Truly Madly Yours

straps of her Hercules sandals with the rubber wedgie soles. She’d dressed conservatively, but maybe her shoes were slightly different by small-town standards. She didn’t care; she loved them. “I like what I’m wearing,” she said, feeling like a nine-year-old again. She didn’t like the feeling, but it reminded her of the biggest reason why she planned to leave Truly quickly the following afternoon after Henry’s will was read.

“I’ll take you shopping next week. We’ll drive down to Boise and spend the day at the mall.” Gwen smiled with genuine pleasure. “Now that you’re home again, we can go at least once a month.”

There it was. Gwen’s assumption that Delaney would be moving back to Truly now that Henry was dead. But Henry Shaw hadn’t been the only reason Delaney kept at least an entire state between herself and Idaho.

“I don’t need anything, Mother,” she said and polished off her breakfast. If she stayed more than a few days, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Gwen would have her in Liz Claiborne and turn her into a respectable member of the Charitable Society. She’d grown up wearing clothes she didn’t like and pretending to be someone she wasn’t just to please her parents. She’d killed herself to make honor roll in school, and she’d never so much as received a fine on a library book. She’d grown up the mayor’s daughter. That meant she’d had to be perfect.

“Aren’t those shoes uncomfortable?”

Delaney shook her head. “Tell me about the fire,” she said, purposely changing the subject. Since she’d arrived in Truly, she’d learned very little of what had actually happened the night of Henry’s death. Her mother was reluctant to talk about it, but now that the funeral was over, Delaney pressed for information.

Gwen sighed and reached for the butter knife Delaney had used to spread preserves. The heels of her blue pumps clicked on the red brick tiles as she moved toward the kitchen sink. “I don’t know anything more now than I did when I called you last Monday.” She set down the knife then gazed out the big window above the sink. “Henry was in his tack shed and it caught on fire. Sheriff Crow told me they think it started in a pile of linseed rags he’d left by an old space heater.” Gwen’s voice wavered as she spoke.

Delaney moved toward her mother and put her arm around Gwen’s shoulders. She looked out at the backyard, at the boat dock swaying on gentle waves, and asked the question she’d been afraid to voice, “Do you know if he suffered very much?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t want to know if he did. I don’t know how long he lived or if God was merciful and he died before the flames got to him. I didn’t ask. Everything that has happened this past week has been hard enough.” She paused to clear her throat. “I’ve had so much to do, and I don’t like to think about it.”

Delaney turned her gaze to her mother, and for the first time in a very long time, she felt a connection to the woman who’d given her life. They were so different, but in this, they were the same. Despite his faults, they had both loved Henry Shaw.

“I’m sure your friends would understand if you canceled your meeting today. If you’d like, I’ll call them for you.”

Gwen turned her attention to Delaney and shook her head. “I have responsibilities, Laney. I can’t put my life on hold forever.”

Forever? Henry had been dead less than a week, buried less than twenty-four hours. She dropped her hand from her mother’s shoulders, feeling the connection snap. “I’m going outside for a bit,” she said, and walked out the back door before she could give in to the disappointment. A late morning breeze rustled the quaking aspen, filling the pine-scented air with the whisper of leaves. She took a deep breath and moved across the back patio.

Disappointment seemed the best word to describe her family. They’d lived a facade, and as a result, they’d been doomed to disappoint one another. A long time ago she’d come to terms with the fact that her mother was superficial, far more concerned with appearance than substance. And Delaney had accepted that Henry was an over-the-top control freak. When she’d behaved as Henry expected, he’d been a wonderful father. He’d given her his time and attention, taken her and her friends boating or camping in the Sawtooths, but the Shaws had lived a life of reprimand and reward, and she’d always felt disappointed that everything, even love, had been conditional.

Delaney walked past a towering Ponderosa to the large dog run on the edge of the back lawn. Two brass name plates tacked above the door of the kennel declared the Weimaraners inside were Duke and Dolores.

“Aren’t you pretty babies?” she cooed, touching their smooth noses through the chain link and talking to them as if they were lap dogs. Delaney loved dogs, having been raised with Dolores and Duke’s predecessors, Clark and Clara. But these days, she moved too often to have a goldfish, let alone a real pet. “Poor pretty babies all penned up.” The Weimaraners licked her fingers, and she lowered to one knee. The dogs were well-groomed, and since they’d belonged to Henry, no doubt well-trained. Their long brown faces and sad blue eyes silently begged her to set them free. “I know how you feel,” she said. “I used to be trapped here, too.” Duke let loose with a pitiful whine that tugged at Delaney’s sympathetic heart. “Okay, but don’t go out of the yard,” she said as she stood.

The kennel door swung open and Duke and Dolores threw themselves forward, shooting past Delaney like two streaks of lightening. “Damn it, get back here!” she yelled, turning just in time to see their stubby tails disappear into the forest. She thought about letting them go with the hope they’d return on their own. Then she thought of the highway less than a mile from the house.

She grabbed two leather leashes from inside the kennel and took off after them. She didn’t feel any attachment toward the dogs, but she didn’t want them to end up as roadkill either. “Duke! Dolores!” she called, running as fast as she could, carefully balancing her weight over a pair of wedgie sandals. “Dinnertime. Steak. Kibbles and Bits.” She chased them into the forest and on old trails she’d roamed as a child. Towering pines enclosed her in shadows and shrubbery slapped at her shins and ankles. She caught up with the dogs at the old treehouse Henry had built for her as a child, but they took off just as she made a grab for their collars. “Milk-Bones,” she called out as she pursued them past Elephant Rock and through Huckleberry Creek. She might have given up if the two animals hadn’t stayed within spitting distance, teasing her, taunting her with their closeness. She chased them under low- hanging aspen branches and scraped her hand as she hoisted herself over a fallen pine.

“Damn it!” she cursed as she inspected her scratches. Duke and Dolores sat on their haunches, wagging their stubby tails and waiting for her to finish. “Come!” she commanded. They lowered their heads in submission, but as soon as she took a step, they jumped up and took off. “Get back here!” She considered letting them go, but then she remembered the Truly Charitable Society meeting at her mother’s house. Chasing stupid dogs through the forest suddenly sounded like a good time.

She followed them up a small hill and paused beneath a pine tree to catch her breath. Her brows lowered as she gazed at the meadow in front of her, subdivided and cleared of trees. A bulldozer and a front-end loader sat idle next to a huge dump truck. Neon orange paint marked the ground in several spots beside big sewer trenches, and Nick Allegrezza stood in the midst of the chaos next to a black Jeep Wrangler, Duke and Dolores at his feet.

Delaney’s heart jumped to her throat. Nick was the one person she’d hoped to avoid during her short visit. He was the source of the single most humiliating experience of her life. She fought to suppress the urge to turn and go back the way she’d come. Nick had seen her and there was no way she was going to run. She had to force herself to walk calmly down the incline toward him.

He was dressed the same as he had been yesterday at Henry’s funeral. White T-shirt, worn Levi’s, gold earring, but he’d shaved today and his hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He looked like he belonged on a billboard wearing nothing but his Calvin’s.

“Hello,” she called out. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, one of his big hands leisurely scratching the top of Duke’s head as his gray eyes watched her. She fought the apprehension weighing the pit of her stomach as she came to stand several feet before him. “I’m walking Henry’s dogs,” she said, and was again treated with silence and his steady, unfathomable gaze. He was taller than she remembered. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder. His chest was broader. His muscles bigger. The last time she’d stood this close, he’d turned her life inside out and changed it forever. She’d thought he was a knight in shining armor, driving a slightly battered Mustang. But she’d been wrong.

He’d been forbidden to her all her life, and she’d been drawn to him like an insect to a bug light. She’d been a good girl longing to be set free, and all he’d had to do was crook his finger at her and utter four words. Four provocative words from his bad-boy lips. “Come here, wild thing,” he’d said, and her soul had responded with a resounding yes. It had been as if he’d looked deep inside her, past the facade, to the real Delaney. She’d been eighteen and horribly naive. She’d never been allowed to spread her wings, to breathe on her own, and Nick had been like pure oxygen that went straight to her head. But she’d paid for it.

“They’re not as well behaved as Clark and Clara were,” she continued, refusing to feel intimidated by his silence.