Читать книгу Runaway Bridesmaid - Karen Templeton - Страница 10

Following her would be pointless. Besides, he’d only come back to stand as best man to his brother, maybe help out his aunt with some chores around the house, run some errands. Not to let Sarah Whitehouse get to him.

The thunder became more insistent as he watched her retreat, her arms tucked against her ribs. He hoped she’d get back to the house before all hell broke loose, although that didn’t look likely, judging from the churning gunmetal clouds overhead. But, he reminded himself, she was a big girl. She wasn’t going to melt in a little rainstorm.

Oh, boy, was she a big girl.

Even as a youngster, Sarah’s long legs and quick, energetic movements had always reminded him of a beautiful colt, sleek and sassy and filled with the promise of what she would become.

A promise that had been more than fulfilled.

Dean blinked in the wind, realizing Sarah had disappeared from sight some time ago. He turned back to the house, got as far as the porch steps and sank onto the next to bottom one as if deflated.

He wished—oh, how he wished!—he’d found her short hair repulsive or odd or just plain ugly. Instead, those bourbon-colored eyes looked even more enormous framed by the soft fringes of the simple cut, which also accentuated her proud jawline, her full mouth, that adorable little chin his fingertips could still feel when he’d tilt her face to his for a kiss.

With a sigh that rivaled the moan of the wind, Dean leaned his head against the banister. This sure wasn’t the little girl who’d been his best friend. Or even the adolescent who’d tripped up his hormones, at fourteen or so. This was a woman, regal and sexy and gorgeous and brilliant and completely unaware that she was any of those things. Except maybe the brilliant part, he amended with a rueful grin.

And just think. She could have been his.

The tears came almost immediately.

Sarah assumed Dean had gone back into the house; she didn’t look back and she didn’t care whether he had or not. But if she thought storming off in a snit would bring her peace, her brain needed some major retooling. As if she could walk away from the truth! Not that she hadn’t tried—and thought she’d succeeded, actually—more than once since Dean had left. Hell, a body’ll believe anything, if you tell it the same lie long enough.

Here she’d thought she’d worked through the pain of his abandonment, his betrayal. That she’d convinced herself that whatever they’d had, no matter how intense, was still nothing more than a teenage romance. Puppy love. The inevitable flaring of a mutual hormonal surge.

Now the truth nagged at her like an obnoxious telemarketer, insisting part of her would always love Dean Parrish, no matter that she’d denied her feelings for nearly a decade.

Ever since Jennifer dropped her little bomb this afternoon, Sarah had been trying to hold back the memories, the good ones even more than the bad, intuitively realizing how tenuous her control really was. It’d been like trying to keep out a flood with a piece of plywood, but until a few minutes ago, she’d managed. Now they hammered at her brain, brutally, relentlessly, bringing with them a crying jag that bordered on hysteria.

She realized she was gasping for air as if she were literally drowning, her hands clamped to her ears—a futile gesture to staunch the barrage, and the pain that came with it. Like a drunk, she weaved toward the kennels, the wind whipping grit in her face, which would turn into hideous clay-colored tracks on her cheeks, as the memories crashed in, wave after wave, surging and flooding and briefly receding only to crest again. For a moment, she thought she might die.

For a moment, she wanted to.

What she didn’t want was to remember the laughter in Dean’s eyes, or his teasing smile. She didn’t want to remember how he’d listen to her tirades about school or her mother making her do dishes again or how Priscilla Long had made fun of her in front of the entire student council, how he’d listen and hug her and tell her it would be okay but never, ever say she was being silly. She didn’t want to remember long walks with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists, when they’d talk for hours about whatever came into their heads, about their hopes and dreams and plans. But most of all, she couldn’t bear to remember the one sweet, perfect time they’d been as intimate as two people can be.

Except his presence had smacked her in the face with the hard, now undeniable fact that, of course, she’d never really forgotten any of it.

A gust of wind knocked her off balance, making her trip over a tree root; she stumbled, regained her footing, wiped her cheek with her shirt sleeve. Had she really been that naive? To think if she refused to acknowledge the truth, it would somehow slink away like a guilty dog with its tail between its legs, never to be seen again? Or thought about again? Or admitted again?

That no one would ever find out?

Out of breath, unable to see, she fell against the trunk of the old magnolia tree at the gate to the vegetable garden, knowing she was courting disaster—she’d already seen lightning fork the slate sky ahead of her. But tears of sorrow and anger and confusion had rendered her immobile, her fomenting emotions parodying the charged atmosphere of the imminent storm.

He’d told her he’d never loved her.

“Dammit!” she cried, the word lost in a roar of thunder. She pounded the solid trunk with her fists, the bark scraping her skin. “Oh, you loved me, Dean! You did! I know that as well as I know my own name.” She clumsily wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand and said on a whimper, “I know it as well as I know you’ll never, ever get to me again, you…you doodyhead!”

Time ground to a halt while she leaned back against the huge trunk, letting its steadfastness support her, as she cried, and cried, and cried some more, until her sobs settled into shaky sighs. She rummaged in her jeans pocket with a hand stinging from self-inflicted abuse, found a mashed tissue, blew her nose. If nothing else, she had to take it as a sign that, as the tree had not been struck by lightning, she was probably meant to live. At least until after this dang wedding.

She took several deep breaths of the rain-fragrant air until she felt some semblance of normalcy return, then stuck out her chin. She’d made it this far; she’d be fine. All she had to do was stay out of Dean’s path.

And get the truth tucked safely away again where no one could find it.

After God knew how long, Dean finally forced himself off the porch steps and back into the house before he started an epidemic of eyebrow-raising. Not that it would have mattered, as it turned out: his brother and future sister-in-law were far too busy oohing and aahing over the newest batch of wedding presents, as well as each other, to have noticed his absence, and Sarah’s mother was in the kitchen, judging from the sounds of pans clanging and the familiar contralto voice belting out a dimly remembered hymn.

Only Katey was unoccupied, perched cross-legged on a window seat, her chin resting in one hand while the other hand automatically stroked a large, smug-faced Siamese cat lolled across her lap. Situated as far from the lovebirds as possible, the child stared out at the approaching storm with that long-suffering expression kids get when they’re forced to make the best of a bad situation.

Dean felt a smile tug at his lips; he’d seen that expression before, many times, on another face, an expression that usually presaged some prank or other that like as not had gotten both Sarah and him in trouble. The cat shifted, cantilevering one splayed paw out over Katey’s knee, and Dean frowned slightly, trying to remember the beast’s name. Something weird Sarah’d thought up when she got the kitten for her twelfth birthday. Which meant—good Lord!—the animal had a good fifteen years under its belt. Maybe it wasn’t the same cat.

Hands in pockets, Dean drifted over to Katey and nodded toward the empty half of the window seat. “Mind if I join you?”

The child flashed him a holey grin that would have suckered him into buying ice in January. Then she eyed the couple as if they’d suddenly developed oozing sores over most of their bodies. “Kinda makes you sick, don’t it?”

“Doesn’t it,” Dean gently corrected her as he eased himself onto the seat, then stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. He could still hear his mother declaring there was no excuse for shoddy grammar. Ever. Just pure laziness, if not contrariness, far as she was concerned, stringing words together every which way the way people did. There were times he still expected his mother’s hand to descend from heaven and whomp him one on the backside for some linguistic infraction or other.

Dean slanted Katey a smile, remembering he was in the middle of a conversation. “Yeah, I guess watching your sister and Lance drool over each other’s a little hard to take. But you know…” He reached over and scratched the cat’s chin, eliciting a blissful rumble. “They are in love, you know.”

“It’s disgustin’.”

Dean chuckled. “When you come right down to it, though, that’s what most people want.” While Katey seemed to contemplate how on earth she’d managed to be born into the human race, it suddenly came to him. “Balthasar!”

“Huh?” Katey said, her nose wrinkled under wide eyes. Her resemblance to her big sister made his heart stumble.

“Isn’t that the cat’s name?”

The little girl looked from him to the cat and back to him. “How’d you know that?”

In an instant, he realized she’d been told nothing. That she had no idea he’d known her sister before. Eventually, she’d figure it out, but right now she probably thought he’d just sprung up like a mushroom after a rainstorm. Nor was it his place to tell her any differently.

His shoulders hitched in a nonchalant shrug. “Oh…I think…Lance must’ve told me. I’d just forgotten for a moment, sugar.”

Enormous eyes shot to his, brimming with tears. “Why’d you call me that?”

The child’s sudden mood change threw him. “I…don’t know. It just kind of popped out. Does it bother you?”

One tear slipped down a soft cheek. “My daddy used to call me that.”

“Oh…” Dean hesitated, then leaned forward, his hands loosely clasped together. “You really miss him, don’t you?”

Katey nodded, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand, jutting out her chin. Sarah’s chin. “Sarah says I’ll always remember him, but—” she shook her head, straight maple-colored hair swishing softly against delicate shoulders “—but I think she’s just trying to make me feel better.” She swallowed and looked out the window again. “Every night, I imagine him sittin’ beside me on my bed and sayin’ my prayers with me, just like he used to. But I can’t hear his voice no more.” Dean saw her lip quiver, then the effort exerted to control it, and decided to let the grammatical slip pass. Then the child leaned her head to one side, considering. “Are you lonely, Dean?”

He choked on his own startled laugh. “What makes you ask that?”

“Lance said you don’t have a wife or girlfriend or nothin’. I just thought most grown-ups had somebody, ’less they were widows like Mama.”

He slowly shook his head. “Nope. Not me, honey,” he said, then stiffened, wondering if that endearment, too, would provoke a reaction. Apparently not. The child continued the conversation without missing a beat.

“You know,” she said in a low voice, “Sarah’s all alone, too.”

His heart lurched like a fish out of water. “She is, huh?”

“Uh-huh. Well, sometimes she goes to the movies with Dr. Stillman from the clinic, but they’re just friends.”

“Oh? And how do you know that?”

Katey shrugged, scowling at her sister and her fiancé. “Because they don’t look at each other like that—”

“Katharine Suzanne!” rang out from the kitchen. “What about this corn?”

Then, just like Sarah would’ve done, Katharine Suzanne shoved the disgruntled cat off her lap and took off out the front door, her waist-length hair flapping against her narrow back.

A mixing bowl in a choke-hold between one arm and her bosom, her other hand clamped around a wooden spoon, Vivian Whitehouse pushed through the swinging door and glanced around the room. Not seeing her quarry, her questioning eyes lit on Dean. He cleared his throat and nodded toward the front door, still ajar.

A sound that was half sigh, half chuckle, rumbled from Vivian’s throat. “Figures.” Then she added, “Sarah’s not here, either?”

“Uh…no, ma’am.” Why did he suddenly feel so self-conscious? Wiping the palms of his hands on his thighs, Dean said, “Last I saw her, she was headed toward the kennels.”

A pair of shrewd gray eyes bore into his. “You talked to her?”

“For a moment.”

Vivian nodded, then banged back the swinging door again, jabbed the spoon into the center of the bowl and clunked both down on a counter just inside the door. Wiping her hands on the front of her untucked shirt, she passed Dean on her way toward the front door. “I’ll be back,” she said, then thrust a no-nonsense index finger in his direction. “Then you and I are gonna talk. So don’t you dare move your backside out of this room, you hear me?”

As the front door closed behind Sarah’s mother, Dean became aware of affianced couple’s attention riveted to his face. He gave a nervous laugh in their direction, then raised his hands guiltily, staring at the space where the imposing specimen of motherhood had just been standing.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” he murmured.

The dogs had smelled Sarah before she got within fifty feet. Rich, baritone barking and excited puppy yips mingled with another roll of thunder as she approached. Five minutes, she promised herself. Just five minutes.

“Hey, y’all!” Sarah scooted into the kennel, upwards of two dozen noses nudging her calves and knees as she tried to greet them all at once. A laugh bubbled out of her tight throat as one puppy immediately latched onto her sneaker lace and gave it what-for, complete with a fierce growl designed to bring the shoe into immediate submission.

Pointing at the lowering sky, she warned, “Y’all better get inside, now. It’s fixin’ to rain any minute.” In confirmation, a bolt of lightning split the clouds, accompanied by a crack of thunder that made her jump and several of the puppies scurry toward the open door of the converted barn.

Sarah shooed the rest of the gang inside, shutting the half-door behind them, then swung open the chain link gate to one of the overlarge pens, staring into assorted sets of tiny golden brown eyes.

“I know you don’t want to, but you gotta. Come on, now.”

Like children forced to come in when they still wanted to play, the dogs reluctantly obeyed, some of them gazing back outside with what seemed to be genuine regret, as if they knew wonderful wet stuff was going to fall out of the sky any minute. Labs and water went together like biscuits and gravy. Sarah allowed a sympathetic smile.

“Sorry. I’m in no mood to clean up mud today, okay? So whaddya think? Should I go check the babies— Oh, Lordy!”

Katey jumped as much as she did.

“Shoot, baby, don’t sneak up on people like that!” Sarah lay her arm across Katey’s shoulders, as much to steady herself as out of affection. “What on earth are you doing here? Looks like the sky’s about to burst wide open.”

Katey hunched her thin shoulders in a gesture Sarah took to mean there really was no reason other than it seemed like a good idea. Or that Mama had asked her to do something, was more like it. “I just figured you were here. And…I didn’t have nothin’ to do.”

“Anything to do.” Sarah pretended sympathy. “And Mama couldn’t even find something for you to do in the kitchen…?”

“What’s wrong?” Katey asked, squinting. “Why are your eyes all red?”

Rats. Sarah cleared her throat, forced a smile. “Just got a bunch of dirt in ’em, is all. You know, from the wind?”

Which got a tell-me-another-one look from the little girl. But then the newborns eeked again, and Katey clasped both hands to her chest in supplication.

“Just for a minute,” Sarah said. Wouldn’t take much longer than that before her mother sniffed her out, anyway.

Katey skipped over to the pen where mama and pups were quarantined from the rest of the dogs, Sarah following. It was chowtime; the tiny black lumps looked more like oversize fat bugs than dogs as they jostled for position at their mother’s teats.

“This is the cutest batch we’ve ever had,” the eight-year-old solemnly declared, her fingers entwined around the chain link. Sarah hid her smile. Katey said that about every litter. Without fail. “C’n I hold one?”

“Let’s just see how Mariah feels about it, okay?” Sarah slowly opened the gate so as not to startle the mother dog, then entered the pen, settling onto the floor beside the bitch and her six pups whose birth she had witnessed just two days before. Squirming as much as the pups, Katey squatted at her right knee. “Think it’d be okay if I held one of your precious babies for a minute?” Sarah asked, then carefully picked up one of the pups and cuddled it against her chest while the mother dog rooted at her offspring’s rump, just to be sure.

Katey sighed, stroking the little furrowed head with one finger.

“Wish I’d’ve been here when the pups were born.”

“It was two in the morning, baby. And Mama dog did it all by herself. I was just here for decoration.” Sarah traded pups. “Now, sheep, on the other hand, don’t even know which end the lamb’s supposed to come out of.” She thought of last March when she and Doc helped George Plunkett and his pubescent son Joshua usher two dozen new lambs into the world, and yawned automatically. “Except they always decide to do it when it’s raining and dark.”

“Well,” Katey announced, unperturbed, “when I’m a vet, those dumb sheep will just have to have their babies when I’m on duty.”

Sarah regarded the little girl with a wry smile. Knowing Katey, she probably would get the dumb sheep to birth during office hours.

“So…still wanna be a vet?” She touched her forehead to Katey’s. “You didn’t seem real interested this morning at the clinic.”

Katey squirmed, her dark brows dipping. “Well…” Sarah could almost hear the child’s brain fast-forwarding through several dozen possible answers. Then the little face relaxed into a grin as she let a puppy sniff her fingers. “I’m just a kid. I’ve got a short attention span.”

Sarah let out a laugh, then hugged the little girl to her. No matter what, this precocious little girl never failed to make her smile. Even more than the pups. “You’ve never been ‘just’ a kid, you know that? Even when you were a baby, you always wore this funny, grown-up expression.”

“I did?”

“Uh-huh.” Sarah pretended to shudder and Katey giggled. “It was freak-y, too, having this little tiny baby look at you with this serious face all the time—”

“Sarah Louise?” The lights flickered in the kennel as her mother’s low voice, easily overriding the next wave of thunder, filled the old barn.

“In with Mariah, Mama.”

“Katey with you?”

“Yes, Mama,” Katey piped up.

Clad in her usual attire of oversize man-tailored shirt and jeans, the full-figured woman now blocked most of the light coming into the stall. Vivian never had lost the weight from the last pregnancy. Not that she seemed to care.

Vivian settled what was supposed to be a stern gaze on the little girl. “I believe there’s something you’re supposed to be doing, young lady?”

The child looked from one woman to the other, then let out an affronted sigh. “Yes, Mama,” she muttered, getting to her feet. Wiping her hands on the already filthy seat of raspberry-colored shorts, Katey unlatched the gate and let herself out of the pen, stoically allowing Vivian to plant a kiss on the top of her glimmering chestnut head as she passed. Size two sneakers ground emphatic squeaks into the smooth cement floor as the child retreated.

Vivian joined Sarah in the cage, huffing a little as she lowered her ample form to the floor, then patted Sarah’s knee. “You okay?”

Sarah cuddled the tiny dog to her chest. “The pups needed to be checked.”

That got a snort as Vivian tucked a stray hank of silver-streaked, ash-brown hair back up into a loose bun at the back of her head. “Chicken.”

“Damn straight,” Sarah shot back with an attempt at a grin, then averted her face when her mother tried to look her in the eye.

“You’ve been crying.”

“What gave you your first clue?”

“Puffy eyes, blotchy face, swollen lips—take your pick.”

With a huge sigh, Sarah said, “I saw him.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Sarah leaned her head back against the whitewashed partition of the pen with a soft thud. “Could you just tell everyone I tripped and drowned in a mud puddle or something?”

Vivian grunted in what Sarah assumed was sympathy. “Now, baby, you knew he’d come back some day.” A beat. “And you knew what that meant.”

Sarah pulled her head forward, concentrating on the writhing mass of pups in front of them. “I just thought for some reason I’d have a little more time to prepare myself.”

“Hah! Bad news never seems to be terribly interested in giving much warning.” Vivian shifted her weight with a soft wince. “What’re you going to do?”

With a sigh, Sarah leaned her head back again and shut her eyes, the puppy snuffling the hollow of her throat with whiskers soft as the inside of a daisy. “Kinda liked the mud puddle idea, myself.”

“You could tell him.”

Sarah opened one eye and tilted her head just far enough to see the side of her mother’s face, sternly refusing to allow one more emotion into her already overcrowded brain. That didn’t stop her face from flushing, however. “Tell him what, exactly?”

The puppies’ mewling filled the silence as Vivian seemed to consider her answer. “You still being sweet on him might be a good place to start.”

The two women regarded each other for a moment, then Sarah looked away. “And what makes you think that?”

“I’m psychic.”

Sarah swallowed past the knot of anger in her throat, then said quietly, “Dean Parrish chewed up my heart and spit it out in little pieces all over Lee County.” Frowning, she shut her eyes and rocked her head from side to side against the wall. “I don’t deserve that.”

“That’s right.”

Sarah’s mouth pulled into a straight line as her voice dropped an octave. “And he sure as hell doesn’t deserve me.” She let out a long sigh. “You were right, you know. Back then. About our not being suited for the long haul.”

Vivian picked something off her jeans. “Maybe…he’s changed.”

“Yeah, and maybe Auburn’ll get a major league football franchise next year.” Sarah shook her head, finally opening her eyes, regarding nothing in particular. “You didn’t see the look on his face, the night he broke up with me.” She carefully placed the pup back with its siblings.

They sat in silence again for a full minute, Sarah fully aware if her mother touched her she’d start bawling all over again. Except what she did was far worse. “The question is, what did you see in his face today?”

Sarah turned away, determined to hold it together, determined not to be the pawn in whatever game her mother now seemed so determined to play.

“Honey, all you can do is take this one step at a time—”

“What’s done is done, Mama,” she said sharply. “There’s no going back.”

After a long moment, Vivian gently bumped shoulders with her daughter. A conciliatory gesture, Sarah figured. “How you handle this is up to you,” she said softly. “And it’s just one week. Dinner tonight, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding. That’s all. Think you can manage that?”

Just one week. Right. With a toss of her head, Sarah said on an exhaled breath, “Doesn’t look like I’ve got a whole lot of choice in the matter, does it?” She stood, then held out a hand to help up her mother, the one person who, no matter what, had been there for her, had helped her through the most painful period of her life. And who, Sarah knew, felt more than bad about her part in creating the situation now facing all of them.

“There are always choices,” Vivian said with a grunt as she struggled to her feet. No longer taller than her daughter, her eyes met Sarah’s dead on. “Always.” She shrugged and draped an arm around Sarah’s shoulder as a teeth-rattling thunderclap ripped open the clouds at last, letting loose a barrage of stone-hard raindrops onto the tin roof overhead.

“Like now,” her mother shouted as they stood at the barn door watching the deluge quickly turn the yard into a river of slimy orange mud. “Do we stay and wait it out, or make a run for it?”

“Oh, come on, Mama,” Sarah challenged with a wicked grin. “I’ve never known you to wait anything out.” She dashed into the driving rain, calling over her shoulder, “Last one to the house cleans dog poop for a week!”

Not surprisingly, Sarah lost the bet. It always astounded her how quickly her mother could move, despite her generous proportions. In any case, they were both drenched by the time they made it to the house and up the steps. Flushed with exertion and laughing too hard to breathe, they wriggled out of sneakers that looked dipped in pumpkin pie filling, dumping them by the back door before stumbling over each other to see who got to the kitchen first.

“Oh, yuck!” Jennifer waved a half-peeled cucumber in front of her as if to ward off evil spirits. “You two are gross!”

Dripping all over the kitchen floor, Sarah grabbed a kitchen towel to wipe off her face. Still laughing, she threw a broad wink at Katey, giggling and half hidden behind a mountain of corn at the kitchen table, then directed her attention to the flinching Jennifer. “Would somebody please tell me how Vivian and Eli Whitehouse managed to produce such a priss? It’s just water, Jen—see?” She shook her head like a dog, sending a spray halfway across the room, cackling in glee as her sister squealed and nearly tripped over herself trying to back away.

“Mama! Make her stop!”

Vivian, her own hair hanging like tangled vines around her face, shifted her eyes to her oldest daughter, her mouth twitching. “Sarah Louise, stop torturing your sister.”

“Yes, Mama,” Sarah said, tucking her hands behind her back and shuffling one bare foot back and forth over the puddled floor. Then she went after Jennifer with a war whoop and the wet towel, sending her shrieking out the kitchen door.

And sending Sarah straight into Dean’s chest, which, along with the rest of him, happened to pick that moment to come out to the kitchen.

She felt strong, rough hands close firmly around her upper arms, her chest and hips meld into his as he steadied her to keep from being knocked over. For more seconds than she wanted to know, his breath, sweet and warm, fanned over her still damp face, making her shiver. Her nipples pebbled, instantly and just this side of painfully. She froze, not sure whether it was her heartbeat or his she felt pounding against her skin.

“Well, now…” One side of his mouth hitched up around a low drawl that was affected and deliberately irritating and made her bare toes curl against the cool lacquered floor. “I see you’re just as clumsy as you always were. Nice to see not everything’s changed about you, Sarah Louise.”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought he drew her just a little closer, close enough that she knew with certain dread that two layers of limp, thin, wet fabric were no barrier to his being able to feel her taut nipples against his chest. The half-grin grew downright insouciant. Lightning flickered eerily across his taut features as he said in a voice too soft for anyone else to hear, “But then again, it would appear that some things have improved considerably.”

It would appear the man had a death wish.

Panicked eyes locked with his, a little cry of alarm escaped parted lips…and, exquisitely timed with the next roar of thunder, two surprisingly strong fists crashed down with unerring aim on either side of his collarbone.

The cups in the glass-fronted cupboard rattled like maracas as Dean let go of Sarah with a grunt, then watched as she streaked past him and out the kitchen door. Rubbing one wounded shoulder, he heard her footsteps pound down the hall, up the stairs and down the upstairs hallway to her room, ending with a door slam that rattled the cups in the cupboard all over again.

Whoo-ee—she sure as hell was stronger than she used to be.

Still coddling his shoulder, he leaned against the open swinging door, half in, half out of the kitchen, and shut his eyes for a moment. She’d left more than a set of bruises behind. Her scent, damp and natural, lingered in his nostrils. And the effects of her body pressed against his still lingered below his waist. Although, lingering wasn’t perhaps the most accurate description….

“Well, just don’t stand there like a lump, boy. Get your butt in here.”

With a slight start, Dean shifted his attention to Sarah’s mother, who was toweling off her hair, having already changed into dry jeans and another loose shirt. Dean couldn’t remember ever seeing the statuesque woman in anything fitted, even when he was a kid.

But when would she have changed clothes? His brow wrinkled as he obeyed, letting the door swing to a close behind him. Vivian apparently picked up on his confusion, answering with a loud laugh.

“Laundry day. Seemed to make more sense to pull dry things out of the basket right here than tramp all the way upstairs. Besides, gives me two less things to put away, right?” She tossed the damp towel out into the laundry room, then haphazardly braided her long hair in a single plait at the nape of her neck as tangential strands curled around her broad face. “So tell me…” Yanking open a small drawer next to the sink, she poked around in the jumbled contents until she found a rubber band, with which she tidily finished off the braid. “How’s life in Atlanta?” She settled back on a stool, crossed her arms. “Must make this place look dull as Luke Hanover’s old bloodhound.”

“Sometimes, dull is good,” Dean admitted, not missing the merest hint of a hitched eyebrow. He decided to let Sarah’s mother come to her own conclusions, which she undoubtedly would.

Vivian simply studied him for a long moment, a half smile lifting her full, round cheeks, those gray eyes searing right into his brain. Other than that, she had no reaction. Whatsoever.

Dean leaned back against the counter, his hands gripping the edge. Woman was making him nervous as a cat watching a frog. This prodigal son business was not what he’d expected. Sarah’s mother could just as well run him out of her house with a shotgun at his backside for leaving her daughter like that. Considering Sarah’s devastated expression when she’d fled his room that day, it was a miracle he was still in one piece. That Vivian Whitehouse was actually being friendly was an even bigger miracle.

If not downright weird.

After a few seconds, the smile blossomed. “Still know your way around a bag of briquettes, boy?”

“Excuse me?”

“That no-count brother of yours can’t barbecue worth beans. But I seem to recall your daddy and you used to cook up a storm.”

The knot in his stomach began to ease a little. “Yes, ma’am, I guess so. But…well, I don’t mean to be rude, but…speaking of storms?”

“Shoot…this’ll be over before Katey’s finished shucking the corn. Grab a Coke out of the fridge and take a load off. I’ll be right back.”

Katey sat at the kitchen table in front of a pile of corn large enough to feed the whole county, shucking it so slowly there was no doubt Vivian was right. The child offered him a doleful expression and a put-upon sigh and tugged off another handful of husk.

Dean nodded toward the corn, his brow creased in sympathy. “Think your Mama would mind if I helped?”

“Yes, I would” came the stentorian voice from the pantry. “That’s her job. You just let her be.”

Katey screwed up one side of her mouth. “Thanks, anyway.”

“Sorry, honey,” he said, briefly touching her shoulder. “I tried.”

He pulled a Coke out of the refrigerator and popped the top, surveying the enormous kitchen appreciatively, a room that had always represented love and warmth and security when he was growing up. Even as the angry storm slashed against the windows, this room was bright, inviting, safe. He sagged against the counter and took a swig of the soda, only half listening as Vivian chattered to him from the other side of the door.

The all-white room hadn’t changed much since he’d last seen it. The same handpainted porcelain plates marched across the soffit over the light oak cabinets his father had put in—as well as the butcherblock countertops—when the Whitehouses had first bought the old place almost twenty-five years ago. He’d only been five at the time, but he still remembered coming over and “helping,” and how Vivian had fussed and clucked over him and fed him enormous chunks of hot corn-bread dripping with butter or still-warm peanut butter cookies or that last piece of chocolate cake that “was just going to go stale if someone didn’t eat it real soon,” all of which were courtesy of the enormous converted cast-iron stove, which still took up a good chunk of one wall like a giant sleeping bull.

His focus shifted toward the sink, where he could almost see a teenaged Sarah, like a hologram or something, standing with her hand on her slim waist and a teasing smile on her lips, her long hair rippling like a waterfall over her shoulders as she’d throw him a towel to dry so they could go riding their bikes up to the lake before it got dark.

He swallowed hard, then his eyes wandered back to the pine table where Katey sat at her task, her tongue stuck out in concentration. The table had also been his daddy’s handiwork, and he noted underneath the growing pile of husks it was still adorned with familiar handmade rag placemats and a pot of fresh flowers in the center. He thought of all the dinners and all the jokes and all the laughter he’d shared at that table. And how much he’d missed all that.

And how, if he hadn’t panicked, believing other people knew more than he did, maybe he wouldn’t’ve had to.

He realized his eyes were moist, about the same time he caught Vivian standing in the pantry door, a bag of briquettes in her arms. Conspiracy lighting up her dove-colored eyes, she walked heavily across the old wood floor and shoved the bag into his arms.

“You have one week,” she said in a low voice. So the child wouldn’t hear, he presumed.

“I don’t…” He frowned. “Huh?”

Vivian sighed, then leveled him with a piercing look that could have converted rocks into diamonds. “To win her back, you fool.”

This time he did jump, just as if the frog had sprung into his face. But her earnest expression stilled him immediately. Worried him, too.

“Look, mistakes get made,” she said in a low voice. “And you can either learn from them and try to fix them, or you can give up and be miserable for the rest of your life. So…there’s your choice. Don’t screw it up.”

Before Dean could protest that he seriously doubted whether winning back Sarah’s affections—even if he’d wanted to—was either reasonable, possible, or the best choice for anyone concerned, the kitchen door swung open and the lady herself appeared. She’d showcased those long legs in a pair of white shorts, topped by a blousy white cotton shirt with the top two buttons left intriguingly undone. Whiskey eyes flashed from her mother to Dean and back again as she stood with one hand on the side of the door, the other on her hip.

Leading Dean to wonder exactly how long she’d been standing on the other side of the door.