Ain’t She Sweet?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ryan waited until Winnie’s assistant left for lunch before he approached Yesterday’s Treasures. The bell over the door rang as he stepped inside. Winnie was alone, standing near the counter, arranging a display of antique dolls in a wicker carriage. She looked up, a welcoming smile fixed on her face until she saw who it was, and the smile disappeared. That made him so furious he flipped the sign on the door so it read closed, twisted the lock, and shot her a look that had badass written all over it.

He was rewarded with the first sign of wariness on her part, a small, almost imperceptible step backward. Good. He was tired of being the only one on edge.

“I’m expecting a delivery,” she said.

“Tough.”

“This isn’t a good time, Ryan. If you have something to discuss, we’ll do it later.”

“I have something to discuss, all right. And I don’t want to do it later.”

His bad temper came from too much caffeine and not enough sleep. He should be at his desk now, eating a ham sandwich from the cafeteria while he caught up on a stack of unread reports and a P & L he’d intended to finish three days ago. But his concentration was shot.

Nearly forty-eight hours had passed since he’d seen Sugar Beth at the Lakehouse, and Winnie hadn’t said a word about it, even though they’d spoken twice on the phone. He knew for certain that she’d heard the news. Deke had called to tell him that the Seawillows had flown off for an emergency powwow on Tuesday night. Too late, he wished he’d stopped at Gemima’s to fan the fire, but he’d walked right past without remembering that Sugar Beth had started working there. The truth was, he’d barely thought about Sugar Beth since Tuesday. He’d been too consumed with his resentment toward Winnie.

Her hair looked longer than he remembered, which was crazy, since she’d only left home four days ago. A tiny, jeweled clip, barely the size of his thumbnail, held her bangs back from her face on one side. She didn’t seem much older than Gigi, but she looked far less innocent.

He’d never paid much attention to her clothes. Her wardrobe was stylish, conservative, and at first glance her ivory-colored wrap dress seemed that way, too. Surely he’d seen her wear it before, so why had he never noticed the not-so-subtle way it clung to her body? She always complained that her legs were too short, but even without that ridiculously sexy pair of open-toed heels, they were more than long enough for his taste. Exactly long enough to wrap around his hips.

A flood of lust shot straight through him, not the familiar lust a husband feels for his wife, but something more sordid that evoked seedy motels and broken wedding vows. All you ever think of is sex! He’d been indignant when she’d thrown that at him, but he’d have a tough time defending himself now.

“Ryan, I really don’t have time to talk.”

“And I really don’t care.”

Her wariness increased. “Is there something specific…”

“How about the fact that my wife’s moved out, my daughter alternates between clinging to me like a burr and refusing to come out of her room, and I haven’t been worth a damn all week at work. How about that?”

“I’m sorry.” She might have been offering sympathy to a stranger, and the pit of his stomach burned. He’d been so sure that hearing he’d had dinner with Sugar Beth would have shaken her up enough to realize she couldn’t keep doing this, that it was time to start fighting for her marriage instead of running away. Fighting for her husband. He’d at least wanted to frighten her into coming back to the bargaining table. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might not care enough to make the trip.

He was overcome with a watershed of unpleasant emotions-anger, fear, guilt, and something primitive that had to do with antiquated notions of possession. He concentrated on his anger, the one he could most justify. “You’re not sorry about anything. If you were sorry, you’d fix this.”

She had the audacity to laugh, a dark, brittle sound. “Oh, yes, sir, let me just do that, right away, sir.”

“God, I hate it when you’re sarcastic.”

“Only because you’re not used to it.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Be honest.”

He could feel himself losing it, and he gritted his teeth. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Tell me what you want from me?”

She dropped her eyes, and for a moment he thought she was embarrassed. But when she lifted them, she didn’t look embarrassed at all. She looked tough and determined. “I want your heart, Ryan.”

Her quiet dignity spoke of intelligence, of decency, of qualities that made him feel like the guilty party, which was something he didn’t deserve, so he struck back hard. “This is a great way to go about getting it.”

She didn’t flinch. Instead, she took a few steps toward him. She looked young, innocent, very beautiful. “I want your heart, and I want your forgiveness.”

Her words should have pacified him, but they only made him angrier. “This is bullshit.”

She gave a weary sigh, as if he were the unreasonable one. “Go back to work. You’re still too angry to talk.”

His sense of being ill-used had eaten away at him for days. No. Longer than that. He’d had plans for his life, and none of them had included being a twenty-year-old husband and father. She’d stolen his dreams. She’d stolen his future, but he’d swallowed his resentment. Not in one big gulp-that would have been too much to ingest-but in queasy sips-sips so small and far apart he’d never managed to get to the bottom of the glass.

“If you want my forgiveness,” he heard himself say, “you’re going to have to wait a hell of a long time for it.”

Her head came up. He told himself to leave it at that, but he hadn’t been sleeping well, and he knew he’d taken too much for granted, taken her for granted, and that she was right-he had held something back-but he no longer cared about fair. “I hate what you did to me. I’ve always hated it, do you hear me?”

Her face grew as pale as Gigi’s two nights ago, her eyes as wide and just as stricken. Tough. For fourteen years, he’d swallowed his resentment, and for what? So she could run away and upset everything?

“Ryan-”

“Shut up!” He whipped her with his words, blasted her with everything he’d stored up. “You said you wanted me to be honest. Here’s some honesty! You stole my fucking life!” His arm shot out, and he caught a display of glassware with the back of his hand. She gasped as the pieces flew, shattered, just like his marriage, but that didn’t stop him. He bore in, said what he’d barely let himself think. “You took away my choices when you decided to get pregnant. You didn’t care what I wanted. All you cared about was what you wanted. I hate what you did to me, goddammit. And hell, no, I don’t forgive you. I won’t ever forgive you.”

Shocked silence fell between them. Her face was ashen, her lips trembling. His lungs constricted, and he felt as if he were choking. Broken glass lay everywhere, wine and water goblets, shattered pitchers. Shards slicked the floor, brutal ice, the glittering debris of a fractured rainbow life.

He waited for her to fall apart, wanted her to fall apart like he was. Instead, she met his eyes, and through the trembling in her voice, he heard a lifetime of sadness, right along with a toughness he’d never expected. “All right,” she whispered. “All right, then.”

The reality of what he’d said hit home. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want his life broken. He wanted his marriage back, his wife, the woman who’d once looked at him as though he hung the moon and stars. Everything he’d said was true, but where was the relief he should feel at finally getting it off his chest? Where was his old bitterness? He needed it back. He needed to gnaw over the righteousness of his anger so he could justify the broken glass, the shattered marriage.

But he’d waited fourteen years too long to tell her how he felt, and his bitterness had no taste left.