by Livia Quinn
She’d asked him to pose for her last time he was on leave and he’d just laughed at her, his brows wrinkling, like, Are you kidding me? He didn’t see his appeal. He reminded her of someone else in that respect, more interested in his personal mission, to get kids off the street. He’d do it, too. “What are you doing home, Luc?”
Pamela and Lillie walked inside to bring out the drink trays and Luc said, “Mom and Dad picked up the old gym for me downtown. I’m hoping to refurbish it one of these days and turn it into a teen center.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She looked at her handsome cousin. “Does that mean you’ll be getting out of the service soon?”
“I don’t know, Buff. I’ve thought about it…” Luc rubbed his chin, glancing at Ridge, his eyes narrowing. “Ridge. You look familiar.”
Buffy said, “I met Ridge in D.C. at the conference where I was looking for cover models. He’s former military, and—”
“Oh, right,” Luc stuck out his hand. “Ridge Romano.” Ridge shook it and all the older men turned his way, the oldest looking at Ridge with that penetrating glare. “This is the man who is taking on the VA almost single handedly. I’ve heard about what you’re doing for veterans, Ridge. When I come home, you can count on me to help.”
There was a commotion at the other end of the couch as Buffy’s great grandfather shook his wife’s hand away and shakily rose to his feet, gripping the handle of his wheelchair for support. Standing, he eyed Ridge. The porch got quiet. He said, “Young man, I’ve read about you and the work you’re doin’. I never thought I’d have the honor of meetin’ you before I kicked the mortal bucket over.”
Very slowly, his body trembling from the effort to stand, he raised a shaking arm to his forehead in a sharp salute, holding himself at attention through pure grit. Exposed to Ridge’s view for the first time, was his old-fashioned prosthetic hand.
Silently, one by one, the other men in the room rose, went to attention and saluted Ridge. He blinked, and Buffy saw a fierce respect and shared pride as Ridge returned the salute. Then they all yelled, “Hoorah.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Buffy’s mother whispered, “Oh, my,” behind her. She looked at her grandmother who was blinking tears away and whose eyes held so much pride for the men she loved. She smiled at Gran Roberta who simply hugged her husband of sixty-seven years as he lowered himself into his wheelchair.
Buffy swallowed and attempted to compose herself. She felt like her heart would burst from the love she had for the people here. How could she have been so blessed?
Looking over at Ridge she saw he had relaxed and within a few minutes the men were all sharing their stories with him, from Earl, the World War II vet to her grandfather who’d served in Vietnam. Then her father and Luc answered his polite questions about their own service.
Luc asked, “How’s the vote looking?”
“It’s still too close to call but we’re not going to give up.” He ran his hand through his hair. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you know who I was?” He looked over at Buffy suspiciously. She just cocked her head wide-eyed. Not me.
“Oh, man, that picture in the Post went global. Some of the guys in my unit saw it and said it had to be a publicity stunt to bring attention to the Vote.” Ridge looked off. “You mean it wasn’t?” Luc shook his head. “Well, surely it gave you some increased visibility.”
Ridge said, “Good and bad, it seems.”
“Well, as long as the good wins,” Luc smiled.
Buffy’s grandfather asked Ridge to explain more about how the program would work and then Buffy knew it was safe to leave Ridge in their hands. He had a captive, supportive audience.
In the kitchen Buffy’s mother looked at the other three women and ground out, “It irritates me when you keep me out of the loop. He’s the one, isn’t he?” Her eyes lit with a strategic fire. “Isn’t he, Lana Jean Calloway?”
Buffy couldn’t help but smile. She hadn’t heard her full name in that tone of voice since she was eight. “No one’s keeping anything from you, Mom. I’m sure if you ask Ridge right now if he’s the one, he’d back out of here quicker than you could say gumbo. Please don’t blow it.”
“You knew about this, Mother,” Pamela said, calling Lillie by her affectionate nickname, to make her point of why she shouldn’t have been left out. It didn’t sound very affectionate.
“Mom, it’s just not quite time to go shopping for a wedding dress, ‘ya know?” She hugged her mother who relaxed, but Buffy could tell she wasn’t about to give up. She gave Lillie a what now? grimace and Lillie just patted them both on the back.
“Come on, girls. They could talk until next month about the wars and your Mr. Romano’s project but I think they could use a distraction. Buffy, grab the potatoes, and I’ll call your father to get the ham.”
Lunch proceeded without a hitch. Luc said his goodbyes and took off. Ridge made the rounds thanking everyone for their support and promised to come back one day. This concerned Buffy. It sounded too much like the distant future. Shaking Earl’s hand he said, “Sir, my company has a more advanced prosthesis. I can arrange it for you if you’re interested; it’s lighter and more flexible than the version you have.”
Earl narrowed his eyes and said, “Son, I’m ninety-three years old. This old arm has become like my real arm over the years, and we do just fine. Getting a new one at this stage of my life would be like a woman gettin’ fake boobs when she’s past her prime.”
“Old coot,” Ridge thought he heard Lillie say under her breath.
“Watch it, Dad,” said Robert who just put his arm around a steaming Lillie and hugged her. “Ignore him, sugar.”
“Now, Earl,” Roberta said, and her look seemed to be the only thing that made him quail.
Then Buffy’s great-grandfather shook Ridge’s hand and, looking around him at Buffy, said, “You chose a fine man, youngin’.”
Silence.
Ridge turned slowly to look at Buffy. She shrugged and shook her head. It wasn’t me.
Then she watched with an impending sense of doom as her mother put her hand on Ridge’s shoulder and said, “Might as well buy the ring, dear. When a Calloway tells you, you’re the one, it’s like that old saying, “If I tell you the moon is made of green cheese, get your crackers.” She nodded, yep.
“I—” Buffy’s head sank into her hands. Why had she thought this picnic could take place without a bomb going off? What was Ridge thinking? She could feel him emotionally backing away from her already.
She’d been trying to just let it play out, let him come to the same conclusion himself. But no, of all people Grandpa Earl had thrown the big one out there and there was no pulling it back.
Ridge made all the right noises to her family and they walked silently to her car.
She pulled the Porsche out onto the highway and said, “I didn’t put them up to that. I’m sorry, Ridge, they’re—”
“They’re fantastic people, Buffy. They love you. There’s no need to make excuses for them. I won’t forget them anytime soon, believe me.”
Her heart stopped in her chest. If he was already talking about not forgetting them he must be… she tried to get a breath. She turned into her driveway and shut the engine off. “Let’s go inside.” She got out and walked to the house.
He followed her up the stairs and into the kitchen. She didn’t think she could bear to sit in the living room with him, knowing where this conversation was going to end. But she wasn’t done with her pitch.
“Ridge.”
“Wait, Buffy. I should apologize.”
“For what?”
He turned toward her. “I shouldn’t have come.”
She’d seem him withdrawing, and halfway expected it, but didn’t know it would hurt so much. “You never did say why you came. I thought… you missed me as much as I missed you. I kinda got that impression last night.” This isn’t the time to retreat, she thought.
He winced. “That’s what I mean.
I should have called instead.”
“Okay…”
“I talked to those cover models, Tucker Bradshaw and Huey Moak, about your business. About what they do. Did you know Huey is studying to be a doctor? And, Tucker just took the bar. Anyway, they clued me in on their end of the business, the companies they’ve worked for, misconceptions people have about them. How much they love the work.”
“Why did you go to the trouble?” Buffy asked, wondering if she should be encouraged that he’d gone back and contacted the guys after they’d both gone home.
“I want you to have your dream. I want to invest in your company. I can give you the money you need to purchase that building and startup costs,” he leaned forward, his expression earnest, as if he thought she couldn’t possibly turn him down.
“And what about what’s between us? You didn’t mean it when you made love to me? What was that?”
He looked down. “What do you mean? Our sexual relationship?”
She stood so fast the chair fell over.
“No, I mean love.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ridge’s expression showed shock before he closed it off.
“Yes, Ridge, love. Grandpa Earl may have jumped the gun, but it was all true. The Calloways have always known when they met the person they’d ‘spend the rest of their lives with’. I knew it was you before I discovered that I loved you. You’re everything I want in a man and the connection between us is so strong I can’t believe you’d try to deny it.”
“What is that, some kind of old wives tale? You just know? Buffy, it’s merely a combination of my lusting after you for years and maybe the unusual circumstances of our first meeting, the physical attraction. But that’s just lust.” Buffy was surprised she hadn’t jerked back as if he’d slapped her, so sharp was the hurt. “I don’t know, but I’m sorry, I don’t have time for a relationship. I have responsibilities.”
“Your work?” she asked, her heart climbing up into her throat. “Everyone has work, Ridge. Oh, I’ll give you that yours is important work, time-consuming work, at least for now. But that’s not all there is to life.”
“There’s Belinda and Carrie. I promised to take care of them. And I live in California and you’re on the other side of the country…”
He had to realize he was making excuses. Denial, that’s what it was. That, and fear. Fear of what?
“Ridge, you met my family. Did anyone—besides my mother—strike you as less than sensible credible adults who would be capable of being brainwashed into believing in wives tales? Hell, my mother resists it to this day, but she was the one who told you it’s real.
“When she was seventeen she met my dad and his brother. They showed up to cut the lawn in their little beat-up truck. They called themselves Eye Candy Lawn Care. She said, ‘And, baby, he was!’”
She nodded at Ridge. “Talk about lust. She said he looked better than Lucky V in the old Coca-Cola commercial. The minute Dad saw her in her jeans, shorts and halter-top, he said ‘he knew’. And he’d just told his brother, the Calloway curl wasn’t going to get him. He asked her to the senior prom.
“Four months later, they were married and six months after that, yours truly was born. You’ll appreciate this. Daddy wanted to name me Candy but Mom refused.” Ridge smiled, whether he believed her or was just humoring her, she didn’t know.
“She was horrified when I got the modeling contract at fourteen but Dad said I’d be okay; I had the Calloway gene.” Buffy locked eyes with him, “We know what we want.”
He opened his mouth to speak but she went on quickly, “Roberta met Grandpa Earl in high school. She said she knew before he went off to war and told him so, but after he came home with only one arm he refused to go through with their engagement. He said, ‘He’d just be a burden to her; he wasn’t a whole man’. She said, ‘That was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. Even with three limbs he was more man than any man she’d ever met, and he might as well start preparing for their life together.’”
Buffy smiled, “Her actual words were, ‘Three limbs or no limbs, he had all the essential parts’ to give her the babies she wanted and spend the next sixty years with her, if he’d ‘get off the stick’. She signed him up for classes at the university; he was interested in a career in aviation. He didn’t believe he could still work in his field. Two years later he graduated and with his Air Force background got a job with Delta Airlines out of Monroe.”
Ridge just listened, though his expression had lost its tension. “When Earl was gainfully employed as a radar control instructor, he admitted that Roberta had been right. They belonged together. Bear with me,” she said when Ridge started to speak.
“Grandpa Robert came back from Vietnam a changed man, but as you noticed, my Grandma Lillie is no dandelion, here today and gone with the wind. She stuck, learned everything she could about what he’d gone through. He says he was one of the lucky ones to have a woman who was so fierce in her declaration of love and her iron determination. She never doubted they’d have a happy life together and wouldn’t let him doubt. She kept him grounded until he could heal enough to realize he deserved happiness.”
Buffy’s eyebrow arched as she met Ridge’s gaze head on. “Everyone says I take after Lillie. And it’s not just the hair and freckles.”
She laid her hand over his, as if skin to skin, with the vibrant energy emanating from him she could create a link from his heart to hers.
“You asked me why I was never intimate with another man before that night. I’d been waiting… waiting for you. I had the first Calloway curl, that’s what they call it when your heart,” her voice cracked and she cleared her throat, “when your heart clenches the first few times as if to say, ‘Attention, attention. There he is. Or she, in Dad’s case.”
“Anyway, I denied it at first—like you—thought it might be something I ate, or simply as you suggest, lust, since you’d just taken your shirt off. But it didn’t stop. The more I learned about you, the more I got to know the real Ridge Romano, the more I was sure. Let’s see… well, surely by the time I rescued you from that mob in the hotel lobby.” Ridge was listening attentively but she couldn’t read his eyes.
“My virginity was a big deal to me until it was gone, and I realized I was very, very glad I’d given it to you. It wasn’t that difficult because all I’ve heard my whole life, from the time I was, maybe ten was, ‘You’ll know, when the right man comes along, just like all the Calloways’.”
She stared straight into those beautiful dark eyes, feeling tears starting to clog her throat as she watched him deny his feelings, steel himself against her words. “They were right. You’re the man for me, Ridge. I love you.”
He withdrew his hand and stood. “Look. I can tell you believe this—”
“No. Say what you have to say but don’t patronize me.” She reached down into her briefcase and pulled out a book. Tossing it on the counter in front of him, she said, “I believe in happy endings. They are all around me. And I intend to have one of my own.”
Ridge stared at the paperback. The image on the cover was one of the close-ups she’d taken of them in the black leather, the erotic photo. They looked like a couple… It made his chest seize up to look at them together and remember. It had been taken just minutes before she’d led him to the bedroom, her first night with a man. “You said you wouldn’t—”
“And I haven’t. That’s for you to remember me by.” She stood.
What did she mean? He wouldn’t have to “remember her” if she took the check he had with him. They’d be business partners. Besides, how could he ever forget her?
“Do you want to hear my proposal? I brought a check—”
“No. I can’t take your money, Ridge. I…” she breathed in and out slowly. “If there’s going to be no relationship, then there will be no business either. I’ll make it. I told you before, it will happen.”
“I can’t give you what you want,” Ridge started.
“E
verybody has responsibilities, my love. What you’re giving me is excuses. I know there’s something undeniable between us. It’s been there all along, and as far as the distance is concerned, that’s just bullshit. Merely excuses to keep from ‘putting yourself out there’,” she said, quoting him. It’s never been easier to run a global mobile business than it is today. You can work from anywhere.
“You do for everyone else, sweetheart, but your own personal world is insular. I want you to include me and my family in it, and in your work. And I still want you to be the face of the Calloway Studios. But until then… go take care of your responsibilities. I’ll handle mine.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. He didn’t understand why he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. “You could start out with everything you need.”
Her eyebrow rose and she shrugged, “I know what I need. And I choose to believe that you need the same thing. But until you figure it out,” she stretched up, brought their bodies close and her lips brushed his briefly. He tasted her tears, then she walked into her bedroom and shut the door behind her, dismissing him.
The sickness got stronger the closer he got to the airport, until he had to pull over at a rest area and empty his stomach in the bushes. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much, and he was afraid he wasn’t going to feel better anytime soon.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Buffy leaned her head back against the driver’s seat as she drove up the Interstate from New Orleans. She’d managed to keep her mind off the depressing discussion with Ridge last night, until now. At three in the morning she’d still been lying awake fretting, doubting whether she’d made the right move with him.
Then she’d remembered an announcement that had come through her email the previous week. A tax sale was being held in New Orleans for several businesses starting at 10 a.m. One of them was a vintage store that survived Katrina but the owner had decided to sell and move back north. She’d left Larue early to get to New Orleans in time for the pre-sale.