A Week in the Snow (15 page)

Rebecca sat on the bed beside him and grinned, pleased with the orgasm that still thrummed in her veins, happy with her ingenuity. Richard lay stunned on the bed, still unsure of what had happened but pretty damn convinced that Rebecca was the naughtiest woman on the planet.

Richard sat up. He took off the blindfold and the dim light from the hallway immediately showed him that there was no one in the bedroom but the two of them. Rebecca was watching him with a wide smile.

“Those pocket pussies are great,” she said, and Richard suddenly laughed as he realised what she had done.

“You little vixen!”

He grabbed her and pulled her down beside him, kissing her. She tasted herself on his tongue. She licked at him, trying to get more of it, then whispered in his ear, “Tell me. Was she a redhead, or a brunette, or a blonde?”

Richard chuckled. “Redhead.”

“That’s what I thought.”

They lay down together and he ran his fingers through her hair, pulling out the tangles there. She stared up at him with wide, happy eyes.

“I wish you never had to leave,” he said softly. He watched the tenderness creep into her eyes.

“Me too.”

Chapter Nine

When Rebecca woke up the next morning, Richard wasn’t in bed, but she could hear him singing along with a radio somewhere in the house. When the scent of bacon and sausage wafted up the stairs, she knew exactly where he was. With a smile she tossed back the covers and stood up, her body protesting a little from all the attention Richard had given it over the last few days. She had sore muscles in places that had never been sore before, but she was sure that was a good thing.

The more she thought about the fact that things could progress past this one week—that they could try to sustain a long-distance relationship and see where it led—the more Rebecca felt happier than she had been in a very long time. From time to time she marvelled at the way they had met, but after all, didn’t everyone have a story to tell? Theirs was just a little more unusual than most. She wasn’t one to put much stock in fate, but she did believe that ultimately things happened for a reason—and maybe someone, somewhere, was trying to tell her something when her car slid off into that ditch and Richard was the one that happened to find her there.

The object of her thoughts was waiting for her in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the morning paper. He casually flipped a slice of bacon in the pan and grinned at her as she walked through the door. She kissed him, stole a piece of sausage from the plate, and sat down at the table to watch him cook.

“You look good in my shirt,” he said, and she did. She was wearing one of his button-down dress shirts from his closet. It came almost to her knees, a dark blue colour that set off her pretty eyes. She had rolled the sleeves up around her elbows. Wrapping herself in one of his shirts made her feel small and vulnerable, and the smell of him caught in the fabric made her heart sing.

“I want to take one home with me,” she said.

“Only if you leave something of yours here with me.”

“Deal.”

She watched as he took the bacon out of the pan and pulled the eggs out of the refrigerator. His pyjama pants had little bottles of Tabasco sauce printed all over them. His shoulders were broad and strong, but what she noticed more than anything were the marks of her nails on his skin. The marks were still red and long, the sign of the passionate time they had spent over the last several days. The trip certainly hadn’t been what she had planned, but as she smiled at the eight parallel lines on Richard’s back she thought it was most assuredly better.

Eggs splattered in the pan as Richard cracked them open, then worried them a bit with the spatula. He shot the egg shells towards the garbage can and grinned as they went neatly inside. “Two-point shot!” he exclaimed, and watched as the eggs cooked to a clean, fresh white. He flipped them over and counted to twenty, then scooped them on to plates and brought them to the table. He poured another cup of coffee for himself and one for Rebecca as he sat down across from her.

“You know, it’s funny,” she said, looking down at her plate. “We’ve already fallen into a kind of routine. You cook breakfast every morning.”

“I’m just trying to impress you. Once I know I have you hooked, it will be doughnuts every day.”

She laughed and took a bite of her bacon.

“I was thinking this morning about getting that car pulled out,” he said. “We can call the tow truck after breakfast.”

“It doesn’t seem so melancholy now,” she admitted, cutting into her eggs and watching the yolk run out to mix with the bits of sausage on her plate. “Before yesterday, getting the car repaired seemed like a death knell to my time here, but now it just seems like…well, getting a car repaired.”

“Because you’re going to see me after you go back to Miami?”

“I’ll be making this trip again, that’s for sure.”

“Are you going to fly next time?” he asked, and grinned at her. It was his first overt jab at Gene, and the sweet delivery made Rebecca smile.

“Yes, smartass. I don’t think I’ll be driving back through Iowa anytime soon.”

“Snows like this don’t come often, you know. During the summer it’s hot as hell.”

“It seems like it could never warm up that much.” She looked out the window at the snow that was still piled up on either side of the road and covering the yard. She had never imagined so much snow could exist anywhere but the Arctic.

“Rebecca,” Richard said slowly. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

She grinned at him, expecting some sort of tease, but at the serious look in his eyes her smile melted away.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing bad. At least, I don’t think it’s bad.”

Rebecca lost all interest in her food. She laid her fork down on the edge of the plate. Her stomach turned into a cold, hard knot. “Tell me.”

Richard took a deep breath. He was going to tell her everything, and then deal with the fallout. He thought maybe he had figured out a way to do it, a way that she would understand. Ironically, the reasons he was going to give her were the honest truth about the situation.

“When we first started this…it was a fling. You agree?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“So there were things I didn’t think I needed to tell you, because they didn’t matter. Like a few things in my past, things that wouldn’t make any difference to you if I was just a week-long affair, but things that might make a difference if you were looking at a long-term thing, like I think we are.”

“I understand that. Go on.”

Richard looked at his plate for a moment. “I got married when I was thirty-five. Her name was Amanda, a pretty little farmer’s daughter from Dubuque. I met her at a writing conference there.”

Rebecca studied him as he told her this. She wasn’t surprised at all—she had known there was something in his past that had turned him into a loner, and she had guessed that it might be a woman. She had even suspected there might be an ex-wife lurking in his past. Richard was the kind of man any woman would be lucky to have, and if he had been single for three years there had to have been a very good reason.

“I thought everything was good in our marriage…I really did. I didn’t think I was one of those clueless guys who comes home one day and finds his wife has headed for the hills. I thought those men were reserved for talk shows and sitcoms, you know? That happens to men who ignore and neglect their wives, not for somebody like me, who tried so hard to do everything right.”

Rebecca stared at him. “You came home one day and she was gone?”

“She left a letter. She told me she needed to find herself.” Richard shook his head and let out a wry, pained laugh. “I’m still trying to figure out what that means. Does anybody ever know what that really means?”

Rebecca reached over the table and took his hand. She tightened her fingers almost painfully over his. Whatever she had imagined had happened to him, she hadn’t expected a story like that. “I’m sorry she did that to you.”

“Maybe I should have told you earlier. I don’t know. I was so afraid you would walk away from me if you knew.”

“Why in the world would I do that?”

He raised frightened eyes to hers. “Because I’m still married, Rebecca.”

The shockwave of that statement rushed through her, turning her first cold, then impossibly hot. She slowly pulled her hand away from his. Her cheeks flooded with the shock of his announcement, with the fear of all the things she didn’t know. She touched them and felt the burn through her fingertips, all the way down to her heart. She stared at him, her eyes wide.

“You never filed for divorce?”

“I never had a reason to file. I never wanted another relationship.”

Rebecca sat very still, absorbing this news. Her boyfriend—the man she hoped she could call her boyfriend, the one she was well on her way to maybe, just maybe, falling in love with—was married to someone else?

“But then you came along. And it made me realise that I’ve waited long enough. I guess I knew a long time ago that she wasn’t going to come back, but having that failure hanging over my head, and never knowing what I did wrong…well, that was the part I couldn’t accept. That’s the part I still haven’t accepted, to be honest. Her leaving is not so hard to handle as the questions of why she did it, and what part I might have played in her decision.”

Rebecca looked out of the window at the snow, unsure what to say. Part of her wanted to run, while another part of her wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him it was okay. She thought she might cry, but the shock was too immense, and she found herself taking deep breaths instead.

Richard watched as the emotions flickered across her face, but he didn’t say anything else. He wanted to let her decide what to say and do, and didn’t want to try to convince her to say anything that wasn’t in her heart.

Finally Rebecca sighed and looked back at him. Her eyes were sad. “I understand why you didn’t tell me earlier. If it was just a fling, why would you?”

He nodded.

“But it’s not a fling, and the fact that you are telling me this makes that very, very clear. I appreciate that, not only for your honesty, but for knowing you really do want to see where this leads.”

Relief flooded Richard. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“What happens if she comes back, Richard? What then?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think she will.”

“But what if she does?”

What if she did? It was a question Richard had thought about long and hard for many nights before Rebecca had fallen into his life. He had never come up with any answers then, but he certainly had a few now.

“I would tell her to leave.”

“But she’s still your wife.”

Richard leant back in his chair. “Part of the reason I haven’t filed for divorce is my family. They are very traditional, sometimes far too traditional, and they see divorce as the equivalent of living on another planet. My mother has made it very clear how she feels about the situation, and has told me over and over to wait on Amanda to come back. She’s even gone so far as to ask what I did to make her leave.”

“Your family won’t be very open to a new woman in your life,” she pointed out.

“No. But after wasting three years waiting for a woman who obviously doesn’t want to be married to me, I think my family will just have to deal with it.”

Rebecca played with the food on her plate, not certain how to say what was on her mind. Finally she decided that blunt honesty was the way to go.

“Are you going to file for divorce now?”

Richard knew this question might come, and he had thought long and hard about what he would say if it did. Now that the words were on the tip of his tongue, he knew it was the right decision. “I think three years is enough time to make her intentions clear, and it’s probably time to respond in kind.”

Rebecca gave him a tentative smile and reached for his hand again.

At that moment a long, sleek Cadillac roared into the driveway, sending up a flurry of snow in its wake. The car slid on the surface, almost clipped the corner of the truck, and settled at an angle to the sidewalk. An older, stately woman got out of the car, wrapped her coat tightly around her, and marched towards the front door, her face drawn into a frown.

“Shit,” Richard murmured, and stood up. The pounding on the door was hard and long. Rebecca stood up too, and looked at Richard for an explanation.

“Speak of the devil,” he said.

“That’s your mother?” Rebecca asked, incredulous.

“Yeah.”

The pounding hadn’t stopped. Richard started for the door and Rebecca went towards the stairs, but Richard called her back. “No. There’s no need to hide. She’s heard the rumours, and that’s why she’s here. I’m not going to lie to her.”

Rebecca stood at the base of the stairs, trying to decide whether to listen to Richard or whether to run and hide. She was still reeling from the news of his wife, and now she had to face his mother?

Richard swung open the door. Janette Paris stepped into the house as if she owned it, pushed her son to the side with one hand, and peered at the woman hovering by the stairs.

She took in the dishevelled hair, the clothes and lack thereof, and summed the situation up in an instant.

“Well, this just figures,” she said, and turned to glare at Richard. “First you send your wife packing, then you cheat on her. If the two aren’t bad enough, you had to go for the third strike by bedding a woman young enough to be your daughter!”

Rebecca’s face burned with anger.

“I’m not cheating on my wife,” Richard said reasonably, his quiet voice a sharp contrast to the loud bellowing of his angry mother. “It’s impossible to cheat on a woman who took leave of me over three years ago, Ma.”

“You’re still married to her!”

“In name only,” Richard said, and this seemed to infuriate the woman even more.

“You!” She pointed at Rebecca, who stood rooted to her spot at the bottom of the stairs. “You know he’s married! That makes you a lying, cheating whore, and a whore isn’t good enough for my son!”