Last Chance Christmas (Last Chance #5)(7)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Still, it made her feel lonely somehow.

“That’s all you want?” Ricki asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind some information.”

“About what?”

“About my father’s visit to Last Chance back in 1968.”

Ricki’s eyes went wide. “Um, uh, well, I wasn’t even born in 1968. So I can’t help you with that. Let me just get your coffee.” Ricki turned away and made a beeline to the coffeemaker, leaving Lark to wonder about Pop’s infamy in this town. Pop would have enjoyed the notoriety, but Lark didn’t. Not in the least.

Just then, the Christmas bell on the front door trilled. Lark turned. The local law strode through the door. Stone Rhodes wore his buff-colored uniform like a warrior. He was harder and more mature than the kids Lark had been embedded with in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the military bearing and haircut were absolutely the same.

His steps faltered for a moment when he saw her sitting at the counter. Then he squared his shoulders and advanced on her, taking his Stetson off as his long legs ate up the distance. The hat left a small red indentation on his forehead that Lark found oddly seductive.

His stare was as sober as the black coffee Ricki served up in crockery mugs. There wasn’t anything about his bearing or gaze that spoke of weakness. He not only looked like Carmine Falcone, he had the whole he-man, alpha-male, in-charge, slow-talking, take-no-prisoners attitude going. And all that without a Jersey accent.

He dropped the hat on the counter and sat on the stool beside her. “Morning,” he said in a deep voice filled with the blurred vowels of the South. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

Heat rushed through her. Chief Rhodes was handsome, and built, and reeked of testosterone and other male pheromones. And—judging by the wedding band on his third finger—he was also married.

Disappointment extinguished the fire burning in her middle.

Ricki intruded at that moment. “Hey, Stone, you want the usual?” she asked.

The chief nodded.

Not a man of many words, then. She liked him even more. A companionable silence settled over them as he drank his coffee. And she surreptitiously studied the pattern of his closely shaved beard. He looked so much like her fantasy that she had to stop herself from reaching out to touch his cheek to make sure he was real.

She picked up her toast and munched for a moment.

“That all you eating?” The chief finally spoke.

She nodded. “I’m not much of a breakfast eater.”

“By the looks of it, you aren’t much of an eater, eater.”

Chief Rhodes sounded like Miriam Randall. Kind of motherly, despite the weaponry at his hip. She needed to back away. “So, have you told everyone in town why I’m here?”

His laugh sounded like a deep, rumbling earthquake. “Not exactly.”

“No?”

“No, ma’am. But Lillian and Miriam and Annie are all members of the auxiliary. And what one of those women knows, all of them know.” He paused a moment, taking another gulp of coffee. “Speaking of the ladies, I’m surprised they let you out of their sight.”

“I made a jail break. Miriam wanted to force-feed me more scrambled eggs.”

“Hmm.” He nodded. Heat poured off his body. “So, have the ladies tried matching you up with anyone yet?”

She almost spewed her coffee all over the counter.

“Ah ha, I see they have. And what did Miriam tell you?”

Like she was going to sit there at the lunch counter and tell Carmine’s doppelgänger that she needed to find someone she could talk to about the nightmares and the flashbacks. Not in this lifetime. “I think I’ll keep what Miriam said to myself.”

He snorted. “Good luck with that.”

She rolled her eyes in his direction. He was staring straight ahead. There were sparrow tracks at the corner of his mouth and eyes. They spoke of a life lived soberly. His face was like a storybook. She could get caught up in it and forget about what was real.

She changed the subject. “I was wondering if you could tell me where I could find your father?”

A deadly spark ignited in his eyes. “Talking to Daddy wouldn’t be such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because he isn’t going to give you permission to scatter your father’s ashes at Golfing for God.”

At that moment, Ricki showed up with a big plate of biscuits and gravy. She put them down in front of Stone with a flirty smile and a wink. The chief was oblivious to Ricki’s antics. Instead he tucked in to his breakfast like a hungry man.

“I’d still like to talk to your father about it,” Lark said after a moment spent watching him eat.

He swallowed a bite of biscuit. “He’s not going to change his mind. You should scatter your father’s ashes to the wind somewhere. He’s dead. He’s not going to know the difference.”

She looked away. It was true. But she’d made a promise. “I can’t give up on Pop’s last request. You can understand that, can’t you?”

He put his coffee mug down. “I guess. You can find Daddy out at the golf course today. But if you want my advice, you’d be better off going home for the holidays. Daddy is stubborn as a mule on this subject.”

“And I’m patient.” Lark refrained from explaining that she didn’t really have a home and never celebrated the holidays.

“Just how long are you planning to stay?” he asked.

“Until December twenty-fourth. I have a plane to catch in DC on the twenty-fifth.”

“On Christmas Day?”

She shrugged. “That gives me a week to work on your father.”

“Good luck.”

“Any ideas on a place to stay? I don’t want to impose on Miriam for a week.”

“Well, I wouldn’t recommend the Peach Blossom Motor Court. They rent rooms by the hour, if you know what I mean. You’ll have to go to Orangeburg.”

“Thanks.” She stood up and threw a ten-dollar bill on the counter.

“There’s one other thing,” Chief Rhodes said, turning on his stool and looking up at her with a green-eyed glare. “There are folks in this town who think your daddy was some kind of hero, and others who wish he’d never come to town. Most of these folks are older than sixty. The rest of us have moved on. Last Chance has had African-American mayors since the mid-1990s, our town council looks like a rainbow. This café has been owned and operated by T-Bone Carter since 1970, and he’s the great-grandson of a slave. This isn’t the same place your daddy visited in the 1960s and I’m not going to stand by and let some fool Yankee come into my town and stir up trouble. Are we clear on that?”

“Fool Yankee? Really? I see that certain stereotypes are still alive and well in Last Chance.” She smiled as she said it.

He frowned. “Uh, I mean…”

“It’s okay. I’m not offended. But do me a favor. Don’t confuse me with my father. He was a troublemaker. I’m not. I just want to scatter my father’s ashes. If you let me do that, I’ll get out of your hair and return north of the Mason-Dixon line as fast as I can drive.”

She turned on her heel and left him to his breakfast.

Chapter 5

Lark arrived at Golfing for God and found it a hub of renovation activity. The parking lot was so crowded with pickup trucks and heavy equipment that she had to park on the shoulder across the highway.

She wandered through the construction site until she discovered Elbert Rhodes in a small, cluttered office located on the ground floor of the Ark. He was big-boned, with iron gray hair that he wore in a braid down his back. His goatee and black T-shirt gave him the appearance of one of those Vietnam-vet biker dudes who descended on Washington every Memorial Day. Of course, not many of those biker boys wore T-shirts that said “1 cross, 3 nails = 4given.”

Maybe that meant she could appeal to his sense of forgiveness and get her grim chore taken care of.

“Mr. Rhodes, can we talk?” she asked.

He looked up from his computer screen. His eyes were the palest shade of gray, verging on silver. He looked almost wolf-like. It didn’t make Lark feel any more confident.

“I’m Lark Chaikin,” she said, sticking out her hand.

He stood up and took her hand. She was struck immediately by the warmth of him. Like his son, Elbert Rhodes seemed to have some kind of internal furnace that radiated heat.

“I know what you want,” he said, then gestured toward a battered wooden chair that sat beside his messy desk. “Have a seat.”

“I spoke with Stone this morning,” Lark said. “He told me you were opposed to me scattering my father’s ashes on the eighteenth hole. I came to find out why.”

Elbert leaned forward. “I think you know good and well why. And I’m not going to change my mind. You should get in your big car and head back to New York or wherever you came from.”

Lark gritted her teeth. What was this negative thing everyone in town had for New Yorkers and “Yankees”? Had folks treated Pop this way, too? If they had, why did he want to come back here at the end?

She smiled at Elbert and tried her best to reach him despite his prejudices. “Miriam Randall gave me her version of the story. So I gather that you think my father was responsible for Zeke Rhodes’s death. But I know that can’t be possible. Pop could be a difficult man, but he was not a murderer. He fought injustice all his life.”

“I didn’t say your daddy was a murderer. But when he decided to fight injustice here in 1968, he stepped on a hornet’s nest. And his actions had unforeseen consequences—like my daddy ending up dead.”

“If the consequences were unforeseen, then—”

“Why the devil did your father want to have his remains left here, anyway?” Elbert seemed visibly upset.

She backed away. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you. But I don’t know why he asked me to do this. It was his last request. I see that you loved your father. I loved my father, too. Even though he was not an easy man to love sometimes.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I never met your father. I wasn’t here when Daddy died.”

“How can you judge my father if you never met him and don’t really know what happened?”

Elbert leaned forward, and his wolf-like gaze sent a shiver down Lark’s spine. This man was filled with animosity. “All I know is that Daddy didn’t slip from any ladder out here. That’s just ridiculous. And your daddy was camping out here for a few days, just before Daddy died. So I figure your daddy was involved.”

She let go of a sigh of frustration. “Mr. Rhodes, I made a promise to my father. And I’m going to do whatever I can to keep it, even if it means digging up stuff that you and your son don’t want exposed. I really don’t want to make trouble. I would really much prefer to compromise. I could just scatter Pop’s ashes, say a few words, and then leave. No one has to know.”

“No, that won’t work. It’s not my decision alone.”