Good Husband Material

Kari blinked at Gage. She’d expected him to say a lot of things, but not that. He’d been looking at her as if he were the big bad wolf and she were lunch. But in the kind of way that made her body heat up and her heart rate slip into overdrive.

So, she’d been thinking about last night’s kiss and he’d been mulling over paint chips and siding. Obviously her ability to read Gage and handle herself with grace and style hadn’t improved at all in the time she’d been gone.

“I’m still figuring that out,” she said. “The biweekly cleaning service kept the house livable, but it’s still old and out of date. I could redo the whole place, but that doesn’t make sense. I have a limit to both my time and money, so I’m going to have to prioritize.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

My, oh my, but he still looked good, she thought, as she had yesterday. And the pleasure she took in seeing him hadn’t worn off yet. She wondered if it would. By the end of summer, would he be little more than just some good-looking guy who happened to live next door? Could she possibly get that lucky?

Before she could answer her own question, Daisy breezed into the conference room. From her low-cut blouse to the red lipstick emphasizing her full lips, she was a walking, breathing pinup girl. Kari felt bony and string-bean–like in comparison.

“Thanks so much for coming,” she said as she closed the door, then took the seat next to Gage. “I’m writing a follow-up article for the paper and I thought it would be fun to interview you both together. I hope you don’t mind.”

Kari shook her head and tried not to notice how close Daisy sat to Gage. The other woman brushed her arm against his and smiled at him in a way that had Kari thinking they were way more than friends.

But that didn’t make sense. Gage wasn’t the kind of man to be involved with one woman and kiss another. Which meant Gage and Daisy had once been a couple or that they were still in the flirting stage. Either concept gave her the willies.

Daisy set her notebook on the table in front of her but didn’t open it. She leaned toward Kari. “Wasn’t that something? I mean, a bank robbery right here in PL.”

Kari blinked. “PL?”

“Possum Landing. Nothing exciting ever happens here.” She smiled at Gage. “At least, nothing in public. I thought it was so amazing. And, Gage, throwing yourself in front of the bullets. That was amazing, too. And brave.”

He grunted.

With a speed that left Kari scrambling, Daisy turned to her and changed the subject. “So, you’re back. After all those years in New York. What was it like there?”

“Interesting,” Kari said cautiously, not sure what this had to do with the holdup the previous day. “Different from here.”

“Isn’t everywhere,” Daisy said with a laugh. “I’ve spent time in the city, but I have to tell you, I’m a small-town girl at heart. PL is an amazing place and has everything I could ever want.”

She spoke earnestly, focusing all her attention on Gage for several seconds before swinging it back on Kari.

“What’s it like seeing Gage again after all these years?”

Kari blinked. “I’m, uh, not sure what that has to do with the bank robbery.”

“I would have thought it was obvious. Your former fiancé risks his life for you. He protects you from the hail of gunfire. You can’t tell me you didn’t think it was romantic. Don’t you think it was the perfect homecoming? I mean, now that you’re back.”

Kari risked a glance at Gage, but he looked as confused as she felt. What on earth was Daisy’s point with all this? As Kari didn’t want anything she said taken out of context and printed for the whole town to see, she tried to think before she spoke.

“First of all,” she said slowly, “Gage and I were never engaged. We dated. Second, I’m not back. Not permanently.”

“Uh-huh.” Daisy opened her notebook and scribbled a few lines. “Gage, what were you thinking when you walked into the bank?”

“That I should have followed my mama’s advice and studied to be an engineer.”

Kari smiled slightly and felt herself relax. Trust Gage to ease the tension in the room. But before she could savor her newfound peace, Daisy broke into peals of laughter, tossing her pen on the table and clutching Gage’s arm.

“Aren’t you a hoot?” she said, beaming at him. “I’ve always enjoyed your humor.”

The expression on her face said she had enjoyed other things, as well, but Kari didn’t want to dwell on that. She tried to ignore the couple across the table. Daisy wasn’t having any of that. She turned her attention back to Kari and gave her a look of friendly concern.

“I’m so pleased to hear you say that you’re not staying for the long haul. You and Gage had something special once, but I’ve found that old flames never light up as brightly the second time around. They seem to fizzle and just fade away.”

Kari smiled through clenched teeth. “Well, bless your heart for being so concerned.”

Daisy beamed back.

They completed the interview fairly quickly, now that Daisy had gotten her message across. Obviously she’d called Kari and Gage in together to see them in the same room, and to warn Kari off. Like Kari was interested in starting up something with an ex-boyfriend.

Small-town life, Kari thought grimly. How could she have forgotten the downside of everyone knowing everyone else?

Daisy continued to coo over Gage and he continued to ignore her advances. Despite being incredibly uncomfortable, Kari couldn’t help wondering about the state of their real relationship and vowed to ask Gage the next time she felt brave. In the meantime, she would do her best to avoid Daisy.

People in big cities thought nothing happened in small towns, she thought as she finally made her escape. People in big cities were wrong.

“You spoil me, Mama,” Gage said a few nights later as he cleared the table at his mother’s house.

Edie Reynolds, an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late fifties, smiled. “I’m not sure cooking dinner for you once a week constitutes spoiling, Gage. Besides, I need to be sure you’re getting a balanced meal at least once in a while.”

He began scraping plates and loading the dishwasher. “I’m a little too old to be eating pizza every night,” he teased. “Just last week I had a vegetable with my steak.”

“Good for you.”

He winked at her as he worked. His mother shook her head, then picked up her glass of wine. “I’m still very angry with you. What were you thinking when you burst in on those bank robbers?” She held up her free hand. “Don’t bother telling me you weren’t thinking. I’ve already figured that out.”

“I was doing my job. Several citizens were in danger and I had to protect them.”

She set her glass down, her mouth twisting. “I guess this means your father and I did too good a job teaching you about responsibility.”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Probably not,” she admitted.

The phone rang. His mother sighed. “Betty Sue from the hospital auxiliary has been calling me every twenty minutes about our fund-raiser. I’m amazed we got through dinner without her interrupting. This will just take a second.” She picked up the receiver on the counter and spoke in a cheerful tone.

“Hello? Why, Betty Sue, what a surprise. No, no, we’d just finished eating. Uh-huh. Sure.”

Edie headed for the living room. “If you want to rearrange the placement of the booths, you’re going to have to clear it with the committee. I know they told you to run things, but…”

Gage grinned as he tuned out the conversation. His mother’s charity work was as much a part of her as her White Diamonds perfume.

He finished with the dishes and rinsed the dishcloth before wiping down the counters. Every now and then his mother protested that he didn’t need to help after dinner, but he never listened. He figured she’d done more than her share of work while he and his brother Quinn were growing up. Loading the dishwasher hardly began to pay her back.

He finished with his chores and leaned against the counter, waiting for her to finish her conversation with Betty Sue. The kitchen had been remodeled about seven years ago, but the basic structure was still the same. The old house was crammed full of memories. Gage had lived here from the time he was born until he’d left to join the army.

Of course, every part of Possum Landing had memories. It was one of the things he liked about the town—he belonged here. He could trace his family back five generations on his father’s side. There were dozens of old pictures in the main hallway—photos of Reynolds at the turn of the previous century, when Possum Landing had been just a brash, new cow town.