“We sure are,” Penny agreed. “We sure are.”
Chapter One
“Good evening, sir.” The tollbooth attendant spoke loudly to be heard above the rain. “Need any help with directions?”
Brad Corrigan stared at her for a moment, but then realized the gray-haired woman must have noticed the Illinois plates on his rental car and the open map on the front seat. And jumped to the logical conclusion that he might need a little help.
“No, thanks. I’m familiar with the area. I grew up around here.”
“Did you now?” The woman’s smile broadened. “Welcome home.”
Home? Brad couldn’t help wincing.
It had been an August day just like today. Black clouds had filled the sky and lightning had danced to a crackling tune. It had been raining. Pouring, actually. Exactly like today. Coming down so thick that he couldn’t see more than three or four car lengths ahead. Your ordinary Indiana summer storm.
He was in the front seat of their ’68 station wagon, rain dripping on his leg through the crack in the windshield. The car was thirteen years old and a real junker.
He and Mom were heading west to California. To start a new life had been the way she’d put it.
“Don’t worry,” she said as they chugged along Route 30, not even having the fifty cents for the toll road. “Once we get settled you can come back and visit your friends.”
The angry shouting from last night at Penny’s house seemed to be still hanging in the air for everyone to hear. He should never have gone over there with those birdhouses. No, he should never have made up that stupid poem and written the lines inside the houses for her to find.
Lots of the kids made fun of him for not having new clothes or far working odd jobs to help his mom make ends meet, but Penny and her friends never did. So, why had he wrecked it all by trying to be romantic? They were probably all laughing at him right now. He would never ever do that again.
“I don’t have any friends here,” he’d told his mother. “And I don’t care if I ever see this place again in my whole life.”
It hadn’t been home then, and now, eighteen years later, it still wasn’t. Oh, he wouldn’t be the butt of jokes anymore. Not once somebody found out he could buy and sell this town a couple of times over. He wouldn’t tell, but they’d be able to see the signs for themselves. The expensive clothes. His limited edition Rolex watch. And someone was bound to have read about him in some publication.
Not that he needed or wanted anybody’s approval. He had all he needed in his bank account. All he wanted in his stock portfolio. The rest was all nonsense, children’s games. He was a man, took care of himself and put no burdens on anyone. And quite happily alone, thank you. He had learned his lesson eighteen years ago and hadn’t forgotten it.
A horn sounded behind him and the tollbooth attendant’s smile seemed edged in concern. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Me?” Brad laughed. “Sure. Of course. Just steeling myself up for the traffic of downtown Chesterton.”
“You’re going into Chesterton?” Her voice had taken on a pleading quality. “Could I ask you a big big favor? Would you drive Junior into town? It wasn’t raining when he came out here to visit me, and I’d hate to have him walk back in the rain.”
Brad looked ahead. The rain was coming down so hard, he could barely see Route 49. It was a terrible day to drive; even worse to walk, though Chesterton was less than a quarter mile up the road.
“Sure,” he told the woman. “No problem.” It would be good to have some company, someone to talk to actually. “Where—”
But the woman was opening the half door of the tollbooth and letting a huge black German shepherd out. As Brad watched in semihorror, she pulled open the back door of the car and let the dog hop inside. He could feel the monster’s breath on the back of his neck.
“Now, you behave, Junior,” the woman told the dog, then closed the back door before turning to Brad. “Drop him off any place near Centennial Park, if you would. He knows his way home.”
Was it his imagination or had the dog’s breath gotten hotter and closer?
“And don’t you worry about him none,” the woman said. “He’s as sweet as can be—unless you have a beer and don’t share.”
“Uh, I’ll remember that,” Brad said. With a wave at the dog, the woman went back into her booth and Brad pulled forward carefully. He glanced into his rearview mirror. Large canine teeth were all he saw.
“Hey there, Junior. How’s it going?” He could see the headlines now—Former Chesterton Resident Chewed to Death Just Outside City Limits. Lot of good his fat bank account would do him then.
Brad glanced forward again, but saw little except the rain rushing down his windshield. No visibility in front of him and the jaws of death behind him. Great. If he had to ride with the jaws of death though, he’d rather have them where he could keep an eye on them.
“So, Junior,” he said. “Want to ride in the front seat?” Sure. Like the dog could—
Junior hopped into the seat next to him, scrunching the road map as he settled himself down to stare out the front window. Okay. The dog threw a quick glance at Brad, then looked forward again with a slight growl.
“I know there’s a stop sign up here,” Brad said and came to a complete stop—since it looked like Junior was a stickler for such things—before he eased his way onto Route 49 and rolled on north toward Chesterton.
“I am tired, but not so bad I’d ignore a stop sign,” Brad said, then gave a mighty yawn and found the dog staring at him. “Hey, give me a break. It’s got to be forty-eight hours since I had some sleep. If I had bedded down in Chicago like I should have, you’d be walking home in the rain.”
Home. There was that word again.
Home was where you hung your hat. And he had no intention of doing that in Chesterton. Besides—yawning again, he shook his head to clear the cobwebs—he didn’t even own a hat. Not unless you counted that beat-up old hat Ray Bolger had worn in The Wizard of Oz that Brad had bought in auction a few weeks back; he didn’t think the paperwork was complete yet for the donation to the Smithsonian’s American Classics exhibit.
“You really ought to wear a hat, you know,” Penny told him. “You’ll get heatstroke and collapse and die.”
He yanked up a thick wad of chickweed from beneath the fan of iris leaves. “I’m not going to die,” he muttered. Not unless he had to keep talking to her. Not unless she moved her foot six inches and brushed his hand.
“You didn’t bring one, did you?” she asked.
The heat of her nearness burned him hotter than the blazing July sun. “I hate hats,” he said as if he had hundreds of them at home and rejected them all.
He’d be okay if she would just go back to deadheading the spent daylilies over in the next yard. Then he could watch her from a distance and his body could be all fiery just from looking at her, but he wouldn’t have to fight the roaring in his ears to make sense of her words. He’d be able to think then, and would came up with something clever to say when he left the nursery at the end of the day.
“Thad’s got a bunch. You can use one of his.”
He hadn’t wanted one of her brother’s hats. She’d touch it and it would forever wear that soft sweet smell of roses from her soap and he’d never come up with the right words to say.
“I hate hats,” he said again. “I never wear them. Not even in the winter.”
And he still didn’t. Of course, living in Los Angeles was the reason, not that silly statement. Once he’d left Chesterton, he’d left behind all the silly statements he’d made. And he’d made quite a number of them to Penny Donnelly.
“Lordy, but I had it bad for her,” he told Junior. “I wasn’t able to say a coherent word around her from about fourth grade on. In ninth grade, I made friends with her best friend, Dorothy. That way, I could be close to Penny and still have somebody to talk to.”
Junior thumped his tail twice in admiration, not an easy feat w
hile sitting in a bucket seat. Obviously the dog recognized genius and Brad found himself warming to the beast.
“You know, I once vowed I’d come back and make them all sorry. But I’m not. I’m over all that. I’m just back to drop off some probate papers, pick up a few boxes of my uncle’s old belongings and put his house up for sale. Don’t care if I see anyone or not. Shows what happens when you grow up, huh? The old emotions lose their power over you.”
Junior didn’t look impressed this time, as if he were thinking all those things could have been done long distance.
“All right, so they could have been,” Brad acknowledged. “But I was out this way already and it seemed just as easy.”
It sounded insane when Brad said it aloud, but Junior was kind enough not to point that out. Damn, Brad thought with a shake of his head, what in the world had he been thinking of? He’d been in Omaha for the past week—a two-hour plane ride and an hour’s drive from Chesterton, Indiana. Hardly “out this way,”
“Lack of sleep,” he told Junior. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. But it doesn’t change anything. If I can get to Matt Harris’s office before seven-thirty tonight, I can drop off those legal papers he sent me. Hey, with luck, I might even find a real estate office still open, too, and get the house put on the market. That would leave picking up the boxes from the old house which should take about ten minutes, tops. I could still sleep in Chicago tonight. At worst, I do it all tomorrow and be out of here by lunchtime.”
Junior grunted and gave his head a shake. Skepticism or an itchy ear?
Exhaustion or insanity on Brad’s part? Jeez, he was one of the highest paid computer network consultants in the business with part ownership of almost a dozen companies around the country. A software firm in Tacoma. A bakery chain in Orlando. Hell, even the rental car company this car was from. And what was he doing? Rationalizing his actions to a dog. He needed a vacation. Maybe once he left here, he would take one.
Peering ahead, he frowned. The downpour seemed to be increasing and his visibility was getting worse. Damn, maybe getting out of Chesterton wasn’t going to be as fast and easy as he had hoped. He glanced at his watch. A few minutes before seven. He still had time.
“Looks like we may have to pull over and wait this out. Keep your eye out for some place to stop, will you?”
Junior yipped slightly as lights from a strip mall flashed in the murk up ahead, along with a sign that said Sam’s Place. Scary, Brad thought. It was almost as if the dog understood. But he patted the dog’s shoulder, not about to argue. “Good job, Junior.”
Brad turned into the parking lot and pulled around a Dumpster, putting the car beneath the widespread branches of an old oak that looked as if it had been there before the Potawatomi Indians. He shut off the motor and looked at Junior.
“I’m going to grab a quick bite to eat. You want to wait in the car or come inside? I don’t remember Sam as being too particular.”
But as soon as Brad opened the door and stepped out under the slight protection of the oak branches, Junior jumped out of the car and took off, trotting toward downtown Chesterton, a few blocks west. So much for his company.
“You’re welcome,” Brad called after him, then raced for the tavern’s rear entrance. The town hadn’t changed at all—still filled with snobs who thought they were too good to spend a little time with him. Well, he didn’t care.
Brad stepped into a short corridor and went past the bathrooms and the kitchen, but stopped short as he entered the dining room. Gone was the dark, dingy hole-in-the-wall he remembered coming to for Sunday dinners once a month with Uncle Hal. This place was light and cheery with not a speck of duct tape on the bar stools. Maybe Junior was right to leave—Brad wasn’t sure the dog would have been welcome here.
Brad took a seat at the bar, ordered a hamburger out of habit and a soda, then sat there, watching the clock above the bar. He should have ordered a sandwich. It would have been quicker. He drummed his fingers on the bar and stared at a poster for The Wizard of Oz festival in town next month.
Lordy, were they still having that? He wondered if it was still such a big deal, with people coming from all over the country to dress up like the Tin Man or the Cowardly Lion and exchange Oz memorabilia. It actually had been a lot of fun when he’d been a kid—and a good weekend to earn extra money by working parking crews and cleanup the week after. And none of the thousands who came to the town for the weekend ever seemed to mind that Chesterton had no connection to Oz or—
The front door of the tavern opened, letting in some laughter mixed with thunder. Brad idly glanced in the mirror and saw a couple about his age, in their early thirties—a man in glasses and a tall blond woman.
His system suddenly froze up. His muscles, his nerves, everything turned to stone. She’d been the prettiest girl in their class; now she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her pale blue dress made the most of a perfect figure. Taller than average, she moved across the room with an easy grace, so that the soft blond curls falling down onto her shoulders swayed gently.
Brad watched as they passed. His eyes took in her ringless left hand, and then the familiar-looking man with her, holding her arm while he smiled at the waitresses they passed.
And just like before, she needed protection from the cretins.
It was the last night before the freshman science fair projects were due and Brad was walking down the road from Penny’s house. He’d just spent the past two hours finishing up her science fair project, while trying to work up the nerve to ask her to the spring dance next week. When he was finally done with her project, though, he still hadn’t thought of the right words to say and had just left. Rats. He might as well resign himself to being a monk. At least he had plenty of practice with this vow of silence stuff.
Brad stopped as Alex Waterstone came driving his car around the bend in the lane. “What are you doing here?” Brad asked him.
The high school junior looked smug. “I’m going to see Penny, if that’s any of your business.”
Brad got a whiff of aftershave and knew in an instant—Alex was going to ask Penny to the dance. Alex, who was the wilder kid in Chesterton or any of the surrounding counties. And sweet innocent Penny—who didn’t know not to trust guys like Alex—would accept.
“She’s not home,” Brad said. “She went out.”
“On a school night? Her father never lets her go out on a school night.”
“Always a first time,” Brad said.
Alex looked surprised and then a touch belligerent. Damn. If Alex’d been some little twerp, Brad would have just pounded some sense into him, but Alex was as big as Brad. He needed to try a different tactic.
“Actually her dad grounded her, ” Brad said. “He got mad because so many guys were calling her and coming over.”
“But that’s not her fault,” Alex said.
Brad shrugged in his most worldly-wise way. “Try telling that to her father.” He stopped and frowned. “No, don’t. lt’ll only make things worse for her. Best thing is just to lay low and let it blow over.”
“You think so?”
Brad nodded. “She’ll like you all the more for it, I guarantee.”
Alex didn’t look pleased, but put his car in reverse. “Will you tell her I stopped by the next time you see her?”
“Be glad to.”
Brad watched as Alex roared back down the lane spewing gravel in his wake, then started walking again himself. When the right guy came along, one that treated her right, Brad wouldn’t stand in his way. But until then, he was not going to let some wild reckless cretin break her heart.
Brad drained his glass and walked over toward the hallway where Penny had disappeared. Amid posters advertising the Oz festival, tarot card readings and the fire department’s all-youcan-eat spaghetti dinner was a small sign. Tonight, in Sam’s Place, there would be poetry readings by local poets. Including Dr. Alexander G. Waterstone III.
Damn. Well, the probate papers would have
to wait until tomorrow. Alex Waterstone might have lost his wild streak but he was still a cretin. And a man just didn’t let the cretins have the upper hand. Ever.
“Ah, gentle Penny. Would you be caring for some libations?”
Penny tried to smile at Alex as they stopped in the middle of the meeting room, but her stomach was dancing a tango inside her. “Libations” were the last thing she wanted, unless she wanted to distinguish her first ever poetry reading by upchucking in the middle of her “Ode to the Yellow Brick Road.”
This nervousness was crazy. Working on the Oz festival’s publicity committee had made her used to public speaking. Of course, public humiliation was another story.
“No, thanks,” she said and tried to wipe the rain off her new blue knit dress. Why had she ever agreed to this? Reading her own work was a millions times scarier than reciting festival facts that she’d known since she was a kid. “I’m just fine.”
“You look pallid. Beautiful as always, but pallid.”
Pallid? Would she ever be able to speak like that? “Protective coloration. Just so people can find me on this dark carpet when I pass out.”
He patted her hand. “There’s no cause for apprehension. You’ll do quite respectably and the feedback will be vital in fine-tuning your work.”
Easy for him to say, he wasn’t trying to earn an invitation to speak at that symposium in Washington D.C. next winter. “One Hundred Years Later: The Wizard of Oz in Retrospect.” But come to think of it, maybe upchucking on her poem would be the best idea yet. She’d been crazy to think that she—a sometime student of American Literature with a C plus average at nearby Midwest University—could be included in a group of renowned scholars. It was crazy to begin with. She should stick to running the tree service.
“I think I’ll confirm the refreshments with the staff,” Alex said and handed her a stack of program. “Why don’t you find a place for these?”
How about in the trash? But she just smiled at him. “Sure. I can do that.”
If I Only Had A...Husband (The Bridal Circle #1) Page 2