Forever…Again

by Maureen Child

  Damn it.

  “That was well done.”

  The deep voice came from the booth directly behind her, and Lily stilled completely. Only one man she knew had a voice as deep and rumbling as that. And wouldn’t you know he’d be sitting right behind her.

  Shifting on the seat, she glanced over her shoulder and met Ron Bingham’s steady gaze. Really, his eyes were more blue than green, but most of the time they were just the shade of the ocean.

  Which had nothing to do with anything.

  “I suppose you heard everything.”

  “You’re not exactly a quiet woman, Ms. Cunningham.”

  She blew out an exasperated breath. “Do you have to do that?” she demanded.

  “Do what?”

  “Call me Ms. Cunningham.”

  One dark eyebrow lifted. “Your name, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I’ve been here several months, now. Don’t you think you could break down and call me Lily?”

  He leaned one arm on the seatback and stared at her. “Suppose I could.”

  “That’s something, then.” Deciding to ignore him and the fact that no matter where she went he seemed to pop up like the proverbial bad penny, she turned around again.

  “Alone, huh?”

  His voice came from right behind her head, and Lily was half ready to swear she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. Why that should give her goose bumps was something she wasn’t about to explore.

  “There’s that keen detecting skill again,” she quipped and glanced at the counter where Vickie was pouring a strawberry milkshake into a tall, frosted glass.

  “I’m alone, too.”

  “I noticed.” Lily still didn’t look at him. For pity’s sake. Couldn’t a person get a milkshake in this town without a fuss?

  “Want company?”

  Vickie was on her way over and Lily took just a moment to turn around. She almost bumped her nose on his. He’d leaned in so close, he was practically draped over her shoulders. “Why do you want to sit with me?” she asked, and didn’t even care if that question came out a little more bluntly than she’d planned.

  “You’re alone, I’m alone.” He shrugged.

  “Joe Biscone’s alone, too.” She pointed to where a huge man in a plaid shirt and faded green fishing vest sat at the end of the counter.

  Ron winced. “Lily,” he said, “sometimes there’s a reason people are alone.”

  Her lips twitched. She didn’t want to smile, but damn it, he made it tough. He was so stiff, so serious, but the look on his face when she suggested he go sit by the man who always smelled like the bass he continually caught off the dock behind his house had been priceless.

  “Here you go, Ms. Cunningham.” Vickie slid the pale-pink strawberry shake onto the table and then scuttled out of range as if afraid Lily was gearing up for round two.

  Now it was Lily’s turn to wince. “Did you see that?” she asked, and didn’t wait for an answer. “That girl’s going to go home tonight and tell Billy and her mother and her mother’s hairdresser and the hairdresser’s cousin’s sister’s aunt’s best friend that mean old Ms. Cunningham yelled at her.”

  “And that’s bad?” Ron asked.

  “Of course it is.” Lily turned back around and dipped her long-handled spoon into the whipped cream on top of the shake. Taking a bite, she licked her lips and then said, “Don’t you think Mari’s got enough problems lately without me adding to them?”

  Ron eased out of his booth. Then, grabbing his hamburger and cup of coffee, he moved and sat down on the bench seat across from Lily. He watched her for a long minute and simply remembered everything she’d said.

  When Lily first slid into the booth behind him, he’d damn near groaned. All he’d wanted when he came to the Junction was a little peace and quiet. But the moment he heard that bracelet of Lily’s jangling and crashing like the cymbals in a brass band, he’d known his hope was a lost cause.

  Then Vickie had started in with her whispering and gossiping, and it had been all he could do to keep from turning around and chewing the girl out. But he hadn’t gotten the chance. Before he could so much as open his mouth, Lily Cunningham had run to his daughter’s defense. He’d smiled as her words had rushed out, fast and furious—and yet, even while he enjoyed it, he’d known that she was doing nothing more than sticking her finger in the dike.

  Vickie wasn’t alone in her love of gossip.

  And thanks to Sheriff Bryce Collins and his insistence on treating Mari as though she were a common criminal, the whole damn town could talk of nothing else. Shamed Ron to think how much he’d always liked Bryce. How much he’d hoped at one time that Bryce and Mari would settle down together.

  Just as well that hadn’t happened, he told himself now. Bryce had shown his true colors. If he couldn’t believe in Mari, then he damn sure hadn’t loved her.

  “Do sit down,” Lily said, one corner of her mouth tilting into a smile that seemed to come back to haunt Ron far too often lately.

  Why she was getting to him was a mystery. His wife Violet, God rest her, had been dead ten years—and in all that time he’d never once given another woman a single thought. Damn it, he’d loved Violet. She’d been everything to him.

  Just keep that in mind and everything will be fine, he told himself and grabbed for his coffee. Taking a quick gulp, he nearly shrieked as the red-hot liquid ate a path down his throat. But the pain at least got his mind off Lily’s smile.

  “About what you said.”

  “I know,” Lily interrupted, holding up one hand. “I shouldn’t have shot my mouth off—”

  “Thanks.”

  Her mouth snapped shut. Her big brown eyes blinked at him in surprise. “What?”

  He set his coffee down with a clatter. “You think it’s easy?” His voice whispered across the table as he leaned toward her. “Walking through town, watching people watch Mari. Talking about her, whispering? Hell, these people I’ve known my whole life. And all of a sudden, it’s like they’re strangers.”

  Lily reached out, grabbed his hand and gave it a quick squeeze. The warmth of her touch slashed through him with all the subtlety of a lightning bolt. He pulled his hand back.

  “They’re just people,” Lily said, shaking her head as she took another bite of whipped-cream-topped milkshake. “And people, in general, love to talk about someone else’s troubles.”

  “True.” He flopped back against the seat and stretched his legs out, bumping into Lily’s neatly crossed ankles and then shifting guiltily away. “But this is Binghamton. I thought—”

  “That because the town was named for you, your family would be gossip free?”

  “Oh, hell—’scuse me—no.” He shook his head and smiled at the thought. “If anything, growing up a Bingham around here was like growing up in a fish tank. Everybody wanted to be the one to catch you skipping school or toilet papering the principal’s house.”

  “So you already know what this is,” Lily said, picking up her straw and jamming it into the frothy pink ice cream.

  “Sure. Human nature. The bigger they are, the more enjoyable the fall.”

  “Exactly. But why,” Lily wondered aloud as she lifted the straw out and watched ice cream slide down and then drip into the glass, “does it seem to be that someone is actually going out of their way to make Mari look guilty?”

  “You see it, too, do you?” Eager to hear someone else echo his own thoughts, Ron sat up straight again and automatically reached for his coffee.

  “Of course. I’m not blind. How can you drink coffee when its so blistering hot outside?”

  “I’m not outside.”

  “Have some shake.”

  “No.”

  “Try it.”

  He scowled at her. “I stopped drinking milkshakes when I was eighteen.”

  “Wow.” Lily’s eyes widened dramatically. “I didn’t know you could outgrow milkshakes. Gee, what else? Sunshine? Rainbows?” She lowered her gaze to his plate.
“I see that cheeseburgers are ageless.”

  “Oh for—”

  “You should probably break it to me gently,” Lily went on, scooping up another bite of ice cream, then licking her lips with a slow, thorough motion.

  Ron’s stomach tightened, but damned if he could look away. “Break what to you?”

  “What else is off-limits.” She waved her spoon in the air like a maestro with a baton. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to tempt you with anything else ‘unseemly.’ Lemonade, for instance, would that be all right?”

  This is what he got for forgetting that Lily was crazy. “You are the most annoying woman….”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Shake?”

  “Give it here.”

  She slid it across the table with a victorious grin, and he avoided meeting her eyes as he dipped his spoon into the frosty glass and pulled up a sizable portion of pink ice cream. The minute he put it in his mouth, flavor exploded. Icy cold chills raced along his spine and shot back up to his brain. The taste, the smell, the feel of the ice cream melting on his tongue, unlocked memories he hadn’t dusted off in years. Summer nights. Picnics.

  Sweet times with Violet.

  And just the thought of his late wife’s name was enough to remind him that he shouldn’t be sitting in the diner sharing a milkshake with Lily Cunningham. This wasn’t high school. It wasn’t a date.

  He’d had his share of love, and now that part of his life was over.

  Pushing the milkshake back across the table to her, he said, “Thanks. Better than I remembered.”

  It was all better than he remembered. That sizzle of attraction, the hum of electricity in the air. And because he was enjoying himself, Ron felt guilty as hell.

  Chapter Three

  “I don’t understand,” Ron said a moment later when the awkward silence over the milkshake had passed. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all, but this had been bothering him for months. Every time he saw her, he wondered why she’d really come. And just how long she planned to stay.

  “What?”

  “What you’re doing here.”

  “Eating dinner?”

  “Clever. I meant here in Binghamton.”

  “Well that’s blunt.”

  “Yep.”

  “You do that to annoy me, don’t you?” Lily asked, tilting her head to one side as she studied him. “The one-word answers, I mean.”

  “Yep.” Hell, why should he be the only one irritated and annoyed? And something else, his mind whispered, but he paid no attention. If he noticed that her hair shone blond in the sunlight drifting through the plate-glass window, it was simply an observation. Right?

  “That’s what I thought.” She paused, glanced up as the waitress delivered her hamburger and said, “Thank you, Vickie, it looks great.”

  “Enjoy, Ms. Cunningham.”

  Lily sighed. “She’s still worried that I’ll yell at her some more. Did you see how she walked backward from the table?”

  He’d noticed. And he had a feeling a lot of people walked a wide path around Lily. Any woman who could go from calm and cool to red hot and blistering in a matter of seconds was one to keep an eye on. “Could be she was treating you like a queen.”

  Lily laughed outright. “More likely she was afraid I’d jump at her.” She shook her head and on a disgusted sigh, added, “You’d think I’d be able to control my temper better after all these years.”

  “Everyone’s got a temper.”

  “Not everyone uses it.”

  True. Most folks played the game of being nice while biting their tongue to keep the angry words inside. For himself, he much preferred a good flash of temper. Truth usually spilled out then, and he’d rather know exactly where he stood with a person than to have to try to guess.

  He nodded at her as he watched her slather ketchup on her hamburger bun and then drizzle a river of it across still-steaming French fries. She’d never struck him as the ketchup type, Ron thought. There was more “caviar and champagne” about her than “beer and pretzels.”

  “I’m better than I used to be though,” she said, piling tomato, onion, pickles and lettuce onto the open-faced burger before slapping the other half of the bun down on top of it all.

  “Yeah?” Fascinated now, he watched as she tipped the hamburger over, took off the bottom half of the bun and used her knife to spread potato salad on the toasted surface.

  “Oh yes.” Unaware of his scrutiny, she kept talking while she smoothed on another layer of potato salad. “When I was younger, I’d pick up anything within reach and throw it at the closest victim when I was in the middle of a temper. I can tell you, my brothers learned to duck at an early age.”

  “How many?”

  “How many what?” She put the other tomato on top of the potato salad and then slapped the bun back into place at the bottom of the burger.

  He shook his head. The burger was so high now, he didn’t know how she’d ever be able to get a bite. “Brothers.”

  “Three.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you always do that?”

  “What?” She held the big burger in both hands, took a huge bite, then set the burger down and, laughing, picked up her napkin and held it in front of her face while she struggled to chew.

  “Pile all that stuff on your hamburger. You probably can’t even taste the meat anymore.”

  She chewed, held up one hand and when she’d swallowed, she said, “Of course you can. And why bother having the fixings for a burger if you don’t use them? It’s terrific. You should try it.”

  “Potato salad on a hamburger?” Ron winced. “No thanks.”

  “You’ll eat it with a hamburger though?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I eat ’em separately.”

  “Here’s a secret, Ron,” she said, grinning now at his perplexed expression. “All the food you eat ends up together, anyway. There are no separate compartments in your stomach—you know, one for tomatoes, one for meat, one for potato salad.”

  “You’re a real comedian, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t hear you laughing.”

  “I’m laughing on the inside.”

  “And crying on the outside?” she asked. “Not very attractive.”

  “Do you see tears?” He held up both hands as if he were surrendering to a man with a gun. “Never mind. Don’t bother. Don’t say anything more. Your mind’s on one of the weird tracks again, isn’t it?”

  She grinned. “Tom, Dan and Howard.”

  “Huh?”

  “My brothers,” she said, taking another, smaller bite. “You asked about them before.”

  Hell, Ron could hardly remember what they’d been talking about. How could anyone keep up with the way this woman’s mind worked? “You just jump onto whatever conversational track feels right at the time, don’t you?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Right. Where are they now?”

  She shrugged, but he thought he caught a glimpse of something less casual sparkling in her eyes. “In Boston.”

  “That where you’re from?”

  “Nope.” She picked up two French fries and swirled them through a pool of ketchup before popping them into her mouth. “I’m from Binghamton.”

  He smiled. Damn it, he didn’t want to like her, but it was hard not to. “Before here, then.”

  “Originally Boston, then Los Angeles, then New York, then…here.”

  This is exactly what bothered him, Ron thought. She’d been everywhere, lived everywhere. Why in the hell would she come to a spot-in-the-road town like Binghamton? And why would she want to stay? She’d grown up in a world of privilege and now he was supposed to believe that she was going to be happy slurping down milkshakes and building burgers at South Junction?

  No way.

  She wouldn’t last.

  And then what would Mari do?

  All of his daughter’s friends were backing away from her. She’d lost a lot o
f her big financial backers for the research lab already. And with talk spreading, chances were good she’d be losing more. His own mother had been on the phone only that morning, arguing with a banker from Lexington. But it seemed gossip traveled pretty damn well.

  The word was out.

  Something was going on at the clinic and Mari Bingham wasn’t to be trusted.

  A fresh wave of anger crested inside him, and Ron was half surprised the top of his head didn’t just blow off. Hearing his daughter talked about and whispered over as if she were a criminal was enough to make his blood boil. But there was only so much a father could do.

  Mari’s world was crumbling around her, and for some reason she was convinced that Lily Cunningham was going to help her turn the tide. Well, Ron wasn’t. Even the best PR people couldn’t fight all the insidious whispers and the fears and suspicions of the very people they were trying to hose for money.

  Besides, a woman society born and raised couldn’t be without society for very long. One of these days, Lily’d be off, leaving Mari high and dry, and he’d have to find a way to cushion the blow for his daughter.

  “Why come here?” he asked tightly, getting back to the original conversation.

  “I was invited.”

  “Must be more to it than that.”

  Lily set her burger down and reached for her shake. After taking a sip, she lifted her left hand to push her hair behind her ear. That bracelet of hers chimed musically.

  “I wanted a change,” she said. “I wanted to live somewhere that wasn’t made of concrete.”

  That much he could understand. Ron could no more leave the mountains permanently than he could sprout wings and fly. He had to be where the sky was huge, the trees were green and a man could walk miles in the forest without running into another soul.

  But Lily Cunningham just didn’t seem the kind of woman to appreciate the simpler things in life.

  “You look like you don’t believe me,” she said, and tipped her head again, studying him through big brown eyes that looked to him like warm, milk chocolate.

  “Not sure I do.”

  “Fortunately for me, Mari does.”

  “Mari’s a nice girl.”