the bottle, offering another refill.
But when she tipped it over his glass, only a few drops came out. She made a small sound of regret, then suggested, “I think I have some brandy under the sink.”
He shook his head and backed up enough to set his glass on the table. “I gotta go.”
She made a tsking sound and shook her head. “Why did I know you’d say that?”
He looked at her in that studied, patient way of his.
She mentally counted to five, giving him a chance to say something. He didn’t, so she answered her own question. “I knew you would say that because it’s what men are always saying to me. ‘I gotta go.’ Or, ‘I really do have to go.’ Or, ‘Adora. Back off. I said I’m going now.’”
He was squinting at her a little, as if trying to figure her out. “Aw, come on. It can’t be that bad.”
“Sure, it can.” She turned and plunked the champagne bottle on the counter, then whirled back to face him. “I drive men away. I try too hard. Everybody in town knows it. No one’s ever going to marry me. I’m going to be single for the rest of my life.” She hadn’t set her glass down, so she gestured wildly with it. “All my sisters are married. My mother’s remarried. They’ve all moved away to other parts of California—or to Arizona, in my mother’s case. They’ve left me alone here in Red Dog City, with my beauty shop and my cute two-bedroom apartment and my simple little dreams of love and a family that are never going to come true. It’s pitiful. I’m pitiful.” She held out both arms then, and looked down at her body. “Just look at me.”
He said nothing, as usual. After a moment spent staring at her own pink blouse and flowered shorts, she raised her head and met those startling eyes that gleamed the same burnished silver as the cross around his neck. Something warm and sweet seemed to move inside her for a moment. But then, as swiftly as it had come, the sensation faded.
Adora gulped and told herself that it was nothing. Except possibly the effect of too much champagne.
The silence had gone on for way too long. She broke it. “Well, you had a nice, long look. Now tell me. What’s wrong with me?”
“There’s nothin’ wrong with you. You look fine.”
She glared at him, a glare that gradually turned to a glum frown as she realized that she was making a complete fool of herself. Again. She let her head fall back and stared at the ceiling with its darling little rim of marching fruits and vegetables. “Oh, what am I doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know.” She made herself lower her chin and look at him. “Dragging you in here. Making you drink champagne with me. Telling you things you don’t even want to know. I really do have ‘desperate woman’ written all over me.”
He looked uncomfortable. In a moment he’d be shuf fling those big, black boots. “Hey. It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” She leaned back against the counter and ran her finger around the rim of her glass. Then she looked up at him. “But you’re a gentleman to say so.”
He relaxed and chuckled for the second time, a low, purring growl of a sound.
She smiled in response. “Did I say something funny?”
“Not really. I just don’t get called a gentleman too often, that’s all.”
“Well, you should. ‘Cause you are.” She pushed away from the counter and stood up straight. “You said you can’t find Lola?”
“Yeah.”
“Tiff’s been with you?”
He nodded. “We went camping over the weekend.”
“That’s right, Lola said you two had taken off together. And we missed Tiff at the shop today.”
Tiff, who was eleven, liked to make herself at home in the shop downstairs, visiting with the customers, helping out with anything the adults would let her do. And some afternoons, when the workday was through, Tiff would come on upstairs. Adora always enjoyed those times. She had grown up with a houseful of sisters, after all. She liked having other females around. Tiff would help Adora with her various decorating projects. They’d drink lemonade. Sometimes Adora would do Tiff’s hair. And other days they’d just lie around watching “Oprah” in companionable silence.
Adora asked, “So is Tiff around the corner now?”
“Yeah.” Lola and Tiff lived in the small house Jed had bought for them, around the corner from Adora’s, on Church Street. “I left her snoozin’ on the couch. Poor kid’s beat. We hiked all the way to Crystal Falls yesterday and didn’t get back to my place until late. Then I had work to do this morning, so Tiff hung around the cabin until I could run her into town.” Jed owned a machine shop out on Jackson Pike Road and lived in a cabin right next to it. “Now I gotta get back to check on things at the shop. But I don’t want to leave Tiff alone without knowing where Ma’s off to.”
“You know, before she left today, Lola mentioned that the blackberries are ripe down by Trout Creek. She said that Tiff just loves blackberry pie.”
He lifted his shades from where they hung on his vest. “Thanks. I’ll check down by the creek next.”
Adora watched him as he hid those beautiful eyes once more, remembering all the old rumors about him. He had been a wild boy, in trouble all the time.
And, of course, there had been the rape scandal all those years ago, when he’d been caught by Charity Laidlaw in her daughter’s bed. That had been an ugly mess, complicated even more by the fact that it had been a family matter; Charity Laidlaw’s brother had been Lola’s second husband—and Jed’s stepfather.
Dangerous, most folks in town called Jed. Dangerous and bad.
But no matter what they all said, Jed Ryder was kind at heart to listen so patiently to her self-pitying babble the way he had. And he was so conscientious about his family....
Adora heard herself asking, “You know where the best berries are along Trout Creek?” He shook his head. She set down her empty champagne glass. “Come on, then. I’ll show you.”
That huge, gleaming chopper of his was waiting, right where she thought it would be, down in the small parking lot behind her shop.
Jed reached for his helmet when they stood beside the thing. “Get on.”
Adora took in a long breath. Yes, she knew for sure now that dangerous Jed Ryder was really a very nice man. But that didn’t mean she’d let herself be seen on the back of his Harley. In a small town, word got around. And she could do without rumors about the two of them.
“No. I, um, don’t have a helmet.” She could feel his eyes on her behind the shades and sensed that he knew the real reason she wouldn’t ride with him. But he didn’t say a word.
“We can walk,” she added hastily, not quite daring to look straight at him. “The creek isn’t far. And you couldn’t take the bike on the trail, anyway. Come on.” She started off,
