A Husband of Her Own. Brenda Novak

affections?

      She hadn’t been able to compete with Josh at seven. She couldn’t compete with him now. She wasn’t even sure why she kept trying.

      After finishing the salad, she set it on the table and retrieved her keys.

      “Where are you going?” her mother asked, alarmed. “Aren’t you staying for dinner?”

      Rebecca pictured the moment her sister and the kids arrived; she pictured sitting across the table from her father. “No, Dad already took care of what you both wanted to say. Consider me warned,” she said and headed for the entry.

      “Rebecca?”

      She paused.

      “He doesn’t mean to sound so harsh, honey,” her mother said softly.

      “Oh, he meant it all right,” she said. Rebecca wasn’t sure about a lot of things—why Buddy kept putting off their wedding, why she’d gone home with Josh a year ago last summer (and how she’d even started dancing with him in the first place), why she didn’t really fit into her own family. But she knew her father had meant every word.

      REBECCA SAT on her back step as darkness fell, and lit up a cigarette. She’d managed to get through yesterday without smoking, despite Buddy’s call, but one visit to her parents’ house and—POOF—there went her resolve. What difference did it make, anyway? She couldn’t change her stripes. Even if she decided to become a nun, the good folks of Dundee would find something to criticize, her father chief among them.

      At least she’d come by her reputation honestly. She’d raised eyebrows in Dundee more times than she could count and had certainly given Josh a run for his money in their younger days. She still remembered filling his locker with pincher bugs, spray-painting “Josh Sucks” on the sidewalk in front of his house and telling everyone that his penis was a mere three inches long (without adding that she was going by information gleaned ten years earlier in a classic “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”).

      Contrary to popular belief, however, he was hardly blameless. He’d retaliated by jamming her locker so she couldn’t open it, which made her fail an English test because she couldn’t turn in the essay she’d written the night before. He and Randy stole a pair of panties from her gym locker and ran them up the flagpole. And Josh had offered to give her a more current measurement of his penis. She’d refused, of course. But plenty of other girls had come forward to vouch for something far more impressive than three inches. Taken with his football prowess, even her accusation of a small penis wasn’t enough to dent Josh’s overwhelming popularity.

      Rebecca was the only one, it seemed, who didn’t worship Josh Hill. And that hadn’t changed over the years. No matter what happened, her father remained one of his staunchest supporters.

      A staunch supporter of the enemy. She grimaced and took another drag on her cigarette. About Josh, her father always said, “He’s made his parents proud, hasn’t he?” About Rebecca her father always said, “God tries us all.”

      Oh well, nothing in Dundee was going to matter when she moved to Nebraska, she told herself. But that line of reasoning didn’t pack the same power it used to because she was no longer sure she’d be moving to Nebraska. Buddy had left several messages on her answering machine today, but she didn’t feel like returning them. She felt like sitting on the steps, smoking one cigarette after another, watching the moths hover about her porch light. Autumn was here. The leaves were turning, the days growing shorter. Rebecca had always loved the crisp mountain air, and she wondered if Nebraska was very different. She’d only visited there once, the past spring….

      If she did move, she’d miss autumn in Idaho. And she’d miss Delaney.

      Picking up the cordless phone she’d carried outside with her, she dialed her best friend at the ranch where Delaney now lived with her husband, Conner Armstrong.

      “You’re smoking again,” Delaney said, almost as soon as she answered.

      Rebecca exhaled. “That’s the first thing you’ve got to say to me?”

      “You promised me you were going to quit for real this time.”

      Rebecca removed her cigarette and watched the smoke curl up into the sky. “Yeah, well, that was before I went over to my parents’ tonight. Be grateful I’m only smoking.”

      “Something happen at your folks?”

      After another long drag, Rebecca stubbed out her cigarette, then stretched her legs. “Nothing new. How’s the pregnancy?”

      “The doctor says everything looks fine.”

      “Good. Hard to believe you’re almost ready to pop. The past few months have gone fast.” In fact, considering that Rebecca and Buddy had been engaged before Delaney even met Conner, time had streaked by. Delaney was starting a family; Rebecca was trying to work up the nerve to tell everyone her wedding had just been postponed again.

      “I’m big enough that it’s getting a little uncomfortable,” Delaney complained. “I’ve lost my toes.”

      Rebecca thought she wouldn’t mind gaining twenty-five pounds and losing sight of her toes if it meant a baby. “Guess that goes with the territory, huh? Did you ever find the dressers you were looking for?”

      “Conner told me to buy new ones. But I’m having fun hunting for bargains. It keeps me occupied while he oversees the building of the resort. Maybe I’ll drive to Boise next week and visit a few garage sales, see what I can find. You’re off Monday. Want to go with me?”

      Rebecca’s call-waiting beeped before she could answer. “Hang on a sec,” she said and hit the flash button. “Hello?”

      “Rebecca?”

      It was her father. She sat up and shook another cigarette out of the package, knowing instinctively she’d need one. “Yeah?”

      “I just talked to Josh Hill.”

      She froze mid-motion. “Why do I get the feeling that comment is somehow related to me?”

      “Because it is. I asked him to call a truce between the two of you.”

      Rebecca stuck the unlit cigarette in her mouth and found her lighter. “You didn’t,” she said, speaking around it.

      “I did.” A brief, unhappy hesitation. “Are you smoking again? I thought you’d quit.”

      Dropping her lighter in her lap, she quickly pulled the cigarette from her mouth. “I have.”

      “I hope so. That’s such a nasty habit.”

      “Why did you call Josh, Dad? There’s no reason to ask for a truce.”

      “After what happened at Delia’s wedding?”

      “That was an accident. We haven’t done anything to each other on purpose for years.” Barring the night they’d gone to Josh’s place from the Honky Tonk, of course. They’d done a few things to each other then—and would probably have done a lot more if they hadn’t been interrupted. But that night didn’t count. Feverish groping didn’t fall in the same category as their earlier dealings.

      “I’m tired of being afraid to have you two in the same room,” her father replied.

      “Is that what you told him?”

      “That’s what I told him.”

      “And he said…” Rebecca toyed nervously with her lighter, flipping the lid open, closed, open, closed. Click, click…click, click.

      “He agreed to let the past go.”

      “He did?”

      “That’s what I just said, isn’t it? Now, what do you say?”

      Click, click…click, click.

      Words were cheap, Rebecca decided. Why not let her father feel