Rumor Has It

by Tami Hoag

  “I'm not.”

  “You are so damn stubborn!” He slammed his fist against the rough trunk of a persimmon tree and welcomed the distraction of the brief explosion of pain.

  Katie didn't need to strike anything to feel pain. What she was feeling inside was bad enough. “I'm realistic,” she said. “Do you think I haven't considered the options? Do you really think I haven't gone over them, that I just blindly decided adoption isn't for me?”

  “I think you've probably exhausted all arguments on the topic. I think you've been over it until you've blinded yourself to everything but your own fears.”

  Ignoring the ring of truth in his statement she closed her eyes and muttered to herself, “This is pointless.” She looked up at him. “Nick, you're just proving me right. I can't give you what you want.”

  This was it. This was going to be the end. He could see it in her pewter- colored eyes. It was there right beside regret. Wearily he fought against his own sense of resignation. He didn't want to give her up, but the choice didn't seem to be his to make. He reached out a hand to touch her cheek with the very tips of his fingers.

  “Katie,” he asked. He pulled his lower lip between his teeth for an instant. One last try. “Do you love me?”

  “Yes.” She whispered because she didn't trust her voice not to break. Oh, yes, she loved him. She loved him more than she had ever dreamed possible. She loved him wholly. She loved him unselfishly. And because her love had deepened from possessive to unselfish, she had to let him go.

  A cold wave washed over Nick, defying the heat of the afternoon. Tears pressed against the backs of his eyes with an unfamiliar pressure. He had to talk around a knot of them in his throat. “Katie, if you love me, you won't go.”

  Finally she gave in to the need to touch him— just once, just one last time. Echoing his gesture, she lifted a hand and pressed her fingertips against his lean cheek. His skin was smooth in spite of the shadow of his beard. She caught a lone tear on the tip of her finger and drew back from him.

  “Because I love you, I have to do this.”

  She stepped around him and started down the worn dirt path. Panic washed through Nick as he watched his future and his happiness walk away. It roughened his voice as he called out after her, “I dare you to come back here and work things out!”

  Katie kept on walking, tears stinging her eyes. “Not this time, Nick.”

  TWELVE

  “MR. LEONE?”

  Nick spun around and glared at the sweating deliveryman who had stuck his head inside the screen door of the kitchen. As if Nick didn't have enough on his mind already—a heat wave, a temperamental new air conditioner, advertising, the health inspector, the sign maker, Katie dumping him. Katie. Pain spurred his anger. He vented it on the deliveryman. “What the hell do you want?”

  “To deliver your veal,” the man said in a slow, steady drawl that suddenly got on Nick's nerves. Didn't people in the South ever get rattled? Didn't they ever want to scream and throw things? The man held out a clipboard of receipts and a ballpoint pen. “You planning on cooking this meat, or do y'all just eat it raw where you're from?”

  “Smart-ass,” Nick grumbled as he went to open the walk- in freezer.

  He knew he was supposed to be building a rapport with his delivery people. Every friendly connection was helpful in the restaurant business. Under normal circumstances he would have been cracking jokes and offering the man a cold drink. But circumstances hadn't been normal for four days.

  Never in his worst nightmares had Nick imagined he could hurt so badly. Losing Katie had been like losing a vital part of himself. It was like having his heart ripped right out of his chest. He'd never been so miserable or cared less about what was going on around him. The opening of his restaurant was only days away. It was a dream coming true. It meant nothing to him if he couldn't share it with Katie.

  He slumped down on a stool at the worktable and rested his elbows on the smooth new butcher block, his fingers ravaging his black hair. Couldn't she see she'd done the worst possible thing for both of them? Didn't she understand the kind of love they shared was so rare, so precious, most people went through their entire lives only dreaming about it?

  Yes, he thought, she did know, and it was part of the problem. If she had loved him less, she wouldn't have felt the need to let him go.

  Restless, he got up to pace around the kitchen. Love wasn't the problem. The real problem was Katie's fear of the unknown, her unwillingness to compromise, and her unwillingness to see he could compromise. Hell, he had to lay some of the blame at his own feet as well. Maybe he was at fault for his stubborn insistence on compromise. Maybe he'd pushed her too hard. He had wanted Katie and a family. Now he would have neither.

  Anger and frustration rolled and built inside him until he felt as if he were a pot about to boil over. Snarling a curse he snatched up the first handy thing he could find—a copper saucepan— and hurled it across the room with all his might.

  Maggie walked in as the pan crashed against the stainless- steel door of the freezer, the iron handle creasing a sharp dent in the door before the pot clattered to the linoleum.

  “It's too hot for a suit of armor, Nick. Tell me I'm not going to need one.”

  “Come on in, Maggie,” he said, going to the refrigerator. He refused to feel embarrassed for venting his emotions, especially in front of a friend. “You want a spritzer or a beer or something?”

  Waving a cheap palmetto- leaf fan in her face, Maggie planted herself on the stool he'd abandoned earlier. “Anything, as long as it's tall and cold.”

  When he'd poured Maggie's wine cooler into an ice- filled glass and helped himself to a beer, he pulled up another stool across the worktable from her and straddled it. He raised his gold can in a brief salute before pouring a long drink down his throat.

  Maggie sipped her drink and nibbled on a piece of ice, her eyes taking in every aspect of Nick's appearance. “I'd ask how you're doing, but the answer is self- evident.”

  It would have been pointless to deny he felt as bad as he looked. His eyes were as bloodshot as if a night's sleep were completely foreign to him.

  “I'd say Katie is about as bad off as you are,” Maggie said. “It's hard to tell with her though. She's had too much practice covering up what she feels.”

  The mere thought that Katie was suffering tore at his gut. It brought on another surge of anger as well. “Yeah, so we're both miserable and all for no reason.”

  “Katie believes there's a reason.”

  “Well, I've got a news flash for her: She's wrong. The infallible Katie Quaid is wrong, and she's too damn stubborn to see it.”

  “Is she wrong, Nick?” Maggie asked gently. “You asked her to compromise. What if she can't? Do you love her enough to accept that?”

  He'd asked himself the same hard question every long, lonely night since their breakup. His answer was always the same: He wanted children, but he wanted Katie more. “Yes,” he answered softly.

  Taking a last sip of her drink, Maggie slid off the stool and took up her fan again. She fanned herself lazily, giving Nick a long, considering look with her head tipped and her lips pursed. “Then you'd just better convince her, Yankee.”

  “How?” he asked as if her order were as ludicrous as telling him to try to ride to Venus on the back of a donkey.

  Maggie tapped her fan against his shoulder on her way to the door. “By being just as damn stubborn as she is. Katie loves you, Nick. Don't give up on her. All the things she's wanted most in life have slipped out of her reach. Make her believe that won't happen with you.”

  “I'm not going.”

  “You're going if I have to toss you over my shoulder and carry you.”

  “My brother, the caveman,” Katie said with a sharp edge of sarcasm in her voice. “This is the twentieth century, Rylan. You can't force a woman to go to the opening of a restaurant.”

  His smoky eyes narrowed and glittered. His threat was silky- soft, which mad
e it all the more dangerous. “Watch me.”

  Katie's gaze roamed restlessly around her room as she reined in the urge to scream in frustration. She crossed her arms to keep from pounding her fists against her brother's massive chest.

  “Why are you so set on forcing me into going?” she asked. “Are you planning to get some sadistic kick out of watching Nick and me suffer through the evening? Don't you think he has enough to worry about without having to see me there?”

  Without a word Ry went to Katie's dresser and lifted her invitation to Nick's special pre- grand-opening dinner.

  “So he invited me,” she said defensively. “That doesn't mean he expects me to show up. In fact, I'm sure he doesn't.”

  He dropped the invitation back to its place next to a bottle of French perfume and an old framed photograph of their father. He dipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans and drawled, “Yeah, I guess he probably doesn't. You've been dodging him for nearly two weeks. Why should he expect you to come out of hiding tonight?”

  Katie glared at her brother. “I haven't been hiding.”

  He snorted derisively and uttered a raw two-syllable opinion.

  “I've been avoiding him,” Katie continued, undaunted by Ry's rough language, “because I think it's best. The sooner he realizes I'm not going to change my mind, the sooner he can get on with his life.”

  “How noble,” he said with a sneer. “And convenient too.”

  “I don't need your sarcasm, Rylan.”

  “Well, you sure as hell need something,” he said angrily. “You're throwing away happiness with both hands. What the hell's the matter with you, Kathryn?”

  She gave him a long, level look. “Do you want the entire list?”

  “Don't play the martyr with me, Katie. Self-pity doesn't become you.”

  It stung, but she imagined she deserved the remark at least as much as she deserved to feel the way she was feeling. “I think I have a right to feel a little sorry for myself. I had to let the man I love go—”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “I did what was best for Nick.”

  “Oh, really? Care to explain to me then why the guy is so miserable it makes me hurt just to look at him? I've seen things lying dead along the road that look better than he does.”

  She didn't enjoy hearing that Nick was in pain, that he was suffering because of her. Nevertheless, she scarcely met anyone in town these days who didn't tell her so. While only Maggie and Ry knew all the details, all of Briarwood knew of the breakup; and rumors were running rampant. The general consensus was that Katie had discovered the truth about Nick's background as a spy/thief/ mercenary, and she had broken up with him because of it. Sympathy, however, was running in Nick's direction, because he had become very popular around town.

  Turning away from her brother, Katie stared at the floor, trying to ignore the pang of doubt. She didn't like to see Nick suffer either, but she had let him go to save him from even bigger hurt, she told herself yet again.

  “He'll get over it,” she said in a low, hoarse voice. “In the long run he'll see I did him a favor.”

  “No, Katie,” Ry insisted. “I'll tell you what he sees. He sees the same thing I do. He sees you taking a walk out of his life for no reason other than you're afraid.”

  Why couldn't anyone understand? She wasn't the villain. She was only trying to do what was right. She was only trying to give Nick a chance to have everything he deserved. A wave of emotional exhaustion swept over her, carrying her closer to tears than she wanted to be.

  “Tell me this,” Ry said. “If things were different, would you marry him?”

  “He hasn't asked me to marry him.”

  “Would you?” he asked impatiently.

  Katie sighed and shook her head. “Yes. But things aren't different. I can't give him what he needs, Ry. You tell me why he should settle for less.”

  “Because he loves you,” he said simply.

  And she loved Nick. She loved him so much she ached with it. She hadn't imagined anything could hurt the way missing him did. “I couldn't live with forcing him to accept less than he deserves. I can accept my own limitations, but—”

  Ry expressed his disbelief with a barnyard curse. “If you had accepted your limitations, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”

  Katie stepped back from him, the word betrayal written all over her face. Ry knew how hard she had fought her way back from her accident. How could he say such a hurtful thing to her? “You, of all people, should know—”

  “I do know, honey,” he interrupted, his harsh scowl softening along with the tone of his voice. “I know I practically had to keep you prisoner at the farm after your accident, or you would have run away from that loss too. Anyone who'd care to look can see you've built up a nice, safe little world where you don't have to face the things you think you can never have.”

  The words stung despite their delivery. Anger welled up inside her, making her wish she were big enough and strong enough to throw him out of her house. Unable to lash out physically, she did the next worst thing. “How dare you preach to me about hiding? How many years have you spent hiding out on the farm like some kind of hermit?”

  Ry took it on the chin, but Katie caught the brief flicker of hurt in his eyes, and instantly was sorry. Ry had endured more than his share of loss and disappointment. Pressing her fingertips to her temples she hung her head and sighed. “I'm sorry.”

  Ry brushed her hair back from her face with his big, callous hands and pulled his sister into his arms.

  “No. You're right,” he murmured. “I've made mistakes. I just don't want to see you make this one, princess. Nick loves you. You love him. You're not doing him or yourself any favor by breaking it off. Don't be afraid to try for happiness with him just because you've had other things you wanted snatched away from you, Katie.”

  He gave her a hug that barely hinted at his strength but still managed to force the breath out of her lungs. “I'll pick you up at seven. You'd damn well better be dressed, or I'll take you there in your underwear.”

  Katie managed an absent smile at his final threat, but she didn't turn to watch him leave her room. When she heard the front door close, she sank down on her bed and stared across the room at her reflection in the cheval glass. The woman who stared back at her was pale, with dark smudges under her eyes and a wide mouth that turned down too easily. The last two weeks had been worse than anything she'd had to endure in five years. The strain was showing physically and emotionally.

  For four days after the picnic she'd heard nothing from Nick. A part of her had been glad, had hoped he'd simply accepted her decision. A part of her had mourned both his silence and the loss of him. On the fifth day he had launched his campaign.

  Gifts had begun arriving—two and three a day. Katie had sent each back to him unopened. Not that she had needed to open them to know what was in each prettily wrapped box. Everyone in town knew what Nick was up to. He even had been asking people for gift suggestions. His battle to get her back had become the hottest topic in Briarwood, far out doing speculation as to who and what Nick Leone was or had been.

  He had begun phoning her. She had refused to take his calls at the store and had unplugged her phone at home. Several times he had come into Primarily Paper to try to talk to her. She had forced herself to be coldly polite, even though it tore her up inside to treat Nick that way.

  One evening he'd come to her house and tried to talk to her through the doors and windows, because she wouldn't let him in. Peter Ramsey had shown up and told him he had to leave or get hauled in for disturbing the peace.

  She hadn't heard from Nick since then—two nights ago. She couldn't help but wonder if he thought she'd called Peter herself. It probably was just as well he did think so. The sooner he gave up on her the better off he'd be.

  It would have been best for her to stay away from Nick's special dinner, but she would go. Katie knew she didn't have the corner on the stubborn marke
t in the Quaid family. If Rylan believed she should be at the dinner, he would indeed carry her to it kicking and screaming.

  Reluctantly she pushed herself off the bed and went to her closet to pick out a dress. She deliberately tried to empty her mind of Ry's argument, but the memory proved as stubborn as the man himself.

  Ry thought she had ended the relationship because of her own fears. That wasn't true… was it? No. A sliver of uncertainty wedged itself into her mind. She tried to ignore it. If Ry was right, then she'd been fooling herself for a very long time. He was saying she was the one thing she had always fought not to be—a coward. She couldn't believe him. She had made her decision for Nick's sake… hadn't she? Yes.

  Then why was it she suddenly felt as if a final layer had been peeled back from her soul and the real truth revealed?

  Nick tried once again to tie a decent knot in his necktie. He stared at his reflection in the little mirror on the wall in his office and wondered if it was possible for fingers to develop dyslexia.

  “Turn around and let me do that,” his waitress, Mavis Davies, ordered. “I've tied more neckties than you'll ever see. Of course, you might be able to see the one you're wearing a little better if you'd wear your glasses.” Knotting the dark green tie with sure hands, she clucked and muttered half under her breath, “You must have given your poor mama fits.”

  “I was a model child,” he said, trying to lighten his own mood. “I was an altar boy at St. Vincent's.”

  “Then you'd better have St. Vincent pray for you, because I've never seen anyone so nervous.”

  Nervous didn't begin to cover it, Nick thought as he took one last look in the mirror. In all his years of dancing he'd never had a case of stage fright that even came close to what he was feeling now.

  Mavis gave him a motherly look from the doorway of the office. “Everything is going to go fine. The food smells wonderful, and your staff is top-notch. What is there to worry about?”

  What was there to worry about? Whether or not Katie would show up. If she did show up, how would she react to the little surprises he had planned for her? He was going way out on a limb, considering she hadn't accepted any of the gifts he'd sent her, hadn't accepted any of his phone calls. He still wasn't so sure she hadn't called the cops on him the night he'd gone to see her at her house.