A Slice of Heaven (17 page)

R
onnie had just spent an hour on the phone with Butch Thompson, who’d agreed to come to Serenity in the morning to look over the hardware store and Ronnie’s business plan.

“Then I want that meal you promised me at your wife’s restaurant,” Butch had told him.

“You bringing
your
wife along?”

“Not this time. We’ll set that up once we have all the paperwork finished and signed. Shouldn’t take longer than a week or two.”

Having Butch respond as if their deal were a foregone conclusion had left Ronnie elated, so when the phone rang again he was more cheerful than he’d been in a while.

“Ronnie?” Dana Sue asked, as if she wasn’t quite sure it was him.

“Hey, sugar. How are you?”

“Good,” she said. “You sound pretty chipper yourself. Something going on?”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” he promised, then remembered he’d gone to the restaurant the night before specifically to fill her in. Once he’d gotten caught up in her staffing crisis, he’d forgotten all about it. He didn’t dare put it off much longer, but he wanted to tell her face-to-face so he could gauge her reaction.

“Why’d you call?” he asked.

“Can you meet me at the house in an hour?”

“Sure,” he said, though he was surprised by the invitation. It must be important if she was willing to let him cross that threshold again. “You want to tell me why?”

Dana Sue hesitated, but she’d never been any good at keeping secrets. Ronnie gave her time to reach the bursting point.

“Annie’s coming home tomorrow!” she said at last. “Isn’t that fantastic?”

Relief flooded through him, along with a bit of caution. “Fantastic doesn’t even begin to describe it,” he said. “The doctors are sure she’s ready?”

“I saw Dr. McDaniels myself just a few minutes ago. She seems to think Annie’s finally turned a corner. She’s set up a family counseling session for all of us day after tomorrow.”

“It must have been the visit from Ty,” Ronnie speculated.

“What visit was that?” Dana Sue asked, sounding puzzled. “I mean, Annie mentioned he’d been by yesterday, but with everything going on at the restaurant last night I completely forgot about it.”

“And I forgot to mention it for the same reason,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything when I see you at the house.”

“Yes, you will,” she said, sounding grimly determined all of a sudden. “I expect to be told everything you know that concerns our daughter.”

“I wasn’t deliberately keeping it from you,” he said, knowing how her mind worked. She could turn this into some major slight at the drop of a hat, just as she could his failure to mention his plans for the hardware store.

“Okay, if you say so,” she conceded eventually, though her tone was still cool. “I know I’m probably overreacting. I’ll see you in an hour and we’ll settle this then.”

It wasn’t until Ronnie had hung up that he remembered his appointment tomorrow with Butch. A couple of years ago he would have tried to juggle it all. Now, with his priorities where they belonged, he knew that as critical as that meeting was, Annie’s homecoming was more important. He called the man on his cell phone.

“Butch, it’s me again. Can we postpone for a couple of days? I just found out my daughter’s getting out of the hospital tomorrow. I want to be with her. And the following day we’re supposed to meet with her doctor. Since I don’t have the details yet, it might be easier if we just rescheduled for the end of the week.”

“Not a problem,” Butch said at once. “I’ll see you Friday, same time. How does that sound?”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

“No need to thank me. The way you care about that girl is one of the reasons I like you so much.”

Relieved that he’d done the right thing and it had turned out okay, Ronnie whistled as he showered and changed into clean clothes, before heading over to the house that had been his home for nearly twenty years. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to feel crossing the threshold again after all this time. He was just glad that Dana Sue was finally willing to let him inside, instead of greeting him on the lawn with a cast-iron skillet in her hand.

Dana Sue figured she had ten minutes to make the house look reasonably presentable before Ronnie saw it again. Since Annie had been in the hospital, she’d kicked her shoes off just inside the front door and left them there. Plates and glasses from late-night snacks were strewn around. There was a layer of dust over everything. She wasn’t the most attentive housekeeper under the best of conditions, but even by her low standards, it was a mess.

She’d managed to toss her shoes into the closet and get the dishes into the kitchen and in the dishwasher before she heard Ronnie’s pickup pull into the driveway. To avoid any awkwardness over whether he should just walk in or knock and wait at the door of the house he’d once lived in, she met him at the entry.

“Thanks for coming over,” she said, standing aside to let him in.

As he brushed past her, he dropped a quick kiss on her forehead that left her feeling completely disconcerted. It had been so innocent, so casual, he could have been kissing a distant cousin. It was nothing like the soul-searing kisses they’d once engaged in the second he came through the door. The lack of passion in this kiss stirred the daredevil in her, the woman who’d once grabbed what she wanted and held on for dear life.

Apparently puzzled by the fact that she hadn’t followed him inside, Ronnie turned around and stared at her. “You okay?”

Was she? she wondered. Was it okay for her to be struggling with the desire to bunch his shirt in her fist and drag his face down to lock lips with him? Or was that insanity?

Even as heat and need rushed through her, she convinced herself it
was
crazy. It was nothing more than an instinctive reaction to having him back under this roof, back in this room where they’d made love more times than she could count, both of them too eager and frantic to wait to climb the stairs to their bedroom. They’d been more circumspect once Annie had come along, but this room still held an astounding number of tantalizing memories.

“Dana Sue?” he asked, still watching her with a bemused expression.

She shook off the memories and forced a bright smile. “Sorry. Just a momentary lapse.”

She started to breeze past him and take refuge in the kitchen, but he snagged her arm and met her gaze. “I remember, too,” he said softly.

“Remember what?” she said, a false note of cheer in her voice.

He grinned at her attempt to pretend they hadn’t been thinking about the exact same thing. “Everything,” he said succinctly, his gaze locked with hers. “I used to lie awake at night in my motel room and think about the way we were together, the way it didn’t take more than a look or a casual touch to set us on fire.”

“Don’t,” she pleaded.

“Don’t tell you or don’t remember?” he asked.

“Either one,” she whispered. “We can’t go back, Ronnie.”

“No,” he agreed, still holding her gaze. “But we can start fresh, make new memories.”

“How? The image in my mind, the one I can’t shake, isn’t so pretty.”

“The affair,” he said bluntly.

“Yes, the affair.”

“It was a meaningless one-night stand,” he told her. “That doesn’t make it okay, but is that enough reason to give up on us forever?”

“I thought so,” she said, then realized she’d used the past tense, which might be just enough to give him the encouragement he was obviously seeking. “I still do,” she added. “Apparently you did, too, since you left town.”

“You really do not want to go there,” he told her quietly. “I left because you didn’t give me much of a choice.”

“Oh, please, I hardly banished you.”

“No, you just made it very clear how miserable you’d be if I stayed. I went because I already felt guilty for the pain I’d put you through. The last thing I wanted to do was prolong it and make it harder for you and Annie.”

“Then why are you so insistent about staying now?”

“Because I’ve finally seen what a mistake it was for me to go,” he said, then grinned. “And despite what you’ve said, I don’t think you want me gone.”

“I do,” she said, but her answer was halfhearted.

“Do you really?” he asked. “Aren’t you beginning to mellow just a little bit? Didn’t you notice how well we worked together last night, as if we could read each other’s minds? Haven’t you noticed how well we’ve worked together to present a united front to Annie? Individually, we’re both pretty good parents, but together we’re awesome.”

She’d noticed all of that, but she didn’t trust it. She couldn’t. “I won’t have this conversation with you,” she said, jerking her gaze away before she could fall under his spell and into his arms. “You’re only here right now because of Annie. I thought you could help me plan her homecoming.”

He backed down at once, clearly sensing that she was reaching the end of her patience. “I’d love to do that. And there’s something I’d like to tell you about if there’s time.”

“Let’s sit in the kitchen,” she said, hoping there would be fewer memories in there since it had always been her domain. “Let’s focus on Annie’s homecoming, okay? I’ll fix us some sweet tea.”

His narrowed gaze suggested he knew it was the last thing she ought to be drinking. “I’ll use sugar substitute,” she said.

“Did you hear me say a word?” he asked.

“No, but we both know you know something, or think you do. Since I don’t want to discuss it, you’ll just have to take my word that I know what I should and shouldn’t put in my mouth.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said placatingly. “And you’re smart enough to follow the doctor’s orders, I’m sure.”

“I am,” she said. At least when she remembered, or wasn’t driven to indulge in comfort food to suppress her exasperation with this man.

She put water on to boil, pulled tea bags from the cupboard, then grabbed a handful of sweetener packets. “Satisfied?” she asked as she tore them open and dumped the contents in the water, then added the tea bags.

“Thrilled,” he commented wryly.

Scowling, she looked him in the eye. “One thing about you I’ve noticed hasn’t changed.”

“Oh?”

“You’re still annoying as hell.”

He grinned. “I prefer to think of myself as a good jump-start to your metabolism.”

“You wish,” she scoffed, but she had to bite back a chuckle.

There were times, though she would rather eat dirt than admit it, when having Ronnie around again reminded her of what she’d felt like when she was totally and completely alive. To her chagrin she hadn’t felt that way—not even once—since he’d left.

She put such thoughts out of her mind.

Annie wasn’t sure what made her happier, being home again or seeing her mom and dad under the same roof and making a genuine attempt to get along, even if they were only doing it for her sake.

They’d gotten home just before lunchtime, and her mom had insisted they all sit down together for sandwiches and tea. She’d made turkey on whole-grain bread, then cut them diagonally into quarters, the way Annie had liked them when she was little. Instinctively, she’d known to put the sections on a plate in the middle of the table, rather than placing a huge sandwich in front of Annie.

Annie knew both of her parents were watching her like a hawk as she took one little section and put it on her plate, then added a tiny scoop of her mom’s potato salad. There had been a time when she could have eaten the whole bowl, but a taste was about all she could manage now without wanting to run from the table and hurl. Still, it was progress, and she guessed from their expressions that her mom and dad got that. To her chagrin, Annie also knew that Lacy had given them a very precise list of what she was to eat and at what time, every single day. The regimen wasn’t going to change just because she was out from under the watchful eye of the nurses at the hospital.

“Erik sent over some of his cinnamon ice cream for later,” her mom told her. “He thought maybe we could have that when everyone drops by.”

“Awesome,” Annie said, surprised that the idea actually held some appeal. Erik’s homemade ice cream was amazing. When he’d been working on getting the recipe down pat at the restaurant, Annie had only tasted it, but she bet her mom had eaten five gallons. “You didn’t invite a lot of people, did you?”

“Just the ones we talked about,” her mom assured her. “And they won’t stay long. They’re coming around seven, after dinner, just the way you wanted.”

“Thanks.” She took a bite of the sandwich and forced herself to swallow. To her surprise, it tasted pretty good, better than the sandwiches in the hospital, somehow. Maybe because her mom had made it. Annie took another bite.

“You should get some rest after lunch,” her dad said. “You don’t want to overdo things on your first day home.”

Annie frowned at him. “All I did was walk in from the car,” she protested. “Even at the hospital, they made me go in a stupid wheelchair. It was totally lame.”

Her dad grinned. “You didn’t seem to complain much at the time. I noticed the orderly was pretty cute.”

Annie rolled her eyes as she ate another bite of the sandwich, finishing off the little section. “Puh-leeze. Kenny’s, like, twenty-three. I’m pretty sure he flunked out of high school. That’s probably the best job he’ll ever have.”

“Nice to know you have high standards,” Ronnie teased. “Just don’t be too quick to judge people. You never know what hidden talents they might possess.”

“If Kenny has any talents, believe me, they’re hidden so deep no one will ever discover them,” she scoffed, then noticed that she’d absent-mindedly put another section of sandwich on her plate. Shrugging, she went ahead and took a bite.

“You sure about Kenny’s lack of talents?” her dad asked.

Annie studied him. “What do you know about him that I don’t?”

“Just that he’s a talented carpenter,” her dad said. “He’s been making furniture most of his life and selling it on consignment in a few galleries that specialize in hand-crafted pieces by local artisans. I predict you’ll hear big things about Kenny one of these days.”