“I told you I did.”
“That’s just stupid.”
Anger rose from her belly to her brain like mercury in a thermometer stuck in boiling water. “Don’t you call me stupid. I’d say what you’re doing these days is way off the idiocy scale, so I guess you can put up with me for what’s left of your miserable life.”
Katie paused when she saw how the color left his face, but she didn’t relent. Suddenly, the idea of this beautiful, talented man wasting his life felt like a personal affront, like a slap to the face. It surprised her a little to realize she shook with emotion. Or perhaps it was some culmination of the bizarre events of the past fifteen hours and a sleep-deprived brain that was finally getting to her.
“You’re not going to chase me off like you did Everett, Rill,” she said in a quiet, vibrating voice.
His lips flattened in irritation. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Katie. You haven’t seen how I live.”
She swallowed convulsively. There it was: proof positive that he definitely had been too drunk to recall her being at his house last night, let alone remember what they’d done. A feeling of mixed relief and sadness swooped through her.
She stepped toward him and tilted her chin up, meeting his glare. “You call what you’ve been doing the past eighteen months living? We both know you’re flirting with the opposite, Rill. It’s gonna stop here and now, too.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked belligerently. “How do you know that?”
“Because Eden would be ashamed of you. I figure you just need someone to remind you of that.”
His eyes flashed in fury at the mention of Eden’s name; his jaw clamped tight. Katie recoiled slightly in her own skin, the evidence of his hurt paining her, as well. She stepped back.
“Did you bring your checkbook or not? I’ll pay you the cash I have and drive into Carbondale tomorrow to get the rest. Errol’s itching to get back to his house, and I sure could use some sleep.”
His right eyelid flickered, indicating that while Katie might be willing to dust off her hands and move on from her little outburst, Rill was still angry.
“You can come up to my place and get rested up for your drive back to California. You’re not welcome here, though. I want you gone as soon as you’re rested,” he said stiffly.
She stalked past him toward the nurses’ station, wondering why having Rill say out loud what she already knew with perfect clarity could hurt so damn much.
Rill made a phone call before they left the hospital. Katie heard him telling the person on the other end about Errol’s injury. Fifteen minutes later, they dropped a tired, pale-faced Errol off at his house and left him in the care of a woman in her sixties who was dressed like she was on her way to a Grateful Dead concert. Her name was Olive Fanatoon, and once Katie got past her hippie apparel, she realized she was a sweet, soft-spoken lady.
“Is Mrs. Fanatoon a relative?” Katie asked Rill as they walked out to their cars. Katie and Errol had followed Rill to Errol’s. The tiny house itself was in disrepair, but it was ideally situated on the serene, thickly wooded banks of the Ohio River.
Rill shook his head. Katie could tell by the way he didn’t make eye contact that he was still irritated at her. “No, but she’s taken care of Errol on and off since he was a baby. Every adult in Vulture’s Canyon, and most of the teenagers as well, takes turns watching out for Errol, but Olive pitches in more frequently than most.”
“Do you take a turn?” she asked as she reached her car.
Blue eyes flashed at her. “No. I don’t belong to this town.”
“Right. Silly of me to ask. You’ve got much more pressing matters to see to, like drinking yourself into oblivion, for example,” she said as she flung open her car door.
She pulled out of the dusty dirt road that led to Errol’s and onto the rural route, her wheels squealing on the blacktop. She imagined hauling ass up to the Mitchell place and finding a shower and a place to sleep before Rill even had a chance to make his way through her dust.
It galled her to have to pull over and wait before she hit the main road, because she’d recalled why it was so critically important for Rill to believe this was her first time visiting his house. She couldn’t traipse up the hill like she owned the place.
Tears burned in her eyes when he barreled past her in his sedan without a sideways glance. She couldn’t help but contrast his cold aloofness with the scorching memory of him pressed to her backside, his mouth hungry and hot on her neck, his gruff whisper in her ear . . .
Open up, baby. I’ve waited for this for so damn long.
She shivered despite the heat of the early autumn day. Holy shit. Can’t you even console an old friend without ruining everything?
For a few seconds, she felt like something volatile was going to burst right out of her chest, but then she sniffed and determinedly pulled her car onto the road. So what if on an impulse she’d quit her job, driven across the country, run over a town resident whom she’d now have to provide for medically with a quickly dwindling bank account, fucked the man she was supposed to be consoling and then offended him by speaking his dead wife’s name out loud?
“At least you’ve got your health,” she muttered grimly before she turned onto the main road and started up the hill where Rill lived.
Four
By four o’clock that afternoon, Rill was ready for a drink. He’d been confused and worried by Katie’s initial phone call, infuriated when she threw her sauce in his face at the hospital and on low boil since she’d hauled an enormous Louis Vuitton suitcase up the front porch stairs and burst through the screen door.