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“Yes, there is.” He leveled a soul-searching gaze at her. “I want to know what happened to your wedding ring.”
“My...my wedding ring?” A hard lump formed in her throat and the nervousness churned in her stomach again. Why would he ask such a question?
“Yes. I couldn’t help but notice you’re not wearing one.”
She heard it in his voice again. Antagonism... accusation... the hint of some hidden knowledge. Did he know she had a son? Did he know about Richie? She looked down at her hand, stared at the finger where she had worn the simple gold band Robert Bingham had placed there on their wedding day. She felt the anxious trernoi and swallowed hard in an attempt to bring her feeling under control She knew she had to be very careful how she responded to his question.
“My ring...” She again stared at her hand. “I lost my husband in a plane crash. I’m a widow.”
She saw the shock cover his face. She saw something else, too—something in his eyes that she could not identify. Resentment? Smug satisfaction? She did not know.
“A widow?” Wyatt could not hide his reaction to this latest revelation. He had come back to a quiet little town where nothing ever happened and in fifteen minutes had been hit with one shock after another. He had not anticipated seeing Vicki at all, but she was there. Then he had learned about her father’s recent death, and now this—what else could there possibly be? How many more surprises were just waiting to jump out at him?
“You’ll have to excuse me, I have a customer to tend to.” Vicki quickly left the post office and hurried toward the front of the market. “Yes, may I help you with something?”
Wyatt tuned out the voices coming from the market. Her sudden and extreme nervousness had immediately grabbed his attention—the way she bit at her lower lip, how her face had seemed to pale and her hand tremble at the mention of her wedding ring. He suspected she was hiding something and he was determined to find out what it was.
His assumption had been that she was divorced, and he had intended to make some type of caustic remark to the effect that her decision to run off and get married hadn’t been a good one. But this was different. She was a widow. He did not want to delve into her personal life under these circumstances—at least not at that moment. He had started to extend the obligatory condolences, but the words caught in his throat.
He moved to the connecting door and watched as Vicki’s customer left the market. He stuck his post-office-box keys in his pocket, stepped through the door and took a steadying breath in the hopes of concealing his reaction. “I guess I’m pretty much out of touch with things around here. You said a plane crash?”
She averted her gaze, once again unable to maintain eye contact with him. “Yes. It...uh...was five years ago.” She felt very uncomfortable with the task of explaining her husband’s death to Wyatt Edwards. If Wyatt had not walked out on her, none of this ever would have happened. What if... She had played that game too many times. “It was a small private plane. Robert was the passenger. It went down in a field about ten miles from our home in Dallas.”
“Oh.” Oh... It was a dumb thing for him to say, but he did not seem to be able to come up with the right words. As much as he had hoped that she had been every bit as miserable as he had been for the past fifteen years, he had not anticipated this. He wanted to know so much, he wanted to know everything, but he could not bring himself to ask. “Well...I gucss I’d better be going. I have several things to do. I need to unpack...” His voice trailed off and he finally turned and left without saying anything else.
Vicki closed her eyes and sank back against the wall in an effort to compose herself. Her meeting with Wyatt had been a thousand times worse than she thought it would be. It almost seemed as if he had gone out of his way to be contrary and she did not understand why. He had walked out on her. not the other way around. She had been the injured party, the one with every right to be angry.
She knew there was no way they could avoid each other in the normal course of day-to-day activities in the small community, but she vowed to make sure everything stayed on an impersonal level. For the sake of her son, Wyatt Edwards could not be allowed back into her life.
The sound of the door shook her from her disturbing thoughts.
“Good morning, Vicki.” Noreen’s cheerful personality filled the store. “Looks like it’s going to be another beautiful day. I love this time of year—the last warmth of summer changing over to the crispness of autumn.”
“Good morning.” Vicki marveled at the way Noreen always managed to be in such a good mood. A woman in her early forties who had never been married, she always bubbled with good cheer. It seemed that nothing ever upset her.
As he drove up the hill to his house, Wyatt furrowed his brow in concentration. Something strange was going on. Vicki appeared far too nervous. She was hiding something. Did it have to do with him? Was the story about her husband dying in a place crash something she had made up in order to hide the truth?
Get a grip. You’re beginning to sound paranoid. This isn’t some sort of mystery novel It’s just one of those weird little quirks of life—nothing more.
He did his best to rationalize what had happened. Things were bound to be awkward between them, considering their past history and what she had done to him. He considered himself a mature adult who certainly knew how to handle an uncomfortable situation. He had brought those skills into play often enough in his business dealings. And this was no different. At least that was what he tried to tell himself, even though he knew it wasn’t true. This was not business. It was personal—very personal.
Two
Wyatt drove through the large gated entrance and parked in the circular drive in front of the house. He looked up at the imposing two-story structure with its gleaming white paint, dark green shutters and roof, and the large verandah that spanned the front and sides of the house. A little tremor of anxiety jittered inside him. It had been ten years since he had set foot in the house. Now, more than ever, he wondered if he had made a colossal error in deciding to return.
“Wasn’t it Thomas Wolfe who said, ‘You can’t go home again’?” He said the words aloud to no one in particular. Perhaps Thomas Wolfe had been correct. He climbed out of the car, grabbed his suitcase, and walked up the front steps to the large oak double doors.
Just inside the front door he stopped and looked around. The house was elegant to the point of almost being out of place in such a rural setting. The foyer was two stories high, with a large crystal chandelier that hung from the cathedral ceiling. A curved oak staircase traveled up each side to a second-floor landing that looked down on the entrance. He had designated the ground-floor east wing as his office area. The west wing included the den, the billiards room and a small study that had been his father’s personal domain.
The formal living room, dining room and kitchen facilities were located straight back through the foyer, with servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen. The second floor consisted of a large master bedroom suite and a library on one side of the landing and guest rooms on the other side.
Fred Olson, the caretaker who had stayed on all the years that the property had remained vacant, lived in a small apartment above the three-car garage.
It was far too big a house just for Wyatt, but it had been in the family from his great-grandfather’s time. He had been approached on several occasions over the last few years by real-estate developers. They had offered him a lot of money for the land, but he had turned down all offers. He was not even sure why. Perhaps it had to do with family honor and tradition. More likely the house represented a time in his past that he did not want to lose—a time when Vicki was part of his life and he had assumed also a part of his future.
So, the large house on the hill had remained empty, silently standing watch over the valley below and the ocean beyond.
Wyatt ascended the staircase to the second floor. He had lots to do and the clock was ticking. He devoted the rest of his day to unpacking and organizing, with the hope that keeping busy would occupy his mind so that his thoughts would not turn toward Vicki. So far the plan had been a dismal failure.
In her store at the base of the hill, Vicki, too, tried to keep active. But her attention shifted to the window every time she heard a car door slam, the accompanying adrenaline surge telling her how frightened she was about the prospect of having Wyatt around all the time. Sometimes Noreen’s overabundance of good cheer got on her nerves, but not today. She encouraged her employee’s ongoing chatter, welcoming anything that kept her from thinking about Wyatt Edwards.
The day passed far too slowly. Each minute seemed like an hour. Richie visited the store after school, but she immediately sent him home to do his schoolwork. She did not want to risk Wyatt returning and running into her son... their son.
She had been almost four months pregnant with Wyatt’s child when she had married another man. Robert Bmgham knew she needed a stable home for her baby. He also knew she was not in love with him, but he said it did not matter. He had stood by her through a very difficult pregnancy. He had treated her with respect and unconditional love, and he could not have loved her son more if the boy had been his own, never once asking her about Richie’s biological father.
Vicki had an overwhelming respect for Robert and with time had grown to love him, too. But it was not the type of passionate, all-consuming love she had felt for Wyatt Edwards—a love that had never vanished from her consciousness. She had never been able to give Robert the kind of love that he had deserved, and it had hurt her each time she saw in his eyes that he knew there would always be someone else. He had never confronted her about it, but she had carried the self-inflicted guilt and the sorrow for the duration of their marriage.
And now her son’s real father had unexpectedly reappeared in her life. That posed a tremendous threat to her emotional security and that of her son. She needed to make sure nothing upset Richie’s memories of the loving and kind man he knew as his father.
That night as she lay in bed, Vicki was very restless, tossing and turning without getting much sleep. Morning finally came and she forced herself out of bed, leaving a tangled mess of sheets and blankets. Was this how it would be from now on? Would each day begin with an overwhelming fear that her most closely guarded secret would become public knowledge? That Wyatt would discover he had a son? That Richie’s world would crash around him even further than it already had? And all the while she would be looking at Wyatt and thinking what if?
“Come on, Richie.” She knocked on his bedroom door for the second time. “Get out of bed. You’re going to miss the school bus if you don’t hurry.” She heard the irritation in her voice and immediately admonished herself for letting it show.
A moment later the door opened and Richie appeared, dressed and ready for breakfast. He gave her a curious look. She impulsively pulled him into a hug and kissed his forehead.
He quickly squirmed from her arms and stepped back, making no effort to hide his exasperation. “Cut it out! What’s the matter with you today?”
She saw the embarrassment that covered his features, the same features that adorned Wyatt’s face. She smiled and started to reach for his hair, but stopped when he shot her the look. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just glad to see you, that’s all.”
“Sure, Mom.” A withering sigh surrounded his words. “I’m glad to see you, too.” His expression said he knew she had totally flipped out and senility had finally set in. He headed for the kitchen, gulped down a glass of orange juice, then reached for the box of cereal.
Vicki. hurried to work, arriving early so that she could take care of part of the morning routine in the store before the truck delivered the daily mail. She would be working alone until two o’clock when Noreen came to work. She sorted the mail, finishing just in time to make coffee and unlock the front door to the market.
She heard the bell that signaled that the outside door of the post office had been opened. Most likely someone wanted to check the mail before going to work. She turned to pour herself a cup of coffee. When she turned back, she found Wyatt standing in the connecting door, staring at her. The intense expression on his face sent a shiver of anxiety through her.
“Uh...good morning. I’m surprised to see you again so soon.” She took a sip of her coffee to avoid further conversation.
“I just came by to check on my mail,” Wyatt said. It was a feeble lie. They both knew there was no way he could have received any mail at his new post-office box yet. He slowly made his way across the store, pausing to look at whatever happened to catch his eye en route, until finally he arrived at the front counter.
He leaned on the countertop and proffered what he hoped was a casual smile. “That coffee smells good.”
She indicated the large urn at the end of the counter. “Cups are on the other side, three sizes with the prices marked.”
He took a large cup from the dispenser. “I see you have pastries, too. I’ll take one of these bear claws to go with my coffee.” He placed his money on the counter and she rang up the sale.
The stress level inside Vicki increased dramatically. What did he want from her? Why did he insist on hanging around? She tried to maintain a businesslike manner. “Did you need something else or will that be all?”
He watched as she nervously bit at her lower lip. Her discomfort showed in the way she kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her gaze constantly darted around the market, not staying on any one thing for more than a second or two.
He took a swallow from his coffee cup, deliberately stalling before his response. “Are you expecting someone?”
“Uh...no. No one in particular. Why do you ask?”
“You keep glancing out the window. I just thought maybe you were expecting a delivery or something.” Her behavior continued to be what he considered strange, at least for the Vicki Dalton he once knew—back before his whole world turned upside down on him.
He was now more convinced than ever that she was hiding some kind of secret and he was determined to find out what it was. In spite of the fact that she had hurt him and left him empty and angry, she had remained the one and only woman he truly wanted. Now, for reasons he did not clearly understand, they had been thrown together again. He had a second chance and he was not going to let it go without a fight. He would find out exactly what had happened all those years ago when she walked out on him.
“Vicki...” He saw the way she jumped at the sound of his voice. “Are you all right? I’ve never seen you so jittery.” His words came out as half concern and half irritation.
The buzzer intruded into their conversation once again. Someone had opened the front door of the market. Vicki breathed a sigh of rehef as she turned to see who it was. Her relief immediately turned to anxiety when she saw Alice Thackery.
Wyatt eyed the disagreeable woman. He lowered his voice so that only Vicki could hear him. “We’ll continue this conversation later. I want to get out of here before she pins me to the wall about something I might have done twenty-five years ago.” He nodded curtly to Alice, acknowledging her presence as he left.
Alice watched him until he was out of sight, then turned toward Vicki. Her tightly pursed lips only added to the harshness of her unsmiling features. Her tone was sarcastic and condemning. “Well, I see it didn’t take long for Henry’s boy to come sniffing around here.”
Vicki refused to acknowledge her comment. “Is there something I can help you with, Mrs. Thackery?”
The woman ignored Vicki’s question, preferring to continue with her train of thought. “He has live-in servants up there, you know.” She divulged the information as if she were gossiping about some sort of illicit behavior. “No reason for him to be doing his own marketing.” She pointedly stared at Vicki, as if waiting for her to answer some sort of unspoken accusation.
By no stretch of anybody’s imagination did Vicki feel she owed Alice Thackery any type of explanation, nor did she have any intention of giving her one. She stood her ground, determined to wait it out.
The awkward silence lasted for several seconds before Alice finally became flustered and grabbed the nearest thing to her without even looking to see what she had picked up. She plopped it on the counter with an exaggerated flair. “I’ll take this.”
“Are you sure?”
Alice refused to look at the item she had placed on the counter, as if to do so would have cast doubt on her selection. She pursed her lips in a hard line as she stared straight ahead. “I’m sure.”
Vicki suppressed a grin as she rang up the sale for a package of bubble gum. She could not stop that same grin from turning up the corners of her mouth as she watched Alice Thackery huff out of the market and down the sidewalk, passing the sheriff’s station and volunteer fire department on the way toward her house in the next block. Then the smile slowly faded.
Apprehension shuddered through her. She had the uncomfortable feeling that the disagreeable busybody was going to be responsible for causing her a lot of problems. If anyone would be able to spot the distinct physical resemblance between Wyatt and Richie, it would be Alice Thackery. Vicki could almost feel the dark clouds gathering overhead.
Thankfully, the rest of the morning passed with business as usual, until about eleven o’clock.
“Vicki.” Wyatt stepped through the connecting door, his sudden appearance startling her. His voice held an air of absolute authority. “I think we should finish our conversation now.”
Her nerves were pulled about as taut as they could be without snapping. Wyatt, Mrs. Thackery and now Wyatt again. Would this day never end? She took a steadying breath before looking in the direction of Wyatt’s voice. “What conversation was that?” He was at her side before she was even aware that he had moved.
His manner softened, but there was still an antagonistic edge to his voice. “The one where I was about to ask you to have lunch with me. We could talk over old times and catch up on what’s been going on without interruptions from your customers.”
She closed her eyes for a moment as she tried to collect the panic welling inside her and shove it back into some out-of-the-way corner. Was it her imagination or had he added extra emphasis to the words old times? The last thing she wanted to discuss with Wyatt Edwards was old times. “I couldn’t possibly have lunch with you. I have to be here. Noreen doesn’t come to work until two o’clock.” She hurried over to the magazine rack and began straightening the periodicals, just as she had done the day before.
He stood behind her, reached over her shoulder, and took the magazine from her hand. He replaced it on the rack, then grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face him. He leveled a stern look at her. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Vicki, but we have to talk. We need to clear the air about—” He felt her body stiffen and saw the way her eyes filled with a very real fear that he did not understand—a fear that threatened to turn into all-out panic.
She shook loose from his grasp, determination on her face as she stepped back from him. “I...I’m very busy here. I don’t have time to talk about unimportant things.”
“Unimportant things?” He felt a stab of anger that carried over into his voice. She had walked out on him, and he wanted to know why, needed to know why—had to know why. “I’m talking about us—about what happened fifteen years ago.”
She turned away so that she did not have to look at him. She could not keep the anger out of her voice. “The past is just that, Wyatt. It’s the past. It’s over and done and can’t be changed. Now, if you’ll excuse me...” She walked away from him without waiting for a response.
How dare he try to dredge up all the pain and humiliation he put her through fifteen years ago! He had walked out on her without so much as a goodbye note. He hadn’t even waited around long enough to discover that she was pregnant with his child. She was afraid to look back, afraid her anger and her newly opened wounds would cause her to blurt out that most closely guarded and important secret of her life.
“It’s not over, Vicki. And it won’t be over until things are settled between us. I want answers—”
She whirled around and glared at him. Fifteen years of pent-up emotion tried to get out just as desperately as she tried to keep it under control. It was a toss-up as to which would win. She did not want a confrontation with him, she just wanted him to leave her alone. “Drop it, Wyatt. Let it die a quiet and welldeserved death.” Her words were strained, and she turned away again before she said something she would regret.
He grabbed her arm and spun her back to him. “I have no intention of leaving it alone, not until I’m satisfied that things are finally settled.”
“Settled?” She felt her eyes widen in shock. She could not believe what she was hearing. “There’s nothing to settle.”
He had tried to forget her, to put what she had done to him out of his mind, but he had never quite been able to accomplish it. She had disappeared out of his life without so much as a word, and had never made any attempt to contact him. He never understood why she had gone away. Then he heard she had married. That news had crushed every hope he had secretly harbored that she would some day return so they could be together again—until now.
Vicki did not even have time to catch her breath before he pulled her into his arms. At first his embrace was somewhat tentative, but he quickly gained confidence. Memories came flooding back, every feeling she ever had for him ignited deep inside her. She immediately shoved away from him, but not in time. His embrace had made a shambles of her self-control. His sky-blue eyes had the smoky blue she remembered so well, conveying the depth of his passion. It was shockingly apparent that the physical pull between them was still as strong as ever, much to her dismay.
“No, it’s not settled, Vicki. It’s a long way from being settled.” Then Wyatt tmrned and walked out the door.
A very shaken Vicki staggered backward a couple more steps, finally bumping into the counter. Her heart pounded so hard that she had trouble catching her breath. Everything she had so desperately tried to erase from her life had resurfaced with astonishing clarity. Wyatt Edwards seemed to have more control over her emotions than she did. His embrace left her with the uncomfortable feeling of being helpless...and extremely vulnerable.
It took a huge effort to pull herself together and continue with her workday, but somehow she managed it.
At two o’clock Noreen arrived promptly for work. “Good afternoon, Vicki.”
“Hi, Noreen. Things are pretty quiet around here. I think I’ll run home for a little while. I should be back in a couple of hours.” Vicki grabbed her purse from beneath the counter and called over her shoulder as she left the market, “If you need me before that, give me a call.”
Vicki hurried the one block to her house. She went directly to her bedroom, shut the door, then sat on the edge of her bed. She hugged her shoulders in an attempt to make her body stop trembling. She could still feel his arms around her. It had affected her the same way it had when he held her close fifteen years ago. She needed to pull her emotions together and somehow find a way to deal with this latest emotional upheaval in her life.
If only there had been some sort of warning, she could have done something to prepare herself. But now it was too late. She had once again felt the passion of Wyatt Edwards and knew in an instant how much she had missed his touch.
She went to her closet and stared at the small locked box on the top shelf. After what seemed like an eternity, she took it from the shelf and set it on the bed. She paused a minute, uncertain about whether or not she really wanted to open it, then retrieved the key and unlocked it. She carefully removed a stack of photographs, taking one and putting the others back in the box. She stared at it for a long time. It was a picture of Wyatt and her at a party, the night they had ended up making love on the beach.
It was the night their son had been conceived.
She closed her eyes as she held the photograph to her heart. In a barely audible voice she whispered the feelings that she had tried so desperately to bury. “I’ve tried to purge you from my existence, erase the memory of what I thought we once meant to each other. But, God help me, I havcn’t been able to do it.”
She forced away the tears that tried to well in her eyes. It had been a little less than a month after the photo was taken that Wyatt had disappeared from her life. His father said Wyatt had felt smothered by her. She tried to think, tried to put herself back in that place again. Was it possible that she had unconsciously made emotional demands on him following their night of lovemaking? She had not meant to. Making love had been as much her responsibility as it had been his.
She shook her head. She did not know what had happened.
She replaced the photograph, locked the box, and put it back on the shelf. Then she did something she had never done before. Rather than going back to work, she poured herself a glass of wine and took it to the glass-walled back porch.
She sat all alone and sipped her wine while she thought about the future. She had handled the shock of losing her mother when she was still in high school, of Wyatt leaving her, of discovering she was pregnant with Wyatt’s child, of her husband dying and now her father’s death. She did not know if she had enough strength left to endure any more—and that most certainly included Wyatt’s sudden reappearance in her life.
Richie had been without a father and role model during his formative adolescent years. He would soon be fifteen. Somehow she had to find a way to make everything work out while seeing to it that her son was protected from any more emotional upheavals. She sat quietly on the porch, vacillating between memories from the past, the problems of the present, and her fears of what the future held.
“Mom! What are you doing home?”
Richie’s voice startled her. She had not heard him come in. She glanced at her watch. “Oh...I didn’t realize it was so late.” She looked over at her son, who was standing in the doorway. “I just needed a little break from work, that’s all.” She stood up, taking her empty wineglass with her. “I’d better get back to the store. You get busy on your homework and I’ll start dinner in a couple of hours.”
“I don’t have any homework. I did it all at school.”
