She had to realize that Reed, Marsh, Noah and Sam doubted her story, for they hadn’t left her alone with Joey since she’d arrived. She’d been tearful that first morning. Crying daintily into a pack of lavender-scented tissues, she’d told them how sorry she was for leaving Joey that way and how afraid she’d been and how alone. Finding herself all alone, without family and few friends, she’d had the baby blues, she said. Reed had asked his family doctor about postpartum depression. It was a serious condition, so they’d all treaded lightly.
“Give me a chance, Reedykins?” she whispered from her position on the corner of his desk. Reaching down, she laid her small hand on his arm, the action leaving him a clear view of cleavage.
Reed met her gaze instead, and held it until she looked away.
He could have learned to drink sweetened tea and to live with pink everything, with shoes in every room and gossip magazines on the coffee table. The Reedykins handle wasn’t easy to swallow, but he supposed he could have learned to live with that, too. He might have been able to forgive her for abandoning Joey and for failing to so much as tell Reed she’d been pregnant. Perhaps in time he would have been able to forget.
But something was off with her story. And he didn’t believe it had anything to do with postpartum depression. Sam was working on the case and they were all waiting for the results of the paternity test to arrive. Meanwhile, Cookie was evasive.
And seductive.
“It’s the redhead, isn’t it?” she asked.
Reed was saved from answering by Joey’s cry. Cookie glanced at the monitor and slid to her feet.
“I’ll get him,” Reed said in no uncertain terms.
Her eyes narrowed, but she stepped aside and let him pass. Reed made a beeline for Joey’s nursery. “Hey, buddy,” he said from the side of the crib. “No wonder you’re mad. You rolled over again. You don’t like tummy time, remember?”
He picked the baby up, and instantly Joey quieted. Reed’s heart swelled. His chest, too.
He’d watched Cookie closely with Joey. She was gentle with him, but until she produced proof that he was her child, Reed and his brothers weren’t about to lower their guard where the baby was concerned. And she’d produced no proof.
She claimed she’d lost Joey’s birth certificate when she’d been evicted from her apartment shortly after his birth. Sam had assured her, all of them, that that wasn’t a problem. She could simply contact the county where Joey had been born and obtain another copy. As far as Reed knew, she hadn’t even tried. Her memories of her pregnancy and Joey’s birth were vague and inconsistent. Whenever Reed, Marsh, Sam or Noah asked pointed questions, her face crumpled and the weeping began anew.
Reed wasn’t buying the act.
Laying Joey on the changing table, he was certain Cookie knew it. He unfastened the tabs on Joey’s diaper. The instant the diaper was off, the baby kicked his feet in wild abandon. He’d first displayed the new little quirk two days ago. Already, he’d changed so much. He’d changed them all.
“I know,” Reed said softly. “You love being naked. We’re going to have a little talk about that when you’re older.”
Joey’s gaze locked with Reed’s and his grin widened beguilingly. He grasped two of Reed’s fingers in his small, perfect hand. It made fastening the tabs on the new diaper more challenging, but Reed finished the task, disposed of the wet diaper and dressed him again.
Picking Joey up as if he’d been doing it all his life, he turned, and found Cookie watching him. She stood in the doorway, her blue eyes misty and her voice quavery. “It really is the redhead, isn’t it?”
“Do you know what I think, Cookie?” he asked, starting toward her, Joey in his arms.
“What, sugarplum?”
“I think we should keep this about you.”
A memory from Reed’s childhood washed over him just then. His great-grandfather had been a well witcher. It sounded like voodoo, but in reality it was simple science, not magic. Holding a thin metal rod in each gnarled old hand, his grandfather had walked across a plot of land, north to south, east to west. When the divining rods crossed, he stopped. And invariably there beneath the ground the well-digging company found water.
Once, Reed asked how the rods knew. His grandfather had explained that water produced a different frequency, a different energy than dirt, rock and soil. And those divining rods sensed it the way an honest man sensed the truth.
There was a bit of his great-grandfather’s wisdom in Reed as he studied Cookie’s expression today. “Why are you here?” he asked.
She didn’t cry into a lavender-scented tissue this time.
Wearing a pretty flowered shirt and a sad wistful smile, she gazed back at him, as dainty as a Texas bluebonnet. And just as hardy.
If Reed had been holding his great-grandfather’s divining rods, they would have crossed. That was how close he was to the truth.
Chapter Twelve
“Is he here yet?”
Oh, boy, Ruby thought. Not this again. It had been a lot easier to pull off blasé when the he in question had been Peter. The atmosphere at Bell’s Tavern was charged with anticipation. She’d been watching the door all night, and she wasn’t the only one.
Rumor had it Reed was coming.
From her position behind the bar, she performed a quick scan of the room. The hardwood floors and the ornately carved bar were gleaming. The lights were turned low and nearly every table was full.
The live music was loud and the dance floor was crowded. Reed wasn’t on it, though. He wasn’t sitting at the bar or playing pool in the back. He didn’t throw his cards on the table and yell, “Misdeal.”
It was too early to call the grand reopening a complete success, but the waitstaff had barely had time to come up for air.
“Is he here yet?” Abby Fitzpatrick stood on tiptoe trying to see over so many tall people.
Ruby looked from Abby to Chelsea, and caught the dark-haired wedding planner averting her gaze. “What aren’t you telling me?” Ruby demanded.
Chelsea studied her fingernails and coyly refrained from answering. Ruby knew nuances. Chelsea didn’t want to lie.
Orchard Hill had an active grapevine, but this wasn’t simply the rumor mill at work. Chelsea, Abby, Sam, Reed’s brother Noah, Lacey and everyone else whose eyes were trained on the door expected something to happen.
Ruby understood how gossip traveled. Several people had seen her talking to Reed at Murphy’s that night. Evidently someone had seen his car parked at the bottom of her stairs, too, and someone else had noticed him helping her carry boxes from her car into her tavern.
Reed and his brothers had grown up in this town. The Sullivans’ past was tragic, their personalities alluring and their smiles tempting. In case that wasn’t enough to cause hearts to flutter, someone had left an innocent baby on their doorstep. Nearly a month later, a dainty and very stacked Texan arrived claiming to be the baby’s mother. Who could resist talking about that?
Ruby, that was who. She filled four glasses with beer on tap and lined them up on a tray. She was mixing her first Kerfuffle when the bartender she’d hired returned from a short break.
“Is he here yet?” Natasha asked as she donned her apron.
One of the waitresses rushed to the bar, saving Ruby from replying. “I need a Dynamite, a Howl at the Moon and two Fountains of Youth.” She pointed her finger at Sam Lafferty but smiled at Ruby and said, “So is he? Here yet, I mean.”
One by one, Ruby eyed the people she knew best in Orchard Hill. No matter what Chelsea, Abby, Sam and Natasha claimed, they knew something Ruby didn’t know.
Bell’s new bartender had straight black hair and striking green eyes and was taller than Ruby. With her straight black hair and striking green eyes, she was beautiful. At six-one, her height put her at a definite advantage. She had
a clear view of the door. Ruby saw her eyes widen. A moment later, Ruby’s widened, too.
Someone new had arrived. Someone wearing tight white jeans and a pink tank and five-inch heels. Oh, no. It was Cookie. Ruby felt the strangest compulsion to run. But there was no place to hide.
The noise level rose and a gasp sounded. That might have been Ruby. From her position at the end of the bar, she saw Cookie scan the room. The instant she spotted Ruby, she started toward her.
She was halfway through the crowd when another gasp carried through the room. All eyes turned to the door again. This time it was Reed who’d entered.
He scanned the room, too. And while the band began to play another song, his gaze landed lightly on Ruby.
Noah cut in front of Reed. He must have told his brother Cookie was here, because Reed’s entire demeanor changed. Ruby watched as Reed caught up with the little Texan with the big hair.
Funny, Ruby hadn’t been jealous of the bottle redhead in Cheater Peter’s bed. She’d been shocked, disgusted, insulted, scorned, hurt, humiliated and about a hundred other unpleasant things, but not jealous. But then, she’d only thought she was in love with Peter.
Maybe this wasn’t love, either. Maybe it was lust. Perhaps it was the condition that occurred to people who survived terrifying events like bank robberies or getting stranded on desert islands. What was it called? Stockholm syndrome. Wait, it wasn’t that. That was when a person fell in love with her captor, and that took years to overcome. Hopefully it wouldn’t take Ruby that long to get over Reed.
Bother.
Ruby had known for weeks that Reed was looking for the mother of his child. She’d known he was a family man at heart, but seeing Cookie and him together was harder than she’d thought it would be. It made her chest ache, and her stomach, too. And that made her mad. Ha. It seemed it wasn’t going to take her forever to get over him, after all. In fact, she was thinking about clobbering him over the head with the bottle of whiskey Natasha was opening. Ruby wouldn’t, of course. She’d paid good money for that Jack Daniel’s.
While she was still weighing the pros and cons of violence and vengeance, a strong arm came around Ruby’s shoulders. “Hello, gorgeous,” Sam Lafferty said. “I haven’t gotten up close and personal with a redhead yet tonight. If you know what I mean.”
“No need to get poetic,” she said sardonically. “You had me at hello.”
With that, the notorious P.I. and famed carouser led her into a two-step around the perimeter of the dance floor. Ruby knew what Sam was doing, but he couldn’t block Reed and Cookie from her view entirely.
They were talking now. Reed looked angry. Before Ruby got close enough to see Cookie’s expression, Jake Nichols, the local veterinarian, cut in and spun her in the opposite direction.
Digger Brown cut in next, followed by someone named Josh and finally that guy Ruby had talked to at Murphy’s the other night.
Her head was spinning by the time a man cut in for the final time. This one was tall and smelled of a woodsy aftershave and night breezes and apples, of all things. His eyes looked gray tonight, his hand at the small of her back possessive.
“Reed Sullivan,” she said sternly. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Chapter Thirteen
The first thing a woman learned in dance class was to let the man lead. After all, the true test of a dancer’s finesse was to follow, regardless of her partner’s ability.
But Reed wasn’t dancing.
Music was playing, and other people were shuffling backward and forward, to and fro. Reed had assumed a dancer’s position, his fingers twined with hers, one hand on the small of her back. But he was standing perfectly still, his eyes on hers.
She’d worn black tonight, and pinned her hair in a loose knot on the back of her head. As far as Ruby could tell, Reed hadn’t noticed her outfit or her hair. Since he’d cut in on that last dance, he hadn’t taken his gaze off hers.
“You have to move your feet to two-step,” she grumbled.
She’d spoken, and in doing so, she’d moved her lips, which apparently drew his gaze to her mouth. Before she reacted to his nearness, to his heat and the strength in his arms, she said, “Where’s Cookie?”
Tightening his hold, not loosening it, he said, “With any luck she’s in the cab I called for her, on her way to the airport to use her one-way ticket to Dallas.”
The Madonna Mamas were playing a song by Faith Hill. They sounded so much like the original it was uncanny. Strangely, Ruby could wrap her mind around that. But she didn’t trust herself to analyze what Reed had said.
“Where’s Joey?” she finally managed to say.
“He’s home. With his father.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth opened and her heart pounded. “You mean. Cookie isn’t— You’re not— Joey isn’t—”
Reed shook his head.
He started to move, drawing her into the dance. But Ruby wasn’t having it. “Joey—he’s Marsh’s?” she stammered, her feet planted firmly on the floor.
This time Reed nodded.
“Oh, Reed. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
She did a double take.
“At least I hope you’re not,” he added. “I’m not sorry.”
She heard the depth of emotion in his voice. “I wanted him. I still do. I’d take him in a heartbeat if Marsh needed me to. I’m disappointed. Deeply. But I’ve had all week to come to terms with it.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “You’ve known all week?”
“I didn’t have any proof, but I was pretty sure the first night,” he said.
The music was so loud Ruby missed whatever Reed said next. Abby must have stepped in, because the next thing Ruby knew, the band was taking five and Abby was rubbing her hands together at a job well done. No one was dancing this dance, anyway. Everyone, it seemed, was watching Ruby and Reed.
He lowered his hand from the dancing position to his side, but he continued to hold hers, his fingers warm, his thumb moving in a semicircle over her wrist. “I helped Cookie into a taxi an hour ago. She was supposed to go directly to the airport.”
“Why didn’t she?” Ruby asked, and that was only one of the questions blazing through her head.
“Because her ploy didn’t work and because she’s a drama queen, and maybe to take a year off my life.”
“That I can see,” Ruby said. “But then why did she finally leave?”
As if he hated to admit it, Reed said, “Because she’s not entirely evil. She wanted to tell you something. You see, Cookie really is alone in the world. Like a lot of people, she struggles to get by.”
Ruby was watching him closely, listening closely.
A waitress brought Ruby and Reed something to drink and Sam shooed another couple out of their chairs so they could sit down. While activity resumed all around them, while a card game was lost and a billiards game won, while the Madonna Mamas began to play again, and Natasha served up whiskey and pale ale, Reed told Ruby that when a friend of Cookie’s relayed that a P.I. had come to the restaurant where they used to work and was asking questions about a waitress named Cookie who’d apparently left a baby on a doorstep in a college town in Michigan, Cookie remembered Reed.
“She and her friend did a little research online, and they found my family’s orchard and they thought maybe there was an opportunity here. She swears she never meant to hurt anybody. It was just a little white lie.”
“Claiming to be Joey’s mother was just a little white lie?” Ruby asked.
“Her words not mine,” Reed insisted. “She only intended to keep up the facade until I fell in love with her, or Joey’s mother returned, whichever came first.”
He took her drink from her hand, set it on the table and reached for
her hand in his. “I couldn’t possibly fall in love with her. I love you, Ruby. I love your Florence Nightingale tendencies and your mile-long legs. I love your wild hair and your eidetic memory and how unafraid you are to try new things. I love that you love everyone. And I’m hoping you love me.”
Just then, the Madonna Mamas began to play “YMCA.” People flocked to the dance floor. Ruby and Reed didn’t join in.
“Remember when you asked me what my favorite color is?” he asked.
Although she nodded, she couldn’t help wondering what that had to do with anything. “Not pink,” he said.
Ruby felt it, that quiet little mewling inside, a shared smile and that delicious uncurling of rose petals.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. Everything. I was just thinking we still have two hours before last call. And now those two hours are never going to end.”
“Who says we have to stay until closing?”
They got up together, and skirted tables and the edge of the dance floor and the bar. While the Madonna Mamas crooned the iconic song, Ruby and Reed sneaked out of Bell’s.
Maybe sneaking wasn’t the correct term. The two of them were hard to miss, her red hair and swaying hips, his masculine swagger and shirt so white it practically glowed in the dark. He turned Ruby into his arms before the door closed behind them, and covered her mouth with his. Already breathless, they started up the stairs hand in hand.
“Is there something you’d care to tell me?” he asked at the top.
“I can’t think of anything,” she said.
She knew what he was waiting for. She was waiting for the perfect time.
He swung her into his arms like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold. Ruby gave a little yelp, because it looked a lot easier in the movies. Maureen O’Hara’s shin never banged against the doorjamb and Humphrey Bogart’s hip never smashed into the doorknob hard enough to leave a mark.
But this wasn’t the movies. This was real life. And in real life, Ruby laughed out loud and they both groaned a little in pain. Their gazes met, and their breathing deepened, and he loosened his hold and let her slide slowly down his body.
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