Bittersweet Creek (22 page)

Julian

I
half expected to wake up alone and find it had all been a dream, but no, Romy had burrowed into me, holding on for dear life. I watched her sleep—but not in that creepy, sparkly-ass vampire way. I grinned at the small smile she wore in her sleep. I hadn't seen enough of that smile since she came back to town.

And I was responsible for a lot of that unhappiness.

I wasn't going to admit it, but I felt so much better for having told her the truth and knowing she would gleefully shoot me if I ever beat her. That didn't solve the problem of what to do about Curtis or how she'd be better off with the Paris family and all of their fabulous wealth, but for this moment she was mine.

The phone rang, and I thought about not answering it, but something told me my time was up. I trotted to the old rotary phone in the kitchen, the only one I had. Sure enough, I answered the phone to a very pissed-off Hank Satterfield.

“Yes, she's here.... Yes, she's perfectly fine.... Yes, I'll get her—”

Romy appeared in the doorway, wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts and a smile. That smile quickly faded when she heard her father's voice on the other end of the line.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said as she turned three shades of red. “No, I'm sorry I didn't call you. Something came up.”

I laughed at that, and she swatted at my chest.

“He did
what
?”

That didn't sound good.

“I'll be right there.”

That sounded worse.

She hung up the phone and turned to me. “I have to go. Richard's up there.”

I wanted to sink through the floor, down to the crawl space with the beagle and the snakes. This was it. She was going to change her mind and marry that sonuvabitch after all.

She brushed past me, gathering her clothes and dancing into them in a way that was almost as sexy as watching her shimmy out of them.
Hands off, Julian. She's probably going back to him.

When she was as put together as she could be, she turned to face me. “Oh, Julian.”

“What?”

“Enough with the stoic routine. I'm coming back to you.” But after those confident words, the doubt seeped in. “Well, that is, if you still want me.”

“I've never wanted anyone else.” The truth of my own words knocked the wind out of me.

She grinned. I wanted to see that lopsided smile a whole helluva lot more. I owed her that much at the very least.

“Well, then. Happy birthday to me!”

My eyes bugged out. It
was
her birthday. “Can I bring your present by in just a little while?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Julian, you don't have to get me anything.”

“I've had this present for a while.”
A long, long while.

“You, too?” she muttered. “Okay, but give me a minute to get rid of Richard and to smooth things over with Daddy.”

I stood up and she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me soundly. I wanted to take her right back to bed, but I let her go. For the moment.

If she thought for one second I was going to hang back knowing her former fiancé was up the road, she was crazy.

Romy

A
s I did my trudge of shame up the driveway, I saw something even scarier than Richard: his mother.

The full weight of what I'd done twisted my stomach in knots, and I hadn't really had much to eat other than the omelet Julian made for me at two in the morning. Thinking of the omelet made me think of what came after.

Richard and his mother surveyed the little patch of land to the left of the house. At the moment, we were using that land as a vegetable garden, but I could guess Richard's mother had other ideas from the way she gesticulated. She, of course, was impeccably dressed in white capris and an expensive peasant blouse with matching jewelry. I wondered if there was any hope I could sneak into the house and shower before facing the music. Then I accidentally kicked a rock with my steel-toe boots, and Richard turned around.

To say he looked hurt and betrayed would be the understatement of the century.

“Rosemary, darling.” His mother walked forward and air kissed just past each cheek as though it were the most natural thing in the world to have her son's would-be fiancé walk up the driveway in the nasty, sweaty clothes she probably wore yesterday after a night of wild sex.

“Good morning, Mrs. Paris.”

“I was just telling your father that you really do have such a lovely farm. Richard had told me your father was a bit upset about the cathedral, and he needed me to help him drive your present, so I thought I'd take a look. This farmhouse is simply charming! Why, we could clear out this garden, lay down some sod, and have a very nice outdoor wedding right here, don't you think?”

I looked at the Leaning Locust Tree of Pisa and, sure enough, just beyond Richard's Porsche was a car with a bow on top just like Christmas commercials. I looked at Richard, but he looked away.

“Richard, you shouldn't have,” I said.

He muttered something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like, “I know.”

“Oh, silly me, rambling on about weddings when it's your birthday. Go on, Richard, show her!”

Something about her smug tone suggested showing me the car would remind me of just how unworthy of her son she thought I was—not that she would ever say such a thing out loud. Richard, who hated proving his mother right, wouldn't meet my eyes as he took me over to the car, a brand-new Mustang. A lump formed in my throat. “Richard, it's lovely, but I can't accept this.”

“You need something other than that deathtrap truck,” he said with a nod to the pickup. “Your Honda was a disgrace, and I knew you preferred Fords. And that you liked horses.”

Such an over-the-top gesture when I'd done so much to hurt him brought tears that stung my eyes. “I'm so sorry. You're going to have to take it back.”

He took the keys out of his pocket and pressed them into my hand. “You're going to need a car, and we both know this was chump change for me. I would've given you a more expensive car if I'd thought you'd take it.”

His words hung between us, the only other sound the birds and the bugs and the occasional car going down the road. “I know you would have, but you deserve someone far better than me.”

He studied me closely. “So this is it?”

I nodded because I couldn't answer.

“Rosemary, darling, do you think we could get the barn painted?” Mrs. Paris gestured to the barn across the street. “If it were red and white, that would be so . . . quaint, don't you think?”

“You didn't tell her, did you?”

Richard shrugged. “A man can hope, can't he?”

I swiped at the tears that streaked down my cheeks. I didn't want to marry Richard. I knew that. I also didn't want to hurt him, but it was too late for that. “Let me get your ring.”

He nodded, and I raced inside.

“Rosemary Jane—” Hank started.

“Not now, Daddy,” I said as I raced upstairs to get the ring.

I didn't even look at him as I trotted back outside. I handed the ring box back to Richard and he stuffed it into the pocket of his khaki pants. Then I tried to press the car keys into his hand, but he wouldn't have it.

“I meant it. You keep the car.”

“Richard, this is ridiculous—”

A whinny from the corner of the yard made us both look. There was Julian leading the scraggliest palomino I'd ever seen.

Julian

I
t didn't take an idiot to see what was going on at the Satterfield place.

Richard had bought Romy a shiny red Mustang, complete with a damn bow on top. That made me stop in my tracks. I was bringing her Beatrice, who was old, blind, and swaybacked.

Richard stuffed a box in his pants pocket and made straight for me. That's when I noticed the nicely dressed woman fanning herself under the oak. She had the same dark hair, so I could only assume she was his mother.

Romy looked as though she might follow him, but she didn't.

He reared back to throw a punch as he reached me, but I easily caught his fist in my hand. “I know I deserve that, but you're not punching me today.”

“You deserve a lot worse,” he hissed, his pride stinging from how easily I'd kept him from hitting me. “You couldn't leave her alone, could you?”

“She's a grown woman. For the record, I told her she'd be better off with you.” I nodded at the car to make my meaning clear:
She'd be better off
financially
with you
.

At that point my eyes went to the jewelry-box-sized lump in his pocket. My soul got lighter.

“I'm going to guess an annulment is a moot point now?” He stared through me.

“You could say that.”

He sighed and pinched the space on top of his nose. Just when I thought he was more upset about losing the girl than losing to me, he looked up with eyes blazing. “You know what? Do what you need to do. It won't take her long to figure out she's better off with me.”

“You think she's going back to you?”

His hand arced dismissively to encompass the farm around him. “This? You? She has to get that out of her system, but she's too intelligent and too educated to ever be happy here in the boondocks. And you? Please.”

“What about me?”

“I looked up your records,” he said with a smug smile. “Did a credit search. You almost didn't pass high school and don't have a dime to your name.”

My left hand curled into a fist, but I saw what he was doing. I forced a smile. “That's all true, but I do have . . . other things.”

He laughed this ugly bitter laugh, and I thought for a minute I'd got the best of him. Then he started recounting all the places and all the ways he'd had my wife. Blood rushed through my ears, and I had a flashback to Pete Gates's diatribe in The Fountain.

Only this time, everything Richard said was probably true.

“You're gonna shut up now,” I said as I stepped closer to him, now nose to nose with clenched fists at my side.

“Yeah, but you're going to remember every word I said.” He stared me down for a moment, but then he smiled and walked away, straightening the cuffs of his suit as he went. He knew what he'd said was far more painful than a punch.

Romy

I
was so intent on Julian and Richard's conversation that I didn't notice Mrs. Paris had sidled over. “I see what's going on here.”

I met her gaze. “I'm really sorry, Mrs. Paris. I never meant to hurt Richard; you have to believe that.”

“Oh, I believe it. And that young man
is
a tall drink of water,” she said as her gaze went out to Julian. “I tried to warn Richard that you were a money-grubbing country bumpkin.”

The hell?
“I don't need your money, and I'm not a bumpkin.”

She shook her head in the direction of the Mustang with a simpering “Mmm-hmm.”

The keys to the new car bit into my hand from how I was clutching them. Now I pressed them on her, and she raised her hands to her chest in a show of mock terror. “No, no, I couldn't!” before leaning down and saying in a stage whisper, “
That's
how it's done.”

I gaped at her through a mixture of shock and fury.

“Mother! We're going.” Richard stalked to the car, but the smile on his face was both grim and evil. As he walked past me, I tried once more to hand him the keys.

“No means no,” he snapped as he opened the door. “Title's in the glove compartment.”

He peeled out of the driveway, and the horse Julian led danced around uncomfortably. I walked toward Julian to see what this was all about. He looked positively green. I could guess some of the things that Richard had told him. Just a few weeks before, I might've told Julian myself in order to inflict upon him the same kind of hurt he'd inflicted on me. But now . . .

“So what's this, Julian?”

He wouldn't meet my eyes, reaching over to rub the mare's nose instead. She was a gorgeous palomino, but her eyes were filmed over.

“This is Beatrice.”

I remembered the other day when he'd said he had to go back and get his horse, Benedick. My chest got tighter.

“You always wanted a horse, so I got Beatrice here for a wedding gift, but I never got to give her to you, so happy birthday instead.”

Tears came yet again, and I swiped at them. Dammit. Why hadn't I come back from Vandy at least one more time? I was fortune's fool.

Julian mistook my tears. “I know she ain't much to look at, up in years, and moon blind on top of that. I should've put her down, but I couldn't bear to part with her. Not when I got her for you.”

“She's perfect.” And I was not despite all those years of trying.

“And you named your horse Benedick?” I tentatively reached forward to rub the mare's long nose. She sighed, her eyes half-closed.

He nodded. “That play's your favorite, isn't it? I finally saw the movie.”

He had remembered.

I tried to imagine Julian watching
Much Ado About Nothing,
but I couldn't. He wouldn't have passed a single test on any of Shakespeare's plays if I hadn't read them to him, often translating Shakespeare's English to a more . . . country version.

He scuffed his boot across the grass. “I can take her back if you don't want her. Maybe get you a better horse—”

Beatrice flicked her ears forward and snorted at him. I tended to agree with her. I rubbed her long nose with more confidence this time. “No, you won't. I love her just the way she is. Thank you.”

He smiled, finally meeting my gaze.

“I don't know the first thing about horses.”

“ 'Course you do. I'll teach you the rest.”

I'll teach you the rest.
Thank God. He wasn't going to run away again.

“If you give her some apple pieces, she'll love you forever.”

“I can do that.”

“Think Hank would mind if I patched up the old stables in the barn?”

Another sign Julian wasn't going to bail. Maybe.

“Probably, but you go ahead. He'll just have to get used to my money-pit-horse-that-only-an-idiot-would-buy.”

We stared at each other until a lump took up residence in my throat. “Julian, about Richard—”

“I ain't talking about that right now.”

Not right now wasn't never, but still. I opened my mouth to ask him if we were okay, but my father chose that moment to yell for me out the back door.

“You'd best go talk to him.”

I nodded. So far this hadn't exactly been the birthday I'd had in mind.