The Man She Married

She squared her shoulders and met his dark gaze as he closed the space between them.

She could admit that Gideon was exceptionally handsome. He had brown eyes, a straight nose and a mouth that used to laugh often but had lost that skill while he was in the state senate. He was tall and big with a personality to match.

Smaller than average herself, Prue had found his size intimidating at first, until she’d observed his kindness and compassion and his complete dedication to the people he served.

Curious, she thought, that the very things about him that had made her fall in love had become a sore spot between them when they’d continually kept him away from her.

She smiled just a little in an attempt to convince him that, even when surprised, she was a woman of style and composure. That hadn’t been true in the old days.

Well, it wasn’t really true now, but she could pretend.

“Hello, Gideon,” she said, hands in the pockets of a red wool jacket. She didn’t want him to think she was willing to shake hands or otherwise touch. “What are you doing at the Barn?”

He indicated Paris, who stood nearby, hand in hand with Randy.

“I called a cab from the airport,” he replied, “and Paris picked me up. I had no idea she operated a taxi service. I thought she was in law school.”

Prue shook her head, the small smile still in place. “A lot has changed for her and for me in the last year.”

He nodded once. “I see that. Anyway, we were happy to see each other, I asked her how things were going for her and she started to cry. So I suggested we go somewhere for coffee, she brought me here, and…well…” He swept a hand at the few stragglers in the parking lot making their way back inside. “Randy showed up, she ran off, he chased her, everyone came out to watch… Some town this is. Don’t you guys have television?”

“Why don’t you two sit in the cab if you need privacy,” Paris suggested, handing Prue her keys and giving her a quick hug. “You should talk. It did a lot for us.”

Randy clapped Gideon on the shoulder. “Good luck,” he said, then drew Paris toward the restaurant.

Prue didn’t want to talk, but Gideon was waiting expectantly. And she didn’t want to be confined inside the cab with him. So she asked, “What were you doing with Hank Whitcomb?”

“He and his friends were at a table nearby when the Randy and Paris row started,” he replied. “Paris took off on me, so Randy sort of put me in their care before he chased her out the door.”

Okay, that explained how he’d gotten to the restaurant. “But what are you doing in Maple Hill?”

She saw his expression change. He was going to give her an answer she wasn’t going to like. Not that he’d said or done anything she’d liked since she’d found him with another woman.

“A friend has invited me into a business partnership in Alaska,” he said, his manner growing serious. “He’s turning an old family home in the wilderness into a fishing lodge. It’s pretty spectacular. An ancestor built the place when he made a killing in the gold rush. Anyway, I thought I’d try to talk to you one more time before I went away.”

“What about the winery?” she stalled. “I thought you went back to running it when you left the senate.”

“Blake has it running like a well-oiled machine.” Blake was his younger brother who’d taken over the family winery when Gideon was elected. “Since my term ended, I opened a law office in White Plains, did a little work for the family, taught martial arts at the high school, but…I need something else.”

Alaska. That brought to mind ice and snow, days without sunshine, people bundled up in furs. But Gideon was someone who thought the sun was shining even when it wasn’t. He never remembered a hat or an umbrella. It didn’t seem like the right place for him.

Still. It was his life and she was no longer involved in it.

“Then you should go to Alaska,” she said, trying to sound amiable rather than snide. It didn’t quite come off. “Because I don’t want to hear whatever you have to say, Gideon. Oh, I know you could make it sound good. You have the politician’s gift of gab. You talked me into believing I was going to love the state of New York, that I was going to have no trouble being a senator’s wife. You talked me into waiting to have a baby.” A small tremor broke that last word, and she had to clear her throat to go on, the pretense of amiability slipping away. Instead, all the old grudges were demanding attention. “And as I was busying myself with charity work, living an almost nunlike existence while you claimed to be swamped with work, you were fooling around with Claudia Hackett.”

He hesitated a moment, drew a breath, and in a voice that sounded as though he had difficulty controlling it, he said, “I came specifically to say one more time—I was not fooling around with Claudia Hackett.”

“I saw you with my own two eyes!”

“Your two eyes,” he said quietly, “misinterpreted what they saw.”

“How do you misinterpret,” she demanded, “a woman in nothing but panties?”

A man and a woman who’d just climbed out of a van turned as Prue raised her voice, clearly prepared to listen to them instead of going into the restaurant.

“Will you please sit in the cab with me,” Gideon asked, “so that we don’t make any more of a scene than we already have?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she insisted. “It’s taken me a whole year to get over you and over the—” She stopped and drew a steadying breath. “Over everything.”

He shifted his weight and folded his arms. “Well, I’m not leaving until you listen to what happened.”

“Then I hope you’re happy in the parking lot,” she said, moving past him, “because you’re going to be here for a long time.”

He caught her arm and took the cab keys from her. “Look, Prue,” he said, pulling her with him toward the cab. “You listen to my explanation. That’s all I ask. Believe me. Don’t believe me. I really don’t care. Give me ten minutes, and then I’m out of here.”

“What’s the point, Gideon?” she asked, pulling against him. “We are so out of love, there’s no going back.”

“I’m not trying to get you back.” He sounded convincing. Well, that was a comfort. Sort of. “Why would I want to live with you if you won’t trust me? It’s just become a matter of personal necessity that I tell you what happened, even if you don’t believe it.”

She huffed a noisy breath and stopped struggling. If it meant he’d go away and she could forget, it was worth anything. “All right. Ten minutes. And I’m sitting behind the wheel.”

“Fine.” He unlocked the driver’s-side door of the old station wagon, reached in to hit the button that unlocked the passenger door, then returned the keys to her. He walked around the cab and climbed in.

She tossed the clipboard that held Paris’s daily log onto the dash, and her cell phone with it. She pushed the sun visor out of her way, leaned an elbow on the window and rested her left hand comfortably on the steering wheel.

He studied her posture. “You look comfortable,” he observed.

She straightened, dropping her hand to her lap. “Force of habit. I used to drive a shift for Paris off and on.”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Really. Does she know you sometimes drive on the sidewalk and can fell a parking meter without looking back?”

She glowered at him. “That was an accident and you know it.”

“I would hope so.”

“My heels were too high.” They’d been driving home from a party and quarreling. She’d insisted on driving.

“A lead foot in high heels is not a good thing.”

She turned slightly to give him her most arctic stare. “I thought you wanted to talk about you and Claudia.”

That stare had never intimidated him in the old days, and it didn’t now. “Still the same old Prue. Ignore your own transgressions but remind everyone else of theirs.”

She reached for her door handle, but he caught her arm. “All right, all right. Let’s not waste ten minutes arguing.”

“We wasted a whole marriage arguing,” she countered. “When you were around enough to argue.”

GIDEON WONDERED why he’d come. It wasn’t that he wanted her back; he’d been honest when he told her he didn’t. He’d thought the absolute adoration he’d had for her in the beginning had completely disintegrated, but it hadn’t. One look at her made him forget the bad times, remember the fun.