Sandra Steffen – A Bride by Summer (страница 8)
“None taken.” There went that sinful smile he didn’t overuse. And there went the feeling in her toes.
She sighed. “It’s true that I have fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants tendencies. My father expects my new business venture to fail, and my cheating ex-boyfriend believes I’ll come crawling back, and maybe I have made rash decisions in the past, but I never get lost. It has to do with my photographic memory. Technically it’s called eidetic imagery.”
He assumed a thoughtful pose, his left arm folded across his ribs, his chin resting on his fist.
Ruby’s clothes were beginning to feel constricting, her bottom lip the slightest bit pouty and her pulse fluttery. And her toes, well, blast her toes.
While twenty-year-old heavy-metal music played in the background far more softly than Aerosmith ever intended, Reed rested his hands confidently on his hips and said, “In essence, you’re saying you got lost today and it had something to do with me.”
“Not lost,” she countered. “Slightly turned around. I don’t want— I just don’t think— I shouldn’t.” She shook her head, straightened her spine. “I won’t.”
The old stereo shut off. Without music, the whir of the fan was a lonesome hum in the too-warm room.
“I’m spontaneous,” she said, trying to explain. “Unfortunately, I bore easily. Believe me, it’s a curse. I had a dream job in L.A. that I hated, and now I’m here, and I don’t want to go back to my dad’s towing service. I bought this tavern and I need to focus on getting it open and running and keeping it that way, not on some guy who, it turns out, is tall.”
“With a capital T.” He met her steadfast gaze. “Isn’t that how you put it?”
The air heated and her thoughts slowed. It was all she could do not to smile.
Time passed slowly. Or perhaps it stopped altogether. She found herself staring into his blue-gray eyes, and doing so changed everything, until there was only this moment in time.
She swallowed. Breathed.
Yes, he was tall, she thought, and he didn’t scream expletives after he’d been run off the road, and the color of his eyes was as dense and changeable as storm clouds. It was unfortunate that staring into them had wiped out the feeling in her toes, but it wasn’t his fault.
“Ruby?” Reed said.
“Yes?”
“I stopped by to pick up Lacey’s cameras.”
She blinked. For a second there she thought he said he’d stopped by to pick up Lacey’s cameras.
Ohmygod. That’s what he said.
She hadn’t blushed since she was thirteen years old and she really hoped she didn’t start again now. Since the floor failed to open up and swallow her whole, she whirled around, stuck her stupid tingly toes into the nearest pair of flip-flops, grabbed the key ring off the peg in the kitchen and started for the door.
She darted past him, down the stairs and around the barrel of purple-and-yellow petunias blooming at the bottom. Every concise little thud the heels of his Italian loafers made on the stairs let her know he was following her.
She unlocked the tavern’s back door, and as the heavy steel monstrosity swung in on creaking hinges, she said, “You could have stopped me.”
Surprisingly, his voice came from little more than two feet behind her. “Only a fool would stop a beautiful woman when she’s insinuating she’s profoundly attracted to him, too.”
Ruby must have turned around, because she and Reed stood face-to-face, nearly toe to toe, his head tilted down slightly, hers tilted up. Holding her breath, she found herself wondering why it seemed that the smallest words in the English language were always the most poignant and powerful.
Too, Reed had said.
She was profoundly attracted to him, too.
That meant he was profoundly attracted to her, also.
They were profoundly attracted to each other.
Lord help her, she was reacting to this profound attraction again, to his nearness and the implications and nearly every wild and wonderful possibility that came with it. His gaze roamed over her entire face as if he liked what he saw. As the clock on the courthouse chimed the quarter hour and a horn honked in the distance, Ruby’s heart fluttered into her throat, her toes tingling crazily and her thoughts spinning like moons around a newly discovered planet.
She and Reed seemed to realize in unison how close they were and how easy it would be to lean in those last few inches until their lips touched. If that happened, it would undoubtedly be incredible and there was no telling where it would lead. Fine. There was a very good chance it would lead to sex, wild, fast, ready, middle-of-the-day sex that spiraled into a crescendo of adrenaline and exploding electricity not unlike the music she’d been listening to before she was so rudely—okay, not that rudely—interrupted.
They stilled. Taking a shaky breath, she drew back, and so did he, one centimeter at a time.
He was the first to find his voice. “As tempting as it is to take a little detour here, I’m not going to.”
“You’re not?”
He shook his head. “You have my word.”
“Oh. Um. Good.” Since his word was something she doubted he gave lightly, she led the way through a narrow hallway, past the storage room and restrooms, and into the cavernous tavern in need of paint and a good scrubbing and a brand-new image. Flipping on light switches as she went, she continued until she reached the ornately carved bar where she’d left the box she’d started filling with Lacey’s cameras.
“Here’s the thing,” Reed declared, using her exact terminology.
It occurred to Ruby that he was not a man of almosts. He wasn’t almost tall or almost handsome or almost proud. He was all those things and more. He’d drawn a line in the sand and apparently he intended to make certain she knew exactly how far, how deep and how wide the line ran.
“The baby you saw my brother carrying before lunch?” he said.
“Joey?” she asked, standing on tiptoe to reach the last three cameras on the top shelf.
“Joey, yes. You assumed Marsh is his father.”
She stood mute, waiting for him to continue.
“Unless I’m mistaken, you alluded to that at the restaurant,” he said.
Half the lights in the room were burned out and the bulbs in the other half were so dim and the fixtures so grimy, light didn’t begin to reach into the corners. Murky shadows pooled beneath the small tables and mismatched chairs. The billiards tables in the back were idle, the shape of the neatly folded bedroll barely discernible from here.
Carefully tucking Bubble Wrap around another camera, Ruby finally said, “Are you telling me Marsh isn’t Joey’s father?”
“It’s possible he is.” Reed’s voice was deep, reverent almost, and extraordinarily serious. “But it’s also possible I am.”
Surely Ruby’s dismay was written all over her face all over again. But she didn’t have it in her to care how she looked.
The baby she’d seen before lunch was possibly Reed’s? Had she heard him correctly?
“Oh, my God.”
He nodded as if he couldn’t have said it better himself.
She slid the cumbersome box of cameras aside. Resting one elbow comfortably on the bar’s worn surface, she gestured fluidly with her other hand and said, “Have a seat, cowboy. This is one story I’ve got to hear.”
For years, Bell’s Tavern had been considered the black sheep of drinking establishments in Orchard Hill. It was where someone just passing through town went to drink too much and whine to strangers, where regulars and first-timers alike drowned their sorrows and cheated at cards, among other things. Its saving grace had also been its most redeeming quality.
What happened at Bell’s Tavern stayed at Bell’s Tavern.
It seemed oddly fitting that Reed was about to reveal details of a nearly unbelievable situation to the new owner right here at Bell’s, where countless others had undoubtedly done the same thing. Choosing a stool, he sidled up to the bar and made himself comfortable.
The carton containing his sister-in-law’s cameras sat on the counter near Ruby’s right elbow. As she tucked an old movie projector from the fifties into the box, another curl pulled free of the clip high on the back of her head and softly fluttered to the side of her face. Her skin looked smooth, her lips full and lush, her eyes green and keenly observant.
A warm breeze wafted through the open back door, but other than the muffled sounds of midafternoon meandering in with it, Bell’s was quiet and still. And Reed’s voice was quiet as he began.
“My brothers and I discovered Joey on our doorstep ten days ago. We heard a noise none of us could identify and rushed out to the front porch. There the baby was, strapped into his car seat, wailing his little head off.”
“He was by himself? But he’s so small,” she said.
Reed released a deep breath. “I know. Who leaves a baby on a doorstep in this day and age? Noah is an airplane test pilot and always buzzes the orchard when he’s returning from out of town. From the cab of his plane an hour before we discovered Joey, he saw a woman walking across our front lawn. Despite the fact that it was eighty degrees out that day, she was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt. We think she was hiding Joey underneath it.”
“And you believe this woman was Joey’s mother?”