With This Ring. Lee Mckenzie

“I found Max at the SPCA. I did some work there last summer, repairing their kennels, and there he was. He had been badly neglected by his previous owner. He needed a home and he seemed to think I needed a dog.”

      “Poor fellow.” She knelt beside him and put an arm around his neck. He licked her ear, making her laugh. “How could anyone not love you?”

      “I hear that a lot,” Brent said.

      “Very funny. I was talking about Max.” She stood up and hung the dish towel on a rack near the sink.

      Brent looked at her and for a moment he seemed as uncomfortable as she felt. Now that they’d exhausted Max’s history, he didn’t seem to know what else to say.

      “You have a message,” she said. “Someone called while you were out.”

      He picked up the phone and checked the number of the last caller, then gave her a quick, questioning glance.

      “I didn’t answer it.”

      “I see that.” But he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to check it. Instead he handed her the bag he was carrying. “Here’s the stuff I found at my mother’s place. I’m sorry they’re not nicer or…” His voice trailed off.

      “I’m sure these things will be fine.”

      “I bought you a toothbrush.”

      “Oh. Thank you.”

      “It was my mother’s idea.”

      Panic grabbed her heart and held on. Brent’s mother didn’t like her, although she’d never understood why. “You told her I’m here?”

      “Didn’t have to. She guessed it was you.”

      “How…?” But she knew how. Collingwood Station had an efficient gossip mill, to which she herself had contributed on more than one occasion. “The news really spread that fast?”

      “Afraid so. She went to Donaldson’s earlier today and people were talking about it. I ran into John at the drugstore and…”

      Oh, no. “Was Allison with him?” When it came to sniffing out gossip and dragging it out of people, Allison had a nose like a bloodhound and a mean streak like a pit bull.

      “Apparently she was already at home nursing a headache,” he said. “John didn’t seem to know why you were gone, but he did mention that Nick was looking for you.”

      “While you were out I called my brother and left a message on his machine. I didn’t tell him where I am, so thank you for covering for me.”

      “No problem.”

      She tightened her grip on the bag of clothes as if it was a security blanket, which in a way it was. The things Brent had brought for her meant she wouldn’t have to go home for a few days. If he didn’t want her to stay here, maybe he’d lend her some money so she could stay at a hotel. “Did your mother know what happened? Why I—”

      Brent shook his head. “And my mother’s not one to gossip. She won’t tell anyone where you’re staying.”

      Leslie supposed she should be relieved to hear that, but she knew Brent’s mother. They had served on Collingwood Station’s redevelopment committee and from the start, Colleen Borden had treated her like an adversary. Still, she hoped Brent was right and that his mother wouldn’t tell anyone she was here.

      She wasn’t ready to face her family and friends, and she definitely wasn’t ready to tell them what had happened. But what about Brent? Did she owe him an explanation?

      “Gerald is having an affair,” she said, even before she’d made a conscious decision to tell him.

      He looked as though he didn’t believe her. “Are you sure? I mean, maybe—”

      “I saw them together.” The flash of memory was accompanied by a wave of nausea.

      “Why didn’t you dump him when you found out?” He sounded incredulous.

      “I found out this morning.”

      She watched as he processed that piece of information, and then the understanding of what she’d just told him spread across his face.

      “You mean he…? They…? At the church? No.”

      She glanced down at her feet and wriggled her toes inside Brent’s socks. “I’m afraid so.”

      “Oh, Leslie. I’m so sorry.” He pulled her into his arms then, and she let him. He felt safe and dependable and surprisingly nonjudgmental, and she pressed her face against his shoulder and let the tears flow. Oddly enough, she wasn’t sure what was making her cry—Gerald’s infidelity, or having to tell Brent about it.

      Chapter Three

      Taking her into his arms had been purely instinctive. Reacting to her now that she was in them was perfectly natural, he told himself. Strictly physical. Totally unbelievable. When he’d picked her up by the church, the delicate scent of her perfume had filled the cab of the truck. Now, after using his soap and shampoo, she smelled like she belonged here.

      He’d driven by the church that morning with the intention of finally closing a door on one chapter of his life. Instead the door was wide open and the pages of that chapter were blowing all over the room. Which was a really dumb metaphor to be thinking about, considering that the woman of his dreams, the one to which he still compared all others, was now soaking his shirt with her tears. As far he knew she had never in her life needed anyone or anything, but she needed someone now. Not him, specifically, but he was here and she was here, and the bag of clothes he’d given her was squished between them, and that was a good thing.

      This isn’t about you, he told himself. Ha. The hell it isn’t.

      Meanwhile, he had no clue what to say to her. There, there, everything will be okay.

      No. “I’d like to track that guy down and beat the crap out of him.”

      Or he could say that.

      She took half a step back and looked at him through watery eyes. “That sounds like something a brother might say.” For the first time that day, she smiled, just briefly, but long enough to remind him about the adorable little dimple to the left of her mouth.

      And he was so glad he wasn’t her brother. “If yours never said it, he should have.”

      “Nick never gives advice.”

      “This time he should have made an exception.”

      “And what should he have said?”

      “Don’t marry that guy, he’s a jerk.”

      “He told you that?”

      Brent knew thin ice when he was standing on it, and this ice was getting thinner by the minute. “Not in so many words, but he obviously didn’t like Gerald.”

      “He never said anything like that to me.”

      “He has some misguided idea that he shouldn’t stick his nose in other people’s business.”

      “I know. Nick hates having people tell him what to do, so he’d never interfere with anyone else’s decision.” She looked down at her hands and fidgeted with the handles of the bag of clothing. “So you think Gerald’s a jerk and you’d like to beat the crap out of him,” she said. “Anything else you want to tell me while we’re on the subject?”

      The question caught him off guard. Thin ice, he reminded himself. “Gerald and I don’t exactly move in the same circles so I don’t know him all that well.”

      “But you have an opinion.”

      And as much as he found it difficult to believe, she seemed to want to hear it. So he said it. “I don’t think he’s good enough for you.”

      “Really?”