A Vow to Keep

“Because you aren’t getting out enough,” she scolded herself. So, she would go out with him and look at the house. No doubt after half an hour or so, the hammering of her heart would slow and she would return home more normal than when she had left.

She would, of course, refuse to be project manager on restoring the old house no matter how much she loved it. Then she would make her daily phone call to her daughter, and after that she would make plans to join a club. A bird watching organization might be nice. Perhaps it was time to start thinking about a job, though money wasn’t an issue for her.

Just this morning she had felt perfectly content with the challenge of a new house and the occasional whooping crane sighting. Now she realized she needed something that would make her less susceptible the next time she was in close proximity to a good-looking, available man.

Meanwhile, she had to erase the impression the pajamas and sweatshirt had made. She did not want Rick thinking she was a pathetic eccentric who had let herself go!

She opened her closet to find very little unpacked. For the last few months she had let the wardrobe thing slide. Especially since her life now belonged to her.

No daughter to wrinkle her nose—Mom, you aren’t really going to wear that are you?—no husband who she had felt she had been perpetually trying, and failing, to win.

So, she had taken to wearing jeans and workout pants and things that did not match, like an orange T-shirt with red slacks. She had taken to wearing flannel pajamas with pictures on them and furry socks.

Today, the decision of what to wear seemed hard again. The cream-colored slacks and the purple silk blouse the color of a jewel? What was unpacked? Next to nothing? Should she wear earrings? Makeup? Was there any help for the short hair that seemed to do whatever it wanted no matter how she tried to persuade it otherwise?

She drew herself up short. What was she doing? She came to her senses and made a decision.

“Rick?” she called from her bedroom, opening the door a crack.

“Um-hmm?”

“I can’t go. Never mind. Thanks for dropping by.”

There. What a relief. She sank onto her bed and waited to hear the back door squeak open—it badly needed oil, a much better use for her time than—

There was a faint knock on the bedroom door.

She froze.

The door, still open that crack, slid open further. He stood there, his shoulder braced against the jamb, his thumb hitched through the belt loop of his slacks. His legs looked so long and strong, his shoulders so broad. She hurt for things masculine: large hands, whisker-roughened cheeks, easy strength, the sensuous gravel of a deep voice.

She had a renegade thought. She wished he would come in, push her back on the bed, take her lips with his…which was exactly why she was not going anywhere with him.

She had been putting her life back together, and quite nicely, too. It was obvious he would be a terrible disruption to that process. She looked at his lips. The bottom one was soft and sensual.

A terrible disruption.

“Why not?” he asked. She unglued her eyes from his lips and leaped up from the bed. She pulled a box out of a heap and began to randomly unpack it.

“Why not what?” she asked.

“Go look at the house?”

Oh, yes, that.

Whoops! The box she had grabbed was full of underthings! The ones she didn’t wear anymore—wisps of lace and temptation. She began to ram them back in the box as quickly as she had taken them out.

“I’m not unpacked. I have to oil the back door. I might bake cookies. A house doesn’t feel like home until you’ve baked cookies in it.”

She sounded like an idiot, babbling, but she looked over her shoulder at him and tilted her chin defiantly. Didn’t he know he was being rude? He shouldn’t be standing there in the doorway of her bedroom making her think hot thoughts about him, watching with way too much interest as she unpacked—repacked—her most intimate things.

A little smile tickled his lips.

“Go away,” she said, flustered. “I’m busy.”

“If you come look at the house, I’ll help you unpack later.”

Absurd. She did not want him helping her unpack. He was confusing her, bringing a sensation of turmoil to a life that had been without it for some time.

“Maybe not that particular box,” he said, and the smile deepened.

Okay, so it would be awfully nice to have someone who could move some of the larger pieces of furniture around. It would be awfully nice to have someone to help, period. But she could hire someone for that! And if she was so starved for things male, she could hire some twenty-something guy with bulging muscles. To look at. Nothing else. Her daughter would be disgusted to know her mother even looked!

Why was she suddenly more aware of being pathetic than she had been since that awful day when she’d learned the truth about her husband?

“No, really, I—”

“And bake cookies,” he said. “I’ll help you bake cookies.”

She turned and faced him and put her hands on her hips. “Rick Chase, you do not know how to bake cookies!”

“You don’t know the first thing about what I know how to do.”

Now his eyes were fastened on her lips with heat. And something else. Longing. Well, that wasn’t so surprising, was it? He’d been alone even longer than she had.

But he could have any woman he wanted. She was sure of that.

Weakness flooded her. She wanted to throw herself in his arms, allow herself to be held, to accept the strength he was offering her. But that was the whole thing. She could not be weak. She could not look weak. And she would look weak if she did not go look at that stupid house now that she had said she would.

“You were the one who was a lousy cook,” he reminded her, his eyes breaking from her lips. “I bet you’d end up with door oil in your cookies.”

He was remembering a long, long time ago. Her first efforts in the kitchen, as a new wife and a young mother had been mostly disastrous. But she had applied herself to learning with a fury, and she had become competent enough to turn out items for Bobbi’s school functions: decorated cookies on Valentine’s Day, chocolate cakes for the bake sale. She had learned how to make lasagna and roast beef and chicken. Once she had even managed to single-handedly cook turkey dinner for Bobbi’s Brownie troop of forty-two girls.

But Rick knew none of that. He only knew that Blair, oblivious to her pride in her developing talents, had hired a cook as soon as he could afford one. Roast beef had become Beef Wellington served with Yorkshire pudding, the turkey was smoked and delicately sliced. Linda had dined—often alone—on braised Cornish game hens, slivered Sockeye salmon, soufflés so delicate it was like eating clouds. She felt the familiar cold squeeze in her chest that happened whenever her thoughts turned to her life with Blair. A single thought could ruin a whole day!

She reminded herself, desperately, that now her meals ran to peanut butter on toast with a side dish of quartered tomatoes and that was how she liked it. Then she realized Rick was offering her a morning’s respite from those haunting memories and she suddenly wanted to grab his offer with both hands, foolish as that might be in the long term.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

He gave her a tiny salute and shut the door.

She sank down on her bed. Here was the truth of it: She was, in some part of herself, relieved that her life was being railroaded, relieved that the unexpected was happening, astounded that she was feeling things she had not felt for a very long time. She felt annoyed to be sure, but she also felt alive, in the same glorious way she had felt alive this morning when the crane had lifted itself from the earth.

“Linda,” she told herself sourly. “Remember about happy. A challenge to the gods.”

She found him outside fifteen minutes later. She had opted for the cream slacks, and purple blouse, no makeup, not entirely by choice. She had not been able to find the box it was packed in. Her hair had decided not to cooperate no matter what she tried and was sticking up in rebellious spikes that would have made Bobbi roll her eyes.

Rick was inspecting her car.