Feeling slightly threatened by something he didn’t quite understand, Lash started for the door.“At any rate, I hope you both get what you deserve.”
Ryder thought about what the lawyer had said long after he was gone.There was something about him that didn’t quite mesh.
CHAPTER 9
Amonth to the day from their wedding, the extra room over the garage was finished, and it was none too soon.There had been far too many times when Casey had seen Ryder’s brown, bare body, and Ryder had spent way too many nights alone on a floor when he had a wife who slept alone in their bed.After thirty days of marriage, they were no longer strangers, but the strangeness of their situation was about to make them enemies.
* * *
“Just put the bed over here,” Casey said, pointing at the wall opposite the sliding glass doors.“And the dresser here, the easy chair there….No, there I think, nearer the corner lamp.Yes, that’s perfect.”
A small, birdlike woman wearing a stiff blue uniform and high-top tennis shoes scurried into the room with an armload of Ryder’s clothes, bypassing the deliverymen from the furniture store.
Her graying blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail reminiscent of the sixties.Her eyebrows were thick and black with a permanent arch, compliments of a number seven jet eyebrow pencil.The look was topped off with sky blue eyeshadow and frosted pink lipstick.Bea Bonnaducci’s appearance hadn’t changed since 1961, the year she’d graduated high school.The way Bea had it figured, if it had worked for her then, it should work for her now.
“Where would you be wantin’ me to put the mister’s things?”she asked.
“Put that stuff in the dresser and hang those in the closet.At last he has plenty of space.”
Bea did as Casey directed and then scooted out of the room for a second load, leaving her to deal with the last of the furniture being carried in.
And in the midst of it all, Ryder strode into the bedroom, his nostrils flaring with indignation.He glared at the men who were setting the last pieces of the furniture in place, and when they left, he exploded.
“Damn it to hell, Casey!You waited until Dora sent me on some wild-goose chase and then you set Bea to digging in my stuff.I know you want me out of your hair, but you could have waited for me to get back.”
Stunned, Casey stood mute beneath his attack, unable to find a single thing to say that would calm the fire in Ryder’s eyes.She watched as he paced from one side of the room to the other.When he stepped inside the brand-new bathroom, he gave it no more than ten seconds of consideration before coming back out again.
“I thought you would be glad to have your own space,” she finally said.
He spun, his posture stiff, looking for a fight that just wasn’t there.“I didn’t say I wasn’t,” he muttered.“What I said was…” He sighed, then thrust his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration.“Oh hell, forget what I said.”He stomped out of the room as suddenly as he’d appeared.
Casey plopped down on the side of the bed and knew she was going to cry.It wasn’t so much the fact that he had yelled at her.It was the disappointment that did her in.He’d done so much for her over the past four weeks.All she had wanted to do was return the favor.
She doubled her fists in her lap, staring intently at a pattern on the carpet and telling herself that if she concentrated enough, the tears wouldn’t come.In the midst of memorizing the number of paisley swirls in a square, a teardrop rolled down her cheek and into her lap.She drew a shuddering breath and closed her eyes.It didn’t stop the pain or the tears.They rolled in silent succession.
Ryder walked back into the room carrying the last of his clothes that were on hangers and jammed them onto the rod.
“I sent Bea back to the house,” he said, and then the bottom fell out of his world.Casey was crying, and it was all his fault.
“Oh, hell, Casey, please don’t cry.”
“I am not crying,” she said, and hiccuped on a sob.
He stood, frozen to the spot by the pain in her voice and wondered when it had happened.When had she gotten under his skin?And there was no mistaking the fact that she was there.Why else did he feel as if he were about to explode?
“I am a total bastard.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say.She looked up.He groaned beneath his breath.Those big green eyes, the ones he’d come to know so well, were swimming in tears.
“I am the lowest form of a heel.”
She sniffed and he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and laid it in her hands.
“I do not deserve to see another day.”
She blew her nose and then handed the handkerchief back.“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she said.“I suspect you were just being a man.”
He stuffed the handkerchief, snot, tears, and all into his pocket and tried not to be offended by what she said.“Exactly what does that mean?”
