The Bachelor's Northbridge Bride

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Once inside they chose a table in the center of the small establishment and within moments, Ry had discovered clams on the long list of available toppings.

“I suppose they’ll come out of a can, and fresh are a whole other experience, but let’s have them anyway,” he decreed. “Or shall I just get them on half so you can have something else?”

“I think anything that has you in this much rapture had better be tried,” Kate said indulgently.

“Rapture?” he repeated with a crooked smile. “You think this is rapture? This is nothing but a little yen for clams.”

Kate wasn’t about to explore what he considered rapture to be, so instead—when their pizza was ordered and their drinks were served—she said, “If you do believe there was a baby between your grandmother and Hector, and you want to find it, what’s your plan?”

He obviously had one because he didn’t need to think about it before he said, “I know adoption records—especially from that far back—are sealed, but I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ll use the computer to access what I can of newspaper articles and birth announcements at the time. See if anything seems like a clue to who could have acquired a baby that didn’t seem to be their birth child. I could also comb over old records and compare births to census reports from around here—maybe that will tell me whose family grew even though there’s no record of the mother having given birth.”

“I don’t mean to be a naysayer, but that sounds like trying to find a needle in a haystack. And the fact that it was over fifty years ago won’t help anything.”

“You know what would help things, though?”

“Hmm?” Kate asked as she sipped her iced tea.

“If I knew the city clerk—that is who oversees and has access to anything that’s a matter of public record, like census reports and births—isn’t it?”

“Did you have this up your sleeve all along?” she accused.

“I found out you were the city clerk when I was shirtless—just a couple of hours ago. So no sleeves have been involved in this,” he deadpanned.

“You didn’t know I was the city clerk before that?” Kate persisted.

“Sorry to disappoint you when I’m sure you’d be happier if you could believe I was calculating and conniving, but this really was coincidental.”

“Why would I be happier if I could believe you were calculating and conniving?”

He shrugged. “It’s just the sense I get from you—that you want not to like me.”

Great, he was intuitive, too.

But why did the idea that she was trying not to like him seem to strike him as amusing?

“You’re smiling,” she observed. “You have the sense that I want not to like you and you find that funny?”

“And challenging—which is dangerous for me because I can never resist a challenge.”

That comment went unexplored when their pizza arrived just then and Ry was intent on her tasting it and telling him what she thought.

“I love it!” she said without disguising her own shock at finding it true. Since she wasn’t a big fan of seafood, she’d expected to dislike clams on pizza.

Ry grinned but looked as stunned as she was by her declaration. “Really?”

“The tomato and the clams together have this sort of buttery richness—honestly, I love it.”

“If you think this is good, someday you’ll have to have linguine and clam sauce made with fresh clams—that’s something.”

After a few more bites, rather than returning to the subject of her not wanting to like him, he said, “So, how about it? Can I look through your records?”

He made that sound seductive, which caused Kate to roll her eyes as if he were beyond redemption, and turn a bit preachy. “They aren’t my records. They’re city records. And since they’re public, they’re available to anyone who wants to look through them.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ll be at that office tomorrow afternoon. The records department is in the courthouse building on the corner of Main Street and South—”

“I know where it is. But how late are you open? I’m swamped with Home-Max stuff tomorrow so it’s going to be tough for me to get away, but I want to jump on this.”

“Government offices close at five.”

He laughed. “Geez, loosen up, will you? You sound like a recorded phone message.”

Had she stiffened at the prospect of seeing him again tomorrow?

Probably. It was just that he made it so easy to be with him and she knew that was a pitfall.

She put some effort into outwardly relaxing, though, and announced that she was breaking her one-slice-of-pizza rule and having half of a second slice.

“Go for it!” he encouraged, taking a full second slice of his own.

Then, as if he were slightly baffled, he said, “So, city clerk, I can see that job for you. But how did you decide to become a masseuse?”

“A therapeutic massage therapist,” she corrected because once more he’d made masseuse sound a little off-color. “I wanted to do something in health care but I didn’t want to be a doctor or a nurse—I wanted something that wouldn’t take too much dedication so that when I have a family, my family can genuinely come first. Being a physical therapist or a chiropractor seemed to offer more flexibility, but Northbridge already has one of each of those, and the town isn’t big enough to support more than that. But there was no massage therapist.”

“You wanted a career in health care but you actually chose what line based on what Northbridge needed, not on what you wanted? As if Northbridge is the only place you could get a job?”

“It’s the only place I intend to live, so, yes,” she said matter-of-factly.

“There’s a great big world out there, you know?”

“But I want to live here.”

“And the whole flexible-hours issue so you could devote yourself to a family you don’t even have yet? You let a lot of outside things dictate your choice.”

“I just thought it through and made my decision based on what I want for myself now and in the future. You find that odd?”

He shrugged. “That just isn’t the way I do things. I like to make choices based on the moment, on going with the flow of things as they happen, on what feels right.”

“Is this the first time it’s occurred to you that we’re different?”

He laughed, pushing his plate away after his third slice of pizza and lounging slightly in his chair while Kate continued to sit very straight in hers.

“Believe me, I know we’re very different,” he said then, his tone wry.

“You say that as if I have a tail or green scales for skin,” she pointed out.

“No green scales—your skin is like cream. And your tail is one of the finest I’ve ever seen. But damn, you’re serious. What if things don’t work out the way you think they will? What if you don’t ever get married and have a family? What if a tornado strikes and there’s no more Northbridge? Will you be able to be happy doing massages anyway or will you regret that you didn’t do something you actually wanted to do?”

“I know that some of life just happens to you, no matter what you do. But I also believe that if you set your priorities and go after what you want with steadfast, single-minded determination, you can achieve your goals. I’m just making accommodations for those goals in advance so that when I achieve them, there won’t be obstacles already mucking them up.”

He studied her for a long moment, smiling a Cheshire cat smile right before he said, “You’re just so centered and sure of yourself and what you want and where you’re going, aren’t you? You think you have everything under control.”

“As much as possible,” she confirmed.

He shook his head and grinned. “God help me, there’s a part of me that wants to rattle that cage you’re in. Who put you there—the Reverend or your parents or a bad experience with a man?”

The waitress appeared just then to ask if they wanted to take the remainder of the pizza. Ry didn’t but Kate did, and while the waitress boxed it for her, Ry glanced at the bill and handed the money to the waitress when she was done.

“I am not in a cage,” Kate felt compelled to say once the waitress had left them alone again.

“Boxed, caged, tied up—any way you want to look at, you’re contained.”

Kate merely shook her head. “From your perspective. From mine, I’m doing just fine, thank you very much. And I certainly don’t need my cage rattled. Especially not by you,” she warned.

He smiled again and Kate had the feeling that every word she said only made her more of a challenge.

“Right, I get it,” he said. “I’m not your type. Don’t worry, you aren’t mine, either.”

That stung. Kate had no idea why, but it did.

She felt her spine stiffen in response. “Well, now that we have that settled, we should probably go.”

He grinned as if he knew that her back was up. “Yeah, since there are so many people lined up waiting for this table,” he said with a glance around them at the still empty restaurant.

He stood, though, and so did Kate, making sure to take the pizza box with her. But before Ry moved away from the table, he rolled his injured shoulder and seeing it sent a flash of memory through her mind of his naked back.

“You are good at what you do, I’ll give you that,” he said. “I feel a lot better.”

“So maybe my occupation wasn’t such a bad choice.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad choice,” he countered, leaving tip money on the table. “If I were you, I’d just be a little worried about what went into making it and if it was the right choice.”

“It was for me,” Kate said decisively.

Ry motioned for her to go ahead of him to the door and as she did he said from behind, “So, do you ever do massages that aren’t for medicinal reasons—like they do at spas?” he asked, apparently to make it clear it was not a goad, but a genuine question.

So that was the way Kate took it. “Sure. I have some clients who just want the pampering aspect. And one Saturday a month I run spa day—I put candles around the office, offer teas and treats. The local manicurist comes in to do pedicures, one of our hairstylists is there for scalp treatments and deep conditioning, and we do as much of a spa kind of atmosphere as I can work out in a medical office.”

“Girls only?”

“It isn’t a rule, but we’ve never had a man come. And if we did, it probably would make everyone padding around in bathrobes, with towels on their heads and toe separators on their feet, a little uncomfortable.”

They were at the front end of her car by then and Ry stopped, nodding up the street in the direction of the hospital. “I’ll walk back for my wheels so you can get right home to those things I kept you from.”

Why did the idea of getting on Internet dating sites and looking through a catalog of potential mates suddenly seem anticlimactic to the way she’d just spent the last few hours?

Kate tried to ignore it.

“Thanks for the massage,” Ry said then. “And for taking me to meet Tyson. Sorry about him slapping your wrists for bringing me.”

“The pizza made up for it—thanks for that. And for introducing me to clams.”

He grinned. “Sure. I’ll have to think of what else I can slide between the bars of your cage to open your eyes to things outside of it.”

Kate again shook her head and once more rolled her eyes. But, for some reason, she also smiled a little.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, knowing that shouldn’t be something that somehow brightened her outlook on the coming day, but realizing that it did.

“Will you wait for me if I’m a little late?” he asked in a tone that held an enticement all its own.

“We’re talking government office, remember? It closes at five sharp.”

“Come on—small town, you’re the city clerk, I’m betting you have the key to the office door and can make your own hours.”

“I could but why would I?”

“Just to help out? I have a full 18-wheeler coming in from Missoula tomorrow that has to be completely unloaded so it can get back tomorrow night. I’ll be lucky to get to you by five but then there’s that needle in a haystack to look for. How about if I bring dinner and we eat it while we both go through the old records?”

“Oh, now not only am I extending my office hours to suit you, I’m helping you look through the records, too?”

“Think of my poor, suffering grandmother,” he said like a line in a bad melodrama.

What she was thinking about was how good he looked in the glow of the streetlight he was standing under. How sharply cut were the lines of his face.

Which was precisely why she should say no.

But before she’d said anything at all, he repeated, “Think of my poor, suffering grandmother. Think of the clams,” he added equally as melodramatically.

And she laughed in spite of herself and heard herself say, “For Theresa and the clams, I suppose.”

He grinned again, drawing her attention to his mouth and making her suddenly wonder what it might be like to have him kiss her. She had no doubt that he would have a flair when it came to that the way he did with everything else.

But those thoughts were uncalled for and not at all what she wanted to be thinking about!

“Just try to get there as early as possible, I have things to do at home tomorrow night, too,” she said sternly to counteract her own mental wanderings.

“The minute I can get away, I’ll be there,” he assured.

Friendly—that was all tonight was supposed to be and all it had ended up being, Kate lectured herself. It was all tomorrow night would be. They’d agreed they weren’t each other’s types and she was beginning to believe it because while there was a flirtatious undertone to almost everything he said, he didn’t go anywhere with it. It didn’t seem to be leading to anything like that kissing she couldn’t seem to get her mind off of.

She was still trying like mad, though, as she said, “I’ll see you when you get there, then.”

“No, I’ll see you when I get there,” he countered as if it were a game.

Because everything was more of a game to him than it was to her, she reminded herself.