Dangerous Alterations (4 page)

“What?”

“They think she had a heart attack.” There. The words were out. Her duty was over.

“Where? When? How did you find out?”

“I—I was at a clinic in my town with a friend. Vera was there with Garrett’s wife. It happened in a matter of minutes.”

Silence filled her ear. “You live in Lee Station?”

“No, actually, one town over. It’s called Sweet Briar.” The words trailed from her mouth as she realized she’d given more information than she’d intended. Leona had been right. She should have stuck to the eleven-word script.

“Sweet Briar. Sweet Briar, South Carolina,” Jeff repeated as a telltale tapping overtook his words. After a few seconds, his voice returned in her ear. “I can get a flight into Columbia first thing in the morning. Any chance you can pick me up?”

She bolted upright in her bed. “Pick you up? Jeff, I can’t do that.”

“C’mon, Tori. I don’t want to be trying to navigate an unfamiliar area in my grief. And Lord knows that good-for-nothing stepson of Vera’s isn’t going to offer his assistance.”

Fisting her free hand at her side, Tori willed her head to win over her heart just this one time. Surely her great grandmother would have understood …

“Just get me where I need to go and I won’t bother you ever again. Please, Tori. Just this once.”

Damn.

“What time does your flight arrive?” she asked in a voice that could only be described as wooden.

I am an idiot.

“Tori, you’re the best. I don’t know how I ever let you get away.”

I am an idiot …

I am an idiot …

I am an idiot …

Even the roar of passenger airlines as they took off and made their approach just yards above the roof of her car couldn’t drown out the four-word mantra that had been running in a continuous loop for nearly fifteen hours. In fact, it had gotten louder and more persistent over time, peppered only by Leona’s inquiry about Jeff’s looks.

She knew she shouldn’t have called after talking to him, but she’d been desperate. Leona, of all people, would have a way for her to get out of the biggest blunder she’d made since falling for Jeff in the first place, right?

It had been a sound thought.

Until Leona had learned of Jeff’s single status—a tidbit Tori hadn’t sought yet Jeff had given nonetheless. After her initial outrage that the woman could even think of pursuing her mortal enemy, she’d come to accept the notion Leona had laid out. Payback was a—

The sound of her cell phone broke through her woolgathering and forced her thoughts back to the present. The number on the display screen merely kicked the fifteen-hour-long mantra into overdrive.

I am an idiot …

I am an idiot …

I am an idiot.

Flipping it open, she held it to her ear and simply waited, a tree-shadowed station wagon parked in a far corner of the cell phone lot providing a vague distraction from the voice in her ear.

“Tori? My plane just landed. All I’m doing now is waiting for the horde of idiots milling in the aisle to actually locate their bags and get the hell off the plane.”

A flash of movement pulled her focus from the station wagon to the line of trees behind it as an unidentified figure bent at the waist and ran—or, rather, shuffled—its way to the backseat. She narrowed her eyes and leaned over the steering wheel for a closer look just as a pair of binoculars, held by someone in the front passenger seat, turned in her direction.

“Baby? You there?”

Tori waved at his voice like a pesky firefly as she narrowed her eyes still farther and continued to observe the flurry of activity getting in and out of the station wagon. A station wagon that looked an awful lot like—

“Margaret Louise,” she gasped as the three separate forms she could make out in and around the car took on decidedly familiar features …

There was Rose’s hunched body …

Leona returning to the car from the potty break that no doubt meant Paris was near …

Margaret Louise filling the front seat in what appeared to be a lime green workout suit …

“Margaret, who?”

And, of course, Jeff in her ear.

Shaking her head against the reality that those were her friends, she forced her attention onto the one person she wished she could forget. “I’m sorry, Jeff. I was distracted there for a moment. I’ll meet you at the curb outside baggage claim in ten minutes.”

“Make it five. I can’t wait to see you.”

She looked again at the threesome across the parking lot, their efforts at being sneaky pathetic at best. “Actually, make it
fifteen
.” Closing the phone with a flip of her hand, Tori turned the key in the ignition and headed straight for the blurry-turned-crimson faces on the other side of the lot.

With a quick crank of her hand, she popped her head out the side window. “What on earth are the three of you doing here of all places?”

Rose coughed and looked at the ground.

Leona shifted from one stylish pump to the other.

Margaret Louise stepped out of the car, looked down at the binoculars tethered to her neck, and pointed at her twin sister. “It was Leona’s idea.”

Tori pinned Leona with her eyes. “Is that true?”

Red-faced, Leona looked around wildly. “Frankly, dear, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only reason I’m here is to reminisce about an encounter I had in this very spot with a pilot I met during a trip to Bali.”

Rose rolled her eyes then muttered something under her breath.

Leona turned a penetrating glare of her own on the elderly woman. “Is something wrong, you old goat?”

“I’d rather be an old goat than a common, everyday streetwalker.”

A gasp escaped Leona’s mouth. “Streetwalker?”

“Though most streetwalkers prefer motel rooms, I believe.”

Leona bit the second and louder gasp off with her teeth. “Rose Winters, you take that back!”

“When you take back
old goat
!”

Margaret Louise stepped in front of the unexpected sideshow and shrugged her hefty shoulders. “I’ve been wantin’ to talk to you ’bout somethin’, Victoria, and now seemed as good a time as any.”

She pointed at the binoculars. “Planning on birdwatching after we talk?”

The woman released a loud sigh. “Okay, okay. I give up. We heard what you’re doin’ and we reckon it’s got to be hard. Milo or not, that man broke your heart and seein’ him again has got to be like stickin’ your hand in a light socket and havin’ someone flip the switch. So, we just wanted to be here in case you needed reinforcements.”

“Reinforcements?” she echoed as a lump sprang up in her throat.

“That’s what I said,” Margaret Louise bellowed as the roar of a jet threatened to drown out her words. “Make you soup when you’re sick, fight off the wolves when they’re circlin’, hold your hand when your knees are a-clackin’, help dig the hole when you’re spittin’ mad … that’s what friends do.”

Tori laughed away the urge to cry. “And the three of you have done all of those things at some time or another over the past eighteen months and I’m grateful. Truly.”

“We ain’t dug a hole for you yet,” Margaret Louise reminded. “Though, dependin’ on how today goes, that might be fixin’ to change, I imagine.”

The roar of the jet dissipated overhead. “I’m not sure I follow.”

Rose peeked around Margaret Louise. “You need a hole to bury a body, don’t you?”

“Bury a body?” she echoed.

With a sniff, Leona cut through Tori’s inquiry. “That’s what we do with dead bodies in civilized places, dear. Leaving them to litter the sidewalks as they do in Chicago is simply not done here.”

Tori’s laugh echoed over the sound of the next jet as it hurtled its way down the runway just beyond the bank of trees that framed the back edge of the parking lot. “One of these days, Leona, I will get to the bottom of your issues where Chicago is concerned.”

“Issues?” Leona groused. “I have no issues.”

Rose snorted.

Leona stamped her foot. “Rose Winters, enough!”

Tori held up her hands. “Ladies, ladies, please. I’m … I’m touched that the three of you made the drive out here just to make sure I’m okay. It means more than you could ever know. But I’ll be okay. Really.”

“Of course you will be. Your sweet Milo would have our heads if you weren’t.”

Milo.

Inhaling the much-needed sense of calm that invariably came with the mention of his name, Tori leaned her head against the seat.

“He would if he
knew
.”

Just like that, Leona’s public summation made mincemeat of Tori’s calm.

“Milo doesn’t know that tomcat is in town?”

She closed her eyes against the disbelief in Margaret Louise’s voice.

“Our dear Victoria didn’t want to upset him.”

So much for confiding in Leona …

In a flash, Margaret Louise was around the car and sitting in Tori’s passenger seat. “It’s not ’bout being upset, Victoria. It’s ’bout sharin’ your troubles with the man you love.”

Was Margaret Louise right? Had she made a mistake in not telling Milo about Jeff’s trip to South Carolina?

Leona tsked under her breath. “Twin, get with the program, will you? Victoria didn’t tell him because she didn’t want to get him all green-eyed. Though, if you ask me, every man could stand to have his hold on a woman shaken from time to time. Keeps them more attentive.”

“I’m not worried about him being jealous,” Tori protested.

“Then why didn’t you tell him?”

She met Rose’s questioning eyes, saw the uncertainty in her own reflected in them.

The ring of her cell phone saved her from having to offer an answer she didn’t have. Peeking down at the display screen, she felt her mouth go dry.

Jeff.

Suddenly, the distraction her friends had provided with their unexpected appearance was over. She could no longer ignore the reason she was there in the first place.

“It’s him, ain’t it?” Margaret Louise asked.

She inhaled deeply, then nodded and reached for the phone.

“He can’t hurt you no more, Victoria. Remember that.”

Margaret Louise was right. The days of trying to piece her life back together again were long gone and she was better than ever.

“I can do this,” she mumbled before flipping the phone open and holding it to her ear. “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

 

 

She could feel his eyes inspecting every nuance of her body just as surely as she could see Margaret Louise’s pale blue station wagon tailing her from three cars back. “So … um … how was your flight?”

It was the safest question she could think of at the moment—something relatively innocuous to keep her from giving him a similar once-over. Besides, she already knew the way his dark blond hair curled at the point where it met his ears. And she already knew the way he used his emerald green eyes to wow the female population.

It was how to
forget
him that she’d fought so hard to learn only to throw it all away in a moment of misguided kindness.

I am an idiot …

“It was good. But sitting here now, next to you, is even better.” His deep voice tickled her ear and she tightened her grip on the steering wheel in response. “You look great. Amazing, actually. The south certainly agrees with you.”

“It does.” Swinging her gaze upward, she noted the way Margaret Louise sped up as Tori approached an upcoming traffic light. “I love my job, my friends … my life. Moving here was the best decision I’ve ever made.”

“Hurting you was the worst decision
I
ever made.”

She felt her mouth gape open and her heartbeat accelerate. Why was he doing this?

Jeff reached across the center console and grabbed hold of Tori’s right hand. “I’ve regretted it every single day since it happened.”

As evident by the hundreds of times my phone never rang in the months that followed …

To Jeff, though, she shrugged what she prayed was a carefree shrug. He didn’t deserve anything else. “Sometimes things happen for a reason.” Pulling her hand from his, she placed it firmly on the steering wheel and said a preemptive mental prayer for forgiveness. “I—I’m engaged now. And I’m happy. Happier than I’ve ever been. His name is Milo and he teaches third grade at the local elementary school.”

Silence filled the space between them as the light turned green and Margaret Louise’s car lurched forward behind them. “Milo, eh?”

She nodded.

“I don’t see a ring.”

“It’s, um, being sized,” she lied.

“Well—” he reached for her hand once again—“until it’s on that beautiful finger of yours with a wedding ring planted right there next to it, there’s still a chance.”

She felt her stomach churn. “A chance? A chance for what?”

“C’mon now, baby. You know what I’m saying.”

“No, I actually don’t,” she said. “Enlighten me.”

“There’s still a chance for
us
, Tori.” His hand struck again, this time coming to rest on her thigh. “Engaged is just engaged. It’s not a done deal. Nor is my relationship with Julia—I mean, Kelly. Hell, Julia only came to pass because
…
I don’t even know anymore. She just did. But then Kelly came along and, man, did she look cute in the overalls she was wearing when she came with her dad to fix a faulty circuit breaker at the club. But I don’t owe them anything any more than you owe this Milo guy until the day you’re actually married.”

Jerking the car onto the shoulder, she slammed on the brakes, the roar of anger in her head nearly drowning out the answering screech behind them. “An engagement is merely a
statement
of intent to the rest of the world, Jeff. The commitment between the two people is already there. That’s the part you seemed to miss two years ago.” Gulping back the sobs that threatened to stop her tirade in its tracks, she continued, her voice rising to a pitch capable of shattering glass. “You took everything I knew to be true at that moment and yanked it from under my feet. And you know what? I was drowning in your betrayal
…
absolutely drowning.”