Sweet Talk

Once in his vehicle he drove to town and straight to Jilly’s Lilies. Jilly, the owner and his cousin Jeff’s wife, wasn’t in, but her teenaged assistant, Blake Cameron was there. After a hello and how are you, Reed ordered flowers and wrote a message on a card, which he put in an envelope. Blake promised delivery within two hours, and Reed left.

His day was ruined, and he neither returned to MonMart nor stopped at the volunteer fire station. Instead he drove home, went inside, threw himself on the couch, stared at the vaulted ceiling overhead and tortured himself with the memory of Val saying that she wished there was a way to hate him more than she already did.

The day that had started out so great had turned sour—horrible, actually—and he wasn’t completely sure it was his fault. After all, he’d only tried to help. It was his nature to help anyone in need. Didn’t Val know him at all?

Val had fought flooded eyes and blurred vision all the way home. She was so upset that her whole body trembled. This had to have been the most humiliating experience of her life, or at least the most humiliating since her move to Montana. But strangely enough, when she finally pulled into her driveway, she wasn’t just angry with Reed Kingsley, the sophomoric jerk, she was furious with herself. Why had she said such terrible things to him? She never lost her temper, and she didn’t tell people she hated them just because they annoyed the hell out of her.

She turned off the engine and sat there staring into space while her stomach churned and her hands shook. Rumor was her home. Her business was here and there was no place else she wanted to live. But this was Reed Kingsley’s home, too, and Rumor was too small a town to completely avoid someone, especially if that person was hot on her trail, as he seemed to be. The man’s tenacity was amazing. She had never given him an ounce of encouragement, yet he kept showing up and making her notice him. Why, for God’s sake?

Groaning, Val opened the door of her SUV and got out. Estelle came outside and walked toward her. “I’ll help carry in the groceries,” she called.

Val’s spirits dropped another notch. “There aren’t any.”

Estelle had gotten close enough to see her face clearly. “Oh, my God, you’re pale as a sheet. What happened? Did you have a bad spell in the store? Well, don’t worry about the groceries. I’ll send Jim shopping later on.”

Was she really pale? Val frowned and brought her trembling hands to her face, as though she could detect the color of her skin with her fingertips.

“And you’re shaking like a leaf,” Estelle exclaimed. She took Val by the arm. “You are going straight to bed, my friend. Obviously you need to rest a bit.”

Val rarely argued with Estelle when it came to matters of health. The woman was a trained nurse working in the field all her life until retirement a few years back. She adhered to the common-sense school of medical treatment, and bed rest was high on her list of preferred remedies.

Besides, hiding in bed for the rest of this unnerving day held a massive amount of appeal for Val. She let herself be led along to her bedroom, and obediently undressed when Estelle asked if she wanted pajamas or a nightgown.

“Pajamas.”

Estelle went into the bathroom and returned with a thermometer, which she stuck in Val’s mouth, and a blood-pressure cuff she placed around her upper arm. Val sat quietly for the procedures, wishing that Jinni was back from her honeymoon. Her sister would know what to say about that debasing incident—probably something funny that would make Val feel like laughing instead of crying.

Estelle said, “Your blood pressure is fine.” She took the thermometer. “So is your temperature.”

“I only had one of those weak spells,” Val said. “I’m not ill, Estelle.”

“Well, I still think a little nap is in order.”

“I doubt if I’ll do any sleeping.” But she was getting into her pajamas, and her big, comfortable bed looked very inviting. Estelle folded back the bedding and Val obligingly climbed in.

“Do you still have that grocery list?” Estelle asked.

Val slid her gaze to the right, to the window, just to avoid meeting Estelle’s sharp eyes. She would hear about the incident—it was highly unlikely that anyone living within a twenty-mile radius of town would miss hearing about it—but Val couldn’t bring herself to talk about it. Not yet, at any rate. It was still too new, too painful to think about, let alone attempt to explain why she had left her groceries in one of MonMart’s busy aisles.

“It’s in the pocket of my jeans…I believe,” she murmured.

Estelle picked up the jeans from the chair Val had laid them on and dug into the pockets. “Here it is. Good. I’ll have Jim go to MonMart later on.” She went over to the window and shut the blinds, which darkened the room considerably. “You rest for at least an hour, hon,” she told Val. “Call if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Estelle.”

“You’re very welcome.” The front doorbell chimed. “Now who can that be?” Estelle exclaimed as she hurried from the room.

Val’s heart sank. If Reed Kingsley had dared to ring her doorbell, she was going to get out of this bed and—and… Well, she wasn’t sure what she would do, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. She sat up and listened intently, heard voices and movement in the house, but nothing she could pick up was distinct enough to enlighten her nervous curiosity. If it was Reed at her door, she thought with a sickish sensation in her stomach, she would probably do no more than yank the covers over her head and play dead. He wouldn’t really have the gall, would he?

Estelle finally returned and she was wearing a huge, excited smile. “Well, I never,” she began. “That was one of MonMart’s bag boys, Joe Harte, with all of your groceries. Doesn’t that beat all? He said that Mr. Kingsley asked him to deliver the food right away. It’s all in the kitchen. I have to get busy putting it away.”

Val was so dumbfounded she couldn’t even mumble a reply. After Estelle’s hasty departure Val’s mind went into overdrive, and she yelled, “What about payment?”

Estelle didn’t hear her, and Val lay back on the pillows and said again, this time at normal pitch and with an agonized ache throughout her entire system, “What about payment?”

It didn’t take very much thought to figure out how those groceries had gotten from a cart in MonMart’s canned goods aisle to her front door. She groaned, turned to her side, reached for some tissues from the box on her nightstand and let the tears flow. She knew—she knew, that she could beg Reed Kingsley from now until doomsday to tell her the total cost of that food so she could write a check for it, and he wouldn’t do it.

“Damn that man,” she whispered. She didn’t need his charity, and she didn’t want his friendship, even though she doubted that friendship was the only thing on his mind. She was thirty-five years old and saw a worn-out, used-up human being every time she looked in a mirror. She used to be vivacious and pretty, very much like Jinni still was, but these days she was barely a shadow of her former self. Why on earth would a vibrant, handsome, wealthy man—a Kingsley, no less—notice her, let alone do his ever-loving best to get her to notice him?

Chapter Three

Val dried her eyes, got out of bed with an angry flounce, yanked on her clothes and went into the bathroom to wash her face. Hiding in bed, even at Estelle’s advice, was cowardly and disgusting. She was fine and she had a business to run. People would talk about the MonMart incident until something better came along, and there was nothing she could do about it, so she might as well hold her head high and pretend not to notice.

She dabbed on a little lipstick, then, because her face really was pale, brushed some blusher on her cheeks. Her light brown hair was short, about jaw-length, and nicely cut. At least she liked the cut; whether anyone else did wasn’t something she worried about, although when she’d come home from The Getaway with the new style Estelle had complimented her on it.

It really didn’t matter. Val felt fortunate that her chemo treatments hadn’t taken her hair. It was still thick and glossy and now it was short and swingy and, Val thought, quite becoming.

She grimaced at her reflection. Her hairdo, or any other woman’s, would never make the Life’s Significant Priorities list. She’d learned what was important and what wasn’t the hard way, and hairstyles were absolutely meaningless in the overall scheme of things.

Val was on her way to the kitchen to let Estelle know that she was feeling good and going over to the clinic when the doorbell chimed again.

She blinked in disbelief. Standing on her stoop was Reed Kingsley with a huge bouquet of flowers and an almost tragic, puppy dog expression on his face.

“Valerie,” he said as he released a long breath, which, apparently, he’d been holding. “I ordered these at Jilly’s to be delivered as soon as possible, drove home, worried myself sick over what happened at MonMart, then rushed back to town to deliver them myself.” He held out the bouquet. “Will you accept these flowers and my heartfelt apology?”

She looked at the flowers, at Reed, at the flowers, at Reed, then turned her face away and wished she had stayed in bed.

“Could I come in for a minute?” he asked, startling her further.

The man was a barnacle, she thought drearily. He had, for some reason of his own, attached himself to her, and she was never going to be free of him. It was a depressing thought, and if there was anything Val didn’t need these days, it was something else to lower her already down-in-the-dumps spirits.

But how could she say, “No, you cannot come in, and I don’t want either your flowers or your apology. Please leave and never darken my door again.” The bottom line was she couldn’t. Reed Kingsley might be the most annoying human being she knew but he was a man to reckon with in Rumor. He was one of the town’s movers and shakers, and she certainly didn’t need enemies in the business community—especially now. Business had slowed during her illness, with people taking their pets to Whitehorn or Billings because their local vet wasn’t available. Next on her to-do agenda was to rebuild her reputation and her client list by putting a back-to-work announcement in the Rumor Mill—and, whether or not she liked it, accepting Reed’s apologetic gesture.

She stepped back and swung the door open; it was silent permission to enter, and she hoped he didn’t take her concession as any form of surrender. She was giving him nothing but a minute or two of her time. She hoped he understood that without her spelling it out in succinct terms.

Reed’s heart pounded. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been nervous about entering a woman’s home. He’d always been confident in his innate ability to talk to people, both men and women, and his lack of confidence with Val Fairchild was damn disturbing.

“Uh, maybe you’d like to take these,” he said after she had closed the door. She wouldn’t like to take them; she didn’t want them, but she forced herself to accept the bouquet and say, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Val, I’d like to explain what happened today…explain why I did what I did.”

“You already did that. In MonMart’s parking lot.” She saw Estelle peering around the kitchen doorway and held out the flowers. “Estelle, would you please put these in a vase?”

Smiling broadly, the housekeeper walked over and took the flowers from Val. “Oh, they’re lovely. Hello, Reed, how are you?”

“Fine, Estelle, and you?”

“I really can’t complain.”