A Husband of Her Own (Dundee, Idaho #2)(68)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Josh?”

“Mary?” he said. He hadn’t heard from her since he’d broken things off, but he’d suspected at the time that she thought he’d change his mind and come back to her. In their last conversation, she’d said as much. “You’ll never find anyone like me, Josh. You’ll wake up someday and figure that out,” she’d said. But she’d also rejected his offer of friendship, so he hadn’t expected her to contact him.

“Who else did you think it would be, calling this late?” she asked. Her words were slightly slurred and could barely compete with the music blaring in the background.

“Where are you calling me from? The Honky Tonk?”

“Yeah.”

He stopped the playback of the football game he’d been watching so he could hear her better. “Sounds like you’re having a good time.”

“No. No, I want to go home.”

“Is there any reason you can’t?” he asked, not quite sure why she’d called or where she was leading him.

“I-I need…”

She finished her sentence, but she was mumbling worse than before and Josh couldn’t hear her for the noise. “What?” he said.

“I need…ride home.”

Obviously, she’d had too much to drink. But Mary never went anywhere alone. “Where are your friends?”

“I don’t know. I think Candace…”

Again, what she said was lost. “Can you repeat that?” he asked, plugging his other ear in an effort to concentrate on her voice.

“…left with Leonard. And Wendy…don’t know.” He thought he heard her sniffle at the end of these sentence fragments and wondered if she was crying.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. But he couldn’t get a coherent answer out of her and he didn’t think she could hear him any more clearly than he could hear her.

He sighed. He really didn’t want to leave the house. He was still hoping to hear from Rebecca, and he wasn’t sure she had his cell number. Most people didn’t use cell phones in Dundee; the coverage was too spotty in the mountains. But he couldn’t leave Mary stranded at the Honky Tonk. “I’m coming,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

When he finally got an okay out of her, he hung up and grabbed his coat before dashing outside. Grimacing at the rusty, dented Suburban that had become his usual mode of transportation since Rebecca burned up his Excursion, he shook his head.

“And she’s the woman I want in my kitchen,” he muttered. Then he climbed into the Suburban, started the engine and backed out of the drive.

JOSH FOUND MARY at a table near the jukebox, nursing another drink. As far as he could tell, she was alone. But her mascara was smeared and her clothes looked disheveled. When she saw him, the corners of her mouth turned down in a pouty, sullen expression.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“You called me, remember? You ready to go home?”

“No.”

He glanced around the smoky tavern to see Billy and Bobby Jo and a couple of other guys playing darts. A few pool players huddled over the tables in the back, and a handful of couples were dancing. But the place wasn’t nearly as busy as it would’ve been a couple of hours earlier. Probably because it was almost two in the morning—closing time.

“It’s late,” he said.

She stared at her drink without answering.

“Mary? Do you want me to take you home or not?”

“How could you?” she suddenly demanded. “Do you know what you’ve done to me? Everyone expected us to get married. Everyone! And then you dump me for that…that tramp Rebecca.” She shook her head wildly as though words alone couldn’t describe her humiliation.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ve already been through that. I hope you find someone a lot better than me who—”

She held up a hand. “Stop. I don’t want to hear it. There isn’t anyone better than you.”

Josh would have been flattered had he thought she meant that the way most folks would’ve taken it. But he knew she saw him more as a status symbol than anything else. “You’re a bright, attractive woman, Mary,” he said. “You don’t need me to prove that.”

“Oh, yeah?” She grimaced. “If I’m so bright and attractive, why am I divorced? Why—” Her voice cracked but she sniffled and continued. “Why wasn’t I enough for Glen? Or for you?”

Josh reached out to cover her hand with his. “It wasn’t that you weren’t enough for me, Mary. I think I just had my eye on someone else, someone who’s been part of me for a long time.”

“Rebecca?”

He nodded.

“But everyone’s always thought you didn’t like her!”

“For most my life, I thought so, too.”

“What changed your mind?”

He smiled, remembering all the years he’d known Rebecca growing up. He could still recall the time she’d lost a baby tooth in third grade and had to go see the nurse. And the time she’d found a worm in the schoolyard and chased Monti Blevons the entire recess for grinding it to dust. Then there were the later years, when she slowly shed her tomboy dress for girl stuff. Seeing her in her first formal at Homecoming had taken his breath away. Of course, she was someone else’s date. They’d scowled at each other and brushed past without speaking. But he’d wanted to dance with her. “Truthfully?” he asked.

“Truthfully.”

“I think it was that fight with Buck Miller.”

“In the seventh grade?” Mary said.

Josh nodded, even though he suspected he’d loved Rebecca before that—since the day he’d first seen her and she’d tilted up her sharp little chin and glared down her nose at him.

“It’s pretty hard to compete with giving Buck a bloody nose,” Mary admitted. “I’m not the rough-and-tumble type.”

“Rebecca is a hard act to follow,” Josh agreed. “But don’t get me wrong. There are those who are grateful for that.” He chuckled. “Sometimes I’m one of them.”

“You think you two can make it work?”

“I have no clue,” he said. “Rebecca always seems to make things more difficult than they have to be. But if I have my say, we’re going to try.”

“Well…” She dried her eyes and glanced at the dance floor. “Can I have a last dance?”