Sunny Chandler's Return (12 page)

She tilted her head back. “Were you suitably impressed?”

“Yes, I was,” he answered seriously.

Sunny didn’t want to ask the next question, but it was pressing against the back of her throat, demanding to be voiced. “How’s Gretchen?”

He rolled his shoulders once, quickly, in the facsimile of a shrug. “She’s, uh, she’s okay.”

Their eyes met and held for several beats before Sunny said, “Well, we were just on our way out. Ready, Ty? It was so good to see you again, Don. Tell Gretchen hello for me.”

Don moved out of the way so she could slide from the booth. Ty tossed a handful of bills on the table, spoke a gruff good-night to Don, and then followed Sunny outside.

She could barely wait until he opened her car door. When he did, she all but fell into her seat before her knees buckled beneath her. Taking the lake road out of town, Ty drove just within the speed limit. Sunny rested her head against the back of the seat and let the humid wind pound against her. Not a single word passed between them during the entire trip.

Ty braked the Datsun in front of the cabin. Sunny wanted to escape without any ado. “Thanks for the evening, Ty. It was fun.”

She was out of the car in a flash and running up the steps of the porch. She fumbled with her keys at the door, cursing her clumsiness when she dropped them.

It seemed that making a hasty getaway was out of the question anyway. Ty elbowed her aside, picked up the keys, and unlocked the door himself.

He didn’t wait for her to step inside, but pushed her in ahead of himself and switched on the light. By the time Sunny’s eyes had become accustomed to the sudden brightness, he had a grip on both her shoulders.

“Let me go! What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, trying to squirm out of his hold.

“That’s my line, Sunny. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing!”

“Then why did you act that way in front of Jenkins?”

“What way?”

He shook her slightly. “Don’t play dumb. Start talking.”

“About what?”

“I want to know why you walked out on your wedding.”

Seven

She abruptly ceased struggling. “What makes you think I’d tell
you
?”

His face moved down very near to hers. “Because whether you want to admit it or not, Sunny, there’s something going on here.”

“Going on?”

“Between us.”

She laughed scoffingly. “Your wager. If there is one.”

“More than that.”

“That’s the extent of it.”

“Hardly,” he said softly. “Ever since I took you in my arms to dance, we’ve been short-circuiting. You might not want to admit it. You might not like it. But you sure as hell can’t deny it.”

The stubborn jut of her chin said otherwise. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

“Because, dammit, I want you. In bed.”

His bluntness gave her pause, but not for long. “You’re never at a loss for words, are you?”

“Never. And neither are you, except when the topic of your wedding comes around. Then you clam up. Why?”

“None of your business.”

“Yes, it is.”

“By what right?”

He suddenly grabbed her hand and yanked it forward, pressing it against the fly of his jeans. “
That
gives me the right. As your next lover I have a right to know what’s going on inside your head.”

She pulled her hand away and rubbed the palm of it as though it had been burned. He turned her stunned silence to his advantage. “Why did you put on that stupid, Southern-belle act when Jenkins came in?”

“What Southern-belle act?”

“Sweetheart, you could have given Vivien Leigh a run for her money.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then I’ll be more specific. The fluttering eyelashes. The simpering smile. Your ridiculous vocabulary. ‘I adore it.’ ” He made an impatient gesture. “Where did all that crap come from? Is that kind of posturing what Jenkins expects from you? No wonder your relationship with him fell apart.”

His words stung. But rather than take issue with a point she was afraid she might lose, she attacked from a different angle. “Relationship! That’s a funny word coming from you. What do you know about relationships? From what I hear the relationships you have with the opposite sex rarely last for more than one night, if that long.”

“We’re talking about you, not me.”

“
You
are talking about me.”

“It was your wedding that went bust.”

“Well, at least I got that close,” she shouted.

“I got closer,” he shouted right back. “I got married.”

For an instant, he froze. Then he turned quickly, giving Sunny his back. She watched him drive impatient fingers through his hair as he swore beneath his breath.

Sunny’s chest seemed to cave in on her. “You’re married?”

“Divorced.”

“When?”

“A long time ago.”

“What happened?”

“I got shot.”

“Shot?” She sank down onto the arm of the sofa.

Slowly, he turned to face her again. He stared down at her for a long, quiet moment, then started talking in choppy phrases. “We got married. I got promoted to Vice. I loved it. She hated it. We quarreled every time I left the house. She didn’t understand why—”

He stopped abruptly, raked his hair again, then resumed. “One night they called her from the hospital. The gunshot wasn’t much. The bullet went straight through me.” Absently, he touched his side. “But it was enough to scare hell out of her. When I recovered, she told me she couldn’t take it anymore, that she couldn’t live with me knowing that every time I left it could be for the last time. We divorced.”

Sunny studied the striped pattern of the sofa. “Is that why you came here?”

“No. That was something else.” His lips hardened into that thin line of bitterness that was becoming familiar to Sunny. It was there each time his motivation for moving to Latham Green was mentioned.

He moved to the window, opened the shutter, and stared out into the blackness surrounding the cabin. He seemed lost in morose reflection. Sunny wondered, with an unacknowledged pang of jealousy, if he was still in love with the woman who had left him. She surprised herself even more than him when she asked the question out loud.

His head came around slowly and he looked at her hard. Then a faint smile relieved his lips of their tension. “No, Sunny. If I was, I would never have let her go.”

“But you look so sad when you talk about it.”

“I only regret being a postponement to her happiness. I wish I had realized sooner that we weren’t right for each other, that we wanted different things.” He returned to where she was sitting on the arm of the sofa and crouched down in front of her. Paternally, he covered her hands with his. “Is that what happened to you and Jenkins? Did you just decide at the last minute that you wanted different things?”

“That was basically it, yes.”

“What was it
specifically
? Did you want to go on breaking hearts?”

She shoved him aside and surged to her feet. “Why do you, why does everyone, assume that it was
my
fault?”

She realized too late what a telling statement that was and only hoped that Ty didn’t catch it. Of course, that was asking too much from a policeman. He was trained to catch discrepancies, revealing nuances. He caught her by the shoulders and spun her around.

“Are you saying it was Jenkins’s idea?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Not intentionally, but incriminating confessions usually pop out accidentally. What happened, Sunny? What did Jenkins do?”

She stubbornly pressed her lips together. Ty studied her face, probing her turbulent eyes.

“Now that I think on it,” he said musingly, “your behavior tonight in the café was odd in more ways than one. You walked out on him in that church. Therefore, seeing him for the first time since then, shouldn’t you have acted ashamed? Contrite? Embarrassed?

“Instead, you tried real hard to sell him on how happy you are in New Orleans. You’re not cruel. If it was truly
you
who had jilted
him,
you wouldn’t have been so bubbly, rubbing his nose in how wonderful your life is without him.”

She turned her head away. He pinched her chin between his thumb and index finger and snapped it back around. “Don’t,” she said.

“That’s it, isn’t it? Jenkins said or did something before the wedding that forced you to take drastic measures. Something untenable. Intolerable.”

“Over a hundred people saw me turn and leave. You’ve heard how fickle I was,” she said, flinging her head back and swishing her hair. “I changed my mind, that’s all.”

“Uh-uh. I can’t buy that, Sunny. Something changed your mind for you. But what? What could he have done that was so terrible, so dastardly—” He stopped, staring at her incisively. “Another woman,” he said softly.

Sunny wrested herself free. She began roaming the room as though looking for an avenue of escape. Her arms were crossed over her stomach. Feeling chilled to the bone, she rubbed her upper arms with her hands. She went out onto the porch, seeking warmth. The sultry air embraced her. The shadows were dense; she wanted to draw them around her for protection.

But there was no escaping the intuitive man who was unraveling the secret that no one else had guessed. He moved up behind her.

“What happened, Sunny?” No longer malicious, his voice was as gentle and confidence-inspiring as a priest’s.

He had uncovered her deepest secret. She should be furious, but found to her surprise that she was almost grateful. For three years she had kept the pain bottled up inside her. It was a relief to uncork that bottle and let it all spill out.

“I had bought gold chain bracelets for all my brides-maids. The one I had given Gretchen—” Behind her, Ty cursed. Sunny didn’t stop to comment on his reaction to the name. Now that she had started, she was eager to get it all out. “—had a faulty clasp, so I had taken it back to the jeweler to be replaced.”

She shivered. He laid his hands on her shoulders and drew her back against him. “The morning of the wedding, I got up early. I had a million and one things to do and wanted to get as many chores as possible done early. Delivering Gretchen’s bracelet was one errand I could get out of the way. I drove over to her house. I called out when I let myself in the front door. Obviously she was still sleeping. So I crept into her bedroom.”

She paused, drew a deep breath. “And found Don in bed with her.”

She said it now with the same degree of bewilderment that she had felt that morning when she saw the man she would marry in a few hours, naked, in the sleeping embrace of a woman she had considered her good friend. Rage wasn’t what she had initially felt. Not even anger. But profound puzzlement.

What in the world was Don doing in Gretchen’s bed?

Of course the answer was obvious.

“They woke up. You can imagine ...” Her voice trailed off; her head dropped forward; her eyes slammed shut; she rubbed the center of her forehead. “It was terribly awkward for all of us. I cursed them to perdition, then ran out.”

“Did he come after you?”

“Oh, yes. He caught up with me and demanded that we talk. I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was so bizarre, so unexpected. I was dazed.”

“What did he say?”

She sighed and made a shrugging motion. “That it had been one of those things that just happened. He had no excuse, no explanation for it. Gretchen meant nothing to him. He loved me, was
in love
with me, wanted to marry me. He hated himself for what he’d done.” Again, she sighed. “That kind of thing.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes. I guess so. I don’t know.”

“Had he and Gretchen been together before?”

“He swore that they hadn’t been, but it didn’t really matter, did it? They had still betrayed me. Gretchen telephoned in tears, begging my forgiveness.”

“So you decided to go through with the wedding.”

“I didn’t think I had a choice. My parents had spent so much money on it. Practically everybody in town would be there. I was so confused, and there was no one I could talk to about it because I didn’t want anyone to know. It wasn’t as if I had weeks or even days to make up my mind. I had to decide in a matter of hours what I was going to do.

“Don kept telling me that I was being unreasonable to even consider calling off the wedding, that in the scheme of things one night out of our lifetime didn’t matter. He said I wasn’t taking a very modern approach, and that if I really loved him, I’d forgive him. And I thought I loved him. It seemed impossible to back out.”

She fell silent. When she picked up her story, her voice sounded far away, as though she were reliving it. “It seemed impossible until the minister asked if I would commit my life to Don. And in that instant, I knew I couldn’t. If he could take another woman to bed on the eve of our wedding, chances were very good he’d do it again. The least a married couple should expect from each other is fidelity, isn’t it?” She drew a ragged breath. “So when the minister posed the question, I knew that no matter what humiliation it cost me, I couldn’t go through with the wedding.”

For a long while Sunny stared into the darkness, lost in her memories. When she returned to the present, she realized that Ty Beaumont was supporting her and holding her close. His chin was resting on the top of her head. She could feel his breath sifting through her hair. His fingers were stroking the sides of her neck.

Suddenly the staggering consequences of what she had just done registered with her. Ty had tricked her into telling him what she had kept private all this time. Not even her parents knew why she had left the church that day. Ty’s knowing invested him with power over her. Her secret was certainly safe with Don and Gretchen. But now, Ty knew. At best, he pitied her. His pity wasn’t to be borne!

She spun around and faced him belligerently. Tears of mortification filled her eyes. “There! Satisfied? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“I had no idea it would be anything so painful.”

“Then you shouldn’t have badgered me into telling you.”

“No, we’re both better off for your telling me. What I don’t understand is why you’ve taken the rap for what happened. Why have you let everyone assume that Don was the injured party?”

“You’ll have to figure the rest out for yourself, Mr. Beaumont. I’m going inside.”

She swept past him, but he caught her arm and drew her back. “
Why,
Sunny?”

As she gazed up at him, her eyes filled with salty tears. “Don’t you know?”

The truth hit Ty Beaumont with the impact of a .45 slug. He knew what that felt like, and Sunny’s words struck him just as hard. “You’re still in love with the sonofabitch?”

“Good night. I’m going in.”

“Wait a minute.” He pulled her back again. “That’s it? That’s why you took the blame instead of announcing to the whole church full of people that he and Gretchen had been screwing around, which I personally think you should have done.”

“I didn’t ask for your advice, then or now.”

“That’s why, when you saw him tonight, you looked like you’d been poleaxed before you started playing Scarlett O’Hara. How can you love a creep like him?”

“I don’t expect a man with your lack of sensitivity to understand.”