Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) (12 page)

Cliff didn’t answer and Byron chose not to, seeing how he wasn’t, as far as Liza Baron was aware, supposed to really know the somewhat eccentric owner of Gates Department Store.

“Unless what they’re saying in town is true,” Liza said, popping the muffins into the oven.

Byron’s eyes met Cliff’s, but neither man spoke.

Liza was having a great time for herself. “Martha Bauer—she’s doing my dress for me—says she saw the photographer who did the picture series on Aunt Ellie at the library the other night. Then Tisha Olsen reminded her that his name was Byron Sanders. Then Ricky Travis’s little brother, Lars, said something to somebody who told Inger Hansen who told Martha that Nora has a man staying at her house. From his description, Martha figures it was her photographer. Then
she
talked to somebody else—I hope I’ve got this all straight—who remembered seeing Nora and some man who fit Byron’s description having lunch together a few years ago, but who’d dismissed it, thinking he had to be a salesman or something, given that Nora would never be caught dead
dating
a man.”

Without a word, Cliff got up, pulled open a drawer and got out two towels, one of which he handed to Byron. The other he used to wipe his face as he watched his finacée.

Byron swallowed hard. “So people are gossiping about Nora?”

“Oh, my, yes,” Liza said delightedly. “Lordy, I missed lots of good stuff while I was away. Now everybody’s got it figured out.”

“Got what figured out?” Cliff asked.

She grinned. “That Byron and Nora were lovers!”

* * *

A
HALF MILE
from Barney’s, which had the most extensive selection of pumpkins in or around Tyler, Nora was drenched to the bone and shivering and absolutely certain she’d lost her mind. What had she been thinking when she’d climbed on her bike to go pumpkin hunting in the rain? Even if it hadn’t been raining then, she’d known it
would
rain. She listened to the radio weather report every morning.

She recognized Byron’s rented car in her handlebar mirror and hoped she was the last person he’d expect to see, bicycling in the rain with a pumpkin tucked under one elbow and a flimsy camouflage poncho whipping out behind her in the wind. Her sweatshirt, turtleneck, bra, underpants, jeans—everything was soaked. And even as small as her pumpkin was, it felt like a lead weight and made steering more difficult and the ride home even more torturous. But she had her pride. She’d gone to Barney’s for a pumpkin, and by God, she’d go back with a pumpkin.

She tucked her head inside her poncho hood, but Byron’s car pulled up just ahead of her. Unless she wanted to get run over, she had no choice but to stop.

Byron rolled down his window. “Forget your car?”

“No, I—I planned it this way.”

“A bike ride with a pumpkin in the driving rain, forty-mile-an-hour winds and fifty-degree temperatures?”

If it was fifty out, she was home under her down comforter. “You don’t have to believe me.”

“I lie to save my skin, you lie to save face. It’s the fundamental difference between us. Want a ride?”

Rain was pouring off her nose. “No, thank you.”

Byron frowned, looking handsome if not entirely dry himself. “My instincts tell me to let you drown or freeze—whichever comes first—but I have orders to bring you back to Timberlake Lodge for coffee and pumpkin muffins.”

How tempting. Maybe Cliff would build a fire. Liza could lend her dry clothes. But she shook her head. “I have more errands to run.”

“Like that? You’ll get a reputation.”

She would, too. It was the Byron Sanders Forrester effect. “Liza sent you? I wondered if she spotted me.” A strong gust of wind blew the rain hard into her face and almost knocked her off her bicycle.
I’m nuts,
she thought.
Completely bonkers.
“I’ve got to run along.”

Byron sighed. “Nora, quit cutting off your nose to spite your face and get in the damned car.”

“My bicycle—”

“Leave it in the ditch. You can come back for it later.”

“Someone will steal it.”

“In this weather? Besides, you couldn’t get three bucks for that bomb at a flea market. How old is it?”

“I don’t know— Aunt Ellie picked it up for me at a garage sale when I first came to live with her. It was pretty old then.”

The driver’s door swung open, and Byron got out of the car, grumbling. “I can’t believe I’m discussing how old this rusting hunk of junk is while you’re out here freezing your lovely behind off. Now, in the car.”

She tilted up her chin, her poncho hood falling down her back, not that it had been doing any good. Her hair was dripping. “I won’t have you order me about.”

“Then consider it a plea. Liza won’t give me coffee and muffins if I come back without you.”

“Horrors.”

“Come on, Nora.”

“As you wish, but— Byron, I think my fingers are stuck.”

He covered her frozen hand with his, its warmth immediately penetrating the stiff, purple fingers practically glued
to her handlebar. She let him take her pumpkin. She began to shiver uncontrollably as she pried her fingers loose. Byron didn’t let go of her hand.

“I feel like an idiot,” she said, coughing.

“It’s that kind of day.”

She peeled off her poncho before getting into the car; Byron balled it and shoved it on the floor in back. “I must smell like a wet dog,” she said when she climbed next to him in the front.

He smiled. “Just so long as you don’t have fleas. Be tough to explain to the rental car folks.”

“If you don’t mind—coffee and pumpkin muffins sound great, but I’d prefer just to go home.”

The rain was coming down now in sheets, and her bicycle crashed over in the wind. Byron collected it and jammed it in the back seat of his car. What had she been thinking when she started pedaling home? At the very least, she should have stayed at Barney’s. Maybe, deep down, she’d wanted Byron to rescue her. She’d guessed he was out at the lodge. She’d seen Liza’s T-bird streak past her.
I’m not that kind of woman. I left Barney’s because I thought I could get home before the worst of the storm hit. Don’t make more of this than there is.

“You okay?” Byron asked.

“Just wet and cold.”

He set her pumpkin on the seat between them and started the car. “What’s the pumpkin for?”

“This one, not much. I was checking what Barney had in the way of jack-o’-lantern pumpkins. I do a Halloween party every year. Byron, I’m getting your car all wet.”

“It’ll have time to dry, not that I’d give a damn if it didn’t. I wish I had a blanket or something to give you—”

“We’ll be home in just a few minutes.”

“Right. You’re sure you don’t want to go back to the lodge? It’s closer.”

She looked out the passenger window. “I’m humiliated enough as it is.”

Byron sighed. “What the hell’s so humiliating about getting caught out in the rain?”

When she didn’t answer, he pulled out onto the road, but, mercifully, headed toward town rather than turning back toward Timberlake Lodge. Nora tried to relax, but she couldn’t. She was too cold, too tired, too aware of Byron so close beside her. She was used to doing things right. Taking care of herself. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need
anyone.

“Thank you for the ride,” she said finally.

Byron looked at her, his expression virtually impossible to read. “It wasn’t my choice.” Then he smiled irreverently. “That’s supposed to make you feel better.”

“So I won’t think you were being nice to me on purpose?”

“Seems to annoy the hell out of you when I try.”

She said nothing, uncomfortable with the note of wistfulness she detected in his voice, even as his eyes and smile remained hopelessly irreverent. Instead of trying to explain her jumble of contradictory feelings, she pulled off her drenched sweatshirt. Immediately she regretted what she’d done. The turtleneck underneath wasn’t of the highest quality, the thin, pearl-gray fabric becoming translucent when wet. She could see the lines of her lace bra, and the outline of her nipples, hard with the cold, the rain, the awareness of the solid man beside her.

“Nora…a week of this…”

There was no point in denying the obvious any longer. “I know.”

They arrived at her house. Byron parked along the curb,
and before he had the engine turned off, Nora shot out of the car, unlocked the door and dashed in to her room. She peeled off her wet clothes. Despite her purple fingers and toes and her goose bumps, her body felt as if it were on fire. She couldn’t remember anything so erotic as feeling that hot and that cold at the same time, at least not in the past three years. If Byron Forrester walked into her bedroom right now, she’d pounce. There was no question in her mind.

“Nora,” he called from out in the hall, “are you all right?”

“Fine!”

“If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

Oh, Lord! She grabbed fresh underwear—the most utilitarian she had—and put on iron-gray drawstring sweat-pants that would have made Marilyn Monroe look like a truck driver. Then she got out a black turtleneck and her father’s old Black Watch wool hunting shirt and put them on, letting the tails hang down over her hips. She found some wool socks that were about as sexy as organic compost, then combed out her hair. The extremes of hot and cold had melded into a pleasant feeling of dry, cozy warmth.

She found Byron building a fire in the study. Seeing him on one knee, leaning over the birch logs and kindling as he watched the flames take hold, was like striking a match to a drought-stricken prairie. As the fire spread, the flames licking the wood, rising blue-edged and hot, Nora could feel herself begin to burn.

“You’re still in your wet clothes,” she said.

He climbed to his feet. “I’ll go change.”

She nodded, stepping out of the doorway so he could get past her without touching her. If he did, she’d go up as fast as the kindling.

But he stopped on the threshold. “It won’t work, you know.”

“What won’t work?” she asked innocently, fearing that she knew what he was talking about.

“The woods-woman look. Believe me, if I wanted you soaked to the bone in a camouflage poncho and the driving rain, I want you now.”

And he ducked out fast, before she burst into flame by pure spontaneous combustion. She was so damned hot she had to take off the watchplaid shirt and push up the sleeves of her turtleneck. Who needed a real fire?

She made a pot of coffee and heated up a couple of applesauce-nut muffins she’d stuck in the freezer earlier in the fall, then got out her Halloween tray with the pictures of pumpkins on it, two orange paper napkins and plain white mugs and plates. In a few minutes, she was back in the study, everything nicely arranged.

Byron joined her. She wondered if getting into dry clothes had had a similar effect on him and if he was now more composed. He didn’t look as if he were hanging by his fingernails to the last shreds of his self-control. The fire was burning well and good sense seemed restored. Outside, however, the storm raged on.

“Should I call Cliff and Liza?” she asked.

“No, I think they’ll figure it out.”

“Well…I wouldn’t want them to get the wrong idea.”

“Nora—”

He broke off, but she’d spotted the knowing concern—the I-know-something-I-wish-I-didn’t in his eyes—and prodded him. “What is it?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Tell me about your Halloween party.”

Sitting on the floor, Nora leaned back against her couch and stretched out her decidedly unsexy legs toward the fire.
Byron sat cross-legged opposite her. He’d put on dry cords and a dark blue shaker-knit sweater that somehow made her believe he could be the president of an East Coast publishing house. He, too, had skipped shoes. The fire crackled. The study was small, with just a couch, a glass-fronted bookcase, a couple of caned chairs and a tub table. It was where Aunt Ellie had best liked to read.

“About seven years ago,” she said, “Aunt Ellie and I decided to have a Halloween party for our neighborhood—adults as well as children. Aunt Ellie always considered Halloween a bizarre custom. She just didn’t get trick-or-treating. But she loved bobbing for apples, haunted houses, ghost stories, jack-o’-lanterns. She didn’t approve of having a bunch of mercenary kids in dime-store costumes pounding on our door for free candy.”

Byron smiled. “And I’m sure her opinion of Halloween was no secret.”

“Hardly. She was starting to get real curmudgeonly about the whole thing—to the point of wanting to turn out the lights and pretend we weren’t home—until I suggested a party. Only homemade costumes—they didn’t have to be fancy—were allowed. I ordered all kinds of materials for the store—face paint, false noses and teeth, hats, sequins, feathers—the works. And we’d do all the old-fashioned stuff, like bobbing for apples, spooky ghost houses, making popcorn balls. It was great fun. Aunt Ellie dressed up as a witch—warty nose, croaking voice, poison herbs and all. For the first two years nobody knew it was her. They all thought she’d gone to visit her friend in Milwaukee when I had my party. She just loved that.”

“And what were you?” Byron asked, his eyes on her.

She felt the warmth rise into her cheeks. “A gypsy.”

He laughed. “Eleanora Gates, who’s never lived any
where but Tyler, Wisconsin, as a gypsy. That
is
a fantasy. Did you read palms?”

“Of course.”

“And have a crystal ball?”

“One year I did. Lars Travis broke it.”

Byron was silent for a minute or two, and Nora found herself unable even to guess what he was thinking, yet very much wanting to know. Was he imagining her in her gypsy costume? Remembering past Halloweens when he and Cliff were children? For three years, she’d thought she had him all figured out. To her, he was a wanderer, a cad, a womanizer, a man of talent and vision who would never commit to anything but a fleeting image he could capture on film. Now all bets were off. He might have been some of those things, or none. She didn’t know who Byron Sanders Forrester was, what made him tick.

“After Aunt Ellie died,” she went on, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue our Halloween party tradition. But that first Halloween—she’d only been dead seven weeks—I found myself at Barney’s buying up pumpkins, and I came home and made jack-o’-lanterns and popcorn balls and…I don’t know, people just showed up. I never sent out a single invitation. It was almost like Aunt Ellie had gotten us together, just to prove we could—or at least I could—carry on without her. I remember putting on my costume and feeling so alone. She was gone.” Nora glanced over at Byron, her throat tightening. “You were gone. And there I was, dressing up like a kid for Halloween. But I could feel her spirit with me, telling me to buck up and get on with my life. So I did.”