Chapter Twelve
All the way home from work Tuesday afternoon, Teresa mentally debated whether she would knock on Riley’s door when she arrived. She didn’t want to pester him and she certainly didn’t want to give him the wrong ideas about what she wanted from him, but she worried about him. And she was terribly curious about what, if anything, he’d learned about his uncle.
Her quandary was decided for her when she saw that his car was not parked in his driveway. Not certain whether she was more relieved or disappointed that he wasn’t home, she unlocked her door. She might as well take advantage of the hour before the children arrived home to do some housework. She started a load of laundry, then opened the refrigerator. It was a cool, overcast day. A pot of chili and a pan of corn bread sounded good. She always made more than enough for herself and the children—so if Riley happened to show up at dinnertime, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Not that she expected him to join them for dinner again tonight, of course. But just in case…
It was a little too early to start dinner. Reassured that she had all the ingredients for chili, she took out a canned diet soda and closed the refrigerator door. Her kitchen, with its green and white checked curtains and chair cushions and apple accessories, was perfectly tidy, so there was really little for her to do until time to start the next load of laundry.
A neatly folded newspaper lying on the white laminate countertop caught her eye. Yesterday’s Evening Star, she realized. She’d never gotten around to reading it. She opened her soda, took a seat at the kitchen table and spread the thin paper in front of her.
The lead story bore Riley’s byline and concerned an ongoing dispute between the mayor and some local business owners. Something about a tax that had recently been ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court, and which the mayor was now scrambling to replace. The subject didn’t interest her much, but she read it because Riley had written it. He really was good, she thought, not for the first time. Concise, clear, completely objective in his news coverage. A very different voice than the one he used for his column, which was filled with irony and opinion.
She’d like to read the novel she’d been told he was writing. She and Riley had never talked about that; she wondered how he really felt about being published. Was writing merely an entertaining hobby for him, or was it a cherished dream? Was he any good? She would be willing to bet that he was.
She had a feeling writing wasn’t all Riley was good at.
Unbidden, the memory of his kisses crept into her mind, and her lips tingled as if with a memory of their own. He’d kissed her only twice, and both had been relatively brief embraces but powerful in their effect on her. As much as she’d tried to pretend they hadn’t meant anything to her, as often as she’d told herself that they had done nothing more than satisfy her curiosity—and his—she knew there was more to them than that. The kisses had reminded her of what was missing in her life. Adult intimacy. Romance. Sex.
Despite all its problems, her marriage had been fine in that respect. The handsome, dashing, witty and romantic charmer who had convinced her to quit college only a year prior to her graduation and marry him had been a skilled lover. And if there had been times when she had suspected he was sharing those talents a bit too generously, she had kept her concerns to herself for the sake of the children. Having lost her own family so young, she’d been determined to raise Mark and Maggie in a typical two-parent household.
Fate had had other plans for them.
Someone knocked on her door, bringing her abruptly back to the present. She glanced at her watch. The children weren’t due home for another half hour. Somehow she knew who she would find at her door.
Smoothing her palms down the front of her jeans, she peeked through the tiny security window in her front door, confirming her guess. Making every effort to keep her expression bland—she certainly wouldn’t want Riley to guess that she’d just been thinking about him and his kisses—she opened the door. “Hi.”
He gave her a faint, somewhat weary smile. “Hi.”
“Have you heard from your uncle?”
His smile faded. “No.”
“Want some coffee? A soda, maybe?”
“I’m sure you have things to do.”
Reading between his words, she stepped out of the doorway. “Come in. You can watch me fold towels.”
“That sounds more interesting than anything going on at my place.” He moved past her. “Do you have any ginger ale?”
“Root beer, grape soda or diet cola.”
He chuckled. “I’ll have the root beer.”
“That’s Mark’s favorite.” She turned to walk toward the kitchen, and Riley followed closely behind her.
He motioned toward the newspaper spread on the table. “Read anything interesting?”
“Just catching up on local news,” she replied as she opened the refrigerator door. “I’m a day behind—just getting around to reading yesterday’s paper.”
“Wait’ll you see today’s. The lead story is about the winner of last weekend’s Little Miss Edstown pageant. There’s a big photograph. A four-year-old kid with big hair, trowled-on makeup and a ruffly, beaded dress starched so stiff it could probably walk down the runway by itself.”
“Don’t tell me you covered the pageant.”
He shuddered. “I’d quit first, and Cameron knows it. He sent Lindsey. She isn’t much more fond of pageants than I am, but he bribed her with next weekend off. Please tell me you don’t enter Maggie in spectacles like that, as pretty as she is.”
“No way. I want