She managed a smile. “It’s all right, Riley. I know you can’t stay.”
“Do you know that it’s for you, as much as, if not more than for me?”
She stroked the side of his face. “That’s sweet.”
He snorted and pushed himself up to sit on the side of the bed. “No one’s called me sweet in longer than I can remember.”
She sat up beside him. “Then shame on them, because it’s true.”
He grabbed his clothes from the floor and started getting dressed. “Well, don’t let it get around. I don’t think I’d be much good as a negotiator with my suppliers if they all thought I was sweet.”
With a light laugh that cost her more than he would ever know, she crossed to her closet and slipped on a robe. “I see what you mean.”
A few minutes later they stood at the door and kissed good night, neither of them trusting the emotions swirling through them.
“We’re all right, aren’t we?” Riley asked, his voice low and intimate.
She pressed a kiss to his lips. “We’re all right.”
“Why do I get the feeling that we’re not?” He pulled her close. “Have I rushed things? Was this too soon?”
Amy’s stomach clenched. “If it was, you didn’t do it alone. I’m the one who invited you up. I knew what would happen. What I hoped would happen.”
“Then why do you seem so sad?” he asked with pain in his voice.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, tears stinging behind her eyes. “It just all seems too much, you know?”
“Maybe I do,” he confessed. “This came on us so fast.”
“How can it be real, coming on this fast?” She buried her face against his chest. “I think I’m looking for guarantees, and I know that’s crazy. Life doesn’t come with guarantees. But…”
“But what? Do you want to take a step back? If you do, you’re going to have to say so, because I can’t really read your mind, and I don’t want to push you into something you’re not ready for.”
Amy pulled away far enough to be able to look him in the face. “Why do you have to be so agreeable? Here I am, being all wishy-washy, ruining what was just about the most wonderful night of my life—”
“Just about?”
“And you’re being all nice and accommodating.”
“You want me to complain? Tell you that you’re trying to pick apart something that should simply be accepted? Point out that we have feelings for each other, and we should see where they lead us?”
“You aren’t worried that they might lead us into a brick wall? That one or the other of us won’t end up with our heart ripped to shreds?”
“Well, I wasn’t.” He released her and ran his hands through his hair in what looked a great deal like a gesture of frustration.
“But you are now?”
“How can I not be? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you worry that something bad will happen, you push and finagle to prevent it and end up causing the very thing you’re afraid of. It’s like telling yourself not to be nervous. The more you say it, the more nervous you become.”
“And you think that’s what I’m doing?”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes solemnly. “I think we just spent an incredible night together. For your information, you are only the second woman I’ve ever slept with in my life.”
She gasped. “Riley—”
“I think we can take these feelings we have for each other and make them into anything we want. We can walk away and never see each other again, or we can stay friends, boss and employee, or we can head into deeper waters and see where they take us. The only thing I ask is that whatever happens or doesn’t happen between us not harm my girls.”
Amy gaped at him in shock. “That you think you have to say that to me proves how little we know each other. I would never harm your girls, not for anything.”
I think of them as my own, her mind cried out.
And therein lay the crux of her problem. In her heart of hearts, she had thought of the girls and Riley as hers since before she came to town. How could she love a man she’d never met? In truth, Brenda hadn’t spoken of him nearly as much as she’d spoken of the girls. It was the girls Amy had loved sight unseen. Had she come to town with the unconscious motive to get close to Riley so she could be close to the girls?
Stunned by this new insight into herself, she could not bring herself to look into Riley’s eyes.
“I’m going to be tied up most of the day,” Riley said. “So I don’t know if I’ll be able to call you until late.”
She smiled sadly. “You don’t need to call me. We’ll see each other at the office Monday. I’m not that insecure that I have to hear your voice and know where you are every day.” Ha. Liar.
“Are you telling me you don’t want me to call?”
With a groan and a laugh, Amy shook her head. “I guess I deserved that, but no, that’s not what I’m saying. If you want to call me and have time, I’d love to hear from you. If you don’t have the time, or merely don’t want to call, I promise not to take your lack of calling as a personal rejection. How’s that?”
He chuckled. “I think you’re right. I think we don’t know each other as well as we thought we did. I’m going to leave now, before I make an even bigger ass of myself.”
Amy sighed and watched him through her window until he drove out of her parking lot. Then she slid to the floor, exhausted. She had gone from letting Marva’s beauty consultant pals poke and prod her that morning, to a thrillingly nervous shopping trip with Riley, to an intimate dinner, an exciting movie, followed by the greatest sex—lovemaking—in her life. Then she’d blown it all by giving voice to insecurities she hadn’t realized were so strong.
What was she going to do? Carry on and see what happened? Fall deeper in love with him, then realize all he wanted was someone to take Brenda’s place? Any local woman would do for that; he didn’t need her.
Yet, he’d chosen her. Why?
Because of her connection with Brenda?
That didn’t make sense. There had to be several women in town who had grown up with Riley and Brenda. That kind of shared past would more closely match the life he and Brenda had shared. Just slip another woman in place who had all those same memories, same friends, and, voilà, the perfect match.
The memories Amy held of Brenda did not include Riley. They were of months of life in a war zone, no matter what the politicians called it. A little fun, a ton of work, a considerable amount of danger. They were of bullets and terror and blood. And death.
Why would Riley want to keep those memories around his daughters or himself? Sure he wanted to know of them, but that didn’t mean he needed her around as a constant reminder.
Around and around the thoughts raced through her mind, like a hamster on an exercise wheel. They plagued her the rest of the night, keeping her from any semblance of sleep. She didn’t know how to slow them down or get them off the damn wheel.
Amy wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep the rest of that night. Riley, too, lay awake and wondered what had gone wrong. Amy hadn’t seemed like the insecure type. She had been confident and assertive from the day he’d met her. At work she stood toe to toe with his suppliers and crews and easily held her own. She had even managed to deal effectively with Marva.
So what had gone wrong tonight? She’d been his. He’d felt it in every kiss, every touch. It had felt so damn real. And then, he’d felt her go from limp with pleasure to tense in an instant. The instant her mind had clicked into gear again.
She thought he wanted someone—anyone—to take Brenda’s place.
There was no wrong or right response to that. Brenda had been his wife, and, yes, eventually he would probably want to remarry. But no, he didn’t want a carbon copy of Brenda. She’d been one of a kind. He had loved her with all his heart. No one could take that away or replace her. Bu
t there was room in his heart to love another woman. It didn’t have to take anything away from what he’d felt for Brenda. He wouldn’t let it.
He’d thought, hoped, that Amy might be the one. She’d surprised him, because he hadn’t been ready to think about a new woman in his life yet. When thoughts of a new woman had sifted through his mind, it had always been for the future. Years away from now.
And yet, there she’d stood, on his front porch that morning. Then she was in his home. At the café. At his dinner table. In the lens of his camera. In his office. Shopping for Christmas presents for his daughters. And finally, tonight, beneath him, surrounding him, sheathing him, burning him alive in her bed.
Then, kablooey. The what-ifs and do-you-thinks came sneaking into bed with them.
He supposed he had to bear his share of the blame. He’d felt her tense beneath him and had guessed what she was thinking, but he could have kept his mouth shut. But no, not him. Get it out in the open and talk about it. Hash it out so there were no misunderstandings.
Yeah. Right.
He should have kept his mouth shut.
On the other hand, he thought with resignation, if Amy was so worried about their inner motives that she could end up sabotaging their relationship—if they could call what they had a relationship—he was better off knowing it now rather than later.
He was no closer to a resolution in his mind the next morning when he drove to Marva and Frank’s after church to have Sunday dinner and bring the girls home.
“Daddy, Daddy,” the girls cried.
“There’s my girls.” He dropped to one knee and held out his arms to pull them close. It wasn’t the first night they’d spent away from him, but it hadn’t happened often enough for him or them to be used to it.
“Riley.” Marva came to the living room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “You’re just in time. Dinner is almost ready. Girls, go wash your hands. Frank, help the girls wash up while Riley tells me about his evening.”
“Nothing to tell. We had a good time. I appreciate you keeping the girls.”
“You’re welcome, but you’re going to have to do better than ‘a good time.’ This was a monumental event.”
Riley pursed his lips and went to the sink to wash his hands. “You don’t know the half of it,” he muttered.
“Meaning?”
He wasn’t about to talk about his sex life with his former mother-in-law. “Meaning, this is the first time I’ve been out with any woman other than Brenda.”
“Of course it is, dear. It’s barely been a year since we lost her. Any sooner would have—”
“Ever,” he stated.
“Pardon?”
“Sugarpie.” Frank stepped into the kitchen. “Don’t pester the boy.”
“I’m not pestering him.”
“Good,” Frank said heartily. “Here’s our girls.”
Pammy, Jasmine and Cindy trouped into the room.
“We’re hungry enough we could eat a whole herd of horses, aren’t we, girls?”
“Oh, Gramps,” Jasmine and Pammy laughed.
Cindy giggled, then hiccuped.
They made it through Marva’s delicious pot roast with no more questions about Riley’s date, for which he was grateful. After dinner he offered to help Marva clean up, but, as usual, she wouldn’t hear of it. She was just old-fashioned enough to consider that women’s work. For which Frank was grateful.
As soon as he could manage it without being rude, Riley got the girls to gather up their belongings and took them home, where there was no such thing as women’s work. He had several loads of laundry to do.
That evening, while the girls watched a Disney video, Riley slipped off to his bedroom for privacy and phoned Amy.
When the phone rang, Amy jerked as if shot. She reached out for the receiver, then yanked her hand back and held it against her chest to keep from reaching again. It could only be Riley. No one else even knew her, really.
For that matter, she didn’t seem to know herself, she thought with a harsh laugh.
Was this love? Or a continuation of the envy she’d felt for months and months, since she’d first heard Brenda talk about her wonderful husband and children?
She wasn’t ready to talk to him. She didn’t know what to say. So she sat on her sofa and tried not to let the guilt eat her alive.
And dammit, why did she feel guilty for not answering her own phone, anyway? She didn’t have to answer her phone if she didn’t want to, did she?
So why, she wondered with an aching heart, did it feel like lying?
By the time she went to work the next morning her nerves were on meltdown and her eyes were red and puffy.
“Come on, Galloway,” she muttered as she threw her bag beneath her desk and powered up her computer. “Soldier up and quit acting like an indecisive ninny.”
Easy for you to say. In Iraq I’m brave and smart. In Tribute, Texas, I’m a stupid twit.
“Good morning.”
She barely bit back the shriek that threatened at the scare his voice gave her when she hadn’t realized he’d come in. “Good morning,” she managed. She stared at her computer screen and typed in her password to log on.
His footsteps crossed from the door to her desk. He stopped there. “I called you last night,” he said quietly.
Amy’s stomach clenched. “Did you?”
“Several times.”
She could see his hand resting on the edge of her desk. “I must have been out.” Heaven help her, she’d turned into a liar, she thought with dismay.
“Amy, will you look at me?”
She had to. She knew she had to. She even wanted to. Maybe. Sort of. She swallowed, wishing she knew what to do, what she wanted, what was best for them. If there was a them.
Slowly she raised her gaze. “Riley, I…”
“Don’t, Amy. If it’s this hard for you even to look at me, I guess we have a bigger problem than moving too fast.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. I’m driving myself crazy here.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “Are you going to push me away?”
“You mean I haven’t already?”
“No, you haven’t. I’m harder to push than that. You’ve asked for some room, some time. Is that what you want?”
“Is time and room supposed to make things clear to me?”
“Are you saying you don’t want— You just want to call it quits between us right now?”
Amy felt the blood drain from her face. Was that what she wanted? To call it quits between them? She gave him a sad smile. “Is this your idea of giving me time?”
“I just—” He waved one arm toward her, then ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I said I’d call, so I called.”
“Is that what this is about? I didn’t answer my phone?”
“I think I should go out and come in again so we can start this day over.”
“Maybe you should go out and not come in again,” she muttered.
“What was that?”
She sighed. “Can we drop it?”
“All of it? Drop us?”
Amy wanted to scream. She could put enough pressure on herself, thank you very much. She didn’t need this from him. “I can’t do this.”
“I’m not sure I can, either.” He stared at her, then headed for the door. “I’m going out to check on the jobs.”
By Wednesday things were no better between Riley and Amy. He was still avoiding the office as much as possible and she was still barely speaking to him. His crews at the three job sites he had working that week in town were getting paranoid over his constant presence.
To add to his misery, on Tuesday the weather had decided to play with them. The temperature rose to fifty and brought a downpour, leaving the bare ground at his job sites a mess of mud. This particular site, the Cantrells’ new ranch house seven miles from town, still had problems with runoff. As soon as the ground wa
s dry enough, they would have to fire up the grader and take care of that.
Maybe this thick gumbo sticking to his boots and everything else that touched it would keep his mind off the woman in his office back in town. She was a crackerjack employee, but not much in the relationship department.
Terrific. It was raining again. Just what he needed. At least this time it was a light rain. He climbed into his pickup and headed back down the gravel road toward the pavement that would take him to town.
Of course, the one romantic relationship he’d been involved in had been the success of his life. Maybe just because Amy didn’t love him the way Brenda had didn’t mean there was nothing there for the two of them to build on.
Hell. What made him think he was due a second love anyway? Who needed it?
He’d been focused so hard on chasing Amy out of his head that he hadn’t noticed the drop in temperature. Halfway down the gravel road the light rain turned to sleet. By the time he reached the two-lane blacktop highway that led to town the road was covered in a thin sheet of black ice. A healthy instinct for preservation pulled his attention from his troubled love life to the dangerous road conditions.
It seemed that everyone but him had sense enough to stay off the roads this afternoon, as he didn’t see a single car. But two miles from town, just before the Soldier Creek Bridge, he did see a deer. A big, beautiful twelve-point buck leapt from the brush on his right and sprang onto the road directly in front of Riley.
As mindful of the ice as he could be, yet aware that hitting the animal head-on would kill the deer and could kill himself, too, Riley swerved.
The pickup went into a skid. When the tires left the pavement and dug into the soft shoulder, the truck rolled over. The ditch rushed up to meet the windshield. Riley had a quick vision of his life. It wasn’t the past that left him wanting, but the lonely future stretching out ahead. If he lived.
He had one final thought before his head crashed against the side window—Amy.
Riley and His Girls (Mills & Boon Vintage Cherish) (Mills & Boon Cherish) Page 12