Baby, Come Home

“Amy, hi,” a deep male voice sounded over the line. “This is Marcus Armstrong.”

Amy blinked in surprise, then found her voice. “Hello, Marcus. This is…unexpected. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks. And you?”

“Fine,” she said automatically.

“Good. I assume you know my brothers and I are rebuilding Sweetness.”

She hesitated, her gaze falling on the ad in front of her. “Er, yes, I’m aware of your…project. A friend of mine moved there, and we stay in touch.”

“Dr. Salinger, yes, I know. She mentioned your name to Porter and he put two and two together as to why Kendall chose that particular town to run the ad.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she remained silent.

Marcus cleared his voice. “Look, I’ll get right to the point. I’m calling with a proposition.”

Wary, Amy sat forward in her chair. “I’m listening.”

“We need a bridge designed to replace the old covered bridge over Timber Creek.”

A picture of the splendid Evermore Bridge came to her clearly. Lovingly constructed from original stand timber—wood from old-growth forests—and painted a rustic red, the old landmark had been a faithful steward of the safety of all those who had crossed it. How many times had she and Kendall walked there, hand in hand, to stare up at the intricate ceiling trusses and dissect its construction?

“It didn’t survive the tornado?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not. It was blown away, like everything else. Only sections of the foundation remain, but I doubt if they’re salvageable.”

Amy pressed her lips together. “What does this have to do with me?”

“We need a structural engineer to design and oversee the construction. And I understand that’s your specialty.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She chose her words carefully. “How much do you know about my life, Marcus?”

“More than Kendall,” he said evenly.

Feeling light-headed, she sat there, waiting for the floor to open up and swallow her.

“What I propose,” he continued in her silence, “is that you return to Sweetness…for the time it would take to rebuild our bridge.”

“A new covered bridge?”

“As close to the first Evermore Bridge as possible, considering the original blueprints no longer exist. We have a grant from a preservation society to offset some of the costs and they provided blueprints from a similar bridge in Ohio.” He gave her an overview of the project budget and the amount they could offer for her services. “Not a king’s ransom, I know,” he said.

“No, it sounds very fair,” she said, tightening her grip on the phone. Had Kendall told Marcus how much that bridge had meant to her? Rebuilding it would be a great personal achievement. “So…you’re offering me a temporary job?”

“That’s right. The way I see it, I need a bridge, and it would give you a chance to see if things have changed around here.”

If things had changed… He was alluding to Kendall and their old feelings for each other.

“Whose idea was this?” she asked.

“Mine. Kendall doesn’t know I’m making this call. As far as I know, he doesn’t even know you’re an engineer.”

Because he didn’t care enough to find out? But even as hurt squeezed her heart, she was grateful Kendall hadn’t delved deeper into her life. She wondered again how much Marcus knew.

“And if I say no, what then?” she asked.

There was a hesitation on the other end of the line. “Then nothing. No matter what I think, Amy, you have a right to your privacy.”

She exhaled. “Thank you, Marcus. You don’t know how much I appreciate that.”

“Then you’ll think about it?”

Amy’s mind swirled with the possible outcomes of returning to Sweetness. It had taken years for the sharp pain in her heart over Kendall to subside to a dull ache. If she returned now, there would be more at stake. Much more. And it was more than she was willing to gamble.

“I’m sorry,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster, “but I’m going to have to pass. I have commitments here that I can’t turn my back on.”

A regretful noise sounded on the line. “I’m disappointed, but I understand. It’s been nice talking with you. Call if you ever need anything.”

She smiled into the phone. “Thank you. Goodbye, Marcus.”

Amy set down the receiver and sank into her chair. That was close. She sat for a few moments, her mind traveling down the road not taken, wondering if her response would’ve been the same if Kendall had called instead.

She closed her eyes and conjured up his handsome face, his serious deep blue eyes, his intense approach to everything.

Including lovemaking, she remembered with a smile. He’d been her first lover and the only man who’d ever moved her. Every man in her life after Kendall had suffered in comparison to his strong body and keen intellect. If Kendall had been able to commit to her or had loved her enough to come looking for her, her life would’ve been so different.

Amy gave herself a mental shake. Luckily she had Tony in her life now…a different set of blue eyes to lose herself in. She’d learned long ago that nothing productive came from rehashing the past.

She reached for her computer mouse and returned to the CAD drawing she’d been working on before her chocolate attack, the addition of a wheelchair ramp to an existing structure. A worthwhile project, to be sure…but not very challenging. Even as she double-checked the fine details on the screen in front of her, her mind kept straying to her memories of the Evermore covered bridge over Timber Creek.

Always happy for a reason to get out of the cramped, tension-wrought house where she lived with an elderly aunt, Amy had thought the bridge was the most romantic place in Sweetness—the way it enveloped her and Kendall when they entered one arched portal to slowly walk or ride across the length of it, counting timbers as they went, their footsteps and voices echoing off the plank walls. She would pretend it was their home. They’d certainly shared a lot of intimate moments there, tucked out of sight in the dark corners of the supports, enjoying the vibration of their sandwiched bodies when cars rumbled past.

Unbidden, desire stabbed her midsection. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to think about the way Kendall had made her body come alive. In hindsight, the excitement of sexual discovery had clouded her judgment. It had made her believe that Kendall was in love with her, that they shared an unbreakable bond. She had been such a fool.

Still, Marcus had stirred her curiosity about the town’s progress. Nikki had mentioned a website, but Amy had purposely avoided it. Now, though, she found herself clicking away from her CAD drawing and on to a search engine. A few keystrokes later, she found the official website of Sweetness, Georgia, The Greenest Place on Earth.

Green enough on its own, she remembered, with trees as far as the eye could see. But the slogan was a play on the fact that the Armstrong brothers were rebuilding the town on the industries of recycling and alternative energies. She skimmed the pages of description. The pictures showing the devastation of the tornado still rocked her to the core—those were all places where she’d once walked. The “before” and “after” slide show featured pictures of the overgrown wasteland the town was when the Armstrong brothers had returned to reclaim it, and pictures of the progress that had been made. Nikki was in one of the photos, standing beside the sign for the Sweetness Family Medical Center, next to a short bespectacled man who, from his white lab coat, appeared also to be a doctor. Rachel Hutchins, the busty blonde who used to be the receptionist for the dermatologist Amy used in Broadway, was in several of the photos, flashing her Miss America smile. Nikki said the woman would probably be mayor when the first elections rolled around.

There was a Lost and Found page listing hundreds, maybe thousands of items that had been found after the tornado and warehoused until they could be returned to the rightful owners. Former residents of Sweetness were encouraged to sign up on an email list to be kept apprised of developments. A social network site for the town had also been established.

On the About page, Amy found what she’d been looking for. A picture of the three Armstrong brothers standing outside, dressed in dusty work clothes. Amy instantly recognized each one of them. Porter, always the ham, was grinning at the camera. Marcus, the stoic one, looked highly inconvenienced at having his picture taken. And Kendall…

Her heart stuttered. Kendall had grown from a beautiful boy into a devastatingly handsome man, his shoulders wide and muscled, his skin tanned, his brown hair streaked by the sun. He wasn’t quite smiling and he wasn’t quite scowling. As always, he was square in the middle of his brothers’ temperaments. He had the same deep blue eyes as Marcus and Porter, but where Marcus looked stern and Porter, mischievous, Kendall was the calm one.

The cautious one. The one who couldn’t commit.

With a sigh, she closed down the page and reopened the CAD drawing, hoping to lose herself in the details of the diagram. But her mind kept wandering and she kept making mistakes. Then she inadvertently pressed a key that undid an hour’s worth of work.