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Skipping the normal protocol by not looking out one of the flanking windows first, Carolyn opened the door.
Brody was standing on the porch, his expression so grim that Carolyn felt alarmed, thinking Tricia had gone into premature labor or someone had been in an accident.
She gulped, fumbled with the hook on the screen door that separated them. Through the mesh, she noted Brody’s wrinkled clothes, mussed hair and disturbing countenance.
“Brody...what—?”
He’d taken off his hat at some point, and now he slapped it once against his right thigh. “Can I come in?” he bit out. Then, almost grudgingly, “Please?”
Carolyn’s concern eased up a little then, as she realized Brody was frustrated—maybe even angry—but not sad, as he surely would have been if he were bearing bad news.
She gave one slightly abrupt nod instead of speaking, not trusting herself to be civil now that Brody’s irritation had sparked and spread to her, like wildfire racing over tinder-dry grass.
Once the door was open, Brody practically stormed over the threshold, giving Carolyn the immediately infuriating impression that if she didn’t get out of his way, she’d be run over.
So she stood her ground, and that proved to be a less than brilliant choice, because they collided and the whoosh of invisible things reaching flash point was nearly audible.
“What?” Carolyn demanded, and found herself flushing.
His nose was half an inch from hers, if that, and fierce blue flames burned in his eyes, and his words, though quiet, struck her like stones. “I. Don’t. Like. Games.”
Carolyn felt several things then, not the least of which was a slow-building rage, but there was a good bit of confusion in the mix, too, and a strange, soft, scary kind of excitement.
“What are you talking about?” she asked tartly. It would have been prudent, she supposed, to take a step or two backward, out of Brody’s force field, but for some reason, she couldn’t move.
“I’m talking,” Brody all but growled, after tossing his hat in the general direction of the antique coat tree that dominated the entryway, “about this whole Friendly Faces thing. You trying to scare up a husband online. It’s all wrong—”
Carolyn’s temper, mostly under control before, flared up. “Wrong?” she repeated dangerously.
Brody sighed, but he was still putting out the same officious vibes. “Okay, maybe wrong wasn’t the best word,” he said.
“Maybe it wasn’t,” Carolyn replied succinctly, folding her arms and digging in her heels.
“I hate to break this to you,” Brody spouted, leaning in again—she kind of liked it when he did that, even though it was infuriating—“but you can’t just go around trusting people you’ve never even met. Men tell lies, Carolyn.”
Carolyn widened her eyes in mock surprise. “Really?” she trilled, as though she just couldn’t conceive of the possibility.
She saw his jaws clamp down, watched with some satisfaction as he relaxed them by a visible effort.
“Men tell lies,” she repeated, amazed. Then she stabbed a finger into his chest and said, “Oh, yes, that’s right, Brody. I remember now. You lied to me, through your perfect white teeth!”
“I did not lie to you,” Brody lied.
“Oh, no? You said you cared about me—you wanted to stay and make things right with your family. Settle down and start a family. And then you left, vanished, flew the coop!” Carolyn realized she was perilously close to tears, and she was damned if she’d cry in front of the man who had broken her heart so badly that even after more than seven years, she wasn’t over it.
So she turned away from Brody, not wanting him to see her face.
He caught hold of her shoulder, his grasp firm but not hard enough to hurt, and made her look at him again.
“I meant everything I said to you, Carolyn,” he said evenly.
He had not, she recalled, with a terrible clarity, said he loved her. Not in words, anyway.
“But then something came up, as you put it in that note you left me, and you hit the road and left me alone to wonder what I did wrong,” Carolyn accused, in an angry whisper.
Getting mad, in her opinion, was a lot better than bursting into tears. And it wasn’t just Brody she was furious with. She blamed herself most of all, for being gullible, for loving and trusting the wrong man and maybe missing out on the right one because she’d wasted all this time loving him. Because she’d so wanted to believe what Brody told her. What his body told hers.
“I regret leaving like I did,” Brody said. “But I had to go. I flat-out didn’t have a choice, under the circumstances.”
“And what would those circumstances be?” Carolyn asked archly. “Another bronc to ride? Another buckle to win? Or was it just that some formerly reluctant cowgirl wannabe was willing to go to bed with you?”
Brody closed his eyes for a moment. He looked pale, like a man in pain, but when he opened them again, the frustration was back. “If that’s the kind of person you think I am,” he snapped, “then it seems to me you ought to be glad I took off and saved you all the trouble of putting up with me!”
“Who says I wasn’t glad?” Carolyn demanded. Who was this hysterical person, speaking through her? Was she possessed?
“You’re not going to listen to one damn thing I say, are you?” Brody shot back.
“No,” Carolyn replied briskly. “Probably not.”
“Fine!” Brody barked.
“Fine,” Carolyn agreed.
“Reoww!” added Winston, from the top of the stairs. His hackles were up and his tail was all bushed out and he looked ready to pounce.
On Brody.
Guard-cat on duty.
“It’s all right, Winston,” Carolyn told the fractious feline. “Mr. Creed is just about to leave.”
Brody made a snorting sound, full of contempt, swiveled around and retrieved his hat from the floor next to the coat tree, where he’d flung it earlier.
He wrenched open the front door, looked back at Carolyn and growled, “We’re still going on that horseback ride.”
Carolyn opened her mouth to protest, but something made her close it without saying the inflammatory thing that sprang to her mind. She didn’t like to use bad language if she could avoid it.
“You agreed and that’s that,” Brody reminded her tersely. “A deal is a deal.”
With that, he was gone.
The door of Natty McCall’s gracious old house closed hard behind him.
Carolyn got as far as the stairs before plunking herself down on the third step from the bottom, shoving her hands into her hair and uttering a strangled cry of pure, helpless aggravation.
Winston, having pussyfooted down the stairs, brushed against her side, purring.
Carolyn gave a bitter little laugh and swept the animal onto her lap, cuddling him close and burying her face in the lush fur at the back of his neck.
Being a cat, and therefore independent, he immediately squirmed free, leaped over two steps to stand, disgruntled, on the entryway floor, looking up at her in frank disapproval, tail twitching.
“You’ve decided to like Brody Creed after all, haven’t you?” Carolyn joked ruefully, getting to her feet. “You’ve gone over to the dark side.”
“Reow,” said Winston, indignantly.
Carolyn made her way upstairs, determined not to let the set-to with Brody ruin what remained of the day. She had tea to brew—that would settle her nerves—and aprons to sew for the website and the shop, a life to get on with, damn it.
Instead of doing either of those things right away, though, Carolyn went instead to her laptop.
She turned it on and waited, tapping one foot.
Practically the moment the computer connected to the internet, the machine chimed, “Somebody likes your picture!”
“Good,” Carolyn said.
While she’d been offline, six more men had taken a shine to her—or to Carol, her recently adopted persona, anyway—and while five of them were definite rejects, the sixth was a contender, right from the instant Carolyn saw his photo.
His name was Slade Barlow, and he hailed from a town called Parable, up in Montana. For the time being, he lived in Denver. Like Ben, the firefighter, he was a widower, with a child. His eleven-year-old-son, Brendan, attended a boarding school there in Colorado but spent weekends and holidays with him.
“Hmm,” Carolyn said aloud, clicking on the response link. Tell me about Brendan, she typed into the message box.
Slade apparently wasn’t online, but Ben was, as she soon learned, when he popped up with a smiley face and a hello.
Carolyn, jittery but determined, responded with a hello of her own.
How about meeting me for a cup of coffee? he asked. Page After Page Book Store, on Main Street, five o’clock this afternoon?
Carolyn’s first impulse was to shy away, but her most recent run-in with Brody was fresh in her mind, too. The nerve of the man, showing up at her home and place of business the way he had, and announcing that she would go horseback riding with him, simply because she’d made the mistake of agreeing to his invitation.
She consulted the stove clock, saw that it was four-thirty.
She would, she decided, show Brody Creed that he couldn’t go around dictating things, like he was the king of the world, or something.
Okay, she wrote. Page After Page, five o’clock. How will we recognize each other?
Ben replied with a jovial LOL—laugh out loud—and another of those winking icons he seemed to favor. I look just like my profile photo, he responded. Hopefully, so do you.
Right, Carolyn answered. Was there a computer icon for scared to death? See you there.
Half an hour later, having refreshed her makeup and let down her hair, Carolyn arrived at Page After Page. The bookstore was, at least, familiar territory—she spent a lot of her free time there, nursing a medium latte and choosing her reading matter with care.
She spotted Ben right away, sitting at a corner table in the bookstore coffee shop, a book open before him.
As advertised, he looked like his picture. He was a little shorter than she’d expected, but well-built, with a quick smile, curly light brown hair and warm hazel eyes that smiled when he spotted her.
“Carol?” he asked, standing up.
Good manners, then.
Guilt speared Carolyn’s overactive conscience. “Actually,” she said, approaching his table slowly, “my name is Carolyn, not Carol.”
He laughed, revealing a healthy set of very white teeth, extending one arm for a handshake. He wore jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt in a dusty shade of blue and an air of easy confidence. “And mine is Bill, not Ben.”
The confession put Carolyn at ease—mostly. She managed a shaky smile and sat down in the second chair at Ben’s—Bill’s—table. “Do you really have a nine-year-old daughter named Ellie?” she asked.
“Yes,” Bill replied, sitting only when Carolyn was settled in her own chair. “Do you really work in a bank, have two dogs and like to bowl?”
“No,” Carolyn admitted, coloring a little. “I lied about my job, my hobbies and my pets. Is that a deal-breaker?”
Bill chuckled. His eyes were so warm, dancing in his tanned face.
And as attractive as he was, he wasn’t Brody.
Too bad.
“What’s the truth about you, Carol—yn?” he asked, smiling.
“I sew a lot, I look after a friend’s cat and I’m in business with a friend,” Carolyn confessed, after a few moments of recovery. She blushed. “And I can’t remember the last time I was so nervous.”
Ben—Bill—smiled. “I don’t sew, I’m strictly a dog-person and I fight fires for a living, just as I said in my bio. That said, I’m amazed, because despite all the prevarications, you look just like your picture. You’re beautiful, Carolyn.”
At that, the blush burned in Carolyn’s face. She looked down. “Flatterer,” she said.
Bill smiled. “What can I get you?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?” Carolyn countered, a beat behind.
“Coffee?” Bill said, grinning. “Latte? Café Americano? Espresso with a double-shot of what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here?”
Finally, Carolyn relaxed. A little. “Latte,” she said. “Nonfat, please.”
Bill smiled, nodded, rose and went to the counter to order a nonfat latte.
Carolyn, desperate for something to do in the meantime, checked out the book he’d been reading when she approached.
You could tell a lot about a person by what they liked to read.
A Single Father’s Guide to Communication with a Preteen Girl.
Well, Carolyn thought, trust her to meet up with a guy who was both sensitive and masculine after she’d been spoiled for functional relationships by Brody Creed.
Presently, Bill returned with her latte, looking pleasantly rueful. “Confession time,” he said, with a sigh, as he sat down again. “I’m on the rebound, Carol—Carolyn. I didn’t mention that in my profile.”
“No,” Carolyn said, oddly relieved. She reached for her latte, took a sip. It was very hot. “You didn’t.”
“Her name,” Bill told her, “is Angela. We’re all wrong for each other.”
Carolyn considered the foam on her latte for a long moment. “His name is Brody,” she said. “Two people were never more mismatched than the two of us.”
