His for the Taking - By Ann Major Page 0,34
he hadn’t. No, after dropping Maddie off last night, he’d lain in his bed, tossing and turning, torturing himself with visions of her lying in her fiancé’s arms.
Gathering his courage, he dragged himself out of the truck and walked up to the front door and knocked. He was about to raise his hand again when the door opened and Cinnamon wheeled around from the back porch, yapping.
Propped on crutches, Miss Jennie, whose wrinkled face was softened by her bright blue eyes, beamed up at him sweetly as Cinnamon rushed inside.
“Good mornin’, Cole. I expect you’re here to see my darlin’ Maddie.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Well, she’s in the shower. The poor thing’s as pale as a ghost this morning and seems plumb tuckered out. I don’t think she slept much last night. I heard her pacing early this morning, but you come on in…that is, if you don’t mind waitin’ for her.”
He removed his Stetson. “I don’t mind,” he said politely, feeling ashamed of his own violent emotions as he stepped inside Miss Jennie’s quiet, orderly parlor, which was filled with faded carpets, well-used antiques and the scarred piano that every kid in town had hammered on, including him.
“I have a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen. Or if you’d prefer a soda, there’s several in the fridge. I think I’d like a soda myself. Maybe you could open one for me, and we could chat at the kitchen table while we wait for our girl. Or sit on the screened porch.”
“Wherever it’s cooler.”
“That would be the kitchen. I’ve got the air on.”
Cole poured himself a mug of coffee and set a chilled can of soda before Miss Jennie, who was quick to thank him.
“I can’t manage these crutches and get a soda out of the fridge at the same time,” she said. “Not enough hands. Maddie’s been so good to come here and help me with little things like that. She’s fed Cinnamon and chased him, watered the plants and done the laundry. Mainly, though, we’ve caught up on our visitin’. I’m mighty proud of how she turned out.”
He nodded courteously. He had immense respect for Miss Jennie, who had been his senior English teacher as well as Maddie’s, only Miss Jennie hadn’t championed him. Quite the opposite. Once, when his grades had fallen, she’d kept him from playing football for six weeks even though his parents and the coaches had pressured her to relent.
“I never knew you were friends with Maddie back when she lived here, you being a Coleman and all. She never once mentioned you until that awful night when she came here and said she had to leave Yella for good. She told me plenty about you that night, though. Cried her heart out, she did, poor thing, because you were so high-and-mighty, so far out of her reach. I told her to call you and lay it all out—to give you a chance. But that only made her weep harder because she said she already had and that you’d made it clear you thought she was trash and didn’t want her.”
Cole clenched his hands into fists and then unclenched them.
“There was nothing I could say to cheer her after that. She just said, ‘He doesn’t want me. He never will. I’m scared. You’ve got to help me get out of this town, or I’ll end up just like my mother.’ So I did.”
Whatever else Maddie might have been that night, he now knew she’d been scared, and he hadn’t been there for her. He was going to find out what the hell had happened to her that had made her run. It might take a while, peeling through the layers of the truth, but he was determined. First, though, he had to deal with Noah.
“She turned out real nice, didn’t she?” Miss Jennie’s blue eyes drilled into him.
“She did turn out nice,” he muttered, feeling defensive.
“Miss Jennie!” Maddie stood in the doorway. Her stern voice and her ashen face were enough to make Miss Jennie swallow whatever she’d been about to confide.
“Hello, Cole,” Maddie said stonily.
He stood up awkwardly, having forgotten all he’d intended to say to her after Miss Jennie’s startling revelation.
It didn’t make sense that Maddie had come to see Miss Jennie, of all people, on the night she’d been so mad with love she’d supposedly run off with Vernon. And Miss Jennie had confirmed what Maddie had told him about having tried to call him. What did it mean that she’d