Broken: Secrets in Madison Falls Read online

  Bella turned the key, but nothing happened. She kept turning it over and over but to no avail. She leaned into the steering wheel and put her head down. How much more could go wrong today?

  “What’s wrong, Aunt Bella?” Ethan asked from the back seat.

  “The car won’t start, buddy,” she said, sitting up. Freaking out wouldn’t help right now, she decided, so she reached into her purse to find her phone. Unfortunately, the battery had died while she was inside the school, and her charger hadn’t yet made it into the car with her.

  “What are we going to do? It’s kind of cold,” he said. Bundled up in his Spiderman coat, he looked so small and helpless. It tugged at her heart when she thought of everything Lori would miss in his life. His first car. His first girlfriend. His first heartbreak. His first prom. His first job. Marriage. Kids. She had to stop thinking about it before she got emotional, so she stepped out of the car and popped the hood. Bella was not well versed with cars, but it seemed like the natural thing to do. At the very least, raising her hood was like putting up a white flag to the public and saying “HELP!”

  ***

  Grant Brady sat at his desk trying to concentrate on grading papers. The early darkness that accompanied October days in Georgia was causing him to lose focus, or at least that was what he was telling himself today. It couldn’t be the beautiful blond that happened to be Ethan’s new guardian.

  At twenty-eight years old, Grant had been through the ringer in the last few years. Against his parents’ advice, he’d married Allison Treadwell at twenty-two years old. Married for three years, he was waiting for his white picket fence life to appear, but Allison had other ideas. Her ideas centered around his best friend, Travis, and Travis’s naked body. When he walked in to find them doing the deed in his marriage bed, he’d done some damage to Travis’s nose.

  Now, three years later, he was still having trouble trusting women. Especially a sexy, hot blond who just flew in from California. But, although his head was telling him one thing, his libido was doing cartwheels the whole time he talked to her, which is why he had to lie about having a class to get back to. Now, as he sat in his old, musty office grading history papers, he wondered what she was all about.

  As he graded his twentieth and final paper, Grant looked out the window and noticed an open hood on a car. It was starting to get dark, and his Southern chivalrousness wouldn’t allow him to ignore anyone having car trouble in his own school parking lot.

  He closed down his computer, turned off his lights, and locked the door behind him. As he walked out into the parking lot, the sun was just going down, and the pinks and blues of the Georgia sky reminded him of summer evenings as a kid.

  “Need some help?” he called out toward the car just in time to see that it was Bella leaning over looking at the engine and cocking her head to the side.

  She turned around and struggled not to cry when she saw who it was. Although she didn’t know him very well… yet… she was happy to see a friendly face offering assistance.

  “Oh, hi… We never quite made it out of here. Car won’t start,” she said with a sigh.

  “Mind if I take a look?” he asked as he removed his coat.

  “That’d be great,” she said.

  “Here, take this. You’re shaking,” he said as he handed her his coat.

  “I can’t take your coat.”

  “Yes, you can, Miss Clay. Southern gentlemen require it,” he said as he winked at her and nodded toward the coat.

  “Thank you. And please call me Bella,” she responded as she slid into his heavenly cologne-scented black leather coat.

  “Alright then. Bella…” he said softly as he started looking under the hood. She watched him intently as he fiddled with this and that under the hood and then attempted to crank the car again. Unfortunately, it was all to no avail.

  “Well, what’s the prognosis?”

  “I think it could be your starter or maybe your alternator. Either way, you aren’t going anywhere in this car for today.”

  “Crap. I’ve got to get Ethan home, and I have no way to work tomorrow,” she said.

  “I can give you guys a lift home, so that solves one problem,” he said with a smile that made her a bit calmer.

  “I appreciate it. Ethan said he’s freezing,” she said pointing toward the car.

  “Come on, bud,” Grant called to Ethan, who made sure he grabbed his backpack. Bella reached in, picked up her purse, and locked the car.

  As they all climbed into Grant’s big red pickup truck, she was thankful to have someone helping them out.

  “We live about two miles from here, right down off Sycamore,” she started to explain.

  “Yeah, I know where you live,” he said with a laugh as he and Ethan shared an inside joke.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked looking over at Grant and then back at Ethan who was sitting in the extended cab.

  “Mr. Brady is our neighbor, Aunt Bella,” Ethan said giggling.

  “He is?” she asked and then looked back at Grant. “How close of a neighbor are you exactly?”

  “I live two doors down from you,” he said with a grin.

  “Really? How did I not notice that?”

  “You’ve kind of had your hands full,” he said.

  “True.”

  “What are you guys doing for dinner?” Grant asked.

  “Oh, crap… I don’t know now. I was going to run and pick up some subs from the deli.”

  “No biggie. I have a nice pot of chili in the slow cooker at home. Care to join me? It’s way more than one man can eat safely,” he said laughing. She loved hearing his laugh. It was deep and masculine… and a little bit sexy, too.

  “Sure. Ethan, you like chili?” she asked.

  “With cheese and crackers?” Ethan asked.

  “Of course, bud.” Grant said.

  Minutes later, they were pulling into Grant’s driveway. He lived just two doors down from Bella, and she wondered what kind of trouble she might get herself into knowing that information.

  Chapter 7

  Dinner with Grant was fantastic. Bella enjoyed a real home-cooked meal for the first time in a long time. She hadn’t had a lot of home-cooked meals in her life. She and Lori had been bumped around from house to house in foster care, and most of their stand-in parents weren’t much for cooking.

  Without a mother figure in her life, Bella had missed out on being taught to cook. She’d always wanted to learn, and maybe one day she would. Now that she was Ethan’s mother figure, maybe she needed to do just that.

  “Where did you learn to cook?” she asked Grant after polishing off her second bowl of chili.

  “My grandmother is an amazing cook, so she taught me a bit. Slow-cooker meals are not really ‘cooking’, though. This was easy,” he said as he cleared the table and rinsed a few dishes in the sink.

  “As little as I know about cooking, a slow-cooker meal would be like something from a five star restaurant,” she said giggling. Ethan had left them alone after dinner, opting instead to watch cartoons on Grant’s tablet computer in the living room.

  “Care for some wine?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  Grant poured two glasses of white wine and handed a glass to Bella. “Why don’t we sit in the den where it’s more comfortable?” he asked. “Ethan will be fine in the living room. He seems occupied,” he said laughing.

  Ethan was giggling out loud as he watched videos. Bella was so happy to see him smiling again. Maybe feeling like he was part of a family for a night would be good for him. Tomorrow, he would go back to reality like she would. They were alone, and they only had each other.

  “So, tell me how Ethan is doing. I mean, aside from slugging other kids,” Grant said with a slight smile.

  “Well, I hear him crying at night in his room sometimes. I try to give him his space, but let him know that I am always there for him. This is so new to me, and I don’t know if I am doing it right. I’m thinking about fi
nding a good counselor for him, just so he can express any feelings he needs to talk about.”

  “You couldn’t do it wrong as long as you show him love and compassion. That’s all any kid really wants,” he said taking a sip of his wine.

  “Yeah, I know that all too well,” she said under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Oh, nothing. So, tell me about yourself. How long have you lived here?”

  “Three years, and don’t change the subject, Bella.” A mischievous grin slid across his face as he waited for her to explain.

  “I don’t know you well enough to start spilling my life story,” she said raising one of her eyebrows.

  “How well do you have to know me?” he asked tilting his head at her. Why did she want to tell him?

  “It’s getting late,” she said as she stood up.

  “Please don’t go. Ethan is enjoying himself. Sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he said standing up. “Plus, I don’t get a lot of company.”

  “Really? I would think you’d get a lot of ladies over here,” she said, smirking as she sat back down.

  “The singles scene in Madison Falls is pretty lackluster.”

  “I saw a VFW down on Main Street. Maybe you could go to some of their dances,” she said, snickering.

  “You’re quite witty, huh?”

  “I try. So, tell me your story, Mr. Brady.”

  “Grant.”

  “Okay, Grant. What’s your story?”

  “I haven’t known you very long…” he repeated her words back to her.

  “Very funny.”

  “Fine. I have nothing to hide,” he said not knowing how she was being eaten up inside keeping the secret of her two years in the porn industry. “Married at twenty-two to my college sweetheart. Lasted three years, and we divorced three years ago. Moved back to Madison Falls to be closer to my grandmother who basically raised me.”

  “What went wrong?” she asked hoping that his honesty would continue.

  “She slept with my best friend from college.”

  “Yikes. Sorry. What’d you do to him?”

  “What makes you think I did anything?” he asked, taking a nervous sip of his wine.

  “Because I know you did. You don’t strike me as the type of guy to just let something like that slide.”

  “I broke his nose. And I’m not proud of it,” he said, trying to hold back a grin.

  “You kind of look proud of it,” she said, kicking her foot at his leg. Both of them broke down into hysterics.

  “Okay, I was proud of it when I did it. I guess that’s why I thought Ethan’s little situation was pretty funny.”

  “Well, don’t tell Mrs. Dalton that,” she said. “I don’t think she has very high hopes for me as his guardian.”

  “Mrs. Dalton is a little uptight. Take her with a grain of salt.”

  “I can’t take anything with a grain of salt. My life suddenly became very serious, very quickly.”

  “I know. I can’t imagine how much of a change this has been for you. I remember Lori saying that you were working for some make-up company out in California, right?” he asked. She knew it was an innocent question, but it made her stomach twist in knots.

  “Right.”

  “Don’t you miss working there?”

  “Of course. But, Ethan comes first. Besides, I have a job down at the coffee shop.”

  “With Miss Roslyn?” he asked with a big grin.

  “Yes. I love her. She’s fantastic.”

  “That she is,” he said, getting up and taking her empty glass.

  “Well, I’d better get home and get Ethan in bed. I have to figure out what to do with him for the next week while I have him at home and no way to get to work. Talk about roadblocks.”

  “I might be able to help you out with one thing,” he said.

  “And what is that?” she asked as she stood up and followed him to the kitchen.

  “I have an extra car in my garage that you could borrow… on one condition.”

  Condition? She was used to men having conditions, and she doubted she would like his any more than theirs.

  “Condition?” she said flatly.

  “That you come back for dinner tomorrow night,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ll show you some real home cooking.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, but I suppose I can do that. And thank you, for everything.”

  “You are more than welcome, Bella. Just being neighborly.”

  Grant woke up Ethan who had already fallen asleep on his sofa with his tablet computer on his stomach. He carried him across their two yards and helped Bella get him inside. She quickly tucked him into bed, leaving his clothes on.

  “Listen, I’ll pull the car out in the morning and gas it up for you. It will be in the driveway in the morning, and I’ll just put the keys in your front flower pot,” he whispered. “It ain’t much, but it’s a safe, reliable car until you can get Lori’s fixed.”

  “I can’t say thank you enough. For the ride, the dinner, the car… and the company. This was the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” she said smiling as she leaned against the door frame.

  “Then you need to get out more often. It was nothing, really,” he said. “Good night, Bella.”

  “Good night,” she whispered as he backed up and walked across the yards. She didn’t know why, but she felt so much safer knowing Grant Brady was just two doors away from her.

  Chapter 8

  As expected, Bella woke up the next morning to find a car in her driveway and keys in the flower pot. Just by talking to him for one day, she could tell that Grant Brady was definitely a man of his word, and she was very thankful to have that kind of new friend in town.

  She got ready for work and woke up Ethan so he could eat breakfast. Since she hadn’t yet done her full grocery shopping, she had very little to serve him. Still, she managed to find a box of microwaveable waffles in the very back of the freezer. When she had gotten custody of Lori as a teenager, Bella had to learn how to make something out of nothing when it came to food in the house, so she could certainly do it this morning. Some of her concoctions were less than stellar, but it was food.

  As she drove Grant’s car to the coffee shop, she looked around for clues that would tell her more about him. The car was immaculate, just like his house, and he had a brand new air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. In the city, they might call him “metrosexual”, but in the country he was just a clean cut, good looking, reliable man you could bring home to Mom.

  “Morning, Roslyn,” Bella said as she walked into the coffee shop with Ethan trailing behind her. Thankfully, she had spoken to Roslyn after Ethan went to bed, and she was okay with Bella bringing him to work for the week. Sharon had agreed to pick him up when Howie got out of school each day and take him to her house for the last couple of hours of Bella’s shift.

  “Morning, Bella. Hey there, Ethan! I’m Miss Roslyn,” she said, kneeling down to shake Ethan’s hand. “I understand a kid said some very unkind things to you at school?”

  “Yes, ma’m,” he said looking down at his shoes.

  “Well, let me tell you something. When I was about your age, my Mommy died too. And do you know that I still have such wonderful memories of her even today? I mean, I’m a pretty old gal, but I can still smell her perfume sometimes. So, nothing that silly boy says to you can ever take away the magic of your mother in your heart. Understand?” she asked rubbing the side of his arm.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Now, how would you like a nice cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows?” she asked.

  “That’d be great!” he said as he ran over to the table in the corner and put down his back pack. Bella was requiring him to do some extra work while he was off school.

  “How did you know about what the boy said?” Bella asked Roslyn cocking her head. Although she had told her that Ethan was suspended for a week, she never told her the whole story.
>
  “A little birdie told me,” she said with a wicked grin while she made Ethan’s hot chocolate.

  “Huh?” Bella said, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion as she tied on her apron.

  “Scooter!” Roslyn yelled out when the coffee shop door opened. With a big grin, she walked around the cash register and embraced a man who had just walked through the door.