Back in the Bachelor's Arms

Chapter Three

Chloe wasn’t sure exactly what time Reid returned that afternoon. When he wasn’t there by one-thirty she left a note propped against the outside of the front door telling him to just come in without ringing the bell because she might be on the phone. Then she went upstairs to her bedroom and called the rental car company where she’d encountered only problems.

But sometime during the two hours she was on the phone and mostly waiting, she heard water run downstairs and realized that Reid actually had come back.

And knowing that gave her conflicting emotions.

On the one hand it made her tense.

On the other hand, she became aware of a tiny flicker of excitement that she tried to expunge by concentrating on the difficulties she was having on the telephone.

But despite the fact that the difficulties were many and varied, they didn’t dim that flicker that was still alive at four o’clock when she finally got off the phone.

Four o’clock was a late start on the attic and the thought of Reid being nearby made her consider not doing any work at all today.

Maybe she should just go downstairs to say hello, she thought.

And get another glimpse of him.

It was tempting. It could even be her contribution to the truce, she told herself.

But she knew she was only making excuses to see him and that that was not an inclination she should give in to. So, in the end, she decided that a late start was better than no start and went to the attic.

What she found there was hardly what she expected. She hadn’t realized that her parents had accumulated—and left—quite that much stuff. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes were filled to the spilling point. There were two old trunks that were equally as packed, and an ancient bureau, a matching armoire and an aged wooden icebox that were all crammed full, too.

Plus the entire attic was covered in cobwebs and dust that made Chloe sneeze and warned her that the first thing she needed to do was clean away some of the yuck before she’d be able to spend the hours and hours it was going to require for her to sort through so much.

Luckily the old vacuum cleaner her parents had left in case the renters didn’t have one was still in the hall closet of the second floor. It was also fortunately in working order.

She dragged it to the attic and went about the first order of business—cleaning enough to be able to stand it up there, firmly setting her thoughts to that rather than to Reid.

At least as much as possible knowing all the while that he was just downstairs….

It took the rest of the day and well into the evening before the attic and the surfaces of what was stored there were cobweb-, dust-and spider-free. Only when Chloe was done did she realize that the daylight that had been coming in through the octagonal windows at either end of the attic had disappeared and left only darkness outside.

And for no reason she understood, Reid was the first thing to pop into her mind again when it occurred to her that the day was gone.

With the second floor between them, she hadn’t been able to hear anything, so she wondered if he was still downstairs or if he’d wrapped up his work for the day and left. Without a word to her.

And while she knew that was what she should be hoping for, as she turned off the bare bulbs that lit the attic and descended the narrow staircase to the second level, she wasn’t hoping for that. Although she wasn’t sure what she was hoping for…

Just in case he might still be there, she made a pit stop in her bedroom and the bathroom connected to it. The sweatsuit she’d put on earlier was covered in grime. Though she’d worn the less-than-attractive outfit so as not to run the risk of appearing as if she cared how she looked to Reid, she was secretly happy for the excuse to change and shed the sweats quickly, replacing them with jeans and a turtleneck T-shirt she tucked into them.

Then she went into the bathroom, washed her face, applied a hint of mascara and blush she’d also forgone earlier, and brushed out her hair. If she went downstairs and discovered Reid was long gone and she was alone, she was going to feel ridiculous for doing it all.

She was spared that, though. Because when she went down the second set of stairs, there was Reid, drying off a paintbrush.

“I didn’t know if you were still here or not,” Chloe said to announce herself, taking instant stock of him.

He was dressed in the same jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing early that morning and there was a shadow of a beard darkening the lower half of that face that she wanted to study but knew she shouldn’t. The shadow of a beard that gave him a scruffy, sexy appeal he would never have had at eighteen when there was too much of the boy still on the surface.

“I just wrapped it up for the day,” he answered, his tone again amiable, if slightly restrained.

But then, as if he couldn’t maintain that restraint, he nodded in the direction of the kitchen and said, “There’s nothing to eat around here. What were you thinking about for dinner?”

“I hadn’t thought about it yet,” she admitted. Which was true. She’d eaten before leaving Billings the night before, assuming she would do a grocery run today. But without a car and feeling a bit too wobbly to walk to Main Street, she’d lunched on the cheese crackers she’d brought with her. Then she’d been too busy fighting with the rental agency, cleaning the attic and thinking about Reid to consider what she was going to do for the evening meal.

“No car, no food in the house—how about ordering a pizza?” Reid said. “Paul’s delivers now. It’s one of Northbridge’s flashy new amenities. I’ll even treat.”

“Really?” Chloe was so surprised by that offer that the word slipped out on its own. She just couldn’t believe he was asking her to have dinner.

“Really,” Reid confirmed. “We can do that, can’t we? After all this time? Share a friendly pizza? It shouldn’t be a big deal, should it?”

It probably shouldn’t have been. But it was. At least to Chloe. It was a big deal that he was suggesting it, that he was willing to do it. And it was a big deal that she would be spending some time with him when he was making an effort to be pleasant. When he was likable. When he looked the way he did even in clothes that had paint smudges on them….

“Sure,” she said after another moment’s hesitation. “I think we can share a pizza. We’re two grown up, civilized people.” Who were both obviously only tentatively feeling their way along what was a new path for them.

“Let’s do it then,” he said. “Do you still want ‘The Works’ or have you gone vegetarian or something?”

Chloe knew from their high school days that the only pizzeria in town—Paul’s Pizzeria—made a pie called The Works and that it was a large pizza topped with pepperoni, sausage, seasoned ground beef, black olives, mushrooms, green peppers, onions and three different kinds of cheese. It had been their favorite and at that moment it sounded wonderful.

“No, I haven’t gone vegetarian or anything. The Works would be great,” she said.

Reid set his paintbrush and rag down, then retrieved his cell phone from the pocket of his jean jacket where it was slung over the carpet roll. It took him only a few moments to order. He clearly recognized Paul’s voice, identified himself, and said he wanted The Works sent to the rental house. In Northbridge everyone knew everyone else’s business so intimately that that was all the information necessary.

Then Reid hung up. “We’re all set. Luke and I have the fridge stocked with sodas and beer. Which would you like?”

Before Chloe could tell him, his cell phone rang.

“Why don’t you tell me what you want and I’ll get drinks while you answer that?” Chloe said.

“Soda is fine for me,” he said by way of conceding the logic in that idea.

Chloe couldn’t help overhearing the conversation as she took two colas from the refrigerator. While the tone was medical, there was something else about the exchange that sparked her interest.

When the call ended she went as far as the archway between the living room and the kitchen with cans in hand and said, “Linoleum or paint-splotched carpeting?” Since there weren’t any chairs anywhere they would need to sit on the floor of one room or the other.

“Paint-splotched carpeting,” he decreed, motioning for her to sit in the very center where the least of the splatters marred the olive green shag floor covering.

Chloe sat with her legs curled to one side, watching as Reid returned his phone to his coat pocket, and trying—really, really trying—not to watch him do it and notice that even his derriere had improved with age.

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on your call but…well, I did anyway. Do you deal in blood that isn’t human?” she asked, referring to something she’d overheard him say.

He didn’t join her on the floor. Instead, he went to stand with his back braced against the door, raising a knee so that the sole of one cowboy-booted foot was flat against the wooden panel. Then he slid his hands into the rear pockets that she’d been attempting not to look at a split second before.

“Remember the stories that have been around forever about Reverend Perry’s wife?” Reid asked rather than giving her a direct answer about the blood.

“The scandal about her helping two itinerant farmhands rob the bank and running off with them?” Chloe said with intrigue in her tone.

“That would be the story, yes.”

It was one of the biggest scandals to ever hit Northbridge. It had happened in 1960. Celeste Perry had reputedly grown weary of her righteous life as the wife of the town minister and the mother of their two young sons. She’d become enamored of one of two hard-living, hard-drinking farmhands—Frank Dorian and Mickey Rider—who had come into town during harvest season. On a night at the end of that October she’d slipped out of her marital bed to meet up with her lover and his partner. Later investigation had revealed that her lover and his partner were bank robbers rather than migrant farm workers, and after breaking into Northbridge’s only Savings and Loan and its vault, and cleaning out all the money they could carry, the reverend’s wife and the two men had disappeared.

“Is Reverend Perry still around?” Chloe asked, not only because she was curious, but also because it helped to have something to talk about that was completely separate from either of them and their own past problems, and she wanted to prolong it.

“He is,” Reid answered. “But he retired about five years ago.”

“And your phone call had something to with him and what happened with his wife?”

“We’re refurbishing the north bridge—it’s being restored and the land around it will be turned into a park so the town’s namesake isn’t just some rundown relic. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago one of the guys working on it found an old duffel bag jammed into the rafters. It was stuffed with the belongings of one of the robbers and the empty moneybags from the bank. There were some stains on the outside of the duffel that looked like they might be blood.”

“Human blood,” Chloe repeated.

“There’s no way to tell that just by looking at it. Especially after all this time. I did the initial tests—”

“You did?”

“The wearing-of-many-hats in a small town. The police department keeps some of the chemicals needed to do the initial tests. The first thing that has to be determined is if it is human blood—if it proves to be animal blood they don’t bother the forensic lab in Billings and waste their time. I did the tests here and they appeared positive for human blood.”

“But that call sounded as if someone else was telling you that.”

“They were confirming it and expanding on it,” he qualified. “The call was from the forensic lab—I’ve been playing phone tag with the pathologist there since this morning and that was him returning my last message to his voice mail. I was right, the blood was human, but the forensic lab did more extensive tests and was able to come up with the blood type. Which has just told us that the blood isn’t Celeste Perry’s.”

“So it was from one of the men,” Chloe concluded.

“We have Celeste’s pre-1960 medical records to let us know if it matched hers. We don’t have anything on either of the men, but by process of elimination, since it’s definitely not Celeste’s blood, it’s certainly a possibility that it’s one of theirs. Luke and the rest of the cops here are going over the old investigation. Now that my tests have been confirmed, and the pathologist has found hair and tissue, too, there might need to be a search for a body.”

“Wow, big goings-on in Northbridge.”

“Yeah, everybody’s been talking about it,” Reid said.

“Don’t you need to let your brother or someone else on the police force know what you just found out?”

“Forensics is calling Luke with the formal report. The call to me was more courtesy because I went to med school with the pathologist,” Reid said just as the doorbell rang.

He pushed off the door, turned and opened it, greeting a teenager by name. Chloe didn’t recognize either the teenager or the name—a testament to how long she’d been away from Northbridge.

When Reid had paid for the pizza, he closed the door and finally joined her on the floor with the large box safely between them.

Paper plates, napkins and prewrapped packets of plastic cutlery had also been delivered and Reid divided them evenly before opening the box to reveal a pizza identical to what they’d shared numerous times in the past.

“It doesn’t look as if it’s changed,” Chloe commented, breathing deeply of the aroma of Paul’s special blend of spices and seasonings.

“You know Northbridge—not too much does.”

Reid served her a slice and then took one for himself, biting into its tip while Chloe used fork and knife. She pronounced it as good as ever after her first taste.

But with the renewed town scandal update exhausted and the subject of their dinner explored as far as it could be, an awkward silence fell. And since Reid had carried the conversation to that point, Chloe felt obligated to make her own contribution.

She just couldn’t think of what to say and settled on small talk that she knew he probably wasn’t interested in. But anything was better than the silence, so she glanced at the progress he’d made painting the room and said, “It looks like you got more done than I did today. I spent all afternoon arguing with the company I rented the car from.”

“They weren’t happy about the accident,” Reid guessed.

“That wasn’t the worst of it. I took out the insurance but they lost the paperwork and were trying to claim that I wasn’t covered. I had to go through channels to get them to acknowledge that I was, but even then they wanted me to pay to have the car towed back to Billings. I had to fight to get them to agree to do it themselves and then—for the third round—I had to force them to honor the clause in the contract that says they’ll send out a replacement.”

“Are they going to?”

“Reluctantly, since I’m ‘in the middle of nowhere’ as they said. But they won’t get one out here until the end of the week—Friday or Saturday. They insist that they can’t do it before then and nothing I said—or threatened—made any difference. They were big jerks.”

Something about her rant made Reid smile slightly and for no reason Chloe understood, the entire two hours of turmoil suddenly seemed worth it just to see that.

“I’ll be around all week so if you need to go anywhere that you don’t feel like walking to, I can take you.”

That offer was the second surprise of the evening and even though Chloe knew it probably wouldn’t be smart to take him up on it unless she had to, it pleased her to have it on the table.

“Thanks,” she said simply.

She turned down a second piece of pizza but Reid helped himself to another slice and said, “So. What do you do for a living?”

More safe, surface chat. But Chloe was grateful for it.

“You know the toy prizes in kids’ meals at fast-food restaurants? I design them.”

Another smile that sent a little warmth all through her.

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“Nope, I’m not kidding. Movie tie-ins. Spinning things. Wheelie things. Dolls. Action figures. Magic tricks. You name it, I’ve done it.”

“How did you get into that?”

“I kept up with the painting and drawing I’d always liked to do when I went to college. I thought I wanted to be a graphic artist. Designing a toy was an assignment in one of my classes and not only did I discover that I had a knack for it and enjoyed it, but the toy I designed—a robotic ladybug—ended up winning a couple of awards and being bought by a miniature toy company. Well, the company isn’t miniature, only the toys are. Anyway, they offered me a job on the spot. I turned it down because I wanted to finish school, but they were still interested when I did. I’ve been with them ever since.”

“Amazing.”

He did seem amazed. And impressed. Although Chloe didn’t know how impressive what she did was compared to what he did.

“How about you?” she countered. “You never said anything about wanting to be a doctor.”

“That came out in college. About the same time I was finding that I had an aptitude for the science classes I was also working for most of my tuition as a janitor at the hospital. Old Doc Seymour noticed that I was interested and encouraged me—actually he took me under his wing and taught me a lot before I even got into med school. He also put in a good word for me when it came time to apply and that didn’t do any harm in getting me in.”

“Where did you go?”

“Wayne State, in Detroit. I did my residency there, too. In the heart of the city. After that, coming back to Northbridge was a day in the park.”

“It can’t be too much of a day in the park if you’re the only doctor here,” she said, recalling his comment from that morning about needing a replacement to cover his vacation.

“It’s time consuming,” he admitted. “And tough getting enough sleep now and then. But I have it better than old Doc Seymour who did it before me because now there’s more supplementary staff—besides three nurses to Doc Seymour’s one, I have a nurse-practitioner and a physician’s assistant, too, which helps.”

“And what happened to old Doc Seymour?” Chloe asked but with some hesitancy, because talking about Northbridge’s former doctor took them closer to their past than she wanted to venture.

“He did what he always said he was going to do—he retired to his cabin out by the river and fishes a lot.”

“He doesn’t practice medicine anymore at all?”

“He comes into the hospital every Wednesday, walks around, pokes his nose in here and there, wants to know about any new gadget I’m using. But he’s eighty-six now, his eyesight isn’t great and if I’m seeing one of his former patients he likes to sit in. Sometimes even with lousy vision he still picks up on things I miss.”

“Do you like being a doctor?”

“Yeah, especially here. I get to do a little of everything and sort of take over the surrogate dad role old Doc Seymour played—even though I’m too young for it,” he added with a laugh.

Reid as a dad—surrogate or otherwise. Not a subject she wanted to get anywhere near.

As if he’d thought the same thing after making that comment, he glanced at his watch and said, “I should go.”

Chloe didn’t dispute it. But she did say, “No more pizza?” And she said it with a touch too much hopefulness in her tone.

“I think I’ve had my limit,” he answered, closing the lid on the box. “Besides, the leftovers will give you something to eat around here. Didn’t you always claim that was your favorite breakfast?”

“Mmm, cold pizza—it’s a treat,” she confirmed.

He got to his feet then and so did she, keeping her distance as he put on his coat. But she did follow behind as he headed for the door so she could lock it after him.

He didn’t go out, though. He stopped there, and with one hand on the knob, he met her gaze.

“This was okay,” he seemed to conclude.

Not an accolade but under the circumstances Chloe took it as high praise.

“It was okay,” she agreed.

“So do you think we can do this? Let bygones be bygones or something?”

“What do you think?” she asked. “I mean, do you think you can let bygones be bygones? Or something?”

He studied her for a long moment with those brilliant green eyes. And while they still didn’t look at her the way they had fourteen years ago, they also didn’t look at her the way they had the night before or that morning. And that was a relief. Even if she did still yearn a little for more.

“I can give it a try,” he said when he finally did answer.

“I’d like that,” Chloe responded quietly.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then. How early can I start without disturbing you?”

“Anytime. Just use the key Betty gave you and come in. Even if it’s before I’m awake I can’t hear much of anything upstairs and I’ll probably sleep through it.”

“Okay, but I’ll be especially quiet until I know you’re up.”

She nodded.

“Good night, then.”

“Get home safely,” she joked, making him smile a little again.

For another moment they remained standing there, not too far apart, just looking at each other.

As they did, Chloe couldn’t help recalling so many other times when they’d said good-night at her door much like that. Only then he would have kissed her.

He would have kissed her in a way that would have filled her with a special kind of heat. That would have made her feel like his and his alone…

And of course that didn’t happen tonight.

Instead Reid broke the glance first, looking at the handle as he turned it to open the door.

“Thanks for the pizza,” she said belatedly.

“Sure,” he answered as he went out into the clear autumn night.

Then he closed the door behind him and Chloe stepped up to lock it.

When she did she could feel the warmth of his hand lingering on the knob and all on their own her eyes closed and she absorbed that sensation, picturing those other nights, those kisses that had sent her to bed with a smile on her face.

Those kisses…

She couldn’t help wondering if those kisses were anything like Reid’s kisses now. Or if, as had happened with his looks, his kisses had changed and matured, too.

And even though it was completely uncalled for, even though it was its own kind of torture for her, she also couldn’t help—in a secret, forbidden place deep inside of her—wishing she’d gotten a taste of his kiss, old or new, tonight.