Spying the phone, he remembered his short call with Becca, how the sound of her voice had taken him back in time to that summer after his first year at Oregon State. Man, he’d been horny and she, well…his groin tightened at the thought of their affair. “Too hot to handle,” he said aloud and reached into the refrigerator for a beer.
Funny, when Renee had insisted “the old gang” get together and had finally convinced Hudson that she was going to arrange a meeting whether he liked it or not, he’d offered to call Becca. Not Zeke, nor Mitch, nor Glenn, just Becca. And Renee had known that Becca would be the lure. Her eyes had actually lit with smug satisfaction when he’d reluctantly agreed and offered to call her.
“I bet Tamara has her number,” Renee said, tossing him her cell phone, Tamara Pitts’s name and number listed on her display. “Give her a call.”
She hadn’t added I dare you, but it had been there just the same. They both knew it, and no, it wasn’t a twin thing. Renee just knew how to manipulate people. “She’s not married, you know, her husband died last year and get this, he left not only a widow, but a girlfriend to boot, a pregnant girlfriend. Becca didn’t even have time to divorce the bastard before he kicked off. A real gem, that Ben Sutcliff.”
He didn’t ask how she’d known all the dirt on Becca’s husband. Renee didn’t explain. It was part of her nature, what she liked to call “reporter’s instincts,” but Hudson thought it had more to do with being a snoop and a busybody.
“So, call her. See if the widow can make it,” Renee said, her lips curling knowingly. “You know what, you never really got over her. Or Jessie. I’d call that pathetic, but considering my current marital state, that would be a little hypocritical.” She hadn’t elaborated and Hudson knew better than to prod. As far as he was concerned, Renee’s husband, Tim, was useless. But then he’d always thought so.
“I just wonder, if that skeleton does happen to be Jessie’s, what the hell happened to her?”
Hudson hadn’t let his mind travel down that dark and twisted road. He’d always assumed Jessie was alive; that she’d just taken off. Again.
He hoped he was right.
“I’ll call her later,” he’d said, writing down Tamara’s number. He wasn’t about to have Renee listen in to a conversation between him and Rebecca Ryan.
Now, in the kitchen his parents had once owned, Hudson twisted off the cap on his bottle of Budweiser and tried not to think about either Becca or Jessie.
Two women he’d thought he’d loved.
Two women who had altered the course of his life.
Two women he might have been better off never meeting.
There was no sleeping. Not with the rain peppering the windows and tree limbs swaying like frantic beckoning arms outside Becca’s window. She watched, eyes open in the darkness, Ringo curled up beside her, snoring softly. She’d been uncertain about the dog when Ben suggested they get a pet, then had fallen in love with the mutt, rescuing him from a pet store where lots of puppies tumbled around, noses pressed to the cages. Even though the dog had been Ben’s idea, he’d been lukewarm on Ringo. He’d wanted to pick out the dog. Becca hadn’t realized it at the time, but she now knew it wasn’t about the pet, it was about Ben being able to pick out what he wanted, whether it worked for Becca or not. He’d done the same thing with the furniture, and her car, and this condo. The only choice that had been totally hers was Ringo. And Ben hadn’t liked it.
She hugged Ringo now and he let out a long doggy sigh. She tried not to think about the phone call from Hudson, but his cool voice played like a tape in her mind, looping over and over again.
Becca? Rebecca…Sutcliff? Rebecca Ryan, in high school?
Squeezing her eyes closed even tighter, Becca fought back traitorous thoughts. She was too old for romantic ideas about Hudson Walker. That was all part of a long-ago past. And even though she would be reconnecting with some of her old friends—even though she was about to physically see Hudson again, now…now that she was a widow and therefore free—it didn’t mean she should have even one romantic notion about Hudson. That affair had been all about high school. She was over it, and yet there it was, streaming into her consciousness, taking hold and not letting go.
Even now, in her darkened bedroom, with the dog snoring beside her, Becca remembered the months after she’d graduated from St. Elizabeth’s as being a turning point in her life. That blasted hot summer with Hudson had been one of those magical times when everything was working right. Becca had Hudson, and though he might not be proclaiming his undying love for her, he truly liked her and she was head over heels about him. From a few stolen moments, their relationship quickly exploded into a daily/nightly routine where as soon as they were off work they would find each other, ending up in each other’s arms, making hot love on a blanket underneath bright stars on the Walker ranch, or in his bedroom, sneakily, after his parents were asleep, or anywhere they could find to be alone.
In September Hudson prepared to go back to OSU, which was located in Corvallis, about an hour and a half down I-5 from Portland. Becca didn’t see his returning to college as a problem, but Hudson started growing more distant as the summer wound to a close. Where once he’d been as enthusiastic as she, calling her day and night, he’d started to cool as the shimmering heat of August had slipped into a cooler September.
And then there was the pregnancy.
A skipped period she’d barely thought about, and then another that had worried her. She’d always been irregular, but she felt different, and when she finally worked up the courage to buy one of the home pregnancy tests, she’d sat on the edge of the bathtub at her parents’ house and prayed she was wrong—only to see the evidence of the child growing within her, a child she’d always wanted.
But Hudson?
Oh, God. Her throat had turned to sand and tears slid from the corners of her eyes before she could take control again, wrapping all the evidence of the test kit in a brown paper bag and burning it in the wood stove before her parents arrived home from work. Neither Jim nor Barbara Ryan would welcome an unplanned grandchild from an unmarried daughter.
Becca had sniffed back her tears and only told her old cat, Fritter, a tortoise-shelled skinny stray that had attached itself to her, about the pregnancy.
Afraid, desperate, sensing something had changed with Hudson, Becca tried hard not to cling to him. She’d practiced telling him about the baby. Over and over again in the car, when she was alone, or whispering to the cat in her bedroom, but she wanted to wait for just the right moment, didn’t want to spring it on him. After all, he’d been the one who had the condoms…well, most of the time.
Finally, as a harvest moon hung low in the night sky, she’d told herself it was now or never, she had to tell him. He deserved to know. It was his right. But before she could force the words over her tongue, he mentioned that he’d known he’d been a little aloof, that it hadn’t been her fault, but he’d been plagued with thoughts about Jessie.
Once again…Jessie.
He told her when she was seated next to him on a porch swing at his parents’ ranch. He was in jeans, a work shirt, and boots, and there were bits of straw in his hair. He’d been drinking a lemonade when Becca pulled into the drive, and his mother, a tall woman with dark hair shot with gray, asked if she wanted a lemonade, too. Becca politely declined and sat down beside Hudson on the swing. Beneath her skin anxiety ran like an electric current. Something was wrong. She didn’t know if she had the courage to tell him. She had to tell him about the baby. But she couldn’t bear for him to think she’d deliberately trapped him. Couldn’t bear to think that maybe she had, a little…to have his baby.