At Any Price. Margaret Allison

behind her, his headlights illuminating the way.

      Jack followed her all the way home. He pulled his car into her driveway, parking behind her. He knew she was annoyed but he didn’t care. He wasn’t about to let her ride her bike on a rainy night alone. It made no difference that Newport Falls was the safest place in the country. The roads were slick and a tired driver might not notice someone pedaling a bike on the side of the road. After all, who in their right mind would ride a bike to work in January?

      Katie, of course. She had always done things differently from anyone else. Eccentric, they’d call her in New York City. There had never been, nor would there ever be, another woman like her. Feisty and opinionated, beautiful and brainy, with a killer body and a heart of gold.

      When Katie tapped on his window, he rolled it down. “You didn’t need to follow me home,” she said.

      “What?” he said, pretending to be surprised. “I thought this was the way to the inn!” The inn, which everyone knew, was directly next to the diner.

      Katie grinned. It was enough to make him smile. He nodded toward her parents’ house. “It still looks the same.”

      Katie nodded. “Thanks for following me,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then she bounded off toward the house.

      Part of him wanted to chase after her. Open a bottle of wine and sit by the fire, just the two of them. He would tell her how nice it was to see her again. Explain how badly he felt that they had lost contact. How he wanted to make things right…

      He stopped himself. He could not allow old feelings to surface. He reminded himself once again that Katie had long ago stopped caring for him, and only a fool would think otherwise. As he had heard her say in her office, she had turned to him only as a last resort. And it was only for money.

      But her heart was in the right place. He could see why she was attached to Newport Falls, and he knew why she was desperate to save it. How it had changed since he had grown up here! There was a distinct creakiness to the town now, as if it were suffering from a terminal illness. The changes were not subtle. For Sale signs littering yards. Stores with windows boarded up. Empty streets and restaurants. It made him sad to think that Newport Falls might soon be just as Katie had said. A ghost town.

      Jack drove back to the inn, mulling over all the thoughts that cluttered his mind. He didn’t like feeling this way, his mind in turmoil. He found himself yearning to be back in the safe, sterile confines of his office. His life had a comfortable rhythm, revolving around work. There were women, of course. Plenty of women. But his relationships were based on sex, not emotion.

      But the gossip columnists were wrong when they said he did not want to commit. He was envious of his peers with wives and families. He could only hope he would be so lucky one day. But first, he needed to find the right woman.

      And to forget about Katie.

      Three

      Katie woke up the next morning feeling as if she had just dodged a bullet. She was surprised by her feelings for Jack. She had hoped that their years apart would’ve lessened her desire for him, that she was finally over him.

      For a while at least, she had half convinced herself she had succeeded. After all, it had been so awkward in the diner. It hadn’t seemed as strange being with Jack in New York. But to be having dinner with the man she had loved so intensely, in the place where they had spent so much time, was odd and uncomfortable, to say the least. He had changed since they were last at Joe’s Diner. Jack was still handsome, there was no doubt about that. But it wasn’t his looks that had attracted Katie. It was his heart.

      But just when she was certain that he had hardened over the years, that her friend was unrecognizable, he went and followed her home. Sweet and a little crazy, it was a total Jack thing to do.

      Thankfully she had possessed enough self-control and self-respect not to invite him in. After all, the end result would have been disastrous. She probably would’ve confessed her true feelings or, worse yet, acted on them. And Jack, once again, would’ve run for the hills. She would have been left brokenhearted all over again. And she would’ve let down all the people who worked for her. All the people who were dependent upon Jack investing in The Falls.

      Damn! She had half hoped that Jack really had changed. That his tough childhood had finally caught up with him and he’d lost the sweetness he had once preserved so effortlessly. It would have been understandable. After all, despite his recent success, life had given him many reasons to be bitter. He’d never known his mother, nor had he known any other relatives besides his father. And although Katie had always felt Jack’s father loved him, he was too incapacitated to function as a parent. Jack had grown up in a one-bedroom shack on the outskirts of town. Many times the house had no running water or heat. But Jack never grieved over his situation. He’d worked as long as Katie could remember, paying for his own clothes and groceries. He raised not only himself, but took care of his father, as well.

      There was no self-pity, either. “There’re a lot of people who have it worse than me,” he’d said whenever she or Matt would express concern. And that may have been true. One thing was certain, though. No one in Newport Falls had it worse than Jack Reilly.

      And, because of that, Jack always had to fight for respect. There were a couple of incidents in which Jack was blamed for something he didn’t do—like when the tools were stolen from the hardware store and the time someone robbed the Creeley house. But in both instances Jack was exonerated. It seemed like some people just couldn’t believe a boy who had grown up with a rotten father could be so decent and kind. But he was.

      Katie remembered the spring day she, Matt and Jack were walking home from school and saw black smoke billowing out of the Pelton home. Mrs. Pelton was crying on the street, comforting her six-year-old son, Frank. “They’re still inside,” the boy was screaming. “Rosie’s still inside.”

      Rosie was the family dog, a four-year-old golden retriever who had just had puppies. A normally obedient dog, Rosie had sensed danger and refused to leave her babies. Mrs. Pelton and Frank had run out of the house, narrowly escaping, but the dogs were trapped in the boy’s second-floor bedroom.

      Before Katie could stop him, Jack had climbed the tree in front of the Pelton home. He jumped from the tree to the roof, just as he had done at her house many times. When he tried to open the window and found it locked, he kicked it in, shattering the glass. He pulled his T-shirt up over his mouth and climbed inside.

      Both Katie and Matt had pleaded with him to stay outside with them. But when it became apparent Jack wasn’t going to listen, Matt followed him up the tree.

      Suddenly, Jack appeared at the window with a puppy in his hands. One at a time he handed them to Matt, who passed them down to Katie. When all four puppies were rescued, Jack appeared with Rosie. They escaped just as the flames licked the window. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the house was destroyed.

      Jack became a local hero after that. The town even gave him a special award at a picnic in his honor. But his father didn’t show. The night of the picnic Katie could see Jack looking around for him. Afterward, when she mentioned it, he had blown it off in his typical casual manner. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “I didn’t expect him to be there.” But she knew whether he expected him or not, it still hurt. “You guys were there,” he said. “That’s what counts.”

      She always knew Jack would leave town as soon as he could. She wasn’t surprised when he got a full academic scholarship to Princeton. Nor was she surprised when he chose prestigious summer internships over bagging groceries in Newport Falls. Although she told herself that it was the logical thing to do, her heart still ached. She missed Jack, longed for him. And she held on to the hope that one day he would feel the same way about her.

      But each year he wrote less and less. She and Matt found themselves comparing notes, trying to read between the lines in Jack’s abbreviated letters. Although he returned when her father died and stayed with her for an entire week, it was clear their relationship had run its course. When Jack graduated from college