Читать книгу Her Sister's Fiancé - Teresa Hill, Teresa Hill - Страница 7

Kathie’s younger sister, Kim, threw open the door and squealed when she got home from a late day at school and saw Kathie standing there. The next thing Kathie knew, they were in each other’s arms. Kim was practically bouncing with joy and squeezing her so tight.

Kathie was so relieved she nearly cried right then and there.

“I can’t believe it!” Kim said over and over again. “I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

Then Kim was almost crying, too.

“Really. Not ever. The longer you stayed away, the more worried I got. I didn’t think we’d all ever be together again, and I couldn’t stand that idea. I just couldn’t stand it!”

“I know,” Kathie said, her bottom lip trembling.

It had been the worst thing. The absolute worst, right after thinking they all must hate her for what she’d done to her beloved older sister. Thinking that they’d never be a family again, the way they always had been. That she’d be completely cut off from them, and that it was something she deserved…it had been horrible.

She feared she still deserved it, but couldn’t help but think it was so incredibly wonderful to be home, no matter what the circumstances.

“So, it’s all over, right?” Kim asked, nearly begging. “You’re back. To stay. Right?”

“I don’t know,” Kathie said, watching her sister’s face fall into disbelief.

She hadn’t thought about this—about how hard it would be on Kim to have her back and think everything would go back to normal, when all Kathie was doing was trying to fix the mess she’d made as best she could and then disappear again.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? This town is your home. This is where you belong!”

“I know. I just…I’ve never really lived anywhere else, except when I was at college,” Kathie tried. She’d never been the adventurous sort. She was the quiet one. Jax was the charmer. Kate, the smart one, and Kim the beauty. Kathie was the mouse. All she’d ever wanted was to feel safe, right here in Magnolia Falls, in the midst of her loving family, but she had to say something to try to explain herself. “I mean, there’s a whole world out there. You know that. You love to travel. There might be all sorts of places I’d love to live.”

Kim looked unconvinced. She looked hurt, and maybe even mad. Kim who was never mad at her.

“I have to try, you know?”

“No. I don’t know,” Kim complained. “Don’t you love us anymore? Don’t you miss us?”

“Of course, I do.”

“You’re supposed to be getting over everything,” Kim argued. “So that everything can get back to normal.”

“I want that,” Kathie insisted.

Oh, God, she wanted it.

She just didn’t think it was possible.

“It was awful when you left,” her sister said, sitting down on the sofa. “Terrible. It was the worst thing. Mom was gone, and then you were gone, and I just kept thinking, who’s going to disappear next? For months, everybody else kept saying you were bound to come home soon, that you wouldn’t be able to stay away. Not me. I kept thinking, who’s going to leave next?”

“Oh, Kimmie. I’m so sorry!”

One more thing to add to her list of sins against her family.

She took her sister into her arms and held on tight.

Kimmie had been a baby when their father died. She had no memories of him at all, just pictures and the stories they all told her about him. And she’d still been in college when their mother died. Because she was so young, Kathie and her brother and sister had tried harder for Kim than anyone else to make sure she felt safe and secure, a part of a strong, loving family.

But Kathie had just left, not even thinking of how her younger sister would feel about it. Kathie had thought she was trying to save the rest of them by leaving. But Kim just saw it as losing one more person in an ever-dwindling family circle.

Kathie had done even more damage than she thought.

Kim hardly spoke to her the rest of the night. She went to bed early, got up early and left. The school year still wasn’t over in Magnolia Falls, and Kim taught art at the elementary school.

Kathie hid in their apartment for three solid hours, then had to call herself all forms of the word coward just to get herself to go outside and risk seeing anyone she knew.

It was spring in Magnolia Falls, warm and sunny, very, very green, everything smelling fresh and new.

If only Kathie could have started all over again, just wound back the clock, what would she do?

Never fall for Joe. Never have some silly, schoolgirl crush in the first place or have it and get over it, completely, ages ago, like other girls did, so that no one would ever be hurt or ever have to know.

But she couldn’t do that.

Which meant she had to do the next best thing.

She had to fix this as best she could. Make people see that it wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t her sister’s. Move on with the plan, and then get away from here again, even if it killed her this time.

She’d taken the time to fix her hair, put on a bit of makeup and dress in her favorite jeans and a bright yellow top, trying to look as good as she could and not have anyone guess how terrible she felt, how scared, how ashamed, how sad.

She was going to march into the center of town, into the bank where Joe worked and go to lunch with him, in full sight of everyone there, on the street and in the Corner Café, a hotbed of gossip dead-center in town.

Time to get moving with the Joe-didn’t-dump-Kathie-and-Joe-isn’t-the-bad-guy plan.

Which meant she had to look happy to see him, and he had to look happy to see her. Kathie was afraid that might be a problem, so she pulled out her cell phone and called the bank, asking for him.

“May I say who’s calling?” the receptionist asked politely.

Kathie was pretty sure it was Stacy Morganstern, who used to be on the same peewee football cheerleading squad as Kim.

“Stacy? It’s Kathie.”

Stacy gasped. “Kathie Cassidy?”

“Yes.”

“You’re back in town? I hadn’t heard!”

“Just got in last night,” Kathie said. “How are you?”

“Well…fine. Just fine. How are you?”

“Great.”

“Where have you been? Everyone was so worried, and then no one knew, and—”

“Teaching. I was teaching. A temporary position in North Carolina, but it’s over now. Joe brought me home yesterday.”

“Joe?” Stacy gasped once more.

“Yes. He drove up and helped me move.” Not entirely untrue. He’d carried her suitcases to her car, after all.

“You’ve been seeing Joe? All this time?”

No way to answer that without lying, which Kathie really didn’t like to do.

“Stacy, I’m sorry. I’m kind of in a rush. I want to catch Joe before he makes lunch plans. Could you put me through?”

“Oh. Okay. Sure. I’ll get him for you.”

Kathie breathed a bit easier after escaping from the you’ve-been-seeing-Joe question. Relief was still rushing through her when Joe came on the phone.

“Kathie?” He sounded like a man approaching a rabid dog.

God, help me, please. I won’t ever go after my sister’s fiancé again. I swear. I won’t fall for any man I’m not allowed to have.

“We need to have lunch together,” she said in a rush, not giving herself time to think about it.

Just do it.

Follow the plan.

The Joe-is-not-the-bad-guy plan.

“Okay,” he said, still sounding like she might bite his head off or something.

“I mean, if we’re going to do this, we just have to do it. Which means, people have to see us together.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “I’ll pick you up in a half hour?”

“No, I’ll meet you at the bank. It’s always crowded at noon. Might as well start there, letting people see us, and then we’ll go to the Corner Café.”

Joe groaned. “You mean the diner?”

“Yes.”

“Darlene remodeled and changed the name. It’s actually called the Corner Diner now and it’s bigger.”

His chance meeting with Kate at the Corner Diner last fall was still probably the talk of the town, the best gossip to come out of the place in years. They’d run into each other in the midst of breaking up, and Kate had informed Joe very loudly that no, despite gossip to the contrary, she was not pregnant with his child or anyone else’s. She’d been spotted at the local OB/GYN’s office, taking a then-pregnant Shannon for a checkup. Everyone in town had assumed it was Kate who was pregnant, not Shannon, a girl Kate had met while volunteering with the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization.

So Kathie could understand why Joe was reluctant to be seen in the place, especially in another meeting destined to make the gossip rounds.

“We have to,” Kathie said. “And try to look happy when you see me. You’re supposed to be crazy about me, remember? Otherwise, you can’t be devastated when I break your heart in a month or so.”

Joe fought the urge to drum his fingers on his desk, a habit he’d given up two years ago as a New Year’s Eve resolution, because it wasn’t good for a man to show any outward sign of weakness. Or stress.

And drumming those fingers was something he did when he was stressed.

Right then, he could have drummed with baseball bats quite happily, and it wouldn’t have given him half the relief he needed considering what was about to happen.

Yeah, baseball bats.

And he had a quarter-inch-thick layer of glass lining the top of his desk to protect the wood from scratches. The bat would have made confetti out of it in seconds, but he wouldn’t have cared.

She was coming.

And he was supposed to look happy about it.

“Mr. Reed?” his secretary, Marta, said from the doorway to his office, an odd look on her face. “Is everything all right?”

Joe hadn’t known she was standing there, hadn’t had a clue, and she wasn’t a woman who moved with any kind of stealth. She was rather large, and besides that, she wore three charm bracelets with about fifty charms that jingled every time she so much as breathed. It drove him crazy, had for years, but it meant he always knew where she was.

Until today.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “Why?”

“You buzzed for me to come in,” she said.

He opened his mouth to say that he certainly hadn’t, but then looked down to find one of his non-drumming fingers perilously close to the button on the phone that he used to summon her.

Maybe he had buzzed her in, one little drum of the fingers before he forgot he’d given it up.

“Is there something I can get you?” she asked.

“No. I…uhhh…I’m going to lunch. In a few minutes.” He wouldn’t be able to choke down a bite, but he’d go and try to look happy about it and not like a man about to get his head chopped off or something.

He wondered if Kathie had briefed her brother, the cop, on the let’s-date-Joe-for-the-summer plan and how Jax might react, whether Joe would get hauled off into the woods yet again and threatened with bodily harm or more moving violations. If Joe was smart—and he’d always prided himself on being a very smart man—he’d park his car and walk to work for the next month. It was only a few miles, and the weather was fine so far.

Yeah, he should walk, just in case, at least until it got too hot.

Because a smart man knew how to pick his battles and avoid the ones he couldn’t win. He’d never win with Kathie’s brother over anything to do with him and Kathie Cassidy.

“Did I forget to write down an appointment, Mr. Reed?” Marta asked.

“No. Made it myself. Just now.”

“Oh. With whom?”

He frowned at her, not wanting to say, wanting to postpone just for a few more minutes that nice, sane, everything-is-getting-back-to-normal atmosphere he’d tried so hard to cultivate after…the unfortunate event, as he’d taken to thinking of it in his own mind.

The series of unfortunate events, he should say.

She’d ended up in his arms more than once, after all.

He could have pleaded temporary insanity if it had been only the one brief time the day her mother died. Granted it had felt like temporary insanity each time, but he really couldn’t claim a series of unfortunate lapses into temporary insanity. One didn’t have serial bouts of temporary insanity. One had to consider it was more than temporary insanity at that point. More of a long-term psychological disorder, which he certainly hoped he did not have.

There’d been the day her mother died. Grief could have easily accounted for him taking her in his arms that day. Not for the kissing part, but the holding at least.

But the second time, the did-that-really-happen, Oh-my-God-it-did time, as he tended to think of it. The no-denying-it-anymore-time, trouble-is-definitely-here, what-the-hellhad-he-done-time. After which, he’d wallowed in guilt and confusion and, if he was really honest with himself, an overwhelming sort of…desire.

For his fiancée’s little sister.

Rot in hell, Joe. You deserve it.

“Uhh hmmm.”

Standing in front of him, Marta cleared her throat pointedly, then frowned at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Where were we?”

“Your lunch appointment? You were going to tell me who it’s with, so I know to send him in when he arrives.”

Joe tugged at his tie, which was getting tighter with every passing second. When had it gotten so hot in here? They’d turned on the air-conditioning last week, hadn’t they? It wouldn’t go off until sometime in September, at least.

He was starting to sweat when he realized something was going on in the bank. Or rather, that, oddly, nothing was going on in the bank.

A hush had come over the place. Through the glassed-in walls to his office, he could see that people had frozen in place and started to stare, mouths hanging open.

He leaned to the left, then the right, not able to see much of anything to either side of Marta. Her bracelet jingled, as she turned around, too, and started trying to figure out what was going on.

To the back of the lobby near the doors, he saw heads turning. More and more heads. She was halfway through the room now, judging by the stares.

Joe saw someone reach for a cell phone and hit speed-dial. Someone else looked like they were trying to ready their phone to take a photograph.

Great.

They could capture the moment for posterity and share it with the whole town.

When Joe met Kathie again, right there in the bank…

Marta gasped and jingled as her hand went, too late, to cover her mouth. “It’s her!”

His secretary was fiercely loyal to him. She was one of the few people in town who didn’t blame Joe for what happened. He noted with amazement that she had positioned herself between Joe and the door to his office, as if to shield him with her body from the walking disaster in the lobby, which had Joe fighting not to laugh.

The idea that Marta was so terrified of what might happen next to poor Joe that she’d physically stand between him and Kathie Cassidy was both sad and hilarious. Sad that she thought he needed protecting that much and hilarious at the idea that anything as insubstantial as a person standing between them would be enough to keep Kathie from doing whatever it was that she did to him.

Because he just wasn’t himself around her.

It was like she short-circuited something in his supremely logical, well-organized, methodical brain, and he became someone he didn’t even know, someone he couldn’t begin to understand.

And what was his role in this charade today?

To act smitten?

He fought down another laugh.

Smitten?

Had he ever come close to being smitten with anyone?

Everything he’d ever felt for her sister had been completely reasonable and sensible. He’d been so happy to find someone who suited him so perfectly, who believed in the same things he did and had the same kind of calm, reasoned approach to life that he did. Theirs had been the completely rational, confident kind of courtship he’d always been seeking and feared he’d never find, because most women were…well, not so calm or rational or well-organized.

And Kathie…he would have never believed she was capable of causing havoc in anyone’s life.

She could be quiet as a mouse most of the time. Kate was the one in charge, the strong, smart, determined one. Kim was the baby of the family, full of energy and exuberance. Jax was…well, Jax. As flashy and outgoing as Joe was serious and calm.

Kathie could easily disappear in the midst of them, hardly uttering a word. Sometimes when the whole Cassidy family was together, he forgot she was even there.

He’d known about the crush, of course. No way he could not have known. But that had been over for years, he’d believed. She’d always been kind to him, always noticed him but never done anything in recent years to make him think her feelings for him were anything but a history likely to embarrass her.

In a lot of ways, he’d still thought of her as a teenager. It was like she hadn’t aged a day since he’d first met her, when Kate had brought him home to meet her family for the first time.

Little Kathie Cassidy.

His undoing.

“What do you want me to do?” Marta whispered to him urgently? “Get rid of her?”

“No, I don’t want you to get rid of her,” he said, all but prying open his own mouth after that and trying to force out the words, She’s my date. No luck. He just couldn’t get them out.

“I will if you want me to. I can do it. I get rid of people you don’t want to see all the time. I’m good at it.”

She made it sound like she’d been taking lessons from Jax, twisting arms and threatening people with broken kneecaps or something. It was a bank, for God’s sake.

“No one’s getting rid of anyone,” Joe said. “She’s here to see me.”

“Not if you don’t want her to. No one gets in to see you if you don’t want them to.”

“Marta—”

“I’m his lunch date,” Kathie announced to what seemed like the entire building.

Marta gasped.

Maybe the entire room did, as well. Joe couldn’t be sure.

He was too busy staring at her.

No naughty, French-maid-like outfit today.

Just jeans that were the tiniest bit snug and a little no-nothing, T-shirt-like top. Nothing that should have made her look so good, so young and fit and…

Something had happened to her while she’d been gone, he decided.

She looked…different. Not so teenage-girlish.

Oh, she still looked impossibly young to his thirty-one years, but not the way she used to.

Or maybe he’d just never really looked at her that closely because he’d never thought of her as anything but his fiancée’s little sister. Until she’d kissed him that day, and then he’d simply tried not to think of her at all. Guilt had left him all but blind. He wouldn’t even look at her, but now….

She looked different.

She looked…really good.

God, help him, he was headed straight for ruin again.

She was Kate only minus three years and a wealth of knowledge of how the world worked. Kate minus all the determination and drive and seriousness. Kathie was more carefree, a kinder, gentler, happier version of her sister, and he hated the whole idea of comparing the two of them. It brought to mind what a vile thing he’d done, being engaged to the one and kissing the other.

But as she stood before him that day, he couldn’t help but think she was different in ways he didn’t want to examine.

And that he was once again on the edge of sheer ruin because of the odd things he felt for her.

Kathie walked right up to him, stopping only a breath away.

Uh-oh.

Joe braced himself as best he could for what might come next.

Just how friendly were they going to pretend to be?

She put one hand against his chest, another on his shoulder, stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. While she was that close, she whispered in his ear, “You look like you’re afraid I’m going to pull out a gun and rob the place, Joe.”

Which was probably true.

He forced himself to try to relax, to let his hands rest lightly on her shoulders and smile as he brushed his lips against the side of her cheek, something he’d probably done a thousand times when he’d been engaged to her sister and never had so much as a remotely sexual thought.

Nothing but a friendly hello once again.

He could do this.

Except they were trying to look like more than friends, and she’d lingered too close, as did he, for a moment too long.

It only took a moment with her, her hand pressed against his chest, right over his heart, his face against hers, lips lingering beside the soft skin of her cheek, then his nose caught in the vicinity of her right ear, in the edges of her hair, taking in the smell of her.

He remembered this smell, so delicate, barely there. A man had to get this close to smell it.

Maybe it was the scent of her that did it, that went in through his nose and made a beeline to some part of his brain that just…couldn’t take it, had no defenses against that sweet, intoxicating smell.