Wishes At First Light

Guitar picking was safer. If a little tougher on the ears of unsuspecting neighbors.

Holding the last note of a sixties folk tune that Bob Dylan made famous, Clay debated going inside for the night. With his feet propped on the narrow porch rail and his back jammed into a corner on the wooden chair he’d borrowed from the dinette set inside, his joints had gone stiff from staying in one position for too long. Or from the cold. He pulled his feet off the railing just as a car turned off the interstate and into the parking lot.

The white Ford sedan had out-of-state plates. A rental, he guessed. And since there weren’t many guests staying in the motel cottages, he paid attention to who stepped out of the vehicle and under a streetlamp.

Gabriella.

“Are you going to play anything or is that just for show?” she called as she strode his way, a warm smile on her face.

She looked pretty. Dressed up a bit, like she’d been out to dinner with friends. Pale hair skimmed her shoulder where it fell loose from a ponytail. She wore a long gray dress belted over dark tights, plus a lightweight trench coat. Shiny earrings bobbed in the porch light as she leaned on his railing.

“I guarantee that if I play for you, it’ll be the last time you ask me to play.” Setting the guitar aside, he clapped a hand on the arm of the wooden rocker. “You’re welcome to have a seat if it’s not too cold for you.”

He asked because it was the neighborly thing to do. And because he was more than a little curious about her. But he was surprised when she joined him without hesitation.

“Thank you.” Stepping up onto the narrow planks, she seated herself carefully. There was a slow deliberation in the way she moved, as though she never rushed into anything. “I’m glad for the fresh air. I went to a Salon Night in town for a bunch of the women who are giving testimony in the Covington trial and it’s good to clear my head from the scent of fingernail polish.” She waggled her shiny nails, studying the pink polish. “I’m not usually one to spend time in a salon, but it was fun.”

She wore no ring. He’d noticed that over breakfast, too. And it occurred to him he wasn’t usually the kind of guy whose eye gravitated to a woman’s left hand.

“Pretty,” he observed lightly. “And probably a good distraction tonight when everyone is keyed up before the trial.”

“About that.” She tugged on the cuff of one loose sleeve of her coat, fingering the dark button that decorated a taupe-colored strap. “I’m definitely keyed up, which is part of the reason I ran out at breakfast this morning. I’m so sorry about that.”

She sounded both genuine and distressed.

“No need to apologize. It wasn’t a big deal.” He didn’t want her to worry about it. Hell, he’d rather have her thinking about reliving happier times when—he’d thought—they’d been on the verge of acting on an attraction.

“But I was actually planning on seeking you out tonight to tell you the other reason I left the table abruptly this morning.” She bit her lip, her pale forehead furrowed. “It’s awkward. And embarrassing.”

A breeze toyed with the loose strands of hair around her face, and his hand itched to smooth away the silky pieces. Put her at ease somehow.

“I wish it didn’t have to be. Are you sure you don’t want to sit inside where it’s warm?” The motel cabins were tiny, but each unit had a kitchenette. A small sofa.

“I’m fine.” She shook her head, but wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her coat tighter to her body. “I wouldn’t mention this at all, but I hoped if I talked to you about it, maybe it would put some unsettling parts of my past to rest for me.”

Concern rooted him to the spot. “You’re worrying me. I hope I don’t have anything to do with unhappy parts of your past, Gabriella.”

Beyond the parking lot, a tractor trailer whizzed past, rumbling the whole porch under his feet and sending the foliage of a few overgrown bushes whipping against the small cabin.

“Not through any fault of your own.” She shook her head slowly.

Sadly.

“I don’t understand.” Defensiveness fired through him. He’d been a perfect gentleman where she’d been concerned. “We were young. What we shared was perfectly innocent—”

“Was it?” She asked the question as if she really needed to have it confirmed. As if she didn’t already know the answer.

“Hell, yes—” he started, sitting forward in his seat.

Gabriella laid a hand on his arm, a new confidence radiating from her that had been missing this morning. She seemed calmer tonight. Maybe the Salon Night was her equivalent of guitar picking.

“Because, Clay, I thought I had a lot of not-completely-innocent conversations with you online that summer in chat rooms.” Her clear blue eyes were focused on his as he felt the floor drop out from under him.

“What?” He shook his head. Confused.

“And it turned out,” she continued, barely pausing to take a breath. “That night I was attacked? I thought I’d spoken to you online just before the incident. It was you I was planning to meet in the quarry.”

The revelation seemed to hang suspended in midair between them, not really permeating his brain. He’d heard the words. But they made no sense.

“Gabby—I sent you a couple of emails that spring, I remember. I know you got them, because you answered them.” They’d spoken about it during a math tutoring session. She’d sent him some sample problems that way. “But I don’t think I even knew how to find a chat room back then.”

Unlike most of his generation, the techno-revolution had missed him. He’d been poor to start with, so it wasn’t like his parents had bought him laptops or game systems at Christmastime. He’d been lucky to get new socks. A sweater, maybe. Later, when his alcoholic mom had run off and his alcoholic father had given up completely on parenting, Clay had moved into nicer foster homes with access to more technology, but he’d been low in the pecking order of kids waiting to use an internet connection for homework.

Gabriella folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself as she stared up at the fat full moon overhead for a long moment. There was something so vulnerable about her and strong at the same time. Willowy slim, she had a delicate, feminine grace, but the determined set of her chin and shoulders suggested she would walk through fire if the need arose.

“I knew, of course, that you couldn’t have been the person I communicated with that night.” She blinked and drew a deep breath before continuing. “Those messages came from the man who attacked me. He was just pretending to be you when he sent them, so I believed that it was you who wanted to see me.”

He wondered what the exchange had been about that it had drawn a sixteen-year-old girl out of her home late at night. And damn, but it sent a surge of cold fury through him to think her attacker had impersonated Clay to get at her.

“That night wasn’t the only time you thought we exchanged messages online?” He had all new reasons to attend that trial for Jeremy Covington tomorrow.

Seized with the need to see the man pay for his crimes, Clay wondered if it was too late to charge him with impersonating Clay in addition to the long list of felonies that including numerous counts of cyber stalking, stalking, assault, sexual molestation, soliciting a minor and attempted kidnapping. Clayton remembered there was at least one impersonation charge on the long list he’d read in the paper, but that had been in conjunction with another incident involving a local teen he’d lured out by pretending to be a mutual friend of Heather Finley’s.

“No.” Sitting forward on the wooden seat, Gabriella tucked her feet around the front rail of the chair as she shook her head. “We chatted five or six times before that in the two weeks prior to that night—or so I thought.”

Clay couldn’t believe the gall of the guy—a respected man in the community, a coach on the high school football team with a kid and a wife—to contact a local girl repeatedly, pretending to be a teenage foster kid. It made sense that Covington would have known about Clay’s fledgling relationship with Gabriella, though. They’d met under the bleachers during football practices.

“For how long?” He couldn’t wrap his brain around it, but he realized he should be comforting her instead of focusing on how wronged he felt. How robbed. But damn it, Clay should have been the one enjoying those conversations with her online. “I mean, how extensive were these conversations? And what did he talk to you about?”

He sat forward in his chair, too, closer to her. Belatedly, he remembered he’d brought his motorcycle jacket outside earlier and he grabbed it off the back of his chair to drape across her shoulders. The flannel he wore over a sweatshirt kept him warm enough.

“Thanks.” Her eyes met his in the moonlight, clear and blue even though the darkness grayed out most colors. “This is where things get awkward for me. I was kind of hoping when I confided this to you that you would have been on the receiving end of at least some of those messages I sent you.”

Her gaze darted away again, searching the parking lot as if she’d rather look anywhere else. Across the lot at the diner, a couple of staffers closed the back door for the night, turning off the last of the lights in the building.

Clay’s attention returned to Gabriella. Her pink fingernails flashed along the zipper of the brown bomber jacket, tugging the leather tighter while her words sent his brain on a kind of wild ride. Just what sort of things had she believed they were saying to each other in those chats?

“I understand where that realization would be unsettling.” He nodded, starting to put the pieces together. “But consider my side. I can’t help but wonder why you were messaging with me, Gabby. I only remember a few cursory exchanges online about times we were going to meet for math tutoring when I wanted to know you so much better. I was pretty much crazy about you back then.”

She went still. Slowly, her eyes tracked back to his.

“That helps, actually, to hear you say that. So, thank you.” She shrugged awkwardly in the big jacket, the fabric weighing down the gesture so it was just the slightest movement. “Because our conversations were fairly flirtatious. I looked forward to those chats, because I liked you, too.”

And just like that, Gabriella Chance got under his skin all over again. He’d pinpointed the attraction between them alive and well earlier today. But right now, with her soft confession drifting on the night breeze, and her loose ponytail sliding along the shoulder of his jacket as she looked at him with trusting eyes...

She tapped into a spot in his chest that he hadn’t cracked open in a good long while.

Her cell phone vibrated on the porch rail, the light and the sound startling her. She reached for it.