“Afraid not,” he said. “I quit my job over there.”
She regarded him with dismay. “Why would you do that?”
“It wasn’t fair to ask them to hold it for me when I had no intention of going back.”
“But you have to go back,” she said, sounding desperate.
“Because?”
“You know perfectly well why. You cheated on me, Ronnie, and I will not have you underfoot every time I turn around, reminding me of that.”
Obviously this still wasn’t the right time to bring up the hardware store. “What do you suppose folks in Serenity remember most—that I cheated, or that you threw everything I own onto the front lawn and then chased me off before I could gather up half of it?”
She winced. “It’s probably a toss-up,” she said stubbornly, though they both knew that wasn’t true. People could forget a man’s foibles, but they weren’t likely to forget a woman in the throes of a very noisy revenge. A commotion like that made a lasting impression.
He grinned at her. “Care to take a poll?”
She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s go for a walk and ask everyone we pass what they remember most about the two of us.”
She shook her head. “You’re pathetic.”
“How is that pathetic?”
“You know there are only women home this time of day, and all you have to do is ooze a little of that charm of yours and they’ll all side with you. If you get really lucky, one of them might ask you to move in.”
“I thought women stuck together when it came to things like this.”
“They do,” she said, then amended, “Mostly. Look at Maddie, though. She’s already back to being your best buddy. She always was a sucker for that crooked smile of yours. At least Helen isn’t so easily duped.”
“Helen’s turning bitter about men,” Ronnie observed. “She needs to find the right one quick, before all those nasty divorces make her too cynical.”
Dana Sue bristled. “That’s a lousy thing to say.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought the same thing,” he chided. “You’re too good a friend not to see what’s happening to her.”
Dana Sue sighed. “Okay, you have a point. She is a little jaded and she does need somebody in her life who can mellow her out. I just don’t know if the kind of man she needs can be found in Serenity.”
“She works all over the state,” Ronnie reminded her, relieved to have distracted Dana Sue from their own relationship for the moment. “Surely somewhere in South Carolina there’s an eligible man who’s smart enough and brave enough to take her on.”
“She does meet some nice men,” Dana Sue said. “She even fixed me up with a few of them.”
A streak of pure jealousy shot through Ronnie at the thought of Dana Sue with some stuffy, white-collar guy. “You and Helen don’t have the same taste in men,” he commented darkly.
“And look where that got me,” she retorted.
“More than twenty years of bliss, if you go back to high school,” he said, undaunted by the barb.
“And two years of pure misery,” she responded.
Ronnie bit back a smile. “If you’d given me half a chance, the misery wouldn’t have lasted that long.”
She balled up her napkin and threw it at him. “Not going to happen.”
“We’ll see,” he murmured. “We’ll see.”
Dana Sue might not want to admit it, but they were already making progress.
Chapter Seventeen
Dana Sue lingered in the dining room, her gaze caught by the sight of Ronnie and Cal off in a corner talking sports or something like old pals. Ronnie had never gotten along that well with Bill, Maddie’s first husband, despite having known him since high school. In fact, Ronnie had been the first to recognize that Bill was all wrong for Maddie. It turned out that his perception of Bill as selfish and unfeeling had been right on target.
Not that he’d ever spoken up, Dana Sue recalled. Not to Maddie, anyway. And he hadn’t wanted Dana Sue to share his impressions, either.
“Maddie’s married to him,” Ronnie had said on more than one occasion. “What I think of Bill doesn’t matter. For her sake, I’ll make the attempt to get along with him, the same way Helen does.”
At the time, Dana Sue had been surprised by the implication that Helen was no more enamored of Bill than Ronnie was. But it turned out that she, too, had been keeping quiet for Maddie’s sake. She’d never been nearly as reticent about Ronnie. Practically from the day they’d met, Helen had always expected the worst from him, and hadn’t kept silent about her fears.
Only Dana Sue had seen how Bill’s treatment of Maddie had bothered Ronnie. She had a hunch he was the only one of them who wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Bill was having an affair with a nurse in his office. But of course, by then, Ronnie had been gone.
Watching him now, she noticed that he didn’t seem to have the same kind of issues with Cal, despite the age difference between Cal and Maddie that had set tongues wagging all over town a year or so ago.
When Ronnie glanced up and caught Dana Sue looking his way, he winked. A few minutes later he crossed the room and joined her.
“You and Cal seem to have found a lot to talk about,” she said, not entirely sure how she felt about the two of them turning into pals. It would be just one more thread weaving Ronnie into the fabric of her life.
“I like him,” he said. “He’s grounded and down-to-earth. He adores Maddie and the new baby, and Ty, Kyle and Katie clearly look up to him. He’s obviously been good for all of them.”
“Then you approve of her choice this time?”
“Not that it’s my business, but yes. He told me Bill wanted Maddie back once his relationship with his nurse fell apart. Is
