Runaway Bridesmaid (10 page)

“Vivian!”

“Well, it's true. And you know it.”

Ethel studied the developing scenario outside and shook her head. “All water under the bridge now, ain't it? From the looks of things, she'll never take him back, anyway. And I can't say as I'm sorry about it.”

Vivian was quiet for a moment, then said, “You love that boy, Ethel?”

That merited a sharp glance. “He's kin. Of course I love him.” Dean's aunt tilted her head at Vivian, the skin around her eyes crinkling like crepe paper. “What made you ask such a stupid question?”

Well used to the old woman's acerbic tongue, it didn't even occur to Vivian to take offense. “Because I'm trying for the life of me to figure out why you're still so dead set against Sarah and Dean being together.”

She could see Ethel's jaw clench, her wrinkled lips pursing as if sucking on a sour candy. Habit. That's all this was, Vivian realized. After so many years of harboring the conviction that Sarah and Dean weren't right for each other, it would take more than a few words to change the old woman's mind.

But then, perhaps that depended on what the few words were.

Vivian sighed, then lowered her voice. “They need to be together. The sooner you accept that, the easier this is all going to be.”

The gray head whirled around. “What are you saying, girl? The easier
what's
going to be?”

Unwilling to deal with the scrutiny of those cold blue eyes, Vivian directed her attention outside, praying for guidance. After a long moment, she got her answer. Sarah would undoubtedly have a hissy fit, but Vivian would cross that bridge when she came to it.

 

Dean didn't doubt for a moment that Sarah would follow through with her threat. Slowly, his own hands rose, mirroring hers, as he took a prudent step backward. “Okay, okay…I won't touch you,” he promised, his voice low and controlled, as if talking to a wounded animal. Which he supposed was nearer to the truth than he realized. And his return had only reopened the wounds.

His heart constricted at the agony contorting her features, agony that was
his
fault,
his
doing, and all he could think of
was how desperately he wanted, somehow, to make things right between them again.

How desperately he wanted his best friend back.

And that took the edge off the anger. Somewhat, anyway.

“I won't touch you,” he repeated. “This time. But no more siccing bimbos on me, you got that?”

Her chin came up, the angles of her face limned in coral from the setting sun. “Melanie's no bimbo!” she retorted with sparking eyes. A woman simply defending another woman, he decided. But at least she lowered her hands. She seemed to teeter for a moment, then abruptly crossed the few feet to the porch. She settled onto the edge of the floor peeking out from under the railing, bracing her hands on either side of her hips. “She's just young, is all.”

Dean followed at what he decided was a safe distance. “She's a damn piranha, for God's sake. She tried everything short of chaining me to a tree.”

Suddenly she was fighting a smile. Playing a game. Tiny creases danced at the corners of her eyes as she said, “Oh? Too much for you to handle, Dean?”

“Dammit, woman!” His arms flew up in exasperation. “What the Sam Hill is this all about?”

The humor faded. With a half shrug, she said, “It's not about anything. She just wanted to meet you, that's all.”

“Right. What, exactly, did you say to her, Sarah?”

Her gaze glanced off his, then she pushed herself away from the porch, aimlessly strolling down the drive. “Nothing much. Except that…” She pivoted her torso, as if trying to decide whether or not to finish her sentence. When she did speak, he caught the tremor in her voice. “Except that there was nothing between us. Anymore.” Focused again on the driveway, she crammed her fisted hands into her pockets.

She was lying. Oh, she was doing a damn good job of it, but the words must be burning in her throat, they were such bunk. Her voice always went quavery when she got emotional or was forced to say something she didn't want to. That hadn't changed.

His anger had, however. Completely, this time. Something in her eyes, the shakiness in her voice, had just washed all the fight right out of him.

But he was still curious. “Sarah?”

“What?”

“Did you really think throwing a bosomy blonde in my path would distract me?”

Her shoulders hitched in a little sad shrug. “It was worth a shot.”

“After all this time, how could you even think such a thing?”

“I would've thought you'd have at least enough sense to figure that one out on your own.” She sounded weary, like a mother who's asked a child to do something a dozen times and still not gotten results.

Frustration flared again, just for a second. “How many times do I have to tell you, I made a mistake?”

Her hand plowed through her hair, stayed there as she shook her head. “Don't you see, Dean? It doesn't matter.” Anguish again flooded her features; a cold, sick feeling washed over him that they weren't having the conversation he thought they were having. Her hand fell to her side as she turned, faced him. “It's not just a matter of my forgiving you, if that's what you want. Too much has happened, too much time has passed…”

The look in those honey-brown eyes stabbed him all the way to his soul.

He didn't care what happened now, even if she belted him clear into another zip code. She still cared. A great deal, unless he was way off course.

And, heaven help him, so did he.

He tugged her to him too quickly for her to react, crushing his mouth to hers. The smell of her, the taste of her, the
feel
of her—all sweeter than he remembered. Nine years evaporated into dust the instant his lips made contact, the instant he had her in his arms again. Where she belonged.

One arm easily encircled her slender waist, his other hand
nestling her head, her short, fine hair as silky as a kitten's fur against his rough palm. He could feel her swell against him, trembling and aroused, just like she used to when they were hot and horny teenagers who couldn't do a blessed thing about their grown-up passions. They'd held off so long, so long, until that one night they'd given up and given in—

What the hell was this?
Realization pricked his clouded brain: seconds ago, they were swapping skin cells; now she'd gone limp in his arms, her hands at her sides, noncommittal. He reluctantly pulled away from her mouth, daring to search her eyes, only to have his gaze bounce off a pair of identical bronze shields. Impenetrable. Opaque. Cold and hard and unforgiving.

He let her go, then walked back to the house, muttering words he hadn't used in a very, very long time.

 

The sound of her sneakers pounding against the dirt echoed the hammering inside her chest. Her head buzzed from the blood rushing through her ears; her lips burned, ached, tingled. She tried to touch them, but her fingers were shaking too badly to make contact.

Well,
that
definitely took the prize for the hardest thing she'd ever done, pulling back like that. Dean probably wondered what was wrong with her. Shoot,
she
wondered what was wrong with her.

There was nothing wrong with her, which was the problem. By her count, all systems were go, go,
go.
Too bad she had to abort the flight.

Dammit to hell! How
dare
her body betray her like that! And after one measly little kiss, no less. Sure, she'd kissed a few other men, but only Dean's kisses accomplished so much with so little. He was an efficient son of a gun, she'd give him that. Even if she wasn't giving him anything else. Her hand found its unsteady way to her head, where she smoothed down her hair as if expecting to find it standing straight up on end. Heaven knows, several other things were.

Having reached her car, she fished her keys out of her
pocket, made several unsuccessful attempts to connect key to lock, finally hurled them down into the dust. Her hands flew to her face as she collapsed back against the still-hot door, where she gulped in breath after breath, trying to regain control.

Then her hands fell to her thighs with a loud slap as she let out a rattling sigh. What the hell good was a hyper libido if you couldn't do anything about it?

Mexico called again. Loudly.

But…that wasn't an option, either. Instead, she'd just go for a run until her leg muscles screamed for mercy and her lungs felt as though they'd been turned inside out. After that, she was going to find what was left of that cake and stuff her face until she got sick.

“Hey, Sarah!”

Startled, she twisted around, peering over the roof of her car at the blond teenager climbing into the old pickup parked a few feet away. Dusk had cast a charcoal filter over everything so she didn't recognize him at first. “Hey, Jeff.” She frowned. “You leaving without your folks?”

“Mama wants to stay and help clean up for a little while longer, so she told me to go on home, get the animals fed and all that. I'll be back in about an hour.”

Sarah nodded and tried a smile. “Sounds like a plan to me.” She waved a silent goodbye as he started up the engine.

After Jeff pulled out of the drive, she leaned against the car for another moment or two, still and thoughtless, then decided she was calm enough to safely operate the vehicle. She kicked around in the dirt for a minute or two until she found her keys, but had no sooner picked them up when she heard the screech of tires…immediately followed by the heart-wrenching sound of an animal in pain.

S
he grabbed her black bag and battery-powered lamp out of the back of the Bronco and tore off in the direction of the cluster of people gathered at the edge of the front yard. Close by, at a forty-five degree angle to the road, the driver's door ajar, sat the McCallums' truck.

Penny was so quiet and still Sarah at first thought she was already gone. “Hey, girl,” she said gently over the knot in her throat, squatting by the dog and setting up the lamp. She placed her fingers at the base of the dog's neck; there was still a faint pulse.

Jeff McCallum was near to hysterics. Barely sixteen, he'd only had his driver's license about a month and had taken such pains to prove to his folks he was a safe driver. And he'd had one of Penny's puppies since he was eight.

“I swear, I didn't see 'er, Sarah. She just come out from behind those bushes. There wasn't nothin' I could do…”

“It's okay, Jeff” came a low, soft voice from over her head. Sarah glanced up to see Dean lay a hand on the boy's shoulder. “It wasn't your fault.”

“He's right,” Sarah immediately concurred, reaching up and giving the weeping boy's hand a quick squeeze. With a sigh, she pulled her stethoscope out of her bag. “It wasn't anybody's fault.”

“Nobody's but mine,” Amanda Jenkins said, her voice strangely calm. With some difficulty, she knelt by the dog, took the long graying muzzle into her lap. “I shouldn't've let her loose today, not with all these people around.”

Sarah briefly stroked Amanda's arm, then turned back to her patient, who hadn't moved at all. Dean dropped to one knee on the other side of the dog, his veined hand skimming the beautiful fur. “We can't move her, can we?”

“No.” She caught the compassion etched on his features in the eerie glow from her lamp, and remembered Dean playing with Penny when she was a pup, all those years ago. “No,” she repeated, refocusing on the barely breathing dog. “I don't dare move her until I check her out.” With great care, and scant hope, she placed the stethoscope on the dog's abdomen. There was little point to the exam, but she went through the motions because that's what she was supposed to do. Sarah had instantly known the dog was going to die. The only question was, whether she'd do it on her own, or whether Sarah would assist her.

Ever since she was a child, she'd always been able to tell when an animal was ready to let go. She could see it in their eyes. She'd seen animals with near-fatal injuries pull through, and others with less catastrophic problems just give up on her, no matter how adeptly she applied her skill. The old ones, especially, always seemed to know when it was time.

It didn't make things any easier.

Even a cursory exam confirmed her suspicions about the extent of the old dog's injuries. She shut her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. A small hand, smooth and warm, lighted on her wrist.

“She needs to be put down, don't she?”

Sarah opened her eyes, finding her own strength in
Amanda's clear brown gaze. “There's really nothing I can… I'm so sorry.”

Amanda gave Sarah's wrist a slow, reassuring squeeze, then reached up to take her husband's hand in hers. “Then do it now. I can't stand to see her suffer no more.”

Sarah nodded, then pulled out a vial of Soccumb from her black bag, quickly filled a hypodermic. “Penny…she'll go to sleep about fifteen seconds after she receives the injection. She won't feel anything at all.”

Amanda gave her a watery smile. “I know, honey. This ain't the first time I've been through this, you know.”

Sarah tried to smile back. After the slightest hesitation, she maneuvered the needle into a vein in the dog's forepaw, slowly injected the thick substance, then waited.

 

It always hurt. Always. No matter how old or injured or ill-tempered an animal might be, no matter how much more humane it might be in theory to put the creature out of its misery, her heart cracked in two every single time she had to put an animal to sleep. If her mother had told her once, she'd told her a hundred times she was such a good vet because she cared so much, that heartache came with the territory.

Small comfort.

Mercifully, everyone had gone by the time she got back to her car. Percy said he'd bury Penny out in the pasture the next morning, where she used to like to sit and watch the cows. He asked Sarah if maybe she could come around about eleven or so, he'd like to have a little service, if she didn't think that sounded silly. Tears stinging her eyes, she'd told him it wasn't silly at all and that of course she'd be there.

You did what you had to,
she told herself. The dog's back was broken. Even if she'd been a young animal, in perfect health, what sort of life would she have had paralyzed?
There hadn't been any choice…

The driver's side door stood open. She slammed it shut with all the force she could muster, then leaned her arms on top of the hood and buried her face in her arms, sobbing like a child.

Seconds later, she found herself cradled instead against a familiar chest, familiar strong arms holding her, rocking her, as gentle fingers caressed the nape of her neck. Not to arouse, but to console.

“Shh, baby…it's okay, it's okay…” Dean's deep voice reverberated softly in her ear as his chin came to rest of the top of her head. She thought maybe he kissed her hair; she was too upset to be sure.

Please,
she silently begged,
don't tell me it didn't matter because the dog was old, anyway, or that I did the kindest thing, or that bad things just happen. Please.

But of course he knew better than that. Instead, he simply held her, his body molded to hers as if they were indeed two halves of a single unit, and it felt good, and right, the way it always had.

Which was exactly what scared her so much.

Her hands had been pressed flat against his chest as he held her; now she sheathed her face in her palms as her sobs grew louder, as she grieved for things that could not be because of decisions made long ago. Physical yearnings, she could walk away from. Walking away from
this
was another matter entirely.

But she did. Somehow.

Somehow she pushed out of that strong, caring embrace and made her way back to her car, leaving Dean standing in the Jenkinses' driveway. Without looking, she knew exactly his expression. His silence told her.

She wished with all her heart it didn't have to be this way. But there was nothing to be done for it.

 

Dean drove out to the Thomas place the next afternoon, deciding the frown he wore almost constantly these days had become a permanent part of his features. The twenty-minute drive gave him some time to think, for what good it was worth. Which wasn't much. He'd just about decided to stop trying to figure things out, anyway. Seemed like the more he did, the
worse things got. But…well, you can't just turn off your brain, you know?

Sarah was naturally at the top of his Things to Worry About list. Talk about blowing hot and cold. Not that her behavior was all that bizarre, he supposed, under the circumstances. Frankly, it was amazing she
hadn't
decked him yet. But he kept seeing something in her eyes he couldn't ignore, couldn't let go of. A combination of things, actually, the signals all mixed up like superimposed radio stations.

Probably the strongest was fear. Of being hurt again, would be his guess. But there was desire, too, laced with the apprehension. Hell, that he could practically feel, it was so strong.

There was something else, though, something he couldn't put a finger on, that had him completely baffled. And trying to figure it out was making him seriously crazy.

Next on the list was Sarah's mother, clearly anxious to see them back together. While there seemed to be little to be gained from pointing out the futility of her goal, her motives still eluded him. And made him more nervous than ever.

But the person who most gave him pause was his aunt. Suddenly, after the potluck, Sarah could do no wrong in the woman's opinion. Smart Sarah, pretty Sarah, nice Sarah.
What a shame the two of you broke up,
she had said, leaving Dean so stunned he couldn't even manage a coherent sentence.

What do you mean, what a shame we broke up?
he wanted to shout.
Whose idea was it to leave, anyway? Who called whose third cousin on your Aunt Mildred's side and got me that job in Atlanta?
But he kept his mouth shut, for once, because more and more, the past seemed irrelevant to what was happening now.

Whatever that was.

He pulled the Dakota into a small neat yard choked with hollyhocks and marigolds and petunias and a dozen assorted chickens, and honked, two long beeps and a short. Ed had warned him about the signal. Otherwise, Wilma Thomas was likely to greet him fully armed. A second later, the widow stepped out onto the front porch, nary a weapon in sight, a
wide toothy smile fixed on a broad face the color of devil's food cake. Dean supposed her to be somewhere in her early sixties; Franklin had been the “baby,” born ten years after what the Thomases had assumed was the last in their series of seven children, who were all long since gone with families of their own.

“Well, look at you, Dean Parrish,” she said with a cackle, her hand settled on a wide hip covered in a garish floral duster. “Get yourself in here and have a glass of tea and a piece of pie. And you better hurry before Franklin gets it all. I swear that boy's goin' to grow another six inches this summer.”

Minutes later, Dean found himself sitting at a small but painstakingly crafted trestle table, a small lake's worth of iced tea and a good quarter of a rhubarb pie placed in front of him. He promised himself to forget about Sarah and her kin and his kin for the next few minutes and concentrate on matters at hand. And what was at hand was a fine piece of home baking. And an even finer piece of furniture. Dean palmed the top of the piece appreciatively.

“Your son make this?”

Wilma nodded as she went about chopping vegetables for supper on a wooden board set up near the ancient sink, complete with pump. “It's just pine, but he was trying out a new technique, so didn't want to use better wood in case he messed up.” Her scrutiny was brief. “You like it?”

“Yes, ma'am. It's very nice.
Very
nice.” Addressing the woman's back, he asked, “Where'd he get the tools?”

“Oh, his daddy had accumulated them from time to time, mostly from flea markets and yard sales, you know how it is.” She dumped the pile of carrots into an enormous cast-iron kettle on the wood-burning stove, then started peeling potatoes, her gnarled hands wielding the little paring knife with such precision that each peel came off in one long, thin strip. “Then he'd clean and fix 'em up real nice so they worked like new, and all he had to do was buy new blades now and again.” She nodded toward the window in front of her, indicating something in the backyard. “There's a separate workshop out back.
With its own generator, before you ask,” she added, finishing off with another raucous laugh. “Oh, yeah, that man thought of
everything.
”

“I can see that,” Dean allowed as he scraped the last of the pie juice from his plate. “Dr. Stillman said there are other pieces in the living room?”

“Oh, not just in there, honey. All through the house. Just go on and have a look around,” she said, reducing the denuded spuds into manageable chunks. With a bright smile, she added, “I trust you.”

Dean chuckled as he rose from the table, wiping his mouth on a pink-and-green flowered napkin. “I'm sure glad to hear that, Miz Thomas.” A low whistle floated from Dean's lips the minute he opened the kitchen door.

Another cackle floated from behind him. “Real nice, ain't they?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Dean said softly. “Real nice.” He walked all the way into the room, the swinging door creaking three or four times behind him before coming to a stop. Ed really did know his stuff. And so did this kid. From tables to chairs to a desk to even a carved headboard in a back bedroom, Franklin Thomas already showed a remarkable talent. The construction was solid and precise, unusual in someone so young. The teenager had truly been given the hands and soul of a master. And of course many of the pieces were two or three years old already, Dean realized in amazement.

Just then, Franklin came in from working out in one of the fields. Shirtless and sweating, his tall, muscular build—ill-concealed underneath the obligatory farmer's overalls—was definitely to be respected. The young man thrust out an enormous hand, accompanied by a smile that somehow managed to be confident and deferential at the same time. “Dr. Stillman told me you'd be comin' today.” Coal-black eyes swept the room. “What do you think?”

Nothing like being forthright. “Your work shows more than just skill, Franklin. Shows intelligence, too.” When the dark,
thick brows lifted, Dean added, “The way you laid out the wood grains in some of the pieces…brilliant.”

Franklin hesitated, then said, running his hand lovingly across the back of a rocker, “I don't recall anybody ever calling me intelligent before. Least, not to my face.” He patted the chair, then said, “I didn't even finish high school.”

Dean leaned back on the arm of a Mission-style sofa. “Neither did I.”

The kid's eyes snapped up to Dean's face. “You pullin' my leg, right?”

“Nope. Just got my GED about five years ago.”

Franklin eyed him for a second longer. “How come
you
didn't finish?”

“I didn't know it then, but apparently I had some sort of processing problem. I could read the words okay, but I couldn't interpret what I was reading well enough to make much sense of them. You?”

Recognition, and relief, flickered for a moment in the dark eyes. “Yeah. Sounds about right. So, I decided to make the best use of my hands I could.” Franklin held up a pair of mitts big enough to crush a watermelon. “Figured if my brain didn't work, something else would have to.”