Riley and His Girls (Mills & Boon Vintage Cherish) (Mills & Boon Cherish)

by Janis Reams Hudson

  How dare this interloper come to town and try to insinuate herself into Brenda’s place? How dare this Amy person be alive when Brenda was not? The nerve of the girl, expecting Marva to help her snare Riley. That’s essentially what this amounted to, Marva knew.

  Brenda, Brenda, what am I supposed to do? She wanted to throw Amy out on her head, yet the girl was a link to Brenda unlike any other link Marva had. And Brenda had loved this girl like a sister. Her phone calls and letters and e-mails had been full of Amy this and Amy that. To turn the girl away now would be a slap in Brenda’s face.

  In addition, Marva knew she couldn’t hope that Riley would stay single and depend solely on her for help with the girls forever. This was the first time he had shown any interest in a woman other than Brenda. She could have hoped any new woman in his life would be someone local, someone she knew.

  But Marva couldn’t think of any local girl with the strength of character to fill Brenda’s shoes, attract—and hold—Riley’s affection, love the girls and stand up to Marva herself. Apparently it took an outsider. But this outsider knew a side of Brenda that no one else knew.

  Marva wasn’t certain she wanted to know any more of that side of her daughter.

  Whatever, this woman was here and seeking her expertise. Marva knew she had no real choice but to help her. It would cost her nothing but a little time. To turn her down could prove the first step in the possible future loss of free and constant access to her granddaughters.

  Marva swallowed her emotions. It took courage for Amy to come here and ask for help. She herself could demonstrate no less.

  She looked Amy up and down. “How much time do we have?”

  “No ruffles,” Amy stated flatly as the big sedan parked in front of a boutique on Main Street.

  “If you want my help, you’ll have to listen to my advice.”

  “I know that, Mrs. Green.”

  “If we’re going to do this, you might as well call me Marva.”

  The giant knot behind Amy’s breastbone eased. The woman’s offer was a huge milestone. Reaching it didn’t mean everything was going to be sweetness and light—Marva had yet to decide to like her—but it might get them through the lunch hour.

  “And no lace or bows,” she added.

  Marva smiled slightly and took on the tone of a mother putting off saying no to avoid an argument. “We’ll see.”

  That, Amy thought with a cringe, did not bode well for her.

  Marva was on a first-name basis with Darnelle of Darnelle’s Boutique. The two of them spoke a language that was foreign to Amy. They took ordinary words and changed their meanings, words like trim and cut and bias.

  “I think something that flows with her movements, don’t you?” Marva suggested to Darnelle.

  Darnelle’s eyes lit. With dollar signs, undoubtedly. “I’ve got just the thing. Black jersey pants, wide legs, slightly flared.”

  “Oh, yes. Amy, what size are you, a six?”

  Amy blinked. “Uh…”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Marva tsked in irritation. “Let’s find her a six and an eight. Although she is a tad on the lean side. Do you have them in a four?”

  The six met with Marva’s approval, but the slacks left Amy feeling practically naked. Though she did like the way they swayed with her movements. And they were soft on her bare legs.

  Marva found a soft, thin sweater in a black-and-white swirl pattern that fitted her like a second skin.

  “Are you kidding?” Amy protested. “I look practically naked.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Marva stated.

  “You look pretty, Amy,” Cindy said.

  Amy wondered what it said about her that she trusted the fashion advice of a four-year-old.

  Chapter Eight

  Early Saturday afternoon Amy paced her small living room and tried to calm her racing heart.

  Any minute Riley was going to pick her up for the first date she’d had in years. Unless she counted going to the canteen on base in Iraq, which she didn’t.

  One more look in the mirror.

  She kept wondering who that person was who stared back at her.

  Marva hadn’t stopped with the flowing pants and cashmere sweater on the lunch hour. Oh, no, not the dragon lady of Tribute, Texas. The local shops had all closed by the time Amy got off work Friday, but that didn’t deter Marva, not when she had an entire Saturday morning to work with.

  There’d been accessories: earrings—thank heaven Amy’s ears were already pierced or Marva might have done the deed herself, with her teeth if necessary—a necklace to complement the bold design and delicate texture of the sweater, a long, narrow scarf to drape around her neck.

  Then there were shoes. They selected plain black leather pumps with two-inch heels, but only because, it being December and cold, Amy refused to have her bare toes sticking out of the sandals Marva preferred. Amy was under strict orders, however, to purchase a nice pair of dressy high-heeled boots in Waco.

  For a woman who hated the army, Marva Green sure could bark out orders like the most seasoned of drill sergeants.

  Looking at herself in the mirror, Amy remembered the traumatic experience earlier that morning at the hair salon. Call her crazy, but when a stranger came at her with a pair of scissors and a gleam in her eye, Amy got nervous and started wishing for her M-16.

  Who knew that a little snip here, another there, would transform her hair from a mess to tie back out of her way into this cute fluff that feathered around her head and, along with a judicious application of cosmetics, made her eyes look huge, her face delicate.

  She let out a sigh. She was buying into the media’s and society’s hype of their definition of beauty. Shame on her. But she really liked what she saw in the mirror. She might not want to look like this every day—she certainly wouldn’t want to go to all this trouble!—but for special occasions, or when she just felt like it, this was a look she liked.

  A heavy knock on her door startled her.

  Caught preening in the mirror like a teenager primping for her first date, with the prerequisite case of nerves to go with the affair!

  No. Don’t think affair. If she thought about where this date might lead, she’d never make it through the day.

  With a quick spritz from the misty fragrance Marva had insisted she needed, Amy breathed slowly and opened the door to her date.

  “Wow,” he said, giving her a slow once-over that made her feel as if he was stroking her from head to toe. “You look great.”

  Once she got her breath back, Amy swallowed to keep a rein on the nervous giggle trying to break loose. “Not bad, yourself,” she managed. He looked taller. Must be the cowboy boots, when he usually wore work boots. Or maybe it was the crisp, pressed denims that made his legs look a mile long. He wore a pale-blue shirt that made his blue eyes seem a deeper blue than ever. He wore the shirt tucked in, with a silver oval belt buckle etched with a rodeo cowboy riding a bucking bronc.

  Top that with a tan suede Western-style jacket that made his shoulders look wider than usual, and she swore her heart went aflutter. Her heart had never gone aflutter in her life.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Oh, yeah. “Um, let me get my coat.” Marva would cringe if she saw this old parka with her nice clothes, but Amy wasn’t about to freeze just to look good.

  Then again… “How cold is it?” she asked.

  “The most you’ll need is a jacket, if you’ve got something lighter than the parka.”

  She did. It wasn’t suede, like his, but it wouldn’t make her look like Nanook of the North, either.

  “All right, then, I’m ready.” A date. Gulp.

  The fifty-minute drive to Waco down the smooth, two-lane blacktop that led through farmland and pastures went by fast.

  Amy had expected to feel as awkward as ever, as nervous as she’d felt at her apartment, but all of that faded away when she asked him about the girls and he told her of their latest escapades.

&nb
sp; “And we were just about going to be on time, when Cindy comes to me with her hairbrush and says the brush is broken and doesn’t work anymore.”

  “It doesn’t work?”

  “That’s what she said. You gotta love the way a child’s mind works. Her hair was so tangled that she couldn’t get the brush through it, which meant it was broken. She wouldn’t let her sisters help her, so I had to do it. You never saw such snarls. I asked her how her hair got so tangled up, and she came out with the most elaborate story about gremlins sneaking into their room at night and picking her hair up two strands at a time and tying them in knots.”

  Amy laughed at the imagination it took to come up with a story like that.

  “All over her head until it was all snarled.” He was quiet for a minute. “You know what?” He suddenly tilted his head and shot her a curious glance.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s nice to be able to talk about them to another adult besides their grandparents. My usual companions on the rare occasions when I go out are roofers or plumbers or guys I went to school with. Guys don’t talk to each other about their little girl’s tangled hair.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t imagine they do. Not good for the macho image.”

  “How shallow does that make me?”

  “It doesn’t make you shallow, it makes you a normal man.”

  The conversation lulled while he passed a slow-moving hay truck. Then he chuckled. “Cindy came up with another good one this morning. She’s evidently decided you’re an important person in her life.”

  A little warm spot bloomed in Amy’s chest. “Is that okay with you?”

  Startled, he glanced at her before focusing again on the road. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I’m an outsider.”

  “You are not,” he protested quietly but firmly. “She puts you in the same category as her nana.”

  Amy swallowed. “As honored as I am, being in the same anything with Marva Green is downright scary.”

  Riley laughed. “That’s what makes Cindy’s latest story so funny. She’s got it in her head that you and Marva went shopping together.”

  Amy pursed her lips and tried for a look of innocence.

  “You didn’t,” he said. “You did? Did you?”

  “Please. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Ha! You’re embarrassed that you went shopping with the dragon lady?”

  “Not that,” she corrected. “It’s embarrassing that at my age I had to have help finding something to wear on a date.”

  “After what she said to you the other day at the office, you asked her to help you?”

  “I did.” He looked stunned. She laughed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a girl thing. Now she knows I’m not a threat to her.”

  “Ah. So that’s what that was about.”

  “Apparently. Anyway, Cindy didn’t make it up. She’s the one who got Marva to agree to help me, and she went with us yesterday on my lunch hour.”

  “I’m sure she was a big help,” he said with a wry smile.

  “Let’s just say one of the gifts I have to find today is for Darnelle.”

  “Darnelle Hatch?”

  “Let me guess—you went to school with her.”

  “Sure, but she was Darnelle Koch back then. Married Teddy Hatch.”

  “Whom you also went to school with.”

  He gave her a cheesy grin. “Of course.”

  “What’s that like?” she asked, a soft yearning filling her. “Living among people you’ve known all your life, knowing that you can walk down any street in town and come across someone who is your friend.”

  “When you put it that way, it sounds perfect, but its got its ups and downs. On the down side, there is nowhere I can go in town without seeing someone I know.”

  “In other words, it’s a two-edged sword?”

  “You got it. There is no such thing as privacy. Everyone in town knows everyone else’s business.”

  “I’m learning that,” she said. “Ernie the mailman says Jack over at the hardware store drank too much and wrecked his daddy’s car last week.”

  “Yup. And he had Ernie’s cousin’s daughter with him. Which explains why Ernie’s telling everyone in town. Jack’s lucky that Ernie doesn’t have a shotgun.”

  “Considering what Marva thought of me this time last week, I’m pretty glad she doesn’t, either.”

  “So,” he asked a moment later. “This isn’t what Marva helped you pick out, is it?”

  “Yes, it is. I know nothing about style or fashion. She and Darnelle basically had their way with me,” she added with a slight shudder.

  Riley laughed at her. “Maybe Marva’s getting smarter with the years. I would have thought she’d go for ruffles and bows and lace.”

  “She might have, but I reminded her I’m a crack shot with an M-16, and I know where she lives.”

  Riley laughed, then shook his head. “I wish Cindy had something like that she could hold over Marva’s head, and that she’d use it.”

  “Cindy? Why?”

  “I’m afraid she’s not forceful enough to tell anyone if she doesn’t like the ruffles and bows her Nana gets her.”

  “Oh, no,” Amy protested. “Those must be Cindy’s idea.”

  “What do you mean?” He shot her a quick glance.

  “While we were shopping I saw Marva try to interest Cindy in clothes that were more tailored, less frilly. Cindy didn’t want any part of them. She kept going back to the real girly stuff.”

  “So much for me thinking the kid wasn’t forceful enough to express her opinion. I wonder what else I don’t know about my own children.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Daddy. No parent ever knows everything about their kids. Remember back to your own childhood.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’d rather not.”

  At the discount store in Waco, Riley helped Amy find backpacks. Each girl would get a pack sporting her own favorite cartoon character.

  Amy helped Riley choose toys. He wanted to get them each a doll, but Amy said he also had to get each one something that didn’t scream “stay home and have babies” to them.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with staying home and having babies,” Amy said quickly. “It’s an admirable thing to do. It’s a biological imperative. But girls need to know there are other choices.”

  “Of course they have other choices.”

  “Then offer them some.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. A chemistry set. Jigsaw puzzles. Paint-by-numbers.”

  Riley shot her a narrowed look. “You want me to turn three kids loose in my house with chemicals and paints and hundreds of little pieces of cardboard?”

  Amy grinned and patted him on the cheek, ignoring the way her fingers wanted to linger. “Now you’re getting the idea.”

  Before she could pull her hand away, he grabbed it and held it with his on the handle of their shopping cart. “In that case, I might have to insist that you be around to help me clean up the mess.”

  She smirked, thinking she had him now. “Is that an invitation?”

  His thumb stroked her palm and made her shiver. His eyes stayed fixed on hers and stopped her breath.

  “And if it is?” His voice, deep and soft, nearly melted her bones right there where she stood, between the toy trucks and the fishing lures.

  “I’m…uh…oh, look.” She grabbed the closest thing at hand. “A little toy construction set. Maybe one of the girls will want to go into the family business.”

  Without taking his eyes from her, he took the package and tossed it into the shopping basket. Slowly he smiled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I make you nervous.”

  “It’s a good thing you know better.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Amy needed a breather from the whirlwind spinning in her head. The whirlwind named Riley. She freed her hand from his hold and ran her fingers through her newly trimmed hair.

 
After paying for their purchases, they flipped a coin and decided on dinner first, then a movie.

  For the next two hours they sat across from each other in a dimly lit steakhouse and talked. No teasing or innuendos this time, but true conversation. They talked more about the girls, about work and his dreams for his business, about Marva and Frank and their two sons. And they talked about Brenda.

  Riley had a need to know more about Brenda’s life in Iraq, and Amy had a need to talk about the friend who had died protecting her and others.

  After the waiter brought their dessert, Riley shook his head in chagrin. “If this is our test date, I think I’m failing.”

  Surprised, Amy nearly fumbled her fork. “Why do you say that? I thought we were doing fine.”

  “Yeah, but when a guy is trying to worm his way into a woman’s affections or seduce her into bed, he should probably think of something else to talk about besides his late wife. That’s not exactly sweet nothings.”

  Amy chuckled. “Relax. For anybody else, you might be right. For you and me, not talking about her would be awkward.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “You’re right, aren’t you?”

  “Of course. But just so I’ll know, which were you going for? My affections or my bed?”

  She would wonder later if she’d done it on purpose, brought the sexual tension to a sharp peak in an instant.

  Why else would she have asked such a question?

  “Both.”

  Was she out of her mind? Obviously, or she wouldn’t have opened— Both? “Oh.”

  Riley laughed. “You’ve got that deer-in-the-headlights look. I love it.”

  “I’m not a deer, thank you very much. You’re a sadist, enjoying watching someone flop around like a fish out of water.”

  “Oh, sorry, wrong metaphor?”

  “Simile, actually.”

  “The fact that you know that is scary,” he said.

  “I have a feeling,” she said, meeting and holding his gaze, “that before this night is over, I might just scare myself.”

  His eyes slid almost shut. “If I hadn’t promised you a movie…”

  “What would you do?”