When a couple of hours passed and nobody had said anything to her about her recent marriage, Ginny started to relax. About eleven o’clock she put her Next Window sign up and went to the bathroom. She did her business and came down the hall, only to hear voices near the teller windows.
“She said very clearly that she got married,” Susan said. “Married. What was there to misinterpret?”
Ginny stopped in the hall, her back to the wall. She wasn’t one to eavesdrop when people were gossiping, but then again, the gossip had never been about her.
“Nothing, I guess,” she heard Ruby say. “But surely she didn’t really mean it.”
“Didn’t mean what?” Susan countered. “She said that she and Cole McCallum flew to Vegas to get married. How many different ways can you interpret that?”
“Does she have a ring?” Ruby asked.
“Not yet,” Rhonda said. “She said there wasn’t time. That’s understandable. It was a spur of the moment thing.”
Susan laughed. “A spur of the moment figment of her imagination, you mean.”
Ginny felt a jolt of humiliation. Figment of her imagination?
“I mean, if she was going to make something up, she should have at least made it believable,” Susan added. “Cole McCallum. Really.”
“I guess she’s just living in her own little dream world,” Ruby said.
“She’s deluded, I’d say,” Susan replied. “With that weirdo mother of hers as an influence all these years, it’s no wonder.”
“Now y’all stop!” Rhonda said. “Who’s to say she’s not telling the truth?”
“Oh, come on, Rhonda!” Susan said. “Virginia White married to Cole McCallum? Do you really believe that hell actually froze over?”
Ginny turned and went to the bathroom, slid inside a stall and locked it behind her, suddenly feeling hot and flushed, her throat really tight as if maybe she was going to cry.
They didn’t believe her. Not one word of it.
She’d expected them to question why Cole would marry her, but she’d never expected that they flat-out wouldn’t believe the wedding had actually taken place. In one painful swoop, she realized just how she must have looked to these people all these years and how crazy she must sound to them. They thought she was nothing more than a poor, reclusive little person who had given in to her delusional fantasies and had started to believe one of them.
With the exception of Rhonda, she’d never counted any of these women as friends, but at least she thought they’d always respected her. To suddenly see herself as other people saw her was just about more than she could stand.
Of course, she could prove that she and Cole really were married, but what would be the point? It was obviously so unbelievable to them that they would still look at her strangely, knowing all the while that there had to be a piece of the puzzle she wasn’t laying on the table. And what was she supposed to do then? Lie? Tell them that she and Cole were madly in love?
No. Of course not. She couldn’t tell them that. And Cole certainly wouldn’t be telling them that, either. In fact, knowing Cole, he probably wouldn’t say anything at all. He’d simply shrug it off and tell her that she shouldn’t give a damn what these people thought, and that would be that.
After a few minutes, it became pretty obvious to Ginny that she couldn’t stay in the bathroom for a whole six months. She walked to her teller window. When Ruby and Susan saw her coming, they quickly cleared out. Rhonda gave her a friendly but bittersweet smile that said she knew she was a little misguided but she loved her anyway, which made Ginny feel like crying all over again.
Her hands were shaking as she took the next customer’s deposit, and she clenched her teeth and willed them to stop. She raised her chin a little and smiled at the customer, forcing herself to think not of what her life was like now, but what her life was going to be like six months from now.
Six months. It sounded like an eternity.
COLE HADN’T liked working on the ranch ten years ago, and he didn’t like it any better now, particularly with Murphy breathing down his neck.
The moment he’d stepped into the barn, the smell of horses had instantly transported him back to his senior year of high school, when Murphy had insisted he pull his own weight around the ranch. Even though he’d hated every second of it, Cole had stoically done whatever Murphy told him to do, because anything less would have verified what the man already thought—that Cole was a worthless kid following in his father’s footsteps, a kid his grandmother ought to be writing off instead of taking in.
With that kind of history, Cole hadn’t been the least bit surprised to find that his first assignment today involved cleaning out horse stalls.
So Cole grabbed a shovel and went after it, silently cussing Murphy with every move he made. After a couple of hours of hard labor, he was granted a reprieve when Murphy handed him the keys to his truck and told him to go to the feed store in town for some supplies.
Cole welcomed the opportunity to get away from the ranch for an hour, especially since he knew what Murphy had waiting for him when he got back. The old man had decided that today was the day they’d ride fence, which meant hours on horseback. Cole dreaded it, but he certainly wasn’t going to act as if it were any big deal. No matter how hard Murphy pushed him, he had no intention of ever letting the man see him sweat.
Twenty minutes later, Cole drove into town and headed down Main Street. He stopped and picked up the supplies Murphy wanted. Since it was nearing lunchtime, he walked across the street from the feed store to Taffy’s to pick up a burger to go. He entered the restaurant, immediately assaulted by the small-town-diner smells of black coffee, ham and eggs and chicken-fried steak.
Mary Lou Culbertson sashayed over to wait on him at the counter. She wore a strangely satisfied expression that made Cole wonder what was going on.
“Hey, Cole. Funny you should show up right now. Have you heard the news?”
“News?”
The other waitresses giggled and moved in closer, ignoring their customers. Cole furtively shifted his eyes to each of them, wondering what was up. Then Mary Lou leaned her forearms on the counter, her eyebrows wiggling as if she currently possessed the juiciest piece of gossip this town had ever seen.
“Do you remember a girl named Virginia White who went to Coldwater High?” she said. “Kind of a dowdy little thing? Brown hair? Nondescript? Her mother was really weird?”
Cole eyed Mary Lou carefully. Where was she going with this? “Yeah. I remember her.”
“Well, you are simply not going to believe this. She’s running around this morning telling people—now get this—that you two are married.”
Cole stared at Mary Lou, forcing his face to remain impassive. Why was she talking to him as if he hadn’t heard about his own wedding?
Mary Lou laughed. “Isn’t that the craziest thing you ever heard? I mean, that mother of hers was loony, but I never thought Virginia was insane, too. Can you imagine her making something like that up?”
Making it up? Is that what everybody thought? That Ginny had made up the fact that they were married?
“Where’d you hear about this?” he asked carefully.
“Susan over at the bank told me when she came in here on break about an hour ago. Virginia works there, you know. She’s still just like she was in high school—kinda in her own little world. Anyway, it seems she’s telling everybody you two went to Vegas over the weekend and got married. She probably saw you back in town and her fantasies got away from her. Have you ever heard anything so pitiful in your whole entire life?”
Cole felt a smoldering anger building inside him that was on the verge of bursting into flames. Pitiful? Is that what they thought Ginny was?
“Hmm. Virginia White, you say?”
“Yeah.”
Cole stood up. “I’m afraid you’ve got her name wrong, Mary Lou.”
“Huh?”
“It’s Virginia…McCallum.”
Everybody,
including Mary Lou, stared at him blankly, as if his words just wouldn’t compute. Cole started for the door, any thoughts of ordering lunch flying right out of his mind.
“Cole!” Mary Lou shouted. “Wait! Are you telling me it’s true?”
He never looked back. He swung the door open and headed out of the restaurant, then stopped on the sidewalk and glanced down the street to the First State Bank of Coldwater, a presumptuous storefront with white pillars flanking its brass-plated front door.
He’d had enough. He’d had enough of the nasty, rotten people in this town making sport of anyone who happened to provide them an opportunity. He’d lived through it as a teenager, when he’d been the subject of enough gossip to fill ten daytime talk shows. Evidently nothing had changed.
It was time he did something about it.
He strode across the street to the bank and swept the door open. Scanning the area, he caught sight of Ginny behind a teller window. He’d made enough of an entrance that everyone in the bank turned around to stare, probably hoping that a little excitement might actually come their way.
He had no intention of disappointing them.
He made his way across the lobby. Ginny looked up as he approached her, her eyes widening with surprise.
With the long, definitive strides of a man with firm intent, he circled the counter, strode right up to her, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
IF LIGHTNING had struck Ginny, she couldn’t have been more shocked. And she wasn’t the only one. The moment Cole’s lips fell against hers, she heard a gasp or two, and she would have gasped herself if his lips hadn’t been pressed to hers in the most wonderful way, kissing her as only Cole could, reminding her of just what she’d given up when she’d instituted that darned no-touching rule. By the time he finally pulled away, she felt deliciously dizzy, but still she wasn’t completely sure what was happening.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” she whispered.
“What?” he said, in a voice that insured that everybody in the vicinity heard him loud and clear. “A man can’t drop by to say hello to his new wife?”
Ginny couldn’t believe it. He’d just told everyone within earshot that they were indeed married, and his kiss had told them it was a marriage in every sense of the word.
“I was just over at Taffy’s,” he said, staring at her adoringly. “It seems the whole town has heard our good news.”
There was a funny little inflection in his voice when he said the words good news, an inflection meant to be interpreted by her alone. That’s when she knew that he must have heard everything, including what these people thought about her, and he’d come here to put an end to the gossip.
The most unexpected feeling of warmth swept through her. It wasn’t just a sexual thing, even though he’d kissed her with all the intensity of a man who couldn’t bear to be separated from his new wife. It was something more. She felt a bond with him she’d never felt with another person, as if they shared a secret the rest of the world would never know.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Susan standing to one side with a look of pure astonishment on her face.
That’s right, Susan. You heard him say it. Me and Cole. Tonight. Just the two of us. And you know what newlyweds like us do when we’re alone together. Why don’t you sit back down at your desk and mull that one over for a while?
Just then, Ruby cleared her throat and assumed her best branch-manager voice. “You’re not supposed to be back there,” she told Cole. “Employees only.”
“Hmm,” Cole said to Ginny. “It appears that a man kissing his wife behind this counter is a breach of regulation.”
Ruby cleared her throat again. Loudly.
“Can’t wait for tonight,” Cole said.
“Yes,” Ginny said, assuming a dreamy, love-struck voice that wrapped effortlessly around her words. “Tonight.”
Cole backed away from her slowly, then circled the counter and headed for the door. Everyone stood frozen in place, looking utterly flabbergasted. With one last smile in Ginny’s direction, he swept out the door and closed it behind him, leaving the bank lobby in total silence.
In unison, every set of eyes turned toward Ginny. She smiled sweetly, then returned to her work as if what had just happened was no big deal at all. But beneath her calm, cool exterior, an undercurrent of excitement swept through her, a feeling of vindication that made her heart soar.
Rhonda edged next to her, a look of total disbelief on her face. “Lordy! I don’t believe I’ve ever seen so many stars in one man’s eyes in my entire life!”
Ginny felt like hugging herself and grinning uncontrollably, but she managed to hold on to her casual attitude. “Yes,” she said offhandedly. “Cole is very affectionate.”
“Affectionate? That’s putting it mildly. If he kisses you like that in public, I can only imagine what he does in—” Rhonda stopped herself with a flustered smile. “Sorry, sweetie, that is none of my business.” Her gaze shifted furtively to Susan’s desk, and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m just so glad he dropped by!”
Susan was shuffling through a pile of papers, trying really hard to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. And the more she shuffled, the more obvious it was that she was on the verge of shredding, instead.
For the remainder of the day, Ginny heard the buzz of gossip all over the bank—speculation, she knew, on just where along the way Cole McCallum had lost his mind. She didn’t care. She was the one who was going home to him tonight. She smiled to herself. Let them picture that.
Then guilt set in. She was being vindictive, on top of the fact that she was living a lie. Liars, according to her mother, were essentially thunderbolt magnets, and Ginny had to resist the urge to wonder when the next one might go whizzing past her ear. Then she thought about that big smile Cole had given her when he walked into the bank, and how it had made everybody’s jaw drop to the floor, and she felt wonderful all over again.
She didn’t understand anything about Cole. Nothing. One day he was negotiating a business deal with her. The next day he was angry because she wouldn’t have sex with him, even though their marriage was supposed to be strictly business. Then the next day he seemed to have forgotten all about that and was acting like her loving husband to save her from malicious gossip. She just didn’t understand him. Maybe it was because she didn’t understand men, period.
Or maybe it was because there was a lot more to Cole McCallum than met the eye.
8
COLE HAD forgotten just how excruciating it could be to ride a horse when he hadn’t been on one in years. By two o’clock his muscles were aching, and by four o’clock they were screaming in agony. He must have gotten up and down off that horse at least a hundred times during the day, using muscles he hadn’t used in years, bending over, pulling wire tight, hammering in tacks to repair broken fence. He and Murphy surveyed nearly the entire perimeter of the ranch, and it was almost six o’clock before the two of them and Cliff Danbury, one of the ranch hands, finally arrived back at the barn. Cole couldn’t remember the last time he’d been as exhausted or hurt as bad as he did right now.
He dismounted and led the sorrel gelding into the barn. As he took the horse’s saddle off, he turned to see Cliff hauling his own saddle to the tack room. Cliff had worked on the ranch less than a month. He was a congenial kid in his early twenties, and Cole gathered that he was the type to stay around one place just long enough to save up a little cash before he was on the road again.
“Long day, huh?” Cliff stretched his arms over his head stiffly, then lowered them with a weary sigh. “Me and a couple of the other boys are heading over to the Lone Wolf for a couple of beers tonight. Wanna come along?”
The Lone Wolf. Cole never wanted to see the inside of that place again. In fact, all he could think about right now was getting a hot shower and falling into bed.
“No, thanks,” Cole said. “I think I’ll head to the house.”
Cliff shoo
k his head sadly. “That’s what marriage’ll do to you. One day you’re living it up, and the next day you’ve got a ring through your nose and some woman leading you around. It’s downright pitiful.”
Cole had to agree, but he didn’t figure this was the time to express those feelings when he was supposed to be a happily married man.
“I don’t know, Cliff. You’re going to spend half your paycheck tonight, buying drinks for women, trying to get one of them to go home with you, when I’ve already got one at home waiting for me.” He smiled. “Which one of us is the pitiful one?”
Cliff shook his head. “You can talk it up all you want to, but I’m not buying. Who needs all that responsibility? Not to mention having sex with the same woman every night for the rest of my life.” He shuddered. “No offense to your lovely wife, but I just couldn’t do it.”
Cole had to second that motion. The very thought of limiting himself to just one woman for the rest of his life was inconceivable to him, too. Of course, no women for the next six months didn’t sound so hot, either.
After taking care of his horse, Cole walked the gravel road toward the foreman’s house, dreaming of a hot shower and a soft bed. He saw Ginny’s car out front. The moment he stepped onto the porch, he smelled something cooking.
When he opened the door, he saw Ginny at the stove, wearing a red flowered apron that hung almost to her knees. She’d pulled her hair away from her face, but a couple of strands had come loose to tumble down her cheeks. She turned when she heard the door open and smiled at him briefly. She turned away just as quickly, though, and her reluctance to meet his eyes told him she probably wasn’t going to mention what had happened at the bank today. That was good. At least she wouldn’t be coming down on him for breaking her no-touching rule. After all, he’d had to call a halt to the gossip, and hadn’t that been the most effective way to do it?
“You’re making dinner,” he said. “I sure hope that’s for both of us.”
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