“He didn’t call the police, because he understood. Didn’t try to duck or anything—and he saw it coming. Stood there and took it.” Respect edged his words.
She pressed her palms to her head, as if that would make the whirling ache go away. “I don’t believe this.”
“He said he’d’ve done the same if the situation had been reversed. So I gave him ice and towels—cut lips bleed like a son of a bitch—and he told me he was going to marry Lily. He didn’t want you to hear it through the grapevine.”
Why? The Corbett version of courtesy? Sleep with someone else while you’re engaged, get her pregnant, have it all come out at your wedding, but don’t let your ex-fiancée be blindsided by the news that you’ve married?
Supporting his right arm with his left hand, he shifted in the seat.
“What else, Max?”
“There was a time—later on—when he wanted to see you. I told him no. It was a couple days after they buried Lily. And right before that first time you and Suz came for Thanksgiving. Must’ve been a year and a half after…you left. I never did know how he found out you were coming, but he did, and he said he wouldn’t take no from me. Made me promise to ask you if you would talk to him.”
“But…you never did.”
He shook his head—at himself or refuting her words? “I said there was something you should know. You said if it had to do with the Corbetts, I better keep it to myself. When you were leaving, I tried again. Remember?”
Standing at the front door, with the wind shaking leafless branches at the murky sky. Bracing herself to leave the warmth of Max. She remembered.
“And you said if I didn’t honor your wishes on this, you’d stay away for good. Not just from town, but from me. I believed you. I wasn’t going to risk it.”
Nothing on earth could keep her away from her brother for good. But the fog of grief and heartbreak had finally been starting to lift when she’d heard the news of Lily’s death. The emotions of that—and, yes, the recognition that Steve was no longer married—had pushed her emotions close to an edge she never wanted to be near again. Being in Tobias was bad enough. She had been afraid if Max said one more thing about a Corbett, and especially Steve…
She couldn’t blame Max for believing her threat—she’d believed herself.
“I’m sorry, Max. I never should have said that.”
He went to hitch his shoulders in a forget-it gesture and winced instead.
She started the car, looking over her shoulder to back out.
“’Net?” Max’s voice roughened on her childhood nickname. “Were you still in love with the guy then? Would it have made a difference if you’d talked to him that Thanksgiving?”
Not knowing the answer to the first question, she shook her head at the second. “No.”
She didn’t know if that was the entire truth. She couldn’t know. Because that was in the past, and she was in the present.
As for the future, she’d help Max for this month, then she’d leave and find whatever waited in the next phase of her life beyond Tobias.
Steve was standing in the hospital hallway staring out the automatic doors that had closed some time ago behind Annette and Max when his cell phone rang.
A minor emergency would be good. A transformer out or a small flood, maybe. Something to get his mind off Annette Trevetti. At least for a while.
A call from his mother didn’t qualify.
He started for the door to the parking lot, absently letting Lana have her say. He’d learned at an early age that it caused fewer fireworks to listen before simply doing what he wanted. Zach had never learned that trick.
“No, I’m not going to forbid her from going there…. Miss Trudi is family…. Great-aunt by marriage might be distant, but Miss Trudi is family…. Eccentric’s not a crime.” He turned from the parking lot and headed toward downtown.
“Mother.” She stopped talking. “I’m picking Nell up because it’s her time to come home, but Nell will go on seeing Miss Trudi as long as they both enjoy it.”
Not for the first time, he thanked heaven as he hung up that he’d insisted all legal Is be dotted and Ts crossed before he’d married Lily. They’d shared a house but never a bed. Six months after Nell’s birth Lily had moved out, leaving Nell. So there was no doubt after Lily died that he was solely responsible for Nell.
He supposed it was to his mother’s credit that she wanted to be involved in raising her granddaughter, and he would never cut her off from Nell. But he was damned if Nell would be raised the way he and Zach had been.
Steve used to envy the bond between Annette and Max. Just the two of them, yet they had a stronger sense of family than he’d experienced in all his life.
Until Nell.
When he’d brought up Annette meeting Nell and she had backpedaled so fast she should have fallen off the edge of the earth, he’d wanted to goad her, to push her, to get a rise out of her.
And he’d succeeded. Her wide brown eyes had come to his face, looking almost hunted—and their expression had put him in the role of the one toting the weapon. The expression frosted over in an instant. But he’d known. The prospect of seeing him again had not pleased her.
He thought he would have accepted that—he didn’t particularly relish reliving being left at the altar—if it hadn’t been that she’d been so all-fired eager to get the hell out of Dodge. A little too eager.
It wasn’t as if he thought he could recapture her belief in him, but why shouldn’t he find out exactly what was behind that edginess? Maybe some hunting was in order.
Chapter Two
From the hospital, Steve headed his SUV toward one of the two best vantage points overlooking the lake and what qualified as downtown Tobias.
Tobias Corbett, founder of the town, the county and the family’s fortunes, had bought both vantage points, as well as most of the valuable property around them. He’d given each of his two sons one of the plots, and the plots had been passed down through the two very different branches of the Corbett family.
Now Trudi Bliss, a seventy-eight-year-old independent thinker and the last descendant of Tobias’s elder son through his only daughter, who had married one Jebediah Bliss, owned an eyesore of a house set in a square block of prime Tobias property. Compared with the improvements Steve had worked hard to bring to Tobias, the throbbing of that sore thumb kept getting worse, and the squeeze on Miss Trudi, as she was known to everyone, got tighter. There were plenty of people who lectured him, telling him that as manager of the town and county and Miss Trudi’s closest relative, Steve had a major problem brewing.
That was his job—to handle problems.
Like the one this morning. Steve, introducing the new electrical inspector around, arrived at the work site where Max Trevetti’s company was turning a one-story house into two stories and found it in an uproar.
Somehow Max had fallen, obviously breaking his wrist. Homeowner Muriel Henderson had fainted at the sight of either the bones sticking out of Max’s wrist or the blood from the cut on his head. Max’s workers were divided between reviving her and trying to stop Max from driving himself—one-handed—to the hospital because he didn’t want to waste man-hours. Steve instructed the new inspector to call for paramedics to attend to Muriel, then drove Max to the hospital to make sure the guy didn’t try to keep working. He knew Max Trevetti.
That had surprised Annette.
It used to be that every one of her emotions registered immediately on her face. God, it had been like an oasis of clear water and lush plants after a lifetime in the arid landscape of Corbett House. At movies, he used to watch her more than the screen. It had been a revelation seeing someone respond that way.
Not anymore. In the hospital hallway she’d guarded her emotions like a judge. Even when she’d first seen him. Nothing.
But he had seen her moment of surprise later.
Yeah, she’d definitely been surprised that he and Max had become…well, not friends, exactly. Perhaps c
olleagues.
After Max had punched him that night, then sopped up his blood, the next time they’d passed in the street there’d been a nod. Then a civil conversation about a permit application. They didn’t seek each other out, but when circumstances put them together they got along. In a town this size and with their respective positions, circumstance put them together fairly often. Like today.
Steve had gotten the doctor’s initial diagnosis before he called Gert, who usually looked after Nell after school and whose daughter Juney was Max’s assistant. That was another thing about a town this size, everybody was connected to everybody else. Steve had been sure that Gert, home with the flu, would know how to get in touch with Juney, who would know how to get in touch with Annette. A roundabout way to notify Max’s sister, but Steve had figured that getting the call from him would have made the situation worse for Annette.
Or maybe he hadn’t known how in hell he would start that conversation.
Max had insisted Steve get to Town Hall to keep appointments and to change out of his blood-smeared clothes. When he could shake loose, he’d returned to check on Max. Well…maybe he’d wondered, with Juney on her honeymoon, if Annette would come to town.
Curiosity. It was natural.
Physically, she’d hardly changed at all.
The impact of that realization had stopped him in his tracks in the instant she’d faced him.
Her hair turned neatly under at her shoulders instead of falling well beyond, and was more controlled than before. But it was still that rich, thick chocolate, the same color as her eyes. And her figure—
His tire bounced from the curb he’d kissed while parking, jerking his mind to the here and now.
He had another female to think about.
He had his hand on the iron gate flanked by brick walls when he saw two figures approaching. He started down the hill that sloped toward the lake to meet them. Last summer’s crop of weeds had dried in the cracks of the brick wall and through the ironwork atop it. If weeds were a cash crop, his relative would be sitting pretty.
Beneath an open red raincoat, Miss Trudi wore her usual smock and loose pants, which his mother unstintingly called disreputable. The older woman’s alternative was chiffon of various hues and lengths that frequently became tangled in furniture, plants and people. From a safety standpoint, he preferred this get-up.
The other figure flipped his heart and brought a smile. She’d had that ability from the first time he’d held her and looked into her eyes. He’d seen neither of her parents there, but another person entirely. All her own.
He waved and called hello. “Thanks for looking after Nell, Miss Trudi.”
“It’s my pleasure. How is Gert?”
As he gave the unpromising update on Gert, he reached for the books Nell carried. She shifted them away. “I can do it.” One of her favorite phrases. She scowled and added, “Girls can do anything boys can do and have babies.”
If Miss Trudi had accurately conveyed the facts of life to the seven-year-old, he’d both mourn that step toward maturity and be eternally grateful that he didn’t have “The Talk” looming somewhere in his future.
“Sketched in the broadest strokes,” Miss Trudi murmured with an amused glint. “We have been exploring the realm of potential role models for our Nell.” Then she added to the girl, “Being a strong woman does not suspend the rules of courtesy. And a smart woman does not dismiss realities. Are the books heavy?”
Nell considered. “Yeah.” She extended the stack to Steve. “I can be anything I want to be.”
“Absolutely,” he agreed.
“Like the president of India.”
“Indira Gandhi,” Miss Trudi filled in, nodding to the books, which Steve noted were biographies for children. “However, Indira Gandhi was prime minister, dear.”
“You might start closer to home,” he told Nell.
“Tobias doesn’t have a president.”
“No, but the United States does.”
Her furrowed brow and intense look informed him she was weighing that. “Maybe after India,” she said.
“No need to decide just yet, dear,” Miss Trudi said in absolute seriousness. “Now, Steve, won’t you come in and have a cup of tea? You look tired.”
Absently, he thanked her and followed them in.
Annette hadn’t looked tired. A little worried about Max, sure. But in that moment before she became aware of his presence, what else he’d seen in her had been laughter and confidence. Bone-deep confidence. That was new. Her looks might not have changed much, but a lot had happened in seven-and-a-half years. He knew each step of her success—a proud brother and Tobias’s grapevine saw to that—but they were strangers to each other now. Maybe they always had been.
“Dad!” Nell rolled her eyes. “Told you he wasn’t listening.”
“Sorry. Got some, uh, business on my mind.”
“That’s okay, dear.” Miss Trudi patted his hand. “We’re talking about women.”
Nell giggled, and he gave her a fake glower. “Hey, I know about women.”
“Of course you do, dear,” Miss Trudi said soothingly. “That’s why you’re having tea with me instead of preparing for a date.”
A flash of the first time he’d picked up Annette for a date crossed his mind. His heart going like a trip-hammer at the idea of spending time with her…
But Miss Trudi and Nell didn’t mean ancient history. He’d dated since the divorce. Been serious a few times, too. Serious enough to almost make some damned fool mistakes.
The first serious one had wanted kids—just not some other woman’s. He’d made sure the next woman hadn’t objected to raising a child not her own. She hadn’t; Nell had. Seeing them together, he knew Nell’s instincts were on target.
Then he’d almost made the biggest mistake. A few years ago, Fran had moved back in next door to care for her terminally ill father. She was funny, endearing and wise. Nell adored her, and vice versa. He’d brought up marriage.
Fran had smiled, touched his cheek and said simply, “You don’t love me.”
When he’d tried to fumble out a response she’d added, still with that wise smile, “And I don’t love you. If I had any sense, I would—but I don’t. And neither one of us wants Nell to have an example of a marriage not built on love.”
It had hit him then that although he hadn’t made the same mistake twice, the potential for new and different mistakes might be infinite.
He hadn’t dated much the past year.
“Time to go, Nell.” He stood. “Say thanks to Miss Trudi.”
He buckled Nell into the back seat and circled to the driver’s side. A blurry figure in an unfamiliar car tooted in greeting. He smiled and waved automatically.
Talking about the Corbetts was considered a right of residency in Tobias. The whispering that Annette would come crawling back had evaporated after he’d married Lily. It regained life when it became clear he and Lily weren’t living together even before the divorce. And it flourished after Lily died. But he’d known Annette never would. He’d known that the instant he’d seen his ring discarded on the minister’s desk.
He could have caught her before she left the building, much less town. He’d remained rooted to the spot.
“Why’re you just standing there?”
Nell’s call from inside the car jerked him out of his reverie. Producing a smile, he tossed the keys in his hand and found the right one. Inside, he checked the rearview mirror, catching Nell’s face in its frame.
“What’s the matter?”
He smiled. “Nothing’s the matter. Looking at my favorite girl.”
She tipped her head. “You had a different favorite girl before. The lady at the library told the other lady that the girl Steve Corbett loved a long, long, long time ago is back.”
That was fast, even for Tobias. He put the car in Neutral and slung around against the pull of the seat belt to look at her directly. “A woman I used to date—”
“Like Fran?” she asked.
“Yes, dates like I had with Fran. But more dates. We…we liked each other a lot—but it didn’t work out, and she went away. Now she’s back because she’s helping her brother, who got hurt. Remember Max, who builds rooms onto houses and has that big toolbox? That’s Annette’s brother.”
Maybe he’d hoped to distract her by throwing in Max and his tools, which had fascinated Nell. No such luck.
“Are you going to date her now?”
Date Annette. Looking over to see her eyes, bright and interested. Laughing as a rubbery string of cheese stretched into a slapstick routine as they shared a pizza. Holding her hand as they walked across campus. Holding her. Her mouth on his. Her taste. The hot, tight feel—
“Are you?” Nell demanded.
He pushed down the college kid in love he’d once been and grabbed for the father he’d become. “I can’t tell you that, Nell. But I can tell you that no woman I date could ever change how much I love you. Do you understand? What I might feel for a grown-up woman won’t change that you’re my favorite girl. Okay?”
She met his eyes and nodded. “Okay.”
He turned and put the SUV in gear.
“But maybe you’re not gonna date this one because she’s going to hightail it out of town first chance she gets?”
He raised his eyebrows at Nell through the medium of the rearview mirror.
“That’s what the lady at the library said to the other lady at the library.”
“Ah. Well, ladies at the library don’t always know everything.”
She frowned. “So she’s gonna stay?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.” He pulled away from the curb, knowing that answer was unsatisfying all the way around.
Nell didn’t like waiting.
Annette would surely prefer the library lady’s prediction—if not her phrasing—that she’d be gone as soon as possible.
As for him… He shouldn’t want to be reminded. He didn’t need distractions from Nell and his job. But… Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted.
“Daddy, remember I’m going to Laura Ellen’s to practice for the parade.”
Wedding of the Century Page 3
