A Vow to Keep

Still, the difference he saw today was not just in Linda’s physical appearance. Before, she had always seemed faintly fragile, now she seemed strong. Before, she had carried herself with a certain remoteness, now she looked engaged. Before she had seemed controlled, now she seemed…was passionate too strong a word?

No.

Who was this new Linda?

He remembered how Bobbi had finished the conversation last night. “I should never have agreed to college, not this year. I better come home. Do you think I should come home?”

Of course he thought she should come home! He certainly didn’t want to be the one put in charge of the rescue of Linda Starr, especially since it was now perfectly evident to him she would resent rescue or even the insinuation one was needed.

“Not that I have a home to come home to,” Bobbi had announced, faint sulkiness in her tone. “My stuff is in boxes!”

Last night he had taken that as evidence that maybe something was wrong.

But now, standing in the brightening morning, looking at Linda’s back, her shoulders set with pride, Rick knew he’d never seen a woman who looked less in need of rescuing. Had he been talked into playing the good Samaritan—used the flimsy excuse of her daughter’s stuff in boxes—to come and see her for himself?

Linda, he calculated, was thirty-eight years old.

She had looked ten years older than that at her husband’s funeral. Now she looked ten years younger. She looked confident, defiant, madder than hell at being found so vulnerable. And she looked beautiful in a way that threatened a wall he had long ago erected around his life.

His job here was nearly done. He would make Linda an offer. She would refuse. He could report to Bobbi that her mother appeared to be fine. More than fine. On fire with some life force that he had not seen in her before, or at least not for many, many years.

Could he leave now, without making the offer? If he left like this he would be filled with the regret of a challenge only partially completed. His own self-preservation was not the issue here, though he felt the threat of the new Linda strongly.

The issue was if Linda was really okay.

She went through the back door of her house, bare feet leaving small prints in the silver grass. He followed them, directly into her kitchen.

He looked at her house with a curiosity he had no right to feel, a spy gathering info. Was it the home of a woman who was doing okay? Or was it the home of a woman secretly going to pieces?

Certainly her house from the outside had been a bit of a shock, had underscored Bobbi’s assessment of the situation. Though many of these Bow Water houses were getting million-dollar facelifts, thanks to their close proximity to downtown, Linda’s was not one of those. Evaluating houses was his specialty, and hers had no curb-appeal. It was a tiny bungalow, shingle-sided, nearly lost in the tangled vines that had long since overtaken it. It was a long, long way from the gracious manor nestled in the curve of the Elbow River that she had just sold.

Still, the interior smelled headily of coffee and spices he could not identify. Despite the fact that it needed work, it had a certain undeniable cottage charm that suited the Linda with short messy hair and funny flannel pajamas.

She motioned at a chair and poured coffee into a sturdy mug. She slapped the mug down in front of him and left the room in what seemed to be a single motion, leaving him free to inspect for signs of craziness. For Bobbi’s benefit? He was kidding himself.

It was obvious she had just moved. Boxes were stacked neatly, labeled Kitchen, waiting to be unpacked. The floor’s curling linoleum needed to be replaced and so did the cabinets, the kitchen sink and the appliances. He was willing to bet the neglect was just as obvious in the rest of the house. Still, he could see the place had potential. Possibly original hardwood floors under that badly damaged linoleum, deep windowsills, high ceilings, beautiful wood moldings with that rich, golden patina that only truly old wood had.

She came back into the kitchen. She had tugged a sweatshirt over her pajamas, gray and loose. He was accustomed to women making just a little more effort to impress him, but for some reason he liked it that she hadn’t. He liked that somewhere, under the layers of pain, they were still Rick and Linda, comfortable with each other.

The sweatshirt had the odd effect of making her seem very slight, the kind of woman a man could daydream about protecting, if he wasn’t careful. A man could remember how, for a moment, when he had told her he had a problem, the wariness had melted from her eyes, briefly replaced with trust.

She got her own coffee, but didn’t sit. Instead she stood, rear end braced against the countertop, and regarded him through the steam of her coffee.

Her eyes were brown, like melted chocolate. Once, he had thought, they were the softest eyes in the world. Now they had shades of other things in them. Sorrow. Betrayal. Maturity. But all those things just seemed to make them more expressive and mysterious, the way shadows brought depth to a painting.

Her hair was two shades lighter than her eyes. He realized, slightly shocked, that the black had probably never been her true color. It was as if, before, she had worn a mask, and now the real Linda was beginning to shine through.

“So,” she said, “say it. I can tell you’re thinking it.”

She’d always been perceptive, almost scarily so. He looked at her lips, full, moist and incredibly sensuous. What might they taste like? He hoped she wasn’t perceptive enough to gauge that renegade thought!

“Okay,” he said, as if he had not thought about the full puffiness of her lips. “It seems like a rough neighborhood.”

She cocked her head at him, as if she was politely interested in his opinion, so he rushed on.

“And the house seems, um, like a lot of work for a woman on her own. Why did you sell your Riverdale house for this?”

She took a sip of her coffee, as if debating whether to talk to him at all. Then she sighed. “That house never felt like mine. It was Blair’s, his love of status in every cold stone and brick. I hated that house. I especially hated it after the renovation. A glass wall thirty feet high is monstrous. Besides, it was a ridiculous place for a woman alone to live.”

Rick hadn’t much liked the house after Blair’s renovation, either. It had lost its original charm and become pretentious. Still, he had always assumed Blair was solely responsible for the problems between he and his wife. Suddenly it was evident that they had been very different people, their values on a collision course. Linda, more down to earth, wholesome, uncomfortable with Blair’s aspirations, his runaway ambition, his defining of success in strictly monetary terms.

Rick didn’t want to be exploring the complications of the relationship between Linda and Blair. But he had always known a simple truth: Linda was too deep for his friend. Too good for him. He did not want to be here, in her house, with those thoughts running through his mind.

“Great coffee,” he said, wishing he could deflect this awkward moment with a discussion about rich flavor. “What kind is it?”

“I grind my own—several different combinations of beans.” Like her daughter, she was not easily deflected. Her eyes asked what she was too polite to, Why are you here?

One more question, and still not the one he had come here to ask. “Why didn’t you list your house with us? It is your company. Half of it.”

Her eyes became shuttered. “I think I’ve provided quite enough fuel for gossip and speculation at Star Chasers, Rick. I don’t want one more single fact about my life to be the conversation at morning coffee, ever.”

He wanted to deny that. But he couldn’t. Every agent, secretary and file clerk had discussed the scandal surrounding Blair’s death incessantly. Each of them had slid Linda slanted looks loaded with sympathy and knowing on those rare occasions when business had forced her to come to the office.

He did not know how she had made it through the funeral with such dignity and grace. He did know he did not deserve her forgiveness for his part in the scandal. He did not deserve it because he guarded one of Blair’s secrets, still. He felt guilty just standing here with those clear eyes regarding him so strippingly.

Do what you came to do and leave, he ordered himself. Instead he studied the little devils on her pajamas and found himself wanting to know more about the Linda Starr who would wear pajamas like that, outside in her yard at dawn.

“You said you had a problem,” she reminded him, still polite.

He tried to think of a problem, but none—aside from the brown of her eyes—came to mind. Thankfully he had made a plan. That’s why men made plans, for moments just like this one, when their wits fled them.

He had known he couldn’t exactly offer her a job. It would have been unbelievably condescending. She owned half the company. What could he say? Come and be senior vice president?

“I’m having problems with a house,” he said.

Ah. He saw the flicker of interest in her eyes, and knew, somehow, he had stumbled on just the right way to get to Linda. She loved old houses. The one they were standing in was evidence of that!

“It’s an Edwardian, 1912, Mount Royal.”

She could barely contain a sigh.

“It’s a nightmare.” He told her about the water damage, the bad renovations it had suffered over the years, and especially about the daughter of the previous owner who kept coming over, wringing her hands and crying. “She’s seventy years old and she laid down in front of the bulldozer when we tried to rip off an add-on porch. Now she has the neighbors signing petitions about everything. I’ve had two project managers quit.”

He had not expected this: that it felt so good to unburden himself.

“And what do you want me to do?”

“Take it over. Be my project manager.”

Her mouth fell open. “I can’t do that.”

“Bail me out, Linda. I made a mistake,” he admitted. “I fell in love with the place. I bought it on pure emotion, never a good thing to do.”

Pure emotion, he reminded himself, was always a bad thing. Always. Which is why he had to be very careful around Linda. He felt things he didn’t want to feel, even after just being with her for a few minutes.

She turned away from him, and dumped her coffee in the sink, but not before he’d seen the look in her eyes.

Memories.

This was the problem with having come to see her. Their lives intersected and crossed, drifted apart and then intersected again. In her eyes he had seen the memory as clearly as if it had flashed across a video screen.

Him and her and Blair, so young, at the very beginning, buying those horrible old houses, slapping on paint, filling flower boxes, making cosmetic changes and then keeping their fingers crossed when the For Sale sign went up.

“Flip-flop,” he remembered out loud. That was what she had called it. Blair had wanted a more sophisticated name for the company, the one they had gotten from combining both their surnames.

She turned from the sink and smiled weakly. In her eyes, he saw yearning. For the way things had once been? For the laughter and excitement of those first few sales? Of those early years?

Bobbi had asked him to help her. More than asked. She had begged him. And Linda still loved these old houses, as much as he did, maybe more. He wanted to walk away from her, for his own self-preservation. But he did not think a man who would walk away from a woman who needed something just to protect himself was a man he wanted to be.

“Will you come?” he asked. “At least have a look at the house I’ve invested your daughter’s college fund in?”

What he saw in her eyes was way more powerful than that.

“I don’t think I should.”

It wasn’t the out-and-out no that he’d expected to hear.

“You do still own half the company,” he reminded her.

“No, really.” She pointed at the unpacked boxes. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to do. Really.”

It was the fact that she said really twice that made him know what she really wanted.

“Come,” he said softly, foolishly. “Just help me talk to this woman. Look at the house. See if you get a feel for it.” He knew if he got Linda over to that house the rest would be a done deal.

“You don’t need me,” she said.

She was not the only perceptive one. Because in those words he heard how she longed to be needed, how the death of her husband and the departure of her daughter had set her adrift.

Bobbi had been right. He had abandoned Linda when she most needed a friend. It did not make him think highly of himself.

“No,” he said. “I don’t need you.” He wagged his eyebrows devilishly at her. “But I want you.”

She laughed, just as he had hoped she would. It was a good sound and a bad one both. It was the kind of sound a man could get addicted to, that could stop him in his tracks when he was way too sure he was doing the right thing.

She threw up her hands in surrender. “Okay,” she said, and he could tell the answer shocked and surprised and frightened her nearly as much as it shocked and surprised and frightened him.

CHAPTER TWO

“I’LL have to go change,” Linda said, looking down at herself. She could actually feel a blush rising in her cheeks. Her pajamas looked worse for the wear. And the sweatshirt! Why had she picked something that made her look so frumpy and frazzled?

Shock, she realized. She was in shock. That was why she had said yes, she would go look at that house with Rick when it made no sense at all to do that.

Not that her mind was making sense right now.

Rick Chase was having the oddest effect on her. Looking at him—his large frame filling the tininess of her kitchen, his scent, richly masculine and amazingly sensual, filling her senses—she felt her belly do a dizzying drop. She’d known Rick for twenty years. She’d never reacted like this to him before!

Of course, she had never been single and available before.

Available? How did she know that he was? How could he be? Why wouldn’t he have been snatched up by someone? He wasn’t remarried, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved. It was a different world than the one in which she had gotten married. Marriage was only one choice of many these days. She’d assumed he was alone, but she had learned, the hard way, assumptions were very bad things on which to base decisions.

Bobbi stayed in touch with him, her honorary uncle, her godfather. Would Bobbi have told her about Rick’s relationships? Or would she have considered the romantic doings of old fuddy-duddies well outside that small range of things that interested her? Would Linda have heard if Rick was with someone? Suddenly she regretted all those phone calls from people in the office not answered.

“Rick, are you—”

The words stuck in her throat when he looked at her quizzically.

It was none of her business! She didn’t care.

“Am I what?”

Don’t ask, she pleaded with herself, especially not standing there in devil-embossed pajamas and an oversize sweatshirt. Especially not with her hair going every which way and not a smidgen of makeup on!

“Are you in a, um, relationship?”

There. She’d gone and asked. This was why she had become reclusive. She knew darn well she could not trust herself. Her interest could only be interpreted one way.

“No.”

She could feel the blush deepening in her cheeks and she rushed away from him, down the hall and into the safety of her bedroom.

She closed the door and leaned against it, taking a deep, steadying breath. Bobbi had been insinuating lately that Linda was losing her mind. Was she losing her mind? Why was she having this reaction to Rick?

“Because you aren’t getting out enough,” she scolded herself. So, she would go out with him and look at the house. No doubt after half an hour or so, the hammering of her heart would slow and she would return home more normal than when she had left.

She would, of course, refuse to be project manager on restoring the old house no matter how much she loved it. Then she would make her daily phone call to her daughter, and after that she would make plans to join a club. A bird watching organization might be nice. Perhaps it was time to start thinking about a job, though money wasn’t an issue for her.

Just this morning she had felt perfectly content with the challenge of a new house and the occasional whooping crane sighting. Now she realized she needed something that would make her less susceptible the next time she was in close proximity to a good-looking, available man.

Meanwhile, she had to erase the impression the pajamas and sweatshirt had made. She did not want Rick thinking she was a pathetic eccentric who had let herself go!

She opened her closet to find very little unpacked. For the last few months she had let the wardrobe thing slide. Especially since her life now belonged to her.

No daughter to wrinkle her nose—Mom, you aren’t really going to wear that are you?—no husband who she had felt she had been perpetually trying, and failing, to win.

So, she had taken to wearing jeans and workout pants and things that did not match, like an orange T-shirt with red slacks. She had taken to wearing flannel pajamas with pictures on them and furry socks.

Today, the decision of what to wear seemed hard again. The cream-colored slacks and the purple silk blouse the color of a jewel? What was unpacked? Next to nothing? Should she wear earrings? Makeup? Was there any help for the short hair that seemed to do whatever it wanted no matter how she tried to persuade it otherwise?

She drew herself up short. What was she doing? She came to her senses and made a decision.

“Rick?” she called from her bedroom, opening the door a crack.

“Um-hmm?”

“I can’t go. Never mind. Thanks for dropping by.”

There. What a relief. She sank onto her bed and waited to hear the back door squeak open—it badly needed oil, a much better use for her time than—

There was a faint knock on the bedroom door.

She froze.

The door, still open that crack, slid open further. He stood there, his shoulder braced against the jamb, his thumb hitched through the belt loop of his slacks. His legs looked so long and strong, his shoulders so broad. She hurt for things masculine: large hands, whisker-roughened cheeks, easy strength, the sensuous gravel of a deep voice.

She had a renegade thought. She wished he would come in, push her back on the bed, take her lips with his…which was exactly why she was not going anywhere with him.

She had been putting her life back together, and quite nicely, too. It was obvious he would be a terrible disruption to that process. She looked at his lips. The bottom one was soft and sensual.

A terrible disruption.

“Why not?” he asked. She unglued her eyes from his lips and leaped up from the bed. She pulled a box out of a heap and began to randomly unpack it.

“Why not what?” she asked.

“Go look at the house?”

Oh, yes, that.

Whoops! The box she had grabbed was full of underthings! The ones she didn’t wear anymore—wisps of lace and temptation. She began to ram them back in the box as quickly as she had taken them out.

“I’m not unpacked. I have to oil the back door. I might bake cookies. A house doesn’t feel like home until you’ve baked cookies in it.”

She sounded like an idiot, babbling, but she looked over her shoulder at him and tilted her chin defiantly. Didn’t he know he was being rude? He shouldn’t be standing there in the doorway of her bedroom making her think hot thoughts about him, watching with way too much interest as she unpacked—repacked—her most intimate things.

A little smile tickled his lips.

“Go away,” she said, flustered. “I’m busy.”

“If you come look at the house, I’ll help you unpack later.”

Absurd. She did not want him helping her unpack. He was confusing her, bringing a sensation of turmoil to a life that had been without it for some time.

“Maybe not that particular box,” he said, and the smile deepened.

Okay, so it would be awfully nice to have someone who could move some of the larger pieces of furniture around. It would be awfully nice to have someone to help, period. But she could hire someone for that! And if she was so starved for things male, she could hire some twenty-something guy with bulging muscles. To look at. Nothing else. Her daughter would be disgusted to know her mother even looked!

Why was she suddenly more aware of being pathetic than she had been since that awful day when she’d learned the truth about her husband?

“No, really, I—”

“And bake cookies,” he said. “I’ll help you bake cookies.”

She turned and faced him and put her hands on her hips. “Rick Chase, you do not know how to bake cookies!”

“You don’t know the first thing about what I know how to do.”

Now his eyes were fastened on her lips with heat. And something else. Longing. Well, that wasn’t so surprising, was it? He’d been alone even longer than she had.

But he could have any woman he wanted. She was sure of that.

Weakness flooded her. She wanted to throw herself in his arms, allow herself to be held, to accept the strength he was offering her. But that was the whole thing. She could not be weak. She could not look weak. And she would look weak if she did not go look at that stupid house now that she had said she would.

“You were the one who was a lousy cook,” he reminded her, his eyes breaking from her lips. “I bet you’d end up with door oil in your cookies.”

He was remembering a long, long time ago. Her first efforts in the kitchen, as a new wife and a young mother had been mostly disastrous. But she had applied herself to learning with a fury, and she had become competent enough to turn out items for Bobbi’s school functions: decorated cookies on Valentine’s Day, chocolate cakes for the bake sale. She had learned how to make lasagna and roast beef and chicken. Once she had even managed to single-handedly cook turkey dinner for Bobbi’s Brownie troop of forty-two girls.

But Rick knew none of that. He only knew that Blair, oblivious to her pride in her developing talents, had hired a cook as soon as he could afford one. Roast beef had become Beef Wellington served with Yorkshire pudding, the turkey was smoked and delicately sliced. Linda had dined—often alone—on braised Cornish game hens, slivered Sockeye salmon, soufflés so delicate it was like eating clouds. She felt the familiar cold squeeze in her chest that happened whenever her thoughts turned to her life with Blair. A single thought could ruin a whole day!

She reminded herself, desperately, that now her meals ran to peanut butter on toast with a side dish of quartered tomatoes and that was how she liked it. Then she realized Rick was offering her a morning’s respite from those haunting memories and she suddenly wanted to grab his offer with both hands, foolish as that might be in the long term.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

He gave her a tiny salute and shut the door.

She sank down on her bed. Here was the truth of it: She was, in some part of herself, relieved that her life was being railroaded, relieved that the unexpected was happening, astounded that she was feeling things she had not felt for a very long time. She felt annoyed to be sure, but she also felt alive, in the same glorious way she had felt alive this morning when the crane had lifted itself from the earth.

“Linda,” she told herself sourly. “Remember about happy. A challenge to the gods.”

She found him outside fifteen minutes later. She had opted for the cream slacks, and purple blouse, no makeup, not entirely by choice. She had not been able to find the box it was packed in. Her hair had decided not to cooperate no matter what she tried and was sticking up in rebellious spikes that would have made Bobbi roll her eyes.