Linda Howard: To Die For

Enough coffee had dripped into the carafe to fill my cup. Thank heavens for the automatic cutoff on coffeemakers today. I pulled out the carafe, and only one little drop escaped to sizzle on the hot pad. After pouring the coffee, I slid the carafe back into place and leaned against the cabinets while I began to mentally worry at what had been puzzling me in my dream.

My feet were freezing, so after a moment I went into the family room and got the notebook in which I’d been listing Wyatt’s transgressions, then curled up in his recliner with the robe tucked around my feet.

What Mom had said last night-well, a few hours ago-had triggered some chain of thought. The problem was, the links weren’t connected yet; so technically, I guess, there wasn’t a chain, because they have to be linked to make a chain, but the individual little chunks were lying there waiting for someone to put them together.

The thing was, she had said pretty much what I’d already been thinking, but phrased it just a little differently. And she had gone way back, all the way to my senior year in high school when Malinda Connors threw a screaming hissy fit because I was voted Homecoming Queen even though I was already Head Cheerleader and she thought it wasn’t fair for me to be both. Not that Malinda would have gotten Homecoming Queen anyway, because she was, like, the poster girl for Skanks Unlimited, but she had a real high opinion of herself and thought I was the only obstacle in her path.

She hadn’t tried to kill me, however. Malinda had married some moron and moved to Minneapolis. There’s a song in there somewhere.

But Mom had started me thinking that the roots of this could go back quite a while. I’d been trying to think of something recent, such as Wyatt’s last girlfriend, or my last boyfriend, which didn’t make sense at all because Wyatt had been the last one who mattered and he hadn’t even technically been a boyfriend, because he got cold feet so fast.

I started writing items down in the notebook. They were still the individual links, but sooner or later I’d hit on the one thing that turned them into a chain.

I heard the shower running upstairs and knew Wyatt was up. I turned on the television to check the local weather-hot, fancy that-then stared at the notebook some more while I pondered what I was going to do that day. I’d had enough of sitting in the house. The first day had been great; yesterday had been not so great. If I had to stay here all day again, I might get into all sorts of trouble, out of sheer boredom.

Besides, I felt fine. The stitches in my left arm had been in for seven days and the muscle was healing nicely. I could even dress myself. The soreness from the car accident was mostly gone, taken care of by yoga, ice packs, and general experience with sore muscles.

After about fifteen minutes Wyatt came down the stairs and saw me sitting in front of the television. “Making another list?” he asked warily as he approached.

“Yeah, but it isn’t yours.”

“You make lists of other people’s transgressions?” He sounded a little insulted, as if he thought he was the only one who deserved a list.

“No, I’m making a list of the evidence.”

He leaned over and kissed me good morning, then read the list. “Why is your red Mercedes on the list?”

“Because I’ve dreamed about it twice. That has to mean something.”

“Maybe that the white one is a total wreck and you wish you had the red one back?” He kissed me again. “What would you like for breakfast this morning? Pancakes again? French toast? Eggs and sausage?”

“I’m tired of guy food,” I said, getting to my feet and following him into the kitchen. “Why don’t you have any girl food? I need some girl food.”

He froze with the coffee carafe in his hand. “Women don’t eat the same things that men eat?” he asked cautiously.

Really, he was so exasperating. “Are you sure you were married? Don’t you know anything?”

He finished pouring his coffee and set the pot back on the hot pad. “I didn’t pay that much attention back then. You’ve been eating what I eat.”

“Just to be polite, because you were going to so much trouble to feed me.”

He thought about that for a minute, then said, “Let me drink my coffee and I’ll get back to you on this. In the meantime, I’m going to cook breakfast, and you’ll eat it because that’s all I have and I refuse to let you starve yourself.”

Man, he gets testy over the least little thing.

“Fruit,” I said helpfully. “Peaches. Grapefruit. Whole wheat bread for toast. And yogurt. Sometimes a cereal. That’s girl food.”

“I have cereal,” he said.

“A healthy cereal.” His taste in cereal ran to Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch.

“Why worry about eating anything healthy? If you can eat yogurt and live, you can eat anything. That stuff’s disgusting. It’s almost as bad as cottage cheese.”

I agreed with him about the cottage cheese, so I didn’t leap to its defense. Instead I said, “You don’t have to eat it; you just need to have girl food here for me to eat. If I’m going to stay, that is.”

“You’re staying, all right.” He fished in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out something, which he tossed to me. “Here.”

It was a small velvet box. I turned it over in my hand but didn’t open it. If this was what I thought it was-I tossed the box right back at him. He fielded it one-handed and frowned at me. “Don’t you want it?”

“Want what?”

“The engagement ring.”

“Oh, is that what’s in the box? You threw my engagement ring at me?” Boy, this was such a big transgression I would have to write it in block letters on its own page, and show it to our children when they grew up as an example of how not to do something.

He cocked his head while he gave this a brief consideration, then looked at me standing there barefoot, dwarfed by his robe, waiting narrow-eyed to see what he would do. He gave a quick little grin and came to me, catching my right hand in his and lifting it to his mouth. Then he went down gracefully on one knee and kissed my hand again. “I love you,” he said gravely. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes, I will,” I replied just as gravely. “I love you, too.” Then I threw myself at him, which of course knocked him off balance, and we sprawled on the kitchen floor, except he was on bottom, so that was okay. We kissed for a while; then I sort of came unwrapped from the robe and what you might have expected to happen, happened.

Afterward he retrieved the velvet box from near the door, where it had skittered when he dropped it, and flipped the top open. Taking out a simple, breathtaking solitaire diamond, he took my left hand and gently slid the ring onto my ring finger.

I looked at the diamond and tears welled in my eyes. “Hey, don’t cry,” he cajoled, tilting my chin up to kiss me. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I love you and it’s beautiful,” I said, and gulped back my tears. Sometimes he did things just right, and when he did, it was almost more than I could bear. “When did you get it? I can’t think when you would have had the time.”

He snorted. “Last Friday. I’ve been carrying it around for a week.”

Last Friday ? The day after Nicole was murdered? Before he followed me to the beach? My mouth fell open.

He put a finger under my chin and pushed up, closing my mouth. “I was certain then. I was certain as soon as I saw you on Thursday night, sitting in your office with your hair up in a ponytail and wearing that little pink halter top that had all the men’s tongues dragging the ground. I was so relieved to find out you weren’t the one who’d been murdered that my knees nearly buckled, and I knew right then that all I’d been doing for two years was avoiding the inevitable. I made up my mind right then to get you corralled as soon as possible, and I bought the ring the next day.”