Ten
Rick had never owned
a suit in his entire life, not until now. And he didn’t think he’d
ever get used to wearing a tie. The damn thing felt like a noose
around his big neck. But today was special—it was a day that
required him to look like a successful businessman.
Three weeks ago he’d just about given
up hope of ever realizing his dreams, and now here he was at a
party given in his honor to celebrate the reopening, under a new
name, of his own heating and air-conditioning company. Eve had
insisted on a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier today, and Aunt
Birdie and Lori Lee had helped her plan tonight’s
party.
Not only had Lori Lee been a hundred
percent right about Tuscumbia Savings and Loan approving his loan
application, but she’d been right about the majority of her friends
and acquaintances, most of whom were milling around in Eve’s home
right now. Powell Goodman and the Royces were conspicuous by their
absence, but Rick figured nobody missed them. He sure as hell
didn’t.
He’d been amazed not only by how many
fellow businessmen had attended today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony,
but that they had actually invited him to join several of their
local business-related organizations. And at tonight’s party, a
Tuscumbia pharmacist and a restaurateur had invited him to play
golf with them next Saturday. Golf? Rick Warrick playing golf? Aunt
Birdie, who had overheard the conversation, had accepted for him
and later told him he could borrow her late husband’s set of
clubs.
Lori Lee smiled at him from across the
room, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. Kneeling in front
of Darcie, Lori Lee was retying the pink ribbon in his daughter’s
hair. And for the millionth time he marveled at the similarity
between woman and child.
He was damn glad he’d been wrong about
everything, that he wasn’t destined to be a loser, that life was
finally giving him a hand up instead of a kick in the pants. He had
to be the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. Who else had so
many people on his side, rooting for him, believing in him,
refusing to let him give up when things looked hopeless? And what
other reformed bad boy had the good fortune to have Lori Lee Guy in
love with him?
He slipped his hand in his coat pocket,
checking for the hundredth time to make sure the ring box was still
there. Maybe he should have waited, given Lori Lee a chance to come
to her senses and realize that he’d never be good enough for her.
But while he was on a winning streak, he figured there was no time
like the present to reach out and take what he’d always
wanted.
He wished he could have bought her a
big diamond, something she could show proudly to her friends. But
he couldn’t afford a big diamond, so he’d chosen something less
expensive—a ring that reminded him of Lori Lee. The marquis-cut
golden topaz lying in the jeweler’s case had caught his eye the
minute he’d walked into the store. The band was gold, the front and
sides of it filigree, giving the ring an antique look, and the
topaz was surrounded by tiny diamond chips. The topaz had been less
expensive than the diamond he’d wanted to buy her, but even the
topaz would have to be paid for in monthly installments. Right now,
he was just about as broke as a guy could be.
Tonight, when he took Lori Lee home
after the party, he planned to ask her to marry him. He’d be up
front with her, remind her of all the reasons she’d be a fool to
say yes, and then tell her he loved her and beg her to be his wife.
Somehow he’d find a way to give her whatever her heart desired.
More than anything he wanted to make Lori Lee happy. She had
everything to give him, and he had so little to give her in
return.
With Deanie Webber on one side of him
and Mindy Jenkins on the other, he was caught in the middle of
their giggling conversation. The moment he saw his sister go into
the kitchen, he realized her departure gave him a means of
escape.
“If you ladies will excuse me, I think
Eve needs my help in the kitchen.”
As much as he liked both Deanie and
Mindy, a little bit of their bubbly personalities went a long way.
He smiled and spoke to several people who greeted him warmly as he
made his way through the crowd. He stopped twice to shake hands,
first with the mayor and then with Phil Webber’s brother, Charles,
a local contractor.
Rick shoved open the hinged swinging
door to Eve’s big, bright kitchen, but stopped dead still when he
heard what his sister was saying.
“I’ll never be able to thank you
enough, Miss Birdie.” Eve wrapped her arms around the elderly woman
and hugged her lovingly. “None of this could have happened without
you. We owe you so much.”
“Nonsense, girl.” Grasping Eve’s hands,
Birdie patted them affectionately. “I did what I wanted to do. I’ve
always thought Rick was the only man meant for my Lori Lee. Do you
honestly think that I’d have let anything interfere with their
happiness when they were finally so close to getting
together?”
“Rick’s like a new man since he got the
loan. I’ve never seen him so happy, and with so many plans for the
future. All his dreams are coming true, thanks to
you.”
“All I did was make a phone call to my
nephew over at Tuscumbia Savings and Loan,” Birdie
said.
Rick’s jaw tightened painfully as he
clamped his teeth together. He should have known. Dammit! He should
have known! He’d been so proud of himself for getting the loan, so
sure that the bank had given him the money he needed because of his
personal credentials, his good credit report and his outstanding
work record.
But it was a lie. All of it was a lie.
What had Aunt Birdie done, guaranteed his loan with her own money?
Yeah, that’s exactly what she’d done. She wanted to make sure Lori
Lee’s future husband got what he needed to succeed in Tuscumbia,
and the old woman sure as hell had enough money and clout to pull
it off. Was that why so many of Tuscumbia’s solid citizens were
befriending him now? Why so many fellow businessmen attended the
ribbon-cutting today and were here at this party tonight? Because
Birdie Pierpont had issued an order requiring their
presence?
Lori Lee had known, of course. Hell,
she’d probably been the one to ask for her aunt’s help. She knew he
couldn’t succeed on his own, that he didn’t have a prayer of being
accepted in this town without a great deal of help from someone
with a whole lot of power. Lucky for her, she just happened to have
an aunt who filled the bill.
“Let me add my thanks to my sister’s,”
Rick said, his voice cold and deadly controlled.
Birdie gasped. Eve jumped. And the two
women swung around guiltily, like two children caught with their
hands in the cookie jar.
“Rick, don’t get upset.” Eve held out
her hand pleadingly. “All Miss Birdie did was lean the scales back
in your favor after all the harm Mara Royce and Powell Goodman
caused.”
“Is that what you did, Aunt Birdie?
Lean the scales in my favor?” Rick glared at the old woman who
lifted her double chin and stared at him defiantly. “Lori Lee said,
Rick needs a big loan, Auntie. How about making sure he gets
it?”
“That’s not how it happened,” Birdie
told him.
“Isn’t it?” Rick balled his hands into
fists, longing to ram them through the wall. “You could’ve just
given me the money outright. Why bother with the pretense of a
loan? No, you couldn’t do that, could you? Lori Lee probably told
you that y’all would have to be careful not to bruise my ego and
wound my pride. Better let Rick think he did this all on his own.
That way he won’t feel like he’s been bought and paid
for.”
“Rick, how dare you say such a stupid
thing to Miss Birdie,” Eve scolded her brother.
“Yeah, how dare I? Especially after all
she’s done for me.”
“Young man, you’re sadly mistaken if
you believe we plotted a conspiracy behind your back or if you
think Lori Lee—”
The kitchen door swung open. “Are y’all
in here talking about me?” With sparkling eyes and a wide smile on
her face, Lori Lee glided into the kitchen. She slipped her arm
around Rick’s waist. He tensed at her loving touch. “What’s
wrong?”
Withdrawing from her embrace, he took a
couple of steps away from her, then focused his dark gaze on her
suddenly pale face.
“Rick overheard a private conversation
and misunderstood something Eve and I were discussing,” Birdie told
her niece.
“What did Rick misunderstand?” Lori Lee
posed the question to her aunt, but her gaze never left Rick’s
stern face.
“Rick didn’t misunderstand a damn
thing,” he said, then grabbed Lori Lee’s arm. “You couldn’t let me
do it on my own, could you? You knew a loser like me could never
succeed without a little help, so you got your aunt to fix things,
to tidy up all my problems.”
“What are you talking about?” Lori Lee
stared at him, an incredulous look in her tear-glazed eyes. His
fingers bit into her arm. She winced, but didn’t cry
out.
At that precise moment, Rick hated Lori
Lee as much as he loved her. And yes, dammit all, he did love her.
That had been another little bonus to his recent success. He’d
finally gotten the courage and self-confidence to admit to himself
that he had always loved Lori Lee Guy.
And she loved him—but not enough to
accept him for the failure he was. No, she had to make sure she
wasn’t marrying some unacceptable loser.
“I’m talking about the fact that Aunt
Birdie secured my loan with the bank. Hell, the money they loaned
me probably came straight out of her account. But then you already
know all about it, don’t you, honey? You’re the one I really have
to thank for my business, for my new friends, for my acceptance by
all the right people.”
“Rick, you’ve got things wrong,” Eve
said. “You’ve blown the whole situation way out of
proportion.”
Jerking Lori Lee up against his hard
chest, Rick narrowed his eyes and glowered at her, daring her to
lie to him. “I wanted to do this on my own, dammit. You knew how
important it was to me to prove myself. Maybe I couldn’t have done
it without your help, but this way it’s meaningless.”
Huge drops fell from Lori Lee’s
tear-filled eyes as she stared at Rick, her whole body slowly going
numb. She reached down, prized his fingers from around her arm and
took a faltering step backward. When he reached out to steady her,
she slapped his hand, then turned and fled from the
kitchen.
Birdie stomped her fat little foot on
the floor. “Dammit, boy, you’ve gone and done it now.”
“I wouldn’t blame Lori Lee if she never
forgives you for being such an idiot,” Eve said.
“So this is all my fault?” Rick punched
his chest with his index finger. “I’m the one that y’all made a
fool of, you know. I’m the—”
“You, Rick Warrick, are a fool all
right,” Birdie told him. “But not for the reason you think. You
just took out your anger on an innocent person.”
A gnawing sense of fear ate away at
Rick’s stomach. “Are you trying to tell me that Lori Lee didn’t
mastermind this whole thing, that it wasn’t her idea from the very
beginning?”
“I’m telling you that there was no
grand scheme for anyone to mastermind.” Birdie waddled across the
room and pointed her pudgy finger in Rick’s face. “Eve told Lori
Lee and me about your loan being turned down at Colbert Federal and
the reason why.” When Rick glared at Birdie, she nodded. “Yes, we
both knew what had happened before you came by the shop that
day.”
“You’d already planned my rescue before
I ever told Lori Lee anything,” Rick accused her. “When she told me
to apply for a loan at Tuscumbia Savings and Loan, she knew they
wouldn’t turn me down, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she knew, just as I knew, that
once they checked your records and saw that you qualified for the
loan, they’d give it to you.” Birdie shook her finger in his face.
“And that’s exactly the way it happened. You got the loan because
you deserved it. Just like Darcie won her trophy because she
deserved it.”
“But you pulled some strings at the
bank for me to get the loan,” Rick said.
“All I did was call my nephew, Guy
Stephenson, and tell him that when you applied for a loan, I wanted
them to judge you on merit alone, and if they dared let John Hobart
or Powell Goodman influence their decision in any way, I’d withdraw
my money from their bank.” Birdie tapped Rick on the chest several
times, emphasizing her point. “I did just what Eve said I did, I
tipped the scales back in your favor. You did the rest on your
own.”
“That’s all you did?” Salty bile rose
in Rick’s throat. He suddenly felt sick at his stomach. God, he was
a fool. And an idiot. And the biggest jerk in the
world.
Tom Nelson swung open the kitchen door
and walked in. “What’s wrong with Lori Lee?” he asked. “She just
ran out the front door and got in her car.”
“She left?” Rick asked.
“Yeah, and she was in a pretty big
hurry,” Tom said. “I called out to her when I noticed she was
crying, but I don’t think she even heard me.”
“I’ve got to go to her.” Rick slammed
his hand into the door, swinging it open.
Birdie grabbed his arm. “Don’t you go
to her unless you’re prepared to do more than apologize to her.
Don’t go to her out of guilt and remorse. She deserves
better.”
“She deserves better than me,” Rick
agreed. “I’ve always known I wasn’t good enough for her. But that’s
never stopped me from wanting her and it’s not going to stop me
from asking her to marry me.”
Birdie loosened her hold on Rick, then
patted his arm tenderly. “What Lori Lee needs is a man who will
love her enough to overlook her flaws, to convince her that her
inadequacies don’t matter.”
“That’s the one thing I can give her. I
can love her more than anybody else ever could.”
“Can you love her despite her flaws?”
Birdie asked.
“Lori Lee doesn’t have any flaws,” Rick
said. “She’s perfect. She’s always been perfect.”
“You’re wrong, Rick. Lori Lee isn’t
perfect. No one is.” Birdie looped her arm around Rick’s. “I’ll
walk out to your truck with you. There’s something I think you
should know before you go after Lori Lee and ask her to marry
you.”
Rick pulled his truck up in the
driveway directly behind Lori Lee’s Riviera. When he reached the
small porch of her two-story brick colonial house, he found the
front door standing wide open.
Dear God, give me the
chance to make things right with her. For once in my life, let me
say and do all the right things. I can’t blow this. I can’t lose
Lori Lee.
Walking into the foyer, Rick looked
around, but didn’t see her. He closed the door behind
him.
“Lori Lee?”
Silence.
“Lori Lee, honey? Where are
you?”
Silence.
“I know that I’m the biggest idiot in
the world and you have every right not to forgive me, but if you’ll
just give me one more chance, I promise—”
“Don’t make any promises you can’t
keep.” Holding Tyke in her arms, Lori Lee walked out of the living
room and halted in the doorway leading into the foyer.
“Honey, I...” He took a few tentative
steps toward her, then held out his hands beseechingly. Her
beautiful face was streaked with tears, her eyes red and swollen.
He could kick himself for hurting her this way. “I acted like a
macho jerk back at Eve’s and I know it.”
“You’re a proud man.” She stroked
Tyke’s head lovingly. “I realize that there have been times in your
life that the only thing you had was your pride.”
“Yeah, but in this case I let my pride
get in the way of seeing the truth.” Rick took another step toward
her, holding his breath when she didn’t back away from him. “Aunt
Birdie and Eve set me straight. They’ve pretty much ripped all the
hide off me, but you’re welcome to rip off what’s
left.”
Tyke squirmed in Lori Lee’s arms.
Leaning over, she set him on the floor and patted his back. The
little Boston terrier sniffed Rick’s feet, then cocked his head and
gave the big man a thorough inspection. Satisfied that their guest
was friend and not foe, Tyke scurried off toward the living
room.
Lori Lee straightened and looked at
Rick, a tenuous smile on her lips. Fresh tears gathered in her
eyes. “You can’t spend the rest of your life afraid to believe in
yourself. Darcie deserves a father who knows his own worth. How can
you teach her to be self-confident, if you aren’t?”
“What about you, Lori Lee? What do you
deserve?” he asked, closing the gap between them with one final
step.
When Rick reached out and tenderly
clasped Lori Lee’s elbows, she shivered as tears streamed down her
cheeks. She shook her head, unable to answer his
question.
“I’ll tell you what you deserve.” Rick
bent down on one knee. “You deserve a man who loves you with all
his heart and soul. A man who can promise to love you and be
faithful to you for the rest of your life. A man who would lay down
his life and die for you.” Rick grabbled in his coat pocket for the
jeweler’s box. “A man who wants to spend the next fifty years or so
doing everything he possibly can to make you happy.”
Rick eased the jeweler’s box from his
pocket, lifted it in his hand and held it out as an offering. Lori
Lee stared at the small velvet box, then looked down into Rick’s
dark eyes and saw tears.
“Oh, Rick.”
He flipped open the box. Lori Lee
gasped when she saw the golden topaz ring.
“I wish it could have been a big
diamond,” he said. “But when I saw this ring, I thought it looked
like it belonged on your finger.”
“It’s beautiful. The most beautiful
ring in the whole world.”
Still on bended knee, Rick took her
hand and slipped the topaz on her finger. “Lori Lee Guy, I love
you, more than anything. I want you to be my wife.”
Falling to her knees, Lori Lee embraced
him. “And I want to be your wife, but...but I can’t. I can’t marry
you.”
Rick lifted her to her feet, then took
her in his arms and carried her into the living room. Laying her
head on his shoulder, she clung to him when he sat down in the
Queen Anne chair and placed her on his lap. Tyke scampered across
the room and lay down at Rick’s feet.
“Why can’t you marry me?” he
asked.
“I...there’s something...” She gulped
down the tears choking her. “I should have told you long ago,
before you fell in love with me, before you—”
“There’s something you should have told
me fifteen years ago?” Caressing her cheek, he wiped away her tears
with his big, rough fingertips.
“Fifteen years ago?” she gazed at him,
her blue eyes questioning what he’d said.
“Yeah, that’s when I fell in love with
you. I didn’t know it was love back then. All I knew was that I
wanted you. But when I finally got around to admitting to myself
that I was crazy in love with you, I realized that I’ve been in
love with you all these years.”
“Oh, Rick. Rick.” She cupped his face
in her hands and stared at him, all the love in her heart showing
plainly in her eyes. “You fell in love with a dream, with a girl
you thought was perfect. You still think I’m perfect, but I’m
not.”
“As far as I’m concerned you’re
perfect. My perfect woman.”
Releasing his face, she grasped his
shoulders and rested her forehead against his. Her body shook with
the force of her sobs. “I—I’m not...not...perfect. I’m the
most...most imperfect woman...”
Tilting her chin, he leaned over and
kissed her forehead. “All right, honey, so you’re an imperfect
woman. That just makes you all the more perfect for an imperfect
man like me.”
“No, Rick, you don’t understand.” She
dug her nails into his shoulders. “I’m infertile. I can never give
you a child.” There, she’d finally been totally honest with him.
Now that he knew the truth, he wouldn’t want her.
“That’s where you’re wrong, honey.
You’ve already given me a child,” he told her.
“What? What did you say?” Disbelief
shone in her bright blue eyes.
“I already knew about your infertility
before I proposed to you,” Rick admitted. “Aunt Birdie told me, and
she warned me to be damn sure and certain I loved you enough for
your imperfection not to matter before I came over
here.”
“You knew...before you... What did you
mean about my already having given you a child?”
“All the way over here, while I was
following you, I kept thinking about Darcie, about how much like
you she is. And I don’t mean just her blond hair and blue eyes. I’m
talking about her talent and her personality and the pure sweet
goodness in her.”
“Your wife. Your ex-wife. Darcie’s
mother was—”
“April Denton was a woman I picked up
in a bar. The only similarity between you and her was the blond
hair and blue eyes. Darcie is nothing like April. She’s always
looked more like you, been more like you, ever since she was a
toddler. I used to look at her and wish she was our
child.”
Lori Lee gasped again and again as she
tried to control the torrent of tears engulfing her. She could not
bear the pain, the hungry, helpless pain, inside her. Dear God in
heaven, Darcie should have been her little girl. Hers and
Rick’s.
“Oh, baby, don’t do this to yourself.”
Rick held her, caressing her, comforting her as she
cried.
“Darcie should have been ours,” Lori
Lee said.
“She is ours, honey. That’s what I’m
trying to tell you. Maybe April carried her in her body and gave
birth to her, but she wasn’t April’s child. Not ever.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The night I had sex with April, the
only time I ever forgot to use protection, I thought she was
you.”
“You thought she was—”
“I’d been drinking, but I wasn’t
drunk,” he said. “I picked April up in a bar because she reminded
me a little bit of you. I was always finding girls with long blond
hair and big blue eyes that reminded me of you. I suppose, in a
way, every girl I was ever with was a substitute for
you.
“What I’m trying to tell you, and doing
a damn poor job of it, is that the night Darcie was conceived, I
didn’t make love to April. I didn’t give her a child.”
“Oh, Rick. Rick. You
were—”
“Making love to you, Lori Lee. I was
making love to you. Seven years ago on a hot August night in South
Dakota, I was making love to you.”
“Seven years ago? In August?” Lori
Lee’s thoughts drifted back to the last time she’d had sex with
Tory, the night she had pretended he was Rick Warrick. “Oh, my
God!”
“You knew, that night. Somehow you
knew, didn’t you, that I was making love to you?” Gripping her
chin, he forced her to look at him. “Tell me, Lori Lee. Tell
me!”
“In August, seven years ago, I—I
suspected Tory was cheating on me, but I tried to convince myself
he would never hurt me that way. It reached a point where I
couldn’t bear for him to touch me. The only way I could endure
having sex with him was to—to—”
“To pretend he was me?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Don’t you see, honey? The night Darcie
was conceived, you and I were making love to each other. I didn’t
give April a child. I gave you a child. Darcie is the child of our
love.”
Lori Lee dissolved into a swirl of pain
and joy, happiness and grief, tears and sighs and boundless love.
“Darcie’s mine. My little girl.” She kissed Rick’s lips softly,
tenderly. “Our little girl.”
“Yeah, honey. Our little girl.” He took
her mouth in the sweetest, most powerful kiss they had ever shared.
When he lifted his head, he smiled, tears streaming down his face.
“Don’t you think it’s about time Darcie’s parents got
married.”
“Yes. Yes, I do. I will.
I...”
“And if you want more children, we’ll
find them. Kids nobody else wants. Kids like me. Bad boys trying to
fight the world all alone.”
“And kids like me,” Lori Lee said.
“Imperfect kids.”
Rick stood with Lori Lee in his arms
and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom. Tyke bounded up the
steps behind them, then rushed ahead of them and curled up in a
ball beside Lori Lee’s bed.
There in the sweet darkness of night,
they made love, committing their hearts and bodies to each other
for a lifetime, and their souls to each other for all
eternity.