LITMIR.BIZ

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Jim and Estelle were retired, Jim from the U.S. Forest Service and Estelle from nursing. Jim was a big man with thick shoulders, a bit of a paunch and a full head of graying hair that would make many a younger man blanch in envy. Estelle was tall and thin—her dark hair also graying—and so full of cheerful energy that she appeared to bounce from one task to another. This great sixty-something couple still worked for Val, Jim in the Animal Hospital and Estelle in Val’s home, and Val could talk with ease to each of them. Not about herself, of course, or her disturbing past, but Jim and Estelle had become parental figures to her. She truly loved them both.

      “What a precious wedding,” Estelle said with a nostalgic sigh, as though recalling her own wedding. Jim stood behind her and grinned. Maybe he, too, was remembering.

      “Val, you look beautiful in that dress,” Estelle said. “And Jinni’s gown? Oh, my, I’ve never seen such lovely dresses in all my days. Where did you say they came from?”

      “From New York City, Estelle. Jinni knows the designer. She called her, described what she would like shipped out, and we received the dresses two days later.”

      “And they fit perfectly.” Her comment was a statement, not a question.

      “With a nip and a tuck here and there, yes.” Val could see that people were starting to leave the church. Max and Jinni were planning to fly to California and honeymoon at a fabulous resort, and it was time they headed out.

      “I’m going to say goodbye, then I’ll be ready to go,” Val murmured while getting to her feet.

      “We’ll wait in the car,” Jim called. “Take your time.”

      “Thanks, Jim.” Val hurried to the happy newlyweds. Max was talking to a tall, well-dressed man, and Val barely noticed either of them while she took Jinni’s hand and said with teary eyes and a catch in her voice, “You are the most stunning bride this little church has ever seen. Jinni, what can I say, except thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I don’t need to tell you to be happy, because you always are.”

      Jinni blinked back her own tears. “You can be happy, too, sweetie. You just have to look at the bright side of life. We both know it’s there, Val, but sometimes it isn’t out in the open. You have to do a bit of searching to find it. Now, kiss me and say goodbye. We have to get a move on if we’re going to make our flight.”

      Smiling through her tears, Val kissed her sister’s cheek, then turned to kiss Max. But instead of looking into Max’s brilliant blue eyes she found herself looking into Reed Kingsley’s brilliant green eyes. She was so startled that she let out a small gasp.

      “Hello, Valerie,” he said calmly.

      “Hello,” she answered, and twisted a bit to plant a quick kiss on Max’s cheek. “Have a wonderful honeymoon,” she whispered, then backed away, turned and hurried down the aisle to the church’s outer door. She was almost there, almost home free, when Reed caught up with her. He was a persistent cuss, obviously used to having his own way and unable to believe that a woman to whom he made overtures would not reciprocate. Val wasn’t interested, and she wasn’t about to explain to him or to any other man why she wasn’t.

      “Val, must you leave so quickly? Are you going straight home?” Reed asked, while visions of getting to know this unusual woman, really getting to know her, danced in his head one more time. He didn’t normally have to chase a woman for months and months to get a few words out of her. He could already tell that she wasn’t going to be any nicer to him tonight than she usually was.

      She slanted a glance at him over her right shoulder. “Yes, I am. Good night.”

      She had succeeded in putting him down once again, and it didn’t help that he’d been right about her apparently irrevocable attitude toward him.

      “Val,” he said quietly, “I only want to talk for a minute.” He saw that his plea didn’t move her, but he still held his breath until she spoke.

      “I can’t,” she said coolly, politely. “Sorry, but the Worths are waiting in their car for me.”

      She left him standing there with a taken-aback look on his handsome face, which she dismissed with an annoyed toss of her head. He wasn’t stupid, so why didn’t he take the not-so-subtle hints she dropped every time they ran into each other? She hadn’t known he would be at the wedding. Since he wasn’t a close friend of Jinni’s, he must be Max’s business associate. Max, she knew from Jinni, had invited a few business buddies to the affair, the few who lived in the area.

      Hell, maybe they played golf together. How would she know?

      Val put Reed Kingsley out of her mind and walked to the Worths’ car. As far as she was concerned, the evening was over. Jinni was married and her life with Max had already begun. It was a lovely thought, even if she didn’t want the same thing for herself, Val conceded as she got into the car.

      While Jim and Estelle took Val home, Reed, driving with a frown on his face, made a left on Main and considered stopping in at Joe’s Bar, or maybe even pushing the envelope by going out to Beauties and the Beat strip joint. He nixed that idea almost at once; he would like some female company, but not with the gals who danced half-naked at the joint.

      “Damn,” he mumbled. This thing with Valerie Fairchild had crept up on him when he wasn’t looking. He couldn’t quite place the first time he’d seen her as a beautiful, sexy, desirable woman, but that seemingly irrevocable opinion had taken root without conscious direction from his brain. Now, it had grown into something that, considering Val’s constant rejection, he’d be better off without.

      The whole thing perplexed him. He had never been one to lose sleep over sex or romance or any other type of male-female relationship. He liked women—women of all ages, for that matter—and they liked him.

      Except for Val. Why didn’t she like him? Why, of all the women he knew, was she the one that had finally gotten under his skin? Was it because she played so hard to get?

      “She’s not playing at all,” he muttered. “There’s the problem.” Rumor was a gossipy little town, and there was not one speck of gossip about Val and men, not old gossip, not new gossip. He’d wondered if her sexual preferences were with her own gender, but there wasn’t any gossip about that, either. No, she was heterosexual, strikingly beautiful even if she did very little to enhance her looks, and simply didn’t like him. She might be the one woman in his personal history who had truly gotten under his skin, but it was damn obvious that he hadn’t gotten under hers.

      Wasn’t it time he called it quits? He’d had enough of Val’s polite disregard of his very existence. There certainly was no shortage of available women in the area, and spinning his wheels over one who couldn’t care less was utter nonsense. With that decision made, he told himself he already felt better.

      But obviously he’d been driving on automatic pilot—his mind a million miles away—because he was long past The Getaway, a spa on the outskirts of town, before he realized that he’d left Rumor and Joe’s Bar in the dust. Fine, he thought. He didn’t want to drop into Joe’s, anyway. Making a U-turn, he drove back down Main to Kingsley Avenue and swung a right.

      He was going home, and the whole damn town would be old and gray before he turned himself inside out to get Val Fairchild’s attention again.

      Weatherwise, it was an incredible November. One perfect day rolled into another and another, each with brilliant sunshine and air so clear that whenever Val looked off into the distance, she felt the lovely, if unrealistic, sensation of limitless vision.

      Bright, flaming colors had replaced the dark greens of the trees and bushes, and the unique smell of fall seemed to permeate Val’s every cell. The residents of Rumor, Montana, had been enjoying the pleasures of a storybook, picture-perfect Indian summer for more than two months now.

      People Val knew kept saying it wouldn’t last, but they had started saying that in September and had repeated it almost constantly throughout October. Val took it a day at a time. It couldn’t last forever and no one with a lick

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