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“Well, you’re thirty-five. Where’s your wife and kids?” She shook her head, annoyed all over again, and not even having some sympathy for the roots of his behavior was mitigating it. “Stop messing in my life, Stu. I’m warning you.”
At that, he smiled. “I’m quaking in my boots, Had.”
She turned on her heel and strode out, slamming the door behind her hard enough to knock some of his carefully towered boxes right back down again. “Come on,” she gestured to the kids who were waiting. “Let’s go.”
“Had, wait.” Stu had followed her out. “Your truck is good to go.” He tossed her the key. “Until next time, anyway.”
Hadley caught the key and waved the kids toward her truck. Having her transportation back in working order was something, at least.
The kids piled in and she drove back to Tiff’s.
Once the children had left no question that there would not be any leftovers from the lunch Hadley had prepared, she settled them in the kitchen with cookie makings. Before long, Mrs. Ardelle and Joanie joined them, and within an hour the smell of sugar cookies was filling the kitchen.
Hadley left them long enough to finally change out of her church clothes and into her usual jeans and a white T-shirt. Then the phone rang. She stared at it for a moment, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be Wendell. Didn’t matter. She still had to answer the thing.
“I’m looking for a, um, Wood Tolliver?” The voice was feminine and very husky. A phone-sex voice.
Not that Hadley knew what a phone-sex voice sounded like. “Can you hold on for a moment and I’ll see if he’s in his room?”
“Of course. Thank you.”
Hadley carried the cordless unit with her and knocked on Wood’s door.
He yanked it open a moment later, looking a trifle harried. As if he’d been raking his fingers through his hair a few dozen times. His sleeves were shoved up his arms, and she could see papers scattered again all over his bed. She wondered anew what it was that necessitated so many notes. He seemed to have more of them than her latest manuscript attempt did. “Phone call for you.”
He stared at the phone she extended as if he’d never seen one before. “Who is it?”
“I didn’t ask.” Some woman. Maybe the woman you were with last night. “And I’m busy.” She pushed the phone into his hand and turned away.
Unfortunately, she didn’t move fast enough to miss his impatient “Hello” followed by his much less impatient “Hey, there, sweetheart.”
Well, of course, she told herself.
Guys like Wood Tolliver naturally had a “sweetheart” somewhere. She was just fooling herself to think otherwise.
He may have kissed her, but she was the type of woman the Wendell Pierces of the world wanted, not the Wood Tollivers.
Chapter Seven
“Your sleigh, Miss Day.” Hadley grinned and waved her hand at the horse-drawn sleigh waiting beside Tiff’s.
Nikki Day’s jaw dropped ever so slightly. “I didn’t think it would be so—” She broke off and waved her ivory-gloved hand expressively.
Alan and Trev and Julie were all practically dancing around the sleigh, and she knew one of these days she was going to have to make arrangements to have them taken out.
“It is pretty grand,” she agreed. “Every time I see it I get a little shiver.” The ornate blue sleigh was like romance on gleaming runners with a plush red seat and velvet blankets with gold tassels. “And Ivan, here, will make sure his horses don’t get too rambunctious, right, Ivan?”
The old man standing beside the two beautifully matched Morgans smiled and tipped his hat. “We’ll take good care of you, miss. I’ve been running sleigh rides in the winter and hayrides in the summer since I was a lad.”
Nikki smiled, but to Hadley it seemed forced. And the other woman’s face, surrounded by a long cloud of auburn hair, looked pale. But maybe that was just because Nikki wore ivory from head to toe.
“Thank you.” Nikki took Ivan’s hand and stepped up into the sleigh and arranged a blanket over her legs. Hadley called back the kids and they reluctantly moved out of the way while Ivan climbed up onto the slanted driver’s bench and picked up the reins. With a cluck of his tongue and a jingle of the horses’ riggings, the sleigh set off over the open field, toward the line of trees in the distance.
“It’s so pretty,” Julie sighed. She was a dreamer. Like her aunt. Hadley hugged her narrow, young shoulders, and steered everyone back inside.
“Wash your hands before you touch any more cookies,” she ordered when they got to the kitchen.
“What are all the cookies for?” Alan had asked the question a few times already. He wasn’t satisfied with Hadley’s explanation that she’d just felt like baking. Not with Christmas and dozens of cookies still a recent memory.
But she couldn’t very well tell the children they were for their mother’s surprise birthday party, or there would undoubtedly be no surprise. “We’re making them for Grandpa Beau,” she blatantly lied, and hoped it wasn’t a terribly punishable offense.
And despite the holidays just past, she knew Evie would still appreciate the homemade storybook cookies. They’d always been her favorite.
Fortunately, the explanation seemed to satisfy Alan, who—along with his siblings—was sitting on a high stool at the counter, using paintbrushes to add colorful splotches of egg-yolk “paint” to the trays of unbaked cookies.
“That child looked peaked to me,” Mrs. Ardelle observed when Hadley finished washing her own hands and sat down at the table beside Joanie. She pointed the end of the rolling pin out the back window where they could see the tail end of the sleigh gliding through the snow. “Mark my words. She’s got troubles.”
“She seems lonely to me,” Joanie said. “And I know she’s not married,’ cause I asked her.” She picked up another cookie and put half of it in her mouth.
“You’re supposed to be icing them, not eating them,” Mrs. Ardelle said, laughter in her voice.
Joanie shrugged and smiled around her mouthful. “If Alan and Julie and Trev get to eat some, why can’t I?”
Hadley added some blue piping onto the square cookie, and fashioned a little bow so it would look like a birthday gift. “I’m going to the Tipped Barrel tonight.” She reached for another cookie to decorate.
Silence met her announcement.
Mrs. Ardelle finally broke it. “Excuse me, dear, but aren’t they closed on Sundays?”
Hadley paused. “Well, yes, I suppose they are. Tomorrow night, then.”
“But why?” Joanie’s eyes were wide. “The sheriff will have a conniption fit and fall right in it.”
“I don’t care.” And, Hadley realized, she didn’t care if Shane disapproved. Or Stu. Or Evie or Beau or Wood. She kept trying to write stories about women, capable women, making their own way in life. How could she do that if she weren’t making some similar effort in her own life? “Until this town starts seeing me as something other than the thoroughly boring and settled Hadley, nothing’s going to change. Maybe Wendell’s not the only one I have to convince that I could possess a wild side. Right?”
She looked up to see Joanie’s and Mrs. Ardelle’s twin expressions. “I know. I don’t look like I belong in the Tipped Barrel.” She’d figured that when she and Wood had gone there, only to find Charlie instead.
“Well,” Joanie pondered. “I can help you with that. Some. I’ve been watching the girls doing hair at Curl up and Dye. Maybe we could do something with your hair. You know. Something a little outrageous. Sexy.”
Hadley stomped out a sneaky whisper of unease. “I don’t want to dye it or anything.” Joanie was a receptionist at the hair salon, not a stylist.
“Joanie knows that.” Mrs. Ardelle bustled over to the table and sat down, her floury hands fluttering. “But I know what she means. Fluff it up, or something. Your hair is lovely, Hadley, but it’s… well, it’s so—”
“Boring.”
“Nice,” Mrs. Ardelle finished. “You’re a nice girl, Hadley, and you look like one. I’m just not sure changing your image for a night is likely to dissuade Mr. Pierce in his pursuit.”
“I have to do something,” Hadley muttered. “I can’t seem to get my brothers from helping him along. So, unless Wendell decides himself that I’m not as suitable as he’d always figured—” She broke off when she heard the front door open, followed by a yell.
She pushed away from the table and hurried to the hall. Ivan stood there, his weathered face flushed. “Call the ambulance,” he barked.
Dismay streaked through Hadley. She pointed Mrs. Ardelle toward the phone, but the woman had already yanked the receiver off the wall.
She hurriedly followed Ivan outside. “What’s wrong?”
His boots clumped down the steps. “That Miss Day. She just passed out. We were nearly to the creek. Saw some deer there the other day and thought she’d enjoy seeing them. But when I looked back, she was all sort of slumped over—” He waved his hand at the sleigh, parked askew beside the house. Even the horses looked nervous, shifting and tossing their heads.
Hadley ran to the side of the sleigh and climbed up. Nikki’s face was cold, her eyes closed. She was breathing, but she clearly was not waking up.
“Should we try and get her down from the sleigh?” Ivan sounded as worried as Hadley felt.
“I don’t know.” If something was wrong with the baby, would she be bleeding? Even though Hadley dreaded looking, she pulled back the velvet blanket. There was no visible signs of anything wrong. Which, Hadley knew, didn’t mean much of anything.
She covered Nikki up again, chafing the woman’s hands and nearly groaned with relief when she heard the sound of a siren. Moments later the ambulance arrived, and Palmer displaced Hadley in the confines of the sleigh as he checked Nikki over.
“Had, pull out the stretcher for me.”
She was shaking like a leaf, but she ran over to the rear of the ambulance and threw open the wide door. Her hands closed over the end of the stretcher and she pulled. But it didn’t move. Frustrated, she tried again.
“Here.” A hand reached up and flipped the lock holding the stretcher in place. Then Wood closed his hands beside Hadley’s, and they pulled the stretcher successfully from the vehicle. The legs dropped down automatically and they pushed it quickly through the skiff of snow on the sidewalk toward the sleigh from which Palmer was lifting the unconscious woman.
“Thanks. Noah’s on another call already.” He settled Nikki on the stretcher and fastened the safety straps carefully over her. “Hospital’s gonna want her ID.”
“Of course.” Hadley raced up the stairs, through the house, and up to the tower. Inside Nikki’s room it took her a moment to find the woman’s purse, and then to make sure the wallet was inside. Then she raced back down the stairs. Palmer was already behind the wheel, clearly impatient to be on his way. She tossed him the purse through his open window, he caught it, and the ambulance drove off, siren wailing.
Hadley leaned over, pressing her palms to her stomach. “Oh, God. I should have known better than to let her go off on that sleigh ride. I didn’t think she looked quite right. I should have said something to her. Done something. But I just let—”
“Stop.” Wood closed his hands over her shoulders. “You’re freezing. You don’t have on a coat. Come inside.”
She blindly followed when he urged her up the stairs. “This has never happened before. Guests don’t come here and collapse, Wood.”
“Shh.” He pushed her into the chair in the hallway. “Take a breath before you pass out yourself.”
“Auntie Hadley, are you okay?” Trevor snuck around Wood and patted the back of her head. “Why’d that lady go in the ambulance?”
She willed herself to settle down. “I’m fine, Trevor. And that lady is going to be fine, too.” She hoped.
“Who’s he?”
She realized her nephew was eyeing Wood. “His name is Mr. Tolliver. He’s staying here while his car gets fixed. Wood, this is Evie’s son, Trevor. And that—” she looked over his blond head toward the kitchen doorway “—is Julie and Alan.”
Wood shifted abruptly. “Cute kids.”
“Yes. You guys go on back to the kitchen and finish the cookies with Mrs. Ardelle, okay?” She caught that woman’s eye, who nodded immediately and capably distracted the trio back to their cheerful task.
As soon as they were gone, she leaned over her knees, covering her face with her hands. “It’ll only take Palmer a few minutes to get her to the hospital. I should go over there. Someone should be called. But I don’t know who.”
“What sort of information did she leave when she registered? Or made her reservation?”
“Right. Of course.” She sat up. Pushed back her hair. “I have home and work numbers for her.” She went downstairs to her office and pulled out the paperwork. But since she didn’t know what she’d be telling whomever she might reach, she jotted down the numbers to take with her to the hospital. She wasn’t even sure if the hospital would try to reach someone for Nikki. They probably would.
Wood was waiting by the door, her parka in his hands, when she went back upstairs. She didn’t look at him as she slid into the sleeves and pulled it closed around her. But when he followed her out the door after opening it for her, she couldn’t help herself.
“I’m going with you,” he said.
Her fingers closed more tightly around her keys. “Why?” she asked baldly.
Dane stared down at Hadley’s confused face for a moment. Why, indeed? He had no love of hospitals, not having spent so much time in them recently. “Not because I don’t think you’re capable on your own,” he assured evenly. “Now, do you want to stand here on the steps arguing about it, or shall we get going?”
For a second, he wasn’t all that sure she wouldn’t choose arguing, which surprised him. But she nodded, and they went to her truck, which she drove with extreme care, to the hospital. It was located on the east end of town, where the buildings didn’t appear to be stuck in a fifties time warp like so much of Lucius seemed to be.
They went in through the emergency room entrance, and Hadley explained the situation to the receptionist.
Then they waited.
And waited.
And finally he couldn’t sit in the molded plastic chair in the minuscule waiting room a minute longer, and he rose.
“Are you all right?” Hadley looked up at him. The harsh light from the utilitarian fixtures overhead shined in her gleaming brown hair and ought to have made her natural features look pale. Yet there wasn’t a single flaw visible in her creamy skin. And her brown eyes simply looked deeper. More liquid. “Wood?”
“My father’s in the hospital,” he said abruptly.
Her soft eyebrows drew together, forming a tiny crease over her nose. “Oh, Wood. I’m sorry. You must hate being here. Is it serious?”
“Enough. He’s had more than one heart attack in the past two weeks.”
“Good heavens.” She pressed her hand to her throat. “It must be hard for you to be away from him right now.”
“He’s been unconscious for most of that time.” He didn’t want her asking why he’d leave his father at a critical time. “My sister said he’s showing some signs of coming around again.”
“She’s the one who called Tiff’s this afternoon?”
He nodded. Darby hadn’t been able to reach his cell phone, because he’d been tied up on a conference call with Laura and the head of his West Coast operations. “Darby,” he said after a moment. It was a family name for her. Not the one most of the world had known her by. Debra White Rutherford, the little girl who’d been kidnapped right out of a crowded elevator, outraging the entire nation.
The little girl who’d been kidnapped right out from under her brother’s nose, more like.
He pushed aside the thoughts. It was being in the hospital that was doing it. Eroding his objectivity. His remoteness.
“Well, that’s really good news about your father, isn’t it?”
He supposed it was. Only if Roth did fully regain consciousness, he’d just continue fighting his doctors every damned inch of the way. Nobody could convince his father to do anything he didn’t want to do, particularly undergoing a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Yes. It should be good news.”
She ran her finger back and forth over the neckline of her T-shirt. To date, it was the snuggest thing she’d worn, yet it was still too big. He had an unbidden vision of her in threads designed just for her racehorse-lean body.
“Wouldn’t you rather be with him right now?” she asked, blissfully unaware of his thoughts. “You can trust Stu with your car, you know.”
