The Bachelor's Northbridge Bride

“No, it’s fine. Anyway, this dream Gram has is that the baby is crying for her. She has problems with depression most of the time but when she has this dream, she really gets bummed out. She ended up crying all afternoon and there was nothing her nurse Mary Pat or I could do to cheer her up.”

“I feel so badly for her,” Kate said. She couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to have a child and then have it taken from her.

“Yeah, it’s lousy,” Ry agreed.

It was definitely easier to talk to him without looking at that handsome face, with his back draped in towels, without touching him while the heat packs did their job, and Kate was feeling more herself.

“We’ve notified this Tyson character that we intend to sue him for restitution over the land,” Ry went on to say. “Our lawyers are putting the finishing touches on that this week, but I think I’m going to have to take the bull by the horns over the baby. Do you know Tyson?”

Kate decided enough time had passed with the heat packs applied to his shoulders and since she felt she could better deal with massaging him, she removed the towels and packs. But before she answered Ry’s question, she warmed more oil between her hands and said, “I’m going to start on your spine to get everything in line before I work on your shoulder.”

“Sure, whatever,” he said.

Talking to him about his grandmother had helped dispel some of her reaction to him because this time when she began the massage, she had something to think about other than how smooth and sleek his skin was.

“Yes, I know Hector Tyson,” she said then, finally responding to what he’d asked. “Everyone does. He’s a cranky old man like my grandfather. In fact, I’ll be seeing Hector as soon as we’re done here. I’m sure you know about that holding barn he bought out from under you to try to keep Home-Max from coming in?”

“Yeah, I know about that.”

“Well, he’s closed on the deal and he wants the title. I agreed to deliver it to him tonight.”

“You’re a masseuse who moonlights as a messenger?”

“I’m a masseuse who’s also the city clerk.”

“Seriously?”

“The city clerk job in Northbridge is only a part-time position—we just aren’t big enough to need one full-time. And since being a masseuse in a small town is also not a huge moneymaker, I do both jobs.”

“Ah, that’s why you were only here this afternoon, not this morning,” he said, although his ah was tinged with some pleasure as she worked her way from his waist upward and began to address those wide shoulders of his, paying particular attention to the injured one.

“So why don’t I go with you when we’re finished here and you can introduce me?” he suggested then.

“I can think of about 100 reasons why not,” she answered before thinking better of it.

“Why is that?”

Of course he would ask, and now that her runaway mouth had gotten her into it, what was she going to say? That she was worried about her own visceral responses to him? That she didn’t want to risk what might happen if she was with him any more than necessary? That the rock-solid muscles of his back were not the kind of “rock solid” she was looking for and so she considered him a waste of her valuable time?

“I just don’t think that would be a good idea,” she hedged. “I’m going to Hector’s house as a civil servant. I can’t bring a date.”

“Who said anything about a date?”

She wished she hadn’t.

“No one,” she backpedaled. “I’m just saying that that’s what it would look like to Hector. And then you’d attack him and—”

“I’m not going to attack an old man. I just want to talk to him. Wouldn’t it be better to start off with an introduction from someone he knows? Someone who can say I’m family now?”

She didn’t appreciate having that table turned on her. But she did know that her brother would want her to help the Graysons in any way she could, especially in getting to the bottom of things for Theresa.

Plus now that she’d shot off her mouth about going to Hector Tyson’s house tonight and then made the other slips of the tongue that had compounded things, if she didn’t concede, this was apt to become a much bigger deal than she wanted it to. And then that could get back to her brother and it all just seemed like it could snowball if she didn’t bite the bullet and let Ry Grayson have his way….

“Ouch!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, not realizing that in the process of working on his shoulder her own frustration might have made her rougher than she should have been.

She was more careful as she stretched his arm toward his back.

“So what do you say?” he asked. “Will you do the honors with old man Tyson? Otherwise I’m just gonna follow you from here so I know how to get to his place and we’ll end up there at the same time anyway.”

“You weren’t planning to go tonight until you heard I was going,” she accused.

“But now that I know you are, I might as well trail you—it’s easier than finding him on my own. So what’ll it be? Together with an introduction—the way a family member would do with another family member? Or some awkward, coincidental, synchronized arrival on the old man’s doorstep that’ll be harder for you to explain?”

Kate was finished with his massage and rather than be quick about answering him, she left the room to get another warm, damp towel. As she laid it across his back and shoulders when she returned, she sighed elaborately and said, “I suppose—since you are family now—you can tag along.”

“Not gracious, but I’ll take it,” he said.

After another few minutes of silence that she let lapse to make it clear she didn’t appreciate being coerced into something she didn’t want to do, Kate used the damp towel while it was still warm to rub the oil off his back, hating that it gave her a tiny thrill to do it and to hear his sighs of satisfaction when she did.

And now her time with him wasn’t going to end here, she thought, knowing that it was also not a good sign that that excitement she’d been trying to dress up as dread in anticipation of his massage had returned with the prospect of taking him with her to Hector Tyson’s house.

But the massage and taking him to Hector’s house were one-time and one-time-only occurrences, she told herself. After this, there wouldn’t be any reason for her to even see Ry Grayson, let alone spend time with him. Or touch him.

If she could just get through the next hour or so, this would all be over with and she could go back to her single-minded husband-hunting.

That meant going home to her apartment to check the two Internet dating services she’d joined, and looking through the catalog of men she’d received in the mail today from Partner-Finders—the matchmaking firm she’d signed up with in Billings.

Stubborn determination—that’s what she had. Stubborn determination to find herself a mate.

And she wasn’t going to let Ry Grayson get in the way of it.

Even if the feel of every taut tendon and hard muscle of his back seemed burned indelibly into her brain.

Chapter Three

“I told you people before and I’ll tell you again,” Hector Tyson shouted, “these are nothing but the ramblings of a crazy woman and no, there was no baby, let alone one that I took away from her! And I don’t need to talk to anybody who’s threatening to sue me and trying to put me out of business on top of it!”

The old man redirected his venom from Ry to Kate. “First your brother Noah brought that Grayson woman he just married and now you bring this Grayson. If you Perrys don’t quit bringing them to my house, you’re not going to be welcome here, either! Now both of you get out!”

“I’m sorry we upset you, Hector,” Kate said, “but—”

“But nothing! Just get out!”

Kate wasn’t fond of Hector Tyson but she also didn’t like having been a part of aggravating him. And since the man was eighty-four years old and his face was now the color of beet juice with a vein throbbing in his temple, she was worried he might have a stroke or a heart attack.

“Let’s go,” she urged Ry, who was glaring at the cantankerous old man.

“I’ll leave,” he told Hector, “but don’t think this is over by any means. I believe there was a baby and I’m going to find out what happened to it, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“That’s not making it better,” Kate pointed out. “Let’s just go.”

Ry apparently felt the need to give Hector the hard stare for another moment. The hard stare that Hector was returning unwaveringly from squinted eyes.

But after that additional moment, Ry turned on his heels and went with Kate from the living room, across the entrance hall and through the front door of the Tyson home.

“Well, that was pleasant,” she said facetiously once they were outside in the fresh evening air again.

Ry laughed. “Ah, come on, you can’t tell me anything to do with that guy is ever pleasant. You said yourself that he’s cranky.”

Kate was surprised by how quickly Ry could switch gears. He’d been arguing heatedly with Hector for the last twenty minutes, but now he was once again as calm and relaxed as he’d been before meeting the surly elderly man.

“Was that all an act in there?” she asked as they walked to her car. Ry had ridden his motorcycle to his massage so Kate had driven them to Hector Tyson’s house.

“An act?” he parroted.

“I thought you were as mad as Hector was and now you’re happy as a clam again.”

“Ooh, clams sound good,” he said as he opened the driver’s side door for her and waited for her to get in. “I’d like to wring that old coot’s scrawny neck, but I’m not mad at you, so why would I take it out on you? Or let it ruin the rest of this warm summer night?”

That was reasonable. And levelheaded. “I’m glad you didn’t take it out on me. I’m just surprised that you can shake it off so easily.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t expect this to be amiable. It went about the way I thought it would. No sense stewing or brooding over it.”

Or throwing a tantrum, which was what she’d come to expect from men in her past and had thought she might be in line for again now. But Ry merely closed her door and went around the front end of her small sedan.

As he did, her eyes went with him, drinking in the view of him in jeans and a plain white crew-neck T-shirt that fitted him like a second skin and seemed to throw into relief not only that back she’d had her hands on such a short while ago, but also a chest and a set of flat, to-die-for washboard abs. And he didn’t brood, stew or throw tantrums. Kate appreciated that.

He got into the passenger seat then and once again said, “Clams—let’s have some. I don’t suppose there’s a seafood restaurant around here.”

“Sorry,” she said, wondering if he was just assuming they were going to go to dinner now.

“How about pizza, then?” he suggested enthusiastically. “Sometimes I can get clams on pizza and if I can’t have ’em fresh, that’ll do.”

“There is a pizza place, but I’ve never noticed if clams are one of the toppings they offer.”

“Let me guess—because you only eat cheese pizza.”

“I eat more on my pizza than just cheese, but I’ve never eaten clams at all, let alone that way.”

“Then you don’t know what you’re missing. What do you say—shall we go see if we can get a pizza with clams? You can broaden your horizons.”

“Dinner wasn’t part of this errand tonight,” she pointed out. “And what makes you think that I don’t have other plans?”

“Do you?”

“I have things to do at home.” There was that catalog of men waiting for her.

“One of the things you have to do at home is eat, though, right?”

“Yes.”

“So eat with me and then go home and do your things. I’ll buy you dinner as payment for taking me to meet Tyson.”

Besides the sandals on her fancy feet, she was dressed in navy blue scrubs—the clothes she worked in because the hospital preferred that anyone providing any kind of health services wear them. And while she had paid special attention to her makeup today and wound her hair into a loose knot at her crown that left wisps of curls around her face, it was the scrubs she was thinking of when she said, “I’m not dressed to go out to eat.”

“Come on, you can’t tell me that there’s a dress code to eat pizza in Northbridge,” he cajoled as Kate started the engine and backed out of Hector Tyson’s driveway.

She knew she shouldn’t agree to have dinner with him. But there were only leftovers for her at home. And she did love pizza….

“It’s just having a friendly meal together—surely we can do that?” he said as if he knew she was considering it.

“Friendly?” she repeated.

“Nothing but,” he swore zealously.

Friendly was safe. His zeal was a little disappointing somehow, but she didn’t want to analyze why that should be and instead merely told herself that as long as things between them could be friendly and nothing more, she could have dinner with him. Friendly was not going to gum up anything for her.

“I suppose I could do pizza. If it doesn’t take too long. And you do owe me for getting me into trouble with Hector.”

“Yeah, I know how you Good Girls avoid trouble,” he said. “I probably owe you a salad and a soda, too. And maybe my left kidney and my firstborn child.”

“Just the pizza will be enough,” she said wryly.

They were back on Main Street by then. She drove past the redbrick corner building that housed the small medical facility where she worked and where his motorcycle was parked, and went to the pizza parlor instead, coming to a stop nose-first at the curb there.

“Is this still open?” Ry asked since they could see through the storefront windows that the place was empty.

“Sure. But it’s after eight—most people in Northbridge have finished dinner and it’s too early yet for late-night snacking.”

“But not by much, I’ll bet,” Ry muttered as he got out of her car.

Once inside they chose a table in the center of the small establishment and within moments, Ry had discovered clams on the long list of available toppings.

“I suppose they’ll come out of a can, and fresh are a whole other experience, but let’s have them anyway,” he decreed. “Or shall I just get them on half so you can have something else?”

“I think anything that has you in this much rapture had better be tried,” Kate said indulgently.

“Rapture?” he repeated with a crooked smile. “You think this is rapture? This is nothing but a little yen for clams.”

Kate wasn’t about to explore what he considered rapture to be, so instead—when their pizza was ordered and their drinks were served—she said, “If you do believe there was a baby between your grandmother and Hector, and you want to find it, what’s your plan?”

He obviously had one because he didn’t need to think about it before he said, “I know adoption records—especially from that far back—are sealed, but I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ll use the computer to access what I can of newspaper articles and birth announcements at the time. See if anything seems like a clue to who could have acquired a baby that didn’t seem to be their birth child. I could also comb over old records and compare births to census reports from around here—maybe that will tell me whose family grew even though there’s no record of the mother having given birth.”

“I don’t mean to be a naysayer, but that sounds like trying to find a needle in a haystack. And the fact that it was over fifty years ago won’t help anything.”

“You know what would help things, though?”

“Hmm?” Kate asked as she sipped her iced tea.

“If I knew the city clerk—that is who oversees and has access to anything that’s a matter of public record, like census reports and births—isn’t it?”

“Did you have this up your sleeve all along?” she accused.

“I found out you were the city clerk when I was shirtless—just a couple of hours ago. So no sleeves have been involved in this,” he deadpanned.

“You didn’t know I was the city clerk before that?” Kate persisted.

“Sorry to disappoint you when I’m sure you’d be happier if you could believe I was calculating and conniving, but this really was coincidental.”

“Why would I be happier if I could believe you were calculating and conniving?”

He shrugged. “It’s just the sense I get from you—that you want not to like me.”

Great, he was intuitive, too.

But why did the idea that she was trying not to like him seem to strike him as amusing?

“You’re smiling,” she observed. “You have the sense that I want not to like you and you find that funny?”

“And challenging—which is dangerous for me because I can never resist a challenge.”

That comment went unexplored when their pizza arrived just then and Ry was intent on her tasting it and telling him what she thought.

“I love it!” she said without disguising her own shock at finding it true. Since she wasn’t a big fan of seafood, she’d expected to dislike clams on pizza.

Ry grinned but looked as stunned as she was by her declaration. “Really?”

“The tomato and the clams together have this sort of buttery richness—honestly, I love it.”

“If you think this is good, someday you’ll have to have linguine and clam sauce made with fresh clams—that’s something.”

After a few more bites, rather than returning to the subject of her not wanting to like him, he said, “So, how about it? Can I look through your records?”

He made that sound seductive, which caused Kate to roll her eyes as if he were beyond redemption, and turn a bit preachy. “They aren’t my records. They’re city records. And since they’re public, they’re available to anyone who wants to look through them.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ll be at that office tomorrow afternoon. The records department is in the courthouse building on the corner of Main Street and South—”

“I know where it is. But how late are you open? I’m swamped with Home-Max stuff tomorrow so it’s going to be tough for me to get away, but I want to jump on this.”

“Government offices close at five.”

He laughed. “Geez, loosen up, will you? You sound like a recorded phone message.”

Had she stiffened at the prospect of seeing him again tomorrow?

Probably. It was just that he made it so easy to be with him and she knew that was a pitfall.

She put some effort into outwardly relaxing, though, and announced that she was breaking her one-slice-of-pizza rule and having half of a second slice.

“Go for it!” he encouraged, taking a full second slice of his own.

Then, as if he were slightly baffled, he said, “So, city clerk, I can see that job for you. But how did you decide to become a masseuse?”

“A therapeutic massage therapist,” she corrected because once more he’d made masseuse sound a little off-color. “I wanted to do something in health care but I didn’t want to be a doctor or a nurse—I wanted something that wouldn’t take too much dedication so that when I have a family, my family can genuinely come first. Being a physical therapist or a chiropractor seemed to offer more flexibility, but Northbridge already has one of each of those, and the town isn’t big enough to support more than that. But there was no massage therapist.”

“You wanted a career in health care but you actually chose what line based on what Northbridge needed, not on what you wanted? As if Northbridge is the only place you could get a job?”

“It’s the only place I intend to live, so, yes,” she said matter-of-factly.

“There’s a great big world out there, you know?”

“But I want to live here.”

“And the whole flexible-hours issue so you could devote yourself to a family you don’t even have yet? You let a lot of outside things dictate your choice.”

“I just thought it through and made my decision based on what I want for myself now and in the future. You find that odd?”

He shrugged. “That just isn’t the way I do things. I like to make choices based on the moment, on going with the flow of things as they happen, on what feels right.”

“Is this the first time it’s occurred to you that we’re different?”

He laughed, pushing his plate away after his third slice of pizza and lounging slightly in his chair while Kate continued to sit very straight in hers.

“Believe me, I know we’re very different,” he said then, his tone wry.

“You say that as if I have a tail or green scales for skin,” she pointed out.

“No green scales—your skin is like cream. And your tail is one of the finest I’ve ever seen. But damn, you’re serious. What if things don’t work out the way you think they will? What if you don’t ever get married and have a family? What if a tornado strikes and there’s no more Northbridge? Will you be able to be happy doing massages anyway or will you regret that you didn’t do something you actually wanted to do?”

“I know that some of life just happens to you, no matter what you do. But I also believe that if you set your priorities and go after what you want with steadfast, single-minded determination, you can achieve your goals. I’m just making accommodations for those goals in advance so that when I achieve them, there won’t be obstacles already mucking them up.”

He studied her for a long moment, smiling a Cheshire cat smile right before he said, “You’re just so centered and sure of yourself and what you want and where you’re going, aren’t you? You think you have everything under control.”

“As much as possible,” she confirmed.

He shook his head and grinned. “God help me, there’s a part of me that wants to rattle that cage you’re in. Who put you there—the Reverend or your parents or a bad experience with a man?”

The waitress appeared just then to ask if they wanted to take the remainder of the pizza. Ry didn’t but Kate did, and while the waitress boxed it for her, Ry glanced at the bill and handed the money to the waitress when she was done.

“I am not in a cage,” Kate felt compelled to say once the waitress had left them alone again.

“Boxed, caged, tied up—any way you want to look at, you’re contained.”

Kate merely shook her head. “From your perspective. From mine, I’m doing just fine, thank you very much. And I certainly don’t need my cage rattled. Especially not by you,” she warned.

He smiled again and Kate had the feeling that every word she said only made her more of a challenge.

“Right, I get it,” he said. “I’m not your type. Don’t worry, you aren’t mine, either.”

That stung. Kate had no idea why, but it did.

She felt her spine stiffen in response. “Well, now that we have that settled, we should probably go.”

He grinned as if he knew that her back was up. “Yeah, since there are so many people lined up waiting for this table,” he said with a glance around them at the still empty restaurant.

He stood, though, and so did Kate, making sure to take the pizza box with her. But before Ry moved away from the table, he rolled his injured shoulder and seeing it sent a flash of memory through her mind of his naked back.

“You are good at what you do, I’ll give you that,” he said. “I feel a lot better.”

“So maybe my occupation wasn’t such a bad choice.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad choice,” he countered, leaving tip money on the table. “If I were you, I’d just be a little worried about what went into making it and if it was the right choice.”

“It was for me,” Kate said decisively.

Ry motioned for her to go ahead of him to the door and as she did he said from behind, “So, do you ever do massages that aren’t for medicinal reasons—like they do at spas?” he asked, apparently to make it clear it was not a goad, but a genuine question.

So that was the way Kate took it. “Sure. I have some clients who just want the pampering aspect. And one Saturday a month I run spa day—I put candles around the office, offer teas and treats. The local manicurist comes in to do pedicures, one of our hairstylists is there for scalp treatments and deep conditioning, and we do as much of a spa kind of atmosphere as I can work out in a medical office.”