A Week in the Snow (24 page)

She came out of the bathroom and the bartender caught her eye, motioning her over. A cup of steaming coffee sat in front of her barstool. She slipped on to the stool with some effort and took a deep sip of the black liquid. It reminded her of Richard, and without warning the tears started again.

“Listen,” the bartender said, leaning over the bar and whispering to her. “I heard what you said to that jerk. About that guy, Richard. Your boyfriend.”

She nodded. Of course the bartender had heard. Bartenders had a talent for hearing everything. Why did this one have to be so nosy?

“If his wife came back after fucking with his head for that long, don’t you think she would fuck with your head, too?”

Rebecca stared at him, trying to absorb this. “What do you mean?”

“She said they slept together, right?”

“He didn’t deny it.”

“But do you know for sure if they really did?”

“She’s back,” Rebecca said, as if that answered everything. “He slept with her.”

“Okay, maybe he did. But put yourself in his position…”

“I would never do that,” she said quietly.

“How do you know?”

She took another sip of coffee.

“He filed for divorce, right?”

“He waited three years!”

“He didn’t file until
you
came along, right?”

“Yeah.”

The bartender held up his hands in mock surprise. “So maybe he didn’t file for divorce before because he didn’t have a reason,” he said. “Maybe you’re the reason he finally did it.”

She drank her coffee and looked at the television, trying to tune him out. The bartender sighed. “I’m just saying—he did all this for you. Now you should get your ass on a plane and get up there and give that bitch what-for.”

Rebecca looked at him, her mind finally clearing a bit. “You’re saying she lied to me?”

“Girl, I’m willing to bet you’ve been burned real good before he came along.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You automatically think Mr Wonderful is fucking around. Has he given you any indication that he’s stuck his dick where it doesn’t belong?”

Rebecca stared at her coffee cup as the bartender topped it off.

“I asked if he’d slept with her,” she said. “He was utterly silent.”

“Maybe he was shocked you didn’t trust him,” he said.

Rebecca thought about that. Would Richard have been stunned that she didn’t trust him? He had made his feelings on his wife very clear, and if she hadn’t believed his words, then she had to believe the divorce papers, didn’t she?

“But she sounded so smug,” she said, and the bartender nodded.

“Of course she did. She was getting one-up on the new chick. Wouldn’t you sound that way? Want to give a nice little jab to the woman who had taken your place?”

Rebecca shook her head.

“Bullshit, sweetie. Ain’t nothing cattier than a woman scorned.”

The coffee was working, and now her emotions were toning down while her reasoning was kicking in. The bartender wiped down the bar while Rebecca thought things over, and she suddenly reached into her pocket for her cell phone. She had to squint to see the little letters on the screen.

Twenty-three calls.

She held the phone to her ear and listened to every one of them. Richard was asking her to please pick up the phone. Amanda had tried to seduce him, he said. It didn’t work. He had slept in his room and she had slept in the guest room. He had told her about Rebecca and he had got a slap across the face for his trouble. Would she please pick up the phone? He wanted to explain. He loved her, and only her, and would she please stop avoiding him and answer?

Rebecca listened to all the messages then sat quietly for a moment, trying to wrap her mind around everything that had happened over the last several hours. She wouldn’t put it past Richard’s wife to try to seduce him.

It didn’t work, he said—but how far did it go?

She thought again of the woman’s smug voice. She had sounded as though she owned Richard, as if he was just another piece of property. She had taken a perverse pleasure in telling Rebecca that she was his wife. But where had that pleasure been for the last three years?

Strangely, Rebecca thought of Gene. She hadn’t let his words sway her. Was she really going to let go of the man she loved more than anything, just because a woman who happened to be married to him—in name only—said he belonged to her? Or was she going to fight for the man she loved?

Rebecca stood up from the barstool. The bartender proved he was one of the best in Miami when he handed her a travel cup of coffee. She slid a good amount of money over the counter and saluted him with the cup. “I’m going to Iowa,” she said.

He clapped, getting the attention of everyone in the bar. “Good for you, honey” he said. “Haul that wifey out in front of God and everybody, then kick her ass.”

Chapter Sixteen

The plane touched down right on time, and Rebecca pulled her carry-on from the seat beside her. She had been lucky to get a flight out on such short notice, even if it was the red-eye. The snow in Des Moines was gone, and she assumed the snow in Crispin was gone, too.

The temperature was a balmy forty degrees, practically a heatwave, and she had remembered to wear her jacket. She had packed only for the day, since she didn’t think her mission would take very long.

She got a rental car at the counter and pulled on to the road at a little past seven. She took a glance at the map and pointed the car towards Crispin. She was going to stop at the
Tribune
office first and try to find him there before going to the house. She would be more than happy to confront that conniving bitch—if she really was conniving, and if Richard hadn’t had a change of heart.

Her phone rang as she was coming into the edge of town. She crossed the covered bridge and looked down at the caller ID. She almost answered it when she saw Richard’s number, but decided not to do that just yet. She would know what he really thought when she saw him in person, when she could read the answers in his eyes. Hearing it wouldn’t be good enough.

She pressed down hard on the gas pedal as the phone beeped. He had left a message. She flipped the phone open, pressed the button and put it on speaker.

“Rebecca, listen. Just listen. I know you aren’t happy with me right now, and I think I can guess why. But please, don’t do anything crazy yet. Let me come to Miami and talk to you. I’m getting the first plane out, and if you’re not at the airport to meet me, I’ll come find you. I’m not letting you go without a fight, Rebecca. I will not make that mistake.”

The message ended. Rebecca stared at the phone, amazed. At the sound of an angry horn, she looked up and realised she had drifted to the other side of the road. She jerked the wheel, got back between the lines, and weathered a furious look and a flip of the bird from the other driver.

She pulled up in front of the newspaper office and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Richard’s truck. She hesitated for a moment, looking through the windows. What if the wife was there? But Richard had just called and said he was coming to find her, and surely he wouldn’t have done that if his heart was torn between two women.

She barged into the office and was met by a startled young man. He had a stack of papers in his hand and looked like he had just been handed his ass on a silver platter.

“Where’s Richard?” she demanded, and the young man jerked his head towards the back room.

“Back there. But you might want to come back later. He’s mighty pissed off.”

She started in that direction, but the young man stopped her. “Ma’am?”

“What?”

“I mean, he’s
mighty
pissed off. Really. He’s…” The boy looked at the doorway as if he were afraid a bear would charge through it. “He’s throwing things.”

“Throwing things?

“Uh-huh.”

She turned back to the door. They both heard the cursing from the direction of the editor’s office. Rebecca turned back to the young man. “Is there anybody with him?”

“Lord, I hope not.”

Rebecca walked into the rear section of the office. There was Richard, standing in front of his desk, staring at the computer screen. He bent low to touch a few keys, and the screen changed. He studied it, scowling. He abruptly picked up a paperweight and flung it across the office, where it banged hard against the back wall.

Rebecca blinked at the space where the paperweight had been. “Richard.”

He spun around, fury written all over his face. Maybe it was the kind of fury that had scared his employee, but to her he was sexier than he had ever been.

It took a moment for the shock of her presence to sink in. He stared at her and forgot all about plane schedules, runaway wives and annoying mothers. He forgot about divorces and battles over bank accounts and almost falling into bed with a wicked witch who didn’t know how to accept defeat. For the first time since he had come back from Miami, he felt nothing but relief.

“Baby,” he said, already choked up. “Come here.”

Rebecca walked into his arms and laid her head on his chest. He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe, but she didn’t try to move away. She let him hold her as long as he wanted.

“I was just getting a ticket to come see you,” he said, his voice rough. “The travel agent put me on hold so I was trying to get something online, but the damn computer system keeps going down, and I have no idea if I just bought a ticket for Miami or a ticket for Maine.”

Rebecca laughed.

“Are you here to tell me goodbye?” he asked her, and she tightened her arms around him.

“I’m here to make sure I don’t have to.”

Richard pressed his nose to her hair and inhaled the sweet scent. He wanted more than anything to cry. He hadn’t done this much crying since he was a baby. The emotional rollercoaster was wearing him out, and his emotions were raw.

“I love you,” he whispered. “When you didn’t answer your phone, I was so scared…”

“I know. I know. It’s all right now.”

“Rebecca, I didn’t sleep with her.”

“I believe you.”

“But you need to know…”

“I already do.”

He pulled away from her and looked into her calm, happy face. “You do?”

“I’m not naïve, Richard. You’re human, and you’re confused.”

“My confusion lasted for two minutes.”

She nodded. The thought of him with someone else hurt, and the thought of him with his wife hurt even more, but she did understand. Emotional pain could make a person do almost anything. Hadn’t she been contemplating some stupid things of her own as she sat beside some drunken guy at a bar?

They looked at each other for a moment, both of them coming to terms with what had happened in the last several weeks. Had it only been a month since he pulled her from that car in the blizzard?

“Where is she?” Rebecca asked, her voice quiet and hard.

“She’s at the house, I think. Packing.”

“Good.”

“Rebecca…”

She pinned him with the look he already knew so well, the determination that he knew could not be swayed. “Are you going to stop me?”

“I don’t think stopping you is possible,” he said carefully. “But you have to understand…she’s vicious. She will say anything to hurt you, and she can make you believe it.”

Rebecca saw the wariness in his eyes. “What did she say to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What kind of story did she give you?”

Richard shook his head, the pain of Amanda’s bombshell still alive and well, clawing into his conscience and making him doubt everything about himself. “I said it doesn’t matter.”

Rebecca nodded. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll get it out of her.”

“She left me for someone else.”

The words, now they were out in the open, damn near shattered whatever composure he had left. All through the night he had wondered if it was true. He was pretty sure it was. The fact that she had run off with someone else was something he could handle. What he couldn’t handle was the way she had looked at him when she had told him, as if he really was that terrible in bed, as if every intimate moment they had ever had was up for laughs when she was with someone who was so much better at the act than he was.

Rebecca watched the emotions flicker over his face. She saw the moment he started to question himself, and that infuriated her.

“She really slammed you, didn’t she?”

Richard looked into her eyes. “Rebecca, I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?”

He swallowed hard and looked away. “I’m scared you will leave me, too.”

She had heard enough. She stepped out of his arms and gave him what she hoped was a charming, reassuring smile, though her body was close to shaking with fury. “I’m leaving you only long enough to put that bitch in her place.”

Rebecca turned on her heel and marched into the front room. The young man behind the counter had obviously heard it all, and he watched her with appreciation in his eyes. She nodded calmly, flung open the door so hard it slammed against the wall, and left rubber on the street when she took off.

Richard stood in the middle of his office, still trying to get his bearings in the midst of the hurricane. Amanda was at the house, but given the events of the last twenty-four hours, he wasn’t sure she was really packing. She seemed to have her mind and heart set on making sure he gave them a fair shot, which was as hypocritical a notion as he could imagine. When Rebecca showed up, sparks would fly—and from Amanda’s physical attack on him last night, he was sure things wouldn’t be pretty.

It took a while for the situation to sink in, but once it did he hoped he would get there in time. He flipped open his cell phone as he headed for the door, dialling one of the many community numbers he knew by heart.

“Steve? I have a situation. Meet me at my house, will you?”

He ran from the office. His assistant watched him as he went by, and listened to the second set of squealing tyres headed in the direction of Richard’s house.

“Good luck, boss,” he said, and started typing invoices.

Rebecca pulled into the driveway at a very sedate pace, belying the fact that she had raced well over the speed limit to get there. She took her time getting out of the car. She fixed her hair and applied lipstick, all the while knowing Amanda Paris was probably watching through the front windows. If she was crazy enough to come back here, she was probably paranoid, too.