The Tycoon's Son. Shawna Delacorte
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The conversation continued for a few minutes—innocuous questions about the daily mail, the hours of operation for the market, and about placing orders for specialty items from time to time. The sound of a buzzer interrupted them, indicating that someone had entered the market.
“I’ll be right there,” Vicki called out to the unknown person, then turned her attention back to Wyatt. “Is there anything else you want before I go?”
“Yes, there is.” He leveled a soul-searching gaze at her. “I want to know what happened to your wedding ring.”
“My...my wedding ring?” A hard lump formed in her throat and the nervousness churned in her stomach again. Why would he ask such a question?
“Yes. I couldn’t help but notice you’re not wearing one.”
She heard it in his voice again. Antagonism... accusation... the hint of some hidden knowledge. Did he know she had a son? Did he know about Richie? She looked down at her hand, stared at the finger where she had worn the simple gold band Robert Bingham had placed there on their wedding day. She felt the anxious trernoi and swallowed hard in an attempt to bring her feeling under control She knew she had to be very careful how she responded to his question.
“My ring...” She again stared at her hand. “I lost my husband in a plane crash. I’m a widow.”
She saw the shock cover his face. She saw something else, too—something in his eyes that she could not identify. Resentment? Smug satisfaction? She did not know.
“A widow?” Wyatt could not hide his reaction to this latest revelation. He had come back to a quiet little town where nothing ever happened and in fifteen minutes had been hit with one shock after another. He had not anticipated seeing Vicki at all, but she was there. Then he had learned about her father’s recent death, and now this—what else could there possibly be? How many more surprises were just waiting to jump out at him?
“You’ll have to excuse me, I have a customer to tend to.” Vicki quickly left the post office and hurried toward the front of the market. “Yes, may I help you with something?”
Wyatt tuned out the voices coming from the market. Her sudden and extreme nervousness had immediately grabbed his attention—the way she bit at her lower lip, how her face had seemed to pale and her hand tremble at the mention of her wedding ring. He suspected she was hiding something and he was determined to find out what it was.
His assumption had been that she was divorced, and he had intended to make some type of caustic remark to the effect that her decision to run off and get married hadn’t been a good one. But this was different. She was a widow. He did not want to delve into her personal life under these circumstances—at least not at that moment. He had started to extend the obligatory condolences, but the words caught in his throat.
He moved to the connecting door and watched as Vicki’s customer left the market. He stuck his post-office-box keys in his pocket, stepped through the door and took a steadying breath in the hopes of concealing his reaction. “I guess I’m pretty much out of touch with things around here. You said a plane crash?”
She averted her gaze, once again unable to maintain eye contact with him. “Yes. It...uh...was five years ago.” She felt very uncomfortable with the task of explaining her husband’s death to Wyatt Edwards. If Wyatt had not walked out on her, none of this ever would have happened. What if... She had played that game too many times. “It was a small private plane. Robert was the passenger. It went down in a field about ten miles from our home in Dallas.”
“Oh.” Oh... It was a dumb thing for him to say, but he did not seem to be able to come up with the right words. As much as he had hoped that she had been every bit as miserable as he had been for the past fifteen years, he had not anticipated this. He wanted to know so much, he wanted to know everything, but he could not bring himself to ask. “Well...I gucss I’d better be going. I have several things to do. I need to unpack...” His voice trailed off and he finally turned and left without saying anything else.
Vicki closed her eyes and sank back against the wall in an effort to compose herself. Her meeting with Wyatt had been a thousand times worse than she thought it would be. It almost seemed as if he had gone out of his way to be contrary and she did not understand why. He had walked out on her. not the other way around. She had been the injured party, the one with every right to be angry.
She knew there was no way they could avoid each other in the normal course of day-to-day activities in the small community, but she vowed to make sure everything stayed on an impersonal level. For the sake of her son, Wyatt Edwards could not be allowed back into her life.
The sound of the door shook her from her disturbing thoughts.
“Good morning, Vicki.” Noreen’s cheerful personality filled the store. “Looks like it’s going to be another beautiful day. I love this time of year—the last warmth of summer changing over to the crispness of autumn.”
“Good morning.” Vicki marveled at the way Noreen always managed to be in such a good mood. A woman in her early forties who had never been married, she always bubbled with good cheer. It seemed that nothing ever upset her.
As he drove up the hill to his house, Wyatt furrowed his brow in concentration. Something strange was going on. Vicki appeared far too nervous. She was hiding something. Did it have to do with him? Was the story about her husband dying in a place crash something she had made up in order to hide the truth?
Get a grip. You’re beginning to sound paranoid. This isn’t some sort of mystery novel It’s just one of those weird little quirks of life—nothing more.
He did his best to rationalize what had happened. Things were bound to be awkward between them, considering their past history and what she had done to him. He considered himself a mature adult who certainly knew how to handle an uncomfortable situation. He had brought those skills into play often enough in his business dealings. And this was no different. At least that was what he tried to tell himself, even though he knew it wasn’t true. This was not business. It was personal—very personal.
Two
Wyatt drove through the large gated entrance and parked in the circular drive in front of the house. He looked up at the imposing two-story structure with its gleaming white paint, dark green shutters and roof, and the large verandah that spanned the front and sides of the house. A little tremor of anxiety jittered inside him. It had been ten years since he had set foot in the house. Now, more than ever, he wondered if he had made a colossal error in deciding to return.
“Wasn’t it Thomas Wolfe who said, ‘You can’t go home again’?” He said the words aloud to no one in particular. Perhaps Thomas Wolfe had been correct. He climbed out of the car, grabbed his suitcase, and walked up the front steps to the large oak double doors.
Just inside the front door he stopped and looked around. The house was elegant to the point of almost being out of place in such a rural setting. The foyer was two stories high, with a large crystal chandelier that hung from the cathedral ceiling. A curved oak staircase traveled up each side to a second-floor landing that looked down on the entrance. He had designated the ground-floor east wing as his office area. The west wing included the den, the billiards room and a small study that had been his father’s personal domain.
The formal living room, dining room and kitchen facilities were located straight back through the foyer, with servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen. The second floor consisted of a large master bedroom suite and a library on one side of the landing and guest rooms on the other side.
Fred Olson, the caretaker who had stayed on all the years that the property had remained vacant, lived in a small apartment above the three-car garage.
It was far too big a house just for Wyatt, but it had been in the family from his great-grandfather’s time. He had been approached on several occasions over the last few years by real-estate developers. They had offered him a lot of