Книга - Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business
Inglath Cooper


Country roads always seem to lead you home…Culley Rutherford is doing the best he can to raise his young daughter on his own. One night while at a medical conference in New York City, Culley runs into his old friend Addy Taylor. After a passionate night together, they go their separate ways, so Culley is surprised to see Addy back in Harper's Mill.Culley is willing to explore the attraction between them, but Addy is back in town to help her mother run their family orchard–that's all. Slowly Culley and his daughter, Madeline, try to break down Addy's defenses, hoping to show her that coming home for good is the best move she can make.









Culley raised his glass and tapped it against hers


“To two old friends running into one another.”

Addy raised the glass to her lips and took a long sip. “Your mom told you about the divorce?”

“I’m sorry.” He reached across and covered her hand with his.

Addy couldn’t say anything for a moment. He turned her palm over, squeezed her hand tight, and she held on as if it were a lifeline. Finally she said, “I know what all the marriage manuals say. That when something like this happens, the affair isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom.”

“It still hurts.”

“That from personal experience?”

“Yep.”

Culley glanced away, a cloud of something that looked like sadness in his eyes. Not what she would have expected of the Culley Rutherford she had known in high school.


Dear Reader,

Every now and then I hear people say reading can’t be what it once was. There are too many other forms of media to choose from. While it’s true we have many choices these days when it comes to entertainment, I noticed something on a recent trip to a hair salon in Dallas, Texas, that reassured me books are doing just fine.

This was one of those great places where they offer you hot tea and massage your hands while you’re getting your hair washed with flaxseed shampoo. It was a Saturday, and the place was busier than a hive of bees. While I waited for my appointment, I noticed how many people were reading. An older lady with a Larry McMurtry, a twentysomething young woman with a Nora Roberts. A mother with a baby in tow snatching paragraphs of something that looked light and fun. A gray-haired man waiting for his wife, deep into James Patterson. And really, it seemed as if they were all enjoying the opportunity to read every bit as much as they were enjoying the salon’s exceptionally nice treatment.

I think those people all knew what I know about reading. That even with all the entertainment we have to choose from today, there’s something special about a book. Maybe it’s the one-on-one connection we have with the characters, or the fact that we can keep turning the pages without commercial interruption. And what a pleasure it is to read the first page and think, “Ah, this is going to be a good story.”

That’s what I wish for you. Many, many good stories!

All best,

Inglath Cooper

P.S. Please visit my Web site at inglathcooper.com. Write to me at P.O. Box 973, Rocky Mount, VA 24151.




Unfinished Business

Inglath Cooper







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Mac for showing me what real love is.

And to Grandpa Holland for the Sunday morning rides.




CONTENTS


PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN




PROLOGUE


ADDY PIERCE HAD always believed in the power of intuition.

That little voice had a purpose.

Hard to explain, then, why she ignored it this particular day.

She’d worked on the Lawson case until after midnight, setting the alarm for four and leaving Mark asleep when she headed out the door for the office at five.

She had just sat down at her desk with a cup of much needed coffee when she missed the file, remembered she’d left it on the dining-room table. She was to be in court at ten o’clock, but she had enough time to run home and pick it up on the way.

It was then that the little voice had sounded inside her.

Send someone else.

Looking back, this was the detail that continued to play like a CD track stuck on what-if. What if she had sent someone else to get the file? Would they have told her Mark was at home? Or taken pity on her and left her unaware of the fracture in her marriage?

But none of those things had happened.

Addy had been the one to drive to her house. The one to open the front door and notice his suit jacket draped across the back of the living-room couch. The one to hear his voice coming from upstairs. The words not clear from where she stood in the foyer, but distinctly his voice. Followed by a woman’s laugh.

The voice inside Addy screamed. Leave. Turn around and leave.

But eight years of practicing law had shown her that knowledge, once gained, can rarely be ignored.

Standing there in the foyer of a house that already felt as if it didn’t belong to her, a feeling of dread swept through her, weakened her knees, so she put a hand on the wall and stood for a moment, waiting for the room to stop its listing.

Her feet moved of their own volition, the runner on the staircase deadening her footsteps. She followed the hall to the master bedroom, the voices drawing closer.

They’d left the bedroom door open. This amazed her. That in their own house, their own bed, he hadn’t bothered to close the door.

How could he have been so comfortable that he left the door open?

Through that rectangle she watched the husband who was supposed to have been hers rest his cheek on the woman’s belly, rounded with child.

Addy swallowed. Went absolutely numb as if someone had flipped a switch and obliterated all feeling inside her.

Mark turned, as if he’d felt her gaze. Shock skidded across his too good-looking face, then froze there.

“Addy. What are you doing here?”

The question hung in the air, ridiculous, considering. The woman scrambled up—as well as a woman in her condition can scramble—and yanked the covers around herself with a well-sculpted arm.

She was so young. She had the kind of skin that made Addy want to run out in search of face creams guaranteed to halt the aging process in its tracks.

What was Mark doing with someone who looked like she should still be in college?

He jerked out of the bed. Addy stared at her naked husband while the woman made no effort to hide the possessiveness in her own assessment of him. Mark reached for a robe where it lay on top of the thick comforter. Addy recognized it as the one she had bought for him at Bloomingdale’s for Christmas last year.

A robe. She’d given him a robe.

Was that the cause of this? The fact that their marriage had deteriorated to the point that she couldn’t come up with anything more exciting than a robe for a gift?

The room suddenly had no air in it. Her lungs screamed in protest. She was going to be sick. She turned and bolted down the hall.

“Addy! Addy, wait!” Mark called out.

She stumbled down the stairs. Don’t think. Not yet. Get out. Just go. Her throat had closed up, and her eyes burned with the need to cry. Not in front of him. She would not cry in front of him!

“Addy, please!” He caught her in the foyer, his chest rising and falling with what looked more like agitation than exertion. Her gaze dropped to his ab muscles. A six-pack. Like those guys in the men’s fitness magazines. When had he started working out? And he’d lost weight, hadn’t he?

She realized then how long it had been since she’d seen him without his clothes on. How long it had been since the two of them had made love. She felt a wash of mortification for what she now knew to be the reason.

“We need to talk, Addy,” he said, a note of uncertainty in his normally confident attorney’s voice.

She focused on the navy crest of his robe, the knot in her throat so thick she could barely speak. “Aren’t we a little beyond the talking stage?”

“This isn’t how I wanted to tell you,” he said, compassion edging the admission.

Fury exploded through her. She did not want his pity! Damn him. “How long has this been going on?”

He looked away, then dropped his gaze, guilt etched in every angle of his posture. “I never wanted to hurt you, Addy.”

“You knew I wanted children. You weren’t ready, you said. How could you? How could you do this?” The words throbbed with pain, and she hated her own inability to keep them neutral.

He stepped toward her, reached out, then dropped his hands to his sides. “Please, Addy, I don’t know what to say. This wasn’t planned. It just—”

“Don’t you dare say it just happened. I can’t believe you would do this to us. Who are you?”

He blocked the door with one hand. “Wait. Addy! You don’t understand—”

“I understand,” she said, the details of their marriage clicking into place like the numbers on a vault lock. All those late nights he’d been working, his lack of interest in her and the fact that they hadn’t made love in months.

The anger collapsed inside her, and she felt as though her bones might not support her. She walked over to the dining-room table, picked up the file she’d left that morning.

And, without another word between them, she left. Game over. Marriage finished.




CHAPTER ONE


ADDY TAYLOR STOOD at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 48th Street, hand raised for a taxi. Rain pelted her already-a-lost-cause hair, and her lightweight coat drooped beneath the downpour. She glanced at her watch, waved harder as another cab sped past her like a bullet, tossing a wave of muddy water across the toes of the Italian leather pumps she’d stalked for two months at Neiman’s until they finally went on sale.

She stepped back from the curb, reached down and pulled off a shoe, emptied it of water, then did the same for the other.

Her flight was due to leave LaGuardia in forty-five minutes. She had been in Manhattan since Monday, taking depositions from the board of directors of a company Owings, Blake was representing in a securities fraud suit. She’d known she was pushing it, allowing so little time to get to the airport, but she’d been close enough to finishing to not have to come back next week.

Fifteen minutes later, a taxi whisked to a stop beside her. She opened the door, shoved her small suitcase and laptop bag across the blue vinyl seat, slid in and closed the door. “LaGuardia, please.”

The driver had thick black frame glasses and a scruff of a beard that looked as if his razor had gone dull several days before. He pulled out into traffic, looking in the rearview mirror. “Which airline?”

“U.S. Air.”

“What time’s your flight?”

“Five-fifteen.”

He gave her a pointed look, muttered something about the taxi not having wings, then rammed the accelerator to the floor, tossing her against the back seat.

She looked down at her lap. A drenched mess. She reached inside her purse and pulled out a couple of tissues, attempted to wipe the rain from her face, only to have them dissolve in a sodden lump in her hands. A complete waste of time.

She dropped her head back, pressed a thumb to her throbbing right temple. What she would give for a hot bath and a long soak. The last thing she wanted to do was get on an airplane. So spend the night.

The thought beamed up from nowhere, only to be squashed by a wake of practicality. Too expensive. She hadn’t planned to stay.

But then why not? What did she have to hurry home for?

Another weekend, and nothing but an empty house that stood as an all too recognizable symbol of her empty life.

April third. First day as an officially no-longer-married woman. Addy hated the sound of it, hated everything about the new tag, its implications of failure and rejection. The realization that like her own mother, she had been left. Half a year had passed since Mark had moved out, and sometimes Addy felt as though she were still standing in the doorway of their bedroom, trying to make sense of the fact that there was another woman in her bed. Six months, and she had not moved beyond that single truth.

Maybe it was finally time she got moving. At the very least, she could indulge herself for the night.

She sat up in the seat. “Wait. I’ve changed my mind. The Plaza Hotel, please.”

Another pointed look through the rearview mirror, this time with compressed lips to complete his disapproval.

A few minutes later, the taxi jarred to a stop outside the 59th Street entrance to the Plaza. A bellman opened Addy’s door and took what luggage she had. She paid the driver who managed to complete the transaction with a single huff and an acceleration back into traffic worthy of NASCAR.

Addy went inside and checked in, relieved that there was a room available, astronomically expensive though it was.

The bellhop, an older man with white hair and shoulders hunched from the weight of several decades worth of suitcases, directed her through the hotel’s ornate lobby to the elevator and up to her room. Inside, he pointed out the minibar, the safe inside the closet. “May I get you some ice before I go, miss?”

“No. Thank you. I’m fine.” She handed him a tip for his help, and with a nod, he left her alone. Under other circumstances, she might have enjoyed the luxurious room. An Oriental rug, two double beds with a mound of pillows propped high, a wall cabinet which housed the TV, fax machine and Internet connection.

Heat crowded the room. She cracked the window, letting in the sounds of the city below, the whine of a trumpet, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on the paved streets.

With methodical movements, she emptied her suitcase. Nothing inside except two wrinkled suits and workout clothes she’d worn to Crunch, the club she’d escaped to each night that week in order to avoid the late dinners she was semi-expected to attend with her client.

On another spur-of-the-moment impulse, she grabbed her purse and headed back out of the hotel. The rain had stopped, so she didn’t bother putting up the umbrella the doorman had just handed her. Barney’s was a short walk away, and she headed up 59th Street, aware that she could be accused of trying to avoid the pain gnawing at her stomach. And maybe she was. She’d racked up enough billable hours in the past six months to put her in the running for junior-partner status. Work was the distraction she needed. As long as she focused on whatever case was before her, she could avoid looking at the state of disaster currently posing as her personal life.

She crossed over to 60th and headed toward Lexington Avenue. Her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse. “Hello.”

“Where are you?” Ellen Wilshire rarely bothered with greetings. As a newly appointed partner in the same firm for which Addy worked, she trimmed minutes from her non-billable schedule just as she trimmed fat from every morsel of food she ate.

“Still in the city. Currently headed toward Barney’s.”

“You’re supposed to be back in D.C.”

“I decided to stay the night.”

“And I had planned to take you out on the town!”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t sound it.”

There was a smile in Ellen’s voice, so Addy didn’t bother to deny it. As grateful as she was for her friend’s consideration, she wasn’t sorry she’d missed the outing. Ellen’s idea of cheering her up would be a night spent in some currently hip spot where thirty-somethings with their own set of divorce papers were trying to anesthetize reality with Cosmopolitans. “I’m still in training wheels on the social scene, Ellen. Rusty and not interested.”

“Yeah, the unapproachable signs are hard to miss. Poor Teddy’s been asking me for detour instructions again.”

A young, fast-track attorney at Owings, Blake, Teddy Simpson had made no secret of his interest. He’d been consulting Ellen on a regular basis for tips on getting Addy to go out with him.

But the thought of entering the dating scene again all but gave her hives.

“Let me guess. You’re going in search of a little black dress for a night out in the city.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“Whoo-hoo! Is there a man etched into this anywhere?”

“No. I thought I’d fix myself up, get a table in the Oak Bar and spend the evening with a book.”

“Excellent social outing,” Ellen said with a frown in her voice.

“Practicing for the future.”

“When you decide to stop living like a nun.”

Addy smiled. Ellen had been on her case for months. Get back out there. Find someone else, and you’ll forget all about Mark.

But Addy didn’t think it was possible to forget eleven years of marriage, and especially not one that had ended as hers had. If anything, it had run a stake through her heart and anchored her to a single spot of relative safety from which she was reluctant to move.

“Okay, one more night of this solo stuff, and you’re mine,” Ellen conceded. “You’re thirty-three, not eighty-three, and I can’t in good conscience stand by and let every social skill you ever had atrophy. Tomorrow night. We’ll paint Georgetown red.”

“I can hardly wait,” Addy said.

“Just finish the book tonight. You won’t need it for a while.”

The line clicked off with Ellen’s usual abruptness.

Addy put the cell phone back in her purse, turned the corner to the front entrance of Barney’s. The customers here all looked as though they took their Vogue subscriptions seriously. Lots of black, chunky heels, skin that had been exfoliated and moisturized into a blemish-free existence. She took the escalator to the third floor, bought a too-short black dress and a pair of too-high heels to go with it, both of which dealt a near death blow to her AmEx.

On the way back to the hotel, she passed an antique store, caught a glimpse of herself in the wavy glass of an old framed mirror. She stopped, stared for a moment, wondered how she could have thought a new dress and shoes could fix the tear inside her. Allow her to look in the mirror and see a woman capable of getting past her husband’s betrayal. The truth? There wasn’t a black dress in Manhattan that could get her past that.

Nothing she had believed about herself fit anymore. If her life had once been a puzzle whose pieces had long been put in place, it had all been ripped apart the morning she found Mark in bed with his pregnant lover. Since then, she’d been trying to put those pieces back together, but nothing fit where it had once been. Her vision of herself as a desirable woman, her once-certain career goals.

An older man in a red bow tie stepped to the window, raised an eyebrow in inquiry. She lifted a hand and walked on.

Back in her room, she took a long bath. Up to her neck in bubbles, fatigue hit her in a wave, sent off little alarms along her nerve endings. People weren’t supposed to be this tired at thirty-three, were they? This kind of tired was the stop sign at the end of the road for lawyers who’d been practicing for thirty years. The kind that made them start thinking about retirement and second homes in south Florida.

Maybe she just needed a vacation. Some downtime. Owings, Blake expected a lot from its attorneys. Sixty to seventy hours a week was standard unless they had a big case going, and then it was whatever it took to get the job done. Past that, Addy shied from taking apart her own question. Examining the nuts and bolts of it.

At some point in her marriage, she had developed a fairly keen ability to let things she didn’t know how to fix merely coast along as they were. The fact, for example, that somewhere along the way, she and Mark had begun to feel like two roommates sharing the same home. “Morning, honey,” on the way out the door to work. “Night,” before they went to bed. And very little else in between.

Every marriage had its problems. Hers had certainly been no exception. And yes, she would take full credit for sinking herself so deeply into work these past couple of years that she had ignored the warning signs. Late nights. Saturdays at the office.

But the simple truth was that she had trusted her husband. Had married him thinking he was a man who would take his vows as seriously as she did. And this was the part she couldn’t get past. That she could have been so wrong.

When she’d been eight or nine years old, she’d gone on a camping trip with her church youth group. There had been a heavy rain on the first night, and early the next morning she had waded out into the middle of the river that flowed near where they had pitched their tents. The water had risen quickly, covering the rocks she had used as a path coming out. No one else had been up yet, and she stood in the middle of the once placid river, transfixed with fear. She had known that just below the surface were rocks that would lead her back to shore. But some might have already grown too slick. And what if she slipped and fell into the current? Was she strong enough to swim back?

She had finally forced herself to move, found her way to shore before anyone realized she was missing.

In these past six months, she hadn’t been able to make herself pick a path back to safety. She just kept standing in the same spot while the water rose around her.

The bath was cool now. She stood, reached for one of the big white towels hanging beside the tub. Maybe she should just order room service and go to bed. She thought of Mark, knowing he wasn’t alone tonight, this first night of their divorce. He had started a new life. With another woman and a baby boy, now six weeks old. Addy had been made aware of the birth after running into a mutual friend of theirs in the grocery store, the information imparted with a kind of I-hate-to-tell-you-this-but reservation, beneath which was hidden an almost malicious glee to be the first to reveal the news.

One thing was true about divorce. It showed a person who her friends were. And weren’t.

Suddenly, Addy was sick of rehashing the same stuff she’d been rehashing for six months. She would put on the new dress and go downstairs. Ellen was right. She was spending way too much time alone with her own thoughts. At least in a room full of people, there was the odd chance of drowning them out.




CHAPTER TWO


THE OAK BAR, the Plaza Hotel’s wood-paneled watering hole, had a gracious charm that allowed even out-of-towners to feel welcome. It was the kind of place where people didn’t mind double-digit pricing for their highballs. Heavy, dark-wood tables filled the room, surrounded by brown leather chairs, invitingly worn.

In town for a medical conference, Culley Rutherford had agreed to join three of his buddies here in a salute to old times. They were drinking scotch. He was nursing fancy-label bottled water.

“I knew you when that would have been two jiggers of J.D.” This from Paul Evans, his old roommate from Hopkins.

“Too much to hope I’ve matured since then?” Culley asked in a neutral voice while a knife of familiar pain did a slow turn inside him, its edges sharp enough to make him wish he’d never agreed to this buddies-weekend.

“We’re supposed to be taking advantage of this, aren’t we?” Paul held up the red-embered tip of the thirty-five-dollar cigar he’d been pretending to smoke for the past hour and a half. “We’re in New York City, the Oak Bar, no less. No wives. No children. No patients. I’ve seen at least fifteen bombshells walk through that door since we got here,” he said with a meaningful head tilt toward the bar entrance. “Does life get any better?”

Culley had once been the least serious of the foursome. And there had been a time—surely, it hadn’t been that long ago?—when he would have agreed and ordered the next round of drinks. Actually, he would have been the one to make the statement in the first place. Actually, he would have already left with one of those bombshells Paul had been ogling.

Until he’d run head-on into a wall called consequence, and everything had changed.

Now he was just another guy closing in on thirty-five. He checked his watch to see how much longer he’d have to stick with this group before he could escape to their hotel down the street and the decently comfortable bed waiting for him there without having to cart along more than his share of ridicule for being an old party pooper.

The three other guys at the table— Paul, Wallace Mitchell and Tristan Overfelt—had hounded him by e-mail until he’d finally agreed to come this weekend. Culley had nearly backed out at the last minute—there would have been plenty of excuses that held water—but even he had thought it might be good for him to try to start being sociable again.

“This next round has your name on it, Culley.” Tristan helped the hovering waiter pass around the drinks from the tray in his hand, then threw the check across the table to Culley. He pulled a fifty out of his wallet and handed that and the bill back to the waiter who nodded and moved on.

Another hour passed during which they waded through some of their more memorable med-school experiences: the day Paul had passed out when they’d delivered their first baby (he still swore on his mother’s Bible that he’d had a virus; he was an OBGYN, for heaven’s sake, he had a reputation to uphold). The time Wallace had spent their rent money on tickets to an AC/DC concert, and they’d gotten thrown out of their apartment, spending the rest of the semester living out of their cars.

And there was the usual guy stuff. Bad dirty jokes. Boasts from the still-married guys about how their wives wanted to have sex five nights a week, none of which any of them believed. Everybody except Culley ordered another cigar, stage-smokers all. They didn’t actually like smoking them; they just liked the way they looked pretending to smoke them.

“Now there’s one I’d give it all up for.”

Culley glanced at Paul who was doing a dead-on imitation of a balding, sex-deprived, turned-loose-for-the-weekend husband who’d just caught a glimpse of what he’d been missing. His tongue was practically hanging out.

A look at the door revealed why.

She was a knockout. Even Culley, disinterested as he was, would admit that. And he’d barely noticed the fifteen women Paul had pointed out before her. With a seven-year-old daughter, dating just wasn’t worth the complications it inevitably created. He hadn’t been with a woman in—

He didn’t want to think about how long that had been.

Wallace and Tristan were busy agreeing with Paul that the breasts were real. The figure-defining black dress certainly gave ample evidence on which to base their conclusions. A low dip at the front of the dress revealed a vee of cleavage. Something inside him stirred, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt the itch of physical need for a woman.

His gaze went to her face. She didn’t have the expectant expression of a beautiful woman meeting a date or a husband. There was sadness there, disappointment of some kind.

He had a ridiculous urge to ask her if she was alone.

She followed the maitre d’ across the floor, winding through the busy bar past their table.

There was something awfully familiar about her. And then recognition jolted through him. It couldn’t be. No way.

Paul, Wallace and Tristan stared like three men who’d spent the last six months at sea. Culley stared, too, but now for a different reason altogether.

Addy.

Addy!

The woman whose breasts he and his friends had been assessing with clinical horniness was Addy Taylor.

Culley got up from the table as if puppet strings pulled him out of the chair one limb at a time.

“You’re not going over there, are you?” Paul laughed. “We know you’re probably short on goddesses down there in Podunk, Virginia, but this would be ballsy even for the Culley of old.”

“I know her,” Culley said.

“No way,” came back the chorus of three.

“And we thought things had changed. You still get all the hot chicks,” Paul grumbled.

Culley tamped his friend down with a look of disapproval. “I’m just going over to say hi to an old friend.”

“How do you know her?” Tristan piped up, suspicion drawing his brows together.

“We kind of grew up together. She married a friend of mine from high school.”

“Oh, yeah, Mark—” Paul searched for a last name.

“Pierce,” Culley finished for him.

“So where is he? If she were mine, I sure wouldn’t be turning her loose in the likes of this city.”

Culley shook his head. “You always did hold the reins way too tight, Evans. Don’t you know that just makes them want to run faster?”

Paul frowned while Tristan and Wallace laughed, their hoots ripened by the Scotch they’d been drinking like Gatorade.

Culley headed across the room on the crest of their still rumbling laughter. Six paces into it, an extended family of butterflies had taken up residence beside the campfire still smoldering in his stomach. How long had it been since he’d seen Addy? Years. His brain couldn’t seem to wrap itself around a number, but he knew it had been shortly after Mark and Addy had gotten married, definitely not since Mark had stopped keeping in touch, quit returning Culley’s phone calls.

Just a few feet from her table now, he was struck again by the differences in her. He remembered her in her wedding dress, how perfect and…virginal she had looked that day.

He remembered how envy had nearly eaten a hole in him.

The woman sitting at the table in front of him did not look virginal.

She looked…hot. Paul’s word, but appropriate here.

She glanced up then, cutting short his visual assessment.

“Hello, Addy,” he said, his voice sounding like it needed to go home and come back after it had gotten some more practice.

The surprise on her face fit every cliché ever used to describe it. “Culley?”

“Small world, huh?” He tried for a smile, but found it had apparently unionized with his voice, and they were both on strike.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, one hand fluttering to her throat.

“Ah, conference, with those guys,” he said, hitching a thumb back toward his table. He didn’t dare look around; his three friends had lost any nuances of subtle behavior several jiggers ago. “How about you?”

She cleared her throat, looked down, then, “Just here for the night, actually. I’ve been working in the city this week.”

Culley knew about the divorce. His mother had kept him apprised of the details, sparse as they were, despite his reluctance to hear them.

There had been plenty of times over the years when he’d thought about picking up the phone and calling Addy. She’d been his friend first, after all. But her marriage to Mark had shifted the balance of their relationship, redefined it. And then there had been that last, awful scene between Mark and him the night of their wedding. Nothing had been the same after that.

Even after he’d heard about their divorce, it felt as if too much time had passed for him to contact Addy, or maybe he still felt guilty for protecting Mark all those years ago.

“Is someone joining you?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Mind if I do?”

She met his gaze, held it in silence long enough to make him wonder if she might turn him down, then said, “I’d like that.”

“Let me just go tell these guys,” he said, hit with the inexplicable feeling that he was aimed for the edge of a cliff, and his brakes were about to fail.




CHAPTER THREE


HE WAS THE last person in the world Addy had imagined seeing in the Oak Bar of the Plaza Hotel.

She watched him wind his way through the tables to the corner of the smoke filled bar where he’d said his friends were sitting. He looked different, and yet there was a sameness to him that was familiar and somehow comforting.

Culley.

She let the name settle over her, sink into an awareness that had been elbowed out of existence long ago.

They had grown up together, their mothers best friends, both of whom had once nurtured the idea of their children marrying the way some people cultivate prize-winning gardens.

But Addy had recognized early on that she and Culley were different. His bedroom walls had been lined with pictures of a half-dozen stars. Hers had a single picture of Tom Cruise, to whom she had remained faithful until her junior year when Mark started school in Harper’s Mill.

To Addy, Culley had been one of those guys who would never settle down, never be happy with one permanent relationship. Girls left their bras in his locker with their phone number written on a strap. She had teased him mercilessly about it, told herself she didn’t mind. The two of them had been friends since they were toddlers. And she had her own goals. On the day her father had walked out to make another family for himself, she had decided the man she eventually ended up with would be the kind of man who meant it when he said one and only, forever.

“Hi.”

He was back. She didn’t miss the interested glances of the two blondes sitting at the table across from them, both of whom looked as though they would have been all for leaving their bra with a room number written inside.

“Hi,” Addy said. “Sit down.”

He took the chair across from her, and she stole the unobserved moment to notice a few details about him. Short, dark-blond hair. A slash of jaw that, in her opinion, had always been the defining feature of his good looks. He was lean and fit, and she was glad to see that he had taken care of himself. That his need to push life’s limits had never taken him over the edge.

He looked up then, caught her staring. Gripped with sudden awkwardness, Addy anchored her hands around the wineglass in front of her and tried for a neutral smile. She didn’t need a mirror to know she’d failed.

He signaled a waiter who promptly stepped forward to take their drink order.

“What would you like, Addy?” Culley asked.

She tapped the edge of her glass. “I’m good for now.”

“A bottle of water for me, please,” he said to the waiter, who nodded and strode off in the direction of the bar.

His departure left behind another gulf of silence over which Culley’s gaze found hers, serious, a little intent.

“You look incredible, Addy.”

It was not what she’d expected him to say, but she was suddenly glad she’d bought the black dress even though it had no magical powers of transformation. She took a sip of her wine, finding it easier to let the compliment hover, than acknowledge it with a response.

The waiter reappeared with his water. Culley raised his glass and tapped it against the edge of hers. “To two old friends running into one another. A very nice surprise.”

She raised the glass to her lips and took a long sip. “Your mom told you about the divorce?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Her smile wavered. “Thanks.”

Culley reached across and covered her hand with his. “Are you all right?”

She couldn’t say anything, his touch surprising her, then suffusing her with a simultaneous rush of warmth and something way too close to gratitude. He turned her palm over, squeezed her hand tight, and she held on as if it were a lifeline, sure of nothing except that she didn’t want him to let go.

He didn’t.

He held on while he got up from his chair, and said, “Scoot over.”

She slid across the leather seat, and he settled in beside her. “Just when you think you know someone,” she said.

“So what happened?”

“Imagine the most boring cliché, and you’ll have the picture.”

He considered that, then said, “Were you having problems?”

“I didn’t think so, but looking back from here, I guess we were. I know what all the marriage manuals say. That when something like this happens, the affair isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom.”

“Still hurts.”

She took another sip of wine. “That from personal experience?”

“Yep.”

“So what happened to yours?”

He looked down, but not before she saw the shadow cross his face. “That’s a story for another time.”

Addy’s gaze skittered away from his, settling on the next table over where an older couple had just been seated. In a booming voice, the man told their waiter that he and his wife were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary.

Culley glanced at them, a cloud of something that looked like sadness in his eyes. Not what she would have expected of the Culley Rutherford she had known in high school, Mark’s opposite, the one whose mission it was to play the field, steer clear of anything remotely hinting at commitment.

Addy pulled her hand from his and said, “Mama told me you took over Dr. Nettles’s practice.”

“Kind of surprised the whole town, I think.”

“No wonder, considering how you egged his car that Halloween.”

He smiled. “You know, he forgave me for that, but I think he tacked on a little extra anyway when I bought him out.”

Addy laughed. And the sound of it chipped away at a chunk of the ice frozen inside her. Simultaneously set up a small stir of appreciation for the presence of the man sitting next to her.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself all these years,” he urged now.

“I graduated from college and woke up one day to find out I’d turned thirty. I think I billed out all the hours in between.”

He smiled. “What kind of law are you practicing?”

“Corporate.”

“Do you like what you do?”

“The rewards are good,” she said, not exactly answering the question.

Which he didn’t let her get away with. “But do you enjoy it?”

“It was exciting at first. I’ve wondered now and then if it’s what I want to do the rest of my life.” She looked down for a moment, suddenly anxious to turn the conversation away from herself. “So what about you? You have a daughter. Tell me about her.”

He nodded, and his face took on an immediate transformation. “Madeline. She’s seven. I’m pretty much a lost cause now. No idea what I’ll do when she’s sixteen.”

Addy smiled. “Some would call that poetic justice.”

“For?”

“All the fathers whose daughters went out with you.”

He put both hands over his heart, looked wounded. “Was I that bad?”

“Close enough.” She smiled. “Madeline lives with you?”

Culley nodded.

“Are you happy in Harper’s Mill?”

“It’s home. Coming back was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

The words sent up a flare of longing inside Addy. Over the years, she hadn’t let herself think about going back. As far as Mark was concerned, it hadn’t been an option. “Does your ex-wife live there, too?”

He shook his head, his expression suddenly blank. “No.”

Addy wanted to ask more, but felt his reluctance to discuss it.

“Do you ever miss the orchard?”

“Only every time I get a whiff of apples.”

He nodded. “I missed being in a small town. When we were kids, I couldn’t wait to move on to somewhere bigger. Bigger had to be better. But then living in Philadelphia, I actually figured at six minutes a day, five days a week for thirty years, I’d be spending about thirty-two days of my life sitting at this one stoplight. Kind of changed my perspective about bigger.”

Addy laughed, forgetting for the moment everything but the fact that she was sitting across the table from Culley Rutherford, who, since their sandbox days, had been able to make her laugh.

“So what happened between you and Mark? Why did you two stop keeping in touch?”

Culley looked away. “That was his choice, not mine.”

“There must have been a reason.”

“If there was, he’ll have to be the one to tell you.”

“Now you really have me curious.”

He met her gaze then. “People change, Addy.”

“They certainly do.”

Across the room, his buddies were standing, waving for a waiter.

“Let me just tell them to go on without me,” Culley said, sliding out of the booth, looking a little relieved by the opportunity to change the suject.

“I don’t want to mess up your plans with them.”

“You’re not messing up anything. And I’m sure they’re done for the night, anyway.”

She nodded, watching him make his way through the still-crowded bar. He clapped one of the men on the shoulder, laughed at something another said. Gladness washed over her for the fact that she had run into him in this place that was home to neither of them. It was like having a little piece of Harper’s Mill handed to her. Comforting. Familiar.

A memory drifted up. A hot August afternoon, the summer before Mark had moved to Harper’s Mill. She could still hear the melodic voices of the migrant workers in the orchard beyond the pond. The apples she and Culley had given their horses still fresh on their hands as they’d sat there on the dock, feet dangling in the water, the setting sun warm on their faces.

Addy had been garnering up her courage for days. Ever since they’d gone to the movies together the week before and sat in stilted silence while the couple on the screen settled into one of those mouths-wide-open kisses after which they declare undying love for one another. “Okay,” she’d said, “so I want to know what all the fuss is about.”

“What fuss?”

“About kissing. I want you to show me.”

Culley had leaned back, surprise raising his dark eyebrows. “You need to save that for Mr. Right.”

“What if he never comes along?”

“He will. He’ll show up one day, and you’ll change every thought you ever had just so they’ll be like his.”

“Will not!”

“Will to.”

“Not if his thoughts are anywhere near as chauvinistic as yours.”

Culley grinned. “Realistic. Not chauvinistic.”

“I’m not like that Pied Piper posse that follows you all over school.”

“Jealous?”

“Right.”

Silence again, except for the knocking of their heels against the old wooden dock.

“So I’m serious. Kiss me. Just once, and I’ll know what the big deal is. Or not.”

“If I kiss you, you’ll melt into a puddle, and then what will I tell your mama?”

Addy laughed. “How do you drag that ego around with you?”

“It’s a chore,” he said.

They both laughed then. Somewhere in the middle of it, their gazes snagged, and the laughter faded.

And then as if not giving himself time to reconsider, Culley dipped his head, brushing her lips with his, the tail end of the kiss lingering a moment, then ending as quickly as it had begun.

He planted both hands on the edge of the dock, staring down at the water. “Well?”

Addy lifted a shoulder. “It was okay. I haven’t melted yet.”

He looked at her, clearly not pleased with the answer. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed a thumb across her lower lip, giving it consideration. “Pleasant, I suppose.”

“Pleasant is a Sunday afternoon drive with your great-aunt Ethel.”

Addy giggled.

Culley’s eyes had gone serious. He looped a hand around the back of her neck, pulled her to him and kissed her again.

No friendly peck, this one.

He opened his mouth and kissed her like he meant to close the deal.

The intimacy of the kiss shocked Addy, sent waves of never before felt feelings tumbling through her. She made a soft sound and opened her mouth to his, following his lead.

He slid an arm around her waist, gathered her closer. All of a sudden, that was the only thing in the world Addy Taylor wanted. To be closer to Culley Rutherford.

They kissed like they’d done it a hundred times, and it was this that Addy thought about years later. How easy and right those kisses had felt.

Maybe too right, because the intensity of what had happened between them that afternoon had set them both back on their heels.

Culley let her go, quickly, as if not giving himself time to reconsider. They’d never before been awkward with one another, but now they couldn’t look each other in the eye. No more joking about whether the kiss had been any good, either. They’d gathered up their things and headed home, both quiet.

They kept their distance from each other for the next few weeks. That kiss had changed the chemistry of their relationship. On the first day of school, the two of them sat in separate seats on the bus. Since kindergarten, they’d sat together, and every kid on their route wanted to know what was up with Addy and Culley.

Addy wished she’d never asked him to kiss her. She wanted her friend back.

She had met Mark on the first day of school that year. He’d transferred to their high school from another county, and Culley’s prediction had proved true. Addy fell in love. Oddly enough, he and Culley had become best friends. And just as Culley had said, she’d changed every plan she’d made for the future to synchronize with his, left the hometown she loved only to wake up one day to discover that the reality in which she’d been living wasn’t reality at all.

“They’re done for the night.” Culley was back, sliding onto the leather seat beside her.

“Are you sure I didn’t mess up your plans?”

“We’d done about all the male bonding any of us could handle. They’re going back to the hotel to call their wives.”

She smiled. “I was just thinking about that afternoon when we were fifteen, and I made you kiss me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “A real hardship.”

The words hung there for a moment, charged the air with something that felt a little dangerous. “That changed everything between us,” she said, surprised by her own directness.

He was silent, and then said, “It scared the devil out of me.”

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You want honesty?”

She nodded.

“Because after that, I knew we couldn’t be the same kind of friends anymore. Looking back, it all seems pretty innocent. But I never forgot that kiss.”

She thought about her response for several seconds before admitting, “Neither did I. I told myself every girl is a bit intrigued by the guy who makes it clear his heart isn’t up for grabs.”

“And I was one of those guys?”

“I’ll say.”

“Was not.”

“Were, too.”

“On the basis of?”

“Dating in nearly alphabetical order three-quarters of our class.”

“Exaggeration.”

“Barely.” She felt a flutter of something very much like happiness. Were they flirting with each other?

Culley smiled then, sheepish. “That was sure another lifetime.”

“So you’ve changed?”

“The most boring man you’re likely to ever know.”

“Your patients are probably eighty percent female.”

“Ouch. Another arrow to the heart. Totally unjustified.”

Addy gave him a doubtful look, hazy though it was, having been filtered through a second glass of red wine.

Silence hung between them then, while the beginnings of an old connection took hold. They sat there, locked in the moment, while beside them the fortieth-anniversary couple got up and headed for the doorway, arms around one another’s waists.

Warning signals blared in Addy’s ear. Here she sat shoulder to shoulder in the booth of a seductive hotel bar with an alarmingly attractive man who had once been a very big part of her life.

Time to go, Addy.

She glanced at her watch. “Twelve-thirty. I didn’t realize it was so late. I better get going.”

He caught the waiter’s attention, asked for the bill, wouldn’t hear of splitting it. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you up.”

“That’s all right, really. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, no. I insist. You’ll tell your mama about my bad manners, and then I’ll have to hear about it from my own mom for weeks.”

Addy smiled. “Fair enough, but just to the elevator.”




CHAPTER FOUR


ONE OF THE lobby elevators stood empty and waiting. Addy popped on a polite this-was-really-terrific smile. “Thank you,” she said. “It was great seeing you.”

“I’ll see you to your door.”

Before she could think of a reasonable-sounding protest, he took her elbow and steered her inside. She pushed the button for her floor, then stood awkwardly to one side, Culley to the other.

The danger alarms were going off again, awareness surrounding them like a force field.

The elevator slid to a stop, and they stepped out. Her room was at the end of the corridor. “You don’t have to go all the way,” she said, even though something inside her screamed too late. “I’ll be fine.”

“Addy, I’m not going to leave you standing out here in the hallway,” he said and took her elbow once again.

To insist otherwise would have been silly—for heaven’s sake, he was just being polite—and she could not deny that his hand on her bare arm made her feel protected and secure, temporary as it was.

At her room, she pulled the key from her black leather clutch. He took it from her, but didn’t open the door.

“I’m really glad we got to see each other,” she said. “This night ended up very different from what it started out to be.”

His blue eyes were steady, intense, some emotion there clearly at war with itself. “For me, too.”

The elevator dinged, opening on the floor once more. The married couple from the bar stepped out and headed to the opposite end of the hall, their voices low, hushed, intimate. The key clicked in the door lock, a soft rush of laughter following.

The air in the hallway was suddenly thick. Addy drew in a quick breath, mesmerized by the man standing before her with questions in his eyes. She had no answers. Only knew herself to be spellbound by the moment and a very real desire to invite him into her room.

The thought was shocking in its clarity. She’d been married for eleven years. And she had been a faithful wife. By thought and deed. She’d had colleagues call her old-fashioned because she hadn’t bought into their so-what’s-the-big-deal-about-an-office-affair outlook, which they pushed like an illegal but socially acceptable substance. Addy’s was a live-and-let-live philosophy, but she had never bought into that kind of casual.

Culley reached out, brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, the touch gentle, tender, yet at the same time, tentative, uncertain. “I’d take the hurt away if I could, Addy.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek then, just a whisper of contact against her skin. Consolation had been his intent. Of that, she was sure. But the gesture pulled at something inside her, stirred up longings for something very different. Something that might make the awful ache inside her disappear.

“I should go,” he said.

“You should,” she agreed. Seconds passed while she grappled with the opposing forces of reason and need. Reason lost the struggle. “But I don’t want you to.”

She slipped a hand up his chest, rested it there with deliberate intent.

“Addy.” Her name came out with ragged edges and a reluctance impossible to miss. “You’re hurting.”

He hadn’t moved, and yet she could hear him backing away. He was right. She was hurting. Had been hurting for so long now that she was tired of being in this place, wanted very much to feel something different. Was that why she wanted him to kiss her? Did that explain the fact that if he turned around and left her here alone, she felt as if something inside her would break into a thousand pieces?

“Tell me to leave, and I will,” he said.

Before them lay two turns in the road, one the end of which she could clearly see: friendship, run-ins every few years. The other road was hidden and nothing could be seen beyond the immediate.

Addy wanted immediate. Nothing more than that. Just here and now. Just this night. Because more than anything she wanted to feel something. To want and be wanted.

“Stay,” she said.

An inch of space separated them. She leaned forward and kissed him. She, Addy Taylor, who had no experience in the brazen department, made this first move. She had this awful fear that he might laugh. Think her incompetent. After all, her own husband had strayed. There must be a reason.

But suddenly his arms were around her waist, pulling her to him. And he wasn’t laughing. He kissed her back with the kind of quick and urgent depth that lets a woman know a man wants her.

Blind need whirled up, clouding everything except the pinpoint of focus that was the two of them wrapped around one another, into one another.

Addy wound her arms around his neck and pulled him tight against her, not giving herself another chance to consider what they were doing. Where this would lead. To think would be to stop. She didn’t want to stop. She only wanted to erase the awful numbness inside her, this feeling of failure without understanding. Replace it with the very real feelings of needing and being needed.

Culley gathered her to him, strong arms encircling her waist, binding her to him. And there in the middle of the Plaza Hotel’s fourth-floor hallway, they indulged themselves in the kind of kiss that made all intentions clear.

The gentleness of those first moments fell away under the weight of raw need. And there were some serious forces propelling them along: long ago what-if’s and basic lust.

Very basic. And very real.

Culley walked her backwards to the wall. His knees dropped a couple of inches as he leaned up and into her.

Addy forgot to breathe. No longer needed to because he was air.

The elevator dinged again and brought them back to a short space of reality. Culley slid the key in the lock, pushed the door open and steered her into the room, still kissing her, his foot kicking the door closed.

Darkness engulfed them. From the window Addy had left cracked, traffic sounds echoed up from the street below, horns honking, car doors opening and closing. Her perfume lingered in the air where she had sprayed it earlier.

And with the privacy of the room came another level of intimacy, urgency and haste marking each kiss. She had never known this kind of need, this sense of inevitability, as if the night had been planned long ago, in another lifetime.

The housekeeper had been in to turn down the bed and left the clock radio playing on the nightstand. A DJ’s voice crooned, “And for all you night owls, we’ll pay a tribute to an old favorite, Frank Sinatra.”

There in the darkness, her fingers found the buttons of Culley’s shirt, undoing them with fumbling inaccuracy. He jerked the knot of his tie free. She slipped a hand inside his shirt, exploring the smooth, muscular warmth there.

Culley said her name, the sound low and hoarse in his throat.

The song played on around them, something about flying to the moon, and that was exactly how Addy felt, as if part of her were soaring with this purely potent mixture of want and need.

Culley’s hand went to the back of her neck, pulled her closer against him, his mouth seeking hers with a need as quick and bright as the igniting of a match. She drew in an unsteady breath, wrapping her arms around his neck, appreciating with startling awareness the hard, very male imprint of him.

They fell back onto the bed, heads colliding with the mound of pillows beneath the headboard, most of which Culley quickly swept away. Their hands reached for buttons, zippers, yanking, pulling, breaths fast and harsh, as if to stop for the briefest moment would allow reason and logic a chance at protest.

His hands transformed her from a woman whose self-image had hit bottom with the discovery of her husband’s infidelity to a woman who at this moment, felt, from the deepest part of her, wanted, desired.

It wasn’t only his touch, but the way he touched her. He made her feel as if this was something he had wanted for a very long time. Could that be true?

Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was the way he lifted her up, up, way above any place she’d ever been before. Too soon, the air got thin, and she thought surely her lungs would burst. At that last moment, Culley kissed her again and said, “Are you sure, Addy?”

She could have changed her mind then and there.

Her choice.

Yes or no.

But for the first time in months, the pain inside her was gone. And all she wanted was to stay here in this place where there wasn’t any hurt. So she kissed him again. And he kissed her back.

There in the darkened hotel room, the radio continued on with its salute to Sinatra, and somewhere below the raised window, a horse nickered.



CULLEY AWOKE TO a strip of sunshine that sliced the bed in half. During the first second of wakefulness, a distinct wave of well-being rolled over him. As if he’d been rehydrated after a week without water. Replenished. Renewed.

And then he remembered. He sat up. “Addy?”

He swung out of bed, checked the bathroom only to find it empty. Glanced in the closet. No clothes. No suitcase.

He searched the bed for a note, then gave the desk across the room a similar perusal. He went to the window and stared down at the already congested traffic.

She’d left.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant.

He anchored a hand to the back of his neck. He should have just walked her to her room last night. Left when he’d seen things were getting out of hand. That’s what a friend would have done.

But the truth was he hadn’t wanted to leave.

The truth was last night had been the first time in longer than he could remember when he had been something of who he used to be. For a few hours, he’d closed the door on his guilt and simply enjoyed being with a woman who had once been his best friend.

In his regular life—the one where he wasn’t falling into bed with newly disillusioned women, the one where he was a reliable father of one and a small-town doctor known for taking the time to listen to patients who needed to talk about their problems—he would have paid attention to his own normally demanding voice of reason. It would seem he’d deliberately tuned it out last night.

But it was back this morning with a megaphone to his ear. That, combined with his stinging conscience, lit a flare of urgency inside him.

He would call her. Go see her in D.C. He’d made enough mistakes in his life to know he didn’t want this to be another on the list.



MISTAKES, WHY DID they have to feel so obvious?

By the time the plane landed in D.C. shortly after ten that morning, Addy’s regret had reached fever pitch.

She’d left the hotel room just before six, slipping out without waking him. Every time she started to remember what they’d done last night, she closed her eyes and blanked the thought.

Of all the people in the world, in New York City, why had she met up with Culley last night? A conversation and a couple glasses of wine, and she’d practically jumped him.

Heat torched her cheeks.

She had just wanted to forget for a little while. To find a place where pain couldn’t reach her. To stitch back together what felt like a permanent tear in her heart. On that, she had succeeded. For a few hours, anyway. A short-term gain with a long-term price tag.

And now came regret. A big black cloud of it.

If she could just flip the clock back a dozen hours. Just twelve hours. She would have taken the shuttle home last night. Painted Georgetown red with Ellen. Sat at home eating Ben & Jerry’s. Anything but what she had done.

Regret, real as it was, didn’t change a thing.

At least in leaving before he woke up, she’d saved them both the embarrassment of admitting what they already knew.

It should never have happened.

It would never happen again.



HER NUMBER IN D.C. was unlisted.

Culley had tried Washington information no less than five times, hoping to get a different operator with a different answer.

After leaving Addy’s room, he’d gone back to his own hotel, showered and packed, then written a note for his buddies, telling them something had come up, and he had to get home. Coward’s way out maybe, but he didn’t want to hang around for their question-and-answer session about last night. He knew them. They would be merciless.

At the airport, he pulled out his cell phone and got the number for Addy’s firm in D.C. on the off chance that she was already back and had gone there. A receptionist sent him to her voice mail. He left a short message, started to add more, but hung up at the last second. He had no idea what to say.



ADDY WENT STRAIGHT to the office, intent on burying herself under a pile of work.

Of course Ellen was there. Addy walked by her office with a neutral good-morning, heading for her own office two doors down.

“Whoa,” Ellen called out.

“Later,” Addy called back. She dropped her coat and laptop bag on the leather couch by her door, crossed the floor and collapsed into the chair behind her desk.

Ellen appeared in the doorway, leaned a shoulder against the frame, arms crossed. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her face devoid of makeup. She was dressed in workout clothes and Nike running shoes. “Up for a run?”

During the week, the two of them ran together at lunch. Addy shook her head, pressed a finger to the dull thud in her temple. “Not today.”

Ellen raised an eyebrow. “So how’d the little black dress turn out?”

“Should have left it on the hanger.”

Ellen came in and sat down in the chair across from Addy, looking like a psychiatrist about to get a juicy morsel. “Do tell.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“I can wait.”

“Ellen, really.”

“You left the book in the room?”

Addy sighed. “No. But I did run into an old friend from high school.”

“And?”

“We sat in the Oak Bar and talked.”

“And?”

Addy tipped her head to one side.

Ellen’s eyes went wide. “You slept with him!”

Addy covered her face with her hands. “That sounds so—”

“Delicious!”

“Ellen!”

“Well, was it?”

“Ellen. I can’t believe I did that. It’s so not me.”

“It’s so exactly what you need. All these months since you and Mark split, and you haven’t even been out on a date. Not normal.”

“Oh, Ellen,” Addy said, making a face, “We grew up in the same hometown. His mom and my mom go to the movies together every Tuesday night. He must think I’m—”

“Human?”

“Easy!”

Ellen laughed. “Now there’s one for the fifties dictionary.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Addy, my God, you’re entitled. Did you practice safe—”

Addy held up a hand. “Too personal.”

Ellen chuckled again. “You were born in the wrong era, Hester.”

Addy dropped her head back, stared at the ceiling. “Why did I have to pick him? Why couldn’t it have been someone I’d never see again?”

“Because you wouldn’t have slept with someone like that. If you picked this old friend, there must have been a reason.”

“Temporary loss of faculties?”

Ellen folded her arms, gave her a long look. “Would you give yourself just a bit of a break?”

“Last night…that’s not something I would normally ever—”

Ellen held up a hand. “The conscience police are not in the room. Give yourself a little credit, Addy,” she said, her voice softening. “You’ve had a tough go of it. If last night got you away from that for a while, then what’s so wrong with that?”

“Plenty, I’m sure.”

Ellen got up, went over to the drawer where Addy kept an extra change of running clothes and shoes. She pulled them out, set them on the desk. “Get dressed. We’re going for a run. Burn off some of that guilt you’re soaking in.”

“I don’t think that’s going to fix it.”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna kick your butt on pace this morning. So at least it’ll give you something else to think about.”

Addy picked up the clothes, headed out the door to the women’s bathroom. “Gee, thanks.”

Ellen smiled. “What are friends for?”




CHAPTER FIVE


WHEN ADDY GOT HOME Saturday afternoon, there were four messages on the machine from Culley—the first one said he’d gotten her number from her mother.

On Sunday, he left three.

Monday, two.

Tuesday, one.

On Wednesday, his number was on caller ID. No message.

Thursday, nothing.

Addy felt horrible for ignoring them. But what would they say to each other? There was nothing to say. The last thing she wanted was to hear her own regret duplicated in his voice. Better to let it fade. Chalk it up to what it was. A slice of time when their paths had crossed, and they had offered each other temporary comfort. And what else could it be? Spending the night with Culley had not fixed the broken part of her, the part that had once believed in her own ability to choose wisely. That confidence had been shaken to the point that standing in one place felt like the only safe choice. To put a foot in either direction might mean setting off another explosion like the one created by her unfaithful husband. An explosion that would yet again change the landscape of her life so that nothing made any sense at all.

Addy wanted safety.

She didn’t call him back.



THE PRACTICE CULLEY had bought from old Dr. Nettles was located in a two-story house on Oak Street in the center of town. It had been built in the 1700s and was believed to have once been an inn that had welcomed such historical names as Daniel Boone.

Culley had loved the place from the first moment he walked its wood floors with the old doctor who had been forced to retire when arthritis made it nearly impossible for him to spend a day on his feet. Coming back to Harper’s Mill and starting his own practice had been a new beginning for Culley and Madeline, and for the past three years, he had known a deep and rewarding contentment for the simplicity of their lives. For so long, his life had been anything but simple, and he valued this new peace more than he would ever value any material possession.

But today, things didn’t feel simple. Hadn’t felt simple since he’d returned from New York on Saturday afternoon.

It was almost six o’clock, and he’d just seen his last patient. The waiting room had been full all day. He hadn’t even stopped for lunch. He closed the door to his office, pulled a bottle of Advil from his desk drawer, gulped a couple, then sat down on the sofa opposite his desk, dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling. He reached for the phone, then jerked his hand back as if it might dial the number without his permission. No. He couldn’t. The number of messages he’d left had reached embarrassment level a half dozen calls ago.

He ran a hand over his face. Why wouldn’t she talk to him? Did she regret what happened between them that much? Apparently so.

And he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Hadn’t been able to think of anything else since he’d woken up Saturday morning and found her gone. He thought about her while he dictated patient notes. While he read Madeline her bedtime stories. While he lay alone in bed trying to fall asleep. Wondering if he’d ever see her again.

He’d tried to look at the situation objectively. The rational part of his brain told him it was just one of those things. One of those it’ll-never-happen-again, once-in-a-lifetime things. Addy had been hurting. She’d needed someone to make her believe in herself again. Fate had just happened to put him in her path.

As for his own excuse, she’d filled some need in him as well that night. Since his divorce, he’d seen a few women. None, seriously. He wasn’t interested. He’d tried. But the last couple years of his marriage had been like living in a waking nightmare. No matter what he did, the outcome was the same.

Maybe it was the fact that he and Addy had once known everything there was to know about one another. He trusted that knowledge, had let his guard down.

He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the ibuprofen to soften the headache pounding at his temples.

If he had any regrets about that night, they centered around the certainty that the two of them would never get the chance to see if there could have been more.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” he said.

Tracy Whitmire, the receptionist out front, popped in and put his mail on his desk. She had red hair and blue eyes that squinted at him from behind fashionable rectangular-lense glasses. “You going home soon?”

“In a while.”

“Better. That little girl of yours needs to see her daddy.”

From some, Culley might have taken that as a criticism. But Tracy was a single parent herself, and they had shared a conversation or two on the struggle to spend more time with their child during the week.

“I’m headed that way,” he said. “’Night.”

“Good night.” She closed the door behind her.

Culley picked up the mail, sorting out the junk stuff and tossing it in the trash can next to his desk. Near the bottom of the stack a return address caught his eye. Mecklinburg Women’s Correctional Facility.

He dropped the envelope, stared at it for a moment while his stomach did a roller-coaster lurch. He left it there for a minute or more, considered not opening it tonight. But then he wouldn’t sleep until he did.

He picked up the envelope, opened it quickly, pulled out the piece of paper and unfolded it. It was the blue-line kind like school kids used, torn out of a spiral binder, the edges curly. The handwriting was Liz’s, but it no longer had its characteristic boldness. It was spiderweb thin and shaky, as if her hand had trembled a little as she wrote.

Dear Culley,

I hope this letter finds you and Madeline well. Although I can’t exactly say things are good here, I’m in a better place. Have done a lot of thinking, but then what else is there to do?

How is Madeline? She must have grown so much. Does she ever ask about me?

I know I’ve been given more chances than any person deserves, certainly more than you should ever have given me. But I want to do things right this time. I’ve been such a disappointment to you and to myself. And I can barely live with the thought of the awful thing I did.

It looks as if I’m going to be released at 80% of my sentence. It’s hard to believe I only have a few more months to be here. Is there any way you could come for a visit before then? I’d really like to talk to you. I know it’s a lot to ask, and I’ve asked more of you than I ever had any right to. It would mean so much to me, though.

I’ll wait to hear from you.

Liz

Culley sat back in his chair, blew out a heavy sigh and realized he had been holding his breath. There were days when he actually went a stretch of hours without thinking about what had happened three years ago. But most of the time, it loomed in the back of his mind like a dark, dense cloud that cast a permanent shadow.

He glanced at the letter. He wanted to write her back and say he couldn’t come.

But then another part of him felt the same thing he’d felt for her in the last years of their marriage. Pity. And guilt for the fact that he hadn’t been able to help her.

And with those two emotions battling inside him, he left the letter on his desk and went home to see his daughter.



FOR THE NEXT MONTH, Addy did little more than work and sleep, eating if she happened to think about it. Ellen dragged her out a couple of nights, but the single’s scene had about as much appeal to her as an emergency root canal.

She’d actually pulled ahead of Ellen in billable hours this month, the good part being that so much work left hardly any time for mental floggings. Of which she’d given herself plenty.

There had been no more calls from Culley. Which was for the best. And although she felt a bit like a mouse trapped on a wheel, there was enough predictability in her days that she managed to convince herself there was nothing wrong with her life as she was living it.

Predictability was good. But wasn’t it always the case that just when you thought you had the tent pegs nailed down nice and secure, an unexpected wind came along and blew the whole thing out of sight?

One Thursday morning in early May, Addy was at her desk when one of the other attorneys buzzed and said there was a call for her on line three. The switchboard didn’t open until eight, so they took turns picking it up. She stuck a Post-it note on the page of the deposition she’d been skimming and answered with a quick, “Addy Taylor.”

“Addy, this is Oley Guilliams at H.M. Memorial.”

Addy sat back in her chair. Mrs. Guilliams had once been her Sunday school teacher. She hadn’t heard her name in years. “Yes, Mrs. Guilliams. How are you?”





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