First Impressions Read online

  “Yeah, sure,” Jared said as he left the office. Outside the door, he leaned against the wall and thought for a moment. He needed to find out who painted those watercolors of Eden’s old house. He needed to—Hell, there were a thousand things that needed to be done, and he was going to do them. He went back to his office and told his secretary that he wasn’t feeling well. In fact, he felt a bout of stomach flu combined with bubonic plague coming on, and he thought he was going to be out of the office for at least a week, maybe two.

  She smiled at him conspiratorially. “Call your mom and she’ll get in touch with you if there’s an emergency?”

  “Yeah,” Jared said with a grin, then he grabbed a couple of firearms and was gone.

  It took all of Eden’s courage to get dressed and drive to the Queen Anne office the next morning. She wavered between fear and courage, then back again. What if Brad wouldn’t see her? What if he ordered her out of his office and told her he never wanted to see her again? The next second she told herself that she was being absurd. They were adults. She and Brad hardly knew each other, so he had no claim on her and therefore no right to expect anything from her. In the next moment she was down again as she thought about what Minnie had told her about Brad’s ex-wife and how she’d been unfaithful. “I am not his wife!” she said aloud as she pulled into the wide road that led to the clubhouse. “And I wasn’t being unfaithful.”

  This morning with Melissa had been very bad. During the night her daughter seemed to have lost all her bravado. She’d stopped complaining and telling Eden that she was in the right and that she should be standing up to Stuart. Instead, Melissa had poked at her cereal and said that Stuart was working very hard to make a home for her and the baby.

  Part of Eden thought she should stay at home and hold Melissa’s hand. It was “mother’s instinct.” When Melissa had been a child Eden had stayed home from work whenever her daughter had even the slightest thing wrong with her—which is why Eden had lost job after job. “You do great work,” her employers had told her. “It’s just that you’re absent too many days, so we’re going to have to let you go.”

  As Melissa pushed her cereal around in her bowl, she looked up at Eden with sad eyes, the same eyes she’d turned on her mother when she was a child. But Eden looked at her hugely pregnant daughter and said, “I’m going. Melissa, dear, you have my cell number, the number of the doctor, and the hospital. If anything happens, let me know.”

  “But what if I go into labor?” Melissa said as she jumped down from the bar stool—and the dishes in the plate rack rattled.

  “You haven’t even dropped yet,” Eden said, pulling on her cardigan. “I think you have at least six weeks before you deliver. Why don’t you take a long, hot bath and watch a few movies on TV? I’ll be back this afternoon, and I’ll bring some fish. We’ll wrap it in paper bags and bake it, like we did when you were a child.”

  “But, Mother—” Melissa began.

  “You’ll be fine,” Eden said, then quickly kissed her daughter’s cheek and hurried out the door.

  Now, as she pulled into the parking lot of Queen Anne, her heart was pounding. How angry was Brad? And how did he express anger? Yelling? No, that didn’t seem like him. Coldness? Did he just shut out a person and say nothing to them? Is that how it would be from now on?

  Eden was sure her heart was in her throat as she walked into the office of Queen Anne. She’d already driven past his law office downtown and seen that his car wasn’t there. She decided to go to Queen Anne, and if he wasn’t there she was going to try his house.

  When she knocked on his office door, no one answered, and when she tried the door, it was locked.

  She felt as though someone was watching her. Turning, she looked into Minnie’s office and saw the young woman staring at her. But the moment Eden looked, Minnie turned her head away. Eden didn’t let that deter her. “Minnie!” she said brightly. “How are you?”

  Standing behind her desk, Minnie gave Eden a look so cold that she wanted to run out the door.

  “Is something wrong?” Eden asked, her voice close to breaking. Is this what she was going to get when she saw Brad?

  “Wrong?” Minnie asked quietly, but in a deadly voice. “You were rolling around naked in the mud with my boyfriend, and you ask me if anything is wrong?”

  “Your boyfriend?” Eden asked, eyes wide.

  “Do you think he belonged to you. Do you think everything belongs to you?”

  Eden thought her brain must be spinning around inside her head. She took a deep breath. “I think that Jared McBride belongs to himself. Minnie, I wasn’t naked. No one was naked. The little truck got stuck in the mud, we were trying to push it out, and we fell. That’s all.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Minnie said as she opened a file drawer and jammed in a folder.

  “I can assure you that—”

  “Save it,” Minnie said, turning to glare at Eden. “And here I thought you were different. You know what Brad went through with his wife. I told you the whole story as a warning. He can’t handle another adulterous woman in his life.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Eden said. Maybe she couldn’t stand up to her pregnant daughter, but this young woman was a whole other matter. “First of all, I am no one’s wife, so adultery is impossible. And second, what’s between Braddon and me, and even between Jared and me, is no concern of yours.”

  “Does that mean that you think you can walk into this town and suddenly you know what’s best for everyone? Are those of us who love Brad to stand by in silence and see him get hurt again? Is that what you think?”

  “Minnie,” Eden said softly. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. If anyone thinks I have, then they are the ones who have the dirty minds.”

  “Then I guess that includes Brad.”

  “Brad thinks I—?”

  “Brad thinks you’re little better than his wife, that’s what. You hurt him, Eden. You hurt him deeply. He got on a plane just hours after he saw you in the arms of another man, and no one has heard from him since. You know what he did? He called my mother.”

  At that Eden drew in her breath. Minnie’s mother. The woman Brad had had an affair with.

  “At least I’m glad to see you remember who she is. Brad will never marry her, but she won’t believe that. You should see her now. She’s giddy with happiness because she thinks Brad’s going to ask her out again. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t listen. I told her that Brad will probably forgive you and that he’ll drop her again. But she won’t listen. And I’m caught in the middle. My mother wants me to spy on Brad, and he needs me to clean up after him. If it weren’t for my daughter needing her relatives, I’d leave this town forever.”

  “Minnie, I’m sorry,” Eden said. “I never meant—”

  “Right. You never meant to hurt anyone. You just loved having two men drooling over you, didn’t you?”

  “I think that’s quite enough.” Turning, Eden took a step to leave.

  “You were a slut as a teenager and you haven’t changed since, have you?”

  Eden drew in her breath, then she turned to look back at Minnie. The young woman’s face was so distorted with anger that Eden could hardly recognize her. There was nothing she could say to combat anger like that. She left the office.

  Minnie sat down hard on her chair, and for a moment she wanted to burst into tears. With Eden Palmer’s betrayal, all her plans for her future had been ruined. Brad would never marry Eden now. He’d had enough gossip about his first wife; he’d never set himself up for something like that again. And then there was Jared. Minnie felt betrayed by him too. She’d really felt as though they’d started something good, but it had all been an act. He’d only been in town because of Eden. Minnie wasn’t sure why Jared McBride had been there, but she knew it had something to do with Eden’s disgusting past. And as soon as he’d found out whatever he wanted to know, he’d left. So Minnie was right back where she’d started. She wasn’t going to g