The Stranger and Tessa Jones. Christine Rimmer
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he’d come to town for it. It’s Saturday, the twenty-sixth, two weeks from today.”
“Saturday.” So strange. Not even to know what day it was. “It’s Saturday, today?”
“That’s right. Saturday the twelfth.”
“Of?”
She gave him one of those looks of hers—a look of sweet and tender understanding. “January.”
“Well, all right. And so your friend’s having herself a winter wedding?”
“Uh-huh. Tawny—Tawny Riggins, my friend and my second cousin by marriage—always wanted a January wedding, even though everyone kept telling her she was crazy, that bad weather could ruin it. But Parker Montgomery, her fiancée, who also happens to be a second cousin by marriage, only a different marriage…” Her voice trailed off. She slanted him a look. “Sorry.”
“What for?”
“More information than you could possibly have needed or wanted.”
“Did I say that?”
She shrugged. “No. You were being polite.”
“Not so. I’m hanging on every word.”
She laughed. “Oh, I’ll bet.”
“Honest truth.”
“It’s only…small towns, you know. Everybody’s related to everyone else. Anyway, it’ll be a winter wedding and Bill said he would be my date for it.”
“So it’s not as bad as I thought, then.”
“What isn’t?”
“The idiot didn’t jilt you.”
“No. He only dumped me. But I broke half the dishes he gave me. That really helped me put things in perspective. I’m so over him.” She laughed. “All of a sudden, I can’t even remember his name.”
“Wait a minute. The fool gave you…dishes?”
“Oh, yeah. FestiveWare, it’s called. It comes in all these great colors, used to be popular back in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. They started making it again in the nineties. I told him I always wanted a place setting in every color. So he bought them for me. I was thrilled at the time. That was when our love was new, you might say.”
“Back when you could still remember his name, you mean?”
“That’s right, during the first week we spent together, when I went to Napa to tour the wine country last summer.”
“And Bill drove the tour bus…”
“I’ve gotta say. Your memory is certainly crystal clear on the subject of…what was his name again?”
He grinned. “You, in the snow, throwing dishes. That, I’ll always remember. Every plate you threw, every word you said.”
“Great.” She sounded resigned.
“Tell me the rest.”
“The rest of what?”
“Well, how did you find out about the showgirl?”
“Seriously, you do not need to know.”
“I do,” he insisted. “Tell me.”
“You should be resting.”
“Tell me.”
“Oh, fine.” She wrinkled her nose. “A letter. He broke up with me in a letter. I suppose I should count my blessings. At least he didn’t do it by e-mail.”
“You got the letter today, then?”
She nodded. “I heard the storm was coming in, so I closed up my store—I own a shop on Main Street—and I picked up my mail at the post office and I came home. I’d seen the letter in the stack and I was all excited, looking forward to hearing from him-whose-name-I-can’t-recall. I sat at my kitchen table and put the bills and junk mail aside. And read the letter. After I read it, I burned it. Then I got the dishes he gave me and lugged them out into the snow…and the rest, you know. I suppose you might say I kind of lost it, went a little crazy, when I read that letter.”
“A little?”
“Okay. It was more than a little. I went crazy…a lot.”
“Luckily, though, you’re past all that now.”
“I am. It’s a miracle. My broken heart is totally mended.”
“So call me Bill. Take me to the wedding of Tawny and Parker. After all, you did tell everyone that I was coming…”
She laughed. And then she grew serious. Gently, she reminded him, “We just met. You’re not well. And two weeks is…a long time from now.”
He couldn’t argue with that one. “Fair enough. For now, I’ll be satisfied if you’ll just call me Bill.”
“Bill,” she said. “All right. Bill.” When she looked at him like that, he thought that being some guy named Bill wouldn’t be half-bad. “Tell me,” she coaxed, “I mean, if you feel up to it. Tell me what you do know. What you remember…about your life. About yourself.”
“That’ll be over nice and quick.”
“I would like to know.” The bulldog, which had been sitting in the doorway until then, lumbered over. Tessa bent and scratched its wrinkled head. “Unless you’re too tired…”
He couldn’t refuse her. “I’m okay. Really.” She was, after all, his hero, the one who had saved him from certain death. “I remember riding in a big rig down Highway 49. That was today, some time before noon…” He shared what little he had to call memory—the ride into North Magdalene, the driver who tried to help him, the trek through town and along the highway to the tree-shaded road that led to her house. As he’d predicted, it took hardly any time to tell: the sum of his life, all he could recall of it, in a few sorry sentences. At the end, he shrugged. “The rest you know better than I do.”
She laid her palm, as she had twice before, along the side of his face. “It will be okay. You’ll see. It will all work out.” She spoke fervently.
He put his hand over hers. “Whatever happened to me before this, I finally got lucky. I found you.” Okay, it sounded sappy as hell. But too bad. It was the truth.
Tessa gazed at him so tenderly—or she did until she seemed to catch herself. She pulled her hand away, sat back from him a little and cleared her throat. He knew she was striving for just the right words—words that wouldn’t hurt his feelings, but would make it clear she wasn’t interested in getting anything romantic going with him.
He changed the subject before she found a way to tell that lie. “Two things I want now. Don’t say I can’t have them.”
“Well, that depends,” she said, all brisk and business-like, “on what they are.”
“Solid food.”
A tight, careful smile. “I can do that.”
“And even before food, I really need a shower—and don’t give me that look.”
“What look?”
“Doubtful. Worried. I can hack a shower.”
“Your bandages…”
“A bath, then. I can be careful of my knees and my head. I mean, if you’ve got a tub…” The bathroom he’d used earlier only had a shower stall.
“There’s a tub in the hall bath.” She still looked unsure. But then she sighed. “I suppose if your bandages get wet, we can just change them.”
“Exactly.”
“And I’ve got some sweats that are