Avoiding her gaze, John licked his lips nervously and shifted from one foot to the other. “Bobby fell asleep in the car.”
“But the school’s only ten minutes away.”
“Yeah, but...he was real tired.” Without any further explanation, he dashed through the living room. Nadine heard the bathroom door shut as Sam, hauling a dead-to-the-world Bobby, walked into the kitchen.
“What happened to him?” she asked, worried that Bobby was coming down with some virus. Usually after a practice he was so wound up that she had to calm him down. Tonight he was fast asleep.
“I guess practice just did him in.”
Nadine touched Bobby’s forehead. Her fingers came away cool.
“Yeah, we really worked the boys,” Sam said as he carried Bobby into the living room and laid him gently on the couch. Bobby sighed but didn’t open his eyes. The smell of smoke mixed with stale beer, a scent Nadine recognized from her years of marriage to Sam, clung to her ex-husband, and she was instantly angry.
“He’s not even sweating,” she said.
“He was—”
“Somewhere where he shouldn’t be.” Sick inside, Nadine plucked a kernel of popcorn from Bobby’s jacket. “Snacks after the game?” she asked, already knowing and dreading the answer. Anger surged through her blood.
“Well, you know how it is. Phil and Rick wanted to have a beer after the practice, so we stopped at the Buckeye for a quick one.”
Nadine’s back teeth ground together and silent rage swept through her. “While you were having your ‘quick one,’ what were the boys doing?”
Sam’s face flushed scarlet and a defiant glint shone in his eyes. “I left them in the car. But I could see them through the window and I took them each a cup of popcorn—”
“Sam, how could you!”
“It was only for twenty minutes, Nadine!”
“But they could’ve been...oh, God, who knows what kind of scum lurks in the parking lot of the Buckeye at night. They’re just children!”
“And they’re fine, aren’t they!”
“They could’ve been kidnapped or hurt or—”
“But they weren’t, were they? They’re both right as rain.”
“I don’t care.”
“Listen, Nadine, I needed to talk to the guys,” Sam nearly shouted. Then, as if hearing himself, he lowered his voice and plowed his fingers through his thinning blond hair. “With all the changes coming down at the mill, who knows what’ll happen to our jobs.”
“You could’ve brought them home first,” she hissed, her temper still soaring.
Sam was unrepentant. “The Buckeye is only a few blocks from the school. It didn’t make sense to come clear up here—”
“Clear up here? What is it—four, maybe five miles? Damn it, Sam, you could’ve called me. I would have picked them up.”
Sam grimaced painfully. “I was busy. Me and the guys, we had things to discuss. Things you probably already know about.”
“Things?” she repeated, not following this new twist in the conversation.
“Monroe. The Fourth. I heard he was already here, giving the boys a ride in the boat, making himself at home. With my kids!” Disgust curled his lip. “Jeez, Nadine, don’t you ever learn?”
“I don’t see what Hayden has to do with this!”
“Don’t you? You can’t be as blind to him now as you were in high school!”
She started to protest, but Sam was just warming to his subject. “What with ‘Junior’ owning the mill now, big changes are in the works. It’s no secret that he plans to shut us down along with all his mills. Maybe one at a time, maybe all at once, but he’ll close mills and consolidate or sell the entire chain of ’em, but believe me, whatever he decides, it won’t be good for any of us. Including you. If I’m not working, I won’t be able to come up with the support payments, so you’d better hope that ‘your friend’ keeps the mill open or he sells it to the employees.”
“He’s not my ‘friend.’”
Sam lifted a skeptical thin blond brow and his nostrils flared a little. “Yeah, well, it might be interesting to know exactly what he is to you.”
“My employer...or he was.”
“Convenient. He pays you to clean his damned mansion.”
Nadine squared her shoulders. Sam had never approved of her working, much less cleaning other people’s homes, and yet she had to make a living while she took courses to better herself or tried to get her costume jewelry and clothes on the market. “It’s a job, Sam, and from the sounds of things I don’t think now would be the time to quit, do you?”
His eyes narrowed a fraction, and the smell of flat beer seemed to fill the space between them. “I think I’d better leave.”
“Not until you hear me out, Sam Warne.” Nadine blocked his path to the back door. “Don’t you ever, ever, leave my sons alone in a parking lot again. And don’t even think about driving them anywhere after you’ve had a few, okay?”
Sam winced. They both remembered the night while they were married when he’d rolled his pickup. If not for his safety belt, he would have been thrown from the crumpled vehicle and possibly killed. At that time he’d sworn off liquor. His abstinence had lasted all of three months.
“You can’t tell me how to handle my sons,” he said.
“Oh, yes, I can, Sam. And I will,” she proclaimed. “They’re my boys, too, and when it comes to their safety—”
“I don’t have to listen to this.” He hiked his jeans up beneath the sag that was his belly and stormed out. The back door slammed behind him and his truck, as he backed out of the drive, sent a spray of gravel beneath screaming tires.
“Mom?”
Nadine froze. Dread tore at her heart as she turned and found John wrapped in a yellow bath sheet, his skin blue, his hair wet and his eyes round. “You’d better get dressed or you’ll catch your death.”
“Don’t yell at Dad.”
“Oh, John.” She folded him into her arms and felt his teeth chattering against her shoulder. “I don’t mean to argue with him.”
“It was okay. Me and Bobby, we were fine in the car.”
“He shouldn’t have left you.”
“I wasn’t scared.”
“How about Bobby? Wasn’t he afraid?” she prodded, knowing about her younger son’s vivid imagination.
John shrugged a slim shoulder.
“Tell me.”
“Well, just a little, maybe, but then he fell asleep and everything was all right.”
She held her oldest son at arm’s length and saw the pride in his reddened eyes, felt him square his shoulders. He was just too young to try to be the man of the house. Her heart squeezed painfully and she kissed his damp forehead. “Go on and get your pajamas on and I’ll have dinner on the table.” She gave him a playful swat on the bottom and he hurried upstairs to the loft.
By the time he came down again, she had a fire roaring in the grate and was trying to awaken a groggy Bobby.
John’s appetite was enormous, and Bobby, though he usually liked Stroganoff, was glum and too tired to show much interest in food. After dinner, she bathed him, hauled him off to bed and turned out the light after John climbed into the top bunk. They were asleep before she finished the dishes.
Still inwardly seething at Sam, she made herself a cup of coffee, grabbed her sewing kit and glue gun and dragged the nearly finished jacket out of the closet. A few more beads and rhinestones dripping down one sleeve and it would be finished. She felt a small sense of pride. At least this jacket would be sold before Christmas. It was a special order from a bareback rider whom Turner Brooks had known during his days on the rodeo circuit. The woman, buying a horse from Turner, had seen a jacket Nadine had made for Heather and commissioned one for herself on the spot.
“Just make it a little more flashy,” she’d said around a long, slim cigarette. “You know, a few more sparkles.” Well, the jacket was definitely flashy.
The doorbell rang before she fin
ished. Expecting Sam again, Nadine braced herself for another confrontation, flung open the front door and found Hayden, his hair windblown, his face flushed with the cold. Her stomach slammed hard against her abdomen.
“This is a surprise.”
“For both of us,” he admitted. “I didn’t expect to come back here.”
“Did I forget something this time?” she asked, her voice brittle, though her heart was pounding against her ribs.
He shook his head. “I’m the one who forgot.”
Her brows drew together. “Forgot? Forgot wha—” Before she’d finished asking the question, he’d grabbed her and clamped his arms around her. His mouth found hers and with anxious, hungry lips, he kissed her.
She couldn’t let this happen again! She wouldn’t! With all the strength she could muster, she tried to push him away. “Hayden, please...don’t...”
Every muscle in his body grew rigid. Slowly he drew his head away from hers and stared into her eyes. What he saw in her gaze, she could only guess, but slowly he released her. “I...” He shoved the hair from his eyes and swore beneath his breath. “Hell, Nadine, I didn’t mean to come on like a Neanderthal. But it seems I can’t do anything else when I’m around you.” He shook his head, disgusted with himself.
“What—what did you mean?” Good Lord, she could barely breathe and her voice sounded so weak and feminine she actually cringed.
A self-deprecating smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Just that I’ve missed you.”
Sweet Lord, now what?
“I left here angry, said things I didn’t mean and here I am trying to apologize.” Swearing under his breath, he rolled his eyes. “I’m not very good at it.”
“Not much practice, I suspect.”
“You make me crazy, you know.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted, though she wanted to lie and tell him that she hadn’t lost a moment’s sleep over him, that she hadn’t tossed and turned every night replaying their lovemaking over and over in her mind, that she didn’t sometimes fantasize about loving him and becoming his wife and... Oh, God! Drawing herself up short, she shook her head. “This could never work, Hayden.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We’ve already had this conversation, remember?” she said, though she wanted nothing more than to drag him into the house with her and throw herself into his arms. She trembled inside but held her ground.
“I just think we should start over. Take one step at a time.”
Oh, God, why was he torturing her? “Why?”
“Why?” he repeated, glancing up at the dark sky, as if searching for the reasons. “Because I’ve gone slowly and steadily out of my mind without you. Because the house seems like a damned morgue without you there. Because...because I’ve missed you.” His gaze settled on hers again, and there was honesty and desperation in his blue eyes.
Inside, she was melting. “I still don’t want an affair.”
“I’m not asking for one.”
“Then what do you want?”
The question hung in the cool air between them, and she waited with her heart in her throat. “What I want is to get to know you, Nadine.”
“You may not like me.”
One side of his mouth lifted slightly. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that. Anyway, I’m willing to gamble.”
“Damn it all, Hayden, why don’t you just go away?” she said, her voice catching. “Leave me alone. Let my life go on as it was.”
“I can’t,” he admitted, and he kissed her again. This time his lips were tender, his tongue undemanding. She sagged against him and realized with a sense of mounting dread that for the rest of her life she’d never be able to say no to Hayden Monroe.
Chapter Ten
HAYDEN HAD TROUBLE living up to his promise. Nadine had always exuded an earthiness that he found irresistibly sexy. Her jeans were snug, but not obscene, and yet he couldn’t take his eyes off the sway of her rump as she walked. Her mahogany-red hair glinted with gold in the firelight, and her green eyes appeared large and dark above sculpted cheekbones. She served him coffee, then set about finishing work on some glittery jacket she was making for a woman he didn’t know.
He settled in on the lumpy antique couch, propping one heel on the arm and watching her work as he sipped the coffee. “Decaf,” she’d told him as she’d handed him a wide glazed mug. As if he cared. He wasn’t here for the coffee.
She explained about trying to launch her career as a designer of exotic art and clothes or some damned thing—that she’d taken courses at the local junior college in color and art and fabric design, along with more traditional subjects of math and accounting and business law. She wasn’t going to clean houses forever. When she finished the jacket, she held it up for his inspection.
“I’m not much of an authority on rodeo wear,” he said dryly, and her eyes sparkled with merriment as she sashayed closer, the jacket swinging in front of her.
“Oh, sure. I just bet you want one for yourself.”
“Right.” A sarcastic smile touched his lips.
“Maybe for Christmas, hmm?” she teased. Her cheeks were rosy, her lips pulled into a thoughtful grin. “Black denim with gold rhinestones. Kind of an Elvis look with—”
He grabbed her quickly, and the jacket slid to the floor as he pulled her down on top of him on the couch.
“Hayden, don’t—” she said, but giggled as his arms surrounded her.
“Don’t what?” he asked into her open mouth.
“I thought we weren’t going to do this—”
“We’re not.” He kissed her, nibbling on her lower lip and causing shivers to race up her spine. Sighing, she opened her mouth to him and his tongue sought quick entrance. With sure strokes it touched the roof of her mouth and explored the insides of her cheeks before finding its mate.
Closing her eyes, Nadine kissed him back. She didn’t protest when his hand cupped her buttocks, drawing her tighter to his hardness.
“You make me do things I’ve never done in my life,” he admitted when he finally broke the kiss and stared up at her. He smoothed the cascade of red curls from her face and let his fingertips press gently against her neck, while his eyes strayed lower, to her breasts as they rose and fell against him. “However, wearing flashy clothes isn’t one of them.”
“No?” she teased, baiting him on purpose.
“I can think of better things.” His gaze locked with hers, and he let his hand slide downward until he felt the weight of one breast in his palm. Nadine moaned softly, and his fingers squeezed. Desire swept through her in a hot torrent as his fingers fondled her through her clothes.
She closed her eyes, arching back, thrusting out her breasts.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, drawing her down and burying his face against her sternum. “I want you.” He closed his eyes as if to clear his head and didn’t open them again as he said, “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you in your dad’s old pickup. I thought years and time would change that, but I was wrong. The reverse is true. I want you more now than I did as a kid.”
Her throat closed in on itself so she couldn’t swallow; she hardly dared believe him.
Pulling her down to him again, he held her tight and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “This is killing me, but we’ll play it your way, Nadine. I don’t know how, but we’ll give it a damned good try.”
He slapped her playfully on the butt, then forced them both into an upright position. Strain showed in the brackets near his mouth. “Do you really believe we can have a relationship without sex?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Well, I guess we’ll find out. But let me tell you, it’s gonna be hell!”
* * *
HAYDEN WAS TRUE to his word. He started showing up at her house on a regular basis and convinced her to keep working for him. He wanted her to hire the carpenters and handymen to over
see the repairs to the summer home while he spent his days at the mill. He never discussed his plans for the future of the company, and Nadine had never asked, though the few times she’d seen Sam, he was convinced that Hayden was going to do his level best to see that every employee of the company got his walking papers.
Fortunately, the boys hadn’t told Sam about the fact that Hayden visited nearly every night, that sometimes he ate dinner with them or that he had taken them for speedboat rides across the lake. He’d promised to take them skiing as soon as the first storm dumped enough snow onto the mountains.
And they’d never made love again, though they’d come close a time or two when the boys were asleep upstairs and they were alone in front of the fire, but Hayden had always broken off their embrace and Nadine had been left feeling frustrated and doubting that she would much longer be able to abide by her own moral code.
As Christmas approached, there was more demand for her funky jewelry. She stopped by the Rexall Drugstore in the middle of town to check her inventory. The store, located on the corner of Pine and Main had a turn-of-the-century charm. It seemed more like an old-fashioned mercantile than a modern pharmacy. Paddle fans rotated to the strains of Christmas carols filling the store with soft music. Red and green tinsel was strung over the aisles, which were more crowded than ever with excess merchandise—cards, wrapping paper, gift ideas, decorations, even fruitcakes.
The rack that displayed her jewelry was near the front of the store, and as she approached the counter she realized that more than half of the original inventory had already been sold. There was a “lot of interest” in her pieces, the woman behind the counter confided to her.
Before she left, Nadine decided to buy a cup of cocoa at the back counter. She slid onto a vacant stool and dropped her purse at her feet before she recognized the girl sitting next to her as Carlie Surrett. Their gazes met in the mirror over the soda machine, and Nadine’s insides went cold.
“Hello, Nadine,” Carlie ventured, and Nadine forced a smile she didn’t feel. Carlie was a beautiful girl with long, straight black hair and deep blue eyes. She’d been a model for some years, then turned photographer before she’d returned to Gold Creek only a few months before.