Dateline Matrimony (Hot off the Press! 3)

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Teresa said to Riley. “I have plenty of help if you have other things you need to do today.”

“I don’t mind,” he said carelessly, and was almost surprised to realize it was the truth. “It’ll earn me a few brownie points with my employers.”

She smiled a little at the joke, then turned to take a box from Cameron. “Thank you,” she said over her shoulder to Riley.

“Thank him after he’s actually done something,” Cameron suggested. “Riley, let’s get this dresser first. It has to go upstairs.”

Riley winced, pushed up the sleeves of his long-sleeved T-shirt and prepared to sweat. “Okay. Let me at it.”

He soon noticed that Teresa had brought just enough belongings to furnish the few rooms of the duplex apartment. She didn’t have an overabundance of possessions, but what she had looked very nice. Riley would almost bet another day of hard labor that some of the items he and Cameron carried to her bedroom were rather nice antiques. She had good taste.

Every tidbit he learned about Teresa Scott only increased his curiosity about her. Which might not be a good thing, he reflected, considering that he was always too easily intrigued by a puzzle.

Just before six, when almost everything had been brought inside, Marjorie laid out sandwiches for an early light dinner. It provided everyone a welcome break from hauling and arranging furniture and toting and unpacking boxes. Even the kids were starting to wear down, their excitement over the novelty of the move fading. Gathered around the kitchen table while the children picnicked on a tablecloth spread on the floor, the adults chatted for a while, something they’d been too busy to do so far.

“So you and Serena were college roommates?” Riley glanced from Teresa to Serena as he asked the question, finally clearing up the connections between this group.

“Yes.” Teresa sent Serena a quick smile. “I finished high school a year early and I was a bit younger than the average college freshman. I was scared spitless. It helped to discover that I’d been assigned a very nice and friendly roommate.”

“And I was relieved that my roomy was neat and studious,” Serena admitted. “I’d been so worried I’d get a slob who would spend more time partying than preparing for classes.”

Riley chuckled, not at all surprised. A successful attorney, Serena was a notorious workaholic who took her responsibilities to her job, her family and her community very seriously. Riley had often accused her of being too serious.

She and Cameron made a good match, he reflected. While equally dedicated to his career, Cameron was more laid-back about it than Serena. He brought out her dry sense of humor and encouraged her to have fun. They’d been married a year and still looked at each other like they were on their honeymoon.

Riley had nothing against the institution of marriage. It certainly seemed to work well for some people—Serena and Cameron, Dan and Lindsey, his own parents, for that matter, who’d been contentedly wed for thirty-five years. He just couldn’t really picture himself taking that drastic step—at least not with anyone he’d met to this point.

He wondered if Teresa had been as happy with her late husband as his newly married friends were with their respective spouses. How long had it been since she lost him? Was she still grieving for him?

He realized abruptly that Teresa was talking again, filling in the gaps about how she came to be his tenant. “I visited Edstown with Serena a couple of times during college and I always thought it must be a wonderful place to grow up. When the neighborhood the kids and I were living in before started having more problems with crime and delinquency, I decided to move here for their sakes. Marjorie very kindly offered me a job. Since the diner is only open for breakfast and lunch, I drop Mark and Maggie off at a before-school program at the church next door to their school, and then I’m there to greet them when they come home in the afternoons. It’s working out very well.”

“You’re doing me the favor,” Marjorie insisted. “I’ve had so much turnover in staff at the diner during the past year or so that it’s nice to have someone I can depend on to stay for a while.”

Cameron cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “Technically, I am still working for you,” he reminded his mother-in-law.

Marjorie laughed. “I wasn’t referring to you, dear.”

Teresa lifted an eyebrow.

“You remember me telling you that Cameron worked in the diner when he first showed up in Edstown?” Serena prompted.

Teresa nodded, looki

ng at her friend’s husband. “You were working as a reporter for a newspaper in Dallas and you got involved in a dangerous story that almost got you killed. Something about a politician who was embezzling public funds, wasn’t it?”

“Among other things,” he agreed. “I followed a lead to Little Rock and I was snooping around outside his mistress’s house when someone hit me from behind. The crook had hired a couple of guys to send me a message—if not to kill me. He still denies giving anyone instructions to harm me even though their paychecks were traced to him. His story is that he had simply hired a couple of guys as bodyguards for his platonic friend, who’d received some mysterious threats against her life.”

“His platonic friend who just happened to be pregnant with his child,” Riley added.

Teresa rolled her eyes. “Of course she was. How do these men keep believing they’ll get away with this stuff?”

“Anyway,” Serena said, picking up the conversational threads, “I—well, my dog, actually—found Cameron lying in a ditch beside the dirt road that runs behind our house late one evening. He’d been beaten unconscious and left facedown in high grass. It was practically a miracle that I found him then.”

“I’d have probably been dead by morning.” Cameron’s matter-of-fact tone made Teresa’s eyes widen.

Serena continued, “He woke in the hospital with no memory of who he was or how he’d gotten there. But instead of telling anyone about his amnesia,” she added with a chiding glance toward her husband, “he concealed it, making up a tall tale about being a drifter who’d been robbed by a couple of strangers.”

“Needless to say, Dan was not happy to find out a few weeks later that he’d wasted too many man-hours trying to track down those nonexistent muggers when he could have been finding out who Cameron was, instead.” Riley shook his head ruefully as he remembered Dan’s very vocal reaction to that news.