Stop the Wedding! (18 page)

“So you’ve been seeing a lot of him, have you?”

He stood about ten yards away, facing her, unaware he was being observed. Water rushed off his body, pulling at his dark swim trunks and emphasizing his muscular build. Not to mention his maleness. She swallowed hard.

“Annabelle?”

“Hm?”

“I asked if you were seeing a lot of the son?”

Angling for a better view, she frowned as he walked out of her vision. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Is he absolutely divine?”

She straightened, suddenly sheepish, and looked around to see if anyone had caught her spying. “I honestly wouldn’t know, Mike. What’s going on at the office?”

“Quiet as a morgue, but at least I’ve had time to catch up on this cyberspace stuff. I actually logged onto the Internet to search for an apartment.”

“Any luck?”

“I’m looking at two tonight. Oh, and I’ll check in on Shoakie while I’m out.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.”

Michaela sighed dramatically. “I guess it was simply too good to be true.”

“What was simply too good to be true?”

“That Mr. Right would walk up, sweep you off your feet, and take you far away from this dreary office.”

“You watch too much television,” she admonished her dreamy friend. “Assuming there is such a thing as Mr. Right, which I highly doubt, he’s not likely to just walk up—”

The snap of a twig caused her to jerk around. Clad in jeans and a damp T-shirt, Clay stood at the edge of the back yard staring at her, one arm stretched up, leaning against a tree.

A tapping sound came across the phone. “Annabelle, are you still there?”

“Um, yes,” she murmured.

Clay pointed to himself, then back down the path, indicating he’d leave if she wanted him to. She shook her head.

“What happened, Annabelle, is someone there?” her friend whispered.

“Um, yes.”

“It’s
him
, isn’t it?” Mike squealed. “Oh, I knew it!”

“Listen, Mike,” Annabelle said. “I have to run, but I’ll call you back this afternoon. Thanks for handling the details surrounding the closing.”

“Tell me you’ll be home soon,” her friend said.

“What?”

“Just tell me!”

“All right…I’ll be home soon.”

“And that you miss me.”

“What?”

“Say it!”

“And…I miss you.” She fidgeted, feeling like a fool and wondering what her friend had up her sleeve. “Goodbye.” She punched a button to disconnect the call and conjured up a smile for her unexpected guest. “Hello.”

He gestured toward where she stood. “What are you doing way over there?”

She realized she was standing in a bed of pine bark mulch, behind a row of thorny barberry bushes. “Um, weeding.” She moved away from the fence and the telltale peephole, wincing when a briar snagged her bare knee.

His eyebrows rose. “Weeding?”

She leaned over to rip out a stray runner of Bermuda grass and held it up. “See?”

He walked closer, nodding at the phone in her other hand. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.”

She remembered Michaela’s teasing and felt warmth travel across her cheeks. “Just checking in back home.”

He studied her for a few seconds. “I hear you’re leaving,” he said, his tone casual. Pleasant. Nonchalant.

She nodded, stepping closer. “Yes. Mother agreed to go back with me.”

His mouth quirked from side to side. “No doubt it’s for the best.”

He was glad to see her go—why did his words hurt her feelings so much? Wasn’t she just as glad to be going? “So,” she said lightly, “did you come over to offer me cash again?”

A wrinkle appeared on his forehead. “Actually, I wanted to tell you—”

“Annabelle, dear?” Belle stood in the opening of the sliding glass door, shading her eyes from the sun and looking strained.

“Yes, Mother?”

Belle stopped and touched her hair self-consciously. “Oh, Clay. I didn’t realize you were here.”

“Mrs. Coakley,” he said with a respectful nod.

Her mother looked back and forth between them in a way that alarmed Annabelle. “Mom, did you need something?”

Belle nodded. “I was going to make a cup of tea and noticed I’m down to one bag. I don’t feel like getting out, dear, with so much packing yet to do. Would you make a run to the supermarket for a few things?”

She opened her mouth to say yes, if the car would start, but Clay spoke up. “Mrs. Coakley, I was on my way out to run some errands myself—I’d be glad to take Annabelle.” He looked her way for approval and she felt her head move up and down.

A distracted smile curved her mother’s mouth. “Thank you, Clay.” She started to go back inside, then turned. “Clay, how is your father?” Realizing it took a lot of courage for Belle to even ask, Annabelle allowed herself a moment of remorse for her part in her mother’s loss.

“He’s fine,” Clay said without emotion. When the silence stretched around them, he added, “He said he had some business to attend to, and left early this morning.”

Belle nodded, then turned and disappeared inside the house. Her mother’s listlessness tugged on Annabelle’s heart, and after arranging for Clay to pick her up around front, she hurried inside.

“Mom?” She walked from room to room, surprised to find her in the little study off the living room, standing inside a closet, her face buried in a checked shirt Annabelle recognized as her father’s. She blinked away abrupt tears. “Mom?”

Belle swung around, her eyes shimmering. Seeming embarrassed, she smiled and stroked the threadbare shirt. “Your father wore this ratty old thing the day before his heart attack and left it hanging on the bedpost.” She laughed through her tears. “He was always so bad about putting clothes in the hamper.” Belle’s face crumpled and she lifted her lost gaze to Annabelle. “It doesn’t smell like him anymore.”

Annabelle went to her mother and wrapped her arms around her, allowing her own tears to flow. “Oh, Mom, I can’t imagine how much you miss Dad.”

Belle clung to Annabelle and her shoulders shook. Helplessness paralyzed Annabelle, and she thought her heart might break for her mother’s sorrow. But then Belle sniffed and extracted herself, visibly trying to shake her mood. “Look at me, making such a fuss.”

“Mom,” Annabelle said, shushing her, “you’re allowed to make a fuss.”

Her mother pulled a silver chain from the neck of her blouse. Annabelle teared up again at the sight of her mother’s wedding ring dangling from the end.

“I thought all these schoolgirl feelings meant I was in love again,” Belle murmured, fingering the worn band. “But maybe I just wanted it to be so.” She pressed her trembling lips together, then said, “Maybe I’m just an old fool.”

Strange, but she’d always thought of her mother as being above the simple needs of most women “Oh, Mom,” Annabelle whispered, stroking away her mother’s tears. “You’re not a fool, you’re human. Everyone wants someone to love.”

Belle smiled through her tears. “Even you, Annabelle?”

She blinked and struggled for words, pushing away the image of Clay’s teasing smile. “I’m not immune. I want th-that. Someday.”

Belle tilted her head and her eyes softened. “I was beginning to worry that job of yours had hardened your heart.”

Had it? Annabelle wondered. Had her job hardened her heart to the possibility of a love for all time? “I’m just realistic about the odds of maintaining a long-term relationship.”

“You’re right,” Belle said, nodding. She blew her nose, then sniffed. “Martin doesn’t really love me, or he’d never have given up on us so easily. I think he sees my going to Michigan as his way out.”

Annabelle agreed, but remained silent. She did, however, wish she could assume some of her mother’s hurt, which was palpable.

But her mother’s expression suddenly changed, every feature lifting with her smile. “But I’m so lucky to have you,” she said, framing Annabelle’s face with her hands. “This time together will give us a chance to catch up on what’s really important, and your father would like that.”

Anna, promise me you’ll look after your mother if something happens to me.

“Yes,” Annabelle said, enormously relieved that her mother seemed on her way to healing.

“Now,” Belle said, wiping her cheeks. “I’ll finish packing. When you get back from the grocery, let’s go through the flower bulbs I have in the garage and pick out enough to get a perennial garden started around your new house.” She smiled. “Clay must be wondering where you are.” She fingered a strand of hair back behind Annabelle’s ear. “At least the two of you seem to have become friends.”

Her heart beat a wild tattoo. “We’re hardly friends, Mother.”

Belle patted her hand. “Friendly, then. I’m glad my and Martin’s differences haven’t come between the two of you.”

“Mom—”

Belle turned to rehang her father’s shirt among the winter garments in the closet, then closed the door and presented a placid face to Annabelle. “We’re also out of milk, dear, but a quart will do since we’re leaving so soon.”

And just like that, gone was Belle the woman, and back was Belle the mother.

“Of course,” Annabelle said, retreating from the room. “I won’t be long.”

She walked through the house, confused by the emotions pulling at her heart—remorse, relief…and something unidentifiable.

Pulling apart the curtain at the living room window, she was surprised to see an oversized black pickup sitting at the end of the driveway, with Clay at the wheel. She smiled—the man was full of surprises. And in that instant, she ruefully identified the other sentiment plucking at her.

Anticipation.

*****

Clay didn’t mind waiting, because he dreaded admitting he’d been wrong about her. Henry hadn’t yet delivered his report on Annabelle Coakley, but he’d come to believe he’d misjudged the young beauty—maybe she did simply have her mother’s best interests at heart. She seemed eager enough to spirit Belle away to Michigan to get her out of his father’s grasp.

But he frowned when he recalled the phone conversation he’d interrupted earlier. Was this Mike fellow part of the reason Annabelle was so anxious to return to Detroit?

Clay massaged the bridge of his nose because he suspected another cause for the rock of dread lodged in his chest. He was beginning to have these strange feelings—
“Sorry for the wait!”

He jerked his head around at her voice coming through the lowered passenger window. She opened the door and he leaned over to give her a hand up, gentling his grip to accommodate her slim fingers.

“Thanks,” she said, breathless as she fell into the seat and closed the door with a bang. He didn’t realize he was still holding her hand until she stared down at their twined fingers. With a fair amount of embarrassment, he released her. She planted her purse on the seat between them, then looked around the quad-cab pickup. “This is some truck.”

Her rich-colored hair was bound up, giving him an unobstructed view of her profile—wondrously sculpted nose and chin, curving brow, jutting cheekbones. She wore denim shorts and a sleeveless green T-shirt with a yellow sunflower on the front. No makeup that he could tell, because her freckles stood out. The woman radiated health, and he was struck by his desire to put his hands around her, not to arouse himself, but simply to keep her close until he could sort through the disconcerting feelings she evoked.

Dismayed at his train of thought, he nonetheless managed a smile in her direction. “I’m not sure whether that was a compliment or an insult.”

Annabelle lifted her shoulder in a half-shrug, distracted by the digital compass on the overhead console. His frustration rose a notch because he was trying to engage a serious conversation and she seemed oblivious.

“Why do you have a truck?” she pressed, looking and sounding impossibly young for a divorce attorney.

“The truck comes in handy for hauling equipment to the piece of property I own north of here.” He put the vehicle in gear. “I need to run out there and drop off some papers to a surveyor—do you mind riding along?”

Her white teeth appeared on her bottom lip. “Is it far?”

Irritation jabbed him—she had more interesting things to do, like pack for her trip home to Mike. “About a twenty-minute drive, but I’ll take you to the grocery and back to your mother’s if you don’t have time.”

She pursed her pink mouth and shook her head. “That’s fine. I just don’t want to leave her alone for too long. Thanks for the ride, by the way. Mom’s car is on its last leg.”

A finger of worry nudged him when he remembered Henry’s report of the women test-driving luxury sedans—was she hinting now for a new car? Was she regretting she hadn’t taken the money he’d first offered her?

“How is your mother?” he asked as he pulled out of the neighborhood.

“She’ll be fine,” Annabelle said in a soothing tone. “She as well as admitted she was marrying Martin out of sheer loneliness. I’m sure this little romance between them has run its course. How about your father?”

“The same—a little depressed, but he seems resigned to Belle leaving.” He shifted in his seat, rankled by the sensation that something worthwhile was slipping through
his
fingers. “Dad said he might even go back to Paris with me.”

“I suppose you’ll be returning soon then.”

He nodded, suddenly realizing he’d forgotten to call the airline this morning. Too many distractions. “As soon as possible, but while I’m here, I thought I’d take care of some things at the farm.”

“The farm?” Her dark eyebrows shot up.

He smiled. “It’s not a farm, really, just a place where I go to clear my head.”
Which is what I need right now.

She nodded and made a thoughtful noise. “The university law library.”

He glanced over. “Pardon me?”

“The university law library—it’s where I go to clear my head.”

Amazingly, it wasn’t difficult to imagine her in a black suit and heels, with leopard-print lingerie underneath. More and more, the layers of Annabelle Coakley were being revealed to him—although not as literally as he’d envisioned in the deep of night. “Is your work schedule hectic?”

She laughed, a hearty, ruffled sound. “I handle about a hundred divorce cases a month.”