A Vow to Keep

She would say no just for practice, and for all the times she had said yes when she hadn’t wanted to.

Rick Chase followed Linda toward her house thinking Bobbi really had no idea what she had asked of him. He could tell from the warriorlike pride and anger in Linda’s face when she brushed by him that she was going to say no, no matter what he asked.

So, that made his life simple, right? All he could do was try, even Bobbi couldn’t expect more than that.

Linda had taken him by complete surprise. She looked astounding, standing outside in her pink pajamas, shivering. She was different. Her hair, short now, light brown and terribly misbehaved, scattered around the dainty, defiant features of her face.

The last time he had seen her she had been in black. Her hair had been black, too, pulled into a sophisticated bun at her nape. She had looked elegant, cold and unforgiving.

“Did you know?” she had asked him, her eyes, momentarily vulnerable, pleading for him to say, no, he hadn’t known.

He had not answered, and in his lack of an answer, she had known the truth.

His own sense of shame, for being a keeper of the secret—secrets, one that she still did not know about—preventing him from being there for her. Not that he didn’t go through the motions. He called. He left messages. But when she didn’t return his calls, he did not pursue it. Was relieved not to pursue it.

Still, the difference he saw today was not just in Linda’s physical appearance. Before, she had always seemed faintly fragile, now she seemed strong. Before, she had carried herself with a certain remoteness, now she looked engaged. Before she had seemed controlled, now she seemed…was passionate too strong a word?

No.

Who was this new Linda?

He remembered how Bobbi had finished the conversation last night. “I should never have agreed to college, not this year. I better come home. Do you think I should come home?”

Of course he thought she should come home! He certainly didn’t want to be the one put in charge of the rescue of Linda Starr, especially since it was now perfectly evident to him she would resent rescue or even the insinuation one was needed.

“Not that I have a home to come home to,” Bobbi had announced, faint sulkiness in her tone. “My stuff is in boxes!”

Last night he had taken that as evidence that maybe something was wrong.

But now, standing in the brightening morning, looking at Linda’s back, her shoulders set with pride, Rick knew he’d never seen a woman who looked less in need of rescuing. Had he been talked into playing the good Samaritan—used the flimsy excuse of her daughter’s stuff in boxes—to come and see her for himself?

Linda, he calculated, was thirty-eight years old.

She had looked ten years older than that at her husband’s funeral. Now she looked ten years younger. She looked confident, defiant, madder than hell at being found so vulnerable. And she looked beautiful in a way that threatened a wall he had long ago erected around his life.

His job here was nearly done. He would make Linda an offer. She would refuse. He could report to Bobbi that her mother appeared to be fine. More than fine. On fire with some life force that he had not seen in her before, or at least not for many, many years.

Could he leave now, without making the offer? If he left like this he would be filled with the regret of a challenge only partially completed. His own self-preservation was not the issue here, though he felt the threat of the new Linda strongly.

The issue was if Linda was really okay.

She went through the back door of her house, bare feet leaving small prints in the silver grass. He followed them, directly into her kitchen.

He looked at her house with a curiosity he had no right to feel, a spy gathering info. Was it the home of a woman who was doing okay? Or was it the home of a woman secretly going to pieces?

Certainly her house from the outside had been a bit of a shock, had underscored Bobbi’s assessment of the situation. Though many of these Bow Water houses were getting million-dollar facelifts, thanks to their close proximity to downtown, Linda’s was not one of those. Evaluating houses was his specialty, and hers had no curb-appeal. It was a tiny bungalow, shingle-sided, nearly lost in the tangled vines that had long since overtaken it. It was a long, long way from the gracious manor nestled in the curve of the Elbow River that she had just sold.

Still, the interior smelled headily of coffee and spices he could not identify. Despite the fact that it needed work, it had a certain undeniable cottage charm that suited the Linda with short messy hair and funny flannel pajamas.

She motioned at a chair and poured coffee into a sturdy mug. She slapped the mug down in front of him and left the room in what seemed to be a single motion, leaving him free to inspect for signs of craziness. For Bobbi’s benefit? He was kidding himself.

It was obvious she had just moved. Boxes were stacked neatly, labeled Kitchen, waiting to be unpacked. The floor’s curling linoleum needed to be replaced and so did the cabinets, the kitchen sink and the appliances. He was willing to bet the neglect was just as obvious in the rest of the house. Still, he could see the place had potential. Possibly original hardwood floors under that badly damaged linoleum, deep windowsills, high ceilings, beautiful wood moldings with that rich, golden patina that only truly old wood had.

She came back into the kitchen. She had tugged a sweatshirt over her pajamas, gray and loose. He was accustomed to women making just a little more effort to impress him, but for some reason he liked it that she hadn’t. He liked that somewhere, under the layers of pain, they were still Rick and Linda, comfortable with each other.

The sweatshirt had the odd effect of making her seem very slight, the kind of woman a man could daydream about protecting, if he wasn’t careful. A man could remember how, for a moment, when he had told her he had a problem, the wariness had melted from her eyes, briefly replaced with trust.

She got her own coffee, but didn’t sit. Instead she stood, rear end braced against the countertop, and regarded him through the steam of her coffee.

Her eyes were brown, like melted chocolate. Once, he had thought, they were the softest eyes in the world. Now they had shades of other things in them. Sorrow. Betrayal. Maturity. But all those things just seemed to make them more expressive and mysterious, the way shadows brought depth to a painting.

Her hair was two shades lighter than her eyes. He realized, slightly shocked, that the black had probably never been her true color. It was as if, before, she had worn a mask, and now the real Linda was beginning to shine through.

“So,” she said, “say it. I can tell you’re thinking it.”

She’d always been perceptive, almost scarily so. He looked at her lips, full, moist and incredibly sensuous. What might they taste like? He hoped she wasn’t perceptive enough to gauge that renegade thought!

“Okay,” he said, as if he had not thought about the full puffiness of her lips. “It seems like a rough neighborhood.”

She cocked her head at him, as if she was politely interested in his opinion, so he rushed on.

“And the house seems, um, like a lot of work for a woman on her own. Why did you sell your Riverdale house for this?”

She took a sip of her coffee, as if debating whether to talk to him at all. Then she sighed. “That house never felt like mine. It was Blair’s, his love of status in every cold stone and brick. I hated that house. I especially hated it after the renovation. A glass wall thirty feet high is monstrous. Besides, it was a ridiculous place for a woman alone to live.”

Rick hadn’t much liked the house after Blair’s renovation, either. It had lost its original charm and become pretentious. Still, he had always assumed Blair was solely responsible for the problems between he and his wife. Suddenly it was evident that they had been very different people, their values on a collision course. Linda, more down to earth, wholesome, uncomfortable with Blair’s aspirations, his runaway ambition, his defining of success in strictly monetary terms.

Rick didn’t want to be exploring the complications of the relationship between Linda and Blair. But he had always known a simple truth: Linda was too deep for his friend. Too good for him. He did not want to be here, in her house, with those thoughts running through his mind.

“Great coffee,” he said, wishing he could deflect this awkward moment with a discussion about rich flavor. “What kind is it?”

“I grind my own—several different combinations of beans.” Like her daughter, she was not easily deflected. Her eyes asked what she was too polite to, Why are you here?

One more question, and still not the one he had come here to ask. “Why didn’t you list your house with us? It is your company. Half of it.”

Her eyes became shuttered. “I think I’ve provided quite enough fuel for gossip and speculation at Star Chasers, Rick. I don’t want one more single fact about my life to be the conversation at morning coffee, ever.”

He wanted to deny that. But he couldn’t. Every agent, secretary and file clerk had discussed the scandal surrounding Blair’s death incessantly. Each of them had slid Linda slanted looks loaded with sympathy and knowing on those rare occasions when business had forced her to come to the office.

He did not know how she had made it through the funeral with such dignity and grace. He did know he did not deserve her forgiveness for his part in the scandal. He did not deserve it because he guarded one of Blair’s secrets, still. He felt guilty just standing here with those clear eyes regarding him so strippingly.

Do what you came to do and leave, he ordered himself. Instead he studied the little devils on her pajamas and found himself wanting to know more about the Linda Starr who would wear pajamas like that, outside in her yard at dawn.

“You said you had a problem,” she reminded him, still polite.

He tried to think of a problem, but none—aside from the brown of her eyes—came to mind. Thankfully he had made a plan. That’s why men made plans, for moments just like this one, when their wits fled them.

He had known he couldn’t exactly offer her a job. It would have been unbelievably condescending. She owned half the company. What could he say? Come and be senior vice president?