Married by Accident

by Christine Rimmer

  How could she get it wrong now?

  The problem was, on the other two trips, she’d had to turn onto a smaller road at a certain point to get to Bluebonnet. And this time, when she got to that turn, well, she must have just instinctively taken it all over again.

  Thus, approximately three hours after she’d left it, she ended up in Bluebonnet once more.

  She rolled into town, staring blankly out her windshield, past the red phone booth and the post office. The same two old men who had been there the day before yesterday were sitting on the grocery store bench. The black dog lay, as before, near the steps down to the street.

  Her foot seemed to step on the brake without any order at all from her fatigued, bewildered mind. She parked in the same place she had parked the other day. She got out, shut the door. The man she and Annie had spoken to before, Mr. Tolly, gave her a wave. She waved back.

  And then she went around the front of the car, across the short space between the store and the empty building—and up the steps Annie had pulled her up before.

  The sign was still there: Store For Rent. She stared at it, wondering what she was doing here.

  The dirty windows seemed to beckon her. She didn’t have the will or the incentive to deny them. She pressed her nose against the glass.

  And right then her tired mind played the cruelest trick of all.

  She saw neat shelves and gleaming display cases. Racks hung with practical, attractive clothing. Rows of handsome wood shelves filled with interesting items that a shopper might choose as a clever, special gift. In one corner, there was a counter, with a coffee machine behind it, as well as a soda fountain. A sign on the wall advertised varieties of ice cream and other treats.

  Melinda gave a small cry. She backed away from the window, blinked her eyes, rubbed them. She looked in again.

  And saw only dusty floor and empty, rather grimy-looking display cases.

  She whirled from the window.

  And realized she just had to make a phone call. She had to call Zach in Wyoming.

  She marched back down the steps and straight to her car. But then, before she even yanked open the door she remembered that she hadn’t seen her cell phone in weeks. She had lost it the day of the accident, never found it again—and never quite gotten around to getting it replaced.

  She glanced across the street. The red phone booth with its floor of drying grass seemed to actually twinkle at her in the bright, hot sunlight. It was ridiculous, of course. That phone booth could not be twinkling. The paint was old and had lost its shine. And the glass in the top half of the thing wasn’t that clean.

  She waited for an old truck to rumble by slowly and then crossed to the other side of the street The phone booth kept twinkling at her. The door was wide-open. She cautiously stuck her head inside.

  It had a rotary dial phone, of all things. And she didn’t see a place to stick her calling card in.

  Change. She would need change—lots of it.

  She whirled, hung back as two more vehicles drove by, kicking up dust, and then flew back to her car, got her purse and marched up the steps of the grocery store.

  The black dog looked up at her and thumped his tail against the porch floor as she went by. Mr. Tolly and his friend grunted and waved.

  Inside, the woman at the checkout counter took a ten and handed over a roll of quarters. “Long distance, huh?”

  “Yes. Yes, long distance. Very long, actually. Years’ worth of distance.”

  The woman’s forehead crinkled. “You feelin’ all right?”

  “Oh. Yes. Just fine. I seem to be driving in circles, but I’ll straighten out. Eventually.”

  The woman chuckled, somewhat nervously. “Well. Drive careful.”

  “I will.”

  Melinda carried her quarters outside, waved again at Mr. Tolly, smiled at the black dog and crossed the street to the phone booth. She tried to close the door, but it seemed to be stuck in the open position. That was all right, she decided. There was no one nearby to listen in. And it would probably be too hot anyway, all shut up in there.

  Melinda got out her address book and found Zach’s number. She picked up the phone. A dial tone buzzed iu her ear.

  So. The thing did work.

  She peeled the wrapper back on her roll of quarters and put one in the slot. Dialing took forever. If she hadn’t lost all her fingernails cleaning bathrooms at the Yuma house, she probably would have broken one.

  Finally, when she got through the whole number, the line clicked and a voice told her how much money to put in. She realized she should have peeled all her quarters before she’d tried to dial. But she hadn’t. So she scrunched up her shoulder to hold the handset against her ear and started tearing the spiral of paper wrapped so snugly around her change.

  She got it about halfway. But then the peeling hand was also trying to hold the loose quarters. Oh, how in the world did people ever make phone calls when they had to use a phone like this?

  She made a little, impatient noise, and tried to be careful as she tore the paper.

  But she wasn’t careful enough. The quarters went flying. They bounced against the side of the booth and thumped to the dry grass under her feet. With a frustrated cry, Melinda dropped to a crouch to retrieve them. The hard metal cord was too short. The phone yanked itself away from her—and bonked her on the side of the head for good measure.

  That did it—getting hit with the phone.

  That was the final indignity in a day full of wrong turns.

  She just, well, she could not take it. She could not take it anymore.

  Pointless, irritating tears had clogged up her throat. They rose higher, to her eyes—and they started spilling down.

  Melinda sank to her haunches on the brittle grass, drew up her knees and leaned back against the booth wall. The phone dangled near her ear, the dial tone buzzing again.

  Cut off. Cut off. Cut off before she even got through.

  Was that the story of her life or what?

  Sobs bubbled in her throat and came out, sounding ridiculous, making her think of Annie.

  Annie, her dear friend. Annie, whom she’d left sobbing and begging her not to go.

  Melinda clutched her knees. The sobs came harder. She didn’t even try to stop them. She just sat there on the grassy floor of the red phone booth, tears rolling down her cheeks, the dial tone buzzing near her ear.

  She didn’t know what it was that made her look up. But she did. She hiccuped and swiped at her running nose with the back of her hand—and looked out at the street through tear-blurred eyes.

  She saw the blue pickup glide past slowly. It pulled to a stop a few feet beyond the booth.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Melinda just sat there, her heart pounding hard, her sobs frozen in her throat, listening to the pickup door open and shut, to the crunch of boots on gravel, coming her way.

  The boots stopped right in front of the open booth door. She looked at them. They were Cole’s boots. She looked up, over his denim-clad legs, his lean waist, his plaid Western shirt.

  She looked into his eyes, which were shaded by his hat brim and she said, “Hi.”

  He smiled, a crooked sort of smile. And he said her name with tenderness.

  She sucked in a shuddery, teary breath. “I...I can’t seem to get out of Texas. So I tried to call my brother, but I didn’t have my cell phone...”

  Cole took off his hat and dropped to a crouch. He fiddled with the hat brim for a minute, then tossed the hat on the ground.

  He reached out his hand. She put hers in it. Oh, it felt so good. So real. So much like the place where her hand was meant to be.

  He stood, pulling her up with him.

  And then she was in his arms, right there on Bluebonnet’s main street. In front of the red phone booth, across from the grocery store, in plain view of Mr. Tolly, his friend and the black dog.

  She breathed in the scent of him. Dust. Shaving soap. Cole. Home.

  He whispered
, “Maybe you just oughtta give up and stay here, since you’re havin’ so much trouble getting away.”

  She closed her eyes, hugged him closer. “Cole?” she asked against his shoulder.

  “Yeah?”

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

  He pulled back enough to look down at her. “I couldn’t work. I gave up. I packed up my truck. I was headed for L.A.”

  She brushed at his hair a little, just to feel him, with the back of her fingers right above his left ear. “Not again. You poor man.”

  “I figured I was in for another two weeks in a motel room.”

  “But you said... you wouldn’t ask me a second time.”

  “I lied. I’ve been doin’ too much of that lately, I guess.”

  She sniffed, swiped at her nose. “I... had a vision. I think. Or maybe it was hallucination. I’m not sure. But I saw...what could be. I saw...what Annie tried to show me.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “What you tried to tell me. That my real life is here. That I might have found it by accident, but that doesn’t make it wrong.”

  He pulled her close again. She felt his lips on her hair. “I love you. Marry me.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I love you, too. I will choose my real life. And it will be with you.”

  Melinda called her brother that night. He said he and his family would come to her wedding in the Bluebonnet Christian Church.

  And the Bravos did come, Zach and his family from Wyoming, Melinda’s sister, her husband and children from Philadelphia—and Elaine and Austin, only somewhat under protest, all the way from their summer house in the Hamptons.

  Annie was the matron of honor, Jimmy the best man—and Preston Yuma wheeled up to the front of the church before the bride walked down the aisle.

  He quoted from the Song of Solomon.

  “My beloved speaks and says to me:

  Arise, my love, my fair one.

  And come away;

  For lo, the winter is past.

  the rain is over and gone.

  The flowers appear on the earth.

  the time of the singing of birds is come...”

  ISBN : 978-1-4592-6015-3

  MARRIED BY ACCIDENT

  Copyright © 1999 by Christine Rimmer

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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