Strangers When We Meet (7 page)

“Yes,” she said. “It was wrong of me. Just because I’ve got myself in a bind over a man doesn’t mean I should take advantage of the next one who comes along.”

“And just because I’m mad as hell at one woman—not brokenhearted over her, mind you—doesn’t mean I should take advantage of the next woman who crosses my path.”

He had leaned closer. Only a little, an inch or two, but it was too much for Emma. She’d been trying to forget that explosive kiss among the leaves for the last six hours. Now his nearness brought it back in vivid detail, and her insides tingled with longing and desire just as they had when it happened. Perhaps even more strongly than before. She panicked and started to rise. “Then no apologies are necessary from either of us. No harm done, right?” His hand closed over her wrist, and he tugged her gently down beside him again.

“Emma, we have to talk. This isn’t just about Heather’s infidelity—”

“Heather?”

“Heather Markham. The woman I was living with.”

Emma’s breath tightened in her chest. Heather. That Blake’s faithless lover had the same name as the woman Daryl had been with that night was only a coincidence, wasn’t it? Women with the name of Heather were thick as fallen leaves on the ground these days.

She tried to relax. Another coincidence. That was all. But his mention of Daryl’s name coupled with his ex-lover’s had started a chain reaction in her mind.

“There’s something between us, Emma. Something that doesn’t seem to want to go away.”

Something like love at first sight?

But that was what she’d experienced with Daryl, wasn’t it?

She was so confused she couldn’t think straight. She felt as if she’d drunk an entire bottle of wine instead of a cup of hot chocolate. Being near Blake Weston addled her brain and inflamed her body.

Her skin burned where he touched her. Her body vibrated to every sound he made. She wanted to throw herself against his chest, steady her ragged breathing with the strong, solid beat of his heart. She wanted to pour out her problems and, heaven help her, let him solve them for her. She wanted Daryl Tubb to drop off the face of the earth, never to darken her pathway again.

“Emma,” he said, running his palm over her hair, cupping her cheek. She wanted to turn her face into his hand and snuggle close, like a kitten. “Admit it. There is something, isn’t there?”

“Yes. But I don’t know what it is. And since I’m in the middle of one messed-up relationship, I sure as hell don’t want to start another one.”

He didn’t pull back as she almost hoped he would. He was still close enough that if she lifted herself just a little, their lips would touch. And heaven and earth would trade places again, if only for a moment. “Fair enough. I’ll wait. I don’t have unanswered questions about what happened between me and Heather. It’s over. It had been over a long time before she walked naked into my living room to meet another man.”

“I...I don’t know what I feel now.” She wasn’t ready to make the almost unbelievable connection between Heather and Daryl, to wonder at the amused Fate that had brought her and Blake to Twin Oaks the same week. She wasn’t ready to start tugging on all the ends of her unraveling relationship and follow the strings to their implausible, but seemingly more and more likely, end. Heather and Daryl. Daryl and Heather. The names repeated themselves over and over in her mind.

“Go to bed, Emma,” Blake said quietly. “We can’t resolve anything tonight. And if I sit here watching you in the moonlight any longer, I’ll just end up adding more complications to the situation.”

“Like kissing me again?” She was losing her sanity, saying those words aloud.

Blake chuckled. “I thought you kissed me.”

Her head was whirling, half with delight at the anticipation of feeling his lips on hers again, half with dread for the dark hours of the night when she was bound to wake up and start worrying all over again. It was so much easier to give advice on the radio. There she was in control. She could tell her callers what she thought was best for them and be fairly confident she was right.

But this was different.

This was her life, and damned if she knew what was right.

He stood up, pulling her with him. There would be no kiss, she could tell, and bit back a sigh of mingled disappointment and relief. He wasn’t going to solve her dilemma for her. She was going to have to do that for herself. He turned the key she’d left in the old-fashioned lock and opened her door on silent hinges. He gave her a little push inside and closed the door.

“Good night, Emma,” she heard him say, very softly, as he headed down the hall. “Tomorrow we’ll talk.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

E
MMA
WAS
UP
EARLY
the next day, and like the coward she felt herself to be, sneaked out of the inn through a side door, ignored the beauty of the cool morning that was exactly suited to a brisk walk into town and drove her car straight to her grandparents’ house.

Her grandmother was opening the garage door. She was dressed in wool slacks and the turquoise all-weather coat she’d worn to church the day before. “Want a ride?” Emma asked, rolling down the window.

“You don’t even know where I’m going,” Martha responded with a smile.

“I don’t care. I’ll drive you to the ends of the earth.” Away from the two men she was caught between.

Martha put her hand over her heart and rolled her eyes. “What a dutiful granddaughter you are. I’m just going to the hairdresser and the market, so you’re off the hook. But you might ask if your grandfather wants a ride. He’s going out to make a few house calls this morning.”

“I imagine the AMA frowns on retired doctors making house calls.”

“He calls it visiting old friends, but he always takes his bag. I think he’s going to check on Ed Taylor and one or two others.” She waved her hand in the air. “I’ve forgotten who. Must be the beginning of Alzheimer’s.”

“Or maybe you’re thinking of errands you’ve got to run two hours from now, and whether or not you should take the pork chops you’re planning to have for dinner out of the freezer before you leave, right?” Emma said, laughing.

“That might be the case, too.”

“How would you like a houseguest for the rest of the week? I promise to help with the dishes.” She wasn’t going to spend any more nights alone at the inn, no matter how much she liked the place or the people who owned it.

Her grandmother refrained from any overt comment on her leaving Twin Oaks, although her smile was tinged with relief. “I have to admit I’ve missed you staying with us your last few visits. So has your grandfather.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

“Your room is ready whenever you want to move in.” Martha’s eyes shone at the prospect of having Emma to herself for five whole days.

“I have to tell Maureen I’m leaving. I’ll bring my things with me this evening. Is that okay?”

“Wonderful.” Emma watched as her grandmother maneuvered the little import out of the garage and onto the street. She rolled down the window and called to Emma. “Will you join us for dinner? That is, if you don’t already have plans?”

“I’m free as a bird today.”

“We’ll eat at eight, then.”

“It’s a date.” When her grandmother said they would eat at eight, dinner would be on the table at precisely that time. Martha and Felix were punctual to a fault. Emma pulled her car into the driveway and went into the house through the back door. Her grandfather was sitting at the table in the bay window that formed a small alcove at the far end of the kitchen. Her grandmother’s rock garden, all ready for winter’s long sleep, was framed by large trees and a view of the hills above town.

“Morning, Granddad,” Emma said, giving him a kiss on top of the head. “Want some company on your rounds today?”

“I don’t do rounds, but I am heading out to check on Ed Taylor and maybe have coffee at the diner with another couple of old geezers. Think you can handle that?”

She slid onto the chair beside him and read the headlines in the paper over his shoulder. There was a school bond issue coming up for a vote in a few days, and pictures of the new rest rooms at the village park. The paper came out only once a week and had long ago given up reporting anything but births, deaths and school sports, along with town council news. “Yeah, I think I’m up to that. Need a lift?”

“Nope. Going to ride my bike. Might be the last nice day we get. You can use your grandmother’s bike, if you want to tag along. She doesn’t get much use of it these days.”

“I can’t talk you into a nice drive?” Emma put on her most cajoling smile, the one she’d used to get her way with him as a kid.

“Nope. Can’t harangue my patients on good cardiovascular habits and then not practice what I preach.”

“The things I put myself through to spend time with my grandfather,” Emma grumbled.

Felix gave a nod of satisfaction. “Be good for you. And just ’cause half the ride’s up hill, don’t think you’re going to get away with not telling me what in Sam hill’s going on with you and the Tubb boy.”

* * *

E
MMA
SCATTERED
GRAIN
to the fat pullets in the fenced-in run and watched her grandfather and Ed Taylor talk from the corner of her eye. Ed was tall and stooped and terribly thin. Emma didn’t think he looked well, at all. From the way her grandfather was shaking his finger under Ed’s nose, she suspected he was voicing the same opinion.

Finally Felix threw up his arms and shoved some bottles of pill samples into Ed’s reluctant hands. He snapped the lid of his old-fashioned black bag shut, settled it firmly in the basket of his ancient and highly prized Schwinn Corvette and pedaled over to where Emma was standing.

“Let’s go,” he said, his brow creased in a frown. “That damned stubborn fool won’t listen to a word I say. He’s not taking care of himself and not getting enough to eat, but he’s too damned bullheaded to get any help from the county or his daughter. Something’s wrong there, too. She’s always been good as gold at helping the old coot out, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her in months.”

Her grandfather’s gruff exterior hid a heart of gold, but he would deny it to the end and act even more cantankerous and bad-tempered if she insisted it was true. He’d developed his tough outer shell, Emma was convinced, to protect himself from feeling too much of his patients’ pain over the years, and it was second nature to him now. Her grandmother had seen through the ploy from the beginning and, Emma suspected, so had most of his patients over a half century of practice.

They rode in silence toward the village. The sun had climbed higher into the sky, but the morning was still pleasantly cool. Long wisps of clouds arched across the sky from low on the horizon—the weather change Maureen had spoken of. A cold front was coming to blow away the last of the warm Indian summer weather and usher in the beginning of a long, cold New England winter.

There was almost no traffic on the side road they were traveling. A few grasshoppers chirped in the dry grass that edged the roadway, and a couple of woolly worm caterpillars were making their way across the pavement, one brown, one the color of melted vanilla ice cream. Emma could never remember if it was dark for a hard winter or light. Regardless of which meant what, she did her best not to squish them as she rode by.

Black and white cows grazed in a nearby pasture, raising their heads to watch the humans pass before going back to their leisurely meal. It was so quiet Emma could hear a dog bark in its kennel at the vet’s farm over a mile away. They stopped on the crest of the hill leading into town, and her grandfather leaned his bicycle against the remnants of a stone fence, then settled himself on the lichen-covered boulders beside it and pulled his ball cap low over his eyes. “Damned proud old fool.” Felix muttered.

“Do you mean Ed Taylor?”

He took a deep breath. “He’s going to neglect himself right into his grave.” Emma looked over her shoulder at the run-down farm they’d just left. The only things that had been well cared for, she thought, were the chickens she’d been feeding.

“I’m too damned old for this, Emma Martha. I can’t take on the world’s problems anymore.”

Emma remained astride her bike, her feet braced in the gravel. “You shouldn’t have to, Granddad. You’ve looked after other people for most of your life. It’s time you concentrated on you and Nana for a change.”

He sighed. “Ed Taylor’s as stubborn as I am, so I might as well stop trying to change him now. Don’t worry about me and your grandmother, though. I’ve been grousing about my patients since Eisenhower was in office, and your grandmother’s been listening to me do it for almost as long. Enough of complaining about what can’t be changed. We’ll start discussing you now,” the crafty old man replied. “Spill it, Emma. What’s going on between you and the Tubb boy? And while you’re at it, what’s this about changes in your job, too?”

Emma folded her arms and leaned on the handlebars of her grandmother’s shiny red three-speed. She remembered the Christmas her grandfather had presented it to his wife, wrapped in a glittering silver bow. It was just after they’d moved to the tiny Berkshire village. They were going to spend their retirement years tooling around the countryside. And they still did, for short rides in warm weather. Emma had always loved spending Christmas with her grandparents, no matter where they were, but most especially since they’d made their home in Cooper’s Corner.

“I’ll start with the good news. My show’s being picked up for syndication at the first of the year. One hundred stations, good markets, close to a million listeners and the potential, someday, to grow the show to five times that many. It’s not the big time yet, but it’s a good start.”

“I’m proud of you. I don’t always agree with what you tell your callers. Entirely too much sleeping around and such goes on these days. But for the most part I have to say it’s good advice.”

“First, do no harm,” Emma said, quoting from the Hippocratic oath.

“Exactly. And I don’t doubt you’ll be as big as Limbaugh someday. I hope I live to see it.”

“I hope you live forever, Granddad.”

“Don’t know about that. Not as appealing a notion as it was thirty years ago.” He plucked a stem of grass and inspected it closely before putting it between his teeth. “So that’s the good news. Now for the bad. And that involves Daryl, does it?”

“Yes. I imagine Nana gave you the particulars.”

“She told me you caught the young fool with another woman, or some such.” A gust of wind, stronger than the light, steady breeze that had followed them into town, began sighing through the meadow and roadside grasses, kicking up dust as it passed, attempting to take Felix’s Red Sox cap with it. He settled it more firmly on his head and fixed Emma with a steely glare.

“Yes, and for some reason I don’t believe it was only a business dinner. I have no proof...except what’s in my heart.”

“A most unreliable organ at times.”

A crow winged past, cawing raucously, and the call echoed back and forth among the hills. Emma watched the big black bird for a moment, then returned her gaze to her grandfather’s face. “I can’t help how I feel.”

“He’s given you an explanation for his being with her?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t believe him.” The more she said it, the more convinced she was. But it was still hard for her to voice her argument to others. In her heart of hearts she knew Daryl had been unfaithful. She just didn’t know what to do about it.

“So the wheels have come off the wagon, eh? I wondered how long it would take you to come to your senses.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, just that Lori and Burt Tubb spoiled that boy rotten. I can’t say as how I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”

“Why didn’t you say so before, Granddad? I was planning to marry him.” She caught herself with a start, and her heart thumped a little faster in her chest. She hadn’t hesitated a moment in using the past tense to describe their relationship.

Felix gave a little nod, letting her know he’d caught the certainty in her voice, too. “Wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I was relying on your good judgment to rein you in before it was too late. And to tell the truth, I wasn’t looking forward to being the heavy unless I didn’t have a choice. Putting my opinion aside, what proof do you have that he’s lying to you?”

“That’s the million-dollar question. All the proof I have is gut instinct, woman’s intuition, call it what you will....” She let the sentence fade away. She’d studiously avoided trying to make any connection with Blake Weston and the woman who’d betrayed him.

“And what?” her canny old grandfather demanded.

“It’s just coincidence. I doubt there’s even a connection, but still—”

“I hate riddles,” Felix said flatly. “Spell it out, girl.”

“You remember the man I brought to the house Saturday morning? The one with the hangover?”

“The Marine.”

“Yes. His hangover was caused by a broken heart. He found the woman he’d been involved with naked in his living room. With their Realtor.”

“And you jumped to the conclusion that the man was Daryl?”

“Not really,” Emma said doubtfully. “Not right away. But the woman’s name was Heather. Daryl said the client he’d been with was named Heather, when he finally admitted he’d been with a woman at all,” she added. “And he was meeting her because the deal he’d been working on to sell the McGillicuddy place to her and her significant other was going sour—”

“And this Blake Weston found his way to Cooper’s Corner because he wanted to buy property in the area,” Felix finished for her. “Well, I’ll be damned. If it turns out to be true, it’s bigger odds than hitting the lottery. No wonder Tubb thought he could get away with it.”

“So you think he was unfaithful, too?”

“Let’s just say I hear things around town. Nothing I’d ever repeat. But he was noted for being a ladies’ man before he met you.”

“I wish you’d told me this last summer.”

“Hey. You’re my granddaughter. My pride and joy. I wanted to think young Tubb was smart enough to know he’d captured a real prize. But seems he’s still thinking with his—never mind.”

“His penis, Granddad?”

“Hell’s bells, girl. If I’d wanted to say the word, I would have.”

Emma laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “Granddad, you’re a doctor. I’m a thirty-year-old woman. I’ve heard the word before.”

Felix ignored her little joke and scowled even harder. “If you want my opinion straight up and unvarnished—”

“Do you ever give it any other way?” Emma said, swallowing her smile.

”Course not. Plain and simple—dump him. As for you ending up at Twin Oaks on the same day as the man who’s the other injured party... Well, I guess there have been stranger things happen.”