The Woman For Dusty Conrad

“’Morning, Jolie!” she called out.

Jolie waved a hand and returned the greeting.

“I see you’ve sold the house.”

Sold…the…house…

Jolie’s gaze edged the neat front lawn, then traveled to where only a hole indicated that there was once a Realtor’s sign posted. Her stomach tightened. Dusty must have taken it down when he’d come home last night.

Home. She’d have to stop referring to it as such. The house they’d spent five years in together was no longer home. Not to him. Not to her.

“I’m sure it’s a mistake, Mrs. Noonan. The house hasn’t been sold.” Yet.

Collecting the morning paper, she instinctively reached for her keys, only then remembering that she’d given them to Dusty the night before. Resting her palm against the smooth wood door, she thought she’d rather break a window than have to knock to get into a place that had been hers alone for the past few months. She curved her fingers around the doorknob. It turned easily in her grasp. She gave a faint gasp of relief and pushed it inward.

As she closed the door behind her, she instantly became aware of the proof that someone other than herself was in the house. The aroma of coffee wafting from the kitchen. Hiking boots abandoned in the hall. Papers strewn across the coffee table while the television mutely flickered the morning news.

Jolie caught herself tiptoeing and censured herself. What was she afraid of?

“Dusty?” she called out, dropping the paper and her purse on the hall table and craning her neck to peek through the kitchen doorway. He didn’t answer. She forced herself to walk into the room, feeling as if something were different. The yellow walls seemed…brighter, somehow. Refusing to explore the reasons for that, and especially not daring to think Dusty’s presence the cause, she took a mug from the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee from the half-full carafe. She eyed the dark sludge. Not exactly fresh. Shrugging out of the coat she had on, she draped it on the back of a slatted wood chair, then lingered over it, running her fingers down the well-worn denim. She absently plucked a couple of Spot’s white hairs from the material. Since the mornings had turned brisk a couple of weeks ago, she’d taken to wearing the wool-lined jacket Dusty had left behind. She supposed he’d be taking it along with the divorce papers and the rest of his stuff when he left again.

Thrusting the thought from her mind, she turned toward the counter and set about making a fresh pot of coffee. She filled the water reservoir then scooped in the grounds. A loud banging noise from upstairs startled her. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared warily at the ceiling. What was he doing?

The coffee couldn’t brew fast enough for her. Halfway through the cycle, she quickly poured two cups, then headed for the stairs. A splash of white on the gleaming oak kitchen table slowed her steps, then drew her to a stop. Dusty had laid out their divorce papers.

She didn’t have to ask how he’d found them. She had a habit of shoving everything into a desk drawer as she received the items, planning to get to them later. Only in this case “later” hadn’t come soon enough for him.

The banging upstairs started up again. Her heart beating an uneven rhythm in her chest, she climbed the stairs and followed the sounds through the second-floor hall. Her palms grew instantly damp as she realized he was working on the master bath. Correction, the half of a master bath. Dusty had begun the addition about a year ago and had left it unfinished, much as he’d left their relationship unfinished.

Her knees as firm as an empty fire hose, she stepped into the bedroom, her bedroom, and stood frozen before the rumpled four-poster bed. A bed she had slept in alone for the past six months. A bed Dusty had obviously slept in last night.

She tightened her fingers on the coffee mugs, afraid she might drop them. There were at least two other places he could have chosen to sleep. One a comfortable guest bedroom, two, the oversize couch downstairs. Why had he chosen her bed?

The sound of hammering resumed and she forced herself to the half-open door that led off to the left. From a discarded leather tool belt, to a greasy rag, then a piece of floor molding, her gaze wandered until it settled on the back of Dusty’s jeans. The faded material hugged his athletic thighs and legs to perfection.

Despite everything, Jolie found herself awkwardly attracted to her husband.

“You read my mind.”

Her gaze flickered to Dusty’s wryly smiling face, then to the tipping cups she still held. She quickly righted them, nearly causing the liquid to spill out the other way.

She shakily handed him his cup.

He took a hefty sip. “Just as I like it. Heavy on the coffee.”

Grasping her own cup in both hands, she looked at him. Really looked at him for the first time since she’d spotted him at the firehouse yesterday. God, but he looked better than any one man had the right to. His light brown hair was as closely cropped as ever, making her palms itch with the need to run them slowly over the spiky strands. His rich Irish-cream brown eyes were just as watchful, making her feel as though he looked straight through the wall of her chest and into her heart. His body was just as defined, the six-pack ripple of his stomach muscles clearly visible under his chest-hugging white T-shirt, his hips just as trim beneath his close-fitting jeans.

“What…what are you doing?” she asked, surprised by the gravelly sound of her voice.

He put his cup aside, then wiped his mouth with a slow, long sweep of his wrist. He gestured toward the Jacuzzi. “I, um, woke up early and thought I’d have a go at finishing this.”

Jolie swallowed hard. This was all too comfortable…too normal, when everything between them was everything but. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

Before she could stop herself, she asked the question that had been burning on her tongue ever since he’d voluntarily placed himself within shouting distance. Drawing a shaky breath, she asked, “Dusty, where have you been?”

Dusty sat back on his heels as though pushed back. The inside of his eyelids felt peppered with sand, reminding him how very little he’d slept last night. Looking at the smudges under Jolie’s eyes, he guessed she hadn’t fared any better. But while she’d had the firehouse to keep her busy, he’d been stuck at the house with little more to do than think about everything that had come before. Everything that would come after.

He glanced around the half-finished room, the only place in the entire house that hadn’t been there since the beginning of time. He knew every inch of this place. Just which floorboards would creak when you stepped on them. Which windows you could jimmy open with a couple of jostled tries even when locked. The slight incline of the kitchen floor from where the house had settled. Not perceptible to the human eye, but obvious when you spilled something and the liquid pooled near the back door as if seeking a way out.

Somewhere around 4:00 a.m., after he’d found the divorce papers crammed at the very bottom of the desk drawer, then watched TV until he’d overdosed on infomercials, he’d drifted off to sleep on the couch only to awaken with a start a little while later. Without thinking, he’d dragged himself upstairs and dropped into the bed they had once shared. It wasn’t until after he was surrounded by Jolie’s sweet lemony scent, and after he’d had an especially steamy dream that left him drenched in sweat, that he’d given up on catching any quality shut-eye, fixed himself some coffee, then headed back upstairs to check out what she had done with the master bath. It didn’t take long to figure out that she’d done nothing. The door had been tightly closed, his tools were still out exactly where he’d left them. It was almost as if he’d stopped working a day or two ago and had returned to finish the job. Never left.

But he had left. And though some things hadn’t changed, many other things had.

Deciding to avoid her question, he asked one of his own. “When did you put the house up for sale?”

Her gaze flitted away from his to settle on the cup she held. She gave a casual shrug of her shoulders, but the straight way she held herself told him she felt anything but casual. “Last month.”

He cocked a brow. “Don’t you think it would have been a good idea to ask me first?”

“I did ask you. When your attorney called a couple months back I asked him what you wanted me to do with the house. He told me that you wanted me to have it.”

“I meant that you should stay here.”

She gazed at him for a long moment before answering. “Why?” she asked quietly. “This is your family’s house, not mine. I wasn’t raised here, Dusty. If you didn’t care about…what happens with it, why should I?” She leaned against the jamb. “Where’d you put the sign?”

He hooked a thumb toward the window. “Out back. I chopped it for kindling.”

Her eyes widened. “You didn’t.”

“I most certainly did. Though I doubt the Realtor will be very happy with my actions, it sure as hell made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.”

The sound of strangled laughter surprised him. And inspired a grin of his own. He’d thought she’d be upset. Although judging by her own expression, she was just as shocked as he was by her reaction.

“You know, I really shouldn’t be amused by this,” she said. “I should be absolutely livid that you’ve come back and taken over just like you’d never…”

He scanned her features, noticing the way her lips were slightly parted, as if she were ready to breathe the last word but didn’t dare. “Like I never left?”

Jolie stood completely silent for a couple of heartbeats, the amusement shifting from her face. She abruptly turned, pretending to take a sip of her coffee, though he suspected her throat was as open to liquids as his was, and that was not at all.

“You didn’t have to come back for the papers, you know,” she finally said, placing her mug on the unfinished sink and turning to face him. “You could have just had your attorney call my attorney and remind him.” She hugged herself, the unconscious action making his own arms ache to hold her. “Remind me.”

As Dusty watched her shut herself off from him, he reminded himself that her emotional distance wasn’t a result of his leaving. It was one of the things that had propelled him to leave.

He mindlessly gathered his tools together and pushed to his feet. “I suppose I could have done that.” He faced her. “If I thought calling would have had a chance in hell of working, I would have.” He stepped closer to her. “Admit it, Jolie. When you stuck those papers into the drawer, you did so with no intention of signing them.”

The way she blinked told him he was right. Jolie had never been very good at bluffing. Once upon a time, everything she felt, everything she thought, had been all right there on her lovely face for all to see. And right now he saw a woman bursting with a pain felt so deeply it reached out and enveloped him in its dark fingers. The emotion was the first honest one he’d seen from her in so long that it nearly knocked his knees out from under him.