Springs. She never understood why Wickham Falls did not have a taxi service.
Fletcher stood straight and closed the hood. “All the cables and hoses look okay, so I can’t tell what’s wrong until it’s towed to the shop. We’ll have to put it through an electronic diagnostic test.”
Nicole ran a hand over her short hair at the same time she smothered a curse under her breath. She shook her head and exhaled. “I don’t want to believe this.” She looked at her watch again, realizing she had less than thirty minutes to make it to the courthouse. “Tow it, Fletcher.”
“Where are you going?” he asked when she turned to go back into the house.
“I have to call Mineral Springs for a taxi. I need to get to the family court by nine thirty.”
“Forget the taxi. I’ll take you.”
Nicole stopped and turned to face Fletcher. “You don’t have to do that.”
He smiled, bringing her gaze to linger on the elusive dimple in his right cheek. “Yes, I do. After all, it’s the least I can do to offer an apology for what I said to you when we were back in school.”
She wanted to tell Fletcher there was little he could do to erase the acerbic words. Words that, at seventeen, had made her question her appearance and femininity when she compared herself to some of the more glamorous girls who wore the latest designer fashions and had standing appointments for their hair and nails. It had taken years before Nicole realized her self-worth wasn’t about how she looked or what she wore, but her achievements.
“You really don’t have to do that, Fletcher,” she repeated.
He removed a handkerchief from a pocket of his jeans and wiped his hands. “Yes, I do, Nicole. If we continue to stand here debating how you can get to the courthouse, you’ll definitely be late.”
She knew he was right and serious when he’d called her Nicole rather than Nikki. Even if she did call for a taxi, she didn’t know how long it would take for the dispatcher to send a car to pick her up. “Okay. I need to get my tote from behind the front seat.”
Fletcher nodded. “I’ll call the shop and have one of the guys tow it.”
Nicole retrieved her tote as Fletcher opened the passenger-side door to the pickup. She’d just hiked up the pencil skirt to allow her easier access into the truck when Fletcher’s hands circled her waist and lifted her effortlessly until she was settled on the seat.
Her eyes met his. “Thank you.” She’d felt the power in his hands as he’d lifted her as easily as he would a child.
Nicole placed the tote on the floor between her feet and then fastened the seat belt. She turned to see Fletcher talking on his cell phone before he got in beside her in the pickup.
Fletcher started up the pickup, put it in Reverse and backed out of the driveway. “I left the doors unlocked and told Billy he’d find the key under the driver’s mat.” He chanced a quick glance at Nicole as he headed for the county seat.
When the call had come in from Nicole, he’d told his father he would go check on her car. Normally that task would be assigned to one of the two other mechanics, but he knew it would provide him the perfect opportunity to approach Nicole and attempt to make amends for something he’d said more than seventeen years ago.
He’d thought her very cute with her delicate features and her tawny-brown complexion. There were times when she would stare at him with large round brown eyes that seemed much too wise for someone so young. She had always worn her chemically straightened long hair in a ponytail or single braid and the only allowance she made for makeup was lip gloss. However, the woman sitting only inches away had matured appreciably. Subtly applied makeup served to enhance her best features: her eyes and lush lips. The short pixie haircut was the perfect style for her small face.
Fletcher forced himself to keep his eyes on the road rather than take furtive glances at Nicole’s legs in the body-hugging black skirt she had paired with a white man-tailored blouse under the matching jacket. He’d caught glimpses of her in town with her nephews since her return to The Falls, but had decided not to approach her because the timing had not been right.
News had traveled quickly throughout Wickham Falls when Reggie Campos had been seriously injured in an accident that had claimed the life of his young wife a week before Christmas. Residents from The Falls and Mineral Springs had come together to support Melissa Clarke-Campos’s family for their loss during what should have been one of the most joyous seasons of the year.
“How long do you plan to stay in The Falls?” Fletcher asked Nicole after a comfortable silence when he stopped at a four-way intersection.
Nicole turned to meet his eyes. “I’ll be here until late January or early February. Hopefully by that time Reggie will have successfully completed his rehab.”
Fletcher nodded. It was late August, and that meant she would remain in West Virginia for at least the next six months. “Then you’re going back to Florida.”
“Yes,” Nicole said. “Miami is now my home.”
He stepped on the gas and executed a smooth left turn onto the two-lane road. “So, do you like living in Miami?”
“Yes,” she replied, smiling. “I’ve gotten used to the summer heat and humidity, and I love the food and the energy of the city.”
Fletcher reached for a pair of sunglasses on the console and put them on to shield his eyes against the rays of the sun. “I suppose that’s reason enough for not coming back here to live. What about your job?”
“I’ll have to look for a new position once I get back. I’ve exhausted my family-leave privileges and, as a new hire, the senior partners at the firm decided not to authorize a subsequent leave of absence. I don’t know if you know, but I’m working for Preston McAvoy while I’m here. It gives me something to do during the day while my nephews are in school.”
“I was really surprised when I read in our quarterly graduating class newsletter that you’d left the corps to go to law school.”
“I’d promised myself that if I survived my last deployment, I would leave the military. Why did you come back?” Nicole asked.
“I’d planned to become a lifer and then come back to help my brother run the shop once Pop retired. But I was wounded during my third tour and I had to put in for a medical discharge. Even before that my brother decided he preferred working on an oil rig to repairing cars, which meant my plan to serve thirty years was changed to twenty.”
Fletcher stared straight ahead. “The doctors were able to save my leg. The scars make it look like a road map, and I find myself limping whenever I’m exhausted, but I’m luckier than many of my buddies who came home missing one or both legs.” He heard Nicole’s slight intake of breath.
As a Special Forces medical sergeant, he had been responsible for providing initial medical screening to those injured in his unit. The roles were reversed when shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade had torn through his right leg, shattering bone and damaging muscle. He’d managed to carry two of his buddies to safety before going into shock. When he woke more than twelve hours later in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Kaiserslautern, Germany, he’d been told the prognosis was the possibility of losing the limb. He’d returned to the States and was taken to San Antonio Military Medical Center. After four surgical procedures, he’d finally limped out of the hospital on a cane with the realization his military career had ended.
Fletcher did not want to talk about or to relive his time in the army. He wanted to make amends for what he’d said to Nicole. When it had happened, he hadn’t had the courage to apologize to her. “I’m sorry about what I said to you after you told me you wouldn’t be my prom date. It was uncalled-for and I never should’ve said it.”
A beat passed. “It’s the past, Fletcher, and I’m over it.”
He took his eyes off the road for a few seconds. Nicole was so still she could have been carved out of stone and the sentiment in her voice was just as unemotional. “It may be over for you, but not for me, Nikki. When I spent months in the hospital, I had nothing but time to think about my life. What I’d done and things I’d said.”
“You said what you meant at the time,” Nicole said in a quiet voice, “and my father always told me that whatever comes out of the mouth comes from the heart.”
A hint of a smile tilted the corners of Fletcher’s mouth. Judge Andrew Campos had earned the reputation of dispensing platitudes to those who appeared in his courtroom before imposing sentence or a fine. “He’s right about that. I can’t retract what I said, but I know it was immaturity and jealousy that made me lash out at you.”
“And don’t forget ego,” Nicole interjected.
Fletcher had been aware that in high school whenever girls stared at him or remarked about his so-called good looks, he’d found it both uncomfortable and flattering. Once he’d entered adolescence, his father had given him the talk about sex. However, it had been his mother who’d warned him about not taking advantage of girls once they began coming to the house or the auto repair shop whenever he spent school recesses and vacations working with his father.
He and Nicole had shared several classes and been on the yearbook and senior class committees, where they had worked closely together on various projects. He hadn’t made up his mind about who he’d wanted to take to the prom until three weeks before the event, when he asked Nicole if she would be his date. She had declined his invitation and a part of him hadn’t been able to accept that she had rejected him. In the end, she had gone with a boy who’d lived next door to her.
At the time, he had been all ego, because not only was he an above-average student, popular with both boys and girls, and he was also a standout on the gridiron—all of which served to inflate his sense of self. It had taken age and maturity to for him to realize what he’d said to Nicole was not only cruel, but totally uncalled-for.
He nodded, realizing he had to accept the truth. “You’re right. It was more ego than anything else.”
Nicole did not want to dredge up the past, but knew if she was going to spend six months in Wickham Falls and would probably run into Fletcher, they had to settle their past. “You were so used to girls falling over themselves to get you to notice them that you couldn’t accept that I’d rejected your invitation to go to prom with you.”
“It wasn’t only that, Nikki.”
Shifting slightly on the seat, Nicole turned to look directly at him. “What else was there?”
“It’s what you said when you accused me of sleeping with a number of cheerleaders at the same time. And, for your information, I’d never slept with any girl who went to our school.”
She went completely still. “If that’s the case then why did you say, ‘What’s the matter, Nikki? Are you jealous I didn’t ask you to sleep with me?’”
Fletcher shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “You don’t know. Had you found me so unattractive that you couldn’t see yourself sleeping with me?”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “It was just the opposite. I’d always thought you were one of the smartest and prettiest girls in the school, but I was afraid to ask you out because of your father.”
Nicole stared at Fletcher as if he had taken leave of his senses. Andrew Campos had been the local judge for the first ten years of her life before being appointed to the criminal court in the state capital. “What did my father have to do with anything?”
There was a swollen silence until Fletcher said, “Did you ever wonder why most of the boys at the school wouldn’t talk to you?”
“No. Why wouldn’t they?”
Fletcher smiled. “They were afraid of Judge Campos.”
Her jaw dropped. “Are you saying they viewed my father as some kind of monster?”
“Not a monster, Nikki. Just someone they didn’t want to have to deal with in case you told him a boy had attempted to take advantage of you.”
“That’s absurd. And you weren’t afraid of having to face him when you asked me to prom?”
His smile grew wider. “No, because I knew it would be the first and hopefully not the last time I’d ask you out on a date. And besides, I wouldn’t have done anything you hadn’t wanted me to do.”
“Like sleep with me?”
“I told you before, I didn’t sleep with any girl from our school, and I had no intention of starting with you.”
Nicole felt a modicum of relief he hadn’t thought of her as a “judge’s daughter” trophy about which he could brag to his buddies. And Fletcher had been truthful about boys either not talking to or coming on to her. There were occasions she’d felt totally isolated when her female classmates gave her smug stares because she wouldn’t have to compete with them for the attention of the more popular boys. Her best friend had been the boy who’d lived across the street from her and who’d confided to her that even though he was attracted to the same sex he was afraid to come out; she was the perfect foil for his proclivity.
“Thank you for being truthful,” she said as she forced a smile.
“Does this mean you’re going to accept my apology?”
“As I said before, it’s the past, Fletcher.”
“It’s either yes or no, Nikki.”
Nicole turned and stared out the side window at the passing landscape. If Fletcher wanted absolution for his remark, then she would offer it. “Yes, Fletcher, I forgive you.”
She quickly dismissed his apology, pondering the issue of having to deal with her brother’s in-laws. She now understood Reggie’s dilemma whenever he called to talk about his wife’s family. There was never a time he did not complain about the drain on his finances when writing checks to cover the Clarkes’ bills. Nicole had not wanted to get involved in what could possibly become a family feud, so she’d offered him little or no advice on how to deal with the Clarkes.
“Are your parents enjoying their retirement?”
Fletcher’s question broke into Nicole’s musings.
Once her parents had retired, they gave Reggie and Melissa their house as a wedding gift. She smiled. “Oh, yes. They’re like kids in a candy shop. They live in a gated retirement community with every amenity you’d want and need. Dad offers legal advice pro bono for at-risk youth, while my mother volunteers tutoring those studying for the LSAT. They claim it’s their way of giving back.” Her smile faded. “But whenever I talk to Mom, I can hear sadness in her voice when she talks about Reggie. She claims she prays every day that he will make it through his first ninety days without relapsing.” Her brother had managed to hide his addiction from those in The Falls until he’d overdosed and been transported to the hospital.
“Is she able to see him?” Fletcher questioned.
“No.”
“Isn’t that rather restrictive for family members?”
“Yes and no. Yes, because it keeps families in limbo as to the patient’s progress. No, because some may be complicit in aiding their addiction. Once I told my parents that Reggie needed in-patient rehab treatment, they found a private facility less than a mile from where they live. Convincing him to go was like attempting to pull an impacted wisdom tooth with a pair of tweezers.”
Fletcher asked her yet another question. “What did you do to convince him?”
“He knew he needed help after his sons found him unresponsive on the bathroom floor with a hypodermic in his arm. They were so traumatized that I decided to put them into counseling.”
“Good for you, Nikki. Addiction is a disease that affects the entire family.”
“You’re so right about that,” she said softly, knowing Reggie’s addiction to opiates had affected not only his children, parents and sister, but also his in-laws.
“You can let me out here and I’ll walk to the courthouse,” Nicole told Fletcher when he turned into the designated public parking lot. “I appreciate you dropping me off. I’ll take a taxi back to The Falls.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll drive you back,” Fletcher volunteered. “I’ll wait here while you defend your client.”
Nicole met his eyes. “I’m the client.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“I wish,” she countered. “My nephews’ grandparents are suing me because they want court-ordered visitation.”
“Have you kept them from seeing the boys?”
“No, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.”
“If that’s the case, then I’m coming in with you.”
She smiled and rested her hand on his forearm. “I can assure you that I don’t need backup.”
Fletcher stared at her hand. “If you have to deal with folks from Mineral Springs, then you’re going to need someone to have your back.”
“Don’t be silly, Fletcher. This is not some football game between rival teams.” No one could pinpoint when the football rivalry between Wickham Falls and Mineral Springs had begun, but it had been evident when she was in high school, and rumor was that it persisted more than a decade and a half later.
“It doesn’t matter,” Fletcher said as he pulled into an empty parking space and shut off the engine. “I’m still going in with you.”
Nicole did not want to argue with him when she had to keep her head straight to defend her decision against the lawyer the Clarkes had hired to represent them. “Okay. Come with me.”
For the second time that morning, she had conceded to Fletcher, something she had only done in the past with her commanding officers. As a former captain in the corps, she was used to giving orders and having them followed without question. But she was no longer active military, just a civilian attorney who had resigned her position as an associate with a prestigious Miami-based law firm to take care of her family.
