Met Her Match

by Jude Deveraux

  Instantly, expressions of distaste were back on the faces of the four older adults. Their spines went rigid and they looked at Nate with glaring stares.

  “I can assure you,” Mrs. Alderson said, “that there is no connection between the two families. The Thorndykes were our friends. Why young Billy was so infatuated with Terri Rayburn from the lake, no one could understand—but a Wilkins? Certainly not!”

  Mr. Alderson put his hand over his wife’s. “I seem to remember that Abby was friends with Leslie Rayburn.”

  “Sometimes,” Nate began, his voice low and hard, “people—”

  “Hey!” Bob said as he abruptly stood up. “I think I should take Nate to see his office. Anyone object to our leaving?”

  No one moved but their expressions said it all. Please take him away was written on their faces.

  * * *

  When they were outside, Bob said he’d come with his parents so they’d better take Nate’s car. “Unless you want to walk. Your office is very close.”

  “Of course it is,” Nate muttered. “Let’s use my car.” He drove as Bob directed him. They went down a side street and pulled into the drive of a big Victorian house. Nate was glad to see that it wasn’t too gaudy. With the mood he was in, if the house had been painted a dozen shades of purple he might not stop.

  He and Bob got out of the car. There were tall shade trees around the house and a gentle breeze swayed the leaves. The pleasantness of it was calming Nate.

  “I want to apologize for my parents,” Bob said. “You won’t believe it, but they’re very nice people. It’s just that they love Stacy so much. Her mom and mine have been best friends since before Stace was born.”

  “And they wanted their kids to marry.”

  “Right,” Bob said.

  “What about you?” Nate’s eyes zeroed in on Bob’s.

  “I love Stacy and we really tried to make it work. We wanted to please our parents, but...” He shrugged. “It was boring. We knew everything about each other. I sat beside her in the first grade so I know she hates peanut butter. I was there when Elliot Pierce hit her with a stick and she kicked him back, so I know why they still dislike each other. I helped her glue fabric swatches in her notebooks. I cried with her when Daisy died.”

  Nate was trying to keep his expression neutral. He didn’t know any of these things about Stacy. Twice he’d bought her chocolate-covered peanut butter cups. She’d eaten a few but she’d never said she didn’t like them. And what notebooks? “Daisy?” he asked.

  “Her cat. She loves cats!”

  “Oh, right.” When Nate said he liked dogs, not cats, Stacy hadn’t registered an opinion one way or the other.

  “I just want to say that it was a mutual breakup. One night after we went to a movie together we didn’t have a word to say because we knew what the other one thought. There was no reason to talk. When we got in the car, Stacy said, ‘Let’s break up.’ I said, ‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard in years.’ We were both very happy.”

  Bob gave Nate a look of apology. “Sorry for this, but Stacy and I were too cowardly to tell the parents. We just kind of avoided the whole subject.”

  “Then she met Kit.”

  “She did,” Bob said. “She worked on that play with him and he sent her to DC to meet his son—not his workhorse of an assistant.”

  “And she returned with me.” Nate wasn’t good at hiding his bitterness over that. Kit sent a princess to his prince of a son.

  “And as you saw, the parents haven’t recovered. But don’t worry. Stacy will straighten them out.”

  That idea bothered him. He’d helped solve international skirmishes but it would be his wife-to-be who’d handle four disappointed parents?

  “You ready to see your office?”

  Nate looked up at the house with its deep porch. “Who owns this place?”

  “I don’t know. Someone in the Thorndyke family, but it’s all done by mail.”

  “Could it be Billy Thorndyke?”

  Bob grinned. “The boy dumped by the beauteous Terri? Speaking of whom, the scuttlebutt is that you two are more than friends.”

  “Not true,” Nate said, but he looked away. “After you.”

  Bob took a key from his pocket, unlocked the big front door, and they went inside.

  Within seconds, Nate knew he hated the place. There were two large rooms plus a kitchen, a bath and a pretty garden room in the back. Stacy had done a brilliant job of decorating. She’d used the apartment in DC as her starting point, and mixed modern furniture with pieces from the Southwestern US. On a big pine door was a brass plaque: Nathaniel Taggert. Inside was a desk of heavy oak, with Western carvings down the sides. It was something that someone from Colorado would be assumed to like.

  The framed paintings and drawings were of ranch scenes. There was even a glass-fronted box containing different kinds of barbed wire. The rugs were Navajo.

  “Look like your home state?” Bob asked.

  “Sort of.” Nate didn’t add that it was a tourist’s version of Colorado. He looked out the window of what would be his office and saw a shaded front yard and the street. There was a sidewalk where a woman was walking her dog.

  This is it, he thought. This is where I’ll be spending most of the rest of my life. Behind the desk was a huge chair done in artfully aged brown leather. “I’ll be a Colorado cattle baron in Virginia.”

  “What was that?” Bob asked.

  “Nothing.” He turned back to the man. “So what do you do?”

  “I have a law degree but so far I haven’t used it. I’m going into politics so I’m trying to build my résumé. I’m going to Africa to do some teaching.” He paused. “I think I ought to tell you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stacy’s father bought the old Stanton house for your wedding gift.”

  Nate looked at him in question.

  “You know that big white house in the center of town? The one with the fountain in front of it?”

  For a moment Nate was blank, then his eyes widened. “You don’t mean that derelict old place with the columns, do you?”

  “The very one. Stacy and her dad love that house.”

  “Stanton,” Nate whispered as he began to remember. “Her parents’ house was remodeled to look like it.”

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “When Lew was a young and ambitious lawyer, he wanted the biggest house smack in town, where he could see and be seen. But the owners wouldn’t sell, so he made his house as much like it as possible. He laughs about it now. So anyway, he finally bought the big old house, and he’s going to give it to you and Stace. She will love making it back into the showpiece it once was. You’ll have to live in construction for a couple of years, but someday you’ll have a grand staircase to walk down. Stacy will wear one of her Dior gowns and—Are you all right? You look like you’re going to be sick.”

  “I, uh, I need to go to the doctor.” Nate’s voice was barely audible. “I mean Jamie. My cousin. I need to see him. Now.”

  “Sure,” Bob said. “I’ll walk back to Lew’s place.” He put the key on the corner of the desk. “This is yours now.” He started for the door, but turned back. “Nate, I don’t really know you, but I do know Stacy. She’s mad about you. You’re all she could talk about the last time she was here. The elegant dinners, your apartment, your glamorous nights out. She kept saying that you were her dream man, that it was as though she’d made you up, that you were too perfect to be real. She’s so happy you’re going to come here to live and open an office. She can’t bear to leave her parents, and now that her brother has moved to LA, she’s tied even tighter here.”

  When Nate was silent, Bob said goodbye and left the house.

  Nate waited a while then he went outside, locked the front door and sent a text to Jamie.

  Meet me in the gym. 2 m
inutes.

  He turned off his phone and went to his car.

  Chapter 9

  Jamie watched Nate lower the Olympic bar, the multiple forty-five-pound plates making it bow. He’d been quiet since his cousin arrived, but then, it hadn’t taken much to see that Nate needed to talk.

  Yesterday, Della Kissel had come to Jamie’s office. She was Kyle’s patient but she’d demanded a second opinion, which in Summer Hill meant seeing Dr. Jamie. He’d been told by Kyle that her tests in Richmond showed that there was nothing wrong with her. “The woman will live to be a thousand,” Dr. Kyle had said. “Unless someone gets sick of her gossiping and offs her.”

  Della had wanted to be alone with Jamie so she could tell him about Nate and Terri. “I promised Brody I wouldn’t say anything to anyone, but you’re a relative so I think you should know. Did you know that your cousin is engaged to that lovely Stacy Hartman? Did you know that her father is the mayor? Have you heard that she dropped dear Bob Alderson for your cousin? It was the scandal of the year! Why would she want a bear of a man like Nathaniel Taggert when she could have an elegant gentleman like Bob? Although I must say that when Nathaniel was at my house with me in my nightclothes it was quite, quite intimate—if you know what I mean. Does your cousin make passes at all women?”

  Jamie put his stethoscope away. Della’s heart rate was rising with each question. “No,” he said, smiling. “He only comes on to the very pretty ones.”

  That had pleased her so much that he was able to get her to talk about people other than his cousin.

  The visit had warned Jamie that something was going on with Nate. But then his wife, Hallie, had figured that out. The first two days Nate had been in Summer Hill he’d practically lived with them, but then Terri Rayburn returned to town and they’d not seen him since.

  Nate did another dead lift. Sumo style, legs wide, one hand outward, the other back. He moved slowly, never jerking the weight, the knurled bar scraping his shins. Like all dedicated lifters, his shins were scarred from years of dragging a heavy bar up over them.

  Jamie, sitting on a bench, wiping sweat off his face, was waiting. There were rigid, unbreakable rules in a gym. Don’t drop the weights. Put what you use away—don’t leave it for someone else. Grunting at machines was for girls. Only free weights made a man exert to the max. Don’t talk to someone who’s lifting.

  He and Nate were at the gym at Tattwell, a restored plantation just outside Summer Hill that was owned by a distant relative. The wide doors were open and the breeze kept the air cool.

  “It’s just that I feel like my life is being taken over,” Nate said. “Where I live and work. How I live. It’s all being decided for me. I’m beginning to feel that it’s a play that’s already been written and I’ve been cast in the role.”

  “Did you and Stacy talk about this before you got here?”

  “I thought we did.” Nate ran a towel over his face and neck, then picked up a fifty-pound dumbbell and started doing preacher curls. He was so angry he did twelve reps. For a lifter, if he could do a full twelve, that meant the weight was too light. He picked up a fifty-five-pound dumbbell. “I needed to get away from where Kit dumped me in the middle of a bunch of desk jockeys with all their blasted paperwork. I thought I was going to go insane. Then Stacy was there and she wanted to live in this little town and—” He broke off to do eight reps. Slow, using as much force to lower the weight as to lift it.

  “Summer Hill. Where Kit had moved.”

  Nate gave Jamie a hard look. “Don’t start playing psychologist on me. Kit being here is a coincidence.”

  Jamie wasn’t about to challenge Nate when there was so much anger in his eyes. “I’d be a psychiatrist. Medical degree, remember?”

  Nate didn’t smile, but did another eight reps. When he finished, he looked at Jamie. “I love the girl but I’m not liking the life that’s been planned out for me. And I can’t stand her parents.”

  Nate seemed to be in danger of not saying another word, so Jamie decided to encourage him. Misery does love company! “Whatever you have to say about in-laws, I can top it. You should meet Hallie’s sister! She’s a tall, skinny, shapeless blonde who truly believes that every man in the world wants her. She manipulates her poor husband like he’s her toy—and the guy seems to love it. When she’s around Hallie, I have to watch her every minute in case she decides to do or say something hateful. Right now she’s jealous because Hallie is expecting and she isn’t. She thought that because I’m a doctor I could give her a shot of some miracle drug and tomorrow she’d be knocked up. Vain girl!”

  Nate put down the single dumbbell and picked up a set of forty-pounders and Jamie knew he was going to do flyes. That Nate wasn’t sticking to a single body part and working it to exhaustion was a sign of how upset he was. They’d been taught by their fathers, and they knew to structure their workouts around a body part. Back, chest, legs. But today Nate was all over the place. He was doing squats and bench presses in the same day. Not what they’d been taught!

  Jamie stood up to spot Nate on the incline bench with the flyes. If an arm gave way—a common occurrence—the dumbbell could come down on a face. Or a pec muscle could be pulled away from his chest. With Nate’s anger and as heavy as he was lifting today, all manner of bad could happen.

  “At least you wouldn’t be living around the corner from them. Mayor Hartman is giving Stacy and me the old Stanton house as a wedding present.”

  That so shocked Jamie that he almost let Nate’s arms go out too far on his next rep. The house was an eyesore, but worse, it was at the crossroads of town. “You’d never be able to step out of your house without people seeing you. You wouldn’t like it there.”

  “I know, but Bob said Stacy loves the house. Did you know that she was nearly engaged to Bob Alderson?”

  Jamie wasn’t going to tell him that Della Kissel had filled his ear. “I’ve heard rumors.”

  Nate put the weights on the floor and sat up on the bench. “Stacy never told me a word about him.” He stretched out on another bench, this time under a bar loaded with forty-five-pound plates.

  At least he’s sticking with chest for two exercises, Jamie thought but didn’t say. “So what’s it like living at the lake? I hear you’re friends with the manager’s daughter.” Jamie watched as Nate’s whole body changed. His face relaxed so much he almost smiled. “What’s she like?”

  When Nate did a mere five reps with the heavy bar, Jamie thought that just the mention of the name had softened Nate so much that he couldn’t do a full set.

  Nate sat up. “You know Cameron Diaz’s legs?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Terri’s are better. She runs around the house in big shirts and shorts so little you can’t see them. Sometimes she just has on blue lacy underthings and... And during the day she has on cutoffs that...”

  Jamie turned away to hide a smile. “Anything else you like about her? Other than physical, that is?”

  “She doesn’t let me sleep.”

  “You mean she... In your bed?”

  “No, no, not that,” Nate said. “I mean I have to be awake and listening and thinking all the time. She zings out jibes at me that are like shots from a BB gun. I have to dodge them or send them back with equal force.” Nate was smiling. “She’s interesting and funny and smart. And she works! She runs the whole lake. Her father sits in his office most of the time or wanders off with Elaine or—” Nate stopped talking.

  “She sounds like a handful, but if you two are sharing a house, that must be difficult.”

  “I don’t know how to explain it, but we’re like two wheels working at the same speed. Within twenty-four hours of meeting, we each had our own tasks to do.” He gave a half grin. “Her bras and my pockets.”

  “Bras, huh?”

  Nate stood up. “It’s not like that. It’s all platonic. We’re like brother and si
ster.”

  Jamie didn’t dare make a reply to that. Nate’s essay on female legs didn’t sound very brotherly. He spoke softly, thoughtfully. “What are you going to do?”

  “Do? What do you mean?”

  “I mean about Stacy. You don’t like her parents or where she wants to live. Are you two still engaged?”

  The anger returned to Nate. “Of course we are. I’m in love with Stacy and I plan to marry her. We’re going to do the whole forever thing.”

  Jamie didn’t comment, but then he didn’t need to. Loyalty was a trait his family prided themselves on. “Didn’t you and Stacy live together in DC?”

  Nate began to disassemble the bar, even though he’d only done one set. “More or less. She stayed over one night and didn’t leave. It was never official, but yeah, we did.”

  “How were you together?”

  Nate shrugged. “It was in DC so I had to do things for Kit. He got us invitations to those dinners with four forks. Stacy loved every one of them.”

  “What does she eat?”

  “I don’t know. Bird food. The greener the better. I lost eight pounds in the first two weeks after she moved in. I had to sneak out to a steak house before going home to have dinner with her.”

  “What does Terri like to eat?”

  Nate laughed. “Anything. She’s not a health food nut. One day it was pouring down rain and we went into one of the cabins and threw some pizzas in the oven. She works so much that she burns up calories. Anyway, we sat there for a couple of hours and I, uh, I ended up telling her my life story.”

  “How you ran off with a Montgomery and your own family hardly saw or heard from you for years?”

  “Yeah. All of it.”

  Jamie picked up some dumbbells and racked them. “What are you going to do when Stacy gets back?”

  “One thing for sure is that we have to talk. I hate the office she made for me and I hate the house she wants us to live in.”