by Tami Hoag
At any rate, the columnists were going to have plenty to say about the day’s events. Too bad they hadn’t gotten a picture of the look on Ross’s face when she’d denounced him for the cad he was. She didn’t envy Zane the task of fielding all the phone calls and facing all the questions, but her sister had told her not to worry when she’d called her from a phone booth at a rest stop in New Hampshire. Because she didn’t want the people she loved to be worried sick about her, Bronwynn had called and told Zane where she was going. No one else except Zane’s husband, Tom, would find out.
On second thought, she felt sorry for the busybodies who would be trying to get the details. Her older sister was fiercely protective of her family and friends. The scrap hounds would be going up against a tigress.
“And what are you up against, Bronwynn?” she asked herself.
Confusion, hurt. Hunger, she added as her stomach growled. Forcing herself to her feet, she wondered what Wade Grayson was having for supper.
“No way am I giving you one bite of these burritos.”
Tucker perked his ears and tipped his head in a way that usually won him what he was after. Wade was a sucker for a pleading look.
“I know that look. Don’t give me that look.” Wade scowled as he settled himself in the corner of the sofa with his plate on his lap.
His doctor would have an attack of angina if he could see the pile of burritos smothered in sour cream and salsa that Wade was about to eat. Mexican food was not part of the recommended diet for someone with a budding ulcer, but nothing went better with a ball game and paperwork, in Wade’s opinion. He figured as long as he followed the spicy dish with an antacid chaser, he’d be okay. He needed one anyway after his encounter with Bronwynn. At his feet, Tucker sighed and whined, thumping his tail hopefully.
“Forget it. The last thing I need tonight is a dog with gas.” Punching the volume button on the TV remote control, he tried to concentrate both on watching the start of the game and on reading a report on the homeless.
Two bites into his meal, his gaze wandered to the floor. The big yellow dog had his head planted firmly on his outstretched legs and his most poignantly sorrowful look riveted on Wade. Wade rolled his eyes as he cut a burrito in two, put half on a coaster, and offered it to his pet. “I should have gotten a cat. Cats don’t stoop to begging.”
Tucker scarfed down his treat, rolled onto his back wagging his tail, and belched.
Cats, Wade thought. Cats made him think of Bronwynn Pierson. If she were an animal, that was what she would be with her lithe build and almond-shaped eyes. She had the personality of a cat too—quirky, strange, independent. Emphasis on the strange.
He’d done the right thing, leaving her alone in the creepy old house. What better way to convince her she didn’t belong up there than by letting her find out for herself? One night full of the calls of the wild, and she’d be blazing the trail back to Beacon Hill.
He wondered if she knew how to work a camp stove. Could a person get carbon monoxide poisoning from one of those things? Irrelevant, she’d never get the thing lit. He thought of her flicking that little butane lighter at him, almost setting her veil ablaze. “
She’s a grown woman. If she can’t manage a camp stove, it’s none of my concern,” he said as he watched the second batter ground out to third base.
“Wait till she figures out she can’t use the bathroom,” he said with a chuckle. He could almost see her making a trek out to the woods behind the house, trying to manage all those yards of white satin . . . and a bear sneaking up on her from behind and her making a frantic dash for the house and stubbing her bare toes on an exposed root, stumbling and falling on a snake, then picking herself up and running into some cooty old mountain man who would drag her off and hold her prisoner in his cabin. Wade dropped his fork on his plate as his stomach rolled over.
He snarled at himself and his wild imagination. “Mr. Worst-Case Scenario. You’re as bad as she was with that ridiculous Ted Bundy business.”
Even as he told himself he was being foolish, he could see the headline: Heiress Slain While Neighbor Sleeps.
Absently he set his plate on the coffee table and stood up to pace, digging a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket. Tucker wasted no time helping himself to the rest of the burritos.
If he couldn’t get Bronwynn to see reason, he was going to have to take matters into his own hands. He paused in his pacing to take a double swig of antacid. The woman clearly needed a keeper, and, for one night anyway, it would have to be he.
Bronwynn sat back on the couch, swallowed up in the enormous double sleeping bag she’d bought at the hardware store in Shirley. Shirley, Vermont, she reflected as she nibbled at a toasted marshmallow, should have been the name of a B-movie actress in the thirties. Still, it fit the town. It was the kind of town that looked as if it should have a person’s name. The feel of the place was familiar, comfortably worn, like an old pair of slippers. If Shirley had been a person she would have been the kind of mom who wore housedresses and pink curlers and cooked tuna casserole on Fridays. Bronwynn was glad she had come.
She wasn’t quite as glad about her decision to stay at the house. It had seemed like the thing to do earlier, when the prospect of checking into a hotel alone on her wedding night had been a distinctly distasteful option. Now that night had crashed down around her, cable TV at Motel 6 didn’t sound so bad.
The thing was, she always had felt safe at Foxfire—and not just because she had been surrounded by people she loved there. There had been something about the house itself that was welcoming and comforting. She would probably have been feeling safe right now if not for Wade Grayson and his comments about creatures and big hairy things going bump in the night.
It hadn’t occurred to her until after he’d left that she had explored only one room by the fading light of day, and had done so when she had hardly been in a rational state of mind. That left roughly fifteen rooms where anything could be hiding—or anyone. Deciding she had used up her daily supply of fortitude walking out on Ross, Bronwynn postponed the tour and set up camp in the parlor. She was too stubborn to give in to unseen fears and leave, but at the first sight of something big and hairy, she was going to be out the door and testing her car’s zero-to-sixty capabilities in a flash.
It wasn’t so bad, really, she thought, surveying her array of shiny new camping equipment. She had her camp stove and a kerosene heater. A lantern on the claw-footed oak table created an oasis of warm amber light in the room. A broken windowpane was providing adequate ventilation, so she didn’t have to worry about being overcome by fumes.
She wondered what had ever become of the caretaker of the place. Surely someone had been hired to look after it when her uncle had died, but he obviously hadn’t been doing his job for a few years. It made her sad to see the house in such a state of disrepair. It had been such a wonderful, happy house. Now it seemed old, lonely, and depressed.
“We can be depressed together tonight, house,” she said, lifting a can of orange soda to her lips, soda she spilled down her front when she heard a car draw near the house. Immediately her heart and her active imagination went into overdrive.
She was in a secluded, abandoned old house. People probably came out there all the time to do things they didn’t dare do anywhere else. The people in the car could be teenagers looking for a place to have a party, or lovers driving out for a secret tryst, or drug dealers meeting, or the town maniac bringing out his latest dead body to add to his collection in the attic.
She scrambled out of the sleeping bag, doused the light, and reached for the rest of her six-pack of soda. If only she hadn’t left the hammer out in the yard, she thought as she tiptoed into the hall, her blood roaring in her ears.
Wade loaded himself down with the camping equipment he’d hauled up out of the basement of Dr. Jameson’s house. In addition to a sleeping bag and a lantern, he carried a five-gallon jug of water and two pillows. A bag of peanut butter sandwiches was
clenched between his teeth. He found his way up the steps by feeling with the toe of his shoe. The front door was closed. Since he couldn’t call out and his hands were too busy, he reached out again with his foot to knock. The old door creaked back on its hinges. He stepped inside and was immediately struck over the head.
Bronwynn screamed as she brought the cans down, and Wade and all his gear went tumbling onto the floor. Then Tucker wandered in, walked on top of his master’s prone body, and began licking the orange soda off the back of Wade’s head.
“Oh, no!” Bronwynn dropped to her knees and tried to see Wade’s face. He groaned and opened his eyes, wincing. “Are you all right?”
“Just peachy.” He reached a hand up to swat at the dog licking his ear. Tucker climbed down and wandered away, grumbling in his throat.
Bronwynn dashed into the parlor and returned with her lantern. Wade was still sprawled facedown, moaning. He looked up, blinking at the light. There were two Bronwynns, both of them wearing a wedding gown with a navy blue pullover sweater and pair of alligator wing-tip shoes.
“Either I’m seeing double, or this is what’s known as a living nightmare.” He gingerly touched the back of his head. “You gave me a skull fracture. I think I’m bleeding.”
She shined the light on the back of his head. “You’re not bleeding. That’s orange soda. I hit you with a six-pack—well, a five-pack, actually. I had taken one can out.”
“Gee, thanks for holding back,” he said dryly, sitting up, rubbing through his sticky, wet hair at the small goose eggs the cans had raised. He dragged one of the pillows he’d brought along across the floor and tucked it behind his head as he leaned back against the wall. “You have a real flare for entertaining, Bronwynn. I’ve never been greeted in quite that way before.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized as she gathered up the gear he’d flung down the hall. Her soda cans had remained hooked together, but two were spewing soda like steam from an overheated radiator. She left them alone. “In a way, it’s your own fault, you know.”
“You Orange-Crush my skull and it’s my fault?” He gave an incredulous laugh and rolled his eyes, then moaned at the throbbing in his head.
“Yes. If you hadn’t spouted off about this not being a safe place to stay, then I wouldn’t have thought you might be an ax-wielding maniac, and I never would have hit you.”
Wade pinched the bridge of his nose as his vision began to clear. “You know, I think I understood that. What a frightening prospect. I must have a concussion.”
Bronwynn sat down on his rolled-up sleeping bag and stared at him with her elbows on her knees and her chin propped in her hand. “What are you doing here, Wade?”
“A question I asked myself—not for the first time today.” How could she look so darn appealing in that ridiculous getup? Her makeup was gone, her mane of shoulder-length red hair looked like an unmade bed. The truly odd thing was she didn’t seem to care. Most of the women he’d known from Bronwynn’s side of the tracks wouldn’t have let the maid see them in such a state.
“I thought you had so many better things to do.” She studied him as he squirmed a little, looking annoyed and sheepish all at once. He qualified as a definite “cute” with his wholesome kind of all-American looks. Even with his stubborn chin and a scowl pulling his dark blond brows low over his eyes, his was a friendly face.
“Yeah, well . . .” He dug into his pocket for an antacid tablet. “I didn’t want it on my conscience if you accidentally burned this place to the ground or got attacked by a bear or something.”
Bronwynn smiled at him in genuine surprise. “You were worried about me. How sweet.”
“I thought you needed a keeper,” Wade said, pushing himself to his feet and pushing his attraction to Bronwynn a good arm’s length away. “I was right.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. They may have been in the Middle of Nowhere, Vermont, but he showed all the signs of being a stuffed shirt, corporate type. How was it then that she felt this stirring of desire for him? How could she feel desire for any man after what she’d been through with Ross?
Maybe it was because of what she’d been through with Ross, she realized. Maybe she was experiencing a natural human need to be comforted, to be desired by another person after what amounted to a rejection. Finding out her fiancé had wanted someone else, that she hadn’t been enough for him, had to be considered rejection . . . of the worst kind.
One thing her attraction to Wade Grayson was telling her: She had made the right decision in not marrying Ross.
“That’s a great outfit,” he remarked dryly. “You’re really getting your money’s worth out of that dress.”
Bronwynn glanced down and shrugged. “So it’s not haute couture. I never did make it to France today anyway. I was going to change, but I couldn’t get out of the darn thing. There are forty ridiculously tiny pearl buttons down the back. Only a contortionist could undo them without help.”
She led the way into the parlor and settled back down on the couch, tucking her legs into her sleeping bag as she watched Wade move his gear in. He gave her a look that discouraged argument or discussion and said, “I’m staying here tonight.”
Bronwynn nodded. After the scare he’d given her, she wasn’t inclined to refuse. Even disagreeable company was better than waiting for some ghoul in a Halloween mask to sneak up on her with a chain saw. She waved an arm at the ravaged packages of junk food beside her. “Help yourself to supper.”
“I brought peanut butter sandwiches,” he said, settling cross-legged on his sleeping bag on the floor and digging one slightly mushed sandwich out of the brown sack. “Want one?”
“Do they have bananas on them?” she asked hopefully.
Wade made a face. “Don’t make me queasy on top of everything else, Bronwynn.”
“Have you ever tried them with bananas?”
“I don’t have to. I don’t have to try calf’s brains to know I wouldn’t like them either.”
She was right, he was a stuffed shirt. He probably favored plain vanilla ice cream and kept the foods on his plate from touching one another. She sat back and munched on a cookie. “You obviously have no sense of adventure.”
Wade looked around them. “I’m spending the night in the Munster mansion with a pyromaniac in a wedding dress, and you say I have no sense of adventure? What do you want me to do, throw some cobras around on the floor to make it more exciting?”
Bronwynn looked up at the cracked plaster ceiling and heaved a sigh. “No, thanks. I’ve had all the excitement I can take for one day.”
“Do I get an explanation?” Wade asked. He thought he deserved one, but he wasn’t going to force the issue if it really upset her. He watched her while he waited for her answer. She ran her hands back through hair that shone like dark copper in the lantern light.
“I guess you deserve one,” she said at length. “I walked out in the middle of my wedding today.”
“You did what?” Maybe she was even more of a kook than he’d first guessed. He wondered if there were people somewhere searching for her.
“Two nights ago we had a prewedding dinner. My fiancé, Ross, and a number of my relatives were staying at the house. Later that night I decided I was going to surprise Ross, so I went into his room and hid in this big antique wardrobe. I left the door cracked open so I could see out. Then someone else snuck into the room—my cousin Belinda. Well, I’m ready to jump out and grab her by the throat, when in comes Ross and he’s not at all surprised to see Belinda. It seems he’d been seeing Belinda and planned to go on seeing Belinda, and we all saw a lot more of Belinda before they retired to the bathroom for aquatic sports in the Jacuzzi.”
“Brother,” Wade muttered, wincing. That had to be one of life’s nastier surprises. No wonder she’d been acting so crazy. He abandoned his sandwich and moved to sit on the sofa. He reached out and ran his hand over the top of hers where it rested on her slender thigh. “It must have hurt,” he said quietly.
“You see,” she explained, “Ross and I have never had what you would call a passionate relationship. We were friends. He was there for me when I lost my parents last year.”
The part that confused her most was that if she hadn’t felt anything other than friendship for Ross, why had she agreed to marry him? And once she had become engaged to him, why hadn’t she paid enough attention to see what kind of a creep he really was?
Since she didn’t know the answers to those questions yet, she skipped them. “Anyway, I didn’t know what to do. It was such a shock, I wandered around in a kind of daze which everyone mistook for prewedding jitters. I didn’t snap out of it until it was almost too late. I actually almost went through with the wedding! Then, in the middle of everything, I denounced Ross and took off.” She gave a little shrug. “And here I am.”
All Wade could do was shake his head. He plucked a cookie out of the bag next to him and munched on it thoughtfully. Tucker wandered in, snatched up his master’s half-eaten sandwich, flopped down on Wade’s sleeping bag, and went to sleep.
“So,” Bronwynn said in an exaggerated conversational tone, “what are you doing in Vermont, Wade?”
“R and R,” he answered absently, still turning her incredible story over and over in his mind. “Job stress.”
His voice had a hoarseness to it, a raspiness that spoke of too many cigarettes. It was a tremendously sexy quality Bronwynn hadn’t paid much attention to before. As her body responded to it, she tried to latch on to a topic to distract herself.
