Читать книгу The Wedding Gift - Sandra Steffen, Sandra Steffen - Страница 9

Riley Merrick was standing three feet away.

Madeline was certain her feet were planted firmly on the ground, and yet she felt as if she were drawing closer to him. Heat emanated from him, making her yearn to burrow into his warmth, her ear pressed to his chest. The rumble of the bulldozer’s engine and the sharp pounding of heavy hammers receded until the only sound she heard was the chiming of something sweet and delicate sprinkling into the empty spaces inside her.

“Well? Did my mother hire you or didn’t she?” She blinked. And sound returned in a raucous, roaring cacophony of pitch and volume. “Your mother?” she finally asked.

He scowled. “Knowing my mother, she probably told you to lie about your association with her.”

“I’m a terrible liar,” she said dazedly.

He finally released the stethoscope. “Keep that away from me. Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Madeline Sullivan. As I told you before, I’m a nurse, but—”

“So my mother sent you to play nursemaid. That’s so typical. No doubt she expects you to check my pulse and report back to her.”

Since she still didn’t know what his mother had to do with her, she said, “I think we should keep your mother out of this.”

“At least we agree on one thing.”

“Do we also agree that walking on narrow beams fifty feet off the ground is a risk you have no business taking?” Why was she so breathless?

Angry, he was having trouble breathing, too. His next attempt made his nostrils flare as he said, “I was wearing my safety harness.”

Eyeing the harness dangling from the end of a yellow rope, his hard hat upside down on the plywood floor directly beneath it, she shook her head. He could have broken his neck. He could have died, and it all would have been for nothing.

“It can take a long time for ribs to heal completely after a surgery like yours,” she said gently. “Especially with the medications you’re on. You are taking your medicine, aren’t you?”

His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered as he said, “You’re fired, Madeline.”

Her head jerked up. “You can’t fire me.”

“I just did.”

She had to force her gaping mouth closed. Now that she wasn’t simply absorbing the essence of him, she had the presence of mind to take a good look at the man whose name had crept into her thoughts so often these past eighteen months.

She’d expected his face to be swollen, his jowls sagging, his skin sallow. Instead he was lean and rugged and tan. A muscle moved in his jaw and there was a trace of something not easily identified in his brown eyes. Was it dread? Regret? Or was it a haunting sorrow?

Cursed with a soft spot for anyone suffering or struggling in any way, she laid a hand on his arm and said, “What you’re feeling is perfectly natural.”

He drew his arm out of her grasp. “You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling. You have to leave. This is private property and you’re trespassing. Tell my mother—never mind. I’ll tell her myself.” With that, he walked away.

She watched as he conferred with a burly man who’d just climbed off the earthmover. The other man glanced at her, putting her in mind of a St. Bernard—big, yes, hairy, certainly, loyal, obviously, but not very fierce. Deciding to spare him the discomfort of having to escort her to her car, and spare herself the discomfort, as well, she left of her own accord. She surprised herself when she slammed her foot on the accelerator, but she had to admit the sound of sand spraying behind her spinning tires brought her a certain satisfaction.

No sense letting Riley Merrick have the last word.

“Uh-huh,” she said absently into the phone as she reached ahead to wipe fog off her windshield. The hills on either side of the county road were dotted with cherry trees, the branches flexed in anticipation of that elusive signal from Mother Nature to burst into blossom. Madeline understood their wistful impatience.

“Was Riley anything like you expected?” Summer asked.

Hunkering down in her seat, she wrapped her jacket more tightly around her to ward off the damp chill while she considered the question. There was a rawness about Riley Merrick, a burning sensuality that had caught her completely off guard. Deciding to keep that perception to herself for now, she said, “He’s fit, healthy and stubborn, and he looks like his photo.”

“Are you coming home now?” Summer asked.

Madeline had been sitting along the side of the road for the past forty minutes, thinking about her options. Glancing at the keys dangling uselessly in the ignition, she said, “That would be problematic.”

“Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

“What you don’t know the boys can’t badger out of you.” She jolted when a knock sounded on the window. Clearing a spot on the foggy glass, she saw a woman in coveralls hunkered down, looking in.

“Did you just gasp?” Summer asked.

Madeline rubbed the tender spot on her forehead where she’d smacked it on the window and nodded at the woman who’d startled her. To Summer, she said, “How do you suppose a two-ton tow truck sneaked up on me?”

“You called a tow truck?” Summer asked.

Gesturing to the driver that she’d be with her in a moment, Madeline said, “My car started wheezing as I left the construction site. I managed to coax it a mile before it lunged to the side of the road and surrendered. It’s what I get for having the last word.”

“I’m not even going to try to make sense of that.”

She could picture Summer pacing from the front desk of the inn to the French doors with the view of the back garden, always on the lookout, for what Madeline didn’t like to imagine. “They told me they were sending out someone named Red. I wasn’t expecting a woman. I have to go.”

“You’ll call me if you need me?” Summer asked.

“You know I will.” With that, she dropped her phone into her bag, unlocked her door and got out.

“Are you Madeline Sullivan?” the other woman asked.

Madeline nodded. “You’re Red?”

“It’s Ruby, actually. Red is my dad.” She touched a ringlet that had escaped the confinement of her ball cap. “Runs in the family.”

There was a feeling Madeline had when she was exactly where she was supposed to be at the precise moment she was supposed to be there. Some called it an “ah” moment. She called it knowing. She’d described it once to Summer as a shimmering energy that resembled light and felt like warmth. She’d experienced it the day Summer had driven into Orchard Hill six years ago, the day Aaron Andrews took the vacant desk next to her in the fifth grade, and fleetingly when she’d first encountered Riley Merrick today. It was happening again right now.

“Do I have grease on my face?” Ruby asked.

Madeline chided herself for staring. “Goodness, no. I was just thinking how much your name suits you. You’re gorgeous. How tall are you?”

“Five-eleven.” Ruby opened the door and put the car in Neutral. “And a quarter,” she added quietly.

Ruby may have been shy about her exotic beauty, but Madeline soon discovered she wasn’t shy about anything else. She talked while she hooked the cable to the front axle, while she started the winch and while she pointed them toward town.

Listening, Madeline learned what it had been like growing up in Gale, a small town twenty miles west of Traverse City, and how Ruby had decided early on that the family business wasn’t for her. Ruby had reached the point in her life story where she’d graduated from the University of Chicago when Madeline noticed the silver car in the side mirror.

“I took a job with a prestigious marketing firm in L.A.,” Ruby said. “After spending three years going stark raving mad in a tiny cubicle that for all intents and purposes might as well have been a chicken crate on an egg-laying assembly line, I chucked it all and returned to the roots I’d spurned. You’re sure I don’t have grease on my face?”

This time Madeline smiled. “I’m positive.”

At the city limit sign, Ruby said, “I’ve done all the talking.”

Now the silver car in the mirror was close enough to discern the make and year, close enough to see Riley Merrick behind the wheel.

“I don’t mind,” Madeline said. “Really. My fiancé once told me I have a face everyone talks to.”

She didn’t miss Ruby’s quick glance at her bare ring finger. “Does your fiancé drive a silver Porsche?” “No.”

Now they were both keeping an eye on the car in the mirror.

“But you know somebody who does.” At Madeline’s nod, Ruby added, “A friend then?”

“Not exactly,” Madeline said as the wrecker crawled through a pothole on its way into the garage’s driveway. “He just threw me off some property and accused me of trespassing.”

Along with the gift of gab and legs long enough to give Heidi Klum a run for her money, Ruby O’Toole possessed the rare and uncanny ability to move her eyebrows independently of each other. She demonstrated before saying, “I should have let you do the talking.”

Madeline looked out the side window to see if Riley would follow her into the parking lot. Ruby leaned ahead to peer around her.

Together, they saw him stop at the curb. He lowered his window and stared at Madeline. Yearning swelled inside her, making it difficult to breathe and impossible to tear her gaze away. She wondered how long she would have sat there if he hadn’t broken eye contact. Probably as long as it was going to take the beating rhythm of her heart to return to normal.

“Something tells me you haven’t seen the last of him,” Ruby said quietly after he’d disappeared around the corner at the end of the block.

She was still making up her mind about that.

Madeline left Red’s Garage an hour later with a preliminary quote for the repair of her car, simple walking directions to the Gale Motel six blocks away, and more O’Toole family history—red hair wasn’t the only thing that ran in that family. She set off at a fast clip, her tote over one shoulder, her purse over the other, her wheeled suitcase bumping along behind her.

Red O’Toole had cautioned her to keep an eye on the sky. She was more concerned about the Land Rover that was following her. She stepped up her pace and reached into her purse for her cell phone.

“You don’t need to call 911,” a man with shaggy blond hair said, rather sharply in her opinion, as he pulled up beside her. “Riley sent me.”

She tried to recall where she’d seen him. “Why would he do that?” she asked as she considered flagging down the car approaching from the opposite direction.

“You’ll have to ask him.”

The approaching car passed while she was foolishly still deciding. Great. Now it was just her and this stranger and her cell phone.

The houses in this part of town sat close together. Their graying porches and brown lawns looked forlorn despite the daffodils blooming along their foundations. Not a single curtain moved, which meant there would be no witnesses. She could practically hear their grumbles if her brothers had to drive all the way up here to identify her body. That lovely thought finally brought her to her senses.

Again, the man spoke before she completed the 911 call. “Riley told me your car broke down and that you could use a ride.”

“Like I said,” she repeated, “why would Riley do that?”

“Like I said, you’ll have to ask him.” The guy wasn’t going to win any awards for charm. For some reason that made her feel less threatened.

“My name’s Kipp Dawson. I’m six-one and go a buck seventy soaking wet. See for yourself.” He fumbled through the glove box then held his license toward her. When she failed to move closer, he tossed it to her, wallet and all.

She read his ID while keeping an eye on her surroundings. “What are you doing here, Mr. Dawson?”

“I’m giving you a ride. Unless there’s somebody else who can come and get you.”

“I have three older brothers. Three protective older brothers. Accomplished hunters, all of them.”

“If you were going to call them, you would have by now.”

In other words, she’d wasted her breath on the implied threat.

“Riley has two brothers,” he said as if it had relevance to this conversation. “Half brothers, technically, one older, one younger. Pains in the ass, both of them. They come through for him when it counts, though.”

A fat raindrop landed on her forehead while she was wondering why this stranger was sharing Riley’s personal information with her. Within seconds the sky opened up, just as Red O’Toole had predicted.

Kipp got out of his vehicle and wrestled her suitcase from her. After tossing it into the back of his aging Land Rover, he said, “Riley has friends, too, who have his back. We’re worried about him.”

She stood ten feet away in the pouring rain, uncertain what to do about Kipp Dawson and his offer.

“Riley thinks his mother sent you,” he said, getting soaked, too. “I talked to Chloe a few minutes ago. She didn’t mention you.”

Madeline could have blurted the truth, but if she told anyone the reason she was here, it had to be Riley. And she had no right to tell him unless he asked. What had she gotten herself into?

“Maybe having a nurse around isn’t such a bad idea,” Kipp said.

“Are you saying you think he needs a nurse?” she asked.

“I’m not saying anything. I’m just offering you a ride to the motel because Riley asked me to. Do you want it or don’t you?”

Kipp Dawson looked as rough and unkempt as his dented old Land Rover. He was probably right about weighing one-seventy. Men didn’t often lie about their weight. His hair appeared darker now that it was wet and his whisker stubble was too straggly to be a fashion statement. Beneath his exterior was a vein of something earnest.

That didn’t make him her friend.

She tossed his wallet back to him and continued on her way. Walking faster now that she wasn’t weighted down by her cumbersome suitcase, she heard him swear and close his door. Then he was following her again in his car.

The little motel was exactly where Ruby had said it would be. Kipp parked under the portico beneath a lighted vacancy sign that was missing the C, then hauled her bulky suitcase out of the backseat. After setting it heavily on the pavement next to her, he got back in the driver’s seat without uttering a word.

For some reason she felt compelled to say, “Riley made it clear he doesn’t need a nursemaid, as he put it.”

Kipp lit a cigarette before replying. “Riley doesn’t talk about what he needs. You ask me, a good roll between the sheets with a pretty nurse might be just what the doctor ordered.”

Madeline was left staring at his taillights as he drove away, wondering how many more times she would have to consciously close her gaping mouth today.

Sully’s Pub began its existence as a boarding-house for lumberjacks in the mid-1800s. The ax and saw marks on the rough-hewn beams over the bar were as evident today as they were in the black-and-white photograph that immortalized Ernest Hemingway having a beer here in 1948. The waitress was a brown-eyed young woman named Sissy. She wore her dark hair short and her T-shirt tight, the words Yale is for thinkers—Gale is for drinkers stretched across her chest. According to her, the fine folks of Gale have been hoping to lure someone famous to town ever since. Other celebrities had reportedly purchased property in the area, but if they drank, it wasn’t at Sully’s.

Madeline hadn’t come to Sully’s to meet anybody famous. She came because she was starving and the desk clerk at the motel said it was the only place within walking distance that served food this late during the off-season.

The bar was surprisingly crowded on this Friday evening in April. It had a simple menu, small tables, mismatched chairs, paneled walls and one pool table in the back where Madeline and Ruby were losing to a petite brunette named Amanda and her clean-cut accountant boyfriend, Todd.

“You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you?” Ruby sputtered to Amanda after scratching on an easy shot.

Amanda didn’t let the fact that she was nearly a head shorter than Ruby intimidate her. Crossing her arms stubbornly, she said, “You’ve been my best friend my entire life and I’m not attending our ten-year high school reunion without you.”

Without her ball cap to subdue it, Ruby’s wavy red hair fell halfway down her back. Even in flat shoes, her legs looked a mile long. In fact, everything about her was long—her eyelashes, her silences, her sigh before she said, “Pete’s going to be there.” “So?” Amanda asked.

“Pete,” Ruby said with obvious disdain. “You know. Peter. As in Cheater Peter?”

“You guys finished here?” somebody asked.

After relinquishing the pool table to a group celebrating a twenty-first birthday, Todd said, “Just take a date.”

As if it was that easy. “Ugh,” was all Ruby said.

Obviously accustomed to these conversations, Todd excused himself and ambled over to talk to someone on the other side of the room. Now that it was just women, Amanda explained Ruby’s dilemma to Madeline.

“Sure she could ask Jason Horning, but he’s practically eye-level with the girls here.” She gestured in the vicinity of Ruby’s chest. “And Ruby’s always had a thing about short men. I mean, a thing. A few years ago, a man escaped from the Benzie County Jail. Every hardware store within fifty miles sold out of dead bolts and buckshot the first day. And do you know what Little Red Riding Hood here said? ‘I wonder if he’s tall.'”

Even Ruby smiled at the memory, until she said, “Buckshot. Now, there’s an idea.”

Madeline was so intrigued she didn’t notice Sissy’s approach until she’d plunked a beer down next to Madeline’s right hand. “It’s from that sulking Adonis at the bar.”

The celebration at the pool table was getting rowdier and the pub more crowded, and yet Madeline found Riley Merrick as if she had a radar lock on him. He’d exchanged his khakis and brown bomber for jeans and a crisp cotton shirt, and sat on a stool facing the mirror behind the bar, his back to her.

“Mr. Porsche, I presume?” Ruby said.

Sissy practically swooned. “He first came in about a year ago. Every month or so he returns. He orders a beer at the bar, talks to whoever happens to be sitting next to him, then leaves. I’ve seen him propositioned, but I haven’t seen him take a woman up on it. The guy couldn’t be sexier if he tried. I’m telling you, when a man like that buys a girl a drink, he’s either apologizing or interested.”

“Which is he?” Amanda asked, scooting her chair closer.

“Maybe both,” Ruby said. “He accused Madeline of trespassing and practically threw her off some property earlier.”

Ruby, Amanda and Sissy were brimming with curiosity.

“He looks tall,” Amanda said. “If you don’t go talk to him, Ruby here will.”

“Would you stop with the height references already?” Ruby sputtered.

Madeline laughed out loud, and it surprised her. She wanted to grasp these young women’s hands and thank them for failing to soften their voices around her. They didn’t handle her with kid gloves. Of course, they didn’t know her history. That anonymity felt breathtakingly liberating. “Would you excuse me?” she asked, surging to her feet.

She’d changed into boots with heels, snug jeans and a black knit shirt. Several people watched her as she made her way to the bar, but she kept her gaze trained on the man watching in the mirror.

“What are you doing here?” she asked after she’d taken the stool next to Riley.

“I thought it was obvious. I bought you a drink.”

Oddly, that gruff tone was as refreshing as Ruby’s, Amanda’s and Sissy’s curiosity had been. Eyeing the drop of condensation trailing down her bottle, she said, “I don’t drink.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

In the mirror she saw Todd slip his arm around Amanda’s shoulder. It was such a pure and simple gesture of intimacy it sent an ache to her chest. “I just lost a game of eight ball and it wasn’t pretty.”

“Losing never is.”

Riley was a study in contrasts. He was a risk-taker who didn’t like to lose, a wealthy business owner who worked alongside his crew. Practically every guy in the bar had at least a few days’ whisker stubble on his face. Riley was clean shaven. His shirt had a designer logo; the beer bottle held loosely in his right hand didn’t.

“You shouldn’t be drinking,” she said.

“You even sound like my mother. I hope she paid you in advance.”

Riley seemed accustomed to interference from his mother. It might have annoyed him, but Madeline got the distinct impression it didn’t intimidate him. “I told you,” she said. “She didn’t pay me anything. Are you this distrusting of everyone in the medical field?”

She noticed an easing in his expression and a warming in his eyes, and it occurred to her that he was enjoying himself. Some men puffed up their chests or swaggered in order to be noticed. Riley’s self-confidence was more subtle.

Someone jostled her from behind and a loud whooping sounded from the group at the pool table. Three middle-aged men yelled at the ref on a television mounted on the wall, drinks were plunked down, a blender started. Sitting in this bar in this town of strangers, her elbows on the marred countertop, the heel of one boot hooked over the rung of her stool, she felt a weight lifting.

“I met a friend of yours today,” she said. “Kipp Dawson could use some training in social graces.”

“I’ll let you tell him.”

She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure he threatened me.”

“Kipp threatens everyone.”

She found herself staring at Riley’s mouth. It was broad, the lower lip just full enough to entice a second look. “He told me he has your back.”

“What else did he say?” he asked.

“I won’t repeat it verbatim, but he was very poetic.”

He leaned closer, as if to tell her a secret. “The only time Kipp waxes poetic is when he’s referring to sex.”

Was he flirting with her? Her heart fluttered wildly at the thought. “Just so there’s no confusion,” she said, her beer a few inches from her mouth. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

“Madeline?”

They were nearly shoulder to shoulder now, their bottles raised, gazes locked. “Yes?”

“I didn’t ask you to.” He took his time taking a long drink, set his beer back on the bar, then added, “But I was thinking about it.”

Her beer remained suspended in midair. Her mind remained blank. With two fingers placed gently beneath her chin, Riley closed her mouth for her.

“Once more,” she whispered, her heart hammering in her chest, her gaze still on his.

“Pardon me?”

“That’s my answer.”

“What was the question?” he asked.

“How many more times will my mouth go slack today?”

He didn’t quite smile, but she thought he wanted to. Feeling a curious swooping pull in the pit of her stomach, she raised her beer to her lips and drank it down.