not over, Vicki. And it won’t be over until things are settled between us. I want answers—”
She whirled around and glared at him. Fifteen years of pent-up emotion tried to get out just as desperately as she tried to keep it under control. It was a toss-up as to which would win. She did not want a confrontation with him, she just wanted him to leave her alone. “Drop it, Wyatt. Let it die a quiet and welldeserved death.” Her words were strained, and she turned away again before she said something she would regret.
He grabbed her arm and spun her back to him. “I have no intention of leaving it alone, not until I’m satisfied that things are finally settled.”
“Settled?” She felt her eyes widen in shock. She could not believe what she was hearing. “There’s nothing to settle.”
He had tried to forget her, to put what she had done to him out of his mind, but he had never quite been able to accomplish it. She had disappeared out of his life without so much as a word, and had never made any attempt to contact him. He never understood why she had gone away. Then he heard she had married. That news had crushed every hope he had secretly harbored that she would some day return so they could be together again—until now.
Vicki did not even have time to catch her breath before he pulled her into his arms. At first his embrace was somewhat tentative, but he quickly gained confidence. Memories came flooding back, every feeling she ever had for him ignited deep inside her. She immediately shoved away from him, but not in time. His embrace had made a shambles of her self-control. His sky-blue eyes had the smoky blue she remembered so well, conveying the depth of his passion. It was shockingly apparent that the physical pull between them was still as strong as ever, much to her dismay.
“No, it’s not settled, Vicki. It’s a long way from being settled.” Then Wyatt tmrned and walked out the door.
A very shaken Vicki staggered backward a couple more steps, finally bumping into the counter. Her heart pounded so hard that she had trouble catching her breath. Everything she had so desperately tried to erase from her life had resurfaced with astonishing clarity. Wyatt Edwards seemed to have more control over her emotions than she did. His embrace left her with the uncomfortable feeling of being helpless...and extremely vulnerable.
It took a huge effort to pull herself together and continue with her workday, but somehow she managed it.
At two o’clock Noreen arrived promptly for work. “Good afternoon, Vicki.”
“Hi, Noreen. Things are pretty quiet around here. I think I’ll run home for a little while. I should be back in a couple of hours.” Vicki grabbed her purse from beneath the counter and called over her shoulder as she left the market, “If you need me before that, give me a call.”
Vicki hurried the one block to her house. She went directly to her bedroom, shut the door, then sat on the edge of her bed. She hugged her shoulders in an attempt to make her body stop trembling. She could still feel his arms around her. It had affected her the same way it had when he held her close fifteen years ago. She needed to pull her emotions together and somehow find a way to deal with this latest emotional upheaval in her life.
If only there had been some sort of warning, she could have done something to prepare herself. But now it was too late. She had once again felt the passion of Wyatt Edwards and knew in an instant how much she had missed his touch.
She went to her closet and stared at the small locked box on the top shelf. After what seemed like an eternity, she took it from the shelf and set it on the bed. She paused a minute, uncertain about whether or not she really wanted to open it, then retrieved the key and unlocked it. She carefully removed a stack of photographs, taking one and putting the others back in the box. She stared at it for a long time. It was a picture of Wyatt and her at a party, the night they had ended up making love on the beach.
It was the night their son had been conceived.
She closed her eyes as she held the photograph to her heart. In a barely audible voice she whispered the feelings that she had tried so desperately to bury. “I’ve tried to purge you from my existence, erase the memory of what I thought we once meant to each other. But, God help me, I havcn’t been able to do it.”
She forced away the tears that tried to well in her eyes. It had been a little less than a month after the photo was taken that Wyatt had disappeared from her life. His father said Wyatt had felt smothered by her. She tried to think, tried to put herself back in that place again. Was it possible that she had unconsciously made emotional demands on him following their night of lovemaking? She had not meant to. Making love had been as much her responsibility as it had been his.
She shook her head. She did not know what had happened.
She replaced the photograph, locked the box, and put it back on the shelf. Then she did something she had never done before. Rather than going back to work, she poured herself a glass of wine and took it to the glass-walled back porch.
She sat all alone and sipped her wine while she thought about the future. She had handled the shock of losing her mother when she was still in high school, of Wyatt leaving her, of discovering she was pregnant with Wyatt’s child, of her husband dying and now her father’s death. She did not know if she had enough strength left to endure any more—and that most certainly included Wyatt’s sudden reappearance in her life.
Richie had been without a father and role model during his formative adolescent years. He would soon be fifteen. Somehow she had to find a way to make everything work out while seeing to it that her son was protected from any more emotional upheavals. She sat quietly on the porch, vacillating between memories from the past, the problems of the present, and her fears of what the future held.
“Mom! What are you doing home?”
Richie’s voice startled her. She had not heard him come in. She glanced at her watch. “Oh...I didn’t realize it was so late.” She looked over at her son, who was standing in the doorway. “I just needed a little break from work, that’s all.” She stood up, taking her empty wineglass with her. “I’d better get back to the store. You get busy on your homework and I’ll start dinner in a couple of hours.”
“I don’t have any homework. I did it all at school.”
Vicki looked skeptically at him. “How did you manage that?”
“Mrs. Winters had some kind of emergency and had to leave, so my last class was just a study hall. I did everything then.” Richie turned toward the door. “So, I’m going to ride on the trail in the hills.”
“Okay, but be sure you’re back in two hours.” She called after him as he ran out the door, “You stay away from Mrs. Thackery’s house. I don’t want her complaining to me again.”
Wyatt had tried to force himself to work all afternoon, but he could not concentrate on anything other than the feel of having Vicki in his arms once again. It had been an impulsive gesture, one that he should not have given in to. She’d had him wrapped around her little finger once before, then walked out on him. The last thing he needed was for her to realize how easy it would be for her to accomplish it again. He did not want her to see the extremely vulnerable spot that still existed inside him where Victoria Dalton Bingham was concerned.
He finally gave up trying to work, left the house and strolled down the path toward the stables. Maybe a hard ride through the hills would settle the nervous
