Three Weddings and a Murder (32 page)

Eschewing the vanity of perfume, Anna had always opted for natural scents and handmade soaps. To his way of thinking, her fancy soaps might be a natural, organic vanity, but they were a vanity all the same. Yet year after year, he’d bitten back the urge to point out the flaw in her reasoning simply because he flat-out loved the way she smelled.

The way she smelled.

The way she shook back her hair when she laughed.

The way she moved.

And unlike times past, today he wasn’t the only one taking notice of Anna. An overfed blue jay pecking the corncob bait on the railing of the Carlisle front porch paused to crane its neck and jabber a compliment as, with downcast eyes, Anna sideways-climbed the tricky steps. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t the steps that were tricky, maybe it was balancing those eggs while wearing high heels. High heels that showed off a pair of amazing gastrocnemius muscles. All he really knew was that he wanted Anna to look up. And when she saw him, he wanted her to smile.

Raking a hand through his hair, he waited for the moment of truth. Anna reached the top, stepped onto the porch, looked up, and stopped dead in her tracks. Helpless to contain the excitement welling inside him, he grinned—quite possibly beamed—at her. Anna’s mouth, on the other hand, didn’t roll out of its peppermint-pink bow. Her ridiculously blue eyes didn’t crinkle at the edges, and she didn’t offer so much as a glimmer of the smile that had hounded him for more than ten years. If she had, he might’ve never recovered the breath to speak. “Hello, Peaches.”

“Charlie.”

His worst fear had been that the Anna of his boyhood would tromp up the steps and rage at him, and he’d prepared himself for the worst. Or so he’d thought. What he hadn’t prepared himself for was this. This neutral look on her face. This indifferent demeanor. It was as if Anna simply didn’t care one way or another that he’d returned to her with an open mind, determined to find out what he’d missed. It was as if the girl who’d looked up to him, who’d, let’s face it,
worshipped
him, didn’t care one way or another that he’d come home.

His chest deflated…briefly. But he was never one to stay down for the count. “Care to dance?” He grabbed her by the hand, pulled it high above her head and twirled her beneath his arm.

“Damn it, Charlie,” she muttered as they both lunged for the plate of deviled eggs.

Triumphantly he held out the rescued eggs. “No harm done.”

“To the eggs.” She arched a matter-of-fact brow and made a quick survey of each high heel.

He set down the plate on the porch swing and moved in close. One hand found her hip and the other grazed her palm, and magically her arm rose with his. Her body canted forward until he could feel the brush of her warm breasts against his chest. Her knees buckled ever so slightly as he pulled her against him. She was trembling at first, but then she steadied. Her heart beat against him, keeping time with his own, and their breathing synchronized—as if their bodies knew how to talk to each other even if they didn’t.

He swallowed hard.
Man up, Charlie
.

She shifted positions, bringing her hips in line with his, and by now, at least one part of him needed an admonishment to
man down
. “About that dance.”

Sliding out of his arms, she quickstepped back, almost tumbling off the steps in the process. She skirted him, retrieved the platter off the porch swing and stuck it in his hands. “Welcome home, Charlie. The eggs are for you.”

“You remembered.”

Her nose scrunched up. “What?”

“Deviled eggs are my favorite.”

“Are they?”

“C’mon Peaches, don’t be mad.”

“Stop calling me Peaches. Mad about what?”

He squinted at her. She squinted back with no trace of animosity. Surely she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. He refused to accept this display of equanimity as truth. She was either mad and covering it up by playing it cool, or she had amnesia, and amnesia was the least parsimonious explanation for her behavior he could think of. “Look,
Anna,
can we go somewhere private and talk?”

Shaking her head emphatically, she said, “No way.”

“Why not?”

“First, it would be rude to disappear from your welcome home party. Simone has been planning this for the past two weeks—ever since your feet hit dirt in town, and second it was Simone who asked me to bring the eggs, and third—”

She might’ve disabled his hands by sticking him with the platter of eggs, but he was far from disarmed. After all, he was carrying a backup weapon. In less than a heartbeat he’d loaded up the trusty charm gun. “Hey, girl.” He aimed a smoky look her way, one that could have felled hundreds, maybe thousands of librarians in a single shot.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Are you supposed to be Ryan Gosling in this scenario? Since when do you follow librarian humor?”

“Since I saw your Facebook page.”

“You checked out my Facebook?” Her lips transformed into a defiant pink pucker.

“You’re not the girl next door anymore, Anna. You’re the hot librarian.”

Her eyes flashed with determination, but her mouth signaled his impending victory. Anna’s
you-cannot-make-me-smile
pucker was a sure sign he could.

He cocked the charm gun. “Hey, girl. When’s amnesty day at the library?”

He pulled the trigger. “’Cause I need to turn in an apology, and it’s ten years overdue.”

Her pink lips twitched at the edges. Wait for it…ha! Like a field of prickly poppies answering the call of the morning sun, her expression opened and transformed into a thing of beauty—the best smile he’d seen since the day he’d left Tangleheart, Texas.

“Twelve years if you want to be accurate.” The smile crept into her voice too.

“So you did miss me.”

Her face flushed, and her mouth flatlined. “I’m just pointing out the facts, Charlie. No apology is necessary, and I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I think the past belongs in the past.”

“Then let’s go someplace private and talk about the future.”

“You’ve got more nerve than sense, Charlie.”

“And you’ve got great legs.”

“I run.”

His gaze crawled unapologetically from her well-turned calves, up up up and around her curves, climbing higher and higher until at last it reached her big baby-blue eyes. “It shows.”

“Guess running’s my own form of therapy, so I won’t be needing your apology or your psychiatric services, Charlie. I’m over it.”

Blinking hard, he forced his attention away from her knockout body and onto her words. And when those words sank in, he said, “I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“I heard—”

“You heard wrong. I’m a pediatrician.”

“But you don’t even like kids.”

“You sure about that?” He’d always liked kids. Just wasn’t the kind of thing a guy wanted front and center on his high-school yearbook page.

Charlie “Drex” Drexler—student body president, captain of the football team, voted man most likely to break your heart, really likes small fry
.

Nope. Never would’ve worked.

Anna tilted her head, surveying him. “You’ve changed.”

Finally, they were getting somewhere. Because he had, in fact, changed a great deal. And he was smart enough to realize he was going to have to prove to her that he was a different man. She wasn’t about to let him take her home with him, or anywhere else for that matter, anytime soon if he didn’t. He didn’t know much about what Anna Kincaid had been up to all these years, but one thing was certain, fantasizing about getting Charlie Drexler naked wasn’t it.

A
NNA KINCAID DID NOT WISH
to speak ill of the dead, nor did she wish to
think
ill of the dead.

Which was why she’d made a conscious effort, all these years, not to think of Megan O’Neal. The virtue attached to this plan was iffy at best, since the very fact that it required effort for her not to think ill of poor Megan, meant that on some level she did. Sticking out her chin, she beat down a gnawing sense of guilt. The principle might be flawed, but it was the best she could manage for the girl who’d ruined Charlie Drexler’s life.

And imperfect though it may have been, she’d stuck fast to that principle until this very evening, when Charlie had shown up on the Carlisle front porch, taken her in his arms, and turned her heart back twelve years.

In that instant, she’d cast aside all pretense of virtue and indulged in a heartache as raw and sore as the original had been the night Charlie left town. Tonight, when he’d pulled her close, even the knee-buckling feel of his solid chest against her cheek couldn’t stop her mind from churning through the murkiest part of their past.

If it hadn’t been for Megan O’Neal, Charlie might have taken a different road in life. All these years, conflicting emotions toward the girl—jealousy and pity, resentment and compassion—had been lying abed, twisting in the sheets, cuddling and kicking just below the surface of Anna’s consciousness. Not
thinking
about Megan had not blocked out Anna’s
feelings
about Megan, at least not completely. Trembling, she clasped her arms about her waist. Her eyes closed.

Enough
.

Forcing her eyes open, she turned her attention to the present. A quick glance around the interior of the Carlisle farmhouse drew a frown. Farmhouse, of course, was Simone-speak for one of the most well-appointed homes in Tangleheart. Set on a one-hundred-acre spread of rolling green hills, the only crops this farm could boast were the pair of miniature donkeys Nate bought in order to legitimize his agriculture deduction and the stories he liked to spin of his simple, country life.

With no other guests in sight, and the table in the nook set for four—five if you counted the high chair—Anna knew she’d been had. And by her closest girlfriend no less. At least the house smelled like her favorite homemade cinnamon rolls. “Thanks for setting me up, Simone.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Thanks for bringing the appetizer. I hate the way deviling the eggs stinks up the house.”

Another person might’ve interpreted Simone’s reply as wry humor, but she knew her friend better. There wasn’t a wry bone in Simone’s five-foot-nine, Pilates-toned, post-baby body. Simone was too distracted, rushing around, trying to make everything perfect, to take note of the chagrin in Anna’s voice. Giving it another whirl, Anna inclined her head toward the table set for four. “You said this was Charlie’s welcome home party.”

“It is.”

“Looks more like a welcome home trap to me.”

Tonight, Simone’s naturally pale skin appeared all but translucent against her flaming red hair, and her full lips were colorless beneath a sparkled gloss. An emerald-green silk tunic hung loosely over prominent collarbones and scary-skinny arms. “Like any good hostess, I consulted with Drex about the guest list.”

Anna touched her palm to her cheek and held in a sigh. Simone could’ve doubled for any of a number of pre-rehab celebrities. “And?”

“And you’re it.” Simone’s delicate fingers jangled a charm bracelet as she spoke. Glancing at her wrist, a sentimental smile played across her lips and then faded. “You don’t truly mind our little deception do you, Anna? I’d hate to think you’re cross with me.” Worry lines emerged around Simone’s bleary eyes.

Throwing her arms around her friend, she squeezed and noted again how thin Simone had become since Bobby was born. “Me cross? Not likely, considering you’ve got cinnamon rolls in the oven.”

“Smells like my wife’s keeping a secret.” Nate’s good-natured baritone bellowed down the hall, growing louder and closer with every sentence. “I only get baked goods when a very expensive bomb’s about to drop on me. You been to Neiman Marcus again, babe?”

Accompanied by the boisterous energy of an old friendship renewed, Nate and Charlie joined Anna and Simone in the open-style kitchen and family room. Although Nate was, in reality, a giant softy who adored his wife and indulged her every chance he got, he liked to toss around the clichés of an ornery, wears-the-pants husband when they were in public, because after all (as he’d once eloquently explained it to Anna),
nobody wants to get his sorry ass kicked out of the man club
.

In her opinion, Nate’s worries were unfounded. It seemed quite unlikely either
big Nate,
a six-foot-four tower of former linebacker muscle, or Charlie, the gifted quarterback who’d led the Titans to a state championship his senior year in high school, would ever be kicked out of the Tangleheart man club. In Tangleheart, if a guy could play football, it didn’t matter if his daddy was a rich SOB like Nate’s, or a poor SOB like Charlie’s. In Tangleheart, if a guy could play football, nobody cared about the rest of his résumé.

With a slight limp, a remnant of the blown-out knee that had ended his brief but glorious career in the pros, Nate crossed to his wife and lifted her hand to his lips. “You look beautiful tonight, babe.”

Charlie caught Anna’s glance. “You both look beautiful tonight,” he said, causing her to place her hand on her solar plexus.

Breathe, why don’t you, Anna?