Moving slowly lest she detonated an explosion in the pit of her stomach, she stepped away from the door. She was turning the dead bolt when she noticed she was still wearing Riley’s jacket. Emotion swelled inside her as she brought the sleeve to her nose. It was unsettling, for the man stepping boldly into her mind wasn’t Aaron—this man had dark wavy hair, deep-set eyes and a stance that had attitude written all over it.
The door to Madeline’s room was propped open, a cleaning cart blocking the entrance. Riley stood outside, looking in. The bed was freshly made, ready for the next guest. Madeline was nowhere in sight.
He was too late. She was gone.
Built of cinder block fifty odd years ago, the Gale Motel had a total of eight rooms on one floor. The roof was patched, the windows aluminum factory issue. The place completely lacked architectural appeal. But wild horses couldn’t have kept him away this morning.
“I’m too late,” he said as he untied the dog’s leash from the railing. “The desk clerk said Madeline checked out thirty minutes ago.”
The dog stared up at him as if to say, “What are you going to do about it?”
There wasn’t much Riley could do about it. He didn’t know her phone number, where she lived or where she worked. He supposed he could always ask his mother then dismissed the idea as quickly as it formed. He’d had a few beers with a pretty woman. Hours later he’d had one amazing dream about her. End of story. Certain aspects of the dream still lingered in his mind and in his bloodstream, making their brief association feel unfinished, but she was gone, and that was that.
He didn’t remember the last time he’d been this preoccupied with a woman he’d just met. She wasn’t even his type. Normally he liked his women chesty; surgically enhanced was fine with him. And they wanted what he wanted. Half the time they were the aggressors. Madeline liked him—a man could always tell—and yet she’d ducked into her room last night without so much as a backward glance.
The dog strained against the leash, dragging Riley from his musings. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s your hurry?” Normally the old stray poked his nose in a hundred different places. Today he wanted to run.
Riley gave him the lead. They hit Elm Street hard, then Third, and finally the last stretch along Shoreline Drive. They were starting up the driveway when Riley caught a glimpse of Madeline’s pale blond hair before she disappeared behind the arborvitae hedge in his backyard.
Well, well, well. She hadn’t left town after all.
The dog gave a short bark then tugged against the leash again. “You want to show off for the lady?”
For a mutt, he had good instincts.
“Just remember,” Riley said as he matched his pace to the dog’s steady run. “I saw her first.”
There was one rainstorm every April that spun the seasonal dial to spring. It lightened the sky, mellowed the breeze, gentled the air and left every living organism quivering with irrepressible enthusiasm.
Yesterday’s downpour hadn’t been that storm.
The pummeling rain had given everything in its path a good cleaning and the temperature was warmer today. Rooftops, streets, sidewalks, even the boardwalk leading to the lakeshore glistened in the morning sun. Under the surface, the earth was restless. Melancholy. Like Madeline.
She’d forgotten to close the blinds in her room last night and had awakened in the sun-drenched bed, shards of sunlight boring holes through her eye sockets. A quick shower and two aspirin had tamed her headache, thank goodness for small favors. She’d wasted no time packing. She’d checked out of her room, picked up her car and said goodbye to Ruby.
It was time to go home.
She’d accomplished what she’d come to Gale to do, and more. Yesterday she’d seen Riley, she’d spoken with him, she’d even spent a little time with him. No matter what he thought his mother thought he needed, he was obviously physically fit, healthy and strong.
She had only one thing left to do.
With the jacket she’d somehow ended up wearing home last night now folded over her left arm, she pressed Riley’s doorbell again.
When she’d picked up her car at Red’s Garage, she’d asked Ruby’s father if he knew where Riley Merrick lived. Five minutes later she’d driven away with his address, driving directions and a description of Riley’s house. Red O’Toole hadn’t been exaggerating. Riley’s house was a sprawling single story that blended into the surrounding hills. It had a low-pitched roof, deep eaves and wide porches. It wasn’t so large that he wouldn’t have had ample time to answer the door by now if he was inside.
What now?
She supposed she could have left his jacket on the railing, but she preferred to return it in person. Wondering if he might be down by the lake, she followed an old flagstone path around the house.
The property was amazing, the lawn a gradual slope that leveled off just before it reached the water. Shading her eyes with one hand, she watched a catamaran drift slowly by, its bright orange sail rippling halfheartedly on the melancholy breeze. Several fishing boats trolled back and forth on the horizon, and sea gulls bickered in the foamy shallows.
Riley wasn’t back here, either.
Disappointed, she turned and slowly retraced her footsteps. She reached the flagstone path only to stop abruptly.
Riley and a large brown dog were running toward her. Wearing a black T-shirt and loose athletic pants, he stopped twenty feet away and unhooked the dog’s leash. While the dog raced to the water’s edge to scatter the squawking seagulls, Riley let his hands settle on his hips in a stance she was coming to recognize.
“I rang your doorbell,” she said quickly. “And I tried knocking. I wanted to return your jacket before I go.”
Breathing heavily but not excessively, he wiped his face with the front of his shirt, giving her a glimpse of a washboard stomach before he said, “The desk clerk said you’d already gone.”
“You went to my room?” she asked. “Why?”
“It’s a cardinal rule. A guy gets a girl drunk, he buys her breakfast.”
She felt a smile coming on and wondered how he did that. “You didn’t get me drunk.”
“Then I’ll fix you breakfast instead.”
“Do you cook?” she asked.
“That depends. Are you accepting?”
She handed him his jacket and saw no reason not to follow in the direction he was indicating, up the porch steps and through his back door. The dog came in, too, and immediately started drinking from a bowl on the floor.
Madeline looked around the kitchen. With the exception of the stainless steel coffeemaker, the appliances looked as if they’d been new in the sixties. The house seemed even larger from the inside, and had beamed ceilings and hardwood floors and wide arch-ways.
“It’s called prairie style,” Riley said from a few steps behind her. “It’s an original Frank Lloyd Wright house. His open-concept design was way ahead of its time.”
She walked as far as the first archway and what appeared to be the living room. She saw richly stained wood, well-crafted built-ins, mullioned windows and a good deal of furniture covered with sheets. “When did you move in?”
“A year and a half ago.”
She turned around slowly. The fact that he chose that moment to take a frying pan from a low cabinet and a carton of eggs from the refrigerator might have been a coincidence. But she doubted it.
On the verge of understanding something meaningful about him, she said, “Before or after your heart transplant?”
“Moving into this house was the first constructive thing I did after I left the hospital. I use the kitchen, one bedroom and bathroom. I haven’t gotten around to doing much with the rest.”
She stored the information, because surely there was something prosaic about the time frame. Watching him crack eggs into a bowl, she said, “Where did you learn to cook?”
“I scramble eggs and sear meat on a charcoal grill. Neither constitutes cooking.”
She smiled again,
wondered again how he did that.
“Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll get the orange juice.”
The moment she was seated, the dog padded over to be properly petted. His coat was brown but there was gray in his muzzle. Someone had done a poor job of lopping his tail. He wagged it anyway. She found she liked that about him. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“He isn’t my dog.”
Rubbing the creature’s big knobby head, she said, “Whose dog is he?”
Riley leaned against the countertop behind him. Drying his hands on several paper towels, he watched her pet the dog. The old boy was in seventh heaven. “I have no idea. He scratched on my door three weeks ago, desperate and shivering. His fur was falling out and his ribs were practically poking through his skin.”
“You fed him.”
Three little words had no business making him feel like some damn hero. Madeline had that effect on him. She was like an elixir for an ailment he couldn’t name, and brought out every sexual impulse he had.
She’d fastened her hair high on her head with a silver clip, the ends sticking out in every direction. Wearing a plain white T-shirt and weekend jeans, she couldn’t have looked more wholesome if she’d tried. He’d been craving wholesome all morning.
He’d never considered himself the caveman type, but he found himself wondering if the human race might have become a little too civilized. Survival would have been difficult for Neanderthal man, but at least his approach to sex would have been straightforward, requiring only a club and a loincloth.
Seducing modern woman called for a little more finesse.
Riley was warming to the idea of a good challenge. He turned around long enough to drop some butter and the eggs into the frying pan and pour their orange juice, then crossed the room, a glass in each hand.
Madeline smiled a quick thank-you and took a sip of her juice before looking down again where his coffee mug still sat half-full and stone-cold. Tracing one of the scorch marks marring the old hickory surface, she said, “You must wait out a lot of nights here.”
She was extremely astute. The truth was, he spent more nights than he cared to think about sitting at this table, quietly draining a pot of steaming coffee one cup at a time as he waited for the stubborn sun to inch into view.
“Nightmares?” she asked.
There was no sense denying it, even though the blasted nightmare hadn’t been to blame last night. He’d awakened before 4:00 a.m., the sheet tangled around his waist, his pillow no substitute for the wholesome blonde who’d seemed so wonderfully real until he’d opened his eyes.
He set his juice on the table. Resting lightly on both hands, he leaned closer. Her pupils were dilated in the shadowy room, so that only a narrow ring of blue surrounded them. If she was wearing makeup, it was subtle. Her cheeks looked dewy, her lips pink and so kissable. Before the morning was over, he was going to sample them.
Either she didn’t feel the current stretching taut between them, or she refused to acknowledge it. She told him about her parents’ deaths when she was twelve, about her older brothers and the family business in a town called Orchard Hill. She didn’t broach the subject of her late fiancé, Aaron somebody-or-other.
So Riley did.
“How did he die?” he asked, still leaning on his hands, still thinking about kissing her.
“A motorcycle accident. I’d just started my shift at the hospital when I got the call. A witness said a frazzled young mother late for work crossed the center line. She and her little girl died in the accident. Aaron died twelve hours later.”
“Sonofabitch,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “How do you do that?” she asked. “How do you make me feel as if you understand me? You don’t even know me.”
“I know everything I need to know about you.”
He had her full attention.
“Do you now,” she said.
When her gaze dropped to his mouth, he knew she felt the current, too. “I know you carry a stethoscope in your shoulder bag. I know you were engaged in the fifth grade. You get drunk on three margaritas. And you make a habit of trespassing.”
With a small smile, she said, “I was tipsy, not drunk. And I knew I was going to marry Aaron in the fifth grade, but we didn’t actually become engaged until years later.”
“How long has he been gone?”
She swallowed. “It was a year ago last October.”
“Are you seeing anyone now?”
“Of course not.”
He didn’t bat an eye. The guy had been her first love, probably her only love. Riley wasn’t looking to replace a dead man and she wasn’t ready to fall in love again. She needed what the talk-show shrinks called a transitional relationship. Since Riley only wanted her in his bed, the sooner the better, this had all the makings of a perfect arrangement.
“Riley?”
“Hmm?” It wasn’t easy to drag his gaze away from her mouth.
“Do you smell something?” she asked.
He sniffed.
Just then the smoke alarm shrieked. He raced to the stove as the first flames shot out of the frying pan. He smothered the fire with the lid but there was nothing he could do about the black smoke that escaped in belching clouds. He opened the window and the door then fanned the smoke alarm with a used pizza box.
Creeping closer with the trepidation of a month-old kitten, Madeline peered with him at the charred remains of their omelets. “Does it look done to you?” he asked.
She burst out laughing. Riley couldn’t help himself. He threw back his head and joined in.
He roared, she chortled. It had been a long time since either of them had laughed like this, and they wound up holding on to their stomachs, eyes watering, chests heaving, laughing so hard they hurt.
The smoke alarm stopped wailing before their guffaws quieted. In the ensuing silence, he said, “How does cold cereal sound to you?”
It started them both laughing all over again.
“Thank you,” she said, wiping tears.
“For what?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet.” She returned to the table and took another sip of her orange juice. Tracing another scorch mark on the table top with one finger, she said, “This nightmare of yours. Did it start after your heart transplant, too?”
He didn’t want to talk about his surgery.
Obviously interpreting his silence accurately, she said, “You might as well just tell me because now I won’t be able to stop needling until I know.”
Releasing a pent-up breath of frustration, he said, “In the dream, I’m staggering blindly inside a derelict building that seems to go on and on. I have one hand over the gaping hole in my empty chest. With the other hand I’m groping the wall, searching room after room.”
Madeline felt her mouth go dry and the blood drain out of her face. “What are you looking for?” she whispered.
A full five seconds passed before he said, “My old heart.”
She was in dangerous territory and had been since the conversation began. She knew she wasn’t going to like his answer, but, choosing her words carefully, she asked anyway. “Why, Riley? You have a brand-new heart.”
He stood a dozen feet away, feet planted, eyes narrowed. She could see a vein pulsing in his neck. And even though he lowered his voice, she heard him say, “Because I liked the old one better.”
She didn’t pretend to understand the reason bad things happened. Half the time the phases of the moon and the unwritten laws of the universe left her blank and shaken. And yet she knew to her very soul that every choice, every situation, every life had a purpose.
Since Aaron’s death, she’d been wondering what her purpose was. Maybe there was a good reason Riley’s mother thought he needed a nurse. Maybe he needed to take ownership of his dog, of his house and of his new heart.
Maybe Madeline could help with that.
The thought took hold as she looked at the dog waiting for a name, at the furniture waiting to be
unveiled and at Riley waiting for her to say something. Although she had no idea how she was going to accomplish any of this, one thing was certain. Her melancholy mood had completed lifted.
Chapter Four
The more Madeline saw of Riley’s house, the more she thought it suited him. Both were classic in design and revealed only a little at a time.
Dust particles floated weightlessly through the air in his living room, catching like faerie dust on the sunbeams slanting through the windows across the room. Madeline didn’t need magic to imagine what the room would look like when the sheets were removed and the furniture unveiled.
She and Riley had eaten breakfast standing at the counter in his kitchen, ankles crossed, a bowl of cereal with milk and strawberries in one hand, spoon in the other. Dining this way had become a common practice for her these past eighteen months. Tables were for families. And couples.
They’d talked about the weather and the Detroit Red Wings and a movie star who was in the news again, but she hadn’t broached the subject of spending the remainder of her vacation in Gale. And she wanted to stay. The realization set off a mild thrum she thought might be gladness.
Already she was formulating a plan.
Riley may not have named his dog, but he treated him well, with a kind word, plenty of food and a soft green pillow next to the stove. In return, the dog adored him. He followed him everywhere and listened with rapt attention as if he understood every word Riley said. Encouraging him to choose a name would be fun. It wouldn’t be difficult to remove the remaining dust sheets and rearrange his furniture, either. Riley’s recurring dream was Madeline’s biggest concern. She wasn’t a trained counselor, but she was a good listener. Perhaps talking about it at greater length would help.
When they’d first met at the construction site yesterday he’d assumed she’d been hired by his mother. Madeline couldn’t blame him for jumping to conclusions. After all, she had wandered onto private property, and apparently Riley’s mother often meddled. Aaron’s mom had been the same way. Since her son’s death, the lines beside Connie Andrews’s mouth had deepened and her eyes had dulled.
The Wedding Gift Page 4