A light glimmered toward the back of the house, but Rebecca’s rage had already burned itself out. She no longer felt the fierce need to hit something. Now doing anything at all seemed rather pointless. The damage was done.
Climbing out of the car, she strode up to Josh’s Excursion. She was driving a car older than most people’s houses while he drove one of the nicest SUVs on the market. Why did he have to have it all?
She heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel as Booker came up behind her. “Are you ever going to say anything?” he asked.
“These SUVs cost thirty-five thousand dollars,” she responded.
He glanced at the maroon Excursion. “They’re nice.”
“Everything Josh has is nice.” Rebecca opened the door and sat in the passenger seat, letting her legs dangle out the side. She wasn’t surprised to find the vehicle unlocked. There wasn’t any crime in Dundee to speak of, especially out in the hills where the next property was five or more miles away.
The inside of the SUV smelled of leather and Armor All—and Josh. Rebecca noticed the scent of his cologne right away and wondered why, after everything they’d been through, she still liked it.
More irony, she supposed. Josh had blighted her whole existence, and she still couldn’t help admiring him.
“How would it be to drive something like this?” she asked, running a hand over the simulated wood grain on the door panel.
Booker lit up a cigarette, his face momentarily glowing in the little blue flame of his lighter.
A cold breeze fanned the smoke toward her and she breathed deeply, craving the taste and savoring the smell. She hadn’t had a cigarette for almost two weeks, but she suddenly saw little point in denying herself. She couldn’t change. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Reaching out, she caught Booker before he could shove the pack into the pocket of his coat.
“You quit, remember?” he said.
“That was yesterday.”
He hesitated briefly before relinquishing the cigarettes. “What the hell. If smoking’s the worst thing you do, go for it.”
Rebecca lit up and enjoyed her first drag. Booker leaned against the car and tilted his face toward the sky. “So what are we doing here?” he asked after a few moments of silence.
What were they doing? Rebecca longed for some type of revenge. She owed Josh for more than sabotaging her engagement. What about all the love and attention he’d cost her over the years?
I’ve told you and told you that you need to keep your hand steady. You’re never going to win a game of pool if you play like that…her father had said. Your sisters were easy to raise…Josh and his brother have turned out to be responsible, dependable adults…I don’t know where we went wrong with you…wrong with you…wrong with you…
But she was too old for the kind of high school pranks she and Josh used to pull on each other. And regardless of what the community thought of her temper, she’d never done anything seriously wrong. Bottom line, there wasn’t anything she could do that would counteract Josh’s incredible appeal. She couldn’t make him be anything less than he was. Part of her didn’t even want to. That was what made her the craziest. Deep down, she appreciated his good looks and abilities as much as everyone else—even while she resented how easily he’d stolen her father’s heart.
Flicking away the butt of her cigarette, she got out of the Excursion and shut the door.
“Nothing,” she said. “We’re not going to do anything.”
“Cool.” Booker gave her a rare smile. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee at the diner.”
JOSH HAD BEEN lying in bed wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, watching television for more than an hour. But he wasn’t paying much attention to any of the programs that flashed past the screen as he clicked his remote. He couldn’t stop thinking about his conversation with Buddy earlier in the day and how quickly what he’d been trying to do had turned around on him. He’d meant his call to help Rebecca. She wanted to get married, and he wanted to forget about her. Their goals seemed compatible enough. But once he’d gotten Buddy on the phone, he’d purposely told him every unappealing thing he could think of to scare the poor guy away from Rebecca.
He shifted in bed, trying to conjure up the humiliation he’d suffered when Rebecca had bought a child-sized jock and bandied it around school, claiming she’d stolen it from his locker. If there was going to be some kind of negative fallout from his call, it was no more than she deserved after that stunt and all the others like it, he tried to tell himself. But somehow the satisfaction he’d felt earlier had withered away and now he was afflicted with a variety of other emotions—guilt for meddling in something that was clearly none of his business mingled with the stubborn hope that Buddy would break off the relationship and disappear from Rebecca’s life.
Flipping through a few more channels, he settled on CNN because news seemed to fit his mood more than the canned laughter of the sitcoms. Rebecca might have pulled a few pranks on him in the past, but he’d done similar things to her. And interfering with personal relationships wasn’t quite the same as hoisting her panties up the flagpole. He shouldn’t have involved himself in something that had the potential to be so hurtful.
So what did he do about it?
For a moment, he considered calling Buddy to apologize, to see if he could fix any damage he might have caused. But he doubted he could explain the complex emotions that had motivated his first call. There were some realities he’d rather not face. Besides, he was still convinced Rebecca would be better off, in the long run anyway, if Buddy terminated the engagement. The man was still sleeping when Josh had called—at slightly past noon, for crying out loud—which spelled lazy, even if it was a Sunday. And Buddy obviously wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack. He’d never questioned Josh’s motivations, never doubted his veracity. Instead, he’d gone on and on about the quiet, peaceful life he wanted to live.
If Buddy wanted peace and quiet, what the hell was he doing even thinking about marrying Rebecca? Only if a man was serious about increasing his daily angst to never-a-dull-moment, frustrated-to-the-point-of-wanting-to-break-something intensity should he consider Rebecca Wells.
Maybe it was only obvious to Josh, but Rebecca needed a man with more backbone than Buddy. She needed someone who understood her tempestuous nature. Someone capable of riding out the emotional storms. Someone who could soothe the ache Josh sensed inside her—the ache that made him think of her at odd hours during the night and unexpected moments during the day ever since they were kids. She needed—