John Riley's Girl

by Cooper, Inglath

  John threw another glance at the man Liv had brought with her tonight. He didn’t want to be one of those guys, either. He had to talk to her. And suddenly, he couldn’t wait another minute.

  “OH, SHOOT.” Racine held her small, inexpensive-looking camera on end, glancing up to find Cleeve standing in front of her, studying her with amused eyes.

  “So how many pictures are you plannin’ on taking this weekend?”

  “Enough for a scrap book,” she said. “Guess you think that’s silly.”

  “Nope. Don’t see anything silly about it at all.”

  “Well, the end’s going to be missing. My batteries are dead.”

  “Then we better get the lady some more. Can’t have an unfinished scrapbook. Come on,” he said, taking her by the hand. “The minute market down the road should have some.”

  The obvious answer was thanks, but no thanks. Before coming over here tonight, Racine had made herself promise that she would keep her distance from Cleeve Harper. But that resolution was becoming harder and harder to stick to. Being around Cleeve was like having your very own clown, Labrador retriever and fan club all wrapped up in the same package. He’d complimented her outfit earlier tonight—a dress she’d had for years—as if he meant it, with a look in his eyes that made her cheeks flush with color.

  And not to mention that he was so darn good-looking.

  Racine had always had a thing for guys in cowboy hats.

  Really, Macy Harper had no idea what she had.

  So what harm could there be in driving with him to the minute market? She did need the batteries. She had no intention of changing her resolve. He was married. Married! But it would only take a few minutes. How much trouble could a girl get into in that amount of time?

  They headed out to Cleeve’s truck, walking side by side down the driveway. His arm brushed hers. Racine took a quick step sideways, trying to look inconspicuous and failing entirely.

  “I don’t bite,” he said.

  “Not what I heard,” she shot back, sounding more flip than she felt.

  He chuckled. “A man likes to think he’s still dangerous.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you’re dangerous, all right.”

  He opened the truck door, waited for her to climb in, then shut it behind her. Manners, too. This had better be a quick trip.

  Cleeve got in, started the truck up, and they rolled down the driveway. They were quiet at first, in the way of two people who are attracted to one another and shouldn’t be, the silence bearing weight, implication.

  And so Racine filled it with chatter, inane, meaningless stuff that made him look at her with a smile that told her he knew exactly what she was doing.

  He reached out and flipped on the radio. Tim McGraw was singing one of those songs that make a woman’s blood heat up.

  “Can’t you find something else on that radio?” she asked, lifting her hair off the back of her neck.

  Cleeve looked over at her and grinned. “So what’s wrong with this?”

  “The theme’s all wrong,” she said, flipping the dial to a station known for its elevator music, the kind that was as bland as soup out of a can.

  He looked across at her, with an eyebrow raised in acknowledgment of her mood-buster choice. “So why didn’t we ever get together in high school?”

  “Probably because I wasn’t the kind of girl you would have gotten together with.”

  “What kind’s that?”

  “The kind that didn’t have inch-thick glasses or wear her hair in pigtails.”

  “Well, somewhere along the way, you sure did figure it out.”

  Unwise though she knew it to be, Racine let the compliment wash over her, warm places inside her that had been long ago convinced there must be something wrong with her. How else could she have ended up with a man who thought it perfectly fine to use her as his own personal punching bag?

  Cleeve let off the gas and hit his blinker.

  Racine sat up in the seat. “Why are you turning here?”

  “Just taking a short cut.”

  “I don’t think we should go this way,” she said.

  “Why? You know about a roadblock or something?”

  “No. I’d just rather go the other way.”

  “This’ll be a little faster. Gotta get you back so you can finish taking all your pictures.”

  “Cleeve, really, I—” Maybe she was being paranoid. He’d said Macy had gone to visit her sister. There was no reason to think she’d be anywhere near here.

  The house was a quarter mile or so ahead on the right. Racine started talking again, about farming and cows, the words coming out at roller-coaster speed. If she talked fast enough, maybe he wouldn’t even look that way.

  They were almost at the mailbox. Racine threw a panicked glance at the driveway. Sure enough, there was Macy’s car. Parked out front bold as daylight. That woman didn’t have the good sense God gave a turnip—

  Cleeve slammed on the brakes, and the truck came to a tire-smoking stop.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, trying not to look at the car.

  But he was.

  “What the hell?” Cleeve threw the truck in reverse, backing up at a good thirty miles an hour.

  “Cleeve—”

  He stopped the truck right in front of the house. Stared at the car for a long, agonizing minute. And then looked at Racine. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  How could she lie? The fact that Macy Harper was having an affair with Joe Billings was no secret. After seeing the two of them ogling each other in the post office one day, Racine had wondered if the woman just wanted to get caught.

  “Cleeve, I—”

  He threw the truck in gear and roared off down the road, not letting her finish. She let him drive too fast for a good five miles, figuring he needed to let off a little steam.

  “You know, I’m not too keen on the thought of dying tonight,” she said finally.

  “Shit.” He slammed a palm against the steering wheel, letting off the gas. The truck slowed to the speed limit.

  “Pull over, Cleeve,” she said, reaching out and putting a hand on his arm. “Let’s just sit for a minute.”

  Another mile or two slid by before he smacked on the signal and whipped the truck over to the side of the road.

  “So who else knows? The whole damn county?”

  The pain in his voice made Racine’s heart twist. “Are you really worried about that?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it wasn’t my place to do so.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “If I’d told you that, you wouldn’t have thought so. And besides, you might have suspected my motives.”

  He considered that for a moment. “I guess it’s not the kind of thing that’s real easy to bring up. Hey, Harper, your wife sure does visit her sister a lot.”

  “Cleeve.”

  “I must look like a damn fool.”

  “You don’t look like any such thing. If Macy only knew—”

  “What?”

  “You’re a good man. She’s the one missing out.”

  He cupped a hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m pathetic,” he said. “Looking the other way all this time when I knew something wasn’t right.”

  “Sometimes people just don’t end up being who we thought they were,” she said. “I can say that from firsthand experience. And besides, I can one-up you on pathetic.”

  He looked up at her. “I doubt that.”

  “I came to this reunion this weekend all set to snag a great guy. Funny thing is I ended up renewing my crush on this cowboy who’s completely unavailable.”

  Cleeve threw her a startled look, and then blew out a sigh. A small smile touched the corner of his very appealing mouth. “You’re just saying that because I’ve been cuckolded.”

  She laughed. “I’ve never known a man who would even know how to use the word.”

  “You mean would have neede
d to.”

  “I’ve known plenty,” she said, putting her hand over his.

  He had on a short-sleeve shirt, and his skin felt cool to her touch, as if the shock of what he’d just seen had chilled his blood. She wanted to warm him up again, wrap her arms around him and wipe that look from his eyes forever.

  Though she had not spoken a word, she had no doubt her feelings showed clearly on her face. Racine didn’t bother to hide them. She figured it would do him good to know.

  “Racine—”

  The tone of his voice held warning. She would have been wise to heed it. But good heavens, she really did want him to kiss her. Once. Just once.

  He leaned toward her, closing up the space between them. Then he sank his mouth onto hers in the kind of kiss that brands a woman for life. A kiss that makes her feel as if her very bones might dissolve. A kiss that begins with the clear purpose of making it impossible for her to say no.

  Racine slid her hands up his chest, locked them around his neck and kissed him back. Full and deep without a smidge of the reserve that should have been there.

  Cleeve groaned and half pulled, half lifted her across the seat so that she was nearly sitting on his lap. “Racine.”

  A woman could wait her whole life to hear her name said like that. Racine had. No man had ever uttered her name with the kind of need that was in Cleeve’s voice now. Her own attraction to him fought an admirable battle with her conscience. It would have been so easy to give in and just enjoy being wanted this way. But then tomorrow would come, and she’d have to listen to her own regrets. Because starting something with Cleeve Harper on a night like this would do nothing but guarantee its certain demise.

  She pulled back with toothpick-weak resolve. “Not like this, Cleeve. You don’t know how much I’d like to say yes, but not like this.”

  He let her go, sat back in his seat and drew in a couple of deep breaths. “Guess we better get those batteries, huh?”

  “You’re going to be all right, Cleeve. Really, you are.”

  And in the dim light of the truck’s interior, his eyes told her that, more than anything, he wanted to believe her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Spring’s Touch

  OLIVIA FORCED HERSELF to walk across the dew-damp grass to the pond behind John’s house. She’d been helping Lori write down orders for the group picture a photographer had shot after dinner when John had come up behind her and asked, close to her ear, if she would meet him in fifteen minutes. They needed to talk.

  There were a thousand reasons for her not to go. But she could not turn back. It was simply not within her ability to do so. She’d left Michael at the other end of the yard, trying to fix a problem at work from his cell phone.

  It was dark by the water’s edge; there were no lights along the narrow dock, only the shadows thrown out from the party going on at the house behind them.

  “Liv?”

  “It’s me,” she said, a sudden fist of nerves nailing her to the spot.

  John appeared out of the darkness in front of her and put a steadying hand on her arm. “Careful, it’s hard to see out here.”

  She was glad if it gave him a reason to touch her. He held onto her until they’d reached the farthest point of the dock. Their stiff postures screamed the sudden awkwardness between them: he with hands now shoved in the pockets of his jeans; she with arms clasped around herself. The music from the reunion had started up again, the bass throbbing out a seductive beat.

  “Do you want to sit down?” John said, uncertainty leaving footprints on the words.

  Olivia nodded. They sat, close enough that their shoulders touched, their feet hanging just above the pond’s surface.

  Frogs talked all around them. A breeze tiptoed by, lifting the strands of Olivia’s hair.

  He planted his hands on the edge of the dock, his gaze pointed at the water beneath their feet. “Liv, I—”

  “John, I—”

  These beginnings were said in unison.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “No, you, really.”

  “A week ago, no one could ever have convinced me that you and I—”

  “—would ever speak to one another again?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I don’t think I would have believed it, either. But I’m glad I was wrong.”

  “So am I.”

  Quietly issued, the admission sent a shiver through her. How many times in the past fifteen years had she imagined such a scene between the two of them? Heard such words in daydreams that played on into the night? Told herself it was the only place she would ever again hear them?

  But this wasn’t a dream.

  And he had really said that.

  A good stretch of silence, and then, “What you told me this afternoon…it’s a lot to take in after so many years.”

  “I know.”

  “I feel like I lost something I never knew I had.”

  “I’m sorry.” And she was. More than she could ever express with words.

  “But it wasn’t your fault.” He looked at her then, moonlight illuminating the pain on his face. She could have spared him that. Sometimes, there was something to be said for not knowing.

  “Maybe I should have left it alone, John. There was nothing to be changed by my telling you. It’s all in the past now.”

  “There was everything to be changed,” he said, and something in his voice sent a shiver skidding down her spine. “And the fact that you and I conceived a child together will be with me for the rest of my life. It will never be in the past.”

  Emotion welled inside her, pure and true. Tears slid down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop them and didn’t try. She looked up, let him see her grief. It was still there, would never be, as he had said, a thing of the past. “I decided a long time ago that God sends us on certain paths for a reason. I have to believe that what happened was meant to be. All of it. That He had another purpose for our child other than life on this earth.”

  “Liv,” he said, the sound of her name carrying an echo of his own grief. He reached for her, pulled her to him, and they held one another, anchors, each.

  It felt as if they had reached some mutual place where it was possible for them to put to rest the things they could not change. Accept the roads their lives had led them down. And she was glad for this crossing of paths. There was no way to know the outcome. But she was grateful for the moment—this weekend, if that was all it could be—for the gift that it was.

  They sat there on the old dock, night enveloping them.

  John pulled back, looked down at her, brushed the back of his hand across her cheek, the tenderness of the gesture bringing a confusion of feeling surging up from her heart. She reached down, slipped off her sandals, let her feet dip into the night-cool water. “Mmm, that feels good.”

  John dipped his hand in and let the water trickle through his fingers. “Some of those guppies down there have teeth.”

  She popped her feet from the water, pink-tipped toes gleaming in the moonlight. “Remember when we used to swim here, and those little fish would dart up and take a nibble?”

  “I remember that polka-dot bathing suit you had that they seemed to like pretty well.”

  Olivia smiled.

  “And I remember that seeing you in it nearly drove me out of my hormone-enraged mind.”

  Now she laughed. And it felt good remembering those times. Talking about them out loud. Recalling her own disbelief that a boy like John Riley had been crazy about her. He had. And what a feeling that had been. Heady, intoxicating.

  It was the same now. That part didn’t change with age. She could feel the warm longing emanating from him as if she had sensors attached to her skin, making her attuned to this man’s needs, and his alone.

  He needed her. She knew somewhere deep inside where her own need still flared.

  Proof came when he reached out, bracketed both her legs with one arm, placed them across his lap, the feel of his jeans provocative
against her bare skin.

  Olivia could not speak, her words smothered by a sudden blanket of heat.

  His hand, the palm rough with calluses, made long, stroking motions down the length of her calf. “Still so soft,” he said, shaking his head as if the discovery amazed him. “When I was a boy, I knew girls were different. They just looked like they were made up of other stuff than we were. But the first time I ever touched you, I was sure God must have spun you from silk.”

  The words went straight to her heart. “John,” she said, letting the palm of her own hand find his face, brushing her knuckles across skin just slightly rough with stubble. She ached, literally ached, from the contrast.

  “So…you’re seeing somebody? The guy with you tonight?” Surprising as they were, the questions were strained, as if they were hard for him to say, as if he did not want to ask, but had to know.

  “Friends. We used to be more. He was trying to do me a favor by coming.”

  She felt John’s relief. Welcomed it.

  They looked at each other, simply looked, with what felt to Olivia like the need to take one another in, brand their consciousness with the fact that they were really here together, when only so recently, the possibility had not existed. The feelings inside her had the kind of roots that only develop after years of enduring the worst of hardships, drought, winter’s cold. Surviving and all the stronger for it, their grip on life firmer than before. Thriving with spring’s touch. Bringing to full, blossoming life everything she’d once felt for him. Still felt for him.

  He leaned in and kissed her then. His mouth warm and intent on hers. And it was like picking up where they’d left off. From this afternoon. From so many years before. The feelings the same and yet laced now with something different. Tenderness. Olivia felt it in his touch. Palpable understanding of why they had taken the paths they’d taken. And regret, too. For everything they had lost. They had lost. This was the difference in what she felt now. As if she were no longer out on the life raft alone. John was with her. Together, they would stay afloat. Because if their future went no further than this night, she knew she would never again be alone with the loss she’d carried herself for so long. She had seen, clearly, on John’s face that he felt it, too.