Unfinished Business Read online

  He nodded, and his face took on an immediate transformation. “Madeline. She’s seven. I’m pretty much a lost cause now. No idea what I’ll do when she’s sixteen.”

  Addy smiled. “Some would call that poetic justice.”

  “For?”

  “All the fathers whose daughters went out with you.”

  He put both hands over his heart, looked wounded. “Was I that bad?”

  “Close enough.” She smiled. “Madeline lives with you?”

  Culley nodded.

  “Are you happy in Harper’s Mill?”

  “It’s home. Coming back was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

  The words sent up a flare of longing inside Addy. Over the years, she hadn’t let herself think about going back. As far as Mark was concerned, it hadn’t been an option. “Does your ex-wife live there, too?”

  He shook his head, his expression suddenly blank. “No.”

  Addy wanted to ask more, but felt his reluctance to discuss it.

  “Do you ever miss the orchard?”

  “Only every time I get a whiff of apples.”

  He nodded. “I missed being in a small town. When we were kids, I couldn’t wait to move on to somewhere bigger. Bigger had to be better. But then living in Philadelphia, I actually figured at six minutes a day, five days a week for thirty years, I’d be spending about thirty-two days of my life sitting at this one stoplight. Kind of changed my perspective about bigger.”

  Addy laughed, forgetting for the moment everything but the fact that she was sitting across the table from Culley Rutherford, who, since their sandbox days, had been able to make her laugh.

  “So what happened between you and Mark? Why did you two stop keeping in touch?”

  Culley looked away. “That was his choice, not mine.”

  “There must have been a reason.”

  “If there was, he’ll have to be the one to tell you.”

  “Now you really have me curious.”

  He met her gaze then. “People change, Addy.”

  “They certainly do.”

  Across the room, his buddies were standing, waving for a waiter.

  “Let me just tell them to go on without me,” Culley said, sliding out of the booth, looking a little relieved by the opportunity to change the suject.

  “I don’t want to mess up your plans with them.”

  “You’re not messing up anything. And I’m sure they’re done for the night, anyway.”

  She nodded, watching him make his way through the still-crowded bar. He clapped one of the men on the shoulder, laughed at something another said. Gladness washed over her for the fact that she had run into him in this place that was home to neither of them. It was like having a little piece of Harper’s Mill handed to her. Comforting. Familiar.

  A memory drifted up. A hot August afternoon, the summer before Mark had moved to Harper’s Mill. She could still hear the melodic voices of the migrant workers in the orchard beyond the pond. The apples she and Culley had given their horses still fresh on their hands as they’d sat there on the dock, feet dangling in the water, the setting sun warm on their faces.

  Addy had been garnering up her courage for days. Ever since they’d gone to the movies together the week before and sat in stilted silence while the couple on the screen settled into one of those mouths-wide-open kisses after which they declare undying love for one another. “Okay,” she’d said, “so I want to know what all the fuss is about.”

  “What fuss?”

  “About kissing. I want you to show me.”

  Culley had leaned back, surprise raising his dark eyebrows. “You need to save that for Mr. Right.”

  “What if he never comes along?”

  “He will. He’ll show up one day, and you’ll change every thought you ever had just so they’ll be like his.”

  “Will not!”

  “Will to.”

  “Not if his thoughts are anywhere near as chauvinistic as yours.”

  Culley grinned. “Realistic. Not chauvinistic.”

  “I’m not like that Pied Piper posse that follows you all over school.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Right.”

  Silence again, except for the knocking of their heels against the old wooden dock.

  “So I’m serious. Kiss me. Just once, and I’ll know what the big deal is. Or not.”

  “If I kiss you, you’ll melt into a puddle, and then what will I tell your mama?”

  Addy laughed. “How do you drag that ego around with you?”

  “It’s a chore,” he said.

  They both laughed then. Somewhere in the middle of it, their gazes snagged, and the laughter faded.

  And then as if not giving himself time to reconsider, Culley dipped his head, brushing her lips with his, the tail end of the kiss lingering a moment, then ending as quickly as it had begun.

  He planted both hands on the edge of the dock, staring down at the water. “Well?”

  Addy lifted a shoulder. “It was okay. I haven’t melted yet.”

  He looked at her, clearly not pleased with the answer. “Okay?”

  “Yeah.” She rubbed a thumb across her lower lip, giving it consideration. “Pleasant, I suppose.”

  “Pleasant is a Sunday afternoon drive with your great-aunt Ethel.”

  Addy giggled.

  Culley’s eyes had gone serious. He looped a hand around the back of her neck, pulled her to him and kissed her again.

  No friendly peck, this one.

  He opened his mouth and kissed her like he meant to close the deal.

  The intimacy of the kiss shocked Addy, sent waves of never before felt feelings tumbling through her. She made a soft sound and opened her mouth to his, following his lead.

  He slid an arm around her waist, gathered her closer. All of a sudden, that was the only thing in the world Addy Taylor wanted. To be closer to Culley Rutherford.

  They kissed like they’d done it a hundred times, and it was this that Addy thought about years later. How easy and right those kisses had felt.

  Maybe too right, because the intensity of what had happened between them that afternoon had set them both back on their heels.

  Culley let her go, quickly, as if not giving himself time to reconsider. They’d never before been awkward with one another, but now they couldn’t look each other in the eye. No more joking about whether the kiss had been any good, either. They’d gathered up their things and headed home, both quiet.

  They kept their distance from each other for the next few weeks. That kiss had changed the chemistry of their relationship. On the first day of school, the two of them sat in separate seats on the bus. Since kindergarten, they’d sat together, and every kid on their route wanted to know what was up with Addy and Culley.

  Addy wished she’d never asked him to kiss her. She wanted her friend back.

  She had met Mark on the first day of school that year. He’d transferred to their high school from another county, and Culley’s prediction had proved true. Addy fell in love. Oddly enough, he and Culley had become best friends. And just as Culley had said, she’d changed every plan she’d made for the future to synchronize with his, left the hometown she loved only to wake up one day to discover that the reality in which she’d been living wasn’t reality at all.

  “They’re done for the night.” Culley was back, sliding onto the leather seat beside her.

  “Are you sure I didn’t mess up your plans?”

  “We’d done about all the male bonding any of us could handle. They’re going back to the hotel to call their wives.”

  She smiled. “I was just thinking about that afternoon when we were fifteen, and I made you kiss me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “A real hardship.”

  The words hung there for a moment, charged the air with something that felt a little dangerous. “That changed everything between us,” she said, surprised by her own directness.

  He was silent, and then said, “It
scared the devil out of me.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “You want honesty?”

  She nodded.

  “Because after that, I knew we couldn’t be the same kind of friends anymore. Looking back, it all seems pretty innocent. But I never forgot that kiss.”

  She thought about her response for several seconds before admitting, “Neither did I. I told myself every girl is a bit intrigued by the guy who makes it clear his heart isn’t up for grabs.”

  “And I was one of those guys?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Was not.”

  “Were, too.”

  “On the basis of?”

  “Dating in nearly alphabetical order three-quarters of our class.”

  “Exaggeration.”

  “Barely.” She felt a flutter of something very much like happiness. Were they flirting with each other?

  Culley smiled then, sheepish. “That was sure another lifetime.”

  “So you’ve changed?”

  “The most boring man you’re likely to ever know.”

  “Your patients are probably eighty percent female.”

  “Ouch. Another arrow to the heart. Totally unjustified.”

  Addy gave him a doubtful look, hazy though it was, having been filtered through a second glass of red wine.

  Silence hung between them then, while the beginnings of an old connection took hold. They sat there, locked in the moment, while beside them the fortieth-anniversary couple got up and headed for the doorway, arms around one another’s waists.

  Warning signals blared in Addy’s ear. Here she sat shoulder to shoulder in the booth of a seductive hotel bar with an alarmingly attractive man who had once been a very big part of her life.

  Time to go, Addy.

  She glanced at her watch. “Twelve-thirty. I didn’t realize it was so late. I better get going.”

  He caught the waiter’s attention, asked for the bill, wouldn’t hear of splitting it. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you up.”

  “That’s all right, really. I’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, no. I insist. You’ll tell your mama about my bad manners, and then I’ll have to hear about it from my own mom for weeks.”

  Addy smiled. “Fair enough, but just to the elevator.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ONE OF THE lobby elevators stood empty and waiting. Addy popped on a polite this-was-really-terrific smile. “Thank you,” she said. “It was great seeing you.”

  “I’ll see you to your door.”

  Before she could think of a reasonable-sounding protest, he took her elbow and steered her inside. She pushed the button for her floor, then stood awkwardly to one side, Culley to the other.

  The danger alarms were going off again, awareness surrounding them like a force field.

  The elevator slid to a stop, and they stepped out. Her room was at the end of the corridor. “You don’t have to go all the way,” she said, even though something inside her screamed too late. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Addy, I’m not going to leave you standing out here in the hallway,” he said and took her elbow once again.

  To insist otherwise would have been silly—for heaven’s sake, he was just being polite—and she could not deny that his hand on her bare arm made her feel protected and secure, temporary as it was.

  At her room, she pulled the key from her black leather clutch. He took it from her, but didn’t open the door.

  “I’m really glad we got to see each other,” she said. “This night ended up very different from what it started out to be.”

  His blue eyes were steady, intense, some emotion there clearly at war with itself. “For me, too.”

  The elevator dinged, opening on the floor once more. The married couple from the bar stepped out and headed to the opposite end of the hall, their voices low, hushed, intimate. The key clicked in the door lock, a soft rush of laughter following.

  The air in the hallway was suddenly thick. Addy drew in a quick breath, mesmerized by the man standing before her with questions in his eyes. She had no answers. Only knew herself to be spellbound by the moment and a very real desire to invite him into her room.

  The thought was shocking in its clarity. She’d been married for eleven years. And she had been a faithful wife. By thought and deed. She’d had colleagues call her old-fashioned because she hadn’t bought into their so-what’s-the-big-deal-about-an-office-affair outlook, which they pushed like an illegal but socially acceptable substance. Addy’s was a live-and-let-live philosophy, but she had never bought into that kind of casual.

  Culley reached out, brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, the touch gentle, tender, yet at the same time, tentative, uncertain. “I’d take the hurt away if I could, Addy.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek then, just a whisper of contact against her skin. Consolation had been his intent. Of that, she was sure. But the gesture pulled at something inside her, stirred up longings for something very different. Something that might make the awful ache inside her disappear.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “You should,” she agreed. Seconds passed while she grappled with the opposing forces of reason and need. Reason lost the struggle. “But I don’t want you to.”

  She slipped a hand up his chest, rested it there with deliberate intent.

  “Addy.” Her name came out with ragged edges and a reluctance impossible to miss. “You’re hurting.”

  He hadn’t moved, and yet she could hear him backing away. He was right. She was hurting. Had been hurting for so long now that she was tired of being in this place, wanted very much to feel something different. Was that why she wanted him to kiss her? Did that explain the fact that if he turned around and left her here alone, she felt as if something inside her would break into a thousand pieces?

  “Tell me to leave, and I will,” he said.

  Before them lay two turns in the road, one the end of which she could clearly see: friendship, run-ins every few years. The other road was hidden and nothing could be seen beyond the immediate.

  Addy wanted immediate. Nothing more than that. Just here and now. Just this night. Because more than anything she wanted to feel something. To want and be wanted.

  “Stay,” she said.

  An inch of space separated them. She leaned forward and kissed him. She, Addy Taylor, who had no experience in the brazen department, made this first move. She had this awful fear that he might laugh. Think her incompetent. After all, her own husband had strayed. There must be a reason.

  But suddenly his arms were around her waist, pulling her to him. And he wasn’t laughing. He kissed her back with the kind of quick and urgent depth that lets a woman know a man wants her.

  Blind need whirled up, clouding everything except the pinpoint of focus that was the two of them wrapped around one another, into one another.

  Addy wound her arms around his neck and pulled him tight against her, not giving herself another chance to consider what they were doing. Where this would lead. To think would be to stop. She didn’t want to stop. She only wanted to erase the awful numbness inside her, this feeling of failure without understanding. Replace it with the very real feelings of needing and being needed.

  Culley gathered her to him, strong arms encircling her waist, binding her to him. And there in the middle of the Plaza Hotel’s fourth-floor hallway, they indulged themselves in the kind of kiss that made all intentions clear.

  The gentleness of those first moments fell away under the weight of raw need. And there were some serious forces propelling them along: long ago what-if’s and basic lust.

  Very basic. And very real.

  Culley walked her backwards to the wall. His knees dropped a couple of inches as he leaned up and into her.

  Addy forgot to breathe. No longer needed to because he was air.

  The elevator dinged again and brought them back to a short space of reality. Culley slid the key in the
lock, pushed the door open and steered her into the room, still kissing her, his foot kicking the door closed.

  Darkness engulfed them. From the window Addy had left cracked, traffic sounds echoed up from the street below, horns honking, car doors opening and closing. Her perfume lingered in the air where she had sprayed it earlier.

  And with the privacy of the room came another level of intimacy, urgency and haste marking each kiss. She had never known this kind of need, this sense of inevitability, as if the night had been planned long ago, in another lifetime.

  The housekeeper had been in to turn down the bed and left the clock radio playing on the nightstand. A DJ’s voice crooned, “And for all you night owls, we’ll pay a tribute to an old favorite, Frank Sinatra.”

  There in the darkness, her fingers found the buttons of Culley’s shirt, undoing them with fumbling inaccuracy. He jerked the knot of his tie free. She slipped a hand inside his shirt, exploring the smooth, muscular warmth there.

  Culley said her name, the sound low and hoarse in his throat.

  The song played on around them, something about flying to the moon, and that was exactly how Addy felt, as if part of her were soaring with this purely potent mixture of want and need.

  Culley’s hand went to the back of her neck, pulled her closer against him, his mouth seeking hers with a need as quick and bright as the igniting of a match. She drew in an unsteady breath, wrapping her arms around his neck, appreciating with startling awareness the hard, very male imprint of him.

  They fell back onto the bed, heads colliding with the mound of pillows beneath the headboard, most of which Culley quickly swept away. Their hands reached for buttons, zippers, yanking, pulling, breaths fast and harsh, as if to stop for the briefest moment would allow reason and logic a chance at protest.

  His hands transformed her from a woman whose self-image had hit bottom with the discovery of her husband’s infidelity to a woman who at this moment, felt, from the deepest part of her, wanted, desired.

  It wasn’t only his touch, but the way he touched her. He made her feel as if this was something he had wanted for a very long time. Could that be true?