right. I was driving too fast. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t tell me, tell that poor child you nearly ran down!”
“Can you bend your knee?”
She’d already flexed both knees. They stung like the very devil, but at least they both worked.
“You didn’t hit your head, did you?” He had the kind of voice that ought to be labeled hazardous to a woman’s health. Or her whatever. It set off nerves she didn’t even know she had, and that was saying a lot, because at the moment most of her nerves were busy registering acute pain.
Charlie was sniffling, clinging to her thigh and wiping his nose on the leg of her jeans. She gave the star of a thousand daydreams one long, glowering look and jerked her hands free of his grasp.
This was not the way she’d planned it. She’d planned to be wearing her yellow cotton, with her hair in a French braid, with eye shadow and lipstick and enough powder to disguise her freckles.
Instead she was standing here in thin, worn out jeans, every trembling cell in her body awash with pain and embarrassment, not to mention fright and the dregs of an ancient crush. “Oh…blast!” she cried. Sweeping Charlie up in her arms, she marched across the street, leaving John Hale Hitchcock staring after her.
Actually, march didn’t exactly describe it. Charlie was a lot heavier than he looked, and her hip hurt. She’d already given it a good workout what with the wedding and all the extra work and chasing after Charlie. A five-yard dash followed by a flying tackle hadn’t helped matters.
Hitch stared after the woman he’d nearly run down. Something about that wild red hair and that stubborn little chin snagged at his memory, but he couldn’t quite place her. Not too surprising, since it had been years since he’d last visited Mocksville. She’d royally chewed him out, and with just cause. He had been speeding. The signs said 35. He’d been doing at least 45. The stop-off at his parents’ place still had his gut tied in knots. After all these years, you’d think he’d have learned how to deal with the doubts, the frustrated feeling of being a kid who’d done something unforgivable. The feeling that he was somehow responsible for the fact that his parents would rather retreat to their separate studies than spend five minutes with their only son.
One of these days he’d wise up and stop trying. They had his phone number, in case they should ever want to reach him.
Hitch sat in the car for several minutes, still shaken, before starting the engine and creeping the remaining few yards to the MacCollums’ driveway. He owed the little firebrand an apology. If she hadn’t been right on the kid’s heels when he burst out of the hedge, Hitch would have struck him, sure as the world. It was a wonder he hadn’t hit them both, driving with his mind on other matters. At that speed, he’d have passed right by Mac’s place without even slowing down.
He’d have to check on her later, to be sure she wasn’t seriously hurt. She’d been limping when she’d disappeared into the Stephensons’ house next door. Mac might know who she was—a pint-size redhead with blazing blue eyes and a tongue like a whipsaw. A wedding guest, maybe. Possibly a baby-sitter. Whoever she was, she deserved a proper apology, and before he left town he would see that she got one.
A day later, Hitch was actually beginning to unwind. In the process of putting in a couple of killer years trying to get his business up and running, he’d nearly forgotten how to relax.
The MacCollums taught him all over again. No way could anyone stand on ceremony in a house that was casual to the point of sloppiness, in which meals were taken in the big family kitchen with everyone wanting to know all about his business, and what it was, exactly, that an industrial engineer did, and how his folks, who lived in Lynchburg, Virginia, were getting along. And incidentally, when he was going to settle down and raise a family. Knowing that the MacCollums’ interest was prompted by genuine caring, Hitch couldn’t resent it.
The friendly inquisition eased off whenever a friend or neighbor would drop in. Someone would bring over a watermelon or a bucket of tomatoes or a basket of figs, and talk would shift to the wedding and Mac’s ski resorts, and where the happy couple planned to live.
Mac spent as much time as possible at the Stephensons’ house with his fiancée. The poor guy was besotted. Steff spent considerably less time at the MacCollums’ place. Hitch wished them both well, but didn’t hold out much hope for a long and happy union.
“Who’s the redhead next door?” he asked Mac after the last straggler had left. “If I remember correctly, Mary—or Marnie?—had dark hair.”
“You mean Maura. Yeah, she does, only she’s got it all streaked up with blond now. Ask me, it was better the way it was, but you know women.”
Actually, Hitch didn’t. At least, not beyond a certain point. “Redhead. About yea high.” He gestured appropriately. “Blue eyes a size too big for her face, freckles, pointed chin, tongue like a machete.”
Mac chuckled. “You must’ve tangled with Cindy. She’s been in high gear ever since Mrs. S. talked Steff into having a simple home wedding instead of using the church and the club.”
From the level of activity next door, all the vans coming and going, simple was the last word Hitch would have used to describe it. “Cindy who? Cindy what?”
“Danbury. Lorna Stephenson was a Danbury before she was married, so I guess Cindy’s some sort of cousin or something. Came to live with them when she was only a kid.”
“That’s why she looked so familiar,” Hitch mused. “I don’t think I ever actually met her until yesterday, when I nearly ran her down in the street.” He went on to describe the brief encounter.
“You wouldn’t have met her, she was only a kid back then, not old enough to hang around our gang. Besides, Mrs. S. kept her pretty busy. Still does. I like Cindy, she makes me laugh, and you know me—I can always use a good yuk.”
Cindy. If Hitch had ever heard her name, he couldn’t remember it. He wondered how old she was. Doing a bit of swift mental arithmetic, he figured she was at least twenty, maybe more. At first glance he’d taken her for a kid, but when she’d raised that heart-shaped little face, so pale her freckles stood out like rust spots, and sizzled him with a blast from a pair of laser blue eyes, he’d realized she was older than she looked.
“Yeah, well…I owe her an apology. Maybe I’ll get a chance to speak to her Saturday during the festivities.”
Chapter Two
At the groom’s house, the prewedding festivities went on from morning until night, from casual drop-in breakfast guests to late-night beery reminiscences. The friendly, easygoing MacCollums knew everyone in town. Pop MacCollum had been the high school football coach and Mama Mac, as she was called, a retired school teacher, was the woman people came to when they needed help, or sympathy, or simply a nonjudgmental ear.
At first Hitch, still uptight after the visit with his own parents, followed by the near miss with the redhead and the kid, had found ways of avoiding the convivial mob scene. By the second day he had unwound to the point where he was actually beginning to enjoy himself. Or at least to enjoy Mac’s enjoyment. The groom-to-be was having the time of his life, being the envy of all his male friends for having landed the most gorgeous woman in three counties.
At
