by Brenda Novak
She’d just told her parents that they were for sure getting married on January 25th. She’d already bought her dress and given her notice at work. Greta had five hundred cookies waiting in half the freezers of Dundee. And now he was telling her he didn’t even want to set a date? How did she go back to her family a fourth time? How did she tell them the money they’d spent might be wasted?
“Who told you all these things?” she asked.
“Why? What difference does it make?”
“I want to know. I have a right to know. Were you checking up on me?”
“I’d never do that,” he said.
“You had to get the dirt from somewhere.”
“I told you, I received a phone call.”
“It was my father, wasn’t it?”
“No. But he called me once before. And that’s what has me worried, babe. It isn’t only one person telling me to handle you with kid gloves. There are several people who are concerned about us.”
“They’re not concerned. They just don’t like me,” Rebecca said. “Don’t you have any enemies?”
“We’re not talking about enemies. We’re talking about your own father.”
“He’s the worst of the bunch,” she said. “He’s been angry ever since I was born.”
“Why would he be?”
“Because I was the last of four girls. When I arrived, he knew he wasn’t getting a boy. ‘’
“That’s crazy.”
“Exactly. What kind of man holds his daughter responsible for not having a penis?”
“Rebecca, whether you believe it or not, your father loves you,” Buddy insisted.
Rebecca remembered Doyle turning away when she’d won the game last night. “Is that why he always mutters, ‘God have mercy’ whenever I’m around? Because he loves me?” she asked.
“I don’t know why he says what he says. I don’t really know him. He told me he loves you, though.”
“So it was my father.”
“No, it wasn’t. Not this time.”
“Who then?”
“I don’t want to say,” Buddy responded. “He seemed to have my best interests at heart.”
“What?” she nearly shouted. “Why would a complete stranger have your best interests at heart?”
“Maybe he’s a nice guy.”
“Or maybe he wants to start trouble. Ever think of that?”
“He warned me about you. He said you need a strong hand and not to give you too much rein. But he also said, if we got married, I’d better not break your spirit or I’ll have to answer to him.”
Too much rein? Break her spirit? It sounded as though Buddy’s caller was talking about a—
Suddenly Rebecca knew exactly who had phoned him. “Josh Hill! It was Josh who told you all those terrible things, wasn’t it? He’s the one who called you.”
Silence. Then he said, “Beck, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Look—”
“Just tell me the truth,” she said, and to Booker, “Who else, besides Delaney, knows so much about me?”
Booker rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Makes sense to me.”
“He probably didn’t like losing all that money in front of everyone last night,” Rebecca muttered.
“I don’t think it’s about the money—” Booker started to say, but she turned her attention back to the phone.
“Is it him?” she demanded. “Is it Josh Hill?”
Buddy’s lack of denial confirmed her suspicion. “He said he’s a good friend and that he means well.”
Rebecca set her jaw, her body now filling with resolve. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said. “There’s something I have to do.”
“Wait! Rebecca—”
She hung up, grabbed her coat and keys and tried to brush past Booker.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To Josh Hill’s house.”
“That can’t be good,” he said. “I’d better go with you.”
* * *
“SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” Booker asked as they sat in her Firebird across the road from Josh’s ranch.
Rebecca considered Josh’s large, rustic, two-story cabin-like house with the hammock hanging on the front porch. Then she studied the circular drive, the split-rail fence enclosing the property, and the row of shade trees along the right side, and felt her resentment grow. Of course Josh’s ranch would be a cut above everyone else’s. Trucks and SUVs clogged the drive, along with a small tractor, and several horse trailers and Quad-runners sat lined up on one side of the road that led around back. Brand-new stables and corrals had been built behind the house for the mares Josh and his brother owned, and the studs—a couple of which had cost over a million dollars.
Josh and Mike ran a lucrative business. They’d achieved a level of success Rebecca could only imagine. Even if she and Buddy eventually got married, she doubted they’d ever be rich.
But she hadn’t asked for rich. She’d asked only for a fresh start with a simple man who loved her.
And Josh wouldn’t leave her even that much.
“Are we going to the door?” Booker asked when she didn’t respond to his earlier question.
A light glimmered toward the back of the house, but Rebecca’s rage had already burned itself out. She no longer felt the fierce need to hit something. Now doing anything at all seemed rather pointless. The damage was done.
Climbing out of the car, she strode up to Josh’s Excursion. She was driving a car older than most people’s houses while he drove one of the nicest SUVs on the market. Why did he have to have it all?
She heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel as Booker came up behind her. “Are you ever going to say anything?” he asked.
“These SUVs cost thirty-five thousand dollars,” she responded.
He glanced at the maroon Excursion. “They’re nice.”
“Everything Josh has is nice.” Rebecca opened the door and sat in the passenger seat, letting her legs dangle out the side. She wasn’t surprised to find the vehicle unlocked. There wasn’t any crime in Dundee to speak of, especially out in the hills where the next property was five or more miles away.
The inside of the SUV smelled of leather and Armor All—and Josh. Rebecca noticed the scent of his cologne right away and wondered why, after everything they’d been through, she still liked it.
More irony, she supposed. Josh had blighted her whole existence, and she still couldn’t help admiring him.
“How would it be to drive something like this?” she asked, running a hand over the simulated wood grain on the door panel.
Booker lit up a cigarette, his face momentarily glowing in the little blue flame of his lighter.
A cold breeze fanned the smoke toward her and she breathed deeply, craving the taste and savoring the smell. She hadn’t had a cigarette for almost two weeks, but she suddenly saw little point in denying herself. She couldn’t change. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Reaching out, she caught Booker before he could shove the pack into the pocket of his coat.
“You quit, remember?” he said.
“That was yesterday.”
He hesitated briefly before relinquishing the cigarettes. “What the hell. If smoking’s the worst thing you do, go for it.”
Rebecca lit up and enjoyed her first drag. Booker leaned against the car and tilted his face toward the sky. “So what are we doing here?” he asked after a few moments of silence.
What were they doing? Rebecca longed for some type of revenge. She owed Josh for more than sabotaging her engagement. What about all the love and attention he’d cost her over the years?
I’ve told you and told you that you need to keep your hand steady. You’re never going to win a game of pool if you play like that…her father had said. Your sisters were easy to raise…Josh and his brother have turned out to be responsible, dependable adults…I don’t know where we went wrong with you…wrong with you…wrong with you…
But she was too old for th
e kind of high school pranks she and Josh used to pull on each other. And regardless of what the community thought of her temper, she’d never done anything seriously wrong. Bottom line, there wasn’t anything she could do that would counteract Josh’s incredible appeal. She couldn’t make him be anything less than he was. Part of her didn’t even want to. That was what made her the craziest. Deep down, she appreciated his good looks and abilities as much as everyone else—even while she resented how easily he’d stolen her father’s heart.
Flicking away the butt of her cigarette, she got out of the Excursion and shut the door.
“Nothing,” she said. “We’re not going to do anything.”
“Cool.” Booker gave her a rare smile. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee at the diner.”
* * *
JOSH HAD BEEN lying in bed wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, watching television for more than an hour. But he wasn’t paying much attention to any of the programs that flashed past the screen as he clicked his remote. He couldn’t stop thinking about his conversation with Buddy earlier in the day and how quickly what he’d been trying to do had turned around on him. He’d meant his call to help Rebecca. She wanted to get married, and he wanted to forget about her. Their goals seemed compatible enough. But once he’d gotten Buddy on the phone, he’d purposely told him every unappealing thing he could think of to scare the poor guy away from Rebecca.
He shifted in bed, trying to conjure up the humiliation he’d suffered when Rebecca had bought a child-sized jock and bandied it around school, claiming she’d stolen it from his locker. If there was going to be some kind of negative fallout from his call, it was no more than she deserved after that stunt and all the others like it, he tried to tell himself. But somehow the satisfaction he’d felt earlier had withered away and now he was afflicted with a variety of other emotions—guilt for meddling in something that was clearly none of his business mingled with the stubborn hope that Buddy would break off the relationship and disappear from Rebecca’s life.
Flipping through a few more channels, he settled on CNN because news seemed to fit his mood more than the canned laughter of the sitcoms. Rebecca might have pulled a few pranks on him in the past, but he’d done similar things to her. And interfering with personal relationships wasn’t quite the same as hoisting her panties up the flagpole. He shouldn’t have involved himself in something that had the potential to be so hurtful.
So what did he do about it?
For a moment, he considered calling Buddy to apologize, to see if he could fix any damage he might have caused. But he doubted he could explain the complex emotions that had motivated his first call. There were some realities he’d rather not face. Besides, he was still convinced Rebecca would be better off, in the long run anyway, if Buddy terminated the engagement. The man was still sleeping when Josh had called—at slightly past noon, for crying out loud—which spelled lazy, even if it was a Sunday. And Buddy obviously wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack. He’d never questioned Josh’s motivations, never doubted his veracity. Instead, he’d gone on and on about the quiet, peaceful life he wanted to live.
If Buddy wanted peace and quiet, what the hell was he doing even thinking about marrying Rebecca? Only if a man was serious about increasing his daily angst to never-a-dull-moment, frustrated-to-the-point-of-wanting-to-break-something intensity should he consider Rebecca Wells.
Maybe it was only obvious to Josh, but Rebecca needed a man with more backbone than Buddy. She needed someone who understood her tempestuous nature. Someone capable of riding out the emotional storms. Someone who could soothe the ache Josh sensed inside her—the ache that made him think of her at odd hours during the night and unexpected moments during the day ever since they were kids. She needed—
“Josh, I think you’d better get out here! Fast!”
At the urgency in his brother’s voice, Josh jumped out of bed. The remote clattered to the hardwood floor, but he ignored it as he hurried into the kitchen to find his brother standing in a pair of pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, looking stunned. Through the wide front window, Josh could tell that something in the drive was on fire.
“What the hell is that?” he cried.
“Your Excursion,” his brother answered, his voice full of awe.
“That ball of fire is my ride?” Running for the door, Josh charged into the cold night air to find his brand-new Ford Excursion engulfed in flames. Torn between dashing forward to save what was left and turning away because he couldn’t bear the sight, he finally sank onto the porch steps, too shocked to do anything. “Not my Excursion,” he said. “Not my new SUV.”
“I’m calling the fire department,” Mike said, a cordless phone pressed to his ear. “Start hosing it down.”
Josh resisted the little shove his brother gave him. For all he knew, the Excursion was about to explode. And it was too late, anyway. Even if it didn’t explode, by the time they extinguished the flames, the vehicle would be nothing more than a charred wreck.
“I searched for that truck for months,” he complained aloud, even though Mike was now talking to the fire department and wasn’t able to respond. “It was in cherry condition: custom rims, tan leather interior, every upgrade in the book….”
Mike hung up and went for the garden hose. But he didn’t dare get close enough to do any good. When he realized he was wasting his time, he turned off the water, stomped back to the house and sat next to Josh. Together they stared in silent wonder at the fiery spectacle.
“Think it was kids?” Mike asked at last.
They could hear the shrill siren of a fire truck in the distance. Josh wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell of the smoke billowing into the black sky above them and rubbed his bare arms against the cold, which he was just beginning to feel. “We’ve never had any trouble with kids, not way the heck out here. And what reason would they have to destroy my SUV and not your truck? You’re parked even closer to the road.”
“But if it wasn’t kids,” Mike said, “who did it?”
Josh couldn’t imagine. Who would purposely single out his vehicle and burn it to the ground? Who would—
Realization dawned suddenly and, once it did, he knew there could be no mistake. Who would single him out? The same girl who’d tormented him since he was eight years old. Rebecca Wells. He’d called Buddy, and this was her revenge.
He shook his head, unable to believe she’d go so far. So what if he’d told her fiancé a few of the juicier details from her past? Did she think she could hide her true nature from him forever? He might have slanted his stories a bit, but she didn’t have to torch his Excursion.
Briefly, he thought of calling Ned Parks at the sheriff’s office to file a complaint. Destruction of private property. That would cause Rebecca some serious problems, some well-deserved problems.
But even as he watched his Excursion burn, in his heart Josh knew he’d never make that call. The war that raged between him and Rebecca had gone on a long time. They’d both done some pretty stupid things, but they’d never ratted on each other to anyone in authority. In the first place, he had no proof that she was the one who set the fire. He couldn’t call and tell Ned to arrest the mayor’s daughter simply because she was the only person who’d ever had it in for him.
Besides, if he brought Ned into the mess, she’d tell everyone that he’d tried to sabotage her marriage. Buddy might back her up, and then Mary would want to know why he cared enough to involve himself at all. He’d have to deny that he cared about Rebecca, pretend that ache he sensed inside her didn’t bother him. And…
Dammit! Why’d his family ever have to move into the house across the street from Rebecca Wells?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
REBECCA STUDIED BOOKER over her coffee cup. It was well past midnight, but she still wasn’t ready to head home. “So what are your plans?” she asked so she wouldn’t have to think about her own. At this point, she wasn’t sure whether she and Buddy would ever get married, and envisioning herself
living with Hatty for an indefinite period of time wasn’t cheering her.
He shrugged. “Finish painting the garage.”
“And after that?”
“I’m sure Granny will have something else for me to do.”
“You can’t work for her forever. You’re going to have to get a job eventually, aren’t you?”
“Eventually.” He leaned back as Judy came around to fill his cup.
“What kind of job would you like?” she asked.
“I’d like my own repair shop someday. I’m pretty good with engines. I was about to buy out the place where I worked in Milwaukee, but—” He shrugged.
“What?” Rebecca pressed.
“Granny said she wasn’t feeling well and—” he grinned “—I fell for it.”
“Somehow I get the impression you don’t mind.”
“She’s getting old. Someone needs to look after her.”
“What about your parents?”
“They’re too busy with their own lives.”
So Booker had postponed his dreams and come to Dundee to do the job. Rebecca had no doubt that would surprise a few people—like her father. “That’s why you’re so patient with her. You want to be doing what you’re doing.”
He didn’t say anything.
“And when she dies, will you go back to Milwaukee?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll open a shop right here. There’s only Lionel and his son doing auto repair, and they don’t know shit.”
“Where’d you learn so much?”
He set his cup in its saucer and leaned back, leveling his gaze at her. “In prison.”
Rebecca toyed with the handle of her cup. “I’ve wondered about that,” she said. “What did you do?”
The bell went off over the door, and Rebecca looked up to see Greta’s husband, Randy, step into the diner, along with Jeffrey Stevens, the second of Dundee’s two firefighters. Their faces were streaked with sweat, and they were both wearing a good bit of their firefighting regalia, but she didn’t want to hear about the latest brush fire.