“Let’s go somewhere we can talk privately.”
Conner’s first impulse was to resist, simply for the sake of resisting. But he was at least halfway convinced that Rebecca could resolve a lot of his confusion. And the women in the shop were staring at them both, looking more than eager to hear the whole story. He didn’t see any need to broadcast the fact that he’d been so easily conned.
He allowed her to guide him out and around the building, toward an old Firebird. He waited while she unlocked the doors. Then she slipped behind the wheel, and he took the passenger seat, assuming they’d talk in the lot. But as soon as he’d closed his door, she started the engine and began to back out of the parking space.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“For a drive.”
“You have curlers in your hair.”
“Who cares?” she said scornfully. “This town has seen me looking worse.”
Somehow, Conner didn’t doubt it.
They drove for several minutes, heading out toward the open road, an old disco tape playing in the equally dated tape deck, while the defroster worked overtime to clear the ice from the edges of the windshield.
“So?” he said when they’d driven several miles, too impatient to wait any longer. He’d taken Delaney at her word, had remembered her fondly, frequently—even gone searching for her in Jerome. And here she was, living in Dundee, only ten miles or so from the ranch. He still couldn’t believe it and hated what it might mean.
“So, what?” she said.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
Rebecca didn’t answer right away, but her expression was grim, which wasn’t a pretty sight on a woman with rollers on top of her head and loose sections of purplish hair hanging limp at the sides.
“I’m thinking,” she finally said.
“What’s to think about?” he asked as the town behind them began to recede in his mirror. “Just tell me why Delaney lied to me. Does it have anything to do with my uncles?”
“Your uncles?”
“Stephen, Dwight, Jonathan. Those names ring a bell?”
Rebecca shook her head, a vague expression on her face, then turned onto an icy dirt road that bisected a large, snow-blanketed piece of farmland.
“Did they?” he persisted, as she pulled to a stop.
She cut the engine. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“So what’s all this about? Why were you and Delaney in Boise that night if you live way the hell out here? Why did Delaney want to be with me instead of hooking up with someone a little closer to home? And why was she in such a hurry to get away when it was all over?”
He wasn’t sure what he expected to come out of her mouth—some kind of weak excuse, probably—but what she said surprised him.
“Well, Delaney doesn’t want this to get out. This is a small town, and she doesn’t want everyone feeling sorry for her, whispering, ‘Poor Delaney’ all the time. But if you can keep a secret…”
“I can keep a secret,” he assured her.
“Laney has a terminal illness.”
“What?” he croaked.
“She has cancer.”
That took him aback, quickly deflating his anger and making him feel terrible, until he remembered that Delaney and Rebecca didn’t possess a great deal of credibility. After everything that had happened, he wasn’t willing to trust either woman much farther than he could throw her, but Rebecca’s statement could be true.
“What kind?” he asked skeptically.
“It’s…um…” Her gaze lowered to the pack of cigarettes on her console. “In her lungs.”
He crossed his arms and shifted to lean against the door so he could scrutinize her more closely. “She doesn’t smoke.”
“She used to.”
Delaney didn’t seem like a smoker. But on the off chance that Rebecca was telling the truth, Conner thought it better to play along. “How does the future look for her?” he asked.
Rebecca knotted her hands and stared down at them, as though she found the subject almost too painful to talk about. “Not good. She has less than a year.”
“So why would a dying woman drive two hours to get herself laid?”
“She wanted a last hurrah.”
“That couldn’t have happened closer to home?”
“She knows everyone around here.”
“Doesn’t someone who’s facing cancer have more important things on her mind than seducing a stranger?”
She unknotted her hands to rub her arms against the cold. She hadn’t bothered to grab any kind of jacket when they’d fled the salon, but damned if Conner was going to offer her his. He still wasn’t sure he liked this woman.
“She wanted to try it once, to see what it was like. You might have guessed she isn’t exactly an old pro in the bedroom.”
“I had some inkling,” he said.
“Well, we were just trying to have a little fun before the…you know, the end.” Her voice dipped reverently on that last word, which hit Conner hard enough to put a lump in his throat even though he was almost certain he didn’t believe her.
“How terrible,” he said, still watching her closely. “I’m sorry.”
Rebecca nodded and blinked rapidly, as if she were about to cry.
Conner reached out to take her hand, knowing he’d feel like a complete jerk later if he found out she’d been telling the truth and he hadn’t done what he could to comfort her.
“It is terrible,” she said, managing a few very real tears, which served to confuse Conner even more.
“I’m not sure what to think,” he admitted. “I knew she was a virgin, of course, but she didn’t say anything about the rest of it.”
“She was a virgin?” Rebecca said, her voice suddenly strident.
“You didn’t know?”
She pulled away to wipe her eyes. “No. But it figures, don’t you think? She didn’t want to take her virginity to the grave.”
“But she seemed in perfect health. Isn’t chemotherapy and radiation hard on a body?”
Rebecca squinted into the distance. “Yeah, well, she’s a naturalist. She doesn’t believe in ruining her quality of life, and the cancer’s not to the point that it’s painful, you know?”
The tears had been pretty convincing, but…something still didn’t seem right.