Truly Madly Yours

“Then I guess the next time I see you in a crosswalk, I won’t put on the brake.”

Nick stepped forward until she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. His gaze moved over her flawless porcelain cheeks to her pink lips. The last time he’d been this close to her, she’d been naked. “Give it your best shot.” White and pink. That’s what he remembered about her most. Soft pink mouth and tongue. Firm white breasts and tight pink nipples. Silky white thighs.

She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever she meant to say was silenced by Gail’s approach.

“There you are,” Gail said as she wove her arm through Nick’s. “Let’s hurry and get a place on the beach before the show starts.”

Nick stared into Delaney’s big brown eyes and felt a tightening in his groin that had nothing to do with the willing woman by his side. He stepped back and turned his attention to Gail. “If you’re in a hurry, go ahead without me.”

“No, I’ll wait.” Gail turned her gaze from Nick to Delaney. Her grip on his arm tightened. “Hello, Delaney. I hear you’ve moved back.”

“For a while.”

“The last time I talked to your mother, she told me you were a flight attendant with United.”

A slight frown wrinkled Delaney’s brow and she glanced around as if she were desperately looking for a reason to escape. “That was five years ago, and I was a baggage handler, not a flight attendant,” she said and took a step backward. “Well, it was nice to see you again, Gail. I’ve got to go. I told Lisa I’d help her… ah… do something.” Without a glance in Nick’s direction, she turned and walked away.

“What’s going on between the two of you?” Gail asked.

“Nothing.” He didn’t want to talk about Delaney, especially not with Gail. He didn’t even want to think about her. She was trouble for him. She always had been. Since the first time he’d looked into her big brown eyes.

“When I walked up it certainly looked like something.”

“Drop it.” He shook free of Gail’s grasp and moved into the house. Earlier, when he’d gone to his own house to get the fireworks he’d promised Sophie, Gail and the twins had been knocking on his front door. He didn’t like women dropping by his house. It gave them unrealistic ideas of his involvement with them. But it was a holiday, and he’d decided to overlook the intrusion this one time and had invited them to Louie’s. Now he wished he hadn’t. He recognized that determined look in Gail’s eyes. She wasn’t about to drop anything.

Gail followed close behind Nick, but waited until they were in the deserted kitchen before she continued, “Do you remember when Delaney left ten years ago? A lot of people said she was pregnant. A lot of people said you were the father.”

Nick tossed Louie’s bota on the counter, then reached into a cooler. He grabbed two Miller’s and twisted the caps off each. He remembered the rumors. Depending on who you listened to at the time, gossip had him and Delaney getting it on in a hundred different places and in very imaginative ways. But whichever version you heard, the ending was always the same. Nick Allegrezza had put his dirty hands on Delaney Shaw. He’d impregnated the princess.

Henry hadn’t known what to believe. He’d been enraged at the very possibility that the rumor could be true. He’d demanded Nick deny it. Of course, Nick hadn’t.

“Were you?”

Now it was ironic as hell. Ten years later, Henry wanted him to knock up Delaney. Nick handed Gail one of the cold beers. “I told you to drop it.”

“I think I have a right to know, Nick.”

He looked into her blue eyes and laughed without humor. “You don’t have a right to know squat.”

“I have a right to know if you see other women.”

“You know I do.”

“What if I asked you to stop?”

“Don’t,” he warned.

“Why not? We’ve gotten close since we’ve become lovers. We could have a wonderful life together if you’d let it happen.”

He knew for a fact he wasn’t the only man on Gail’s list of potential husbands. He just happened to be at the top. For a while, being number one on Gail’s sexual hit parade had been amusing. But lately she’d begun to get possessive and that irritated him. “I told you from the start not to expect anything from me. I never confuse sex and love. One has nothing to do with the other.” Nick raised the beer to his lips and said, “I don’t love you, but try not to take it personal.”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and leaned her behind against the edge of the counter. “You’re such a shit. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

Nick took a long drink. They both knew why she put up with him.

Delaney felt Steve’s strong masculine arm encircle her waist and pull her against his side. Red, white, and blue exploded in the black night, showering the lake with fiery sparks as Delaney tested the feeling of Steve’s embrace. She decided she liked it. She liked the contact and the warmth. She felt alive again.

She glanced to the left and watched Nick bury the bottom half of a pipe in the sand. A few minutes earlier, she’d gotten a real good look at the fireworks “Uncle Nick” had brought his niece. There wasn’t so much as one legal sparkler in the sack.

A cascade of gold illuminated his profile for a few brief seconds, and she looked away. She wasn’t going to avoid him anymore. She wasn’t going to limit where she went because she didn’t want to run into him. And she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her time in Truly like she had the past month. She had a plan. Her mother wasn’t going to like it, but Delaney didn’t care.

And she had a wedding to look forward to in November, too. Lisa had approached her again about being in her wedding and Delaney had gladly said yes. She remembered the many times she and Lisa had pinned dishtowels in their hair and pretended to walk down the aisle. They’d speculated over who would marry first. They’d hoped for a big double wedding. Neither of them would have believed they would remain single until the ripe old age of twenty- nine.

Twenty-nine. As far as she could tell, she was the only one of her school friends who wasn’t at least engaged. In February she would turn thirty. A thirty-year-old woman with no home of her own and no man in her life. The home she wasn’t worried about. With three million she could buy a home. But the man. It wasn’t that she needed a man in her life. She didn’t, but it would have been nice to have one around sometimes. She hadn’t had a boyfriend for a while and she missed the intimacy.

Her gaze was drawn again to the dark silhouette of the man lighting rockets from a pipe near the water’s edge. He turned at the waist and looked over his shoulder in her direction. A funny little tickle settled in the pit of her stomach, and she quickly glanced up into the night sky.

The town sent up a finale so spectacular it lit the lake like dawn and caught the canopy of Colonel Mansfield’s pontoon boat on fire. The people loved it and showed their appreciation by setting off their own bombs from beaches and balconies. Happy Dragons, Cobras, and Mighty Rebels burst in fiery showers of sparks. Legal fireworks like Whistling Pete’s, modified to screech and take flight, buzzed the night sky.

Delaney had forgotten what pyromaniacs the people of Truly were. A shrieking missile whizzed past her head and exploded in a red shower on Louie’s deck.

Welcome to Idaho. Land of potatoes and pyros.

Chapter Five

The Miata’s door handle dug into Delaney’s behind as Steve pressed into her front. She placed her hands on his chest and ended the kiss.

“Come home with me,” he whispered above her ear.

Delaney pulled back just far enough to look into the dark shadows of his face. She wished she could use him. She wished she was tempted. She wished he wasn’t so young and that his age didn’t matter, but it did. “I can’t.” He was handsome, had pecs of steel, and seemed genuinely nice. She felt like a cradle robber.