A Husband of Her Own

Feeling a stab of guilt for having such a strong reaction to him—in spite of her engagement—she cut the massage short and quickly rinsed his hair. Then she slapped on some conditioner, nearly spraying him in the face when she went into rinse mode again.

“What’d I do now?” he asked as she sat him up so fast she nearly gave him whiplash.

“Nothing,” she said, tossing a towel into his lap. “Why?”

He swiped at the water that was running down from his temples and dripping onto the cloak. “That was some shampoo. I’ve never seen anyone snap into fast-forward like that.”

She smiled to cover the craziness inside her. “Well, you know me.”

He raised his brows. “Somehow you always manage to surprise me.”

“YOU KNOW, IF WE TOOK a little more off the top, we’d make the most of the cowlick you’ve got right here,” Rebecca said.

Josh shifted his gaze from the look of expectation on her face to his own reflection. One of Rebecca’s hands held up a section of his hair, the other clutched a pair of scissors. “Are you setting me up?” he asked.

That cowlick had been a nightmare for him when he was a kid. His mother had waged her own personal war against it, usually armed with a jar of Dippity-do. Up until the time he was six or seven, she’d plastered his hair to his head, making him look more like a young executive than a first-grader. Fortunately it hadn’t taken him long to learn how to compensate for her efforts by visiting the bathroom before class and using the sink to rinse his hair. His bangs always stuck up once they dried, but he hadn’t minded that. What he’d minded was the perennial “wet look” and the way his mother had constantly licked her fingers and combed his hair down, even in public.

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “It’s only hair. If I botch it too badly, you can always shave your head.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“Come on, don’t be a wimp. Bald is in. And I’m not going to mess up. I have my reputation to consider.”

“Your reputation is what frightens me.”

She sent him a pointed look, and he couldn’t help smiling. After the shampooing incident she’d calmed down a bit and seemed to be hitting her rhythm. But when it came to Rebecca, nothing was ever the way he thought it would be, so he had no idea how long the peace might last.

“Do what you think is best,” he told her, even though it went against his better judgment to give her so much freedom. Especially when he remembered the time she put gum in his hair while he and Randy were having a sleep-out in the yard.

He chuckled as the clippings from his hair fell all around him.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“I was just thinking about that time you snuck over and—”

“Never mind.”

“Wait,” he said. “I was just going to see if you remembered putting gum—”

“No.”

Obviously she didn’t want to discuss the past, but that incident and several others, while horrific enough at the time, seemed pretty funny now. Couldn’t she see how immature and stupid they’d been? “Don’t want to take a walk down memory lane, huh?”

“Not with you.”

“Why not? You have to admit some of that stuff is funny.”

“Hilarious,” she grumbled. “Only no one seems to remember what you did.”

“What’d I do?” he asked.

“You know what you did. Quit playing the innocent.”

“At least I feel bad about my terrible behavior,” he replied.

“I’ll bet.”

She was right, of course. He didn’t feel any worse than she did. She’d pulled pranks on him; he’d pulled pranks on her. After so many years, there was no way to sort out blame—and the thought of even trying to do it bored him. He didn’t care anymore. So why didn’t they just forgive and forget? They were both adults, with separate lives to lead. Yet every time he passed Rebecca on the street or saw her somewhere like Jerry’s Diner, he got the feeling they had unfinished business between them.

Probably because of that night over a year ago—even though nothing had ultimately happened. He’d gotten Rebecca to go home with him. He’d even managed to remove her clothes, along with most of his own. Then his brother had come home and at the slamming of the front door, she’d suddenly scrambled to her feet, dressed, grabbed her purse and hurried off. He’d been two seconds away from the best sex of his life, so crazy for her he almost begged her to stay. Except he’d known it wouldn’t do him any good. It was as if she’d suddenly come out of a trance and realized who she was with. After that, she didn’t want him anywhere near her.

But his preoccupation with Rebecca was just an ego thing, he assured himself. Something to do with conquering her at last. She was the girl in school who thumbed her nose when he passed in the halls or booed when he threw a touchdown. He’d wanted to make her a believer. That was all. He’d only come today hoping to put all that behind them so they could finally achieve neutrality.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy with Rebecca. She held too much against him, even though he’d never set out to make a real enemy of her. For a few years when he was a kid, he’d thought it fun to torture girls by putting spiders in their hair or chasing them home from school with a craggy old stick he claimed to be one of his dead grandmother’s bones. But his grandmother hadn’t even died at that point. And Rebecca had never been intimidated by that kind of stuff, anyway. The one time he’d put a spider in her hair, all the other girls had screamed, but not her. She’d calmly scooped it up and set it gently on the ground. Later she’d dredged up a garter snake and slipped it down the back of his shirt when he wasn’t looking. He’d liked snakes, so that part was actually kind of cool. What wasn’t so cool was that a girl had beat him at his own game.

Still, he’d always liked Rebecca’s toughness. She was different from the other girls. More stubborn. More prideful. He’d never seen determination on a person’s face like he’d so often seen on hers—usually when they were competing in some way. He knew how badly she hated to lose, but she’d never let him see her cry. If he beat her at something, she’d jut out her chin and tell him he’d had a stroke of luck. Or she’d challenge him again. Sometimes he let her win just because he was tired of being goaded to give her another chance.

So, all in all, he supposed what had happened when they were young probably wasn’t so different from what happened to a lot of kids. In elementary school, boys occasionally pinched girls, pulled their hair, whatever. It was the “cooties” stage, and girls turned up their noses at boys, too. Rebecca just never forgave him as they grew older. There were times when he’d tried to seek her out, tried to win her over, but it made no difference at all.

He remembered one time in particular, right before his first game as starting quarterback for the varsity football team. He was only a junior and had yet to prove to the town that his dad, who was head coach, hadn’t put him in because of the family connection. The senior who’d been planning to start that year was furious about losing his position. So were his folks. They’d stirred up all kinds of trouble around town, which threatened his father’s job, and Josh knew the only way to silence the critics was to play the best game he’d ever played in his life. He was feeling the pressure of it all when he spotted Rebecca standing near the bleachers. He caught her eye, thinking if he could only get her to smile at him, just once, everything would be okay. But she’d cast him that “who gave you the right to breathe” look and turned away.

Fortunately, he’d thrown for over two hundred yards, including three touchdown passes, and they’d won the game. No thanks to Rebecca.

The other girls in town came around, though. In the second grade, he’d pulled Beth Paris’s ponytails countless times, yet she’d ended up asking him to take her to the Homecoming Dance when they were seniors. And she’d wanted to do a lot more than dance. Certainly no hard feelings there.

Forget about Rebecca, he told himself, growing cranky. It’d been twenty-four years since he’d met her, and he was just as confused by her now as he’d ever been. Men who thought women were complicated creatures didn’t know the half of it—unless they knew Rebecca Wells.

“You don’t like it?” she said, sounding for the first time in all those twenty-four years as though she wasn’t quite sure of herself.

“What are you talking about?”

“The expression on your face. You look like you’re ready to choke someone.”

He wondered what she’d say if he told her she was the one he was thinking about choking. She probably wouldn’t be surprised. If she wasn’t so engrossed in cutting his hair, she’d most likely be thinking about choking him, too. That was the way it was between them.

“Looks good,” he said, even though he couldn’t tell a whole lot while it was still wet. It just seemed shorter.

She set her scissors down on the vanity and retrieved her blow-dryer from a holster-like holder. “You’re lucky to have that cowlick,” she said. “It gives your hair some lift here, off the forehead, and adds a lot of body.”

“Yeah, well, you might mention that to my mother the next time you see her standing in line at the drugstore to buy Dippity-do,” he said. “Maybe I won’t get a jar for Christmas this year.”

“If I came within ten yards of your mother, she’d probably shoot me.”

“Now that you mention it, she is a little bitter,” he admitted. “I guess I’m stuck with the Dippity-Do.”

“If it depends on me, you are,” she said and switched on the blow-dryer. The resulting whir left Josh to his own thoughts again, but only for a few minutes. Soon Katie interrupted them by tapping Rebecca’s shoulder. “Your father’s here,” she hollered over the noise.

CHAPTER FOUR