yourself as some kind of knight in shining armor, running around saving damsels in distress? You should be locked up!”
Reed was so shaken by her fury he could barely think at all, let alone come up with a reply. He’d honestly thought she needed help; obviously he’d made a huge mistake. He felt sick about it.
“I—I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I really thought—”
“Go to hell!” She let go of the strange car and walked the short distance to her own.
“Wait! What about your groceries?” Reed called.
“Put everything back on the shelf or shove them where the sun don’t shine! I wouldn’t go back in there if the damn stuff was free!” Val got behind the wheel of her SUV, started the engine and backed out of her parking space. Her eyes were burning like fire, but that Kingsley jerk was still watching her and she would rather drown in her own salty tears than let him see her wiping them away.
Reed realized the enormity of his act when he returned to the store and found that everyone he met asked him what had happened. The incident would be the talk of the town for days, and he had smeared Val’s reputation by assuming something that wasn’t true. She hadn’t been feeling faint, she’d coldly told him; she’d been…what? She’d denied without explaining, but what would cause a woman to lean against shelving in a store?
Mumbling evasive answers to the curious, Reed hurried toward the stairs to the second floor. But when he remembered Val’s cart, he made a U-turn. It was right where she had left it. Right where he had caused her to leave it.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath. The basket was loaded with meat, vegetables, dairy products, fruit and bakery goods. She’d done a lot of shopping, probably filling a weekly grocery list. And there it all sat. Would she calm down and come back for it?
“She won’t have to,” he said under his breath, pushing the cart toward the front of the store. At the first available checkout stand, he unloaded the pile of groceries and told the clerk to put the cost on his account, bag it and have it delivered to his office. He wasn’t sure what to do with it but he figured he’d think of something.
He did. When a bag boy—Joe Harte, who was juggling high school classes and his job, trying to save money for college—pushed a cart with five stuffed bags of food into his office about fifteen minutes later, Reed had a slip of paper ready. “Hi, Joe. You have a car, don’t you?” he asked the young man.
“I have a pickup.”
“That’ll do. I’d like this order delivered to this address.” He handed over the piece of paper. “Tell the supervisor you’re doing me a favor so you don’t get hassled about your absence, all right?”
“I’ll take care of it, Mr. Kingsley.” Joe left with the cart, heading for the elevator. Reed left, too, but he used the stairs, as he usually did.
Once in his vehicle he drove to town and straight to Jilly’s Lilies. Jilly, the owner and his cousin Jeff’s wife, wasn’t in, but her teenaged assistant, Blake Cameron was there. After a hello and how are you, Reed ordered flowers and wrote a message on a card, which he put in an envelope. Blake promised delivery within two hours, and Reed left.
His day was ruined, and he neither returned to MonMart nor stopped at the volunteer fire station. Instead he drove home, went inside, threw himself on the couch, stared at the vaulted ceiling overhead and tortured himself with the memory of Val saying that she wished there was a way to hate him more than she already did.
The day that had started out so great had turned sour—horrible, actually—and he wasn’t completely sure it was his fault. After all, he’d only tried to help. It was his nature to help anyone in need. Didn’t Val know him at all?
Val had fought flooded eyes and blurred vision all the way home. She was so upset that her whole body trembled. This had to have been the most humiliating experience of her life, or at least the most humiliating since her move to Montana. But strangely enough, when she finally pulled into her driveway, she wasn’t just angry with Reed Kingsley, the sophomoric jerk, she was furious with herself. Why had she said such terrible things to him? She never lost her temper, and she didn’t tell people she hated them just because they annoyed the hell out of her.
She turned off the engine and sat there staring into space while her stomach churned and her hands shook. Rumor was her home. Her business was here and there was no place else she wanted to live. But this was Reed Kingsley’s home, too, and Rumor was too small a town to completely avoid someone, especially if that person was hot on her trail, as he seemed to be. The man’s tenacity was amazing. She had never given him an ounce of encouragement, yet he kept showing up and making her notice him. Why, for God’s sake?
Groaning, Val opened the door of her SUV and got out. Estelle came outside and walked toward her. “I’ll help carry in the groceries,” she called.
Val’s spirits dropped another notch. “There aren’t any.”
Estelle had gotten close enough to see her face clearly. “Oh, my God, you’re pale as a sheet. What happened? Did you have a bad spell in the store? Well, don’t worry about the groceries. I’ll send Jim shopping later on.”
Was she really pale? Val frowned and brought her trembling hands to her face, as though she could detect the color of her skin with her fingertips.
“And you’re shaking like a leaf,” Estelle exclaimed. She took Val by the arm. “You are going straight to bed, my friend. Obviously you need to rest a bit.”
Val rarely argued with Estelle when it came to matters of health. The woman was a trained nurse working in the field all her life until retirement a few years back. She adhered to the common-sense school of medical treatment, and bed rest was high on her list of preferred remedies.
Besides, hiding in bed for the rest of this unnerving day held a massive amount of appeal for Val. She let herself be led along to her bedroom, and obediently undressed when Estelle asked if she wanted pajamas or a nightgown.
“Pajamas.”
Estelle went into the bathroom and returned with a thermometer, which she stuck in Val’s mouth, and a blood-pressure cuff she placed around her upper arm. Val sat quietly for the procedures, wishing that Jinni was back from her honeymoon. Her sister would know what to say about that debasing incident—probably something funny that would make Val feel like laughing instead of crying.
Estelle said, “Your blood pressure is fine.” She took the thermometer. “So is your temperature.”
“I only had one of those weak spells,” Val said. “I’m not ill, Estelle.”
“Well, I still think a little nap is in order.”
“I doubt if I’ll do any sleeping.” But she was getting into her pajamas, and her big, comfortable bed looked very inviting. Estelle folded back the bedding and Val obligingly climbed in.
“Do you still have that grocery list?” Estelle asked.
Val slid her gaze to the right, to the window, just to avoid meeting Estelle’s sharp eyes. She would hear about the incident—it was highly unlikely that anyone living within a twenty-mile radius of town would miss hearing about it—but Val couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. Not yet, at any rate. It was still too new, too painful to
