Uncertain Past

by Roz Denny Fox

  “Hey, you had me worried there for a minute. I was afraid you’d forgotten. And I didn’t have so much as a phone number for you.”

  “I gave your housekeeper my cell number, but the phone company can’t install a jack in my bedroom until next week. They don’t want to connect the existing line before then. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be a waiting list here.” She shrugged and eased past him, walking toward the row of dartboards. “I’ll bet you came early to practice, so you could get the drop on me,” she teased, glancing at him over a shoulder that was bare except for the narrow strap of her tank top.

  His grin vanished momentarily, then widened. “So the pupil thinks she’s ready to challenge the teacher, eh? Maybe you’d better take a closer look at the board, sugar babe.” He blew on his fingers and brushed them over the left side of his chest. “This old man put two darts smack-dab in the bull’s-eye.” He wagged his bottle at Emmy, admiring the view of her backside as she marched up to check the placement of his darts. A row of male heads turned and the bar area grew quiet. When Emmy bent to inspect the bristles on the board, the move widened the strip of exposed flesh where her top again pulled away from her jeans.

  She’d gone to examine the board because Riley’s unexpected use of that private nickname had caused her stomach to tighten in a way she hadn’t counted on. Maybe he used the endearment indiscriminately now, calling all women “sugar babe” in that gravelly, sexy tone of voice. If he did, she’d kill him.

  Well, she’d pulverize him at darts, anyway.

  Riley couldn’t see her face to know what she was thinking as she studied the board so intently. But he noticed the stir her compact little backside created among his pals at the bar. Striding behind their stools, Riley smacked the heel of his palm against each man’s head as he passed. “Mind your eyeballs,” he growled. “The lady’s with me tonight.”

  “Lucky dog,” murmured a young cowboy in town from a nearby ranch.

  “We can only hope,” his neighbor said, “that she’ll wise up when Gray here trounces her at darts. Think I’ll stick around. Some enterprising dude should be ready and waiting to console her.”

  Riley ignored their banter. He’d bailed most of them out of tax jams at one time or another. The guys talked big, but they also respected him—not least because he’d won so much money from them playing darts. They were poking fun, and Riley knew it.

  “You want a cola? Or do you still drink sarsaparilla?” he asked Emmy when she’d finished her inspection of the board and paced off the throwing distance of seven feet six inches. She’d ended up beside him again and knelt to study the faint toe line someone had drawn on the traffic-worn floor.

  “I thought I told you I’d grown up. I prefer a dark ale. Whatever Jake has on draft.” Emmy flipped up the locks on her dart case. When he didn’t immediately acknowledge her request, she glanced up.

  Riley’s eyes were trained on the left side of her tank top. Emmy realized a strap had slipped, allowing the material to sag. She’d lived with the quarter-size tattoo of a rainbow on her left breast for so many years she hardly noticed it anymore. But from the way Riley’s eyes bugged, she could only surmise the women on his dating roster didn’t come with any type of brand.

  Discreetly tugging her shirt back into place, Emmy decided to let him make the first comment if he felt so inclined.

  “Is that, uh, a transfer pattern? The kind that peels off?”

  Her lips twitched in the briefest smile. “What’s with you people? Gwyn asked if it was real, too. It hasn’t peeled off in, oh, thirteen years. Look, Riley,” she said, rising to her feet. “I once traveled with a circus. A roustabout put the tattooed lady up to daring me. They figured I was too chicken. Anyway, we were in a dinky town in Montana. No tattoo parlors there. The subject came up again in Seattle. Yes, I was scared. But by then I was determined to show them. So I went out and got this . . .”

  A hint of some sentiment Emmy couldn’t quite read flashed in Riley’s eyes.

  She heaved a sigh. “If you’re going to lecture me, for heaven’s sake do it, and then order my ale. I’m thirsty.”

  Riley ran an index finger up and down her narrow tank strap. “Where’s your pot of gold?”

  “What?” His question wasn’t in the least what Emmy expected.

  “Isn’t there supposed to be a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow?” Riley barely managed to keep a straight face. Mostly because he yearned to trace the colorful arc that again peeked over the edge of Emmy’s tank top. He couldn’t remember when, if ever, anything had enticed him so powerfully.

  She threw back her head and laughed, a rich sound that rolled the length of her throat. “I’m happy to see you still possess a sense of humor.” Pirouetting out of his reach, she pretended to bat her eyes. “Give the man a kewpie doll for asking the sixty-four-dollar question. Is there a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow? That, my friend,” she said with a flirtatious wink, “is for me to know and you to find out.”

  Riley pondered her answer a moment too long. He actually looked disconcerted as he turned to order Emmy’s drink from the hovering bartender.

  She stared at the rigid set of Riley’s broad shoulders. Her laughter died away, replaced by a sense of yearning for years lost. For things that might have been had circumstances not torn them apart. Of course, if she’d stayed in Uncertain, she would never have become the type of woman who’d hitchhike to Florida, where she knocked around doing odd jobs until she fell in with a circus wintering in the sun. She’d likely have married Riley right out of high school, and maybe she wouldn’t have been woman enough back then to hold his interest.

  She accepted the beer he handed her with a simple “Thanks.” After taking a sip, she set the mug on the table beside his suit coat. Without further talk, she removed a supply of darts from her case.

  Riley, whose thoughts still lingered on whether or not her “pot of gold” remark had been some sort of challenge, whistled long and low, his mind jerked suddenly back to the game. “If you’ve graduated to tossing Black Widows, I may revise my earlier comment about the pupil not overtaking the teacher.” He grabbed one of the slender shafts from Emmy’s hand and ran a thumb over the trademark spider on a carefully weighted barrel. “Heck, this thing feels too light-weight to fly true. My nickel-silver’s are heavy enough to shave the tail off these squirty things.”

  Emmy snatched back her dart. “How about if we say loser buys dinner?”

  Riley brushed aside a perpetually stubborn lock of hair. “You’re on. Hey, Paul,” he called to the man wearing the backward baseball cap. “The lady has a hankering to part with some of her money. You gonna be around long enough to keep score for us?”

  The man spun on his bar stool, eyeing Emmy with growing respect. “Aw, Riley, give the little gal a break. At least, tell her you haven’t been whipped in over a year.”

  “Two,” said Riley, hefting his first dart. “But who’s counting?”

  Emmy only smiled benignly. “Shall we play 301?” It was the most common game. Each player started with 301 points. A scorekeeper subtracted each player’s thrown score from the opening figure of 301. The score doubled or tripled depending on where a dart landed on the ring. The first player to reach zero won. Unless his or her last throw broke zero, which meant backtracking to the previous score and trying again. Unless the opponent won on the next toss, something Riley apparently did with regularity.

  “I’ll be gentleman enough to let you take a few warm-up tosses,” Riley said magnanimously.

  “Uh-uh,” Emmy responded. “I’ll run ‘em cold. By the way, where are you taking me to dinner?”

  He smirked for the benefit of his line of friends at the bar, who’d all turned in their seats, gearing up for the promised show. “I’d intended to let you off easy for old times’ sake and opt for burgers here. But you’re entirely too cock
y, Ms. Monday. How does a thick juicy steak at Bayou Jetty sound? They’ve gone highbrow since you left town. Be forewarned, it’ll cost you some bucks.”

  “Are you going to talk all night, or shall we throw a round to see who starts?”

  “Nah. Let’s just do it. And by all means, ladies first.” Riley stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture toward the toe line.

  Emily blocked out the rumble of excited male voices at the bar and the clink of beer glasses. She brought her first dart straight back to shoulder level and fired it at the board. The second two followed in rapid succession.

  Paul resettled his cap and tugged at one ear as he sent Riley an uneasy glance. “I need a minute to go check. From this angle it looks like she scored big.”

  Riley, who’d assumed a casual stance, legs crossed at the ankles and his hands loosely tucked into his pants pockets, threw back his head and groaned. “I think we both know what you’ll find. The lady’s a shark, and I walked into this deal with my eyes wide open. At least I can brag that I taught her the game—when she was knee-high to a grasshopper and still wearing braces and pigtails.”

  “I never wore braces,” Emmy said cheekily, inviting him to step up to the mark with the same exaggerated gesture he’d given her. “Now let’s see you shave the tail off one of my Black Widows.” She batted her naturally long eyelashes, trying hard not to copy his smirk.

  Paul removed her darts and handed them back to her with a look of reverence.

  The men at the bar guffawed and a few ribbed Riley unmercifully. But when he matched her score, laying his darts so close together the feathers actually shivered, the bystanders fell silent. The bartender might even have covered a few bets both for and against their favorite son.

  The play went back and forth, with neither player giving ground. Riley threw the first dart that went wide. It counted as a double.

  Tension wound tight in Emmy, the way it always did when she entered any competition. Especially competition with men. She’d learned long ago that males liked to win at any cost. She’d once had a foster brother who got her soundly spanked if she beat him at anything. She’d learned for a while to hold back, although holding back wasn’t her nature.

  And this was Riley. He’d taught her that winning was important, but not as important as loving the sport, win, lose or draw. In fact, Emmy thought she could feel his warm breath on her ear as he extolled her to relax and “don’t be so serious.” It was her imagination, of course. Riley wasn’t sixteen anymore. Emmy sincerely doubted any man went into the practice of law if he didn’t get a thrill out of winning.

  The thought was enough to make her falter. Two darts in succession missed the target. A third might be on a line, but the others were definitely out. Way out.

  “Are you okay?” Riley stepped in close to Emmy. He massaged the back of her neck as Paul walked to the board to make his unbiased assessment. “You don’t have anything to prove to me, sugar babe,” he said soothingly. “It’s just a game.”

  Emmy gazed up, into his bottomless black eyes. She’d always felt she could lose herself in Riley’s eyes. Nineteen years melted away. She was thirteen again, and just looking at his face made her ache inside. But now Emmy understood the source of that ache. She sucked in a long, shaky breath. “You’re right. It’s nothing but a game. Stack that against the two reasons I’m really here—well, not here, but in Uncertain—and the outcome of this match is trivial. Thanks, Riley,” she said seriously, meaning every word, “for helping me clarify what’s important and what isn’t. It’s your turn,” she murmured, nudging him toward the line with a genuine smile.

  Baffled by her remarks but turned inside out by her smile, Riley tripped over his feet getting to the line to collect his darts. Nerves caused his miscalculation—really a stupid error. Riley’s three tries all dropped too early. He heard the collective groan go up from the crowd that had gathered.

  Emmy traded places with him. She faced a choice here. Either do her darnedest to win the match, or purposely throw it to give Riley another chance. She did something a dart player should never do at this stage: she let her eyes meet her opponent’s. Or maybe it was a good thing she broke the unwritten rule. Riley smiled encouragingly, no hint of jealousy in evidence. He went so far as to give her a thumbs-up. The tight coil in Emmy’s stomach unfurled. Her darts landed precisely where she wanted them.

  “She did it,” Paul shouted, waving the score card. “Zero. She hit zero cleanly on a minimum number of throws.”

  A whoop went up from the people bunched behind the players, while a stunned silence seemed to grip the men seated at the bar.

  Riley ignored everyone. He grabbed Emmy by the waist and swung her in a circle just as he’d done when she’d hit her very first bull’s-eye. Caught up in the moment, she laughed down into his face. Then she clasped his head between her hands and planted a huge kiss squarely on his lips.

  The crowd really cheered then. Their scorekeeper, Paul, ordered a round for everyone. “Riley’s buying.” He had to shout to be heard.

  Riley lost his grip on Emmy. She felt herself slide down his body and quickly braced herself to land on the floor. He’d obviously been more affected by Paul’s too generous offer than moved by her kiss.

  In truth, if Riley hadn’t released Emmy when he did, he’d have embarrassed himself in front of guys who wouldn’t let him forget it. He hadn’t been struck by such unbridled passion since the day he met Lani Sky. That day he’d already been high from passing his bar exam. He’d driven to Oklahoma to tell his mom the good news. Lani happened to be at the house with his sister, Josey.

  He’d done little over the previous five years at U.T. in Tyler except study, study and study more, and after that long experience of social and romantic deprivation, he’d been snared by what he saw as Lani’s quiet charm. Oddly enough, it was the same day he’d run into Jed Louis, and Jed had bluntly told Riley that he had to accept the fact that Emmy Monday was never coming back to Uncertain.

  Yet, here she was, in his arms—kissing him. So different in some ways from the Emmy he remembered, and in other ways the same. Riley was oh-so-tempted to spirit her out of Jake’s and see if she lived up to that sample kiss.

  His cell phone rang. He turned away to answer. Alanna’s sweet voice washed over him, instantly cooling his weak-kneed desire for Emmy. The call reminded him that he had responsibilities beyond assuaging lust run amuck. He had a daughter. The child Lani had never wanted.

  “Why are you so late tonight?” Alanna asked.

  “Remember, Daddy told you this morning Mrs. Yates is fixing you dinner?”

  “But I don’t like what she makes.”

  “I know you’d rather I was there to cook.” Riley scraped the hair out of his eyes. “I can’t eat with you. I’m, uh, taking, an . . .um, client to dinner. I’ll get home in time to tuck you into bed and kiss you good-night. I promise.”

  “Okay,” she said, plainly trying not to cry.

  Emmy went about collecting her darts from the board. She felt Riley’s angst as she quietly closed her dart case. She visualized Alanna holding the phone, imagined tears streaking her face. Even though it annoyed Emmy immensely to hear Riley describe her as a client, she’d suffered Alanna’s type of disappointment so many times as a kid. She couldn’t bear being the cause of the girl’s unhappiness.

  Emmy curled a hand over Riley’s arm. “Let’s skip going to Bayou Jetty. In fact, I bought two pounds of fresh shrimp this morning,” she said spontaneously. “I planned to fry them up in that beer batter you used to like. Why don’t you and Alanna come to my place for dinner? Suit yourself, of course. But I need to get home to feed my kitten, anyway.”

  Riley looked so relieved and yet torn, Emmy wished she hadn’t suggested dinner. She should’ve just let him off the hook and asked for a rain check, instead.

  Pressing a hand over one
ear to filter out the noise from the bar, he relayed Emmy’s invitation to Alanna.

  The smile and nod that followed was response enough for Emmy. She hefted her dart case, preparing to leave. “I’ll go peel the shrimp.”

  “Wait.” Riley closed his phone and fumbled it back into his pocket. “Let me settle up the bar bill Paul so kindly arranged for me. It’ll take a minute to eat the requisite crow. Then I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “Pickup. I drive a pickup. And I’m perfectly capable of getting there on my own.”

  “I know you are.” He sounded moderately exasperated. “I’m angling for two seconds alone with you, okay? We won’t get a word in edgewise over dinner. Or haven’t you noticed my kid’s a motor mouth?”

  Emmy set her empty mug on the bar. “Reminds me of me. You and Jed accused me of being the world’s worst chatterbox.” She waved off the denial she saw forming. “Go on, Riley. Clear your debts. If you trust me to touch your darts, I’ll load your case.”

  “I trusted you to touch them when I taught you to play, didn’t I?”

  Emmy nodded, her memory returning to the innocent high spirits—and equally innocent attraction.

  After Riley had settled his debts, it still took them ten minutes to make their way to the front door. Old-timers surged forward to congratulate Emmy on her game. A few even remembered her, which came as a shock. Especially when they offered condolences on Frannie’s death.

  Once she and Riley were finally outside in the fresh air, he placed a proprietary hand on the small of her back as they crossed to the parking lot.

  “During the game, Emmy, you said you’d come back to Uncertain for two reasons. Frannie’s one. What’s the other, might I ask?” At some long-buried level, Riley hoped Emmy would say it was him. That kiss told him she also felt the unfinished business between them. He should’ve been prepared for the reason she gave, but he wasn’t.