“It’s the woman I— Uh, yeah. It’s her. Did she tell you anything?”
Marsh put both hands on his head as if to prevent an explosion. “She’s talkative, all right.”
Reed remembered that about her. In fact, it was one of the reasons he’d kissed her the first time.
Marsh wasn’t the type to elaborate. Sometimes getting information out of him was like pulling teeth. “Did she mention why she left Joey or why she came back now?” Reed asked.
Marsh shook his head. “She never got around to that, but Cookie isn’t a nickname. And her last name is Nelson.”
“How is she with Joey?” Reed asked very, very quietly.
“She hasn’t seen him yet.”
Reed met his brother’s gaze. That didn’t make sense. Finally he said, “Has she asked about him at all?”
It was Marsh’s turn to sigh. “I offered to show her where he sleeps, but she said she didn’t want to disturb him.”
“Do you think she’s telling the truth?” Reed whispered.
“About not wanting to disturb him? Hell, how should I know?” The refrigerator clanked on and the predawn breeze rattled the blinds at the kitchen window. Marsh scratched his stubbly jaw and yawned. “If you mean is she telling the truth about being Joey’s mother, she offered to show me her stretch marks. No, I did not take her up on it. This is your baby.”
Reed didn’t miss his brother’s grimace at the double entendre. He wanted Joey to be his as badly as Reed did, for his own good reasons.
“The truth is,” Reed said quietly, “we don’t know any more right now than we knew before she arrived. I left a message for Sam, but until we have proof, let’s not let Joey out of our sight.”
Marsh’s relief was palpable.
Feeling an enormous surge of affection and gratitude for his brother, Reed said, “Hopefully we’ll be able to fill in the blanks after I’ve spoken with Cookie. Meanwhile, I’ll take this watch. Get some sleep.”
“I think I’ll do that.” Marsh started to go, stopped. “How was the reunion?”
Reed thought about Ruby’s friends and her laughter and how she’d contributed to all the newsy, breezy conversations, all the remember-whens, what-are-you-doing-nows. Ruby O’Toole put the joy in enjoyment.
He thought about Springsteen and how it had felt to see her dancing in Skeeter’s arms. He thought about walking her to the car and the wind in her hair and his mouth on hers, and how the thrum of her kisses, her touch and her sighs was still in his bloodstream.
“It was fine. I had an okay time.”
Marsh looked at him. And Reed very nearly groaned at the understatement.
His brother would never call him on it. That wasn’t Marsh’s way. He started up the stairs. Reed imagined he would stop at Joey’s door, but he didn’t have time to think about that right now. Instead, he retraced his footsteps to the living room for a little one-on-one with Cookie.
He noticed she wasn’t sitting up anymore. He went as far as the center of the room and called her name. “Cookie?”
Her eyes were shut, her breathing quiet. Curled up on one end of the large sofa, she appeared to be sleeping.
“Cookie?” he said more sternly.
Her eyes remained closed and her chest rose and fell evenly, calling attention to her— Several terms came to mind, but he refused them all and turned his attention back to her face. She had a small round face, a narrow nose, lots of hair and fake eyelashes. She was cute—pretty, actually.
What game was she playing? Or did she have a good reason for her actions?
“Cookie, can you hear me?”
Nothing. Bending over her, he reached for her shoulder, only to pause, his hand suspended several inches above her. “Cookie?” he said louder than ever.
She didn’t move a muscle.
“Cookie, wake up.” He gave her shoulder a little shake. She was as limp as a rag doll. He tried again. All she did was sigh.
“Cookie, come on. Get up.” If there was ever a time when he might take up swearing, it was now. He’d driven for hours through a torrential downpour, past downed trees and power lines, past accidents and flashing lights. The least she could do was sit the hell up and talk to him, dammit.
It was no use. Evidently one of those people who could sleep through a train wreck, she was out cold.
Straightening, he put his hand to his forehead, where tension was trying to expand his skull from the inside. The woman had one hell of a lot of explaining to do. He looked at her again and considered his options. Carrying her upstairs to the spare room did not appeal to him, and he didn’t see what good it would do to sit here twiddling his thumbs while she slept. He faced the inevitable. His questions were going to have to wait.
Feeling as though he was suddenly all thumbs, he drew a plaid throw over her and turned out all but one lamp. Casting one last look over his shoulder, he went upstairs to bed.
He stopped in the doorway of Noah’s old room. Light from the hallway stretched almost to the crib, where Joey was sound asleep. The floor creaked in the usual places as Reed went in and closed the door. He took off his shoes and peeled out of his damp clothes. After donning one of Noah’s T-shirts and an old pair of sweats, he stretched out on Noah’s old bed.
Noah’s airplane posters were still tacked to the walls, and yet the room smelled of baby, milky and sweet and innocent somehow. Joey made little humming noises in his sleep, his breathing soft and fluttery. Utterly peaceful, this innocent baby had no idea his mother had returned.
If Cookie was his mother, that is.
Odd that she hadn’t wanted to hold him after being away from him for nearly a month. Maybe she was exhausted from traveling, but even if she were dead on her feet, wouldn’t she have wanted—needed—to at least check on him, to see him with her own two eyes, to prove that he was okay? Maybe she wasn’t a good mother.
Or maybe he was looking for flaws.
* * *
The floors at Bell’s looked fabulous. Everything was fabulous. Wonderful.
Peachy.
Ruby propped the tavern’s back door open with a chair to air out the lingering, unpleasant smell of polyurethane, and caught herself wondering how things were going at Reed’s house. Oh no she didn’t. She wasn’t going to think about Reed and Cookie. Or Reed with Cookie. She closed her eyes because telling herself she wasn’t going to think about it only made her think about it more.
She’d arrived back in Orchard Hill yesterday afternoon. She hadn’t heard from Reed since he’d driven away from her parents’ house. She hadn’t texted him, or vice versa. She had no reason to. And vice versa.
All that kissing had pretty much made the friendship connection null and void. Perhaps some women could just be friends with a man they were in love with, but not Ruby. Unrequited love wasn’t her style.
She had no one to blame but herself and even that wasn’t doing any good. So. There was no sense wasting her time thinking about a few kisses and what had almost been. It was already Monday and she had too much to do to while away her time on what-ifs.
Later today she was interviewing her last candidate for bartender. In a pinch, Ruby could bartend, but she hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. She planned to print and laminate the menu next, and then she would apply a coat of beeswax to the bar. And there were about a hundred other tasks to complete in preparation for the grand reopening of Bell’s Tavern.
Most everything was on track. The shelves were stocked and her new waitstaff was ready to begin. The cash drawer had a lock, and she’d hired a short-order cook as well as a local band for Friday night. The full-size ad had run again in Sunday’s paper and a smaller version had appeared in today’s edition. Her online ads had garnered a great deal of excitement, too.
She wished she were more excited.
H
oping to generate a little cross breeze, she propped the front door open, too. She wondered if Joey remembered his mother, wondered if he’d sighed when he was finally in her arms again, home at last. She wondered if there’d been any fireworks yet. Not that she was worried about that. Why would she worry when she wasn’t even thinking about Reed? Or Cookie. Or Reed and Cookie. Or Reed with Cookie.
She sighed, for all her determination couldn’t seem to keep Reed far from her thoughts.
Methodically attacking the remaining items on her to-do list, she carried the Welcome to Bell’s Grand Reopening banner to the front window. The moment she got there, it became clear to her that she had the worst timing in the world.
Reed was walking by.
She hadn’t seen him in two days, which, from the looks of him, was how long it had been since he’d shaved. He was carrying Joey. The two of them appeared to be alone. She simply couldn’t help wondering what had happened when he’d come face-to-face with Cookie.
Where was she, anyway?
He happened to be walking by, and he happened to look tired and slightly bedraggled. Ruby refused to drink in the sight of him. And she refused to duck and hide. She’d done that during the Cheater Peter debacle and she vowed she would never humiliate herself that way again.
Also, Reed had already seen her.
She definitely had the worst timing in the world. He didn’t appear to think so, for his expression changed. He stopped and looked at her, and she swore he was glad to see her. Ruby had trouble drawing a breath. And yet she found herself reacting, her face relaxing, a smile lurking. The courthouse clock chimed on the quarter hour, two minutes late, as usual. They both smiled, and they might as well have been back in that parking lot after midnight, the wind whipping and rain threatening and their bodies warm and growing warmer all the time.
She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised he wandered inside. The front door was wide open, after all. It wasn’t as if they were strangers or adversaries. She wasn’t sure what they were anymore. Not just friends. Not lovers.
Joey’s eyes widened adorably now that he was out of the sun. Reed’s adjusted faster, blue-gray pools of appeal beneath sandy-colored brows.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hey,” she said at the same time.
A moment of awkwardness followed. And then he said, “We’re meeting Marsh and Sam for coffee at the Hill in a few minutes.”
We? Ruby thought. “Why is Sam still in town?” she asked.
He met her gaze. “There are some unanswered questions.”
Which could have meant anything. Since it was followed by another unwieldy pause, she could only assume it meant something important. “Unanswered questions regarding Cookie?”
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t feel she had the right to ask. Odd, since she’d had no qualms about asking him anything. But that was before.
Before they’d kissed. Before she’d fallen in love with him. Before Cookie breezed into town on the tail of a storm.
Was Cookie Joey’s mother? she wondered. Or wasn’t she? Was she still in town? What reasons did she give for leaving him? For returning for him now? Ruby couldn’t ask any of those questions, so she settled for something safe. “Does this banner show up from outside?”
Since he couldn’t very well say what he was thinking, either, he said, “It does. Yes. Very well, in fact.”
Neither mentioned the elephant in the room.
Needing to do something with her hands, she added more double-sided tape to the corners of the banner in the large window. He probably felt as if he had to say something to fill the void, and opted for “I heard you interviewed Bert Bartholomew.”
She did that thing with her nose again. “He knew his liquor,” she said. “I’ll say that for him.”
“But?”
Ruby felt him looking at her, and she swore he was thinking it was good to see her. It didn’t matter that the rubber band was slipping from the ponytail at her nape or that her nail polish was chipped and there was a big tear in her T-shirt.
He. Genuinely. Truly. Liked. Her.
And vice versa.
She was in trouble. Deep trouble.
“I didn’t hire him, though,” she said.
“Bert worked for us for a while at the orchard. He kept a flask in his chest pocket.” Moving Joey to his other shoulder, he said, “I suppose bartending would be a better fit for him than running the cider press. What time was the interview?”
“Nine this morning.” She pulled a face. “I own a bar. Obviously I don’t have a problem with people enjoying alcohol.”
“Just not for breakfast?” he said.
He was being very agreeable. She thought he looked tired and uneasy, which wasn’t like him.
Just then someone with a soft, decidedly Southern voice called through the open door. “Reedykins, are you in there?”
Reedykins? Ruby thought, as a petite woman wearing white jeans, a pink shell trimmed in faux leopard skin and four-inch heels joined them inside.
She stood close to Reed and glanced around. Spying Ruby, she said, “I do declare it’s taken us half an hour to walk down the street. Reedykins knows everyone in town and everyone is just so friendly.”
Ruby caught Reed cringing.
Reaching a delicate hand toward Ruby, the curvaceous blonde said, “I’m Cookie Nelson.”
Reed cleared his throat and after a barely perceptible pause, completed the introductions. Naturally predisposed to like nearly everyone, Ruby had no intention of liking Cookie Nelson. It seemed to her that failing to tell Reed he had a child, and then deserting her baby with no explanation, was a good enough reason to hold a grudge against her. While Ruby was silently justifying her position, Cookie looked up at Reed. And smiled.
And Ruby was pretty sure it was as genuine as the stars in her eyes. “My mama always said it’s the curse of small towns, don’t y’all agree?”
If Ruby could have found her voice she might have agreed, but it didn’t matter. Cookie carried the conversation by herself. In almost no time Ruby learned that blue eyes ran in Cookie’s dearly departed father’s side of the family and her grandmother had loved apple pie, which apparently was some sort of a sign from heaven, since Reed lived on an apple orchard.
For an elephant in the room, she was very petite and friendly and quite pretty. Perhaps a year or two older than Ruby, she wore pink well, and that Southern drawl was almost contagious. She may have been a little ditzy and she may have talked a mile a minute about nothing, but she called Bell’s Tavern “an adorable drinkery.”
No matter what she’d done, Cookie Nelson wasn’t going to be an easy person to dislike.
And Ruby wanted to dislike her.
“Y’all are opening on Friday? This Friday?”
Ruby’s gaze swung from Reed to Cookie and back again. He wouldn’t bring her, would he? “Yes,” she finally said.
With a bat of her eyelashes, she gazed at Reed, and said, “We haven’t been out yet. Do you think we could attend?”
“I don’t think—”
Before he could finish, Cookie turned to Ruby and said, “We have a lot to work out, as you can imagine.”
Joey let out a little squawk. The sound the baby made seemed to remind Reed where he was, what he was doing and that he had to go. His gaze found Ruby’s. Sensing his reluctance, she swore he wanted to say something. The moment passed, and the trio left, Cookie taking two steps to Reed’s every one and Joey riding contentedly in his favorite position at Reed’s shoulder. Watching them go, Ruby thought it would be so much easier if the blonde bozo were easier to hate. It would be easier if Cookie were, too.
Was she Joey’s mother or wasn’t she?
Why was she in Orchard Hill if she wasn’t? And why hadn’t the private investiga
tor moved on to his next case? It was all Ruby could do to keep from grinding her teeth together in complete frustration.
Casting a surreptitious glance over her shoulder at Ruby, Cookie daintily tucked her hand into the crook of Reed’s arm. It was a possessive gesture if Ruby had ever seen one. Cookie Nelson wasn’t stupid, not in the least.
And she wasn’t going to be so difficult to dislike.
* * *
On Friday, Reed read through the contract on his desk. The terminology was important, the details even more so, and yet when he reached the bottom of the page, he didn’t remember a single word he’d read. This was one time an eidetic memory would have come in handy.
The faraway drone of Marsh’s chain saw carried on the warm breeze wafting through the open window. He’d gone out a few hours ago to clean up fallen tree limbs in the orchard. Noah and Lacey had returned from their honeymoon and were now in Traverse City visiting Madeline.
On Joey patrol this morning, Reed listened intently to the baby monitor on his desk. He was reassured by the baby’s soft breathing and the occasional hum he made in his sleep, but distracted by the sound of narrow heels clicking across the hardwood floors.
Cookie’s footsteps didn’t stop until she reached the doorway of Reed’s office. She wore jeans and a flowered top, the neckline low and the waist cinched tight. There was a provocative pout on her lips. “I made you a glass of iced tea,” she said in her soft Southern drawl.
Reed put the contract down and flattened his hands on top of it. Sashaying closer, she perched daintily on the corner of his desk.
“It’s iced tea, Southern style. Although I must say I can think of something a lot more fun to do while Joey’s sleeping and we have the house to ourselves.”
Reed ignored the overture and took a perfunctory sip of the icy beverage. It was syrupy sweet. Like her.
“It’s an acquired taste, Reedykins. Maybe if you’d give it a chance.”
She was pretty. She was provocative. She was even sweet. Perhaps she was right, and sweetness was an acquired taste.
But she wasn’t telling the truth about Joey.
A Bride by Summer Page 16