“Not sure I understand,” he said, which was true enough.
She crossed her arms, as a strange—and strangely arousing—combination of hurt and mad duked it out in her eyes. “Did I do something to tick you off?” she said, and he heard himself say, “You really want to have this conversation?” and over the sound of his words detonating in his head she lobbed back, “Implying that there’s something to have a conversation about?” and longing and anger collided in his gut in a spectacular explosion.
Obviously trying to ignore this...this
buzzing
between them wasn’t working. For either of them. At which point it occurred to him that, sometimes, in order to do the right thing, you had to be the bad guy. Whatever was going on underneath all that soft, silky, sunset-colored hair, it needed to be stopped, now.
So Patrick climbed the steps, watching her eyes pop wide open when he grabbed her left hand and gave it a little shake, a hundred colors flashing in the faceted stones, even in the waning light. “Why are you still wearing these?”
“What?” she squeaked out, frozen.
“Blythe told me you’re a widow.”
Mouth open, April snatched back her hand, holding it to her chest. “I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret.”
“Then why—?”
“For heaven’s sake, Patrick—plenty of widows still wear their rings! What’s the big deal?”
“How about because people might assume you’re still married? Or at least, still
feel
married?” He crossed his arms. “Both of which seriously conflict with the messages you’re sending out.”
Color bloomed in her cheeks. “Messages?”
“Yeah, messages. Specifically of a ‘let’s get cozy’ nature.”
She blinked. “I don’t—”
“Like hell. You don’t really expect me to believe you have no idea how you’ve been looking at me?” He stepped closer, deliberately towering over her, ignoring the lust rearing its ugly, insistent head when he got a good whiff of her perfume. At how the breeze sifted through her hair, across her slender, very pink neck. God, that hair drove him crazy. Almost as crazy as that prissy little blue headband holding it off her face. “That I wouldn’t pick up on it?”
Then she seemed to regroup, thrusting her hands into her jacket pockets and looking him smack in the eye, even though her voice shook. Barely, but it shook. “I was
going
to say, no, I don’t still feel married. Not that it’s any of your business, but—”
“What?”
“The rings...I’ve never owned anything this pretty in my life, okay? So maybe I just wasn’t ready to chuck them into a safe, never to be seen again. And anyway, you don’t think I noticed you looking at
me
exactly the same way?” Her eyes narrowed. “Even when you thought I
was
married?”
Busted
.
“Fine. So I noticed you were hot. And my skills at keeping my thoughts under wraps might be a bit rusty. But that’s all they were. Thoughts. Doesn’t mean I had any intention of acting on ’em.”
That soft-looking little mouth curved at the corners. “Before or after you found out I was single?”
“Either. Both. And damn it, you’re doing it again, aren’t you?”
Another blush washed over her cheeks. “Not intentionally—”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, April. Hell, you’re not even in the right forest.”
“I wasn’t barking, for heaven’s sake! I was just...looking—”
“Well, don’t. Because I’m bad news. And for God’s sake I don’t need some gal taking pity on me, wondering what it would be like to shag the freak.”
Brittle silence stretched between them, pierced only by a hawk’s cry from behind the house. At last April opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it again and said, “You honestly think that?”
“Yep.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” she said, before she stomped back inside, the door slamming shut behind her.
Weirdly, Patrick didn’t feel nearly as good about that as he’d expected to.
* * *
“Done,” Blythe said, arms outstretched, her six-inch feather earrings a blur. “Done, done, done, done,
done
.” Then she did a strange little NordicTrack shuffle in her stiletto booties that made April laugh, despite still feeling like fish doody several days after telling Patrick he was an idiot. Not that he wasn’t. She just felt bad about it.
Panting a little, Blythe slung one slender arm around April’s shoulders, surveying the finished gathering room. “You ready for this, sweetie?”
April crossed her arms over her lambswool turtleneck and grinned, despite the trembling in her midsection. “I am so ready.”
“Then let’s kidnap Mel, go to Emerson’s for lunch to celebrate.”
“You’re on.”
Her cousin strode off to get her things from the office, leaving April to revel. Absorb. Minutes before, they’d finished the final walk-through of the upstairs, the five bedrooms outfitted in a combination of antiques, repurposed pieces salvaged from their grandmother’s “collections,” and funky yard-sale finds. Windows sparkled, bathrooms gleamed, deeply piled rugs invited bare toes to squish.
Yet April couldn’t shake the feeling that any minute she was going to tumble out of bed and realize it’d all been a dream. But it wasn’t. In fact, she’d been stupefied that morning to check the website and discover several booking requests for the festival, more for after the holidays. And she had to hire more staff and find a laundry service, set up accounts with various suppliers—
It was happening. It was really, really happening.
So this whole business with Patrick still hanging over her like a toxic cloud was patently unfair. He and his band of merry men—and two women—had finished up the day before as well, aside from the spring planting. She’d also paid for a year’s worth of monthly maintenance, so she’d never have to think about keeping it all pretty, they’d do it for her. But now that the bulk of the job was done—and since she seriously doubted Patrick was going to show up in May, clippers in hand, to trim her topiaries—in theory she supposed she never had to think about him again, either. Let alone see him.
In a town the size of a peanut? Right.
“I texted Mel,” Blythe said, wrapping a long, silver-threaded scarf around her neck as she emerged from the kitchen, the fringed ends gracefully blending into the folds of her cashmere cape. “She’s going to meet us there.”
“Excellent.”
November had returned with a vengeance, making both women scurry out to Blythe’s Prius, complete with a vanity plate that read WOWFCTR.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Blythe said as April buckled her seat belt. “You ever change your mother’s mind about coming up for Thanksgiving?”
“Hah. Only way that’ll happen is if I blindfold her and toss her in a sack.” The Prius silently navigated the circular drive and out onto the road leading through the gently worn neighborhood of rambling, multistory houses set on spacious lots, the bare-branched elms and maples and oaks seeming to scrape the cloudless, brilliant blue sky. April frowned over at her cousin. “Does your mom still have issues about Nana?”
Blythe darted a look in April’s direction, then shrugged. “I have no idea. Not something we discussed.” They passed a small farm, the flat, open field choked with Canada geese foraging for harvest leavings. “But you know, our grandmother made her own bed, pushing her daughters away.”
“True, I suppose.”
“So you’ll go back to Richmond for the holiday?”
“Maybe. Haven’t decided yet.”
“You’re welcome to hang with me. Or I’m sure Mel—”
“Thanks. But I probably will spend it with my folks.”
Actually, she had no intention of going to Richmond—which she’d already told her mother, who’d then said they were having dinner with friends anyway. Just as well, being as April had realized that since this would be the first holiday without Clayton and his mother, she simply wanted some space to absorb that. And heaven knew she didn’t want to spend it with Mel, since for one thing even though April adored Ryder—whom Mel had loved from the time she was a little girl, and who was the main reason she’d returned to St. Mary’s after swearing six ways to Sunday she never would—all that bliss was hard to take in a confined space. And for another Ryder’s parents and Mel were still working out their own issues with each other, fallout from yet more of her grandmother’s madness. Best to stay well away from that for a while—
“So. What’s going on between you and Patrick?”
“What? Nothing—”
“No, if
nothing
was going on, he wouldn’t have kept asking me questions the past couple days that he should’ve been asking you. Honestly, I leave town for one day, and it all goes to pot.”
April frowned at her. “Excuse me?”
Her cousin pushed out a why-me? sigh. “You’re single, he’s single. You’re young and adorable. He’s young and sexy as hell. No chatter than I can tell that he’s seeing anyone, no evidence that his injuries affected his testosterone level—”
“Blythe, jeez—”
“And I’m guessing you haven’t been secretly getting it on with anybody, either, since Clayton’s death.”
Heat seared April’s cheeks. “You don’t have to be so...matter-of-fact about it.”
“About what? That your husband is dead? And you’re not? That you’re only twenty-freaking-six years old, your husband has been gone for, what? Nearly a year? And you’re still wearing your wedding rings even though—even though,” she said when April opened her mouth, “you’re looking at your landscaper like you’ve been on Atkins for a year and he’s a Krispy Kreme donut. So, yeah. I’m matter-of-fact. Because somebody has to be, and apparently that’s not you.”
April gawked at her. “This from the woman who thinks, and I quote, that ‘romance is a load of horse pucky’?”
Blythe snickered. “That’s not exactly quoting me. And that applied to me. Not the rest of the world.”
“Isn’t that being a trifle hypocritical?”
“Ask me if I care.”
Gravel crunched as she steered the car into the restaurant lot. Not a huge crowd, this time of year. During the summer, though, hour-long waits for tables at the seafood joint that always smelled of French fries, hush puppies and heaven were not uncommon. They spotted Mel’s car, parked close to the wide plank leading to the pylon-supported building.
A chill traipsed up April’s spine. “Oh, Lord—you’ve been discussing this with Mel, haven’t you?”
“Hellz, yeah.”
“So is this lunch? Or an intervention?”
Blythe cut the engine, grabbed her purse and grinned at April, all smokey-eyed devil woman. “Who says it can’t be both?”
April groaned.
“You interested in Patrick or not?”
“Whether I am or not has nothing to do with—”
“Just answer the question.”
So here it was. Moment of truth and all that. Even if it was little more than a formality, since if she hadn’t been interested she wouldn’t be obsessing like she was.
Blythe tapped the steering wheel. “Clock’s ticking, sweetie.”
“How about...intrigued?”
“Close enough,” Blythe said, then patted April’s knee. “Oh, c’mon...it’ll be fun.”
“For
you,
” April muttered. Blythe chuckled.
Except the thing was, maybe she did need an intervention. Or at least a sounding board. Or two. Something her cousins had excelled at when April was fourteen, and they’d been only too willing to help her with her boy problems. They should only know how little progress, actually, she’d made on that particular front in the intervening years.
Although, if this went down the way she suspected it would, they were about to find out.
Chapter Four
A
pril couldn’t quite tell whose mouth was hanging farther open, although she gave the edge to Blythe.
“Get
out
. You’re still a
virgin?
”
“Yep.”
Okay, so she hadn’t really meant to lead with the punch line, except her cousins had overwhelmed her with all this
advice,
and it sort of...popped out.
They exchanged flummoxed glances, then Mel frowned at her. “But you were—”
“Married. I know.”
And Patrick thought
he
was the freak. Heh.
“So, see...” April frowned at her overstuffed shrimp salad sandwich, wondering how she was going to pick it up without half of it plopping back on the plate. “I really don’t have a whole lot of experience. Or any, really. When it comes to, you know...”
“Seduction?” Blythe offered—kindly, it should be noted—and April’s eyes shot to hers.
“Oops,” Mel muttered, her pink hoodie clashing with the maroon vinyl booth seat. “Deer in headlights, straight ahead.”
“I hadn’t exactly thought of it like that,” April said, finally picking up the bulging sandwich.
Plop
. She scooped up an escaped shrimp and bit into it. “But I guess I have to start somewhere.”
Both women were still staring at her, absolutely still except for their chewing mouths. April sighed.
“My marriage...” She devoured another shrimp. “It wasn’t about romance. Clayton and I were doing each other a favor.”
“As opposed to doing each other,” Blythe said, and Mel swatted her.
“I know, it sounds weird—”
“You think?”
“For God’s sake, Blythe,” Mel said, “will you shut up and let the girl tell the story?”
As in, the whole story. Instead of the uber-edited version she’d offered when they’d first reconnected in September, when she wasn’t sure how her cousins would react to something that still sounded surreal, even to her.
“Okay,” she said on a breath, then met their dual gazes. “Five years ago an agency in Richmond sent me to interview for a companion position to Clayton’s mother, Helene, who lived with him. Which was bizarre in itself, since I have no idea why the agency thought I’d be a good fit. But I’d had so many rotten jobs by that point—” already privy to her sketchy childhood and her father’s predilection for pipe dreams, her cousins nodded in sympathy “—that this one sounded too good to be true. It didn’t require any real skills, which I didn’t have, anyway. And it paid well.” She blushed. “
Really
well. And Clayton was desperate, since the old gal had run off no less than six companions in the previous year.”