Wyoming True - Diana Palmer Page 0,39
at the time. I always felt that Cody rushed to judgment. People usually have reasons for what they do, and the girl wasn’t flighty or mean-spirited.”
“He blamed himself, but it was easier to blame the cousin,” she murmured.
His intake of breath was audible. “Do you always do that?” he asked.
She looked at him with both eyebrows raised. “Do what?” she asked, all at sea.
“See things that most of us miss.”
She averted her eyes from his piercing silver ones. “I suppose I’ve become introspective from spending so much time alone.”
“No boyfriends, in other words.”
She shook her head. “Never again,” she said, the words rough and angry.
He frowned. “Ida, there are kind men in the world.”
“Maybe they look that way,” she said. “Even act that way. Then they get you behind a closed door...” She stopped abruptly and drew in a breath. “Where are we going exactly?” she asked with a social smile.
She was far more damaged than he’d realized. He wondered just what else her ex-husband had done to her and was surprised that he cared.
“This little fish place I know,” he replied after a minute. “Best fried oysters on both coasts.”
“And you’d know this, how?” she asked with a little smile.
He grinned. “Because I’ve eaten at most of them. I can pick a restaurant.”
“Can you, now?” she chuckled.
“Wait and see,” was all he said.
* * *
THE RESTAURANT WAS a tiny little hole-in-the-wall in a strip mall, right on the ocean. There was a back patio where people could sit at a small table and eat while they watched the waves come in, foaming on the white sand.
“This is absolutely charming,” Ida exclaimed when they sat, waiting for their order. “They could make money just renting the tables!”
He laughed softly. “I agree. It’s a beautiful place.”
“I lived in Massachusetts while I was going through college,” she recalled. “I loved the ocean. My husband actually bought a hotel on the ocean near Boston so that I’d have a nice place to go on weekends and holidays.”
He felt a pang of something he couldn’t quite identify. “Kind of him.”
She smiled. “He was like that. He sent me to Paris on our first wedding anniversary and had a personal tour guide take me everywhere I wanted to go. It was the grandest trip! I’d never even been out of the country. I saw Versailles and the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre...”
“He didn’t go with you?”
“No.” She sighed. “I never knew why until he died.”
He was thinking of Paris, how exciting it could be. He’d been in love once, with a model who’d worked there. He’d followed her to Paris, and they’d had an exciting few months while the affair lasted. Sadly, she was just getting over a failed affair, and just when Jake was ready to give her a ring, her old boyfriend came back and she was gone, just like that. It had left him with a bad taste in his mouth and an undeserved prejudice against the City of Light.
“You’re brooding,” she said.
He snapped out of it. “Sorry. Bad memories.”
She cocked her head, pondering that.
His dark eyebrows drew together. “No mind reading.”
She held up both hands. “I know nothing.”
“I’ll bet,” he murmured under his breath, because she was the most perceptive female he’d ever known.
“No, really, I know nothing.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “You might decide to take me home before the oysters get here, if I open my mouth.”
That provoked him out of his brief bad mood and he chuckled. “Point taken.”
* * *
“THESE ARE...UNBELIEVABLY DELICIOUS,” she moaned as she dipped a second delicately fried oyster in red sauce and popped it into her mouth. “Even better than the ones in Galveston, and those were out of this world!”
He grinned. “I told you so.” He was eating his own with as much gusto as she was. “The owner could open a franchise if he wanted to. The spices are a very old family recipe, and he has a deft hand with breading, which he does himself. But he’s very content to carry on here.”
“A happy man,” she replied. “And very lucky.”
He drew in a breath and sipped cappuccino. “Happiness is a rare thing.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
He studied her while she ate, his eyes going from the deep circles under her blue eyes to her long-fingered hands.
“Is my hair on crooked?” she asked after a minute, both eyebrows arched.
He laughed out loud. “No. I was just noticing the dark circles under your eyes,” he said honestly. “You don’t sleep much, do you?”
She grimaced.