The Wedding Gift Read Free Page B

into her bag, unlocked her door and got out.
    â€œAre you Madeline Sullivan?” the other woman asked.
    Madeline nodded. “ You’re Red?”
    â€œIt’s Ruby, actually. Red is my dad.” She touched a ringlet that had escaped the confinement of her ball cap. “Runs in the family.”
    There was a feeling Madeline had when she was exactly where she was supposed to be at the precise moment she was supposed to be there. Some called it an “ah” moment. She called it knowing. She’d described it once to Summer as a shimmering energy that resembled light and felt like warmth. She’d experienced it the day Summer had driven into Orchard Hill six years ago, the day Aaron Andrews took the vacant desk next to her in the fifth grade, and fleetingly when she’d first encountered Riley Merrick today. It was happening again right now.
    â€œDo I have grease on my face?” Ruby asked.
    Madeline chided herself for staring. “Goodness,no. I was just thinking how much your name suits you. You’re gorgeous. How tall are you?”
    â€œFive-eleven.” Ruby opened the door and put the car in Neutral. “And a quarter,” she added quietly.
    Ruby may have been shy about her exotic beauty, but Madeline soon discovered she wasn’t shy about anything else. She talked while she hooked the cable to the front axle, while she started the winch and while she pointed them toward town.
    Listening, Madeline learned what it had been like growing up in Gale, a small town twenty miles west of Traverse City, and how Ruby had decided early on that the family business wasn’t for her. Ruby had reached the point in her life story where she’d graduated from the University of Chicago when Madeline noticed the silver car in the side mirror.
    â€œI took a job with a prestigious marketing firm in L.A.,” Ruby said. “After spending three years going stark raving mad in a tiny cubicle that for all intents and purposes might as well have been a chicken crate on an egg-laying assembly line, I chucked it all and returned to the roots I’d spurned. You’re sure I don’t have grease on my face?”
    This time Madeline smiled. “I’m positive.”
    At the city limit sign, Ruby said, “I’ve done all the talking.”
    Now the silver car in the mirror was close enough to discern the make and year, close enough to see Riley Merrick behind the wheel.
    â€œI don’t mind,” Madeline said. “Really. My fiancé once told me I have a face everyone talks to.”
    She didn’t miss Ruby’s quick glance at her bare ring finger. “Does your fiancé drive a silver Porsche?”
    â€œNo.”
    Now they were both keeping an eye on the car in the mirror.
    â€œBut you know somebody who does.” At Madeline’s nod, Ruby added, “A friend then?”
    â€œNot exactly,” Madeline said as the wrecker crawled through a pothole on its way into the garage’s driveway. “He just threw me off some property and accused me of trespassing.”
    Along with the gift of gab and legs long enough to give Heidi Klum a run for her money, Ruby O’Toole possessed the rare and uncanny ability to move her eyebrows independently of each other. She demonstrated before saying, “I should have let you do the talking.”
    Madeline looked out the side window to see if Riley would follow her into the parking lot. Ruby leaned ahead to peer around her.
    Together, they saw him stop at the curb. He lowered his window and stared at Madeline. Yearning swelled inside her, making it difficult to breathe and impossible to tear her gaze away. She wondered how long she would have sat there if he hadn’t broken eye contact. Probably as long as it was going to take the beating rhythm of her heart to return to normal.
    â€œSomething tells me you haven’t seen the last of him,” Ruby said quietly after he’d disappeared