Bride by the Book (Crimson Romance) (24 page)

“Well, thank God,” Celia said, in her brisk way. “Now things can get back to normal, and you can come back to work without his constant harassment. But you might want to call that young man you were working for and let him know the outcome. From all I can gather, he’s the one who alerted us to the fact that something was wrong with Vernon.”

Angie said nothing at the time, but as soon as she was alone at her parents’ home that night, she called Garner’s office, hoping he would not be working late that night.

He was not there, and she left a succinct message, “Thank you for alerting us to my father’s illness. He had surgery for a nonmalignant brain tumor this morning and is expected to make a full recovery.”

The moment she clicked off the phone, the tension of the past few days released in a bout of tears that left her drained and exhausted.

At least, she thought, after spending a good half an hour in a hot shower and drinking two glasses of milk, she ought to sleep really well.

Angie sat at her father’s desk at BrownWare and frowned at the list of things she had to see to that day. Matters at BrownWare had deteriorated so badly, she had spent the first two weeks of her father’s recovery trying to re-gather the reins of the company and find out the true state of affairs.

It had taken her an entire six weeks to simply get the company back on track again. The only thing that made her exhaustion worthwhile was the fact that Vernon would soon return, hopefully as his old self, the father she remembered and loved.

“Hey, girl,” Fonda Clancy said from the door. “You look beat down. What’s the trouble today?”

Angie looked up and absorbed Fonda’s classy little red linen suit, with its short skirt and lacy white blouse. It set off Fonda’s chocolate complexion and crimson tipped black hair beautifully. She thought wistfully for a moment about those cowgirl boutiques Mindy Adams had promised to introduce her to, then told herself firmly that the cowgirl look wouldn’t go over nearly as well in Palo Alto.

“Just tired, I suppose. Mom says Daddy is itching to get back to work.” She sighed and stretched. “It can’t happen too soon for me.”

Fonda came inside and took the chair beside the desk. “So. Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

“Sure.” Like she didn’t do anything but think about what she was going to do. “I’m going back to my house in Arkansas and look for another job.”

“You don’t think your old job is still available?” Fonda’s large brown eyes narrowed as she studied her friend. “Why not? From what you said, that lawyer hadn’t been able to keep a secretary.”

Angie hadn’t told anyone the truth about her relationship with Garner Holt, not even Fonda. The hurt of leaving still felt too raw, and Angie didn’t want to burst into tears in front of anyone. Plus, if she didn’t think about it, she couldn’t obsess endlessly about what he might be doing right now with one of the many women in Smackover and the surrounding cities who would like to date him.

She rubbed her forehead. “Well, the truth is, we had a thing going, and—”

“You
what
?” Fonda shot to her high-heeled feet. “And you didn’t tell me? Angie, Angie. What am I going to do with you? I knew something was going on, but I had no idea you were such a fast worker.” She paced the office, shaking her head. “You should have called me. You know I’m loaded with good advice when it comes to ‘things.’” She stopped before the desk, hands on hips. “So what kind of ‘thing’ are we talking about here? Kissie-kissie or the full hoochie-koochie?”

Angie figured her face must be a shade of crimson rivaling Fonda’s suit. “It was an affair, okay. We slept together.”

“Hoochie-koochie,” Fonda agreed, with a knowing smile. “So why do you think he was glad to see you go?”

“He’s the one who told me I needed to come back to Palo Alto if Daddy had to go in the hospital for treatment. There’s only one reason I can see that he would suggest that. He didn’t care enough about me.”

“
What
?” Fonda clapped her hands to her head.

Angie began to feel slightly foolish in spite of the fact that she knew Garner hadn’t cared about her. After all, he hadn’t called her once, not even to reply to her message. He hadn’t even sent her an e-mail. And she had too much dignity to call him. Never mind that she paced the floor in the guest bedroom of her parents’ apartment every night in an effort to keep herself from calling him again.

Fonda made a great show of pulling out her own hair. “It couldn’t have been because he cared about you, could it?” She raised her hands to the ceiling. “Nope. Not possible. Couldn’t happen.” She lowered her hands and propped them on Angie’s desk so she could lean over it until her face was about six inches from Angie’s. “Sit back, Angelina. It’s time you and I had a long discussion about men.
After
you tell me every single detail of everything that happened.”

“That could take a while.” In spite of herself, Angie began to feel better.

“Don’t worry. It’s time for lunch.” Fonda glanced at the big, gold bangle watch on her slender wrist. “Besides, I have a feeling this relationship of yours is a lot further from over than you think.
If
you handle things right.” Fonda plopped back onto her chair and took out her cell phone. “I’ll order in Chinese food. You seem to have been on some kind of health kick lately, and they say Chinese food is healthy. Right?”

Angie grinned and agreed, even though she had no idea whether Chinese food qualified as healthy. Still, it had to be healthier than the pizza or hamburgers she and Fonda had shared in the old days.

Fonda placed an order for a number of exotic-sounding dishes, then clicked off her phone and leaned forward. “Now talk. And don’t leave out anything.”

Angie complied and found herself astonished at the relief that ensued. Fonda was right again, as usual. Bottling things up never solved anything, whereas talking it over with your best friend would likely turn up unexpected solutions. Hope arose in her heart. When she had finished, ending her tale with the short phone message she had left on Garner’s answering machine the day of Vernon’s surgery, Fonda pursed her full lips and sat back. She stared at the ceiling with her hands linked behind her head.

Finally, she said, “Angie, you should have talked to me first. Then you could have left him a message that would have had him out here in a flash. You don’t seem to realize that he does care about you, or he wouldn’t have made sure you were free to come back here. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you would have set foot in Palo Alto again.”

Angie said nothing but her face probably revealed the answer clearly. Her heart leaped. Could Fonda be right?

Fonda nodded. “The situation is still salvageable, but you’re going to have to do things carefully.”

Angie’s heart promptly fell to the floor.

“But don’t worry,” Fonda said. “You’ve got me on your side. We’re going to get your affair going again, or my name isn’t Fonda Clancy.”

Angie felt a moment of trepidation, but she was able to quickly banish it. Fonda knew what she was doing when it came to men. There had never been a weekend when three or four different men hadn’t been hounding Fonda for a date.

“The first thing you’ve got to do,” Fonda said, with the expression of a woman on a mission, “is get things straightened out here. Then you can get back to your own life.”

Her own life
. Angie savored those words because she knew they were true. She now had a life. At long last, she had a life, and it was up to her to preserve it.

• • •

Garner spent most of his time either brooding in his office or brooding on the front porch of his lakeside cabin. In each spot, he found himself constantly glancing up in hopes of catching a glimpse of Angie. Then he would remember she wasn’t there, and his mood would take a nosedive.

He wished he hadn’t fired her. Then she might have been calling him with updates on her father’s condition and making sure he wasn’t hiring another secretary. In short, she would have been letting him know she was coming back as soon as the crisis was over.

Garner’s thoughts ran in constant circles, in search of ways he could have gotten Angie to go back to help the people who needed her without going so far as firing her. That, he decided, with the benefit of hindsight, might have been a mistake. What if Angie thought that he had fired her because he didn’t want her around anymore, now that she had gotten his office into shape?

He thought and thought, but came to no conclusions as to how he could have handled the matter differently. Besides, there probably wasn’t another way. No one knew better than he what it was like to live with the knowledge that one had failed to come to the aid of his loved ones, and he wasn’t about to let that happen to Angie.

Angie had a lot of determination, and she was determined never to set foot in the door at BrownWare again. Probably nothing less than firing her would have succeeded in getting her to leave Smackover, and he couldn’t have lived with himself if Angie had evaded her responsibility to her family in order to remain with him.

But he still wished he could have kept her with him. He needed her. She’d given him back his hope and belief in life. She had brought him back to life.

Although Angie clearly thought she’d been a failure at BrownWare, Garner knew that wasn’t the case. Angie had been a major power at BrownWare, and everyone had known it but Angie and Vernon Brownwood. He had been right to let her go. He just wished she would call him and tell him she was coming back. Or not coming back.

He’d just like to know something.

On that thought, he spotted Cliff crossing the street to the New South Diner and hurried to join his brother-in-law. Eating lunch alone really palled on him these days.

They settled in their usual booth, but before they could even think about the menu, Dolly slapped a plate down before him.

Garner glared at the plate and said through his teeth, “I did not order this.”

Dolly ignored him. “You’re getting’ what I’m servin’, or you ain’t gettin’. Take it or leave it.”

The plate held Angie’s favorite breakfast of bacon, eggs, grits, and toast. Garner had to admit, it both looked and smelled enticing.

“Extra toast on the house,” Dolly said, and banged it down beside the plate.

Cliff, who had been sitting very quietly across from him, whistled softly.

“I don’t want extra toast,” Garner growled.

“Yes, he does,” Cliff said hastily. “Thanks, Dolly. I’ll have the same.”

“That’s more like it,” Dolly said approvingly.

“Whose side are you on?” Garner demanded.

“Dolly’s right. Low-fat diets do make people mean,” Cliff said, meeting Garner’s silver gaze. “You’ve been behaving like a sore-tailed cat for weeks. Now, you either eat that, or you’ll wear it out of here.”

Garner regarded his usually mild-mannered brother-in-law cautiously. “Are you saying I’ve been … a trifle testy lately?”

Who could blame him? It had been eleven weeks and three days since the day Angie had called him and left that terse little message that Vernon had emerged from a successful surgery and was expected to make a full recovery.

“A bear with buckshot in his bottom would be a better lunch partner,” Cliff said.

Garner rested his forehead on his palms. “Peter Van Holden has just been named president of BrownWare. It was in yesterday’s technology news.”

He hadn’t even looked at today’s technology news. What if the company’s interim chief executive said she had accepted a position as head of some other company?

Oddly enough, Cliff understood this
non sequitur
. “That’s something, isn’t it? The guiding light of BrownWare was right here in Smackover, running your office. She seems such a young thing to have all that experience.”

The technology news sites had duly reported Vernon Brownwood’s successful surgery and recovery, just as they’d reported the actions Vernon’s daughter had taken to cease hostilities with Peter Van Holden and bring him back into the BrownWare fold. Peter had been placed in charge of the long-awaited update to VP-Base, which was expected to restore BrownWare to its former glory. The programmers were working twenty-four hours a day. Garner had figured Angie would remain as head of BrownWare several more weeks, until her father was back at work.

“She started college at sixteen,” Garner said, in what he knew were hollow tones. “She got her Master’s from Cal Tech and has worked at BrownWare ever since.”

After glaring at his plate another minute, Garner finally gave in to the succulent odors and scooped up a big bite of buttered grits. Unexpected warmth filtered through him and he studied the yellow pool of butter. Maybe Angie was right when she said a person needed some saturated fat in their diet.

This was it, Garner decided, on a forkful of egg with its thickly liquid yolk. Angie needed him. The world needed him, because without Angie’s wide-eyed appreciation of life and everything it involved, the world would be a poorer place. His job was to preserve all that joy. He frowned at the butter plate and absently spread a pat across his toast. Angie was the light of his life, and he’d done nothing to make her want to come back to him. He had expected her to call him, and now he was upset because, other than relaying the news about her father, she hadn’t.

“She was supposed to be some sort of child genius who burned out early,” Cliff agreed placidly.

Garner frowned across the table. “She didn’t burn out. She loved her parents and didn’t want them to know she wasn’t as driven as they thought she was. That she wasn’t like them, in other words.”

Cliff nodded wisely. “I’m not surprised. In spite of all that steel in her spine, she had a tremendous desire to please. Here, Garner. Have some more butter on those grits. Real butter has a way of making you feel better.”

Nothing would make him feel better. Angie wasn’t here, and it was his own fault.

He scowled down at Cliff’s hands. The other man busily added butter slices to the steaming mound of grits on Garner’s plate.

“Eat,” Cliff said. “Dolly and I are testing a new scientific theory.”