Back in the Bachelor's Arms. Victoria Pade

while she knew that was what she should be hoping for, as she turned off the bare bulbs that lit the attic and descended the narrow staircase to the second level, she wasn’t hoping for that. Although she wasn’t sure what she was hoping for…

      Just in case he might still be there, she made a pit stop in her bedroom and the bathroom connected to it. The sweatsuit she’d put on earlier was covered in grime. Though she’d worn the less-than-attractive outfit so as not to run the risk of appearing as if she cared how she looked to Reid, she was secretly happy for the excuse to change and shed the sweats quickly, replacing them with jeans and a turtleneck T-shirt she tucked into them.

      Then she went into the bathroom, washed her face, applied a hint of mascara and blush she’d also forgone earlier, and brushed out her hair. If she went downstairs and discovered Reid was long gone and she was alone, she was going to feel ridiculous for doing it all.

      She was spared that, though. Because when she went down the second set of stairs, there was Reid, drying off a paintbrush.

      “I didn’t know if you were still here or not,” Chloe said to announce herself, taking instant stock of him.

      He was dressed in the same jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing early that morning and there was a shadow of a beard darkening the lower half of that face that she wanted to study but knew she shouldn’t. The shadow of a beard that gave him a scruffy, sexy appeal he would never have had at eighteen when there was too much of the boy still on the surface.

      “I just wrapped it up for the day,” he answered, his tone again amiable, if slightly restrained.

      But then, as if he couldn’t maintain that restraint, he nodded in the direction of the kitchen and said, “There’s nothing to eat around here. What were you thinking about for dinner?”

      “I hadn’t thought about it yet,” she admitted. Which was true. She’d eaten before leaving Billings the night before, assuming she would do a grocery run today. But without a car and feeling a bit too wobbly to walk to Main Street, she’d lunched on the cheese crackers she’d brought with her. Then she’d been too busy fighting with the rental agency, cleaning the attic and thinking about Reid to consider what she was going to do for the evening meal.

      “No car, no food in the house—how about ordering a pizza?” Reid said. “Paul’s delivers now. It’s one of Northbridge’s flashy new amenities. I’ll even treat.”

      “Really?” Chloe was so surprised by that offer that the word slipped out on its own. She just couldn’t believe he was asking her to have dinner.

      “Really,” Reid confirmed. “We can do that, can’t we? After all this time? Share a friendly pizza? It shouldn’t be a big deal, should it?”

      It probably shouldn’t have been. But it was. At least to Chloe. It was a big deal that he was suggesting it, that he was willing to do it. And it was a big deal that she would be spending some time with him when he was making an effort to be pleasant. When he was likable. When he looked the way he did even in clothes that had paint smudges on them….

      “Sure,” she said after another moment’s hesitation. “I think we can share a pizza. We’re two grown up, civilized people.” Who were both obviously only tentatively feeling their way along what was a new path for them.

      “Let’s do it then,” he said. “Do you still want ‘The Works’ or have you gone vegetarian or something?”

      Chloe knew from their high school days that the only pizzeria in town—Paul’s Pizzeria—made a pie called The Works and that it was a large pizza topped with pepperoni, sausage, seasoned ground beef, black olives, mushrooms, green peppers, onions and three different kinds of cheese. It had been their favorite and at that moment it sounded wonderful.

      “No, I haven’t gone vegetarian or anything. The Works would be great,” she said.

      Reid set his paintbrush and rag down, then retrieved his cell phone from the pocket of his jean jacket where it was slung over the carpet roll. It took him only a few moments to order. He clearly recognized Paul’s voice, identified himself, and said he wanted The Works sent to the rental house. In Northbridge everyone knew everyone else’s business so intimately that that was all the information necessary.

      Then Reid hung up. “We’re all set. Luke and I have the fridge stocked with sodas and beer. Which would you like?”

      Before Chloe could tell him, his cell phone rang.

      “Why don’t you tell me what you want and I’ll get drinks while you answer that?” Chloe said.

      “Soda is fine for me,” he said by way of conceding the logic in that idea.

      Chloe couldn’t help overhearing the conversation as she took two colas from the refrigerator. While the tone was medical, there was something else about the exchange that sparked her interest.

      When the call ended she went as far as the archway between the living room and the kitchen with cans in hand and said, “Linoleum or paint-splotched carpeting?” Since there weren’t any chairs anywhere they would need to sit on the floor of one room or the other.

      “Paint-splotched carpeting,” he decreed, motioning for her to sit in the very center where the least of the splatters marred the olive green shag floor covering.

      Chloe sat with her legs curled to one side, watching as Reid returned his phone to his coat pocket, and trying—really, really trying—not to watch him do it and notice that even his derriere had improved with age.

      “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on your call but…well, I did anyway. Do you deal in blood that isn’t human?” she asked, referring to something she’d overheard him say.

      He didn’t join her on the floor. Instead, he went to stand with his back braced against the door, raising a knee so that the sole of one cowboy-booted foot was flat against the wooden panel. Then he slid his hands into the rear pockets that she’d been attempting not to look at a split second before.

      “Remember the stories that have been around forever about Reverend Perry’s wife?” Reid asked rather than giving her a direct answer about the blood.

      “The scandal about her helping two itinerant farmhands rob the bank and running off with them?” Chloe said with intrigue in her tone.

      “That would be the story, yes.”

      It was one of the biggest scandals to ever hit Northbridge. It had happened in 1960. Celeste Perry had reputedly grown weary of her righteous life as the wife of the town minister and the mother of their two young sons. She’d become enamored of one of two hard-living, hard-drinking farmhands—Frank Dorian and Mickey Rider—who had come into town during harvest season. On a night at the end of that October she’d slipped out of her marital bed to meet up with her lover and his partner. Later investigation had revealed that her lover and his partner were bank robbers rather than migrant farm workers, and after breaking into Northbridge’s only Savings and Loan and its vault, and cleaning out all the money they could carry, the reverend’s wife and the two men had disappeared.

      “Is Reverend Perry still around?” Chloe asked, not only because she was curious, but also because it helped to have something to talk about that was completely separate from either of them and their own past problems, and she wanted to prolong it.

      “He is,” Reid answered. “But he retired about five years ago.”

      “And your phone call had something to with him and what happened with his wife?”

      “We’re refurbishing the north bridge—it’s being restored and the land around it will be turned into a park so the town’s namesake isn’t just some rundown relic. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago one of the guys working on it found an old duffel bag jammed into the rafters. It was stuffed with the belongings of one of the robbers and the empty moneybags from the bank. There were some stains on the outside of the duffel that looked like they might be blood.”

      “Human blood,” Chloe repeated.