“It’s nothing. I just thought he might have been someone I knew.” She tried to put forth a smile that said it was unimportant, but she was not sure how successful she was. “Why don’t you go on in and clean up while I start dinner?”
She went through the motions, but her mind was not on preparing the meal. All the land back in the hills belonged to the Edwards family—or, more accurately, Wyatt Edwards. Could he possibly be the man whom Richie had run into?
She closed her eyes and took a calming breath. She knew there was no way to keep Wyatt from coming in contact with her son in such a small town, but she certainly had not intended for them to meet when she was not there to control what happened. How was it possible for everything to be falling apart like this? She felt a tear trickle down her cheek.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
She looked up to find Richie standing in the kitchen door, staring at her. She could not quite read the expression on his face, but he looked concerned.
“No one got hurt and I’m sorry about ripping my shirt. It really was an accident, Mom. Honest.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, his words telling her that his concern emanated from an entirely different place than hers. But she knew the relief was only temporary. She would be seeing Wyatt again; there was no way of avoiding it. She also knew that each confrontation would bring her one step closer to what she feared the most.
Three
“I’m going to my dental appointment. I should be back in about an hour and a half, if that’s all right” Noreen grabbed her purse from beneath the counter.
“That’s fine. I have some paperwork to catch up on. Things seem to be pretty slow right now. In fact, they’ve been quiet all morning.” Vicki watched as Noreen left the store, then she returned to the order she had been working on for the grocery distributor.
Wyatt peered through the doorway separating the post office from the market. As soon as Noreen exited through the front door, he entered through the back.
“Good morning.” He tried to sound cheerful even though that was not the way he felt. The impulsive embrace of the previous day kept running through his mind. Even though it rekindled the passionate feelings he had been carrying inside him, it also reinforced the anger and hurt. There was a lot to reconcile, a lot she had to answer for.
Vicki looked up from her paperwork. “Uh...good morning.” She refused to allow any hint of the warmth his touch had caused to show in her expression. She did not want him to think she was happy to see him again, especially after the way he had pulled her into his arms.
Wyatt proceeded directly to the counter, his attitude all business. “I would like to place an order for some special food items. Can you handle that or do I need to go to the city to procure what I want?”
“If my distributor handles the items, then I will be able to get them for you. I’m just putting together an order now.” She looked up at him, trying her best to maintain a professional manner. “What is it you want?”
“What is it I want?”
She saw the slightly wicked grin tug at the corners of his mouth and the glow in his eyes. An edge of irritation crept into her voice as she tried to ignore his innuendo. “What items would you like me to order for you?”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. “I’ve written them down.” He slid the list across the counter toward her.
She reached for it, but he refused to release it from his grasp. She tugged at the piece of paper, then shot him a questioning look. “Are you going to let me see your list, or not?”
He was not ready to let her off the hook yet. He fully intended to toy with her a little longer. One way or the other he would get some answers from her. “Just as soon as you agree to sit down and have a serious discussion about some unsettled matters. Maybe we could talk over lunch.” He leveled an even gaze at her, turned on his best smile and waited for her response.
She quickly withdrew her hand. “I can’t possibly leave. Noreen is gone. By the time she gets back, it’ll be too late—”
“Too late for what? Too late to talk over lunch? Then how about dinner? We could go into the city and—”
“No, I...uh...I can’t have dinner with you. I...I have other plans.” How was she ever going to exist in the same small community as Wyatt Edwards? Why was he doing this to her? Why was he being so persistent ? He had walked out on her—actually, he had run out on her—and she did not understand why he now apparently wanted to pick up the pieces of the old relationship.
“You have other plans? But I haven’t even suggested a specific night for dinner. How could you possibly know that you have plans?” Wyatt noted the nervous way she avoided any eye contact with him, the way she kept biting at her lower lip. He needed to know what it was about him that made her so uncomfortable after all these years. It had to be more than lingering guilt over her decision to run off and get married while he was away on business. That decision had apparently been easy enough for her to make fifteen years ago, he thought bitterly. There was no reason for it to be bothering her now.
She ran her fingers through her hair as she glanced out the window. “I assumed you meant tonight..”
“I did, but as luck would have it, my entire week is open. Why don’t you tell me which night you don’t have plans?”
She bit at her lip again, the panic welling inside her faster than she could push it down. “I’m busy every night.”
“Every night?” he challenged. “I didn’t think there was that much to do in this little town. Tell me, is there some sort of list of events? What’s happening—a barn raising, a square dance, an ice-cream social? Is it rodeo season? Or perhaps big-city culture has come to Sea Cliff in the form of a new art gallery opening, a stage production of some sort, or maybe a live concert. Where do I find a list of these community activities so that I can participate, too?”
“No, it’s not that. I’m just busy, that’s all.” She felt light-headed, as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the air. He was so near and so damnably sexy. But even if it was not a matter of protecting her son. she knew she could never succumb to his charm again. She was certain that over the past fifteen years he had left a string of broken hearts in his wake...hearts just like hers. She knew she could not bear the pain of having him walk away from her a second time.
“Okay, let’s try it this way.” He grabbed her calendar from next to the cash register. “Now, you can’t have lunch with me today because your clerk won’t be back until later this afternoon. Okay, that sounds reasonable.”
He took her pen from the counter and wrote no lunch on the calendar. “Now, as for dinner tonight... you claim you’re busy.” He looked up, capturing her with his gaze. “Busy doing what? Is this the night you wash your hair?” He reached out and touched her ash-blond hair, then allowed his fingertips to skim across her jaw and finally come to rest under her chin.
His voice took on a soft quality, betraying the emotion he was trying to conceal. “Your hair looks lovely. So do you.”
Her entire body trembled beneath his touch. All she could think of was where the embrace they had shared might have led if she had not pulled away from him. She worried about him trying it again. She knew she would be powerless to stop it.
“Wyatt...I...I have work to do...” she finally managed to say. She closed her eyes and turned her head away. “Please go.” Her voice was a mere whisper
As much as he wanted to continue the seduction that seemed to have materialized of its own volition, he recognized that any further conversation along those lines would be counterproductive. He returned to the business at hand. “What about