by Teresa Hill
Rye would just love hearing that.
Emma, Grace, and Janeen could fight over him.
"Oh, that is a wicked look," her roommate Melanie said. "You're not going to hurt someone, are you?"
"I hope not."
"So..." Melanie moved in closer as they stood beside the picnic table laden with food and nodded in Rye's direction. "That's him?"
"Yes."
"God, he's gorgeous. Did I really tell you to give up on him?"
"Yes, you did."
"Well, I take it all back. I never knew men could look like that in their thirties. That nice, tight little butt and those dimples. You think he might take his shirt off later, if they play ball?"
Emma had seen him without his shirt on. She knew just how impressive a sight it was. "I don't think we could take it if he did. Not with it being so hot already. We'd get dizzy and fall down."
Melanie pointed to Janeen. "And who is he with?"
"A different woman every few weeks, from what I hear."
"Oh, Em, I'm sorry."
"It's not getting any better," she confessed. "I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to forget about him."
"I know."
"Do me a favor, Mel. Don't let me make a fool of myself with him today. I did on his birthday, and I really don't want to do that again."
* * *
Sam asked Rye to meet him at an old house on Front Street a few weeks before Christmas, his second here. He liked this place. Amazingly, he felt at home here.
Sam was probably going to throw some more work his way. He hadn't figured out a way to tell his brother he really didn't need any help staying busy, and it sounded ungrateful, too, which he really didn't want to do.
Their relationship was... Hell, he didn't know what it was.
He loved Grace, shooting hoops and playing football with Zach, who worked with Rye sometimes on the weekends and after school. He adored Rachel, and he got along okay with Sam. They didn't really growl at each other anymore. There was still that thing with Emma, which he mostly tried not to think about.
He parked in front of a sadly neglected Victorian, porch sagging, a couple of the front windows broken, weeds all over the yard. Sam was standing on the sidewalk staring up at it.
Rye got out of his truck and walked to Sam's side. "Man, you've got your work cut out for you here."
"Somebody does," Sam said. "What do you think?"
Rye shrugged. "I guess if they've got the money and know what they're getting into... Who are you to try to talk 'em out of it?"
"I'm not. I was wondering if you were interested in it."
"Working here? Sam, I—"
"No, buying it. I know it's a mess, but for somebody who had the time and knew what to do with it... I could help you. Zach's always available, and he works cheap. What do you think?"
He thought with enough time and effort, it could be a great house. That's what he thought. What he asked was, "Why?"
"You don't really want to live over Rick's garage forever, do you?"
"I hadn't really thought about it." He wasn't there much, and he couldn't say he'd cared that much about where he lived. After years spent in a cell, a man developed very simple needs.
"It's time to start living, don't you think?" Sam said.
Maybe it was. Maybe he had been living for the last nine years like he might well get thrown back in jail at anytime. He'd caught himself lately, when he was working on a house, glancing at this and that, thinking about what he would have done with the hallway or the banister or the mantel, if it were his place.
"This little old lady named Marge lived here for about seventy years," Sam said. "She went into a nursing home fifteen years ago and refused to let anybody do anything with her house. Even though she knew she'd never be able to live here again, she just wanted to know it was still here. Made the kids absolutely crazy, and they refused to spend a dime on upkeep. She died last week, and they can't wait to put it on the market."
"Like this?" Rye asked.
"Maybe. One of them asked me to work up an estimate on repairs, which they didn't like at all. I told them they'd get a lot more out of it by getting some basic work done, but they're not inclined to wait. Then I thought about you." Sam turned and looked at him, looking uneasy and maybe hopeful at the same time. "Your year's almost up. You weren't planning on leaving, were you?"
It was probably as close as Sam would come to out-and-out asking him to stay. Rye grinned. "Hadn't planned on going anywhere."
"Good. Grace would cry for a month if you did, and then she'd probably blame me."
"You're just jealous 'cause she likes me more than you," Rye said.
"You spoil her rotten," Sam protested.
"And you don't?"
Sam couldn't say anything to that. Everybody spoiled Grace rotten, and yet she didn't seem spoiled at all. Just happy.
Which made him think about Emma. Was Emma happy yet?
No way he could ask Sam.
"So, what do you think about the house? You could buy it cheap, do the work as you could get to it. I could help you with the down payment—"
"I don't need any help with the down payment." Rye hadn't done much of anything but work for the last nine years, and he hadn't had anything he really wanted to spend his money on. He could have this, if he wanted it.
It meant staying here, making a life here. How did he feel about that?
"I guess we might as well take a look since we're here," he said. "If the ceiling won't cave in on us or anything like that."
They walked through the house. It really was a mess, would need practically everything. A new roof, new electrical system, new plumbing, new heating system. The works. But what he didn't know how to do, Sam did.
A house, he thought.
It had four bedrooms, a fireplace in nearly every room, and a big yard.
What was he supposed to do with a house?
* * *
"Heard you bought a house," Emma said to him, as they helped pull down the Christmas decorations that year.
He was up on a ladder, pulling strands of lights off the second story, handing them down to her. "More like buying a headache," he said. "But yeah, I bought the place."
"So, you're not going anywhere?"
Rye came to the end of what he hoped was the last strand and climbed down. It was bitterly cold, the wind howling, and she was shivering. "No," he said, when they were face-to-face. "I'm not going anywhere."
"I guess Meg Reynolds is happy."
Meg Reynolds was the woman he'd been dating for about six weeks. "I didn't buy this house for Meg Reynolds."
"Does she know that?" Emma asked, rolling up a strand of lights.
That stopped him. Truthfully, he'd never thought about Meg when he decided to buy the house. She was a perfectly nice woman, late twenties, divorced with a couple of kids. He tried not to see them, because he didn't want them to get ideas. He'd never said anything to Meg to indicate that he was interested in any more than a little bit of fun on a Saturday night. Rye was careful to never promise a woman more than he was willing to give. Not that they always listened. That baffled him. You tell them one thing, they start thinking another. He thought sometimes he must be speaking a foreign language, when he could have sworn it was plain old English.
"I heard she's picking out wallpaper and studying paint chips," Emma said.
"Not for me and her, she's not."
Emma shrugged. "You might want to make sure she understands that."
Dammit. He would.
"Rye?" she said, putting her hand on his arm to stop him when he would have walked away. "I just wanted to say... I'm glad you're staying."
"Me, too," he said. "Come on. Let's get inside."
Get back into the middle of the crowd. Keep his hands off her. Just try to think about anything but her.
* * *
Emma walked inside and headed upstairs. She stripped off her coat and her gloves, planning to hide in her room if it came down to that.
But she ran into Rachel in the hall.
"What's wrong?" Rachel asked.
Emma heard someone else coming upstairs. Rachel's sister Ann and her husband and children—including one adorable, perfectly healthy baby Ann had managed to carry nearly to full term—were here for another two days. The house was full of people. She headed into her room and Rachel followed her.
"He didn't buy the house for Meg Reynolds, after all." Emma sat down on the bed, trembling and so relieved. "When he bought that big old house, I thought that was it. He must have found someone he wanted to share it with. What does he need with a house that has four bedrooms?"
The only thing she could think of was that he intended to fill them up with Meg's boys and then children the two of them would have together.
"He didn't go looking for that house," Rachel said. "Sam found it for him. I think he wanted something to tie Rye to this area, and the house did it."
Emma had been afraid to ask if he was leaving, now that he could. Then she heard about the house. "I'm doing a lousy job of forgetting about him," she admitted. "And it's not that I haven't tried."
"I know you have."
"I thought he really cared about me. I know it made him uncomfortable, even before he knew about the age difference. But I thought he just never let anyone get that close, and he was worried about what Sam would think."
"Are you sure he doesn't care about you?"
"I want to believe he does. I told myself we'd get past the age thing. That Sam would get to know Rye, and then he wouldn't object. And I thought Rye wouldn't be able to stay away from me. Isn't that the stupidest thing? He's been out with most of the women in town between twenty-five and thirty-five."
"But I haven't seen a one last more than two months," Rachel said.
"So, he has a short attention span. Or he just likes variety."
"Maybe. Or maybe he really doesn't care about any of them."
* * *
It was a long year. Emma just worked and worked. She came home for Memorial Day, at which time Rye barely even looked at her. She was mad enough by Labor Day that when she came home for her grandfather's annual cookout, she wore the tiniest excuse for a bikini she could find.
The family gathered at a small, sandy beach on the river for a cookout, swimming, sunning themselves, and fireworks.
Emma had the bikini on underneath her T-shirt and cutoffs. Her cousin Becky gawked at her when she finally worked up her nerve to pull off the T-shirt. "Gee, wonder who you're trying to impress."
"I've given up on impressing him," Emma said. "But he's not going to ignore me today."
The tiny string bikini was a flaming red, shimmering, reflective material that would not be overlooked, and the top was made of the narrowest triangles of material. She didn't have anything to write home about in the way of breasts, but this sure made the most of them.
"Chickening out?" Becky asked.
"No way."
Rye was playing volleyball, him and all the guys and some woman he'd brought with him. Not Meg. He seemed as happy as could be.
He was shirtless—God help her—and sweating, his muscles and all that glorious sun-browned skin gleaming. He attacked the ball and the net the entire game, and she had to admit, he looked perfectly at ease here and happy in a way that she didn't think she'd seen him before.
Maybe he'd finally settled in, figured out that he was a part of them, that he always would be. He just wouldn't be hers.
Emma took her beach towel and spread it out in the sand near the volleyball court, sat down, slipped off her shorts, and stretched out facedown on her towel. She was working up her nerve to reach behind her back and untie her top when Sam came along.
He nudged her with his toe. "Did you lose something?"
"No," she insisted, turning her head to look up at him.
"Emma, I've got socks with more material than that swimsuit. Tell me you don't normally go out in public in that thing."
"Only when I'm working on my tan."
"Very funny," he said.
"Sam, I'll be twenty-one in five months."
"You think I won't tell you what you can and can't do when you're twenty-one?"
"You don't do that now," she reminded him. He trusted her, little Miss Responsible. He'd never really played outraged father, except with her and Rye.
Emma wondered if he knew this was about that—her and Rye. She wondered suddenly if everyone knew, wondered if they just looked at her and everything she did or said when he was around, and knew.
She groaned and buried her head in her beach towel.
"You've made your point," she told Sam.
A glance out of the corner of her eye told her he'd accepted that and moved on. She flipped over onto her back and then her side, so she could look out at the family members and friends gathered here. Did they pity her? For everything she felt for a man who simply didn't feel the same way about her.
She was sick just thinking about it. This really had to stop. It had been more than a year and a half. How long was she going to hang on to any hope that he felt something for her?
Emma sat up, pulling on her shorts and grabbing the towel and her shirt. She shook the sand off her towel and draped it over one shoulder, had the shirt in her hand as she took off for the trees that lined the edge of the beach. She'd just made it into the trees when she heard someone coming after her. Turning around, she saw Rye glaring at her.
"What the hell are you doing, Emma?"
"Enjoying the picnic," she claimed, though from the way she'd snarled at him, there was no doubt that was a lie.
"In that?" He nodded toward her practically nonexistent top.
She stuck her nose in the air, not about to back down from him on anything today. "You have a problem with it? It's what all the little girls are wearing this year."
"Emma, don't." He was breathing hard, sweat making little paths down the muscles of his chest, and he looked like he wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her.
Well, he didn't have the right.
"Don't you dare think you have the right to tell me what to do. You're nothing to me, right? And I'm nothing to you. Isn't that what you wanted?"
She thought he was going to grab her for a minute, and maybe she thought he was going to deny it. That's what she really wanted—to goad him into a reaction. But he didn't do either of those things. He held his temper somehow and held back anything he might have said, turned, and walked away.
Story of her life. He was leaving once again, and she'd made herself look like a fool.
* * *
Christmas was quiet that year, New Year's the same. Rye was polite, a bit distant with her, like she was nothing more than someone he saw on major holidays and didn't give a second thought to otherwise.
She no longer looked for little hidden signs that he cared, no longer read things into every glance, every word. She was done. It was over.
She came home for her twenty-first birthday in February in a bittersweet mood. Twenty-one was one of those landmarks. No one could say she wasn't an adult. The summers she'd spent at school and the extra courses she'd taken throughout the years were going to pay off in May, when she graduated after three years instead of the usual four. She'd be on her own then, get an apartment, get a job.
Get a life. She'd promised herself. It was long past time.
She wandered into the kitchen as Rachel was putting candles on her cake. It was grape colored, the icing looking a little rough, the orange and green roses a bit lopsided.
"Grace?" she guessed.
Rachel nodded. "She takes food coloring very seriously."
Emma started to cry then. She couldn't help it.
Rachel put down the cake and pulled Emma into her arms. "Oh, honey. I'm so sorry. Did Becky say something to you?"
"About what?"
"About Rye and Laine Wilson."
"What about Rye and Laine Wilson?" Emma asked.
"Oh, honey. I thought... Well, what is it?"
>
"Never mind what it is. Tell me about Rye. What? He's engaged to Laine Wilson?" Emma had baby-sat her kids, too, dammit.
"Becky said she's been in every jewelry store in town, looking at rings. But nobody's seen Rye in one, and he hasn't said anything to me. I've been helping him with ideas for his kitchen, some special design touches."
"Special for her? For when they get married?" Emma asked. God, she hadn't forgotten him. She hadn't forgotten anything.
"She drops by all the time, and she sure is interested in how the house is going to be finished out. But he's doing what he wants there. He asks me as often as he asks her about what should be done."
"But she's picking out a ring?"
"Maybe," Rachel admitted. "I don't know."
Emma shook her head miserably, telling herself it was bound to happen sooner or later. Just because he didn't care about her, that didn't mean he wouldn't ever come to love someone someday.
"I feel like such a fool. I actually thought that maybe now... I'm not eighteen anymore. I'm twenty-one. I actually thought that might matter to him."
"I'm sorry," Rachel said, hugging her close.
"Me, too."
Chapter 16
He didn't even come to her twenty-first birthday party.
She could have screamed at him, just for that, stupid girl that she was.
Everybody else came, tons of family members and half a dozen or so friends from high school, who happened to be home for the long weekend.
She hadn't seen some of them in years, including Brian Evans. She'd had something of a crush on him in tenth grade, and he still looked really cute. Not much different than he had then, actually.
"We're going to a little party later," he said. "A friend of mine—Todd Myers—remember him?"
"Two years behind us in school, right?"
"Yeah, that's him. We've got an apartment over on Seventh Street. Why don't you come over there with me? This is way too tame a party for anybody who's turning twenty-one."
Emma suddenly thought it was. What was she going to do anyway? Go back to school and hide in her room, feeling sorry for herself and picturing Rye and Laine together?