John Riley's Girl. Inglath Cooper
hadn’t gained forty pounds.
He had all his hair.
And she would have recognized him in a crowd of a thousand on the other side of the world.
To say he looked good would have been an understatement.
Living in Washington, D. C., Olivia had gotten used to men in suits. The professional man’s uniform: polished loafers, socks with crests on them, starched white shirts, hundred-dollar ties. Washington was full of men like that. That was the kind of man today’s women were supposed to find irresistible.
She never had.
And now she realized why.
Because she would forever be comparing them to John. But John Riley as a boy was quite different from John Riley as a man.
There was no questioning which one he was now.
His shoulders had gotten broader. He was more muscular, solid, strong. The changes were unsettling, maybe because that John, she knew. This one, she did not. And the reality of him, standing here in front of her, felt like a kaleidoscope of then and now.
“Olivia.”
At the sound of his voice, she jumped. Olivia. Not Liv as she had once been to him. The greeting was arctic-cold, his whole demeanor one of stiff politeness as if he’d just bumped into someone he had vaguely known in first grade, but wasn’t quite sure he remembered.
“Hello, John.” She folded her arms across her chest to hide her shaking hands. The urge to flee was nearly irresistible. All of a sudden, she felt like a country girl who’d never been farther than twenty-five miles outside Summerville, who had grown up in a four-room house and gotten her new clothes from the church’s Helping Hand closet.
“Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?” The question was clipped, his anger barely concealed.
Olivia’s stomach did a roller-coaster plummet at the recognition of it. She locked her knees and forced herself to return his scrutiny.
People were staring. She felt their curious gazes. Heard the whispers. She willed her voice toward something close to indifference when she said, “The same thing as everyone else in our class.”
“Everyone else is welcome here.”
The words snagged her like barbed wire, cutting through the skin and refusing to let go, their harshness in opposition to the boy she had once known, a boy whose eyes had looked at her as if she were every good thing he’d ever imagined. A flash of memory hit her. The two of them up on Lookout Mountain, lying on their backs in the bed of his old pickup, a quilt beneath them, staring up at the stars and holding hands. Her head was on his shoulder. Amazing that with all the time that had passed since then, she still remembered the depth of the security she’d felt there. I want us to have four children, Liv. At least four. That way they’ll never grow up lonely. Days like Christmas will be loud and out of control. I like out of control.
Had he really said words like that to her, this man with undiluted disapproval in his eyes?
It didn’t seem possible.
She hated herself, suddenly, for the inability to forget, as he so obviously had. There was no doubt that he had put away all the good memories and had no interest in revisiting any of them.
He stood, arms folded across his chest, waiting for her to respond.
Her lips moved although she had no idea what words they were going to form. “I have every right to be here at this reunion, John,” she said, keeping her voice low. “But this is your home, and I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable by coming here.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” he said, the denial instant. “Surprised. I never imagined you’d have that much nerve.”
His directness toppled her poise. “I didn’t know the reunion had been moved until this afternoon—”
“But you still came.”
Again, the words fired at her like missiles with computer-targeted aim. She felt under assault. Countless times, she had imagined what it would be like to see him again. What she would say. How she would feel. None of her scenarios had ever depicted John angry. Indifferent, yes. But not angry. He had married someone else within six months of her leaving here. Why would a man who had forgotten her that quickly have an ounce of anger inside him?
“Just as long as you know this,” he said, before she could manage to respond. “Your being here makes no difference whatsoever to me. Let’s just make sure we let this be both hello and goodbye, okay?”
And with that, he left her standing there, cutting his way back through the hovering crowd of slack-jawed classmates who had sidled in close enough not to miss a word.
JOHN GRABBED a glass from the cabinet above the kitchen sink, flipped the tap on, then downed several swallows of cold water. He set the glass down on the counter, braced his hands on the sink’s edge, head down, yanking air into his lungs. Over the years, he’d done some serious speculating about what it would be like to see Liv again. None of his scenarios had ever even hinted at the reality of it, at the fact that standing there in front of her, close enough to touch her, close enough to see confusion in her eyes, was like having someone drive a semi straight through the wall of his chest.
He’d expected to be protected by his own indifference, had wrapped himself up in it. Liv hadn’t spoken five words before the edges unraveled, leaving him completely vulnerable, and it would be a long time before he thawed out again.
“What on earth are you doing in here when there’s a party going on outside?”
John looked over his shoulder. Sophia stood in the kitchen doorway, the frown on her face the same one she’d been giving him for suspicious behavior since he was ten years old. When John’s mother had died, Sophia, his father’s sister, had come to live with them. Since Laura’s death, she had also become so important to Flora that John couldn’t imagine either of them getting along without her. “Just biding time, Sophia,” he said.
“You planning to stand there all weekend?”
“Might.”
“Then you won’t be setting your sights on Most Sociable, I take it.”
“I had about all I could handle,” he said, ignoring her smile.
“So what are you going to do about the rest of the weekend?”
“The view from here looks pretty good.”
Sophia chuckled and pulled a clean apron from one of the cabinet drawers, gave it a shake and tied it around her waist. “So she did come then?” She reached for a dishtowel and began drying the few bowls that had been left to drain in the sink. The question came totally without fanfare, as if she had just asked him whether he’d remembered to pick up some milk when he’d run into town earlier that afternoon.
“Who?” John asked, neutralizing his expression.
“You know good and well who.”
As much as John loved Sophia, he did not, at that moment, appreciate her uncanny ability to cut to the heart of things. He avoided her gaze, glaring, instead, at the row of pink sponge curlers on the left side of her head. “I told her she wasn’t welcome here.”
Sophia uttered something that sounded like a snort and flapped her dishtowel. “John Crawford Riley! Where are your manners? You were not raised like that.”
“She showed up at this house uninvited,” he dug in.
“She was invited,” Sophia reasoned. “She’s a member of this class just like you were. And if you were indifferent to the girl, you wouldn’t care whether she was here or not.” For emphasis, she plunked a just-dried cup in the cabinet above her head.
John gave her sponge curlers another glare. It was hard to argue with Sophia on this subject. She was, after all, the one who had found