Their Small-Town Love. Arlene James

especially, should aim to be above reproach.

      Ryan watched with a heavy heart as Matt walked away. What a rotten break, Ryan thought, just married and out of a job. He bowed his head to say a quick prayer for his friend. A moment later, he found himself scanning the room for Ivy. How, he wondered, did she know the new Mrs. Matthew Barston? And why had Ivy’s eyes been shadowed with pain?

      Chapter Three

      Night still blanketed the town when Ryan knocked on the door of Ivy’s room early the next morning. He hunched his shoulders beneath the nubbly, caramel-tan fabric of his sport coat. The jacket, worn with a pale yellow shirt, dark brown slacks and a patterned tie in rich tones of gold, provided little comfort from the early morning chill, but he trusted that the temperature would soon warm.

      The door opened to reveal Ivy in a pale pink knit sheath with fitted, three-quarter-length sleeves and a straight neckline. Her dark, lustrous hair hung straight down her back.

      “Hello,” she said, smiling broadly. The warmth of her welcome went a long way toward wiping out Ryan’s nebulous regret at having offered to escort her this morning. He was too busy to get involved with anyone, no matter how much he liked Ivy.

      “You’re looking very pretty,” he told her truthfully, “especially for such an early hour.”

      “Why, thank you. You’re turned out quite nicely yourself.”

      He tugged on the cuffs and lapels of his jacket, preening comically and enjoying her laughter. She interrupted his performance by asking, “Do I need a coat?”

      “Something light, I’d think. It’s not cold but still a little cool out.”

      Ivy went to the suitcase atop the nondescript dresser, picked up a silky, oversized shawl in a pastel paisley print and tossed it about her shoulders. “Will this do?”

      “Perfect,” Ryan decreed. “You look like a spring morning.”

      Laughing again, Ivy retrieved the key and stepped down out of the comfortable room, pulling the door closed behind her. She locked the door and handed the key to Ryan, saying, “I don’t have any pockets and would prefer to leave my purse here. Would you mind holding this for me?”

      “No problem.” Palming the key and the hard plastic tag attached to it, he slid his hand into his coat pocket, then ushered her along the row of rooms, each one separated from the next by a parking bay open on one end. Her perfume wafted on the still, cool air, a combination of spicy cinnamon and sweet camellia well matched to the woman who wore it.

      The barest glimmer of light showed in the east as they strolled along, side by side. Ahead, Ryan could make out cars jockeying for parking space and people moving about; yet, despite that, a certain expectant stillness lay over the place.

      “Hard to believe we were socked in with a nasty ice storm just a month and a half ago,” he ventured after several moments.

      “Yeah, we got hit up in Tulsa, too,” she said, “but then that area almost always gets it. You guys down here not so much.”

      “Usually once a year,” he noted, “and this year it got us really good.”

      “Holt and Cara must have been in a panic, with the wedding coming up and all,” Ivy commented idly.

      Ryan chuckled. “Nope. Nobody was thinking wedding then. Well, Holt and Cara weren’t. The rest of us could read the writing on the wall. I have to hand it to them, though, once the idea hit, they didn’t waste any time. Almost before we knew it, we were standing up there in front of the altar watching them do the deed.”

      Ivy shook her head. “Maybe that’s how it has to be sometimes,” she mused, “fast and furious. What’s that old saying? ‘Don’t let the grass grow under your feet’?”

      “No danger of that,” Ryan quipped. “We’re already expecting to hear any day that they are expecting.”

      A tiny gasp escaped Ivy. “So soon?”

      “Why not?” Ryan asked. “Ace, Cara’s little boy, is just a year old, but chances are he’d be at least two before Cara could give him a brother or sister, and as Holt points out, they would like them to be close in age—similar to the two years between Holt and me.”

      “What about Ace’s father?” Ivy asked carefully.

      “He died not long after Ace was born.”

      She hunched her shoulders, drawing her wrap tighter. “How sad.”

      “Yes. Yes, it is.” Ryan didn’t say that from the sound of things, the marriage hadn’t been a very good one or that Ace’s natural father had looked on him as more of a means to extract cash from his own parents than as a treasured son.

      They walked on in silence for a few moments. Dawn hovered over the horizon now, ready to illuminate the city with the softest tendrils of day and outline the still-leafless skeletons of the stately pecan and hickory trees. It felt as if the world waited for the dawning of the Easter sun.

      “I’d forgotten that sound,” Ivy said suddenly.

      “What’s that?”

      “The oil pumps.”

      “Yeah,” Ryan lifted his head to catch the rhythmic ka-shunk, ka-shunk. “I never notice it. Unless it’s not there. And one day it won’t be. They’re gradually replacing these old pumps with a quiet electric system.”

      “That’s too bad,” she said wistfully. “I find it a comforting sound.”

      “Yeah, I guess I do, too. It nearly drove Ty crazy at first,” Ryan divulged with a chuckle. “Turns out that a penthouse is a very quiet atmosphere.”

      “How did Charlotte and Tyler Aldrich ever get together?” Ivy asked, looking up at Ryan.

      Suddenly struck by the elegant perfection of her features—delicate chin and brows, high smooth forehead, large, deeply set eyes of warm reddish brown, glossy pink lips bracketed by the most beguiling dimples, and a straight, slender nose—he couldn’t respond for a moment. Then a memory intruded, one he hadn’t even known he’d locked away, and before he could think better of it, he heard himself blurting it out.

      “Wait a minute. Didn’t you used to have a little bump on the bridge of your nose?”

      Ivy lifted a hand to that spot on her face, patches of dusky red blossoming on the apples of her cheeks. “You aren’t supposed to know that!”

      “You did,” Ryan teased. “You had a cute little bump right at the top of the bridge of your nose.”

      Dropping her hand, she grimaced. “Cute stops being cute at about twenty-four, thank you very much.”

      “So you had it removed.”

      “Yes, if you must know, I had it removed.”

      Grinning, Ryan couldn’t resist the urge to tease her a little more. “You were the envy of every girl in town back in high school, and all along I’d bet you were obsessing about that tiny bump.”

      “I didn’t,” she insisted. “Well, maybe a little bit, but it was my boyfriend who insisted I do it.” Abruptly, she snapped her mouth closed, as if regretting that last part. Ryan felt a pang on her behalf.

      “What a jerk,” he declared.

      “You don’t know the half of it,” she muttered darkly.

      Again, a question fell out of his mouth without routing itself through his brain first. “How’d you wind up with a jerk like that?”

      She sent an elbow to his ribs, just hard enough to make him laugh. “Basically, the same way I wound up here with you,” she retorted. “Now, enough about me. We were talking about Charlotte and Tyler Aldrich.”

      “Right. Charlotte and Ty and how they got together.”