Heartbreak, Tennessee
Read Heartbreak, Tennessee Online
Authors: Ruby Laska
Tags: #desire, #harlequin, #kristan higgins, #small town, #Romance, #blaze
HEARTBREAK, TENNESSEE
By
Ruby Laska
Copyright 2012 by Ruby Laska
Discover other titles by Ruby Laska at
http://rubylaska.blogspot.com/
“You
sure
you aren’t from around
here?”
Amber shook her head. Even
with her gaze fixed on the menu, she could feel the waitress staring at her.
“Just in town for
business,” she said evenly.
That earned her a
derisive snort. “Somebody gave you a bum steer, sugar. Nobody does much
business around here, at least not dressed like that, anyway. But you sure do
look familiar.”
“I’ll have the hot
turkey sandwich,” Amber said, folding the menu and holding it up with a chilly
smile. “And a glass of iced tea.”
Not until the waitress
walked away with her order did Amber allow herself a long look around the dank,
beer-smelling room.
There he was, of
course, as some part of her knew he would be.
She’d been in town
less than an hour, and all her carefully-constructed defenses fell away like
petals from a rose past its prime, leaving her raw and exposed, her pulse
pounding as hard as it had the day she’d left fourteen years before.
Never to return, she’d
promised herself.
Amber drank deeply
from a glass of water. The icy liquid jolted her senses and started her temples
throbbing, but the pain took her mind off him for a moment. She squeezed her
eyes tightly shut, forcing his image to recede, concentrating on anything,
anything else as she slowly opened them again.
The bar was crowded,
packed with working men and women stopping for a beer, a sandwich, a chance to
trade stories and news at the end of the day. There weren’t very many places to
go in Heartbreak, and Buzzy’s had always been the best of them. Of course,
Amber hadn’t been old enough to order alcohol, but she used to love coming in
for a sandwich and a Coke from time to time. With Mac.
Pushing the thought
from her mind, Amber concentrated on the familiar room. Not much had changed. The
simple wooden tables and chairs were clean enough, decorated with the
rough-hewn initials of decades of amateur carvers. Softball and bowling
trophies and team photos served as the only decorations on the dark paneled
walls.
Heavy drapes prevented
the twilight from coming in the few windows. The anti-smoking craze apparently
hadn’t reached Heartbreak, and a thick haze of smoke filled the air, seeming to
darken the room even further.
No way he could see
her.
He was sitting with
half a dozen other men at a long table. Dressed casually in work shirts and
pants, they were drinking beer from tall bottles, talking and laughing. A
couple of them looked vaguely familiar, and Amber searched her memories, trying
to put names to their faces.
“Here you go, Sugar.”
The waitress slid a
plate in front of her with a practiced motion and gave Amber another hard look
before weaving her way back through the tables to the kitchen.
It was a memory of
that sandwich that had caused her to come into Buzzy’s tonight. Passing by the
place as she walked in the warm night air, she’d suddenly remembered the tender
meat freshly carved and piled high, the gravy like nothing you could get in
Nashville—and she’d given in to the memory.
Certainly, for her,
nostalgia was a rare enough indulgence.
Now, Amber stared at
the steam rising from the plate as her stomach did flip-flops. Her appetite
gone, she let her breath out in a long, uneasy sigh.
Crazy, that’s what she
had been, to think she could see him again and go about her business unchanged,
unaffected, unscathed.
Crazy
.
Even as she tried to
force it back with another icy swallow of water, the knot that was forming in
her throat kept expanding until she wasn’t sure she could keep breathing. Acting
without thought, she stood abruptly, knocking her chair back so it teetered and
almost fell over as she rushed down the dark hallway to the ladies’ room.
Inside, Amber slammed
the old wooden door and jammed the latch shut. She leaned against the wall, the
painted surface cool through the silk of her blouse. She breathed deeply,
trying to get air into her throat.
At last her pulse
slowed, and her breath came more easily. She slowly slid down the wall onto a
rickety chair wedged in the corner of the tiny room. She held her head in her
hands and allowed herself a pair of tears, huge round warm ones that rolled
from her eyes down her cheeks to fall into her lap.
But two tears were
enough, all that Amber could spare. She hadn’t come back to Heartbreak to see
him, or to ignore him or even to burn him out of her memory. Mac McBaine had
nothing at all to do with this trip. She had a job to do, and she intended to
do it as professionally and efficiently as she did everything. And then she
meant to get back to Nashville, where she belonged, and get on with her life.
Amber straightened,
and wiped under her eyes with a tissue, careful not to smear her mascara. She
stood and appraised herself in the mirror. Not too much damage. She smoothed a
strand or two of hair back into place, slicked on a little lipstick, and snapped
her purse shut.
It had been a mistake
to come here, a mistake she would take care not to repeat, but not one she
couldn’t handle.
As she strode back
into the bar, she reached into her purse for her wallet in one smooth movement.
Tossing some bills onto her table, she eased through the noisy crowd and onto
the street without looking left or right.
“But it was
your
wife, your
Honor!”
Mac forced a laugh as
Kurt Greenville supplied the raunchy punch line to the long, rambling joke he’d
been telling. His laughter sounded hollow even to himself, and he hoped that
none of the guys would notice. He wasn’t sure he could trust his face not to
give away his feelings at the moment.
And what, exactly,
were those feelings? The shock from the moment he’d recognized her had
subsided, giving way to waves of emotion that pounded him like lead weights. Astonishment,
anger, panic and—though he struggled to beat it down—desire
pummeled him even as he raised his bottle to his lips and tried like hell to
shift his attention back to his friends.
He’d nearly missed
spotting her. She must have made her way in through the knots of people
standing near the billiard tables, hidden in the pockets of darkness between
the pools of light cast by the few old fixtures. But she’d hesitated briefly
before she found an empty table, and in that moment Mac had happened to look
her way, as his gaze traveled lazily over the faces of his friends and
neighbors, gathered here in a place as familiar to him as his own living room.
She’d have caught any
man’s eye, that was for sure. New faces were rare enough in Heartbreak, let
alone flat-out beautiful female faces attached to equally stunning bodies.
But it wasn’t just any
unfamiliar attractive woman who managed to glide almost unnoticed into Buzzy’s
tonight. It was
her
. Sure, she looked a lot different. She had changed
her hairstyle, her clothes, her makeup, even the way she carried herself,
stealthy and careful, like a jungle cat. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he could
put his finger on what it was that convinced him it was Amber: a gesture,
perhaps, that clicked in his brain and triggered memories long since buried; a
glimpse of her profile, her features in silhouette as they’d appeared in his
dreams hundreds of nights over the years.
In the moment he saw
her walk by, Mac felt the surge of years of accumulated memories forcing their
way out of the depths of his subconscious, where he’d kept them locked away. But
as Amber settled into the shadows of her out-of-the-way table, he garnered all
his will and forced himself to turn away, to return his attention to his
friends, even as his mind raced with thoughts in a dozen different directions. Why
had she come back? What did she want? Did it—and he cursed the thought
even as it faded away—could it have anything to do with him?
Not likely. Not after
the way she’d left. The memory of that night hit him hard, low in the gut,
leaving him with a bitter taste in his gullet. Finding her gone had been the
single worst blow he’d ever suffered, worse than the death of his father, worse
even than the relentless, chilling loneliness he endured day in and day out,
even when he was surrounded by friends.
Narrowing his eyes, he
steeled himself before glancing back in her direction, cautiously, barely
inclining his head. The guys were busy giving the middle-aged waitress a hard
time, and she was dishing it right back at them, an idle flirtation honed over
the years to a familiar repartee as comfortable as a favorite pair of sneakers.
No one would notice that his attention had strayed.
Amber was older, of
course; Mac did a quick calculation and realized she would turn 32 this year. She’d
been successful in re-making herself almost beyond recognition. Gone was the
coltish, rangy creature with the endless slender legs and the wild mane of red
curls tumbling halfway down her back, replaced by a grown woman who wore her
beauty subtly and moved with incredible grace.
It had been 14 years
since she left, a few days shy of her high school graduation.
He couldn’t take his
eyes off her, studying her while she looked down at the table waiting for a
waitress, her expression carefully neutral. Her look was refined, expensive. Soft
fringes of hair framed her face. Clearly her hairdresser knew what he was doing
with a pair of scissors, but he’d wisely left the color untouched, a red like a
deep garnet with highlights the color of a new-minted copper penny.
Amber had gained some
weight, adding womanly curves to a body once sinewy with hard work. She was
dressed in a simple blouse of navy silk, the deep color setting off her skin,
which was as pale as ever, practically luminous in the dim light of the bar.
At her ears were gold
hoops, a little too large for the rest of her outfit, the only hint of her old
look. Amber used to love big earrings and wrists full of jingling bracelets. She’d
worn rings on nearly every finger, inexpensive baubles Mac bought at the
costume jewelry counter at Sears. He’d never been able to afford the real
thing, the gold and jewels he longed to shower her with.
Except that one
time...
Mac shook his head
angrily and turned his attention back to his friends. He had no business
allowing his mind to wander that way, drawing crazy conclusions on the faintest
of sensory evidence. The woman bore a slight resemblance to Amber, that was
all. It had been too long since he’d been in a real relationship, and his body
was responding, drawn to an attractive woman. He’d allowed the thought to get
way out of control, spinning into the kind of fantasy he’d worked so hard to
put behind him. He needed to be careful or he’d plunge into the dark moods he’d
suffered for years after she left.
Maybe it was time once
again to let his friends set him up with a warm-blooded, willing local girl. He’d
try harder this time, make more of an effort to keep up his end of the
relationship. How hard could it be? You meet a girl, find a few things in
common, go on a few dates. Take her home and kiss her on her doorstep. Marry
her, if things went well. Hell, most of his friends already had a couple of
kids by now.