The Best Is Yet to Come
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Diana Palmer
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26
Chapter 1
The bleak winter landscape was as depressing to Ivy as the past few months had been, but she felt a sense of excitement as she watched the long country road. Ryder was on his way. Guilt wrenched her heart as she gave in to the need to see him, to listen to him, to love him. She’d always loved Ryder, even as she feared him. It was her secret passion for Ryder that had sent her running scared into a tragic marriage that had ended six months ago in the death of her husband. This would be the first time she’d seen Ryder since the funeral, and she was torn between delight and shame.
She’d lost weight, but that only made her more attractive. She was tall and willowy, with long black hair that waved around her shoulders, and a complexion like fresh cream. Her eyes were as black as coal—a legacy from her French grandmother—framed by lashes that were thick and long and seductive. Ryder always said that she looked like a painting he had in his living room—an interpretation of the poem “The Highwayman,” depicting Bess with her long black hair. But Ryder was fanciful at times.
Ryder had been at the funeral, down in Clay County, Georgia, near the banks of the wide Chattahoochee River, a good half hour’s drive from Ivy’s home in southwest Georgia. They’d buried Ben in the cemetery of the little Baptist church he’d attended as a child, under a canopy of huge live oak trees dripping with gray Spanish moss. Ivy had stayed close beside her mother, trying to ignore the tall, commanding presence across from her. Ryder had been at the house as well, and she’d had to pretend not to notice him, to pretend grief for a man who had made her life a living hell.
Ryder couldn’t know that his very presence had been like a knife in her heart, reminding her brutally that her secret love for him might actually have led to Ben’s death. It had hurt Ben that Ivy couldn’t respond to him in bed, and because of that, he drank. The accident that killed him had resulted from one drink too many, and Ivy felt responsible for it.
She thought back to her teenage years, when Ryder had been the whole world and she’d worshiped him. He’d never guessed how she felt. That had been a blessing. She smiled, remembering the tenderness he seemed to reserve especially for her. He wasn’t the world’s most lovable man; he had a quick, biting temper, but Ivy had never seen it.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in weeks,” Jean McKenzie observed dryly, staring at her daughter from the hall. “It does improve your looks, darling.”
“I know I’m a misery,” Ivy confessed. She went over and hugged her mother, ruffling the thick salt-and-pepper hair that framed eyes as dark as her own. “But you’re a doll, so don’t we make the perfect pair?”
“Ha!” Jean scoffed. “Pair, my eye. The very last thing you need is to stay here for the rest of your life.”Her voice softened a little, and she frowned at the faint panic in her daughter’s eyes. “Listen, baby, it’s been almost six months. You have to start looking ahead. You need a change. A job. A new direction. Ben wouldn’t want this,” she added meaningfully.
Ivy sighed and moved away from the older woman. “Yes, I know. It’s getting easier, as time goes by.”
“I know that, too. I lost your father when you were only a toddler,” Jean reminded her. “In a way, I’m sorry you and Ben couldn’t have had a child. It would have made things easier for you, I think. It did for me.”
“Yes. It was a shame,” Ivy murmured, but without really agreeing. A child would have been a disaster. At first, Ben had been a good friend, but he’d never been a good lover. He’d been always in a hurry, impatient and finally harsh because Ivy couldn’t feel the passion for him that he felt for her. She’d cheated him by marrying him, and it was guilt more than any other emotion that had haunted her since his death. She’d never felt passion. She wondered sometimes during the last miserable weeks of her marriage if she was even capable of it. She’d promised Ben that she’d go to a therapist, although she couldn’t imagine what one would find. Her childhood had been uneventful, but happy. There were no emotional scars. She simply didn’t want Ben physically, because she belonged, heart and soul, to another man—a man who’d always thought of her as his sister’s best friend and nothing more. And what could any psychologist have done about that?
Money had been another ever-pressing problem. Ben had spent money recklessly when he was drunk, and when she’d insisted on going to work herself, to help out, there had been terrible arguments. Finally she’d given up trying to offer her help and reconciled herself to living in poverty. The months had gone into years, and Ivy eventually withdrew completely into herself and avoided contact with everyone, especially Ryder. That had been necessary because of Ben’s rage at seeing her speaking to him once at her mother’s. That had been, she remembered, shivering, the first time he’d struck her.
A month shy of her twenty-fourth birthday, a piece of heavy equipment had fallen on him. A freak accident, they’d called it, but only to spare her feelings. She knew he’d been drunk when he’d gone to work. He’d handled the equipment haphazardly and paid the ultimate price. Just the morning of his death, he’d raged at her about Ryder again. He’d accused her of being unfaithful to him in her mind, of making his life hell. The words had haunted her ever since.
She and her mother were churchgoing people, and it was that bedrock of faith that had helped Ivy get through the agony of guilt that had followed the funeral. It was all that kept her going even now.
“When did Ryder call?” Ivy asked suddenly.
“About an hour ago,” Jean said, yawning, because it was early and she’d had only one cup of coffee. It took her at least two to wake up, so she dragged back to the coffeepot and filled a cup for Ivy as well.
“Will he stay long?” she asked, her eyes haunted.
“Now, who knows what Ryder Calaway’s plans are, except for the Almighty?” the older woman teased as she retied her loose brown chenille bathrobe before she sat down at the dainty little white kitchen table and creamed her coffee. “For all that we’ve known him for years, he’s still a mystery.”
“That’s a fact.” Ivy sat down, too, her burgundy velour robe exquisitely hugging her figure, highlighting her face. “This is an odd place for such a high-powered businessman, isn’t it?” she added gently.
And it was. They lived in a small county in rural southwest Georgia, in a heavily agricultural area near Albany. Neighbors lived far apart, and even in town, the lots were large. Agriculture was big business here, with most of the small family farms a thing of the past, because big farming combines grabbed them up as more and more farmers went bankrupt. In fact, Ivy’s parents had been a farm family until her father’s death. Jean still lived on the farm, and she still had two enormous chicken houses. She employed a family to pick up eggs and feed the thousands of chicks until they were old enough for market. One of Ryder’s contacts bought chickens from her for his chicken processing plant, and Jean made a comfortable living.
After she had graduated from high school, Ivy had gone to work for Ryder’s construction company in Albany some years before and had found that her friend Ben Trent was also employed there. They’d been in school together, and as time passed, they began to date. In no time at all they were married. Ivy frowned, remembering Ryder’s shock when he’d found out. He’d congratulated her and Ben on their wedding, but he had been reserved and distant, and just afterward he’d gone to Europe for several months to set up some new company.
As Jean had said, Ryder was mysterious. He owned acreage like some women owned shoes, and judging by his clothing and his private jet and the luxury car he drove, he was never short of money. But it wasn’t for his money that Ivy loved him. It was because he was Ryder. He was as big as all outdoors, with an indomitable personality, and he conquered things and people with equal ease. She’d adored him since she was in school, palling around with his younger sister. The Calaways had always been well-off, not minding at all that the McKenzies weren’t. Ivy was always welcome in the big redbrick house with its exquisite rose garden, just down the road from the McKenzie’s house. And Ryder never minded including her when he took his sister to movies or picnicking with whichever girl he was dating at the time.
He’d gone off to college, and then to Albany to take over a small construction company that had gone bankrupt. He’d turned it into a mammoth conglomerate over the years, with offices in Atlanta and New York, and it seemed to keep him busy all the time. After his mother’s death, his father had returned to New York to live, and with his sister’s marriage to a Caribbean businessman, Ryder was all alone in the big redbrick house. Perhaps he was lonely, Ivy thought, and that was why he traveled so much. She wondered why Ryder had never married. He was thirty-four now, ten years her senior, and women loved him. Surely, with his money and vibrant masculinity, he’d had opportunities.
She stared into her coffee cup as Jean got up to take bacon off the stove and check on hot biscuits in the oven. She wondered what her own life would be like from now on, if she could ever stop blaming herself for failing Ben so tragically. She should never have married him, feeling as she did about Ryder. She lived with the fear that Ben didn’t really mind dying. He’d wanted more than she could give him, especially in bed. She was frigid, of course, she reminded herself. Surely that had been part of the problem with their marriage. She’d carry the scars forever, along with her sense of failure. If she’d tried harder, maybe Ben wouldn’t have spent so much time with his friends. Perhaps he wouldn’t have drunk so much, or spent most of their time together trying to hurt her. He’d gone from a gentle, laughing boy to a vicious drunkard so quickly….
“Isn’t that Ryder’s car? My eyes are getting old,” Jean muttered, pausing with a platter of bacon to peer through the kitchen window.
Ivy got up with a quick heartbeat, following her mother’s gaze. “A black Jaguar.” She nodded. “Did he say why he was coming?”
“Does he ever? Just to visit between world trips, I guess, as usual.” Jean laughed. “He hasn’t been home since the funeral.”
“Well, I’m glad, whatever the reason,” Ivy confessed. “It’s been a long time. Ryder has a way of livening people up.”
“And one of us needs that,” Jean murmured under her breath.
Ivy wandered onto the porch in the concealing burgundy velour robe she wore over her thick flannel gown, her hands unconsciously fiddling with the knot that held it together, her long hair wisping around her patrician features as she watched the tall, dark-haired man untangle himself from the elegant vehicle. As always, her heart leaped at the sight of him, and she went warm all over with excitement. Only Ryder had ever had that effect on her.
He stared up at the porch, big and rough-looking, as formidable as a tank. He looked like a man who owned a construction company, from his craggy face to his huge hands. His face looked as if someone had chiseled it out of concrete. He was all hard angles, except for a body that would have made him a fortune in the movies. He had to be six foot three, and all muscle. He still liked to do construction work himself, frequently spending a Saturday helping his men catch up on jobs when he was in a town where they were working. His eyes were a steely gray color, deep-set and piercing, and his mouth was firm and faintly sensuous. He was wearing a charcoal pin-striped suit, and it clung to his muscular frame like silk.
“Not bad, honey,” he drawled as he lifted his arrogant chin to give her a good going-over with his eyes. “But you could use a few pounds between your neck and your knees.” He had a voice like dark velvet, smooth and silky.
Ivy felt her blood racing, as it always did when Ryder was around. He generated a wild kind of excitement that she’d felt ever since she’d known him and had never fully understood. Her full lips smiled involuntarily as he joined her on the porch, her black eyes laughing up at him.
“Hello, Ryder,” she welcomed.
“Hello, yourself, tidbit,” he murmured dryly. It was a long way down, despite her above-average height. He smiled faintly as his eyes made an intent and disturbing survey of her face.
“Don’t I even get a kiss?” she asked, trying to call back the easy affection of her youth, so that he wouldn’t guess at the depth of her lacerated feelings. “It’s been months since I’ve seen you.”
His face seemed to tighten for an instant as he responded to the gentle query. “I’m getting old, honey,” he confessed, reaching out to lift her by her waist with careless ease so that her face was on a level with his lean, dark one. “Before long, I’ll forget how to kiss girls at all.”
“That’ll be the day,” she said with a smile. She smoothed the shoulders of his jacket as he held her, liking the rich feel of the fabric over all that imposing muscle. He looked different close up. Not the carefree man she remembered at all. He was a stranger these days, darkly observant, intense and very, very male. He smelled of expensive cologne and smoke, and his big fingers felt steely biting into her soft waistline. She felt shaky down to her toes in his grasp. “You look tired,” she said softly.
“I am tired.” He looked down at her lips. “You have a pretty mouth, did I ever tell you?” he asked with a faint grin. “Come on, come on, I don’t have all day.”
“Do I have to kiss you?” she asked, eyebrows lifting innocently.
“You’d better,” he murmured. “If I kiss you, God knows where it might lead us.”
“Promises, promises, you heartless tease,” she chided. “Oh, Ryder, it’s so good to see you!”
“You’ve been mooning around, haven’t you, pretty girl?” he asked softly. “I’ll have to take you in hand.”
“I guess I need it,” she sighed. She leaned forward and nuzzled her nose against his with warm affection. “Where have you been this time?”
“Germany.” His voice sounded oddly strained. His eyes searched hers. “Ivy,” he whispered.
He sounded strange. She frowned and felt his big hands contract, bringing her robed body closer.
“What is it?” she asked gently.
His mouth suddenly dropped to her neck and pressed against it hotly. She heard his breath shudder faintly, and her body tensed at the unexpected feel of his mouth on her skin. His lips opened; his tongue stroked the side of her neck. The sensation was suddenly, shockingly intimate. She actually gasped and her body went rigid.
“Shocked?” he murmured. His mouth moved up to her ear and his teeth took the lobe, gently biting. All the time his arms were closing around her slender body, until she was closer to him than she’d been in five years. Her hands clenched on the fine cloth of his suit as he wrapped her up against him and worried her earlobe with his teeth and tongue. Her body began to tremble, to burn. Her legs felt as if they might not support her at all. It had never felt this way with Ben. Even when they were most intimate, she’d never been on fire for him. Her eyes closed and she could have cried out with the anguished pleasure of his mouth on her skin. Dreams had sustained her for so long. The reality was shattering.
She moaned softly. Ben, she thought miserably. Ben, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…
She must have unconsciously said his name because Ryder went rigid all at once, deadly still. He set her roughly back on her feet and released her. Above her his face was like a granite carving, his eyes cold.
“Don’t ever make that mistake,” he said curtly. “I won’t play substitute for you, Ivy.”
Her face began to color. “But, Ryder…”
“Where’s your mother?” he asked. “Inside, staring out to see what happens next?” The hardness left and he was Ryder again, lazily indifferent to her blushes as he took her by the arm. “How about breakfast? I’m starved. They only gave us a three-course meal on the damned airplane. I haven’t had anything in hours.”
He was impossible. A minute ago, she’d been vibrating with desire, seconds later she’d wanted to slap him soundly, now he had her laughing again. “You and your appetite,” she burst out. “Your sister Eve used to go into gales of laughter telling about your midnight raids on the kitchen.”
“I miss Eve,” he sighed. “She and Curt live in Nassau, but I’m hardly ever in that neighborhood anymore.”
“I had an email from her a few weeks ago,” she replied.
At that moment Ivy’s mother bounced into the hall. “Ryder, how wonderful to see you!”
Ryder made a grab for Jean, arched her over one arm and kissed her cheek with a theatrical flair. “Darling,” he said with a stage leer, “come away with me.”
“Alas,” Jean sighed, holding her forearm over her eyes, “I cannot. The sink is full of dirty dishes.”
“Cynic,” he accused, raising her again. “You’ve broken my heart. It will take at least a platter of scrambled eggs to make it whole again. A couple of biscuits. A pot of coffee…” He was already on his way into the kitchen.
“Your stomach will do you in, one day,” Ivy accused as she followed with her mother.
“Only if I marry a girl who can’t cook,” Ryder returned. He sat down at the table wearily. “God, what a long drive.”
“Where did you come from?” Ivy asked as she set him a place at the table, which was already laden with food.
“The stork brought me…” he began.
“The stork couldn’t have carried you,” came the smug reply. “You were probably unloaded under a cabbage leaf by a backhoe….”
“Keep it up,” he dared. “Come on. One more remark about my weight and you’ll be wearing your scrambled eggs.”
“Peasant,” she said with mock arrogance.
“I have earthy leanings, all right,” he mused, watching her with a predatory smile.
She went scarlet, grateful that her mother’s back was turned. She couldn’t meet his playful eyes. Remembering the feel of his mouth on her neck made her knees go weak. It was disloyal to go lusting after a man on the heels of her husband’s death. Except that she’d lusted after Ryder since her fifteenth birthday, heart and soul. She’d managed to keep him from seeing it, but over the years her love had grown stronger. It was because of Ryder that she’d never been able to give herself fully to Ben. It had been Ryder whom she’d wanted, from the first day she’d seen him. But he’d been rich and she’d been poor and too young to catch his eyes. So she’d buried her hopeless longings and married Ben. She couldn’t afford to try to go back to the past. She’d cheated Ben and now he was dead. She owed him loyalty if nothing less. Ryder didn’t want her that way, anyway. He was only teasing. She was sure of it.
Ryder, watching her, could see the wall going up. He sighed as he creamed the coffee Jean had just poured him. “I drove down from the Atlanta airport,” he volunteered. “The house is cold and there’s no heat…” He contrived to look pitiful.
“You can stay with us,” Jean said. “We have a spare bedroom.”
“Of course,” Ivy seconded, but she wouldn’t look at him.
He hesitated, watching Ivy. “No, that’s all right,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t want to impose. I can buy some thermal underwear and wrap up in a blanket.”
Ivy burst out laughing at that picture. Ryder could have checked into the local motel. For goodness’ sake, he could have bought the local motel. And here he sounded as if he’d freeze without them.
“You poor man,” Ivy said, turning, vividly beautiful with her black eyes sparkling in her flushed, animated face.
“Poor, in some ways,” he agreed, smiling faintly while he stared and stared, mesmerized by her beauty. “You’re a nice girl, Ivy,” he mused, and forced his eyes back onto his plate as they all sat down. “I’ll stay at the house, but I appreciate being invited to breakfast. I was starved, and this is delicious,” he added, savoring a bite of perfect scrambled eggs.
“Thank you,” Jean said, grinning at him.
“Can Ivy cook like this?” he asked.
“Of course,” Jean replied.
Ryder pursed his firm lips and grinned. “My stomach hears wedding bells.”
Ivy went white. It was the shock, of course, the remembrance of grief, of what she’d lost. Ryder didn’t feel things this deeply, she tried to tell herself, he wouldn’t understand how much it hurt to joke about it, when she had Ben on her conscience. Ben. She’d killed Ben…!
He caught her just as she went sideways, lifting her gently in his hard arms. “For God’s sake…” he ground out, his face betraying a flash of helpless shock.
“She’ll get over it,” Jean said. “She’s hardly slept lately, or eaten very much. It’s early days yet, and she loved him.”
“Yes,” Ryder bit off coldly. “I know.”
Jean glanced at him and glanced quickly away, because what she’d glimpsed in his face was too private, too hellish, for words. “Here, put her on the sofa. I’ll get a cold cloth.”
He didn’t reply. He carried his light burden into the living room and put her down gently on the big couch. He knelt beside her, brushing back the long, silky hair from her still face. Like a sleeping princess, he thought irrationally, his eyes lingering, his heart aching…
He watched those long, thick lashes slowly lift. Her eyes showed confusion and then she smiled at him. His hands in her hair tightened, clenched. It was all he could do not to bend his head that bare inch it would take to feel her soft, sweet lips under his. He was aware of Jean then, of her voice. He didn’t hear what she said, but he got to his feet and moved back to let her put the cloth on Ivy’s head. He felt as if he’d stopped breathing, but Ivy was all right. She was sitting up, now, and looking embarrassed.
“Sorry about that,” she said. Her eyes went to Ryder, who looked like death walking. “Ryder, I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “It was just…”
“I know what it was. I’m sorry, too,” he replied tersely. “Perhaps I’d better go.”
“Without your breakfast?” Ivy asked. “And what for?”
“I don’t want to upset you anymore,” he said.
Jean mumbled something about putting away the cloth and left the room, but neither of them noticed.
“You won’t,” Ivy continued, puzzled by that coldness in his eyes.
“He’s dead,” he said curtly. “Nothing you can say or do or feel or think will bring him back. If the mention of the word wedding has that kind of effect on you…”
“It doesn’t, normally,” she shot back. “I haven’t been eating properly and I’m just weak!”
“And touchy,” he added. “After six months, still touchy and nervous and overwrought.”
“I have a right to be,” she said angrily. “I loved him!” she said. Maybe if she said it enough, she could make herself believe that she had, that she hadn’t cheated her husband because of what she’d felt for Ryder.
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at her, his face pasty under his tan, his eyes fierce and intent.
“I did!” she cried. “I did, I did!”
She put her face in her hands and the tears came, hot under her fingers. “I can’t live like this,” she whispered brokenly.
“You can, and you will.” He lifted her off the sofa, holding her firmly with both hands. “This has got to stop. Six months is long enough to grieve. You’re going to start living again.”
“That sounds like a threat. What are you going to do, take me on as a new construction project?” she challenged tearfully. “Remodel me? Renovate me?”
“Something like that,” he said absently. He whipped out a handkerchief and mopped her up, his fingers deft and sure on her pale face. “Now stop wailing. It upsets me.”
“Nothing upsets you,” she said, obediently blowing her red nose. “Well, maybe little things do,” she corrected. She smiled faintly. “Like the day your car kept cutting off in traffic and you drove it back to the construction site and dropped a wrecking ball right through the windshield.”
He chuckled. “Damn it, good enough for it. I’d had it in three different shops and nobody could fix it.”
“I’d love to hear what you told the insurance company.”
“I didn’t call the insurance company, I just bought another car,” he said. “From another manufacturer,” he added, grinning.
“It must be lovely, to have that kind of money.”
“I can’t eat it,” he said lazily. “Or drink it. Or snuggle up to it on a cold winter night. I could use it for wallpaper, of course, or make cigarettes out of it…”
“You’re nuts.”
“Thanks, I’m crazy about you, too. How about breakfast, before I starve to death? Carrying you in here used up my last few ounces of strength.”
She laughed helplessly. “All right. Come on, bottomless pit.” She frowned suddenly. “You said you ate on the plane…?”
“When it left Germany,” he replied. “And I’m starving. My God, airlines need to consider hardworking men and pregnant women when they serve food!”
“You’re obviously a hardworking man, since you’d hardly qualify as the other…hey!”
He made a vicious swipe at her posterior, and she jumped clear just in time with a shocked laugh.
“No fighting at the table, children,” Jean said, wagging a finger at them, “or I’ll hide the food.”
A corner of Ryder’s mouth tugged down as he glared at Ivy, who’d retreated to a strategic position behind her mother.
“All right. She’s safe. For now.” The way he said it, and the look in his pale eyes, made Ivy melt inside. But she had to pretend that she wasn’t affected. She turned away, making a joke of it, and refused to take him seriously.
She had to forget what had happened out on the porch. It was disloyal to Ben. She didn’t deserve to be happy. She wouldn’t let herself have Ryder, even if he was finally within her reach, because she’d caused Ben to kill himself with her hopeless longing. It wouldn’t be fair to expect happiness at such a price.
