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The Tycoon's Son
Shawna Delacorte


HER FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD SECRET Years melted away the moment Vicki Bingham gazed into piercing blue eyes and took in the very gorgeous - very grown-up - version of the boy she's once loved. The rich boy who had deserted her after a magical night of exploring caresses and explosive kisses.The millionaire who was father to her teenage son… and hadn't a clue. Or did he? Because Wyatt Edwards had taken an uncanny interest in young Richie, and an even more unsettling interest in Vicki herself, the moment he'd returned to town. He seemed to want answers - and it was clear he wanted Vicki. But all that would surely change once this tycoon discovered the truth… .







“Here’s To What Has Been And What Is Yet To Be.” (#u654a4927-3b78-58a1-9d41-ddbba47d35d2)Letter to Reader (#u7200ccd4-3791-5c65-8c28-4915b3a2d926)Title Page (#u841b4491-6b56-5703-a784-ae7e282d6d2d)SHAWNA DELACORTE (#u4f496f6c-8779-5fbe-9cf5-c7f372923a6b)Chapter One (#uae81c10b-84ad-5010-9c3c-eddb62af9c18)Chapter Two (#u30fa2b32-3fef-5214-9f84-69d28a4c1e20)Chapter Three (#u3d541d27-ab26-5c65-a1ad-86d9a1cb9ffa)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


“Here’s To What Has Been And What Is Yet To Be.”

His words settled over her like a soft caress. He wrapped her in his embrace and snuggled back into the corner of the couch, pulling her with him.

“It’s been a long time, Vicki. I’ve often wondered what happened to you, what you were doing... whether or not you were happy.”

It was not what she had been expecting and she was not sure how to respond. “I was wondering the same thing about you.”

Any further thoughts were put on hold when he claimed her mouth with all the passion he had been carrying inside him for the past fifteen years.

A soft moan escaped her lips. Things had gone too far. She could not stop what was happening even if she wanted to. If it was to be that they had only this one night together, then she wanted it to be enough to last her a lifetime.


Dear Reader,

Silhouette Desire is proud to launch three brand-new, emotional and romantic miniseries this month! We’ve got twin sisters switching places, sexy men who rise above their pasts and a ranching family marrying off their Texas daughters.

Along with our spectacular new miniseries, we’re bringing you Anne McAllister’s latest novel in her bestselling CODE OF THE WEST series, July’s MAN OF THE MONTH selection, The Cowboy Crashes a Wedding. Next, a shy, no-frills librarian leads a fairy tale life when she masquerades as her twin sister in Barbara McMahon’s Cinderella Twin, book one of her IDENTICAL TWINS! duet. In Seducing the Proper Miss Miller by Anne Marie Winston, the town’s black sheep and the minister’s daughter cause a scandal with their sudden wedding.

Sexy Western author Peggy Moreland invites readers to get to know the McCloud sisters and the irresistible men who court them—don’t miss the first TEXAS BRIDES book, The Rancher’s Spittin‘ Image. And a millionaire bachelor discovers his secret heir in The Tycoon ’s Son by talented author Shawna Delacorte. A gorgeous loner is keeping quiet about His Most Scandalous Secret in the first book in Susan Crosby’s THE LONE WOLVES miniseries.

So get to know the friends and families in Silhouette Desire’s hottest new miniseries—and watch for more of their love stories in months to come!

Regards,






Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3


The Tycoon’s Son

Shawna Delacorte














www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


SHAWNA DELACORTE

has delayed her move to Washington State, staying in the Midwest in order to spend some additional time with family. She still travels as often as time permits and is looking forward to visiting several new places during the upcoming year while continuing to devote herself to writing full-time.


One

Vicki Bingham stood on the porch of the country store. The shiver of trepidation started as a little twinge, then spread throughout her body. After fifteen years, Wyatt Edwards was about to step back into her life.

Hunching her shoulders against the cold tremor that engulfed her, she stared up at the empty house standing in stately grandeur on top of the hill. It seemed to look across the valley and out to the ocean like a dark, brooding monarch surveying his kingdom. No one from the Edwards family had lived in the house since the death of Henry Edwards ten years ago. And now it was about to be occupied again by Wyatt, Henry’s only child.

Her ever increasing anxiety forced her to look away. Nothing good could come from this, but she did not know what to do about it.

“Victoria Dalton Bingham!”

Vicki stiffened at the sound of her name. She recognized the voice immediately. It had the same quality as chalk squeaking on a blackboard and affected her the same way. Alice Thackery, a prim woman in her early sixties, was the town busybody and selfappointed guardian of everyone’s morals. Vicki forced a smile and turned around to face the unavoidable.

“Yes, Mrs. Thackery, what can I do for you?” She could tell by the woman’s pinched expression and tightly pursed lips that she was about io be involved in yet another unpleasant confrontation.

“I realize, Victoria, that you had to make certain adjustments when you returned to Sea Cliff to run the store after your father died, but you’ve been here for two months now and I feel that’s long enough. I’ve mentioned this to you on numerous occasions in an attempt to be a good neighbor, but you seem determined to ignore all my attempts to be gracious in this matter.” Mrs. Thackery shifted her shopping basket from one arm to the other as she waited for a response.

Vicki allowed a sigh of resignation. “What seems to be the problem this time, Mrs. Thackery?”

“It’s that boy of yours. You’re allowing that teenage hooligan to run wild around the streets and I won’t have it!”

Vicki stretched herself to her full five-foot-seveninch height and glared down at the shorter woman. She took a calming breath, determined to control her temper. “I will thank you to stop referring to my son as a ‘teenage hooligan.’ Richie is no such thing. He’s a healthy, normal boy who needs his exercise. He’s not a troublemaker and does not run wild around the streets.”

“Not an hour ago, Victoria, he came speeding around the corner on that two-wheeled contraption of his and nearly ran into me. He was with that Forsythe boy and everyone in town knows that little hooligan is just a breath away from reform school.”

“That ‘two-wheeled contraption’ is a bicycle—a dirt bike—not some high-powered motorcycle.”

Mrs. Thackery turned to leave, but not before delivering a parting shot. “Nonetheless, I expect him to control the way he charges around the streets. Humph! It’s getting so a decent person isn’t safe walking along the sidewalk.”

Vicki went inside the store, a combination market and post office. She slammed the screen door harder than she intended.

“What’s the matter, Mom?”

Her son’s voice caught her by surprise. She whirled around and spotted him coming out of the back office with a handful of cookies. “Richie...how long have you been here?” She knew the upheaval in his life had been very difficult for her son. When her husband, Robert Bingham, had died five years ago it had been devastating for Richie. Then, two months ago, he had been uprooted once again when they moved from Dallas, Texas, to the small rural community of Sea Cliff on the northern California coast. She was thankful school had started so that at least he could make some new friends.

He popped one of the cookies into his mouth, practically inhaling it rather than eating it. “I don’t know... five minutes, I guess.” He shoved another cookie into his mouth. “Me and Tim—”

“Tim and I.” She brushed the hair back from his forehead.

“Cut it out, Mom.” A spark of irritation showed as he backed away from her motherly fussing. “Tim and I were riding on this great trail he knows back in the hills.” He took a soft drink from the refrigerator.

“You were also zipping around the sidewalks.” She started to tell him to put back the soft drink and not eat any more cookies because he would spoil his dinner, but they would have been wasted words. At fourteen-and-a-half, he had the voracious appetite of a garbage-disposal unit. He was growing so fast that he could consume what seemed like huge amounts of food and immediately burn it up. He was already as tall as she was and seemed to be all legs. He would eventually top six feet, easily.

He shot her a look of disgust. “Yeah... I saw old lady Thackery leavin’. It wasn’t like she said.”

“That’s Mrs. Thackery. And what she said was that you nearly ran her down with your bike.”

“No way! We were riding in the street, not on the sidewalk. She was standing in her yard. We weren’t even close to her!” He dropped his voice almost to a whisper and stared at the floor, talking more to himself than to his mother. “That old lady’s a menace to society.” He looked up and met her gaze. “Did you know her from when you used to live here?”

“Oh, yes.” Vicki gazed upward, as if asking for protection against some sort of recurring menace. A hint of weariness crept into her voice. “I think Mrs. Thackery has lived here forever.”

She saw the look of defiance on her son’s face. It was a look she knew so well from many years ago, a look that used to cross another handsome young man’s face... a handsome young man with the same dark hair and intense, sky-blue eyes. She reached out to smooth his hair again, but stopped when she saw the look, the one that said Don’t mess with my hair and stop treating me like a kid “Have you done your homework?”

“Yeah, it’s done.” He popped another cookie into his mouth. “When’s dinner?”

Each time a truck passed Vicki’s door on the way up the hill it signaled that the moment she dreaded had moved that much closer. The construction phase of the remodeling had been completed a couple of days earlier. The landscapers had finished on schedule. Moving vans had been delivering both new items and things from a storage company for the past two days. There did not seem to be anything left...only the arrival of Wyatt Edwards.

The local gossip mill had pegged his arrival for the next day, which meant that she had less than twentyfour hours to prepare herself. She did not have any idea what she would say to Wyatt Edwards or what to expect from him. He had walked out on her fifteen years ago, left while she was away for the weekend so that he did not have to face her with his decision. She had been devastated. She could still hear Henry Edwards telling her that she had driven his son away with her constant demands for his attention, until he had not been able to take it anymore.

She had not understood what Henry Edwards had meant at the time. In fact, she still did not understand. It was Wyatt who had been the aggressor, who had pursued her in spite of objections from both their families. She shook her head in an attempt to shove away the bad memories. It was ancient history and no longer relevant to her life. She had a son to take care of and he was more important to her than anything else.

Vicki went about her business for the rest of the day, making a valiant attempt to put the imminent arrival of Wyatt Edwards out of her mind. That evening she helped Richie with a school project for his English class.

Unfortunately, all her attempts at keeping busy did not help. Once she had climbed into bed, turned out the light and closed her eyes, her mind immediately filled with thoughts and memories from long ago. She finally drifted into an uneasy sleep, but woke up sev eral times during the night, the last time being only half an hour before her alarm was set to wake her. She stared at the glowing numerals for five minutes, then with a heavy sigh of resignation reluctantly climbed out of bed. It was a day she would rather not have to face, but she knew there was no way of avoiding it.

She fixed breakfast, and sent Richie off to the school bus. Then she sat down and stared at the clock. In thirty minutes the truck would drop off the day’s mail to be sorted and placed in the individual post-office boxes. She forced herself into action, knowing that the moment she’d dreaded would soon be at hand.

Wyatt Edwards pulled his car to the side of the road and turned off the engine. Only five more miles to the Sea Cliff turnoff. It was the first time he had been back since his father’s death ten years ago when he had inherited controlling interest in his father’s worldwide industrial holdings. He still was not sure exactly what had prompted the decision, but it was too late to turn back now. He had already spent a great deal of money on making the old house livable and preparing an office wing. He planned to conduct most of his business from there, venturing into San Francisco to the corporate headquarters only a few days a month.

He looked out over the ocean, watching as the waves crashed against the rocks just offshore, then climbed out of his car and walked to the edge of the cliff. The small sandy cove below was the place where he and Vicki Dalton had made love for the first and only time. It had been an impetuous action following a beach party. The next day they both agreed that they had acted foolishly. It had been a very profound experience for him and had solidified in his mind just how much he loved her, even though he had never told her so.

Every minute of that night remained etched in his memory and the emotions associated with it had not diminished over the ensuing years. Even though it had been fifteen years since he had seen or talked to her, he had never been able to shake Vicki from his mind... or from his heart.

He clenched his jaw. Neither could he shake the pain of returning home from a last-minute emergency business trip to South America to find she had moved away without leaving him so much as a note. Then, a month later, he had heard that she was married. It was a memory that still angered him as much as it had when he first heard about it—and also filled him with sorrow for what might have been.

He picked up a rock and threw it as far out as he could, watching as it fell to the ocean below. He picked up another rock and repeated the exercise. He kicked at a third rock, sending it over the edge of the bluff, followed by a cloud of dust. He turned his back on the ocean view, but he could not turn his back on his memories. Finally he climbed into his car and continued down the highway.

He turned onto Sea Cliff Road and was immediately struck that everything looked exactly as it had the last time he was there. Forsythe’s gas station still had the Full Service sign next to the pump, even though they had stopped giving full service almost twenty years ago. It appeared that nothing in Sea Cliff had changed. Then his gaze settled on the general store.

That store, a house a block away, and a couple of acres of land were all that Willis Dalton had left. Vicki’s father and his own father, Henry Edwards, had been bitter enemies. Their feud had started when Willis’s and Henry’s respective fathers had had a falling out over a business deal gone bad. Wyatt’s grandfather had ended up the winner and Vicki’s grandfather had lost almost everything.

Wyatt and Vicki had defied both sets of parents by dating and falling in love—at least Wyatt had thought they were in love. But obviously he had been wrong about Vicki Dalton’s feelings for him. He wrinkled his brow in irritation at the fact that it still bothered him. After all these years it was still a thorn in his side.

He pulled his car into a parking space next to the post-office entrance at the back of the general store. He needed to make arrangements for a post-office box. He entered the building and looked around. No one was there. He walked through the connecting door to the market that occupied the front of the building.

Shock hit him smack in the face. He stopped dead in his tracks. It could not be.

Vicki Dalton was standing behind the counter by the front door. It took him a few seconds to collect his wits and recover his composure. He stared at her, noting the way she bit at her lower lip. It was a nervous little habit that had always manifested itself whenever she was upset or worried about something. As he watched her, he felt a soft warmth flicker to life. She looked every bit as beautiful as the image he had carried in his mind all these years.

He quickly ducked out of sight. He certainly had not planned on this. He had been prepared for the unpleasant and awkward necessity of dealing with Willis Dalton, but not for the reality of seeing Vicki again. It was not too late; there was still time. She had not seen him yet. He could turn around and drive back to San Francisco. He drew a steadying breath. He needed to gather his wits about him. Then a surge of anger brought him back to reality.

No, he would not turn and run. She had disappeared from his life fifteen years ago and he had never known why. He clenched his jaw in renewed determination. He could not leave until he had confronted her and demanded an explanation. He wanted her to know exactly how much pain she had caused him—how much pain he had been carrying all these years. He stepped back through the door into the market.

“Well, well, well...” He took a couple of steps toward the counter, trying to keep his voice and manner as casual as possible. “If it isn’t Vicki Dalton. Only I guess it’s not Dalton anymore, is it? It’s been a long time, Vicki.”

The smooth, masculine voice resonated across the room. She did not need to look up to know its owner’s identity. The moment she dreaded had finally arrived. She bit at her lower lip as she continued to stare at the order form she had been filling out. His footsteps pounded in her ears as he drew closer and closer until finally he stood directly in front of her.

“Just how long has it been? Ten years...fifteen?” There was no mistaking the edge to his voice and the antagonism just beneath the surface. “I’m surprised to find you here. Are you just visiting your father or did you decide to move back to Sea Cliff?”

She put down her pen and finally lifted her gaze, smothering the gasp just before it escaped her mouth. His commanding presence overwhelmed her. He seemed to have grown even taller than the six-footone height she remembered, and his blue eyes immediately captured her very soul. The bright colors of his sweater enhanced his golden tan. His dark hair was tousled, probably windblown, giving him a very sexy appearance. His features had matured from the boyish good looks she had known. With the passage of time he had become even more handsome...if that was possible.

When she was an inexperienced eighteen, Wyatt Edwards had been an older man of twenty-two. But now she was thirty-three years old, a widow with the responsibility of raising her son by herself, and the proprietor of a business vital to the small community. There were days when she felt a great deal older.

She managed to find her voice, but could not find any of the words she had been rehearsing for two days. Instead, she stammered, more like an impressionable teenager than a mature woman, “Uh...my father... died two months ago. I came back here to run the store. And it’s Bingham...Vicki Bingham.”

She saw the surprise dart through his eyes, then quickly disappear. His voice softened a little, dropping a bit of its hard edge. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know about your father.”

“Well... it was sudden. A heart attack.” Nervousness churned in the pit of her stomach. She wished a customer would come in or that Noreen Dillon, her full-time employee, would show up for work early—anything to break up the awkwardness that filled the air. She went to the magazine rack and began straightening the periodicals. She felt his stare follow her every movement, but refused to turn and look at him while she spoke. “My... uh... father had mentioned something several years ago about your father passing away. It seems to me that he said your mother had moved back East somewhere.”

“Yes, Mother returned to her hometown of Boston. She still lives there.”

“What brings you to Sea Cliff?” She was not sure why she had asked such an inane question. He had to know that everyone in the small town would be talking about the renovations to the family house and would have seen the moving vans.

“I’m moving back into the house.”

“I see.” She still refused to look at him. She straightened the last magazine in the rack and returned to the counter.

“Vicki...” The edge returned to his voice, now impatient. “I’m trying to conduct some business here and I’d appreciate it if I could have your attention for a few minutes.”

She was not sure what he was talking about, but she did not like the sound of it. Her defenses went on full alert. “All you need to do is pick out your purchases and bring them here to the counter and I’ll be glad to ring them up for you.” She bit at her lower lip and twirled a strand of hair around her finger as she glanced around the market.

Wyatt did not understand her blatantly obvious nervousness. He could have understood a show of guilt on her part—she certainly had lots to feel guilty about—but this was different. She appeared almost obsessed with finding mindless little things to do and went out of her way to avoid any eye contact with him.

He took a deep breath and held it for a moment,. He would have to save the speculation for some other time, after he had an opportunity to digest all the unexpected happenings of the morning. He adopted a businesslike manner and tried to project an authoritative tone of voice. “I want to make arrangements for a post-office box.”

Her gaze flew to meet his. He noted a strange combination of surprise and... well, relief was the only word he could find that seemed to fit. It was a very odd reaction on her part, one he found strangely out of place.

“A post-office box? That’s why you’re here?”

“This,” he gestured toward the back of the building, “is the post office, isn’t it? And I assume you are the official agent for the United States Postal Service.” He fixed her with a hard stare.

Antagonistic... that was the word that immediately leapt to Vicki’s mind. Why was he being so antagonistic? If anyone had a right to exhibit hostility and anger, it certainly was not Wyatt Edwards. She drew in a calming breath, then slowly let it out. “Yes, of course.”

She led the way to the post office at the back of the building. Wyatt stepped through the customer entrance while Vicki went through the employee door. She reached below the counter and withdrew a form. “Here,” she said, shoving it through the customer window toward Wyatt. “Fill this out and sign it.”

“I’ll require one medium-size box for my personal mail and a large-size box in the corporation’s name.”

She checked the list of available boxes while he filled out the form. “Here are the two keys. Please try them before you leave to make sure they work.” She slid the keys through the window, and allowed her hand to linger on them while she looked over the form he had completed.

Wyatt reached for the keys, but halted as soon as he focused on her left hand. She wore no ring, nor was there any indication that she had recently worn one. His brow was furrowed as he slid the keys out from under her fingers.

He located the two boxes and tried both keys. “Everything seems to be okay.” He returned to the customer window where Vicki waited. “What time of day is the mail available for pickup?”

The conversation continued for a few minutes—innocuous questions about the daily mail, the hours of operation for the market, and about placing orders for specialty items from time to time. The sound of a buzzer interrupted them, indicating that someone had entered the market.

“I’ll be right there,” Vicki called out to the unknown person, then turned her attention back to Wyatt. “Is there anything else you want before I go?”

“Yes, there is.” He leveled a soul-searching gaze at her. “I want to know what happened to your wedding ring.”

“My...my wedding ring?” A hard lump formed in her throat and the nervousness churned in her stomach again. Why would he ask such a question?

“Yes. I couldn’t help but notice you’re not wearing one.”

She heard it in his voice again. Antagonism... accusation... the hint of some hidden knowledge. Did he know she had a son? Did he know about Richie? She looked down at her hand, stared at the finger where she had worn the simple gold band Robert Bingham had placed there on their wedding day. She felt the anxious trernoi and swallowed hard in an attempt to bring her feeling under control She knew she had to be very careful how she responded to his question.

“My ring...” She again stared at her hand. “I lost my husband in a plane crash. I’m a widow.”

She saw the shock cover his face. She saw something else, too—something in his eyes that she could not identify. Resentment? Smug satisfaction? She did not know.

“A widow?” Wyatt could not hide his reaction to this latest revelation. He had come back to a quiet little town where nothing ever happened and in fifteen minutes had been hit with one shock after another. He had not anticipated seeing Vicki at all, but she was there. Then he had learned about her father’s recent death, and now this—what else could there possibly be? How many more surprises were just waiting to jump out at him?

“You’ll have to excuse me, I have a customer to tend to.” Vicki quickly left the post office and hurried toward the front of the market. “Yes, may I help you with something?”

Wyatt tuned out the voices coming from the market. Her sudden and extreme nervousness had immediately grabbed his attention—the way she bit at her lower lip, how her face had seemed to pale and her hand tremble at the mention of her wedding ring. He suspected she was hiding something and he was determined to find out what it was.

His assumption had been that she was divorced, and he had intended to make some type of caustic remark to the effect that her decision to run off and get married hadn’t been a good one. But this was different. She was a widow. He did not want to delve into her personal life under these circumstances—at least not at that moment. He had started to extend the obligatory condolences, but the words caught in his throat.

He moved to the connecting door and watched as Vicki’s customer left the market. He stuck his post-office-box keys in his pocket, stepped through the door and took a steadying breath in the hopes of concealing his reaction. “I guess I’m pretty much out of touch with things around here. You said a plane crash?”

She averted her gaze, once again unable to maintain eye contact with him. “Yes. It...uh...was five years ago.” She felt very uncomfortable with the task of explaining her husband’s death to Wyatt Edwards. If Wyatt had not walked out on her, none of this ever would have happened. What if... She had played that game too many times. “It was a small private plane. Robert was the passenger. It went down in a field about ten miles from our home in Dallas.”

“Oh.” Oh... It was a dumb thing for him to say, but he did not seem to be able to come up with the right words. As much as he had hoped that she had been every bit as miserable as he had been for the past fifteen years, he had not anticipated this. He wanted to know so much, he wanted to know everything, but he could not bring himself to ask. “Well...I gucss I’d better be going. I have several things to do. I need to unpack...” His voice trailed off and he finally turned and left without saying anything else.

Vicki closed her eyes and sank back against the wall in an effort to compose herself. Her meeting with Wyatt had been a thousand times worse than she thought it would be. It almost seemed as if he had gone out of his way to be contrary and she did not understand why. He had walked out on her. not the other way around. She had been the injured party, the one with every right to be angry.

She knew there was no way they could avoid each other in the normal course of day-to-day activities in the small community, but she vowed to make sure everything stayed on an impersonal level. For the sake of her son, Wyatt Edwards could not be allowed back into her life.

The sound of the door shook her from her disturbing thoughts.

“Good morning, Vicki.” Noreen’s cheerful personality filled the store. “Looks like it’s going to be another beautiful day. I love this time of year—the last warmth of summer changing over to the crispness of autumn.”

“Good morning.” Vicki marveled at the way Noreen always managed to be in such a good mood. A woman in her early forties who had never been married, she always bubbled with good cheer. It seemed that nothing ever upset her.

As he drove up the hill to his house, Wyatt furrowed his brow in concentration. Something strange was going on. Vicki appeared far too nervous. She was hiding something. Did it have to do with him? Was the story about her husband dying in a place crash something she had made up in order to hide the truth?

Get a grip. You’re beginning to sound paranoid. This isn’t some sort of mystery novel It’s just one of those weird little quirks of life—nothing more.

He did his best to rationalize what had happened. Things were bound to be awkward between them, considering their past history and what she had done to him. He considered himself a mature adult who certainly knew how to handle an uncomfortable situation. He had brought those skills into play often enough in his business dealings. And this was no different. At least that was what he tried to tell himself, even though he knew it wasn’t true. This was not business. It was personal—very personal.


Two

Wyatt drove through the large gated entrance and parked in the circular drive in front of the house. He looked up at the imposing two-story structure with its gleaming white paint, dark green shutters and roof, and the large verandah that spanned the front and sides of the house. A little tremor of anxiety jittered inside him. It had been ten years since he had set foot in the house. Now, more than ever, he wondered if he had made a colossal error in deciding to return.

“Wasn’t it Thomas Wolfe who said, ‘You can’t go home again’?” He said the words aloud to no one in particular. Perhaps Thomas Wolfe had been correct. He climbed out of the car, grabbed his suitcase, and walked up the front steps to the large oak double doors.

Just inside the front door he stopped and looked around. The house was elegant to the point of almost being out of place in such a rural setting. The foyer was two stories high, with a large crystal chandelier that hung from the cathedral ceiling. A curved oak staircase traveled up each side to a second-floor landing that looked down on the entrance. He had designated the ground-floor east wing as his office area. The west wing included the den, the billiards room and a small study that had been his father’s personal domain.

The formal living room, dining room and kitchen facilities were located straight back through the foyer, with servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen. The second floor consisted of a large master bedroom suite and a library on one side of the landing and guest rooms on the other side.

Fred Olson, the caretaker who had stayed on all the years that the property had remained vacant, lived in a small apartment above the three-car garage.

It was far too big a house just for Wyatt, but it had been in the family from his great-grandfather’s time. He had been approached on several occasions over the last few years by real-estate developers. They had offered him a lot of money for the land, but he had turned down all offers. He was not even sure why. Perhaps it had to do with family honor and tradition. More likely the house represented a time in his past that he did not want to lose—a time when Vicki was part of his life and he had assumed also a part of his future.

So, the large house on the hill had remained empty, silently standing watch over the valley below and the ocean beyond.

Wyatt ascended the staircase to the second floor. He had lots to do and the clock was ticking. He devoted the rest of his day to unpacking and organizing, with the hope that keeping busy would occupy his mind so that his thoughts would not turn toward Vicki. So far the plan had been a dismal failure.

In her store at the base of the hill, Vicki, too, tried to keep active. But her attention shifted to the window every time she heard a car door slam, the accompanying adrenaline surge telling her how frightened she was about the prospect of having Wyatt around all the time. Sometimes Noreen’s overabundance of good cheer got on her nerves, but not today. She encouraged her employee’s ongoing chatter, welcoming anything that kept her from thinking about Wyatt Edwards.

The day passed far too slowly. Each minute seemed like an hour. Richie visited the store after school, but she immediately sent him home to do his schoolwork. She did not want to risk Wyatt returning and running into her son... their son.

She had been almost four months pregnant with Wyatt’s child when she had married another man. Robert Bmgham knew she needed a stable home for her baby. He also knew she was not in love with him, but he said it did not matter. He had stood by her through a very difficult pregnancy. He had treated her with respect and unconditional love, and he could not have loved her son more if the boy had been his own, never once asking her about Richie’s biological father.

Vicki had an overwhelming respect for Robert and with time had grown to love him, too. But it was not the type of passionate, all-consuming love she had felt for Wyatt Edwards—a love that had never vanished from her consciousness. She had never been able to give Robert the kind of love that he had deserved, and it had hurt her each time she saw in his eyes that he knew there would always be someone else. He had never confronted her about it, but she had carried the self-inflicted guilt and the sorrow for the duration of their marriage.

And now her son’s real father had unexpectedly reappeared in her life. That posed a tremendous threat to her emotional security and that of her son. She needed to make sure nothing upset Richie’s memories of the loving and kind man he knew as his father.

That night as she lay in bed, Vicki was very restless, tossing and turning without getting much sleep. Morning finally came and she forced herself out of bed, leaving a tangled mess of sheets and blankets. Was this how it would be from now on? Would each day begin with an overwhelming fear that her most closely guarded secret would become public knowledge? That Wyatt would discover he had a son? That Richie’s world would crash around him even further than it already had? And all the while she would be looking at Wyatt and thinking what if?

“Come on, Richie.” She knocked on his bedroom door for the second time. “Get out of bed. You’re going to miss the school bus if you don’t hurry.” She heard the irritation in her voice and immediately admonished herself for letting it show.

A moment later the door opened and Richie appeared, dressed and ready for breakfast. He gave her a curious look. She impulsively pulled him into a hug and kissed his forehead.

He quickly squirmed from her arms and stepped back, making no effort to hide his exasperation. “Cut it out! What’s the matter with you today?”

She saw the embarrassment that covered his features, the same features that adorned Wyatt’s face. She smiled and started to reach for his hair, but stopped when he shot her the look. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just glad to see you, that’s all.”

“Sure, Mom.” A withering sigh surrounded his words. “I’m glad to see you, too.” His expression said he knew she had totally flipped out and senility had finally set in. He headed for the kitchen, gulped down a glass of orange juice, then reached for the box of cereal.

Vicki. hurried to work, arriving early so that she could take care of part of the morning routine in the store before the truck delivered the daily mail. She would be working alone until two o’clock when Noreen came to work. She sorted the mail, finishing just in time to make coffee and unlock the front door to the market.

She heard the bell that signaled that the outside door of the post office had been opened. Most likely someone wanted to check the mail before going to work. She turned to pour herself a cup of coffee. When she turned back, she found Wyatt standing in the connecting door, staring at her. The intense expression on his face sent a shiver of anxiety through her.

“Uh...good morning. I’m surprised to see you again so soon.” She took a sip of her coffee to avoid further conversation.

“I just came by to check on my mail,” Wyatt said. It was a feeble lie. They both knew there was no way he could have received any mail at his new post-office box yet. He slowly made his way across the store, pausing to look at whatever happened to catch his eye en route, until finally he arrived at the front counter.

He leaned on the countertop and proffered what he hoped was a casual smile. “That coffee smells good.”

She indicated the large urn at the end of the counter. “Cups are on the other side, three sizes with the prices marked.”

He took a large cup from the dispenser. “I see you have pastries, too. I’ll take one of these bear claws to go with my coffee.” He placed his money on the counter and she rang up the sale.

The stress level inside Vicki increased dramatically. What did he want from her? Why did he insist on hanging around? She tried to maintain a businesslike manner. “Did you need something else or will that be all?”

He watched as she nervously bit at her lower lip. Her discomfort showed in the way she kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her gaze constantly darted around the market, not staying on any one thing for more than a second or two.

He took a swallow from his coffee cup, deliberately stalling before his response. “Are you expecting someone?”

“Uh...no. No one in particular. Why do you ask?”

“You keep glancing out the window. I just thought maybe you were expecting a delivery or something.” Her behavior continued to be what he considered strange, at least for the Vicki Dalton he once knew—back before his whole world turned upside down on him.

He was now more convinced than ever that she was hiding some kind of secret and he was determined to find out what it was. In spite of the fact that she had hurt him and left him empty and angry, she had remained the one and only woman he truly wanted. Now, for reasons he did not clearly understand, they had been thrown together again. He had a second chance and he was not going to let it go without a fight. He would find out exactly what had happened all those years ago when she walked out on him.

“Vicki...” He saw the way she jumped at the sound of his voice. “Are you all right? I’ve never seen you so jittery.” His words came out as half concern and half irritation.

The buzzer intruded into their conversation once again. Someone had opened the front door of the market. Vicki breathed a sigh of rehef as she turned to see who it was. Her relief immediately turned to anxiety when she saw Alice Thackery.

Wyatt eyed the disagreeable woman. He lowered his voice so that only Vicki could hear him. “We’ll continue this conversation later. I want to get out of here before she pins me to the wall about something I might have done twenty-five years ago.” He nodded curtly to Alice, acknowledging her presence as he left.

Alice watched him until he was out of sight, then turned toward Vicki. Her tightly pursed lips only added to the harshness of her unsmiling features. Her tone was sarcastic and condemning. “Well, I see it didn’t take long for Henry’s boy to come sniffing around here.”

Vicki refused to acknowledge her comment. “Is there something I can help you with, Mrs. Thackery?”

The woman ignored Vicki’s question, preferring to continue with her train of thought. “He has live-in servants up there, you know.” She divulged the information as if she were gossiping about some sort of illicit behavior. “No reason for him to be doing his own marketing.” She pointedly stared at Vicki, as if waiting for her to answer some sort of unspoken accusation.

By no stretch of anybody’s imagination did Vicki feel she owed Alice Thackery any type of explanation, nor did she have any intention of giving her one. She stood her ground, determined to wait it out.

The awkward silence lasted for several seconds before Alice finally became flustered and grabbed the nearest thing to her without even looking to see what she had picked up. She plopped it on the counter with an exaggerated flair. “I’ll take this.”

“Are you sure?”

Alice refused to look at the item she had placed on the counter, as if to do so would have cast doubt on her selection. She pursed her lips in a hard line as she stared straight ahead. “I’m sure.”

Vicki suppressed a grin as she rang up the sale for a package of bubble gum. She could not stop that same grin from turning up the corners of her mouth as she watched Alice Thackery huff out of the market and down the sidewalk, passing the sheriff’s station and volunteer fire department on the way toward her house in the next block. Then the smile slowly faded.

Apprehension shuddered through her. She had the uncomfortable feeling that the disagreeable busybody was going to be responsible for causing her a lot of problems. If anyone would be able to spot the distinct physical resemblance between Wyatt and Richie, it would be Alice Thackery. Vicki could almost feel the dark clouds gathering overhead.

Thankfully, the rest of the morning passed with business as usual, until about eleven o’clock.

“Vicki.” Wyatt stepped through the connecting door, his sudden appearance startling her. His voice held an air of absolute authority. “I think we should finish our conversation now.”

Her nerves were pulled about as taut as they could be without snapping. Wyatt, Mrs. Thackery and now Wyatt again. Would this day never end? She took a steadying breath before looking in the direction of Wyatt’s voice. “What conversation was that?” He was at her side before she was even aware that he had moved.

His manner softened, but there was still an antagonistic edge to his voice. “The one where I was about to ask you to have lunch with me. We could talk over old times and catch up on what’s been going on without interruptions from your customers.”

She closed her eyes for a moment as she tried to collect the panic welling inside her and shove it back into some out-of-the-way corner. Was it her imagination or had he added extra emphasis to the words old times? The last thing she wanted to discuss with Wyatt Edwards was old times. “I couldn’t possibly have lunch with you. I have to be here. Noreen doesn’t come to work until two o’clock.” She hurried over to the magazine rack and began straightening the periodicals, just as she had done the day before.

He stood behind her, reached over her shoulder, and took the magazine from her hand. He replaced it on the rack, then grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face him. He leveled a stern look at her. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Vicki, but we have to talk. We need to clear the air about—” He felt her body stiffen and saw the way her eyes filled with a very real fear that he did not understand—a fear that threatened to turn into all-out panic.

She shook loose from his grasp, determination on her face as she stepped back from him. “I...I’m very busy here. I don’t have time to talk about unimportant things.”

“Unimportant things?” He felt a stab of anger that carried over into his voice. She had walked out on him, and he wanted to know why, needed to know why—had to know why. “I’m talking about us—about what happened fifteen years ago.”

She turned away so that she did not have to look at him. She could not keep the anger out of her voice. “The past is just that, Wyatt. It’s the past. It’s over and done and can’t be changed. Now, if you’ll excuse me...” She walked away from him without waiting for a response.

How dare he try to dredge up all the pain and humiliation he put her through fifteen years ago! He had walked out on her without so much as a goodbye note. He hadn’t even waited around long enough to discover that she was pregnant with his child. She was afraid to look back, afraid her anger and her newly opened wounds would cause her to blurt out that most closely guarded and important secret of her life.

“It’s not over, Vicki. And it won’t be over until things are settled between us. I want answers—”

She whirled around and glared at him. Fifteen years of pent-up emotion tried to get out just as desperately as she tried to keep it under control. It was a toss-up as to which would win. She did not want a confrontation with him, she just wanted him to leave her alone. “Drop it, Wyatt. Let it die a quiet and welldeserved death.” Her words were strained, and she turned away again before she said something she would regret.

He grabbed her arm and spun her back to him. “I have no intention of leaving it alone, not until I’m satisfied that things are finally settled.”

“Settled?” She felt her eyes widen in shock. She could not believe what she was hearing. “There’s nothing to settle.”

He had tried to forget her, to put what she had done to him out of his mind, but he had never quite been able to accomplish it. She had disappeared out of his life without so much as a word, and had never made any attempt to contact him. He never understood why she had gone away. Then he heard she had married. That news had crushed every hope he had secretly harbored that she would some day return so they could be together again—until now.

Vicki did not even have time to catch her breath before he pulled her into his arms. At first his embrace was somewhat tentative, but he quickly gained confidence. Memories came flooding back, every feeling she ever had for him ignited deep inside her. She immediately shoved away from him, but not in time. His embrace had made a shambles of her self-control. His sky-blue eyes had the smoky blue she remembered so well, conveying the depth of his passion. It was shockingly apparent that the physical pull between them was still as strong as ever, much to her dismay.

“No, it’s not settled, Vicki. It’s a long way from being settled.” Then Wyatt tmrned and walked out the door.

A very shaken Vicki staggered backward a couple more steps, finally bumping into the counter. Her heart pounded so hard that she had trouble catching her breath. Everything she had so desperately tried to erase from her life had resurfaced with astonishing clarity. Wyatt Edwards seemed to have more control over her emotions than she did. His embrace left her with the uncomfortable feeling of being helpless...and extremely vulnerable.

It took a huge effort to pull herself together and continue with her workday, but somehow she managed it.

At two o’clock Noreen arrived promptly for work. “Good afternoon, Vicki.”

“Hi, Noreen. Things are pretty quiet around here. I think I’ll run home for a little while. I should be back in a couple of hours.” Vicki grabbed her purse from beneath the counter and called over her shoulder as she left the market, “If you need me before that, give me a call.”

Vicki hurried the one block to her house. She went directly to her bedroom, shut the door, then sat on the edge of her bed. She hugged her shoulders in an attempt to make her body stop trembling. She could still feel his arms around her. It had affected her the same way it had when he held her close fifteen years ago. She needed to pull her emotions together and somehow find a way to deal with this latest emotional upheaval in her life.

If only there had been some sort of warning, she could have done something to prepare herself. But now it was too late. She had once again felt the passion of Wyatt Edwards and knew in an instant how much she had missed his touch.

She went to her closet and stared at the small locked box on the top shelf. After what seemed like an eternity, she took it from the shelf and set it on the bed. She paused a minute, uncertain about whether or not she really wanted to open it, then retrieved the key and unlocked it. She carefully removed a stack of photographs, taking one and putting the others back in the box. She stared at it for a long time. It was a picture of Wyatt and her at a party, the night they had ended up making love on the beach.

It was the night their son had been conceived.

She closed her eyes as she held the photograph to her heart. In a barely audible voice she whispered the feelings that she had tried so desperately to bury. “I’ve tried to purge you from my existence, erase the memory of what I thought we once meant to each other. But, God help me, I havcn’t been able to do it.”

She forced away the tears that tried to well in her eyes. It had been a little less than a month after the photo was taken that Wyatt had disappeared from her life. His father said Wyatt had felt smothered by her. She tried to think, tried to put herself back in that place again. Was it possible that she had unconsciously made emotional demands on him following their night of lovemaking? She had not meant to. Making love had been as much her responsibility as it had been his.

She shook her head. She did not know what had happened.

She replaced the photograph, locked the box, and put it back on the shelf. Then she did something she had never done before. Rather than going back to work, she poured herself a glass of wine and took it to the glass-walled back porch.

She sat all alone and sipped her wine while she thought about the future. She had handled the shock of losing her mother when she was still in high school, of Wyatt leaving her, of discovering she was pregnant with Wyatt’s child, of her husband dying and now her father’s death. She did not know if she had enough strength left to endure any more—and that most certainly included Wyatt’s sudden reappearance in her life.

Richie had been without a father and role model during his formative adolescent years. He would soon be fifteen. Somehow she had to find a way to make everything work out while seeing to it that her son was protected from any more emotional upheavals. She sat quietly on the porch, vacillating between memories from the past, the problems of the present, and her fears of what the future held.

“Mom! What are you doing home?”

Richie’s voice startled her. She had not heard him come in. She glanced at her watch. “Oh...I didn’t realize it was so late.” She looked over at her son, who was standing in the doorway. “I just needed a little break from work, that’s all.” She stood up, taking her empty wineglass with her. “I’d better get back to the store. You get busy on your homework and I’ll start dinner in a couple of hours.”

“I don’t have any homework. I did it all at school.”

Vicki looked skeptically at him. “How did you manage that?”

“Mrs. Winters had some kind of emergency and had to leave, so my last class was just a study hall. I did everything then.” Richie turned toward the door. “So, I’m going to ride on the trail in the hills.”

“Okay, but be sure you’re back in two hours.” She called after him as he ran out the door, “You stay away from Mrs. Thackery’s house. I don’t want her complaining to me again.”

Wyatt had tried to force himself to work all afternoon, but he could not concentrate on anything other than the feel of having Vicki in his arms once again. It had been an impulsive gesture, one that he should not have given in to. She’d had him wrapped around her little finger once before, then walked out on him. The last thing he needed was for her to realize how easy it would be for her to accomplish it again. He did not want her to see the extremely vulnerable spot that still existed inside him where Victoria Dalton Bingham was concerned.

He finally gave up trying to work, left the house and strolled down the path toward the stables. Maybe a hard ride through the hills would settle the nervous tension churning inside him.

Fred Olson looked up from his desk when Wyatt entered the tack room, a quizzical expression covering his face. “Afternoon, Wyatt. Somethin’ I can do for ya?”

“Didn’t mean to interrupt you, Fred. I thought I’d take one of the horses out for a ride.”

“Need any help saddlin’ up?”

“I can handle it, thanks.” Wyatt grabbed a saddle, blanket and bridle and left the tack room.

It was just the type of afternoon for a brisk ride. The sky was blue, the sun just warm enough to take the coolness from the air without removing the crispness. He urged his horse into a trot as he cut across a field toward the stand of trees that marked the edge of the old trail he had enjoyed so much as a young man. Just as he emerged from the trees to join the trail, something flashed around a corner, startling his horse.

The animal reared, throwing Wyatt off his back, and the dirt bike and its rider skidded into a ditch. A moment later a teenage boy ran toward Wyatt as he lay on the ground.

“Are you okay, mister?”

Wyatt slowly got to his feet, testing his left leg before putting his full weight on it. He brushed the dirt from his jeans. “Yes, I seem to be all right. How about you?”

“Yeah.” The teenager glanced back over his shoulder. “But I don’t know about my bike.”

Wyatt grabbed the reins of his horse, then walked toward the ditch. “Well, let’s take a look at it and see. ”

The boy set the bike upright and Wyatt bent down to check the frame and wheels. A couple of minutes later he stood up. “It seems to be okay, except for some scratches in the paint. Hop on it and see if it rides the way it should.”

Wyatt watched as the young man rode about fifty feet down the trail and then back again. “How does it handle?”

“Handles okay,” the boy replied.

“You do know you’re trespassing on private property—” he saw the objection form on the boy’s face and his posture take on a defensive stance “—although the signs seem to have disappeared and I saw where the fence needs replacing.”

He scrutinized the teenage boy for a moment. “So, what are you doing out here zipping around a horse trail on a dirt bike? Do you live somewhere nearby?” he asked, neither angry nor accusatory, merely curious.

“Yeah, I live in town. Me and my friend Tim were riding on this trail the other day. I didn’t know this was someone’s property. I guess Tim didn’t know it either.”

Wyatt placed his foot in the stirrup and swung up on his horse. He looked down at the teenage boy, taking a moment to study him before speaking. “Try to be more careful from now on, okay?”

“Sure thing, mister.” The boy got back on his bike and rode in the direction of town.

Wyatt watched as the boy disappeared around the curve in the trail. Something about him touched Wyatt, something that seemed familiar, but he did not know what it was or why. The disturbing feeling continued to nag at him as he rode back to his house.

Richie arrived home just as Vicki returned from work. He did not move fast enough to hide the results of his mischief from her scrutiny.

“What happened here, Richie? How did you rip your shirt and what happened to your bike?”

“It’s nothing, Mom. I was riding in the hills and some guy came out of the woods on a horse. He got thrown off and I skidded into a ditch. That’s all. It was no big deal.”

“No big deal? Someone could have been seriously injured. Who was this man?”

“I don’t know, just some guy on a horse.”

“He didn’t tell you his name?”

The irritation sounded in Richie’s voice. “I don’t know who he was. He didn’t get hurt. I didn’t get hurt. The horse didn’t get hurt. My bike only got a couple of scratches. That’s all there was to it.”

“What, uh...” The nervous jitter started in the pit of her stomach. “What did this man look like?”

“I don’t know. He was just some guy. I never saw him before. He was tall with dark hair. He was older, even older than you are.”

Richie leveled a curious look at her, followed by a withering sigh that said he was sure her advanced age had affected her reasoning. “So what’s the big deal?”

“It’s nothing. I just thought he might have been someone I knew.” She tried to put forth a smile that said it was unimportant, but she was not sure how successful she was. “Why don’t you go on in and clean up while I start dinner?”

She went through the motions, but her mind was not on preparing the meal. All the land back in the hills belonged to the Edwards family—or, more accurately, Wyatt Edwards. Could he possibly be the man whom Richie had run into?

She closed her eyes and took a calming breath. She knew there was no way to keep Wyatt from coming in contact with her son in such a small town, but she certainly had not intended for them to meet when she was not there to control what happened. How was it possible for everything to be falling apart like this? She felt a tear trickle down her cheek.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

She looked up to find Richie standing in the kitchen door, staring at her. She could not quite read the expression on his face, but he looked concerned.

“No one got hurt and I’m sorry about ripping my shirt. It really was an accident, Mom. Honest.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, his words telling her that his concern emanated from an entirely different place than hers. But she knew the relief was only temporary. She would be seeing Wyatt again; there was no way of avoiding it. She also knew that each confrontation would bring her one step closer to what she feared the most.


Three

“I’m going to my dental appointment. I should be back in about an hour and a half, if that’s all right” Noreen grabbed her purse from beneath the counter.

“That’s fine. I have some paperwork to catch up on. Things seem to be pretty slow right now. In fact, they’ve been quiet all morning.” Vicki watched as Noreen left the store, then she returned to the order she had been working on for the grocery distributor.

Wyatt peered through the doorway separating the post office from the market. As soon as Noreen exited through the front door, he entered through the back.

“Good morning.” He tried to sound cheerful even though that was not the way he felt. The impulsive embrace of the previous day kept running through his mind. Even though it rekindled the passionate feelings he had been carrying inside him, it also reinforced the anger and hurt. There was a lot to reconcile, a lot she had to answer for.

Vicki looked up from her paperwork. “Uh...good morning.” She refused to allow any hint of the warmth his touch had caused to show in her expression. She did not want him to think she was happy to see him again, especially after the way he had pulled her into his arms.

Wyatt proceeded directly to the counter, his attitude all business. “I would like to place an order for some special food items. Can you handle that or do I need to go to the city to procure what I want?”

“If my distributor handles the items, then I will be able to get them for you. I’m just putting together an order now.” She looked up at him, trying her best to maintain a professional manner. “What is it you want?”

“What is it I want?”

She saw the slightly wicked grin tug at the corners of his mouth and the glow in his eyes. An edge of irritation crept into her voice as she tried to ignore his innuendo. “What items would you like me to order for you?”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. “I’ve written them down.” He slid the list across the counter toward her.

She reached for it, but he refused to release it from his grasp. She tugged at the piece of paper, then shot him a questioning look. “Are you going to let me see your list, or not?”

He was not ready to let her off the hook yet. He fully intended to toy with her a little longer. One way or the other he would get some answers from her. “Just as soon as you agree to sit down and have a serious discussion about some unsettled matters. Maybe we could talk over lunch.” He leveled an even gaze at her, turned on his best smile and waited for her response.

She quickly withdrew her hand. “I can’t possibly leave. Noreen is gone. By the time she gets back, it’ll be too late—”

“Too late for what? Too late to talk over lunch? Then how about dinner? We could go into the city and—”

“No, I...uh...I can’t have dinner with you. I...I have other plans.” How was she ever going to exist in the same small community as Wyatt Edwards? Why was he doing this to her? Why was he being so persistent ? He had walked out on her—actually, he had run out on her—and she did not understand why he now apparently wanted to pick up the pieces of the old relationship.

“You have other plans? But I haven’t even suggested a specific night for dinner. How could you possibly know that you have plans?” Wyatt noted the nervous way she avoided any eye contact with him, the way she kept biting at her lower lip. He needed to know what it was about him that made her so uncomfortable after all these years. It had to be more than lingering guilt over her decision to run off and get married while he was away on business. That decision had apparently been easy enough for her to make fifteen years ago, he thought bitterly. There was no reason for it to be bothering her now.

She ran her fingers through her hair as she glanced out the window. “I assumed you meant tonight..”

“I did, but as luck would have it, my entire week is open. Why don’t you tell me which night you don’t have plans?”

She bit at her lip again, the panic welling inside her faster than she could push it down. “I’m busy every night.”

“Every night?” he challenged. “I didn’t think there was that much to do in this little town. Tell me, is there some sort of list of events? What’s happening—a barn raising, a square dance, an ice-cream social? Is it rodeo season? Or perhaps big-city culture has come to Sea Cliff in the form of a new art gallery opening, a stage production of some sort, or maybe a live concert. Where do I find a list of these community activities so that I can participate, too?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m just busy, that’s all.” She felt light-headed, as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the air. He was so near and so damnably sexy. But even if it was not a matter of protecting her son. she knew she could never succumb to his charm again. She was certain that over the past fifteen years he had left a string of broken hearts in his wake...hearts just like hers. She knew she could not bear the pain of having him walk away from her a second time.

“Okay, let’s try it this way.” He grabbed her calendar from next to the cash register. “Now, you can’t have lunch with me today because your clerk won’t be back until later this afternoon. Okay, that sounds reasonable.”

He took her pen from the counter and wrote no lunch on the calendar. “Now, as for dinner tonight... you claim you’re busy.” He looked up, capturing her with his gaze. “Busy doing what? Is this the night you wash your hair?” He reached out and touched her ash-blond hair, then allowed his fingertips to skim across her jaw and finally come to rest under her chin.

His voice took on a soft quality, betraying the emotion he was trying to conceal. “Your hair looks lovely. So do you.”

Her entire body trembled beneath his touch. All she could think of was where the embrace they had shared might have led if she had not pulled away from him. She worried about him trying it again. She knew she would be powerless to stop it.

“Wyatt...I...I have work to do...” she finally managed to say. She closed her eyes and turned her head away. “Please go.” Her voice was a mere whisper

As much as he wanted to continue the seduction that seemed to have materialized of its own volition, he recognized that any further conversation along those lines would be counterproductive. He returned to the business at hand. “What about my order? Will you be able to get the items for me?”

“I’ll call you after I’ve talked to my distributor.”

“Fair enough.” He wrote his phone number on her calendar. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Vicki breathed a sigh of relief when he walked out the door. Maybe the thing to do would be to have lunch with him, in some brightly lit public place, and put an end to things once and for all. She would tell him she was not interested in him, and to confine their unavoidable conversations to strictly business matters.

Speaking of business, she picked up his list and glanced at the items he wanted her to order. She swallowed hard and forced down the now familiar jittery feeling. Every item on his list was something that had been one of her favorites, things he would pick up for her whenever he went into the city.

Why was he doing this to her? He had coldly walked out on her. What could he possibly hope to gain by this sudden pretense of wanting to get back together? Was it all some sort of game for him, just as it had apparently been fifteen years ago? She shook her head in a determined manner. It did not matter. At least that was what she tried to tell herself. She would place his order. It would be a straightforward business transaction—nothing more.

She reached for the phone and dialed her grocery distributor. “Sam, I have a special order here. Do you carry these items?”

Vicki locked up the market and went to her office in the back room of the post office. She had some paperwork to take care of before going home. She sat at the desk, turned on the lamp, and took the journal from the drawer.

“The front door was locked, but I saw the light and figured you were in the office.”

Wyatt’s voice startled her. She had not heard anyone come in through the post office. She was not sure quite what to say. “We’re closed for the day. Unless you’re just checking your post-office box for mail, I’m afraid you’ll have to come back some other time.”




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