A Will and a Way (2 page)

A test, or simply temptation? How many times in his life had he let one of these moments of possibility pass him by? Lingering gazes locked with random women spotted in restaurants, bars, and even the DMV. Time and again, he’d let sparks of attraction fizzle out without exerting the effort to do anything but walk away. Hell, he could tick three very specific opportunities off the top of his head, including the last time he’d kissed his old friend’s new wife goodbye sixteen years earlier.

Was she meant for him? Was Josie meant for Greg? His best friend was true-blue Archie Andrews through and through. And he’d gone and married Josie—the ultimate Veronica. Did that mean Reggie was supposed to beat old Archie’s game and win Betty in the end?

And what the hell was his Betty doing out here anyway? He scanned the area. His love of this moment was the lone passenger waiting for the early morning bus. The observation made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

Will frowned and scanned the nearly deserted street. This was a middle-class neighborhood. There should have been more foot traffic by now. People heading into work early, delivery drivers on their routes, those nut jobs who liked to dress up in spandex and pound pavement for the pure joy of making the rest of the world feel sluggish and lazy. The stillness made him nervous. This was the city. Things were never this quiet.

The turn signal made a clicking sound far too plebian to fit the insanely expensive luxury sedan. The leather-wrapped steering wheel was smooth and warm beneath his palms, the vibration of the well-tuned engine barely more than a hum. Will stiffened when a man approached the shelter. He had a week’s growth of beard, two tattered plastic shopping bags wrapped around his shoes, and a pint bottle nosing from his coat pocket.

And sweet Betty seemed to have no street smarts.

She looked up, but instead of recoiling from the sight of her grungy companion or stepping out of the shelter into plain view of the street, she flashed a smile and nodded. Two actions so innocuous he shouldn’t have noticed them. But he did. He noticed everything about her. The way her handbag wasn’t quite zipped all the way. That sunshine-gold hair. Suddenly, she glanced his way. Their eyes met and held across two empty lanes of traffic.

The thought of pulling over to the curb and yanking a total stranger into the car didn’t seem quite so unreasonable now. He cranked the wheel, but the second he darted a glance in the rearview mirror, the spell was broken.

A minivan pulled to a stop inches from his rear bumper and a low growl of frustration and desperation tangled in his throat. A beater blaring enough bass to shake loose whatever nuts and bolts were holding the thing together slid to a stop in the lane beside him. The bus rounded a corner two blocks back. A garbage truck lumbered to a stop in the far right lane, obliterating his view. He pressed back in the seat, embedding his skull in the leather headrest as he craned his neck, but it was no good. All he could see was a slice of puffy pink coat.

His chance was gone. The love affair fizzled before the number Seventy Riverside Drive’s overtaxed hydraulics finished hissing.

He glared at the bus, resenting the hell out of the fact that a vehicle bearing an advertisement for the latest hair growth wonder cut off the last frame of his comic book dream come true.

The garbage truck rumbled at a rough idle. The bass blaster rattled. A knot of bitter regret took up residence under Will’s breastbone. He pressed an absent hand to the ache and rubbed. The magical moment of zip and tingle was gone, and he wanted it back, damn it. How long had it been since he’d felt anything like it? How many chances would he have to miss? More to the point, how many more would he get?

An impatient blast of a horn jerked him out of his reverie. He held up a hand in an apologetic wave and pressed the accelerator. Grasping the steering wheel underhand, he stared after the bus even as he eased into the left turn. The splotch of pink was impossible to miss. The driver behind him tooted his horn again and Will snarled.

“What’s your fucking hurry?”

He glanced at the rearview mirror to find a soccer mom in a minivan leaning into the turn as if she could speed him along with the sheer force of her will. Given the death grip she had on the top of the wheel and the grim determination thinning her mouth, he figured he’d be wiser not to test her. He sped up, but the woman in the van darted around him and flipped him the bird. He caught a glimpse of a princess movie playing on the multi-screened in-car entertainment system.

Will slowed as he toyed with the idea of hooking a right and giving the number Seventy Riverside Drive a bit of a chase. But really, what was the point? Even if he caught up to the bus, caught up to her, what would he say?

“Hey, Betty, wanna go to the sock hop?” He gave a half-disgusted but wholly amused snort. “We could double with Jughead and Big Ethel.”

Pointing the car toward Harter’s Bakery, he focused on the promise of coffee and a danish. He cruised the streets on autopilot, lifting a hand in greeting when he saw Sam pushing back the gates that covered the pharmacy’s plate-glass windows and nodding a good morning to Rex, the bakery’s delivery driver.

Most of the people from the old neighborhood had been at the wedding. They’d all been there to see Greg get his girl. All Will got was a chance to play airport chauffeur and a glimpse of a woman who just might have been The One.

He could hardly imagine what the fickle witch Fate would throw at him next.

Slipping into a spot in front of the bakery, Will made a mental note to tell Greg that his beautiful beast of a European driving machine had nearly been taken out by a woman jamming some serious Disney, not to mention being blown off the starting line by a rust bucket and one of Sanitation Services’ finest. The cocky sonofabitch needed taken down a notch or two.

Only alcoholics drink a second glass of wine at home, Betty Jean. You don’t want people to talk, do you?

Betty Asher eyed the bits of sediment in her glass of white wine. It was better than openly staring at the man seated at the middle of the scarred mahogany bar. Hooking the heels of her stiff new snow boots into the rungs of her stool, she geared herself up to take another sip. The pale gold liquid that claimed to be Chablis edged closer to tiki-torch fuel once it hit her palate. Just as well. Any wine strong enough to peel paint should be enough to kill the few brain cells that stored her mother’s litany of soft-spoken admonishments.

Resentment rose from Betty’s gut and lodged like a fist in her throat. Well, she wasn’t having her second glass of wine at home.

So there, Mother.

The stem of the glass was smooth, sturdy, and warm from her fingers. They didn’t use Riedel in bars like the one she’d stumbled into. Hell, this one didn’t even have a name. Just a few ancient neon beer signs hung in the narrow, dusty windows. This wine glass was almost as thick as a jelly jar and bore the mark of the ghost of lipsticks past. Her dead mother and fastidious, appearance-obsessed late husband would be horrified. She rubbed her bottom lip over the stranger’s imprint. If that wasn’t out-and-out rebellion for a properly raised young lady, she didn’t know what was.

She smirked and swirled the wine, setting the bits of flotsam spinning. Lifting it in silent toast to the not-so-dearly departed, she braved a sip then shuddered. Nope. It was just as bad on second approach.

Grimacing, she turned her attention from the sad excuse for wine and back to searching for the name she couldn’t quite find. Sneaking another peek at the handsome stranger seated near the other end of the bar, she considered a few more candidates. The man was no Kiefer, Clooney, or Richard Gere. Ed Harris? Yummy, but no. Not Jude Law, either, but maybe Clive Owen. She squinted a little, trying to determine if the man looked the least bit British, then gave up with a sigh. At least he didn’t look anything like Brad Pitt. She’d never really understood the whole Brad Pitt thing. His lips were too pink. Something about him was…soft.

You’ve got no business being out all alone like this, Betty Jean. It isn’t decent. Run along home like a good girl.

Betty gave her head a shake to dislodge the memory of her mother’s voice and forced herself to sit taller. The slick fabric of her parka made it a tricky maneuver, but somehow she managed. Steeling her spine, she lifted the glass and chanced another glance as the wine touched her lips. She couldn’t help herself. The man was a dead ringer for one of Julia Roberts’ movie boyfriends. She just needed to figure out which one.

The problem was, each time she looked at him, he stared right back at her. A rude, oddly challenging, and somewhat insolent stare. Like he knew what she looked like under her parka. And without her pearls...or pants. Even more disturbing was the fact that she found it arousing rather than off-putting.

Everything about him was attractive. His dark hair was straight-ish but tousled. Not the styling gel type of tousling, either. The kind that only came from running one’s hands through those thick strands. Repeatedly. A liberal sprinkling of salt lightened the pepper but did nothing to detract from the overall roguishness the guy was rocking. This was a bad boy, born and bred. That ruled out Tom Hanks and pre-Divine Brown Hugh Grant.

She averted her gaze to the row of gleaming beer taps arrayed in front of Julia’s beau and licked her lips. Kerosene with notes of dirt and a hint of…something unidentifiable. Oh, lord, what was she doing here? This sort of interaction was exactly what she’d meant to avoid when she’d chosen one of the two empty stools at the end of the bar. From here, she should only have to stare down the St. Pauli Beer girl and her amazing beer-serving abilities. She didn’t want company, no matter how handsome. All she’d wanted was a second glass of wine. A little Dutch courage before she scaled the next challenge in her new life. Relaxation in a glass.

Men don’t like it when a lady leads them on, Betty Jean. There’s no sense in encouraging him.

Who says I’m leading him on, Mama?

Gritting her teeth, she tipped her head back and bolted the wine. It seared her throat and blistered her belly. By the time her eyes stopped watering, her mother’s moonlight and magnolias drawl was nothing more than a memory.

“Did you figure it out, then?”

A rich, deep baritone undercut the eighties rock blaring on the stereo and the cheers of the hockey fans crowded around the tables in the corner. She had no doubt the question was aimed at her, but she also had no idea how to field it. Sniffing, she feigned nonchalance as she dashed the tears from her lashes with her finger. Surely there had to be a place in the world where it was perfectly normal for middle-aged women to cry in bars for no reason.

Clinging to the hope that she’d landed in that particular little Utopia, she darted a glance at Mr. Movie Star before returning to her intense study of what appeared to be a well-used Pabst Blue Ribbon tap handle. “Excuse me?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a slow but utterly devastating smile creep across his face. Starbursts of fine lines fanned from shining brown eyes. A pair of worn brackets swallowed the dimples she noticed earlier. The scar that sliced through his upper lip stretched thin and tight. She wanted to lick it.

“Have you figured out which one of Julia Roberts’ boyfriends you think I am?”

Her heart thudded against her breastbone. She wrapped her fingers around the empty wine glass and stared him dead in the face. Like any woman raised in the South, she had a healthy, if a bit grudging, respect for psychic phenomena. This man was obviously an expert mind reader. That, or he had women crawling out of the woodwork to tell him he looked exactly like—

“Dylan McDermott!”

He chuckled and shook his head as he slid from his stool. “Sorry, wrong answer.”

Her cringe was instinctive. Wrong. She knew she was wrong even as the name popped out. Hell, she had the entirety of Steel Magnolias committed to memory and the man approaching her was nothing like the soft-spoken Louisiana lawyer who’d stolen Shelby Eatenton from the safety of her mama’s home.

Tipping her chin up, she held her ground. Well, she held it as best she could. The coat was slippery against the Naugahyde cover of the bar stool, and the urge to slip off before he could reach her was strong. So very strong. But not quite powerful enough to light a fire under her. Besides, she didn’t trust her legs to hold up if she tried to bolt.

His eyes were fixed on her as he skirted stools occupied by two men who’d spent the entire time she’d been there bickering over every topic Fox News presented for their consideration. A blush flared in her cheeks and caught like brush fire, enveloping her in the kind of bone-melting warmth she hadn’t experienced since she left the pine-scented air of southeast Mississippi.

A rush of homesickness so cloying it made it hard to breathe pressed down on her. Life in Percy might not have been a bed of roses since Donald died, but packing up her St. Johns knits and heading for the frozen tundra wasn’t her best and most brilliant idea to date.

She closed her eyes, giving herself a moment to gather her wits before she’d either have to face this too-compelling man, or pull on her hat and gloves and slink away into the frigid night. She’d almost opted for the latter when a scene featuring a windblown Julia cruising down the Chicago River while her best friend crooned in her ear popped into her head.

He came to a stop right beside her. Long, work-worn fingers curled the rim of his glass. His smile was warm and teasing, but his dark eyes were cool and appraising as he gave her a frank once-over. When they met hers again, the air seeped from her lungs. He leaned in just enough to claim his territory, but not so much as to crowd her. The sleeve of his waffle-weave Henley brushed her coat with a soft
shussst
as he lifted the glass of pale amber liquid to his lips and took a drink, those dark eyes holding hers for a second too long.

She caught the scent of scotch, good scotch, and man. Every long-neglected hormone in her body jumped up and started dancing a jive. With jazz hands. This man with his scotch breath and faded shirt was a bad man. A deliciously bad, bad man.