Chapter Five
Despite the board covering the broken window, night noises drifted into Adam’s office.
He stared at the folders spread open in front of him and struggled to concentrate.
The loan committee would meet Monday morning, as it had for decades.
He could imagine the looks on his employees’ faces if he wasn’t ready.
Normally he could shut out any distractions.
Whether it was neighborhood kids or grunts from Charlene’s favorite Sunday night wrestling.
But tonight—He closed the top file and sighed.
Jane had called Billie in for her bath about fifteen minutes before.
The eight-year-old’s arguments as to why she didn’t need washing had taken the better part of ten minutes.
At the end, he’d been grinning broadly at her imagination and inventiveness. What a kid.
But it wasn’t Billie’s chatter that kept him from working.
Nor was it Charlene’s television shows or the crickets.
It was Jane. He’d gone to church in that same building for the past nine years.
Except for an occasional service missed because of illness or vacation, he’d been faithful in his attendance, and his attention.
This morning, as now, his mind had wandered.
The past, so easily disposed of when there was no reminder, slipped around the walls of his control.
It weighed on him, made him lose track of the sermon or his notes on a loan.
When she had left, all those years ago, he’d been able to occupy his mind with the details of picking up the pieces.
All the things he’d complained about to Jane that she’d left him to handle had filled his time and his thoughts.
The act itself had been pushed aside, first for a few days, then indefinitely, until he’d lost track of it all.
Occasionally, something would happen to remind him.
He would recall a conversation, a moment, then shove it back where it belonged and get on with his life.
It wasn’t going to be so easy this time, he thought as he dropped his pen onto the desk and leaned back in his leather chair.
Violent anger had been his persistent companion most of the day.
He hated her for making him remember, and himself for being sucked into something that should have ended a long time ago.
He’d avoided the family dinner table, instead grabbing a snack in the kitchen and ducking out before Charlene could shanghai him. How long could he avoid Jane?
Damn her for coming back, he thought, staring out into the darkness. And for being the one who still got to him.
After taking a deep breath, he ordered his body to relax.
She would be gone in the morning. He wouldn’t have to see her again if he didn’t want to.
There had been weeks, even months between contact with the previous neighbors.
Surely Jane was smart enough to want the same thing.
If they both took a little time to plan this, they might never have to meet again.
Would that be enough to shut her out? Not seeing her, not talking to her?
He closed his eyes, but that didn’t help.
Memories from years ago filled him. He’d just gotten his Master’s degree in Money and Banking and had been putting in a lot of extra hours at the bank to make up for his time gone.
Financially it had been touch and go for a couple of years.
The town of Orchard had been amazingly tolerant and trusting of a bank president in his twenties.
Dani and Ty had needed money for college, not to mention his attention when they were home. And there had been Jane.
Time with her was something he had put on his calendar, scheduled like any appointment. Perhaps, he thought now, he could have wooed her more, but he’d had responsibilities. She’d understood that. All that was to have changed after the wedding. But she’d never given him the chance.
She had been young. Maybe too young, he thought with a flash of insight. She’d wanted him to demonstrate his affection by playing those silly romantic high school games. He hadn’t had time to loll around on her porch and sip lemonade while gossiping about the prom. He hadn’t had time—
Upstairs, footsteps thumped. Billie, he thought with a slight smile. If things had been different, he and Jane could have been married for nine years. They would have had a child of their own by now. A daughter who looked like—
He sat up straight in his chair. Billie?
He started to do some rapid calculations.
They were cut short when he realized he didn’t know how old Billie was.
Even as excitement and expectation flared inside him, he firmly squashed them.
Billie couldn’t be his. He and Jane hadn’t made love often, and when they had, they’d used protection.
She’d been embarrassed as hell about the diaphragm, he recalled with a grin.
Her mother had refused to discuss any kind of birth control, so he’d been the one to take her to the doctor and wait during her appointment.
His smile faded. Sex. Another place he’d screwed up, he saw now with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight.
“Adam?”
He glanced up, startled. He hadn’t heard her knock, let alone enter. Had his thoughts conjured her from the past? Was the woman standing in front of him real?
He studied her dark hair and the fringe of bangs that ended just above her delicately arched eyebrows.
Hazel eyes held his gaze for a second, before flickering nervously toward the floor.
One corner of her mouth quivered slightly, as if not sure whether to curve up or down.
She still looked too damn young, he thought irritably.
But she was real enough. The dress she wore—pale blue and loose fitting with a white blouse underneath—was the same one from this morning.
He wouldn’t have imagined her in that. In his mind, he liked to think of her teetering on unaccustomed high heels, her upswept hair adding height and attempting to make her look older.
Or sitting on his porch, watching the sunset, a sleeveless blouse exposing her tanned arms, while the gauzy full skirt she wore outlined the curvy lines of her legs.
“I’m busy,” he said curtly, as much to disconnect himself from his thoughts as to send her away.
“This won’t take but a moment.”
He made a show of closing the top folder, then glancing impatiently at his watch. “Yes?”
She took a step into the office. The room was large, and he’d taken advantage of the space.
Bookcases lined two walls. The big walnut desk that had been his father’s was the centerpiece of the room.
A comfortable chair with its own table and reading lamp stood in one corner.
The couch sat between the desk and door.
About five years ago he’d pulled up the heavy rug and had refinished the hardwood floors.
It was a comfortable room; a place he could work in.
Her hands fluttered nervously around her waist. She linked her fingers together, as if to still the movement, then rubbed her palms back and forth against each other.
“Sit down and stop fidgeting,” he said, pointing to the couch.
“Sorry.” Jane walked the three steps, then perched on the edge of the sofa. The black leather provided a perfect backdrop for her delicate features. The harsh color outlined the shape of her head, the curve of her cheek and the graceful sweep of her neck. She wore her hair pulled back.
“A nuisance,” she’d said, when, years before, he pulled at the ribbons and freed the silky tresses.
“Beautiful,” he’d replied.
Her innocent blush had thrilled him, as he had then taken what no man had seen or touched.
He shook his head impatiently. “What do you want?”
“To apologize.”
He raised one eyebrow and waited.
“Not about Billie. She hasn’t done anything.”
“Yet,” he said.
The corner of her mouth raised slightly. “Yet. It is one of the hazards of raising a tomboy.”
“But worth the trouble.”
She looked surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought—”
“I’d never hold your behavior against your child, Jane. If you’d taken the time to know the man you were running from, you would be aware of that.”
Hazel eyes flashed anger, as their color darkened to green.
“If I’d taken the time? You’re the one who couldn’t bear to be away from your precious bank.
I always came tenth on a list of five items. Don’t talk to me about—” She stopped, her mouth still open to form more words.
She clamped her lips together and sighed. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Why did you?”
“At church this morning…I’m sorry about all that.
I should have thought…” She hunched her shoulders as if waiting for him to berate her for not thinking—again.
When he didn’t, she went on. “Those people, they all stared at us. I’d forgotten what a small town can be like.
There will be rumors. I didn’t want to cause you any more trouble. ”
He rose from his desk and walked around it until he stood in front of her. After moving a couple of folders, he perched on the corner nearest her. “I can handle it, if you can.”
She nodded. “People will talk, though.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been through it before.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that, too.”
“Forget it.”
“I can’t.”
“Then it’s your problem.”
“You dismiss me so easily, Adam, but then you always did. I was too young and foolish. I was never like those other women you dated.”
His temper threatened to flare but was put out by her words from the past. “I’m not like those other women.
” The phrase echoed over and over again.
It had been winter. January, maybe, and cold for South Carolina.
He’d started a fire and had spread a blanket for the two of them.
They’d been kissing for hours, petting. He’d touched her breasts under the wool of her sweater, but when he tried to take off her bra, she’d resisted.