“I loved her once. I really did.”
The bittersweet vibrato in his voice stopped her cold. She couldn't help but turn to take one last look at the man who'd unthinkingly hurt so many lives.
Ed still sat in the chair, facing away from her, a silhouette in the winter’s late-afternoon sunset spilling in from the window.
For most of her career he'd loomed large, dominating the conversation and tone in every boardroom he entered with just his presence. Now, he sat alone in a fast-darkening room, eclipsed by the light of truth streaming down on him.
Nothing she could say would bring him any lower than he'd brought himself. Her new life started the moment she walked out the front door into the arms of the man she loved.
Without uttering a word, she turned and walked into the cold January sunshine.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Beth blew some warmth onto her freezing hands. Early January in Nebraska would never be confused for a tropical island paradise. The frost-covered ground crunched under her boots when she stepped down from her grandparents' front porch to the hard dirt below and hustled to the crowd of people gathering on the driveway. What she wouldn't do for a cup of steaming coffee.
An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her backwards until she fit snuggly against a hard body—one that had kept her up way too late last night. Hank brushed his lips across the nape of her neck above her coat collar and her formerly frozen insides melted.
“Looks like you could use this.” Like manna from heaven, a bee-decorated coffee mug appeared in front of her.
“Just when I thought I couldn't love you any more.” She swiped the mug from him and sipped the piping-hot brew. Mocha with a shot of caramel. Yep, he was a keeper.
“You sure you want to do this?”
Looking around at her neighbors and friends stomping their feet to keep warm in the bitter cold, she considered calling it all off. Going ahead would change everything. Her shoulders twitched with a shiver of apprehension. After all that had happened, not one person would think any worse of her. But she would. She'd worked too hard during the past few months to go back to her old ways.
“Yeah, I'm sure.”
“Ms. Martinez, I need you to sign a couple of documents real quick and then we can get started.” Frank Eastwick of Eastwick Auctioneers motioned her over to his truck and the battered briefcase resting on its hood.
“Be right there.” Nervous energy took her voice up an octave.
Stepping out of Hank's embrace, she turned to face him. Gone was the vacation beard and the knee brace he'd had to wear after surgery. Bundled up in a bright-red parka with a white capital N embroidered across the back, he fit in perfectly with the rest of the state, breathlessly waiting for the championship college football game. Something ornery that had nothing to do with football twinkled in his hazel eyes.
“You can't go until I get payment for that coffee.” He pulled her close and lowered his head until their lips were only inches apart.
In an instant, her nipples hardened and butterflies started doing cartwheels in her stomach. “That was a gift.” She raised her head, cutting the distance between their mouths to mere millimeters. “There is no payment for gifts.”
“Wanna bet?”
The kiss curled her toes. Suddenly, January turned unseasonably warm and balmy under the tight confines of her wool coat.
“What is it with my children? Where did I go wrong?” Glenda Layton's indignant questions cut through the lust fogging her brain.
Hank ended the kiss. “Hi, Mom.”
“You are in public, you know.” Never one for the cold, the only part of Glenda visible was her brown eyes above the neon-green scarf wrapped around her neck and face. Her matching green down coat reached her knees. The entire outfit was topped off with a white ski cap that she'd managed to bedazzle with neon-green stones. “If it wasn't for this godforsaken cold, Bob and I would sell the RV just so we could keep an eye on you kids. First Claire and now you, getting frisky at inappropriate times. It's like I raised free-love hippies or something.”
“Yep, we're planning on turning Dry Creek into a nude commune. I'm going to ditch the whole sheriff gig to grow pot.”
Glenda harrumphed and rolled her eyes. “Nobody likes a smart mouth.”
Hank dropped a quick peck on his mother's wool cap. “Only you, Mom.”
Her eyes crinkled at the corners, a telltale sign she smiled under the neon-green scarf.
Biting back her own smile at the normal state of affairs between Glenda and Hank, Beth took a step away from his warmth. “I have to sign some papers. Be right back.”
Hank admired the sway of Beth's hips as she made her way to the auctioneer's truck. “Okay, so what was that show all about, Mom?”