Gina looked up from the suitcase she had been haphazardly flinging clothes into, and studied her mother’s small, delicate features. Why had she never noticed the hardness in her mother’s china-blue eyes or the petulant droop of her mouth?
“What is the matter with you? Why are you standing there gawking at me? You haven’t lost your job, have you?” Helen’s voice sharpened.
“I didn’t lose it, Mother. I resigned it. Effective immediately.”
Gina walked over to her closet and opened the door, instinctively rejecting the clothes inside. All those ruffles and soft pastels didn’t suit her. They suited her mother’s petite figure and blond coloring. On her own five-ten frame they looked fussy, and the pale pastels made her look washed-out.
Never again would she buy something that didn’t suit her simply to keep the peace, she vowed as she closed the door with a decided snap.
“How many times have I told you not to slam doors?” her mother demanded.
“I don’t know,” Gina said honestly. “But I do know that this is the last time you’ll ever have to do it, because I’m leaving.”
“Leaving!” Her mother clutched her chest and started to gasp. “I feel…”
Gina watched with a feeling of numbness. “You missed your calling, Mother. You should have gone on the stage.”
Turning away, Gina scooped the last of her underwear out of her dresser drawer, tossed it into her suitcase and yanked the zipper closed.
Her mother’s mouth fell open in shock at Gina’s totally unexpected response. “How can you say that to your own mother?”
“Come to that, how could you lie to your own daughter? Your doctor called me at work this morning and asked me to come by his office on my lunch hour. It was a most enlightening meeting.” Gina cringed at the humiliating memory. “He gave me a lecture about how I was stifling you. About how you’d told him I’d sabotaged your efforts to get a job to help fill your time since Dad died.” Gina’s rigid control cracked slightly at the thought of her beloved father. “The doctor also assured me there was absolutely nothing wrong with your heart.”
“You probably misunderstood him,” her mother insisted. “You really aren’t the world’s brightest person, you know.”
Gina ignored the oft-repeated comment.
“And after I left his office, I got to wondering what else you might have lied to me about, so I went to see the lawyer who handled Dad’s estate.”
“You had no right!”
Gina’s light blue eyes momentarily darkened with anger. “As one of the beneficiaries, I had every right. I found out that, far from leaving you almost penniless as you’d claimed, Dad left you more than enough money to live on. Not only that but he left me enough money to finish my degree.”
Gina jerked her suitcase off the bed and started toward the door.
“But you can’t leave me!” her mother screamed. “I love you.”
Gina paused and looked back at her mother. “Is love your excuse or your explanation for what you’ve done?”
Her mother ignored the question. “Where are you going? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going as far away from here as I can get, and as for what I’m going to do, I intend to start living instead of just existing,” Gina said as she turned and walked out the door.
Chapter One
Gina gently touched the brakes of her car as she rounded a sharp bend in the narrow Massachusetts road and saw the lights of a small village directly ahead.
She shifted restlessly, trying to relieve some of the stiffness driving all day had caused. Her stomach, as if in sympathy with her muscles, gave a sudden rumble, reminding her that it had been a long time since lunch.
When she reached the village, she slowed to a crawl, looking for someplace to eat. Finding a brightly lit diner, she parked in front of it.
Grabbing her purse, she got out of the car and automatically locked it. A fugitive gust of crisp September wind raised goose bumps on her bare arms and whipped her reddish-brown hair into her face. She absently pushed it back as she considered unlocking the car and digging through her luggage to find a sweater. Finally she decided she wouldn’t be outside long enough for it to be worth the trouble.
She started toward the restaurant and then paused when a garish sign across the street advertising Bill’s Bar caught her eye. Turning, she studied the faintly dilapidated building, taking in what seemed to be a score of neon signs advertising beers, most of which she’d never heard of.
Her gaze swung back to the restaurant. It looked staidly middle class and boringly respectable. Whereas Bill’s Bar looked daring. Adventurous. In keeping with the new life she was determined to carve for herself.
Definitely Bill’s Bar, she decided.
Not giving herself a chance to change her mind, she quickly crossed the street, pushed open the bar’s door and stepped inside.
Nervously her gaze swept the crowded, noisy room. Feeling conspicuous, she hurriedly sat down at an empty table near the door. Picking up the cardboard menu lying on the red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloth, she studied it. It was heavy on imported beers and light on food.
A middle-aged waitress appeared a few minutes later. “What can I get you?”
“A bowl of chili, apple pie and a cup of coffee,” Gina said.
“Won’t be a minute.” The waitress headed back to the kitchen, calling out Gina’s order to someone named Margie as she went.
Gina leaned against the back of the scuffed wooden chair and surreptitiously studied the bar’s patrons while she waited for her food. A large party at the back seemed to be having a great time. A wistful smile curved Gina’s mouth at the infectious sound of their laughter.
“Here you are, miss.” The waitress slapped a big bowl filled to the brim with chili down in front of her. A steaming cup of coffee followed. “I’ll get your pie in a minute.”
Gina was adding milk to her coffee when the bar’s door opened and a slither of chilly night air wrapped itself around her ankles.
“Hey, Nick, how’s the arm coming?” a man from the back of the room called out.
Curious, Gina turned to see who Nick was. Her eyes widened when she saw the man standing just inside the door. He was tall. At least six inches taller than she was. And broad. She measured the substantial width of his shoulders beneath the thick, cream Aryan sweater he was wearing.
Unconsciously her tongue moistened her lower lip as her eyes traveled down over his flat stomach and his long, jean-covered legs.
Hastily she glanced down at her chili, trying to stifle her sudden, inexplicable fascination with his body. She took a slow, deep breath, hoping the flush she could feel burning her face wasn’t visible to anyone else in the room.
What was the matter with her? she wondered uneasily. So what if the man was built like the embodiment of every sexual fantasy she’d ever had. She was old enough to know that sexual attraction was nothing more than nature’s way of ensuring the continuation of the species.
Compulsively her gaze returned to the man. Maybe so, she conceded, but in his case, nature had certainly baited one very attractive trap.
She watched from beneath her lashes as the man walked toward the bar, sat down and reached for a glass of beer the bartender placed in front of him without a word ever having been spoken.
A regular patron, Gina concluded as she studied the man’s ruggedly carved features, her eyes lingering on the strength of his square chin.