“What if she does this to somebody else?” his mother asked.
“Hopefully, everyone else is more clear-sighted than I was.” He stood up to shake Derek’s hand. “What did all this cost?”
Derek shrugged. “I had another case in Mexico, so I worked on this one when I wasn’t otherwise occupied. And your mother has a deal going with my aunt, who owes her some money. Nothing for you to worry about.”
Hunter was concerned. “So, your aunt will pay you?”
“Yes. She pays me off in bakery goods, scarves and socks, fix-ups with pretty young women who take her classes.” He grinned. “I’m doing okay.”
Now Hunter understood. He grinned, too. “Your aunt must be the famous Glenda Barrows.”
Derek closed his laptop and gave Hunter’s mother a hug. “You’re pretty good. Any time you want to join my agency...”
Hunter walked him to his car. “Seriously, thanks. I don’t want to press charges, but I am happy to know what happened.”
“I understand.” They shook hands again. Derek got into an old Chevy truck and drove away.
Hunter’s mother waited for him in the doorway. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “I wanted this to turn out differently for you.”
He hugged her tightly. “It’s all right, Mom. It took looking into Jennifer’s face for me to realize how far I’ve come from that time and place. It’s too bad the money’s gone, but it’s only money.”
She blinked, then leaned closer as though she hadn’t heard him. “Say that again.”
“It’s only money.”
“Does that mean you’ll let me give you some?”
“No. It just means I won’t belabor the loss of it. I’m moving on.”
Now she was smiling. “Really. In which direction?”
He kissed her cheek and ran out to his car.
* * *
WEARING A YELLOW fleece robe in which, so Zoey had told her, she looked like a Peep, the yellow marshmallow chicken sold at Easter, Sandy sat on the sofa with a chocolate bar in one hand and a glass of Moscato in the other. She was living tonight’s dream of happy isolation when the doorbell rang. She looked at the clock. It was after ten.
She put the wineglass down but held on to the chocolate as she went to the door. Hunter stood on the porch in jeans and his black leather jacket, a watermelon under his arm. He seemed indefinably different. Still gorgeous, but different.
“Hi,” she said warily. “On your way to a barbecue?”
“No, actually. I’m here to see you.”
That was a surprise. “You are?”
“I went to Safeway for flowers, but they were out, so the produce guy told me that in Asia, a watermelon is considered an excellent hostess gift.”
“I didn’t know that. But this is Oregon.”
“Yeah. Can I come in?”
“No.” She hated to admit this, but she had to say it. “Hunter, I don’t understand. And that’s okay, because I don’t get you half the time. You like me, you push me away, you invite me closer, you push me away again. I can’t do that anymore. Just tell me what you want.”
He nodded grimly, then suddenly smiled, as though he couldn’t help himself. Now she really didn’t understand.
“Remember the day you knocked over the apples at Safeway?” he asked. “When we were on our way to Seaside, you said if you’d knocked over the watermelons instead of the apples, you could be ‘doing hard time by now,’ I believe your words were.”
Who could forget that day? “I remember.”
He transferred the watermelon to his other arm. It had to be a twenty-pounder. “I was wondering if you’d want to do hard time with me.”
What was he talking about? “You’re asking me to go to jail with you?”
He looked heavenward in supplication. “You’re usually sharper than this, Sandy. No, to the altar with me. Will you marry me?”
Stunned, Sandy stared at him in disbelief for a full five seconds, opened her mouth to speak and seemed unable to. Then she did what she’d never done before. She fainted dead away.
* * *
SANDY AWOKE WITH a fish on her face. At least, that was how it felt.
“Sandy! Thank God.”
At the sound of Hunter’s voice, she raised her head and a wet washcloth fell onto her chest. She was lying on the sofa, a pillow behind her head. It took her a moment to focus on Hunter’s features. Now he looked different, gorgeous and worried.
He helped her sit up and sat beside her, tossing the wet washcloth into a bowl on the coffee table.
“Did you come to my door with a watermelon?” she asked, struggling to bring her world back into focus. Because the other thing she thought she remembered couldn’t possibly be real.
“I did,” he replied. “It’s in a couple of pieces at the moment because I dropped it when I caught you. It’s still on the porch. Now that I know you’re all right, I’ll go get it.”
“Wait!” She grabbed the sleeve of his sweatshirt as he stood. He sat down again and smiled into her eyes. His smile worked like a xylophone mallet on every vertebra she possessed. “Did you ask me...to marry you?”
“I did. But you fainted before you answered me.”
Breath whooshed out of her lungs. “I may faint again. What happened?”
* * *
HUNTER TOLD HER about Derek McNabb and all he’d uncovered, and about his own decision not to file charges against Jennifer.
“Why not?”
He was loving this. “Because it’s only money,” he said.
“Okay, now I know I’m hallucinating.” She put a hand to her head in amazement, then seemed to realize that her hair had that octopus quality again, and that she was wearing a giant robe over—possibly—nothing. “Oh.” She pulled the robe more tightly around her and tried futilely to smooth her hair. “I can’t believe you proposed to me when I look like this!”
He wrapped both arms around her and leaned back into a corner of the sofa, taking her with him. “I proposed because I love you in whatever you’re wearing, and I’m tired of your indecisive, wishy-washy, can’t-make-up-your-mind approach to having...”
She giggled at his teasing. “Hunter, are you absolutely sure? You’ve been resisting me for so long that I’m finding this hard to believe.”
“I’m as sure that I want to marry you,” he said, catching one of her hands and kissing it, “as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that taxes will be due on April fifteenth. I don’t know how to make myself clearer.”
“Oh, Hunter.” She got up on her knees to pin him to the back of the sofa and kiss him senseless. “I love you so much. I can’t believe this! I thought we’d end up going our separate ways and you’d marry some corporate accountant and I’d be that redheaded divorcée doing charity work to fight off loneliness, with one daughter in the Senate, and the other one on the NASCAR circuit.”
“So, your answer is yes?”
She made a face at him. “Did you really think I’d say no?”
“Honestly, Sandy, I never know what you’re going to say or do. Which is part of your charm, I guess, but I’m not sure my sanity will survive a lifetime of it, so we might put something in our vows about continuity and predictability.”
She kissed him again. “That from the man who proposed with a watermelon.”
He returned the kiss. “I thought it was an edgy gesture. Very unaccountant-like. My mother told me to stop being a bean counter and start counting flowers and stars. As much as I’d have loved to bring you a star, even when I’m feeling invincible I have my limitations.”
Sandy lay against him, finally feeling the reality of his proposal. He loved her. He wanted to be with her.
They continued to hold each other, talking about dates, churches, reception v
enues, when to tell family and friends. Then an alarm sounded from Hunter’s jacket pocket.
“Is that some protection you’ve installed,” Sandy teased with a straight face, “against falling in love and getting married?”
“Cute. No, it’s my cell phone.” He took it out of his pocket and held it up. “It’s to remind me to go back to the office. Clarissa Burke needs business reports by morning. It’ll be easier to get them done when no one is around.”
“Is she refinancing?”
He shook his head and pushed Sandy gently away. “Sorry. Accountant/client privilege.”
“Is there really such a thing?”
“Well, we don’t call it that, but yeah.”
“Well, what about proposer/proposee privilege?”
“You’ve got it. I’ll take you and the girls to dinner tomorrow night. We can even take your parents and my mother and tell them what’s going on.”
She walked with him to the door. “Wow,” she breathed.
“Wow?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I’m hearing trumpets and feeling confetti on my face.”
“You know what?” He leaned down to kiss her and hold her tightly one long minute. “So am I. Go to bed. You’ll never be able to get up at 4:00. Good night. I love you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HUNTER WAS WRONG. Sandy was up at three-thirty. She jumped in the shower, shampooed and blow-dried her hair as though she was going to a ball rather than to work. She couldn’t help herself. She felt beautiful. Glancing at herself in the mirror before she left the bathroom to dress, she laughed. She didn’t look beautiful, she just felt it.
After a bowl of yogurt, fruit and cereal, she retrieved art paper and pens from a stash Bobbie had once given her, and made several signs to post around the cart. They advertised that fifty percent of the sales made during the opening weekend of the Clothes Closet would be donated to the Closet to buy boots and shoes.
Signs and extra paper tucked under her arm, she grabbed her purse and left for the coffee cart. She lit her open and espresso signs and fixed Dave’s white chocolate caramel mocha; then, in the dark now lit by the lights strung around the cart, she taped her signs outside near the service windows. She stepped back to see if they were noticeable and clear enough. Satisfied that they were, she ran back into the cart just as another customer drove up.
The pace was busy until five-thirty, then she had a moment to restock cups and lids and make up a few carry boxes. She stood at the north window to do so and noticed the traffic on the bridge in the pale dawn. A light rain had begun and she thought worriedly of the signs she’d just put out. The markers were waterproof, but that wouldn’t help if the paper didn’t hold up as long as the lettering. Fortunately, she’d brought supplies with her.
A squeal of brakes drew her attention back to the bridge. There she noticed a small car pull as far to the left as possible to get out of the way of a semi bearing down on it.
She watched, transfixed, as the semi screamed along the straightaway, barely made the turn off the bridge, then screeched into another turn that would take it to the highway.
Her heart pounding, a little scream on her lips, she then watched as the truck careened through the red light and across the highway, headlights coming straight at her at a terrifying speed.
* * *
HUNTER AWOKE SHORTLY after five-thirty in the morning. He was surprised he’d gotten even four hours’ sleep considering he felt as though his body’s operating system had suddenly been equipped with a turbo booster. He wondered if that was love or simple exhaustion. He’d emailed Clarissa’s reports after midnight, gone home and spent the next hour sitting in the dark, remembering the look in Sandy’s eyes when she’d realized he had proposed. To be loved, to be wanted that much, was humbling.
He microwaved a breakfast sandwich and thought about how thankful he was that she still loved him after all the distress in their relationship. He couldn’t wait another moment to see her. She was working, but hopefully she wouldn’t be too busy to hear again that he loved her and was taking her to buy a ring this weekend.
He grabbed his sandwich, jumped in his car and headed for Crazy for Coffee.
Traffic was light, but he got stuck behind a utility truck, its equipment hanging out the sides. He sat a little taller in his seat, trying to see beyond the truck, looking for the lights outlining Sandy’s cart. But all he saw were blinking and rotating lights on what appeared to be emergency vehicles.
He slowed down and frowned at the road ahead, straining to see. The truck in front of him was diverted to the right lane at the intersection by the Pig ’N Pancake, and Hunter followed it.
Apparently there’d been an accident. Then he saw a semi stretched across the left lane, the sidewalk and the paved area where... “Oh, my God!” He heard his own voice reverberate inside the car.
Not until he saw what appeared to be kindling under the giant wheels of the truck did he realize what had happened. A semi had run over Crazy for Coffee!
Hunter turned left with a squeal of tires into the parking lot of a little shop just beyond the cordoned off area. For an instant, he couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Then he was out of the car and running toward the semi and the pile of rubble that had been Sandy’s coffee cart. This could not happen to her—or him—after all they’d waded through to get their lives together. No!
He leaped over the tape and ran around the front of the semi, and noticed that Sandy’s red Beetle was accordioned between the semi’s bumper and the bulging cyclone fence. A gasp in his throat, he raced to the ambulance pulled up beside the semi.
“Sandy!” he shouted, peering inside. Two paramedics were settling a tall man into the back. “Where’s the woman who owns the cart?” he asked one of the paramedics.
The young man shook his head. “Don’t know. Ask Richardson.”
Scott surfaced from inside the cab of the truck. “Hey, Hunter,” he said, holding up the backpack he’d retrieved. “Excuse me. Driver wants his pack.” He handed it into the ambulance. The doors closed and the vehicle sped away.
“Where’s Sandy Evans?” Hunter demanded, his breath coming in short bursts. “Did they take anyone else away?”
“No. She’s okay. She saw the truck coming and got out.”
Hunter waited a minute for his lungs to catch up with his emotions. “Where is she?”
Richardson pointed to a low concrete wall that bordered the property. Sandy sat on the farthest corner of the wall, her arms wrapped around herself. Hunter pulled off his jacket as he ran toward her.
“Sandy!” He sank to his knees is front of her, threw his jacket around her, then pulled her into his arms. “Are you okay? What happened? I just about had a stroke when I saw...”
He realized she lay inert in his arms except for a formidable trembling, and wasn’t saying a word. Of course, he’d been firing questions at her. He held her away from him and looked into her eyes. In the early morning light her cheeks were white, her brown eyes enormous. Her face was smudged with dirt.
“Did you have to dive for cover?” he asked gently.
She nodded.
“Are you hurt? You’re sure you haven’t broken anything?” He ran his hands along her arms, touched her knees.
She shook her head. “I jumped out of the cart when I saw him coming,” she said faintly, “and ran for the grass. He broke his leg.”
“The driver? The ambulance just took him away.”
Now that she’d found her voice, words began to tumble out of her. “His name’s Bud. He lost his brakes coming off the bridge and ran right through the light, then...” She pointed a shaky finger at the kindling that had been her coffee cart.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“What time is it?” she asked.
She l
ooked very unlike herself. Of course, why wouldn’t she? But she was worrying him. He glanced at his watch to answer her question.
“It’s 6:17.”
“It was twenty minutes ago. I looked at my watch just before I ran. I thought I was going to die.”
“You’re fine, Sandy,” he told her, rubbing her back. “You’re okay. You’re sure nothing hurts?”
Her lips trembled. “Nothing hurts. I called 911 and sat with Bud ’til the ambulance came. He told me he’d just bought the truck from a private dealer and wanted to become an independent contractor.”
“Yeah?” That was a lot of information to garner from an accident victim, Hunter thought. Particularly one who’d just decimated your livelihood.
“Yeah. He doesn’t have insurance yet.” Ah. So that was why it was so important. Then another possibility occurred to him. He continued to hold her, afraid to ask the question. She answered it before he could.
* * *
“I DON’T HAVE INSURANCE, either,” she said finally.
Hunter held her away from him to look into her face. “You don’t have insurance,” he said in disbelief.
“No.”
“Sandy...”
“I know.” She couldn’t stop shaking. Every time she glanced at the semi still blocking the lane, she remembered her panicked race to the door, her leap from the stairs, her run for the grass while the deafening collision occurred behind her and pieces of things flew around her and over her head. Hunter loved her, she had her family back and her father wasn’t going to die—but maybe she was.
“Should we be watching for money in the cash register when they remove the debris?” Richardson came over to ask.
She shook her head. “I make a deposit at the bank every night, take home the cash advance for the register and bring it back with me in the morning.” She indicated the purse on her shoulder. “Fortunately, my purse was on top of the counter and I grabbed the bag when I ran.”
Hunter and Richardson went off to talk for a few minutes, then Hunter returned to her. “Okay, then.” He drew her to her feet. “Let’s get you home and we’ll figure out what to do.”
Love Me Forever Page 20