“Are you wondering what I said to Peter?” she asked.
“Who?” he said.
The wind whipped her hair across her face and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it because it took both hands to hold her dress down.
“Okay,” he finally said. “If you insist upon telling me, fine. Go ahead.”
She smiled wryly. “That’s for me to know.”
His answering smile looked as if it might just crack his face. He’d been an amazing sport tonight. She had no idea how to thank him.
She’d been dreading this reunion. Everyone in that room had heard the entire sordid tale of how she’d let herself into Peter’s apartment that day in April. She’d planned to leave him a seductive note, a red rose and—she was loath to admit this—her panties. Not the pair she’d been wearing, but a darling little see-through thong she’d purchased at Victoria’s Secret especially for her escapade. She’d tried to wear a similar scrap of elastic and lace once, but such panties were strictly seduction ploys. Of course they came off easily. Who could stand to wear them?
Peter had been wining and dining her ever since they’d both found themselves back in Gale right after Christmas. She’d gone to work for her father and Peter had taken a position in hospital administration in nearby Traverse City. He’d been especially amorous of late, and that day she’d planned to leave the rose, the note and those panties on Peter’s pillow.
She heard something upon closing his door, but it was an apartment, and she assumed the muted voices were coming from the neighbors. She’d actually felt a feverish and giddy sense of excitement as she’d tiptoed toward his bedroom. Odd that he kept the door closed when he wasn’t home, but she opened it easily with a gentle turn of the handle.
The red rose and the note and—truth be told—the poorest excuse for underwear in the world fell to the floor where she stood just inside his bedroom. Instead of getting to leave her gifts on it, Peter’s pillow had been propped under some other woman’s hips. Not that that little detail registered at first. At that point all she could focus on was the woman’s ankles crossed at the back of Peter’s neck.
Ruby must have gasped.
And Peter had looked over his shoulder, giving her access to certain things she didn’t want to see. Ruby remembered someone swearing—her—and someone calling her name—Peter. That was all she remembered, because that was when she spun around and let herself out. Of his bedroom, of his apartment, and eventually, out of his life.
Walking next to Reed tonight, she realized that Peter hadn’t been the right guy for her. Oh, he was tall and had beautiful eyes and wonderful pecs and washboard abs. Sure, he liked to show his muscles off in tight shirts, or better yet, no shirt.
He’d cheated.
Cheated.
And she’d become one of those women. Those wronged souls who blamed themselves for their partners’ infidelity. For surely there must have been something wrong with Ruby, with her kisses or her lovemaking. Why else would Peter have strayed? For weeks afterward, she’d shown up at his favorite haunts, drove past his apartment and the hospital where he worked. She was a pathetic crybaby who hid under the produce stand at Meijer and plotted how she might win him back.
As if he was somehow worthy. As if she needed him in order to ever be happy again.
What happened to the girl who’d tried out for every sports team and joined—okay, and also quit—every club in school? What happened to the fiery young woman who took chances and made mistakes but in the process took a stand?
Tonight, laughing with old friends about old times, she’d looked across the room and found Reed looking back at her. And she’d discovered not the girl she’d been, not the woman she wanted to be, but the woman she already was.
Reed liked her. Simply. Truly. Liked. Her.
She’d seen it in his eyes.
Nothing was unforgivable, she’d told Peter a few minutes ago. Before his smile had gotten too cocky, she’d finished her statement. “But I don’t love you enough anymore to find the energy it would take to work this relationship out, to learn to trust you again. That’s too great a learning curve. It would take too much of me and there just wouldn’t be enough of me left.”
She was back to her old self. Only better. And now she really needed to let Reed get back to Orchard Hill and his life and reality. She wished there was some way to let him know how much she appreciated his show of confidence tonight, his quiet presence. He’d called Peter Skeeter. She would have loved to have been a fly on that wall. Just because she liked herself again didn’t mean she was perfect.
“What’s so funny?” The consummate gentleman, Reed opened the passenger door for her.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Everything.”
“It’s good that you’ve narrowed it down.”
The breeze had turned cool. It was the kind of late-night breeze that smelled of summer and asphalt and hinted of rain, the kind that caused people to stop what they were doing and tip their faces up and hold their arms out simply to feel it more fully. It was the kind of breeze that only occurred after midnight, the kind that made Ruby ask, “Did you just feel a raindrop?”
“For the last ten minutes,” he said.
She smiled up at him, her hair swirling. He looked down at her, his shirt collar fluttering. She touched his arm. “I just want you to know,” she said, “I’ll never forget what you did for me tonight.”
“Ruby,” he said, his voice whisper-soft.
They would never know for sure who started it or how it began. One moment their gazes were locked. The next moment their lips were.
They met on a surge of heat and unbridled desire. They’d kissed before. Once. This was different. It was wild, unplanned but necessary. It was lips and tongues and breaths and moans and then all of those all over again. Ruby hadn’t intended to do this, neither of them had. She hadn’t meant to let the wind have its way with her skirt or for Reed to have his way with her mouth.
And yet the wind blew and the kiss swirled and a wild stampeding had started in her chest. His hands were all over her back, up and down and high and low, molding her to him. Hers were in his hair, gliding to his shoulders, pressing his chest, where his heart was stampeding just like hers.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. He groaned in answer deep in his throat, and the kiss became a mating of lips and tongues and the very wind that spun all around them. It went on and on and might have gone on forever.
But it couldn’t, and finally, somehow, he dragged his mouth from hers. “Ruby.”
“I know,” she rasped close to his ear.
“I want to.”
“I know,” she said again. “So do I.”
“But I can’t. We can’t. Not until I know. Maybe never. I can’t ask you to wait. I can’t do this.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I do. It’s for the best. It is.”
He drew away slightly, just a few inches, and looked at her, his storm-cloud blue-gray eyes meeting her desire-hazed green ones. And then his lips were on hers and hers were on him and his hands were on either side of her face and her palm was pressed against his chest, heat radiating off him in waves, his heart galloping beneath her fingertips.
The next time, she broke away. “Reed.”
He groaned.
“We have to stop.”
He touched his forehead to hers. “Yes, we do. You’re beautiful. You’re amazing. You’re right.”
Her hands went to his face, and then she was pulling him back to her, his lips to hers. His arms wrapped around her all over again, and he lifted her off her feet, pressing her backward against the solid car, levering himself against her.
If it were possible to make love through their clothes, they would have. He was hard where she was soft, and they both strained toward more, each in their own way, one seeking, the other
wanting with everything she had.
Luckily, it wasn’t possible. Although it didn’t feel like luck. It felt like frustration and barriers they would have just as soon surmounted.
Still, they couldn’t make love. They wouldn’t make love. They didn’t.
What they did instead was take deep breaths and return to reality. Bit by bit, with a little awkwardness and great reluctance they untangled their hands and arms and she unwound her legs from around his waist and he set her back on her feet.
“I’d better get you home,” he said.
She pushed her hair out of her face and slipped into the car. He closed the door and went around to the driver’s side, climbed behind the steering wheel and turned the key.
For the first time in her life, she wished Gale were a little larger. As it was, it took about two minutes to drive to her parents’ house on Bridge Street, where she was spending the night.
Cinderella’s coach had turned back into a pumpkin at midnight. Ruby’s fairy-tale evening was ending in a similar way, but closer to one.
* * *
Reed didn’t look at Ruby during the drive over streets in need of resurfacing, like so many other streets in towns all across America these days. Other than her giving him brief directions, they didn’t speak. He concentrated on his driving, and did what he could to ignore the desire that had settled low and solid at his very core.
He couldn’t forget the way she’d felt in his arms, pliant and warm and willing and so incredibly beautiful. He shouldn’t have let things get that far out of control. And yet he’d been imagining it ever since he’d finally driven out of that traffic jam on the Pearl River Bridge, ever since he’d arrived at the reunion, ever since he’d seen Ruby rushing toward him in that white dress, her long red hair and blue-and-green sash flying behind her.
As far as he knew, she didn’t look at him during the drive, either. Neither of them attempted small talk.
He could see a few sprinkles in the low beams of his headlights. The wind was still strong, but the clouds hadn’t given up much rain yet.
She unfastened her seat belt before he’d brought the car to a complete stop in her parents’ driveway. He threw the shift lever into Park and undid his. Whatever she’d been going to say went unsaid as she got out, as if she knew it would be a waste of breath to tell a Sullivan she would see herself to her door.
They met at the front of his car, the glow of headlights shining low and the porch light shining bright. “I’ve got it from here,” she said at the bottom of the porch steps.
“What did you say to Lover Boy, anyway?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes, and he knew it would be a cold day in hell before she ever relayed the exchange to anyone word for word. It broke the awkwardness, though, so he wasn’t sorry he’d asked.
“You’re beautiful, Ruby. Outside and in.”
“Good night, pal.”
He watched her go up the steps. She was reaching for the screen door when his phone rang.
He grabbed the cell and looked at the screen. It was almost 1:00 a.m. And it was Marsh. Something had to be wrong.
Reed pressed the button and heard his brother say, “There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
“What?” Reed asked a little too loudly.
The next voice he heard was soft and sultry and decidedly Southern. “Reed, honey?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me. Cookie.”
“What? Who?” he asked. “Did you say this is Cookie?” He had to listen hard in order to hear her confirm it. “Where are you?” He listened again, and like the parrot he’d obviously become, he repeated, “You’re at the orchard? In Orchard Hill?”
“I came back for our baby, sugarplum.”
“You came for Joey?” His gaze went unbidden to the porch, and he saw Ruby’s hand fall away from the door. She turned to face him as Cookie rattled off what sounded like some sort of explanation. The connection was terrible and his own heartbeat was so loud in his ears he couldn’t hear most of what she said. “Put Marsh back on, would you?” he finally managed to rasp.
His brother’s voice vibrated with the same intensity Reed was feeling. “I put her suitcases in the spare room.”
In other words, she wasn’t leaving with Joey tonight. Thank God for that. “I’m on my way,” Reed said.
“We’ll be waiting. Hey, Reed. The radar shows rain. Heavy rain. Drive carefully. I’ve got things covered until you get here.”
The connection broke, and Reed’s hands fell to his sides, his gaze on Ruby. She stood on her parents’ front porch, the soft overhead light washing her in a golden glow. Or maybe that was his imagination.
He wasn’t imagining the quaver in her voice, though, as she said, “That was Cookie?”
Nodding, he felt as if he owed Ruby an explanation, and yet he had no idea what protocol to follow. “Marsh said she showed up out of the blue insisting she’d made a terrible mistake.”
The wind whipped Ruby’s hair off her forehead and pressed her dress to her thighs as she held her skirt with one hand. She doubted Reed would leave until she was safely inside. The entire night felt surreal, somehow, and yet she knew she would never forget the way he was looking at her.
The low beam of his headlights cast his shadow onto the porch steps. She’d seen that stance before, feet apart, back straight, shoulders squared. With the light behind him, she couldn’t see the color of his eyes. She felt his gaze, though. It was as if his fingers were actually trailing across her cheek, down her neck, across her shoulder, along her arm, to her waist.
She had no right to respond, and yet she did, warming, wishing, wanting. He’d called it the zing. It was more than that, at least for her.
He stared at her, and she at him, and neither of them knew what to say. She swallowed the lump in her throat as one thought played over and over in her mind. In one night she’d gotten over a man who would always cheat, and fallen in love with one who never would.
Oh, the irony.
Chapter Eleven
The storm raged as Reed left Ruby’s hometown.
Even with his windshield wipers on high, he could barely see. Semis were parked along the side of the road and cars waited out the storm beneath overpasses. Slowing to a crawl at times, he kept both hands on the steering wheel, pressing toward home.
Rain came down in sheets, thunder boomed and lightning forked out of the sky. Not even the raging storm could keep him from thinking about what he’d just left behind and what he would soon encounter back home.
He drove out of the storm sometime after two. In the back of his mind he made a list of questions he would ask Cookie. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but for the next hundred miles, Reed thought about what he would say, how he would say it and how it would feel if Cookie was indeed the mother of his son. On the one hand, it would mean Joey was his, and Reed deeply wanted that. It had seemed straightforward a few weeks ago. Nothing felt simple tonight.
His clothes were still damp when he pulled into his own driveway just after four o’clock. Steering around the fallen limb lying across his path, he parked where he always parked. His feet splashed through the residual puddles on the sidewalk as he went up the back steps and let himself in.
A television was turned low to an all-night weather station. Joey wasn’t crying. So far so good.
There was a quarter pot of coffee left in the coffeemaker, the seldom-used sugar bowl was out and two mugs and an empty baby bottle sat by the sink.
The night-light was on in the nursery where Joey slept during the day. The crib was empty.
Feeling the effects of the long day and an even longer night that had no end in sight, Reed ran a hand through his hair and continued toward the soft murmur of voices in the living room. One belonged to his brother. The oth
er one was vaguely familiar, as well.
Marsh was sitting in his favorite chair, his feet bare, his jeans ripped across one knee, his fingers strumming the cracked leather on the armrest, looking for all the world like something the cat dragged in. He jumped up the instant he saw Reed.
But Reed wasn’t looking at Marsh anymore. His eyes were trained on a woman he hadn’t seen in more than a year.
She wore pink jeans and a formfitting shirt. Her shoes, the right one tipped onto its side, sat on the floor next to the sofa. Her hair was a little longer than he remembered and perhaps lighter, too, but her eyes and smile were the same.
It was her, all right.
“Hello, Reedykins.” With a bat of her eyelashes, she rose sinuously to her feet. “If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
His first coherent thought was that she could stand, and walk, and talk. She wasn’t paralyzed or otherwise incapacitated, which was just one possible reason that might have forced a woman to leave a baby on a man’s doorstep. He also couldn’t think of any good reason for her to have kept their child’s very existence a secret until two and a half weeks ago.
“Where’s Joey?” he asked.
Her eyes widened innocently. “Why, he’s in bed, of course. It’s after four, you know.”
Yes, Reed knew.
“Y’all must have a million questions.” She was including Marsh now with her tender, quivering little smile.
Looking pointedly at Reed, Marsh said, “You two have a lot to talk about. I think I’ll turn in.” He started toward the kitchen and ultimately the back stairs.
There was an open staircase in this very room. With Marsh’s selection of the other one, Reed knew his brother wanted him to follow him into the kitchen, where they might have a moment of privacy.
“Would you excuse me for a minute?” Reed said to Cookie.
“Of course, sugar. Take all the time you need.” She sank back into the soft leather sofa cushion and curled her feet underneath her.
Marsh was waiting for him in the kitchen. “It is her, then?”
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