Before she could speak, Micahlyn did, her full bottom lip curling into a pout. “Mama’s on a diet. We haven’t had any ice cream or cookies or fried chicken or anything good all week.”
A blush turned Nolie’s fair skin pink all over, even extending down her throat and disappearing beneath the V neck of her dress. “Thank you, Micahlyn. I appreciate you announcing that to everyone.”
“You’re welcome, Mama.” Micahlyn smiled prettily, then sprawled in her chair, one knee drawn up, and ate her own hot dog without regard for her plate.
“They don’t learn the finer points of what to tell and what to keep quiet until they’re older,” Chase said, his tone mild. Then he let his gaze slide down what he could see of Nolie—pink throat, bare arms, full breasts, curvy hips. “You don’t need to go on a diet.”
“Oh, no,” she agreed. “I could just keep eating and eating until I pop.”
“Oh, yeah, like that’s gonna happen. You look fine.”
“Sure, I do. What size was Fiona?”
Chase’s jaw tightened. He’d bought her a new wardrobe twice every year they were married, along with various incidental purchases throughout the year. It was fair to say that the cost of clothing her for three years exceeded the cost of his three years in law school. But he’d usually just written the checks and admired her in the clothes. He’d rarely made any purchases himself.
“Well?”
“I didn’t buy her clothes . . . except . . .” He glanced at Nolie and found her waiting impatiently. After drawing a breath, he exhaled loudly and blurted it out. “Once I bought a sweater she’d picked out. It was a petite extra small.”
As he expected, Nolie’s eyes arched toward her bangs. “Extra small? I didn’t even know women’s clothes came in extra small. You’re sure she was a woman and not a little porcelain doll?”
“She was a little of both, I suppose.” With a good measure of duplicity tossed in to keep her from being too precious. He’d never suspected she was having an affair, never expected she would divorce him and marry her lover . . . but then, she’d never imagined he would wind up in prison. She’d signed on for better and for worse, but not for prison and living on a budget.
Nolie shook her head, her hair capturing the light shining down from above and gleaming richer, deeper, with it. “If I shriveled away to nothing but skin and bones, I’d still be bigger than an extra small.”
“But, Mama, you feel just like a mama’s s’posed to,” Micahlyn chimed in. “Tiffany’s mama back home, when she used to hug me at church, everything poked ’cause she’s so skinny. But you’re soft and cuddly, like a mama should be.”
Chase hid a smile. Soft and cuddly—just how every single twenty-something woman wanted to be described. But he could share Micahlyn’s sentiment. He’d slept a lot of nights with skinny, and soft and cuddly looked damn fine at the moment.
“Thank you, sweetie. But no more talk about diets and my weight tonight, okay?”
“Okay.” Micahlyn shoved the last bite of her hot dog into her mouth, then hung one arm over the back of the chair. “Can I be excused?”
“May I,” Nolie corrected.
Michalyn responded with a grin, “Yes, you may. Can I, too?”
“Yes. Take your dishes to the sink.”
As she obeyed, then raced upstairs, Chase polished off his third hot dog and a handful of chips, then leaned back comfortably in his own chair. “Did you ever talk to your mother-in-law?”
“No. When they finally turned the answering machine back on, I left a couple of messages, but she hasn’t called.”
“Look on the bright side—as long as she’s avoiding you, she won’t be calling to talk to Micahlyn, and you get to bask in your weenie-ness and not have to confront her.”
She started clearing the table and he got up to help her, though it seemed that every time he moved, he was bumping into her or she was sidestepping to avoid him. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it if she didn’t seem so jumpy about it. Still embarrassed over the discussion about her weight?
Or did it have something to do with the other night, when he’d sort of almost kissed her?
He hadn’t known at the time what made him do it, and hadn’t figured it out yet. Yes, he was attracted to her, and would like to do a hell of a lot more than just sort of kiss her. But she wasn’t the kind of woman a man used, then walked away from. She was sweet, innocent, insecure. She would be easy to hurt.
Hell, it would be damn easy for him to get hurt.
With everything else done, he leaned against the counter and watched as she finished loading the dishwasher. When she straightened, she washed and dried her hands, then brushed her hair back. “Would you like dessert now or later?”
“Later.” Corny as it sounded, he liked the idea of a “later.”
She squirted lotion onto her hands, then went into the living room as she rubbed it in. He followed, and continued to do so when she circled behind the sofa and went outside onto the porch. She didn’t sit in one of the rockers, but took a seat on the top step. He sat beside her, a foot or so separating them. Twelve inches too much, twelve miles too little.
“Isn’t the sky pretty?” she murmured.
He murmured in agreement, though it wasn’t the sky he was looking at.
“When I was a kid, most of the boys at school wanted to be farmers, like their dads, and most of the girls wanted to be nurses or teachers or mommies, like their mothers. But I wanted to an archaeologist or an astronomer. I loved studying the stars, and I went on so many digs in our backyard and in the fields that Daddy finally had to hide the shovels from me. I believe that was the year they found out my precious buried artifacts were actually the potatoes and carrots Mom had planted in her garden.”
“Did you ever seriously consider doing it? Going to college? Making a career of it?”
She shook her head. “Even if they’d lived, my folks couldn’t have afforded college. When you’re a small farmer, everything pretty much goes back into the land. Besides, I had Jeff. He was perfectly content to spend the rest of his life farming with his dad in Whiskey Creek, and I was perfectly content to be a farmer’s wife.”
“So you got to be content for a couple years.”
“Four years. We married right after we graduated from high school. We were eighteen. He died four years and two months later.”
“That’s more than a lot of people get.”
“More than you got with Fiona.”
He nodded, though she wasn’t looking. Instead, she was gazing at her left hand, where the thin gold band glinted in the dim light. After seeing it for the first time that day he’d caught her falling off the roof—the day he’d gotten turned on like a sex-starved teenager by nothing more than brief contact—he’d pretty much forgotten it, though he guessed she wore it every day. Was it sentimentality? Habit? Did she still love Jeff? Or was it a reminder that she wasn’t yet ready to take another man into her life or her bed?
He couldn’t speak to sentimentality himself. The day he’d found out about Fiona’s affair, he’d removed the gold-and-diamond band she’d given him and thrown it into the Charles River. She had asked for it back in the divorce settlement, and he’d politely told her to get it herself and where to find it.
“What was she like?”
“Fiona?”
“No, the girl you took to your senior prom. Of course, Fiona.”
He scowled at her, but he was just going through the motions, and she knew it. “She was . . . expensive.”
“People shouldn’t be expensive.”
No, he agreed. But some of them were. In one way or another, damn near everyone in his life had cost him more than he could afford.
What would be the price for this time with Nolie?
“Is that all you can say about her? She was expensive?”
He stood up, descended the steps, paced to her car, then leaned against the hood and faced her. She was backlit by the light coming through the windows and do
or. He was in shadow.
“She’s five feet four, slender, delicate. She has black hair, eyes almost as blue as yours, and skin almost as fair as yours. She’s beautiful, elegant, and graceful in any situation.”
That last wasn’t exactly true. Fiona was as much at ease in a four-star hotel or visiting some friend’s Cape Cod hideaway as she was in her own home. She could talk to governors, presidents, and royalty as easily as the current Hollywood heartthrob. But for all her poise and grace, she wouldn’t be able to carry on a conversation with a normal, everyday-average person. The only real people she ever had contact with were there to serve her in some capacity— housekeeping staff, waiters, shop clerks. She could give them orders, but she couldn’t chat with them.
She functioned beautifully in Boston, New York, or Paris, but set her down in Bethlehem, and she wouldn’t know what to do.
“She has this ability to make a person think he’s the most important thing in her life, when the truth of it is, she can’t even remember his name. She was—and I’m sure, still is—ambitious as hell. She’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear and make you believe it, as long as she gets what she wants in return. She’s charming, beautiful, intelligent, and one hell of an accomplished liar.”
He waited, hands resting on cool metal, for Nolie’s response. It came after a moment, her voice soft, her tone thoughtful. “And yet you loved her.”
He wished he could deny it, but Nolie was intelligent, too. She wouldn’t believe him. “Everyone’s entitled to at least one mistake.”
“And Fiona was yours.”
He shrugged. How his ex-wife would hate hearing herself referred to as a mistake. He would bet she didn’t view their marriage the same way. No, for her their marriage had been the first step on the way to a better marriage, a better life.
Nolie rose gracefully, dusted her bottom, then strolled down the steps. “I guess I’ve been very fortunate, because I haven’t made my mistake yet.”
“Come over here and I’ll help you with it.”
The instant the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them—regretted that he’d said them out loud, that they’d made the air between them practically hum with tension, and regretted most of all that she wouldn’t take him up on the offer . . . would she?
A shiver flitted through Nolie as she gazed at him. The darkness hid his expression, but that didn’t stop her from searching anyway for some guidance.
Come over here and I’ll help you with it. Was that a joke, just one friend teasing another, or a serious offer? His voice hadn’t given a clue. He’d sounded . . . normal. Not teasing, not particularly serious. Even now, he offered no hint. He didn’t repeat his words, didn’t move toward her or away, didn’t laugh it off.
If she knew he was serious, she would force her feet to unroot from the earth below and carry her the short distance to him. Even without knowing how he was defining it.
Come over here . . . But who was she kidding? Men like Chase didn’t say things like that to women like her and mean them, just as men like him didn’t kiss women like her. His type of woman was everything she wasn’t—slender, delicate, beautiful, elegant. Her type was nice, average guys, the ones who couldn’t get any farther with beautiful women than she could with handsome, sexy men. And if by some faint ghost of a chance he was serious, he would have to come to her, because she was frozen in place.
And he didn’t look as if he had any intention of going anywhere.
Because one of them had to break the heavy silence between them and he showed no intention of doing that, either, she found her voice and schooled it into something resembling casual. “So that was life with Fiona. What about—”
“Coward.”
Lifting her chin, she gazed at him. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t even have the courage to walk ten feet.”
“To do what? Make a mistake?” She managed to smile in spite of the butterflies in her stomach. “Whether it’s cowardice or intelligence depends on your definition of mistake. Besides, I think you’re changing the subject back because you’re a coward—because you don’t want to talk about yourself any longer.”
“Maybe. But you’ll never know because you don’t have the courage to come over here and find out.”
Nolie’s insides were quivering like Jell-O—with anticipation, fear, insecurity, temptation. The desire to prove him wrong was great. Just not as great as her need to spare herself any unnecessary embarrassment, presuming he’d made the offer only because he’d been positive she wouldn’t take him up on it.
Instead, she folded her arms across her middle. “Why would it, whatever it is, be a mistake?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, personal relationships aren’t my forte.”
“And what does that mean? Anything you start is doomed to fail? If I come over there, you’ll break my heart?”
“Or you’ll break mine.”
Though deep inside she found herself wistful at the idea she could break anyone’s heart, she couldn’t contain the laugh that burst free. “That’s about as likely as me hitching a ride on the tail of the next comet that comes through here and traveling to the outer reaches of the universe.” Finally able to move, she took a few steps toward him. “I hate to break this to you, Chase, but telling me you’re not good with people is kind of like telling a hog farmer his pigs stink.”
“Do they?”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot—you turned yourself into a bona fide city boy. Yes, hogs stink. The only thing worse than being downwind of a hog farm is being downwind of a chicken farm . . . maybe.”
“I can imagine—” He broke off, and she could feel the tension that streaked through him even from five feet away. She looked around but saw nothing, listened and heard the faint rumble of a car’s engine. They couldn’t hear highway traffic from there, which meant the car must be coming up their road. Unannounced company late on a Friday evening? Not likely. Kids looking for an isolated place to park, or someone who’d taken a wrong turn.
The headlights appeared first, all but blinding her. The engine had that low-throated growl Jeff had equated with power and she’d always thought signified the need for a tune-up. The growl didn’t fade when the car rolled to a slow stop in front of her cabin.
She glanced at Chase, who’d edged a few feet farther to her left, deeper into the shadows of the nearby tree. At least he didn’t disappear completely, leaving her to face her visitor—or intruder—alone.
The car was a Camaro Z-28, a convertible, Jeff’s most favorite vehicle in the world after his Ford pickup truck and his International Harvester tractor. With its powerful engine and dark-tinted windows, there was a vaguely sinister air to the vehicle, at least until the front window glided down silently and the woman behind the wheel flashed a friendly smile.
Nolie had an instant to take stock before the woman spoke. She was beautiful, dark-haired and dark-skinned, and looked as if she could double on the runway for any supermodel out there. Her voice was her saving grace. She didn’t sound cultured, elegant, or sophisticated, but as normal as Nolie herself.
“Hi. I’m looking for a cabin rented to Lorraine Giar—”
“Raine?” Chase emerged from the shadows, bypassing Nolie without a glance and striding toward the car. “What are you—”
She was out of the car in a flash, throwing her arms around him. Nolie was more than a little jealous that he hugged her back.
Lorraine Giardello—Raine. So this was the woman Obie had rented Nolie’s other cabin to. Definitely beautiful, shorter than she’d looked seated, probably five foot four, no more than five foot five without those ridiculous heels. Her red dress clung like a second skin and ended so high on the thigh that it would have been considered indecent in some places, and her black hair was cut in a sleek, sexy, breathtakingly short style. A Fiona clone? Nolie wondered uncharitably.
The woman was definitely happy to see Chase.
And vice versa.
Feeling invisible, No
lie took a step back, followed by another and another until she tumbled over the first of the porch steps and sat down hard on her butt on the third step. The sound of her falling and the grunt it knocked from her were enough to make them finally step apart and glance her way. She hoped the night was dark enough that they couldn’t see the blush heating her face.
“Lorraine Giardello, this is Nolie Harper,” Chase said. “She owns my cabin.”
So it was Lorraine now, Nolie thought darkly. Was Raine a pet nickname only he was allowed to use? And that was the best description he could think of for her? She owns my cabin?
Lorraine didn’t even teeter in the high heels and the soft dirt as she approached. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nolie.” Her handshake was firm, her skin extraordinarily soft. “That’s an unusual name. Short for Magnolia?”
If her mother hadn’t raised her better, she would have sent a killing look in Chase’s direction . . . not that he would have noticed. His attention was all Lorraine’s. Instead she forced a smile and said, “Nice to meet you,” through gritted teeth and ignored the question about her name.
She was saved from spending another minute with them by the creak of an upstairs window. “Mama!” Micahlyn called out. “Me and Maria Diane are gonna take a bath, okay?”
Nolie scrambled to her feet. “I, uh, need to go,” she said with a smile that kept slipping. Hurrying inside, she closed the door behind her, then leaned against it, listening for voices, car doors, the sound of the car driving away. The door actually vibrated against her back when the engine revved . . . or maybe that was just her heart thudding too hard in her chest.
She peeked out the curtain over the front window and saw taillights in front of Chase’s cabin. They disappeared, and a moment later lights came on inside the cabin.
“Mama?” Micahlyn stood at the top of the stairs, naked except for pink-hearts underpants, holding the porcelain doll in her arms.
“I’m coming, babe,” she said, and started up the stairs. “Maria Diane does not need a bath—not now or ever, understand?”
“She does, too. See?”
Cabin Fever Page 17