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“That’s always been one of my favorites.”
Seth turned. Philo grinned and eased into one of the chairs.
“Same here.” Seth sat down, too, and extended his hands toward the stove. “That’s a good fire you have going.”
“Pretty cold work up on that roof, huh?”
“Sure was.”
The men sat in companionable silence. That was another thing Seth liked about Cooper’s Corner. Nobody ever felt the need to fill the air with chatter. If you had something to say, fine. If you didn’t, it was perfectly okay to keep still.
“So,” Philo said after a minute, “how’re things going?”
“Fine. Just fine. I’m keeping busy.”
“Guess that house of yours is almost finished, huh? How long have you been at it, now? Two years?”
“Three,” Seth said. “I should be done this spring.” He shrugged. “Or this summer, for sure.”
“Well, it can’t be easy, puttin’ up a place all by yourself, workin’ only weekends.”
“It’s the only way I could manage to do it.”
“Uh-huh. Nothing like free labor. Heard tell you got a good price when you bought that land, too.”
Seth bit back a smile. Philo heard everything sooner or later. “Yeah, I did. I guess I could have hired somebody to help me out, but I enjoy the work.”
“Figured that.” Philo opened the stove’s fire door and added another maple split. “It’s none of my business, I know….” He cleared his throat. “It’s just, well, the wife and I were talkin’ at breakfast this mornin’ and we were wonderin’… Are things okay between you and the lady?”
Seth raised one dark eyebrow. This was a small town. What passed for gossip elsewhere was neighborly concern here, but asking him such a personal question about his love life—or what passed for his love life—was, well, unusual.
“Sure,” he said carefully. “Things are fine.”
“Ah.” Philo nodded as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “Well, the wife’ll be happy to hear it. Phyllis always liked her. Me, too, for that matter, though I never knew her very well.”
Seth looked at Philo with curiosity. There was an off-kilter feel to this conversation, not just the sudden interest in his private life and his relationship with Joanne, but the way Philo was talking about it. Jo had only moved into the area a couple of years back. She lived in New Ashford. As far as Seth knew, she’d never even been into the Coopers’ store.
“Well,” he said, even more cautiously, “she’s a private sort of person.”
“Uh-huh. We figured that. Especially now with, you know, all the stuff that went on….” Philo’s Adam’s apple slid up and down. “So,” he said briskly, “is she back for good? Or is it true, like some folks say, that she’s only here to visit?”
Seth felt his heart give an unsteady thump. They definitely weren’t talking about Joanne. He searched his mind for a “she” who might fit the conversation, a woman he’d know well enough for Philo to ask him such intimate questions. Then he realized from the look in Philo’s eyes, from last night’s dream, from the memories that had been tormenting him…
He knew who they were discussing, and what it meant.
Wendy was home.
Except he didn’t believe that you dreamed about what was going to happen. The images in his head were there because of the time of year, and all this proved was that he’d never quite gotten past thinking about her.
“Is who back for good?” he said, as if Philo’s question might simply be about one of the winter visitors who’d asked him to do some repairs on her cabin.
He thought he’d spoken with casual ease. One look at Philo and he knew he hadn’t pulled it off. The other man’s plump cheeks reddened. Even his ears seemed to burn with embarrassment.
“Damn it,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry, Seth. I told Phyllis this wouldn’t be a good idea. `Phyl,’ I said, `honey, did it ever occur to you that the man might not want to talk about this? That he just plain might want to avoid—’“
“I’m not trying to avoid anything. I just don’t understand the question. Who are we talking about, Philo?”
Philo looked as if he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. He lifted the poker, reached into the fire, made a show of rearranging the burning wood, then stared at the dancing flames as if they held the answer to Seth’s question.
Finally, he looked up.
“Wendy Monroe,” he said with a swift exhalation of breath. “And if you want to tell me to mind my own business about why she’s come back to Cooper’s Corner, or how long she’s goin’ to stay, that’s okay with me.”
* * *
THE SUN WAS LOW in the sky, the wind had picked up and it had begun to snow again. Main Street was one long sheet of ice. The sanding trucks hadn’t come through yet.
Seth drove carefully and fought to keep his mind on what he was doing. It wasn’t easy. All he could think about was Wendy. She was back. She was in Cooper’s Corner. The whole town probably knew it.
Now he knew it, too.
A car pulled out from the curb, skidded delicately to the left before its tires gained purchase. Seth braked gently, then fell in behind the slow-moving automobile.
Philo had all the details, though he’d been uncomfortable providing them. She’d flown in yesterday. Alison Fairchild had picked her up at the airport in Albany and driven her to town.
Seth’s jaw knotted. He’d seen Alison just a couple of days ago, at Twin Oaks, when he’d stopped by to double-check the dimensions of the corner where Clint and Maureen wanted to put the china cabinet he was making for the dining room. On the way out, he’d bumped into Alison. Literally. He’d been trotting down the porch steps, his head full of measurements; she’d been coming up, on her way to visit Maureen, and they’d collided.
“Whoops,” she’d said with a quick smile, then apologized for having her head in the clouds. They’d had a perfectly normal conversation about how well the B and B was coming along, about the weather and the season and every damned thing in the world except the one that would have mattered to him—that Wendy was returning to Cooper’s Corner. There was no way he’d believe that Alison hadn’t known about it then.
And what about Gina? He’d kept in touch with Wendy’s mother. They spoke often. Well, not so often now, but for the first few years he’d phoned at least once a week to ask about Wendy’s recovery. To hell with her father. It was Howard’s fault Wendy had the accident. If he hadn’t been pushing her so hard…
Seth took a deep breath.
There was no sense in going through all that again. It was over. So was what he’d once felt for Wendy.
Calmer now, he understood that neither Alison nor Gina felt under any obligation to tell him Wendy was returning. In which case, why had he gotten so upset? Wendy was the past. Joanne was the future.
His hands flexed on the steering wheel. Okay. Maybe she wasn’t the future. Maybe what he felt for Jo wasn’t what it should be. Maybe it was time to tell her that, before things got any stickier. Maybe…
The tires spun. Seth felt the truck slewing toward the cars parked along the curb. He managed to recover with only a fraction of a second to spare.
Maybe, he thought grimly, he needed to get his head together before he ended up breaking his neck.
He put on his signal light and pulled into an empty parking space just ahead. Climbing out of the truck, Seth turned up the collar of his old leather jacket and trudged toward Tubb’s Caf;aae, just down the street.
The caf;aae was warm and steamy, fragrant with the aromas of coffee and freshly baked doughnuts. He slid onto a stool near the window, exchanged greetings with the college kid working the counter.
“Coffee,” he said.
The kid poured him a mugful. Seth wrapped his hands around it, letting its warmth chase the cold from his fingers. Maybe it was irrational, but it pissed him off that nobody had thought to tell him about Wendy. Hadn’t it occurred to Gina or Alison that he’d be interested? He’d loved her, once.
No. Damn it, no! He’d been infatuated, that was all. What nineteen-year-old kid who’d come out of nowhere wouldn’t be infatuated with a beautiful girl? Wendy had been the town’s darling. The guy she went with should have been a local product. The captain of the football team. A jock with varsity letters and a family that went back a hundred years. Instead, she’d fallen for him. No family, no background, no varsity letters on his jacket…
There she was.
The mug trembled in Seth’s hands. He put it down on the counter, his gaze riveted to the window. Two people had just come out of a store. A man and a woman. Howard Monroe and Wendy. She was bundled in a dark-green anorak; her fiery hair was tucked up under a knitted ski cap so that only strands of it were visible against the pale oval of her face, and her eyes were hidden behind big, dark glasses. But none of that mattered. People hurrying past didn’t recognize her, but Seth did.
He’d have known her anywhere.
His heart turned over as she began walking alongside her father. It was the first time he’d seen her on her feet. Until this moment, the damage she’d suffered had been confined to his imagination. Now he could see the reality of it. Instead of her former graceful walk, Wendy’s hip and knee were stiff. Her limping gait after all those years of rehab, was evidence of the severity of the accident.
They reached her father’s SUV. Howard held out his hand, but she shook her head and said something that looked like “I can do it.” And she did, navigating the icy sidewalk toward the curb and the truck door with studied care.
Seth’s eyes narrowed.
Why wasn’t she using a cane? Why wouldn’t she take her old man’s hand? Why was she so damned thickheaded? She could fall. She could go down in the ice and snow and…
And it was none of his business.
Except it was. Wendy had meant something to him once upon a time, even if that time was long ago.
He got off the stool, dug out a bill, tossed it on the counter and zipped up his jacket. What was the matter with people in this town? Didn’t anybody consider what it would be like for him to discover that she was back by stumbling across her?
He strode toward the door, slapped his hand against the glass. He wasn’t going to let Wendy get away with treating him as if he didn’t matter, the way she’d done nine years ago. He’d go straight up to her, grab her and shake some sense into her. Yeah, that was it. He’d march out of here, take her by the shoulders, shake her…. God, he’d pull her into his arms, tell her that it broke his heart to see her like this, her leg hurting, her dreams shattered….
“Mr. Castleman?”
He looked around. The kid who worked the counter was holding out a bunch of bills.
“You gave me a twenty,” he said. “Here’s your change.”
Seth turned toward the street again. Wendy was getting into her father’s truck. He watched Howard shut the door, then trot around to the driver’s side and get in.
“Mr. Castleman?”
Seth swallowed hard and swung around. “Yeah. Thanks.” He plucked a couple of bills from the kid’s outstretched hand, left the rest behind. “Keep it,” he said. It was the least he could do, considering that the boy had just kept him from making an ass of himself.
Wendy was back. So what? It didn’t change a thing. Seth whistled through his teeth as he got into his truck and drove along Main Street toward Sawtooth Mountain Road. Yeah, they’d had a thing going for a while there. He’d thought he loved her, thought it enough to have flown to Norway the second her mother phoned in hysterics to tell him that Wendy had fallen during a practice run and nobody knew if she was going to make it or not.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
He hadn’t wanted her to go to Norway to start with. He knew how much it meant to her that she’d made the Olympic team, but he’d wondered if she was really up for it. She had the talent and the determination, but those last few weeks, watching her…
He shook his head, thinking back, still seeing the exhaustion on her face, the dark circles under her eyes. She’d been tired all the time, and why wouldn’t she be, the way her old man cracked the whip? As part of the American Ski Team, she had the best coaches in the business, but Howard had taught her to ski. He’d been her trainer from childhood on and he wasn’t about to let that change. He’d still been coaching Wendy, taking her out on the slopes early in the morning, bringing her back late at night, working her and working her until she’d looked ready to collapse.
Seth saw less and less of her as the time for her departure drew close. She was worn out by the end of the day. The few times they did go out, Howard would come to the door, flash a practiced smile and say, “Don’t forget, Seth. Our girl can’t stay out too late.”
As if he hadn’t figured that out for himself, Seth thought, his jaw tightening. He’d been more concerned about her welfare than Howard, when you came down to it. He wasn’t the one who had her skiing and lifting weights and doing leg lifts a thousand hours a day, her old man was.
But Howard was his girlfriend’s father. He deserved respect. So Seth would nod and say yes sir, he understood, even though he didn’t.
The road rose steeply ahead as it climbed the mountain. The plow and the sanding trucks had already been through. Seth downshifted, made it up and over the rise and into his driveway, but he didn’t pull into the garage. Instead, he shut off the engine and sat quietly in the gathering darkness.
He’d never understood how Howard could push his daughter the way he had and not see what he was doing to her.
Seth had finally told Wendy that one evening.
“Honey,” he’d said, “don’t you think your dad’s overdoing things?”
“He isn’t,” she’d replied. “He’s just helping me.”
“Yeah, but you’re so tired….”
Wendy, curled against him with her face buried in his neck, sighed deeply and snuggled closer.
“Just hold me,” she’d murmured. “I love being in your arms.”
He’d held her tighter and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“You can be there all the time,” he’d said huskily. “Just say the word and I’ll drive us to Vermont. We’ll go to the county clerk’s office the minute it opens in the morning, get a license, and by noon, you’ll be my wife.”
Wendy had sat up and looped her arms around his neck. “We’ve been through this before,” she’d said with a little smile. “You know I want to marry you, but—”
“But,” he’d said, trying for a light tone, “first you want to bring back the gold.”
“I just want to go to Lillehammer and do the very best I can. Is that so wrong?”
It wasn’t wrong at all. He knew that, and he told her so. After a while, he just kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to quarrel with her, especially not with the Olympics so close. She didn’t need any more stress. Besides, he knew he’d miss her terribly while she was gone, and he didn’t want his memories tinged with bitterness.
Instead, he made the most of those last few evenings together.
Some nights they went to Pittsfield and took in a movie. Others, they just drove around for a while, maybe stopped in at the Burger Barn for a double order of the fries she loved.
But the best nights, the ones he’d never forgotten, were when they drove up Sawtooth Mountain and parked in the little clearing they thought of as their very own. He’d turn on the radio, find a station they both liked, and take Wendy in his arms.
“Seth,” she’d whisper, her voice going all low and smoky, and he’d kiss her, gently at first, then with more passion. Her breathing would quicken and he’d undo her bra, slip his hands up under her sweater and cup her breasts, so silky, so warm, so sensitive to his touch.
Her soft moans were sweeter than the music coming from the speakers. The heat of her against his questing hand when he slid it inside her jeans was like flame. Together, they’d undo his zipper and she’d straddle him, kiss him as she lowered herself on him….
“Hell.”
Seth shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Terrific. He was a grown man thinking about kid stuff that had been over for the best part of a decade, and he was turning himself on.
Impatiently, he climbed out of his truck and went into the house. The storm was over. Stars winked in the inky-black sky. It was going to be a cold, clear night. Maybe, he thought as he shrugged off his jacket and tossed his keys on the bird’s-eye maple table near the door—maybe he’d phone Jo, see if she wanted to grab dinner at the little place they both liked all the way down near Lee.
And maybe it was wrong to ask one woman to dinner when you were having sexual fantasies about another.
Seth blew out a breath as he undid the laces of his leather construction boots and toed them off.
