“What?”
He paused a moment too long. “I, uh, miss you.”
“I’ll probably stay a few more days.”
“Enjoy your time with your mom. Give her my love.”
A little thrill of alarm went through her chest at his simple words. “I will.”
“’Night.”
“Good night, Nick.” She stared at her phone, felt the chugging of her heart at Nick’s mention of the word love, even spoken so casually and in reference to her mother. Ryanne had the feeling he’d wanted to say something more to her. That terrified her.
Turning off the light, she snuggled under the sheet and lightweight blanket. Don’t worry at night. That was a good theory, if you could put it into practice. In the depths of the night, her mind sometimes drove her crazy with troubling thoughts and memories. What problems did Nick have to keep him awake? His life seemed so orderly, so simple, and he always seemed satisfied with it. Didn’t he? Sure, maybe he regretted that his marriage hadn’t worked out, but Ryanne had never picked up on any feelings that he was still grieving over his ex-wife.
His voice in her ear was still a tangible memory. She closed her eyes and savored it. I miss you. Dangerous. Risky. Too much. Way too much.
Honest.
Nick was honest with her. With himself. He missed her. She couldn’t even let herself return the thought. She couldn’t afford to miss him. If she missed him now, she’d miss him more when she took a job and left. Nope, she wasn’t going there.
Ryanne turned her thoughts to the job offers she’d received earlier in the week. After two promising phone interviews, she had narrowed her choice down. Now she vowed to make a decision on one of them before she went back to Elmwood. It was time to stop playing games and get back to real life. She’d been closing off reality for too long. Nick Sinclair wasn’t part of her real life.
* * *
“YOUR MOTHER TOLD me you were beautiful, but I thought that was just a mother’s biased opinion,” Gil Redding said the next evening as they stood in the kitchen.
Ryanne blushed at the compliment. “Thank you.”
“I hope you like blackened salmon.” Gil tossed a colorful green salad and then served it up onto salad plates.
“I love salmon,” Ryanne said.
“Good.” He added mandarin oranges and slivered almonds and drizzled the salad with poppy seed dressing. “Want to set these on the table?”
“Everything is so pretty and smells wonderful.” She and her mother took their places.
“I practice on your mother for my show. It’s all perfectly nutritious, you know. We watch our diet carefully.”
“I’m a healthy guinea pig,” Evelyn said, giving him an adoring smile.
Gil placed the rest of the meal on the table and seated himself before he poured the ice water.
“Ryanne is going to look into selling the house in Iowa,” Evelyn told him.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Gil looked from mother to daughter. “It’s a nice vacation house, isn’t it?”
“You’ve never been to Iowa in August, or you wouldn’t say that.” Evelyn placed her napkin on her lap. “There are only a few weeks a year when you don’t have to run either the furnace or the air-conditioning.”
“It hasn’t been so bad this summer,” Ryanne said somewhat defensively, and wasn’t sure why. She’d perspired buckets in that upstairs bedroom.
“We might as well invest the money and let some nice family enjoy the house,” Evelyn replied.
Her mother was perfectly correct. Without a doubt that’s what they should do. “We might as well,” Ryanne agreed. She shouldn’t care. She hadn’t been back to that house more than a day or two every couple of years until this summer. She was leaving, anyway. The place would only sit there unoccupied.
“I talked your mom into satellite a few months ago,” Gil told her. “You ladies can watch a movie. Anything you’d like to see?”
“Only if you stay and watch it with us,” Ryanne replied.
“That would give me much pleasure, thank you,” he said, obviously touched by her acceptance.
After he’d gone that night, Ryanne and her mother sat in the kitchen.
“I like him a lot,” Ryanne told her.
“It must seem strange to you,” Evelyn said. “Me being with another man.”
“It does. But it seems right, too. I’m glad you’re happy here. Fulfilled, you know. You deserve it after your life with Dad.”
Her mother looked at her oddly. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I just mean you didn’t really get a chance to live the life you wanted. Now you’re free to do what you enjoy.”
“I lived my life exactly as I wanted,” her mother told her emphatically. “I liked being the wife of a college professor, and all the duties that went along with it.”
“The volunteer positions? You liked those?”
“Yes! Of course I did. I would have stayed and finished out my life there if things had been different.”
“If Dad hadn’t run off with another woman.”
“Yes. But it happened that way, and I’ve moved on to another phase in my life.”
“You weren’t devastated by his betrayal?”
“Of course it hurt. But not like it would have if things had been better between us. He is not an easy man to love.”
Her feelings in retrospect sounded oddly like Ryanne’s feelings about Mason, now that she’d had time to consider and collect herself. She was still mad, but she didn’t miss him—or want him back—except to pay his debt to her.
“I think I feel that way about Mason, too,” she said. “In fact, I don’t know if I ever really did love him. Did you love Dad?”
“Yes, honey, I loved him very much once.”
“Do you love Gil?”
Evelyn nodded. “Gil’s easy to love.”
These days with her mother had been the most enlightening Ryanne had ever spent. Her mother was not the unfulfilled woman she’d always believed. Why had Ryanne ever thought that? Her mother had been satisfied to make a home and perform the duties of a professor’s wife and raise her daughter.
Ryanne’s perceptions had obviously been skewed by her father’s high opinion of himself and his position—and his low opinion of other people. In always wanting to better herself and rise above her life situation, had she taken on some of his haughtiness?
By the end of the week, her mother had visited the doctor and accompanied Ryanne on a shopping trip. Gil offered his services as cook and driver, and Ryanne felt comfortable leaving Evelyn in his care.
“I’ve enjoyed this time more than you can know,” her mother told her as they waited for a cab to take Ryanne to the airport.
“I do know,” Ryanne assured her. “I’m sorry that we haven’t done this before. I was so wrapped up in my career that I let the really important things slide right past.”
“Your career is important, honey.”
“Not as important as the people I love.”
“You’re young. You have plenty of years to love and work your career in.”
Ryanne didn’t feel young anymore. She felt tired, and realized she had been for a while now. Her discontent had been sneaking up on her, and she’d been working harder and harder, trying to hide the fact. She had years left to feel like this.
The cab pulled up in front of the house.
Ryanne hugged her mom. “I love you.”
Once in the backseat, she waved and wiped a tear from her cheek. What an eye-opening week this had been.
During the flight, she made a decision to accept a job. A pharmaceutical company in Albany had offered her a position as head of their marketing department. The salary was what she needed to tackle the remaining debt and start over. An advance bonus would take care of the IRS for another six months and give her the means to set up an apartment. Perhaps the house would sell sometime soon, too.
Resolving to call them when she got back gave her only minimal re
lief. She’d made a choice, but it gave her no gratification.
Knowing how busy Nick was, she’d hated to ask him to meet her, but she needed a ride home. He was waiting for her in the terminal, and with his dark hair swept back from his forehead, wearing a short-sleeved knit shirt and a new-looking pair of jeans, he’d never looked better. She took a deep breath and mentally prepared herself for the loss that was to come.
Nick’s sunglasses were tucked into his shirt pocket and they pressed into her shoulder when he hugged her. “Good flight?”
With a nod, she pulled away and headed for the luggage carousel.
Nick carried her bag to his car, a Crown Victoria with tinted windows and glorious air-conditioning.
“I saw this car parked out back.” She buckled her seat belt.
“This is Dad’s. I knew you’d want to keep cool.”
“Arizona was refreshing compared to this.”
“Heat index was a hundred and five yesterday. I had your air-conditioners checked out. They’re running now. Only a little low on Freon.”
She turned toward him. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I knew you hadn’t gotten around to it.”
“But I didn’t ask you to take that on.”
“I did it as a favor. No big deal.”
“Give me the bill when we get there.”
“It wasn’t that much—”
“I want the bill, Nick.”
“Okay. All right. I was just being neighborly.”
“No, you were butting in where you didn’t belong.”
He said nothing, driving with his gaze straight ahead.
Ryanne watched the countryside roll past. Her reaction probably seemed out of line, but he had no idea that she was living on a shoestring budget for the time being. “How is Ann Marie doing?”
“She’s fine.”
“How’s—”
“Jamie’s fine. Dad’s fine.”
Ryanne sat speechless for a minute, then turned to look at him. He was angry. “I’m going to put the house up for sale,” she announced.
“Your mom’s house?”
“It’s half mine.”
A muscle in his jaw clenched. He relaxed his hands on the steering wheel and gave her a sidelong look. “I see.”
What did he see? That she was distancing herself from him right here and now? That she should never have let things between them go as far as they had? That now she had to pull herself together and go on with her life?
They barely spoke the rest of the way home. Nick pulled into his driveway and parked the Ford in the shade beside the house. He got her bags from the trunk.
She reached for them, but he moved past her, carrying them toward her mother’s house. Her lawn had been mowed recently.
“You mowed?”
“Actually, Forrest Perry did it this week. He heard about your mom’s accident and that you were going to see her. Jon Langley came by and worked on the rose trellises and pulled weeds.”
“What did they do that for?”
He set her bags on the shaded porch while he waited for her to climb the stairs. Then he gave her a penetrating look. “They wanted to do something to help. You see a sinister motive in that, too?”
“Of course not.” She moved forward.
“No one can be nice to you, because it destroys the myth than everyone is out to get you, is that it? Nobody’s just genuinely caring and helpful.”
“Stuff it, Nick.”
He stayed right behind her. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Her steps faltered, then she continued across the porch. “That’s an odd question. What sort of trouble would I be in?”
“I don’t know—you tell me. You’re just awfully secretive and...”
“And what?”
“And you’re always holding out.”
She stared at him, speechless.
“You always hold a little something back,” he said. “And it’s because of this. Because you’re leaving. You’re getting ready to go, aren’t you? Just like you’ve always planned. Running just like you’ve always run.”
She nodded. “You knew I’d be going.”
He turned to leave, but stopped halfway down the stairs. “So did you. So did you.”
She couldn’t bear to look into his eyes. She lowered her gaze.
He moved down the stairs and was gone.
Ryanne unlocked the door and carried her bags in. The entry and living room were surprisingly cool.
Her mail was stacked on the inlaid table beneath a gilt-framed mirror. She couldn’t imagine this table and mirror anywhere but here. They’d been here for as long as she could remember. The brass vase had been a flea market purchase one hot fall day, and now she remembered her mother buying it at her suggestion. Ryanne glanced up, saw her reflection and recognized the agonized expression on her face. She looked away.
Walking through the downstairs rooms, she mentally cataloged each piece, remembering when and where it had been purchased. But she couldn’t picture the house without a single one of them.
She would show the house first, get that out of the way, before she worried about what to do with the collection of furnishings and accessories.
The look that had been in Nick’s eyes haunted her. She couldn’t help disappointing him. Was she supposed to feel guilty for taking a few weeks of happiness for herself? He’d known what he was getting into. So had she, he’d made a point of telling her.
She worked up a measure of anger in order to dispel the yawning emptiness in the area of her heart. He had promised to be her friend. Promised.
Her control slipping, Ryanne walked to the kitchen and got a glass from the cupboard. As she stood in front of the freezer, Jamie’s Sunday school picture caught her attention. Daniel in the lion’s den. Jamie had told her to keep it so she’d remember not to be afraid. She touched the brightly colored artwork, smiled because she knew Jamie stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth when he concentrated, and that he probably had when he’d colored this.
Sometimes you just couldn’t help being afraid. A tear slipped down her cheek. Life was so full of risks that deferring to caution was the only way to avoid big mistakes.
She should have remembered that before she let Nick get too close. Now she didn’t know which frightened her more—the thought of leaving, or the fact that she wasn’t sure she wanted to anymore.
* * *
NICK HAD EXPLAINED to Jamie that Ryanne was tired from her trip and needed to rest, but still his son had driven him crazy with questions about when he could go over and see her.
Ann Marie had been offered a furnished apartment over the hardware store, and Nick felt comfortable with her staying there, what with Eddie having trouble getting bail. Even once he got out, she had a restraining order, and she’d be close to people and near enough to walk to her job at the Three B’s. With Nate Keenan, who owned the building, Nick helped Ann Marie move her things and get settled. Birdy, who worked at the hardware store, helped, too, promising Nick she’d keep an eye on Ann Marie and Dylan.
“How’s Ryanne?” she asked. “I haven’t talked to her since she came home.”
They were standing at the foot of the stairs. Nick opened the door, which led onto the street beside the store. It had grown late while they were moving boxes, and the streetlights were on. “She’s selling the house, so she’s keeping busy getting it spruced up.”
“Oh.” Birdy seemed surprised. “Where’s she going?”
“Back to California.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll give her a call.”
Nick’s phone rang. “Sinclair.”
“Harold Clement heard a shot and his yard light’s out,” Nick’s dispatcher, Sharon, said.
Nick grimaced and held the phone away to grumble.
“I heard that,” Sharon said.
“I’d rather chase turkeys than go over there and listen to his tirade again.”
“Want me to send Duane?”
“You’ve been a big help to her, Nick,” Birdy said sincerely.
“She’s helping herself now. That’s what matters,” he replied.
“Don’t take any credit.”
“I don’t.”
She waved him off. “Go fight crime, Sheriff.”
As soon as Nick arrived at the Clement place, he barked at the bystanders to go home and listened to the cranky pharmacist ranting on about the expense of replacing glass and bulbs.
“You’re supposed to be doing something about this!” Harold shouted. “You’re the law around here, and my yard is being vandalized. I can’t even claim it on my insurance because the deductible is two hundred dollars.”
“Maybe if you didn’t alert the whole neighborhood and have them trampling evidence into the ground before I got here, I’d have something to go on.”
“Get the crime lab out here.”
“This isn’t a homicide investigation, Harold.”
“Yet!”
“Oh, for—” Nick ignored him to fill out a report.
“A lot of good all that paperwork does.”
Nick completed the report.
Apparently finished complaining without an audience, Harold went into his house and slammed the door.
Nick tossed the clipboard into the cruiser, switched on his flashlight and directed the beam across the trampled grass. Jamie was at home with Mel, both fast asleep by now; Ryanne was finished with him and going back to her illustrious life; he hadn’t a prayer of sleeping, so he might as well make himself useful, even if it was too dark to see anything.
Ryanne had always been an elusive butterfly. She’d always been older, smarter, independent...always the unattainable fantasy. He should have matured enough to get over a teenage crush and realize she wasn’t for him.
But it wasn’t a crush. What he felt for her was bone deep. Passion, yes. But love, too. Love as he’d never felt for another woman. He wanted her still. And he would never have her. She was as unattainable as always.
His chest ached with dawning insight and acceptance. Even when they’d been close, she’d held herself back—the part of herself he truly craved: her heart. He was merely a convenience for her, a little side attraction while she was on vacation.
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