To Wear His Ring

by Diana Palmer

  “No, of course not!” Nettie interrupted. “What a ridiculous idea.”

  Relief flooded his face before his expression turned wry. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. After all, everything’s been so normal up until now.”

  Nettie conceded the point. Her concern mounted. As a thief, he could, of course, be an excellent actor, but she was increasingly inclined to believe that they had all made a terrible mistake.

  Chase studied the woman before him. She nibbled at her full bottom lip, appearing worried, but no longer frightened of him.

  With his hands bound behind his back, he pushed himself off the cot. The dull ache in his temples turned into a pulsing throb. His arms were beginning to feel sore, too. He wondered what time it was, how long he’d been out, but before he could ask, he caught the scent of the woman’s hair. Flowers…no…clover. She smelled like the clover fields he’d passed on his way into town.

  For more reasons than Chase cared to count, he had no business thinking what he was thinking in regard to this woman. If nothing else, the timing was absurd. Still, he couldn’t help but notice that if they stood a few inches closer, the top of her head would tuck very neatly beneath his chin. A good fit…

  For the first time, he felt almost grateful for the cuffs around his wrists. If his hands had been free, he might have brushed one of those wild black curls off of her cheek, might have tested her reaction.

  His gaze moved where his hand could not. “You aren’t afraid of me anymore,” he stated softly, with male satisfaction.

  Nettie’s mouth opened and closed in protest. “I was never afraid of you. I’m just cautious.”

  Chase grinned. “Where you and I are concerned, angel, caution seems like a good rule of thumb.” Leaning forward enough to be heard if he whispered, he couldn’t help adding, “Then again, the next time we meet we won’t be standing in a jail cell…and my hands won’t be behind my back.”

  Nettie stared up at him, her mouth dry, her palms moist and the sound of the ocean at high tide roaring in her ears. Sara rushed in, saving her from a response, and Nettie had never been so glad for—or so irked by—her sister’s timing.

  Clutching the first-aid kit, Sara breathed, “Okay, I found it. Now what—” She stopped, realizing the Gentleman Caller was on his feet and that he and Nettie were standing only inches apart.

  For a second, no one said anything, then Nettie, feeling as if she’d been caught with her hand in a till, pointed to the suspect. “He’s awake.”

  “I see that.” Sara’s lips pulled back from her teeth, but it didn’t look like she was smiling. “What is going on?” she asked her sister.

  The Gentleman Caller answered, nodding toward Nettie. “She was tickling me.” A slow smile curved his lips. “I liked it.”

  Sara stared at her sister.

  “I was not!” Nettie denied, swiveling toward the man. “I was not tickling you! I was…conducting a frisk.”

  He coughed discreetly. “I don’t mean to be rude, miss, but I’ve been searched before and from experience I can confirm that what you did was not at all frisk-like. Now if you feel you could improve, I’d be happy to let you practice.” His eyes danced with pure devilish humor.

  Nettie did something then that shocked her sister, surprised the man watching her, but most of all shocked herself: She giggled. As the absurdity of this whole situation struck her with increasing clarity, she clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed until her stomach ached and tears rolled down her cheeks. The harder she tried to stop, the more hysterical she felt.

  “You should have seen…the look on your face…” Pointing at the Gentleman Caller, she struggled to speak intelligibly through gasps of laughter, “…when the lamp hit your head!”

  Somehow it didn’t seem to matter any more that this situation was almost as embarrassing as it was ridiculous, or that she usually embarrassed faster than flies found honey. Where pain typically resided, Nettie felt a long-forgotten giddiness, and she caught a glimpse of enjoyment and curiosity on the man’s handsome face before tears blurred her eyes again.

  “Nettie, what is the matter with you?”

  Nettie shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sara, but you should have seen your face, too…when he passed out.” She doubled up as the laughter made her stomach cramp. “You looked like you thought he was dead, and you saw your fifty thousand dollars flying right out the window!”

  “I didn’t think he was dead,” Sara snapped, “but he’d be a lot less trouble if he were. And I’d still get my reward.”

  “Not if he’s not the Gentleman Caller, you wouldn’t,” Nettie countered. “You’d just have a really good-looking dead guy.” She dissolved into another round of giggles.

  “Thank you.” The guy in question grinned. “I think.”

  As Nettie continued to entertain them with her unusual response, the door to the jail opened and closed. Boot heels scuffed across the hardwood floor, halting at the cell. The three people inside turned toward the newcomer. Sara stiffened immediately. Nettie regained some control over herself, but slowly. “Hello, Nick,” she said, grinning.

  Nick Brady leaned against the iron post of the cell door, thumbs hooked casually in the belt loops of his denim jeans. Dense brows angled over dark eyes as he noted the hands cuffed behind the stranger’s back.

  Ignoring Sara completely, he shifted his gaze back to Nettie and nodded. “Good to see you enjoying yourself.” Eyes narrowed, he stalked past Sara to stand face-to-face with her prisoner.

  The two men were of similar height and build, with Nick perhaps a shade taller and stockier. What they shared was an aura of strength, masculine, arrogant and unequivocal. Nick noted again the suspect’s bound arms and a small smear of blood in the upper right corner of the younger man’s forehead. This time he turned toward Sara with a glare that was so frankly disapproving, Nettie saw her audacious, defiant sister actually blush.

  Turning back to the other man, Nick nodded. “Chase,” he greeted, “I see you’ve met the Owens sisters.”

  Chapter Three

  Slouched at the kitchen table while Nettie chopped carrots at the sink, Sara ripped the head off a gingerbread man, her sixth casualty in an hour. “It’s eleven-thirty,” she growled, stuffing her mouth full of cookie. “Why are you doing that now?”

  “I told you.” Briefly, Nettie suspended the knife. “Chopping…relaxes…me.” She brought the cleaver down, halving a carrot with a swift, ruthless thwack.

  Food crimes were on the rise in the Owenses’ kitchen tonight.

  Nick’s arrival at the jail had cleared up a few questions, most pertinently the identity of Sara’s prisoner. On his way home from a buying trip, Nick had stopped in at Good Eats, heard from Ernie about the evening’s activities and headed directly for the jail, where he informed the women that they had in their clutches—bloodied, verbally abused, handcuffed and nearly shot—Chase Reynolds, special reporter for a top cable news program and Nick’s houseguest for the next two weeks.

  Well, who knew?

  Nettie whacked another carrot. Bad enough she’d nearly shot a man who’d once won a William Jay award for excellence in on-camera reporting; she’d also frisked one of People magazine’s “Fifty Most Beautiful People.” It didn’t seem funny anymore.

  “We should have recognized him,” she muttered, not for the first time. “This is what comes from discontinuing cable. Although how you could arrest a man when you don’t even have a composite sketch to ID him is really beyond—”

  “I told you.” Sara slapped her cookie onto the table. “I had it. I just couldn’t find it. And as far as I’m concerned, he was just another suspect. I was following protocol.”

  Nettie paused in her chopping to lean one hand on the counter, the other on her hip. “When you were insulting him or when you were punting him into the cell?”

  “That’s it!” Sara shoved the glass of milk away from her, scraping her chair back from the table. “I don’t have to listen to this.” Sh
e stabbed a thumb at her own chest. “I had a reasonable suspicion.”

  “Really. What tipped the scales for you, Sherlock, the fact that he’s a fast eater?”

  Sara gaped at her sister. “What is the matter with you tonight? You’ve been sniping at me since we got home.” She waved a hand. “I don’t see what you’re so upset about, anyway. He’s not going to sue you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Nettie put a hand over her eyes and shook her head. “It’s just all so…humiliating! But don’t worry, he won’t sue. We’re not important enough for him to sue.” She resumed rapid dicing. “By the time he leaves here we’ll be just another cocktail party anecdote. Something to entertain Barbara Walters with while he’s stirring martinis: ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I was held captive by two women in Kalamoose? One olive or two?’”

  “Well if that’s all we have to worry about, big deal. Who cares what he says to Barbara Walters as long as he doesn’t cause trouble around here?”

  I do. “What’s someone like Chase Reynolds doing in Kalamoose, anyway?” Nettie tried to sound offhand, but her true interest felt almost raw in its intensity. “How do you suppose he met Nick?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Sara replied unsatisfactorily. She took a last swallow of milk. “I’m going to bed. I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.” Crossing to the swinging door that led to the dining room, she paused. “Listen, about you grabbing that rifle tonight—”

  Nettie groaned. “Don’t remind me. I swear I will never again touch one of your guns, just please, please do not talk about it!”

  “No, no, I wasn’t going to…I mean I’m not upset. I—” Never one to speak easily about her feelings, Sara scratched her neck and shifted uneasily. “I just wanted to say, you know…thank you.” She shrugged. “I know you were trying to protect me, and…I think you put the fear of God into him when you knocked off that shot.” A smile nudged her freckled cheeks. “Put it into me.” Hesitating a moment longer, she nodded toward the severed carrots. “Bet those would make a good cake.” Wishing her sister a good-night, she left the kitchen and headed upstairs.

  Nettie pressed her palms to her cheeks. She stood like that a moment, breathing, trying not to think at all. Then she dragged a plastic container out from one of the bottom cabinets and put the carrots in the refrigerator.

  Twenty minutes later she was upstairs, a pink terry robe wrapped around her just-showered body, her mind still as active as a kitten with a ball of string. Forget sleep.

  Tiptoeing past Sara’s room, Nettie headed for a small attic work studio. Stepping inside, she closed the door softly behind her.

  The room smelled pleasingly of canvas and paint and of the oil-based pastels she arranged by hue in old soup tins and plastic cups. This was her private aerie, the sanctum to which she escaped each day. When she flicked the light on, a soft yellow glow illuminated her easel and drawing board and a corner desk, where she wrote the children’s stories that were winning a loyal and ever-growing audience. A bookshelf she’d hand-painted housed copies of her There I Go Again books, a series of illustrated tales featuring a little boy named Barnaby, whose incredible adventures took place at night while his parents were sleeping. Barnaby trotted the globe, engaging in acts of daring or heroism or simply having outlandish good fun and then returning home to a bed shaped like a racecar and to parents he trusted to keep him safe.

  Crossing to the bookcase, Nettie ran her fingers across the spines of several books, then touched the top of a small pewter frame. Her body stiffened as she awaited the customary catch in her throat.

  Inside the flower-stamped border was a five-by-seven color snapshot of a man and woman barely out of their teens. The girl sported a purple maternity top with a big golden happy face over her protruding belly and the young man wore a smile that gave validity to the description “a mile wide.”

  She and Brian. Back in the days when they’d expected only good things to happen.

  Nettie held the picture with both hands. Sweet longing filled her chest even as her stomach muscles clenched with a pain so bitter she thought she could taste it. They’d been so trusting—two children bringing a baby into the world.

  Anger snaked up from her belly like a weed threatening to choke her. Falling in love and having a baby were acts of faith that should have been rewarded.

  And they had been, she supposed, for a time. The photograph was evidence. Also on the bookshelf, propped on a small display easel, was a likeness of her son’s face, sculpted from clay then cast into plaster. One of Brian’s art projects. Smooth and perfect in illusionary 3-D, it seemed capable of coming to life. Brian had intended to sculpt their son’s face every three years, beginning with age two and a half. This was the only sculpture Nettie had. She kept it on the shelf even though it was fragile, even though there was only one. And she was grateful that she had it. Although there were times when touching it—tracing the nose and the chin and the brow—served only to increase her loneliness.

  Every day for three years she had tried to remember…and tried not to. What good, she sometimes wondered, were memories when the heart couldn’t touch hair or skin, the heart couldn’t hold hands with Brian or press kisses against Tucker’s soft, soft cheek?

  And she wanted that. God, there were times when she didn’t think she could live another minute without it—one more chance to touch.

  Returning her focus to the picture of herself and her husband, she flattened her fingers against the cold glass protecting the photo as tears began to run, salty and hot, over her lips. She’d been living in limbo, and she knew it. Couldn’t go forward, couldn’t back up. A quick, watery laugh escaped her lips. Brian would have hated that for her.

  She had begun to hate it herself.

  She closed her eyes and a man’s smile—not Brian’s—came into view. A smile so recent she could still see it without effort: Wry and searching, flirtatious and bold. And then, as if Chase Reynolds were there in the room, she felt again the deep-down tingle, the chord of anticipation his smile had struck.

  Opening her eyes, she noticed that her hand was starting to shake. Holding the picture frame tightly against her stomach, Nettie turned toward her desk. Her legs felt so heavy and wooden she had to command them to move. When she reached her desk, she opened a bottom drawer.

  The pain in her stomach rose to her throat and like the anger, it squeezed. She bit her lip as she placed the photo gently inside the drawer.

  “Oh, God.”

  For an instant she thought she might stop breathing, honestly felt as if she’d pushed a red button that could destroy the whole world. She waited, feeling the pounding in her chest, the tightness of grief.

  It was then, with a clarity that seemed brittle, that she understood more completely the awful price of choosing to go on.

  Standing, she sent a brief, silent apology to heaven. She’d been a girl when she’d married, barely a woman when she’d lost everything she loved most. With all that had passed since then, she’d earned her womanhood. Chase Reynolds was the first man who made her want to explore it.

  She didn’t expect to have what she’d had before—the hopes, the dreams of a future. The innocence. Not with him or any other man. She didn’t even want that. With a new relationship, one that was obviously impermanent from the start, she wouldn’t have a whole thunderstorm to deal with. Just a little bit of lightning to say she was still alive.

  Looking down at the drawer, Nettie drew a breath that felt like needles pricking her lungs. Then she made herself whisper what had to be the most difficult word in the whole English language. “Goodbye.”

  It was 10:30 a.m. when Nettie guided the Owenses’ old wood-paneled Jeep Wagoneer up the long drive that led to Nick’s farm. Patches of wild mustard splotched the bright emerald grass leading to the house. A gentle breeze snatched the echo of clover from fields across the road, scenting the air with a clean spicy freshness. As moderate as the temperature was outside the car, however, inside the vehicle it
felt like high noon.

  Perspiration bathed Nettie’s forehead and upper lip. Her palms were sweating, her back felt clammy and her stomach whirred like a washing machine stuck on “spin.”

  She hadn’t driven alone in years, not since she’d started having anxiety attacks in the car. The first time she had a panic attack while driving, she’d thought that surely she would lose control of the vehicle. For no reason at all, it had seemed, she had begun to feel hot and clammy, then nauseous, weak and scared. Her arms had started to shake, her vision had blurred and her heart had pounded and raced and skipped beats. The more she had fought the sensations, the worse they had become. By the time she’d reached home, she had been exhausted and utterly confused about what had just happened to her. When she had another attack two weeks later, she went to see her doctor. “Post-traumatic stress,” he had called it. It felt like impending death.

  Eventually Nettie had stopped driving unless there was someone in the car with her, hoping to avoid the sudden attacks. She knew more now about anxiety attacks, what they were and what they weren’t, but she hadn’t yet overcome her fear of driving alone. Unfortunately Nick’s farm was not within walking distance. If Nettie wanted to see Chase Reynolds again—without Sara in attendance—she had to get behind the wheel all by herself and drive. She’d spent half the morning convincing herself she could do it. She’d spent the other half getting ready.

  For a jolt of confidence, she had chosen to wear a gauzy dress that Lilah had sent her from a chi-chi boutique in Los Angeles, but now the thin material glommed to her back in a decidedly less than chi-chi way.

  Plus, a glance in the rearview mirror showed that her makeup was running south. “Very seductive,” she muttered, scrounging in her purse for a tissue to blot her damp forehead and cheeks.