The Driven Snowe Read online

  He waited until she was safely inside, then broke speed records getting to Angela’s house. Her lights were out. He rang the doorbell. Several times. Then he pounded on the door. Still nothing. He peered into her garage. Her car was there, so he pounded a little more, until he was afraid the neighbors would call the cops. Then he realized—she hadn’t taken her car tonight. She was probably still with her friends.

  He waited for two hours, and she still didn’t show up. He called her number on his cell phone. “Angela? If you’re home please pick up.” No answer—not that he was really expecting one. “Okay, if you’re not home, please give me a call as soon as you get in. Please. It wasn’t what you think at all. Just let me explain. I want to talk to you. We need to talk.” He thought about saying “I love you,” but didn’t want to drop that on her in addition to everything she was probably thinking about. If he was trying to drive her away, that’d be the smartest plan. “Just…call me.”

  He hung up, waited a little more, then drove home. He’d catch her tomorrow. Then they’d talk.

  THREE DAYS LATER, he was going out of his mind. He had not heard from nor seen Angela the entire weekend. Manzanita was growing, but it wasn’t that damned big, he reasoned. He’d invited Adam over, and they sat in his home office.

  “She’s being childish about this.” Josh prowled around the room. Adam, sitting on the overstuffed chair, just listened to him rant. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and if she isn’t going to listen to me, then she deserves whatever she’s going through right now. You know she’s just blowing it out of proportion somewhere. If she’d just talk to me, we wouldn’t be in this mess! It’d be cleared up in a matter of five minutes!”

  “You’ve got a five-minute explanation of why you were out to dinner with another woman?”

  Josh glared at him. “It wasn’t like that and you know it, Adam.”

  “Maybe you should try it out on me,” Adam said placidly, “because right now, you’re in no state to talk to Angela. You need to cool down, see things from her side. I’m not saying you did anything wrong,” he hastily added as Josh’s expression turned more fierce, “I’m just saying that she’ll be fine. When she’s ready to talk to you, she’ll talk to you.”

  “Yeah,” Josh said, rubbing at his eyes. “To tell me we’re finished.”

  Adam snorted. “You’re my best friend, Josh, but you’ve got to admit that you get…impatient, shall we say? You want things to run on your timetable. You get these plans, and when problems crop up, you go for any way to just work around them. Sometimes, you’ve got to sit back, and see where things take you. Relax.” He smiled, an approximation of a Zen calm. “It’ll all work out.”

  Those words were no comfort whatsoever, Josh thought.

  He’d barely made it through the weekend by hanging out with Adam, going over reports, working on the new product line launch, going over the media plan for the next two quarters. It was no use. He’d tried to work, read, watch TV, but all he could see was Angela’s face, and her shocked look in the diner before she’d turned and made a break for it.

  Now that it was Monday morning, he was at the Manzanita Public Library, bright and early, waiting for her. He’d give her a piece of his mind, making him worry like this. Angry or not, she could have at least let him know she was okay. She could have yelled at him. She could have faced him.

  He saw a car drive up. It wasn’t her white Honda, but he did recognize the occupants. Two of the women had been with Angela on Friday night. He watched as they walked up to the door, ignoring him as they spoke in concerned tones.

  “I’m worried about her,” the one he recognized as Ginny said in a hushed voice.

  “It would be easier if she’d just open up a little more,” the other one, with the dark hair, said. Josh strained to catch the rest of her sentence, but she was speaking too softly. She looked up, then recognized him.

  Ginny obviously recognized him, too. “You’ve got some nerve, showing up here,” she hissed.

  “I just wanted to see Angela.” He might have expected this. “She hasn’t been in contact with me all weekend. Do you know when she’ll be in?”

  The dark-haired one was more sympathetic. “She’s feeling very hurt, Josh,” she said, in a quiet voice.

  “And if you’d thought with the head on your shoulders instead of the one in your pants, she wouldn’t be!” Ginny added, her eyes blazing.

  “I wasn’t cheating on her,” Josh said sharply, then took a deep breath. He didn’t need to do this. The only person he owed an explanation to was Angela. “I want to talk to her about this. Do you know when she’ll be in?”

  They looked at each other. Ginny’s mouth was set mutinously.

  “She’s taking a few days off,” the dark-haired one explained, obviously sensing trouble and trying to avoid it. “Possibly all week.”

  “She’s not feeling well,” Ginny added. “And don’t try going to her house, either. She’s not there.”

  “Where is she, then?” Josh demanded.

  Ginny stepped toward him pugnaciously. “I need to tell you because…?”

  The other woman spoke up. “Ginny, stop it.”

  “Tanya, he’s hurt her.” Ginny turned her angry gaze toward the dark-haired woman. “He’s a player! You’re not going to just…”

  “I’m not going to ‘just’ anything,” Tanya said gently. “But he’s obviously concerned.”

  “Ha.” Ginny glared at him. “Guilty’s more like it.”

  Josh gritted his teeth. “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Well, when she’s ready, maybe she’ll get in touch with you. Maybe.” Ginny stomped past him and into the library.

  Tanya was looking at him apologetically, ready to walk past him, but he put a gentle hand on her arm, stopping her. “Please,” he said. “I…maybe I made a mistake. I know that I never meant to hurt her, and I would never do anything intentionally to make her this unhappy. I just don’t see how her spending time away from me is going to resolve the situation at all. Where I come from, we work through things. I want to work through this with her.” He looked at Tanya, wondering how he could convince her. “I love her, Tanya. Please, help me out here.”

  Tanya sighed, and he could see her crumbling a little. “I can’t tell you where she is, Josh,” she said, her eyes still apologetic. “She just needs some time to herself. She’ll get in contact with you.”

  Tanya hastily went into the library.

  Josh leaned heavily against his car, running his hands through his hair. At least he knew she was alive, he thought. He then rubbed his hands over his face. But now he was supposed to wait until she decided to talk to him?

  Who knew what she’d think of, what she’d reason, while she was away from him. No. He couldn’t afford to relax and let things fall where they may. He needed to figure out a way to see her.

  He glanced through the window of the library, then squinted. Then he walked in. Ignoring Ginny’s glare, he pulled a flyer off of the wall.

  Flamenco dancing. Offered Thursdays at the Community Center, from 7 to 9.

  Angela took flamenco dancing. It was her favorite class, the one she’d stuck with when Chinese cooking finished and yoga had been cancelled. Hadn’t she always said how important her classes were to her?

  He’d find her there.

  “ALL RIGHT, LADIES…turn. Clap clap. Turn.” The flamenco instructor wore a long, swirling skirt, and her heels clicked loudly on the wooden floor in the dance room at the community center. Angela’s attention was only half there.

  It was the Thursday after that disastrous night at the diner, and Angela still didn’t know how she was going to deal with what she’d seen. More importantly, she didn’t know how she was going to deal with what she felt.

  Turn turn clap. She had spent the better part of the week at a bed-and-breakfast in Napa. Ginny had recommended it to her. She hadn’t really done much of anything except think. She had returned this afternoon to go to her class, and be
cause the midweek rates at the B & B shot up for the busy weekend trade. Still, she had needed the time to sort out what had happened.

  She didn’t think he was cheating on her, even after what she’d seen. Ginny would probably call her foolish, but in some way, she felt like she knew Josh. He wasn’t that sort of person. If he’d grown tired of her, then he would have done something or said something, and dissolved their “arrangement” months ago.

  No. He would have broken up with her. That’s what people did in relationships. Besides, he was an honorable man. And she genuinely felt like he loved her. That wasn’t the problem.

  It wasn’t what he’d done, anyway—she knew that. It was her own reaction that had scared her the most.

  She had just realized that she loved him…was dancing with the euphoria of that fact just moments before facing the image of him with another woman. And that was when it had hit her—what being in love with someone really meant. Being in love didn’t mean that she accepted the fact that he was in love with her. It meant that she wanted to be with him, that she wanted it more than anything on earth. And to her shock, the first thing that had crossed her mind on seeing him sitting and laughing with Shelly was what did I do to make him unhappy?

  She shook, and misstepped. She quickly looked around, correcting herself, trying to match the other dancers.

  She had been scared to death by the fact that, in that second, she regretted going out with her friends—that she would have done anything to be sitting there with him. That she didn’t want to lose him, and didn’t want him to leave her. She had never wanted anything the way she wanted Josh Montgomery. And she was terrified of what she’d give up, just to be with him.

  And what if I gave all that up, just to lose him anyway?

  She misstepped again, almost stumbling. She decided to get a drink of water from the fountain in the corridor, ignoring the instructor’s look of concern. She felt her long skirt swish against her ankles as she walked out of the room.

  She leaned down to the fountain, feeling the cold water spill across her lips as she took several long sips.

  “You looked great in there.”

  She jerked her head up, a little water splashing on her chin. She quickly wiped off her face. “Josh? What are you doing here?”

  He looked strange. His eyes were shadowed, and he looked really tired. Her heart immediately ached for him. He looked good besides that. She’d been tossing restlessly in her strange hotel bed for the better part of the week, and her body longed to just snuggle beside his, feel his warmth and the soft whoosh of his breath.

  “I came here to see you, Angela,” he said. “I came here to talk to you. I hoped you would still come to class.”

  She had almost considered skipping it, but knew it would help take her mind off him, if only a little. Besides, it bothered her that thinking of him had made her miss so much already. “I wasn’t ready to talk to you.”

  “I was hoping you’d be ready now.”

  She heard the low note of pleading in his voice, and saw the weary look in his eyes. He looked so unhappy.

  “All right.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  She nodded, grabbing her jacket and purse from where it was hanging in the hallway nearby, and let him lead her out to his car.

  “There’s someplace I’d like to take you,” he said, as the car cruised quietly along the darkened road. There was a sliver of moon in the sky.

  “You don’t need to take me anywhere special. We just need to talk.”

  “I want to take you here,” he demurred. “I haven’t taken anybody else here.”

  Setting the scene meant so much to him, she thought, as he drove silently. “Josh, I agreed to talk to you. I was really upset…”

  “Here we are,” he said, and the low tone of his voice surprised her. They were up by his house. The car bumped along a dirt road, and pulled out between some trees. She peered out with apprehension. There was a grove ahead of them, but it was shadowy and dense. “This is my thinking place. I used to come up here a lot, when I was a senior in high school, trying to figure out what I wanted to do.”

  She gritted her teeth, fighting her impatience. “I’m trying to say something here.”

  “I am, too.” He unbuckled his seat belt, and turned a little to face her. “I’ve thought here a lot in the past week. And I realized I’d never taken anybody else here, ever.”

  She glanced around. It was secluded, completely shaded in by trees. “Not even some girl?” she said, skeptically, then could have bitten her tongue.

  He took her hand, lacing it with his. She didn’t make any move to clasp his back. His palm was warm. “I know what you must think of me, Angela. I can only say that I wasn’t there with Shelly in any sort of romantic way. I was out to dinner with her, yes. But I thought of you the whole time.”

  She tugged her hand away. “That’s not a great excuse, Josh.”

  He let out a weary breath. “That didn’t come out right. Yes, I was a little mad. I think I was trying to get even a little, or prove something to myself. I’m not proud of that.”

  She turned to him, relaxing a little. She was glad he was being honest, at least. “I can understand.”

  “I was angry that you’d been avoiding me that week after San Diego, but only because I had something really important to tell you.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “Josh, I didn’t think—well, no. I did think that maybe you were cheating on me with Shelly. At least, I did at first.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  She nodded. “I know. Now. I figured that out on my own.” She took a deep breath. “But it hurt…”

  She didn’t know how she was going to get through this, when he reached over, not kissing her, just pulling her against his chest. She felt the warm strength of him, and buried her head against his shoulder. “Honey, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “I know. I just…”

  “Angela, I know that you’re probably afraid to trust me, or anybody, but I have to tell you.” He nudged her away from him, and she looked at him with eyes rimmed with tears. “I love you, Angela. I’ve never loved anybody as much as I love you.”

  She felt her heart catch in her throat. She had trouble speaking.

  “I love you, too.”

  His eyes glowed like Christmas lights, and he smiled. Then he crushed her back against his chest, and she could feel heat pouring off him like a furnace. He was so happy he radiated with it.

  He nuzzled her hair, kissed her neck, then kissed her mouth, hungrily. She kissed him back with equal ardor.

  “I love you,” he whispered again, against her flesh.

  “I love you, Josh,” she murmured back, clutching his shoulders.

  That’s why I’m so scared.

  10

  ANGELA LOOKED UP at Josh, who was getting ready for bed. She put her book down next to the bed, on top of a growing pile of her books. While waiting for him, the herbal tea she’d been sipping had cooled and was sitting on the nightstand. She’d wash the cup out tomorrow, she thought, when she made breakfast.

  In a surprisingly short time, the little actions had become routine.

  “Rough day?” she asked.

  He looked over at her, and her stomach felt sugary at the heat in his eyes. “Better now,” he said, stripping down to boxers.

  Her eyes devoured him. She’d been all but living with him for the past three weeks, had seen him naked at various points for the past five and a half months, and she still couldn’t get over the sight of him. He climbed into bed next to her. He smoothed his hand over the silky nightgown she was wearing. “Why do you still wear nightgowns?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. They always seem like a good idea.”

  He nuzzled her neck, and she felt her synapses shorting out, one by one. “You’re so cute,” he murmured. “You continually wear something that you know you’ll only keep on as long as I’m not home. Sometimes, I just don’t get you.”

>   His nuzzling was getting a little more purposeful, and her breathing went shallow. “I think you’re figuring me out,” she said, around a little gasp.

  He paused momentarily in his goal, angling up on one arm to look at her. “If only,” he said, and though he was grinning, his eyes were serious. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask you this, but I don’t know how you’re going to react.”

  She froze, like a startled cat. Please, please don’t ask about Italy. She hadn’t made up her mind, herself.

  He had to notice the tension shoot through her—curled as he was around her, it’d be hard to miss. “Relax,” he muttered, with a tiny edge of annoyance in his voice. “It’s not like I’m proposing murder or something.”

  “What did you want to ask me?”

  He paused for a moment, then let out a deep breath. “I’ve got this big party for Solar Bars on Friday. It’s for our sales team…they’ve busted tail, and we’re doing twice our target for this quarter. It’s going to be a big blowout. I’m having it over at that new Moroccan restaurant they just opened.”

  She finally relaxed. “That doesn’t sound so horrible.”

  “I’d like you to go with me.” He pinned her lightly to the bed, pushing wayward locks away from her face with gentle fingers. “It would mean a lot if you would go with me.”

  She paused, a little tension creeping back into her muscles. “Friday—that’s…”

  “That’s the night you and the girls were going to go over to San Francisco, stay at that hotel. See the Asian art exhibit on Saturday.”

  She could feel the pressure increasing, like a spring. His eyes didn’t waver.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”

  “I forgot,” he said, and his eyes darted away, then darted back to her full of guilt. “I’m really sorry. I meant to, I swear. Besides, I only planned it about two weeks ago, when the numbers came in, and I wanted to do something while it was still fresh in their minds. I wanted them to know how much I appreciate their efforts.”