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Her hope that he’d come to join her for dinner faded when she saw Kate at his side.
Joel grinned and clapped a hand on Travis’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy. Welcome back.”
“It’s good to be home.” Travis may have spoken to Joel but his gaze remained firmly fixed on Mary Karen. “I see you’ve met M.K.”
“M.K.? Oh, you mean Mary Karen.” Joel slanted a glance in her direction and winked. “We’re getting acquainted.”
A muscle in Travis’s jaw jumped but his smile was easy.
“Would you like to join us?” Joel asked.
“Thanks for the offer but we’re already settled in.” Kate slipped one arm through Travis’s and gestured with the other toward a large table. “The table is already full or we’d ask you to join us.”
“Us?” Mary Karen choked out the word.
“Travis and me.” Kate spoke slowly as if making a very important point. Or perhaps she thought Mary Karen slow on the uptake. But Mary Karen saw everything all too clearly.
“Of course.” Mary Karen could have cheered when her voice came out cool and even, giving no indication of her inner turmoil.
Travis’s brows pulled together and his lips pursed. “Actually—”
“That’s okay,” Mary Karen interrupted. “Joel and I have our eye on that little table by the arbor.”
An awkward silence descended.
“You look familiar,” Joel said to Kate. “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so.” Kate’s cheeks pinked. “In fact, I’m almost positive we haven’t.”
“It’s your eyes,” Joel continued, for some reason unwilling to let the subject drop. “I know I’ve seen them.”
“I’m going to see if our hostess needs any help.” Kate smiled brightly. “I’ll see you back at the table, Travis.”
With those words, she disappeared into the house.
“I never forget a face.” Joel followed her with his eyes. “I just can’t place from where.”
Not at all interested in talking for even one more second about Kate, Mary Karen smiled and changed the subject. “Do you like lamb, Joel? These burgers with mint and cilantro are very tasty.”
“They’re my favorite,” Travis said before Joel could respond.
“Then you should take one.” Mary Karen kept her tone light. “But do it quickly. I have a feeling your girlfriend won’t like to be kept waiting.”
Girlfriend. Even the word tasted bitter on her tongue.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Travis said, his face taking on a mulish expression.
Mary Karen wasn’t fooled. And she wasn’t in the mood to be generous. “Really? That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“Before you left you told me you were dating someone from the hospital.” Joel added a large spoonful of pasta salad to his plate. “Did you two split up?”
Travis groaned.
“I think they make a nice-looking couple.” Mary Karen elbowed Joel. “Don’t you?”
Travis’s hazel eyes flashed. Mary Karen told herself she didn’t care if she’d ticked him off. She believed in calling a spade a spade.
Still, when Travis flung a lamb burger onto a plate and stalked back to the table where Kate now sat waiting, Mary Karen wondered exactly when it was she’d turned into a jealous fifteen-year-old.
She slapped an extra big dollop of sour cream dill potato salad—that she didn’t want—onto her plate pretending it was his head.
Joel didn’t seem to mind that the guest of honor had stalked off. Instead, he leaned over and grabbed two bottles of beer from a round silver tub filled with ice and held them up.
Although a Corona sounded surprisingly good, Mary Karen shook her head. It might be only one beer, but she wasn’t taking any chances with her baby’s health. “Club soda please.”
“Thanks for inviting me to sit with you.” Joel exchanged one of the beers for a can of club soda. “A pretty woman like you could have her pick of dinner companions.”
The compliment was a balm to Mary Karen’s battered and bruised ego. Although Joel didn’t make her pulse beat faster, with his unruly chestnut hair, brown eyes and rugged features, he was a very attractive man. She quickly discovered he was also a gentleman. When they started across the yard to an empty table, he insisted on carrying her plate.
She’d wondered if once they sat down it would be awkward. After all, they didn’t know each other. But conversation flowed easily. By the time they reached for the Key lime pie, Mary Karen had learned Joel had an eight-year-old daughter and that his wife had died of cancer two years earlier. She gave him the abridged version of her own life—minus the new chapter that was about to be written. He seemed genuinely surprised to learn she was divorced and had three small boys.
“You look like a college co-ed.” The admiration in his eyes momentary distracted her from her cares.
“I’m twenty-six. But it’s nice to know you think I look young and carefree.”
Joel brought the beer to his lips, his dark eyes never leaving hers. “You don’t feel that way?”
The last time she’d felt unencumbered of life’s burdens had been in Vegas … with Travis. And that had turned out so well. Mary Karen gave a strangled laugh.
Joel cocked his head.
“I’m a busy mom,” Mary Karen explained, feeling her cheeks burn.
“I understand completely.” The handsome contractor leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “I come from a family of four boys. There was never a dull moment … or a quiet one. My brothers and I gave my mom fits. But now—except for the gray hairs she blames on us—I know she’d say it was worth it.”
“She sounds like a wonderful lady.” Mary Karen picked at a loose thread on the tablecloth. “Nowadays so many men—and women—think parenthood is too much work, too much of a hassle.”
“You’re speaking about your ex.” Joel surprised Mary Karen by briefly covering her hand with his. “The man was a fool, Mary Karen. One day he’ll wake up and realize that the freedom he wanted so badly wasn’t worth all he gave up.”
She’d actually been thinking of Travis rather than Steven, but she readily agreed both were fools. Raising three little boys might be challenging at times, but she adored them. She wouldn’t trade her chaotic life with them for anything. And, she was certain once this new baby came she’d feel the same way about him. Or her.
Yet life as a single parent wasn’t a cakewalk. In fact, most days it was downright tough. And the loneliness … She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to being single in a world of couples. A heaviness wrapped around her heart, the thought of going it alone for the next twenty years was incredibly depressing.
Mary Karen pushed the last few bites of her pie around the plate with her fork for several seconds, then lifted her gaze. “Do you think you’ll marry again?”
Joel sat back.
Heat shot up her neck. Dear God, what must he be thinking?
“I’m sorry.” She raised both hands, palms to him. “I’m just curious. I’m not shopping for a husband. Honest.”
He laughed. “Don’t apologize. Even if you were, I’d be flattered.”
“But I’m not—”
“No worries.” He shot her a wink, and the tenseness in her shoulders eased.
Yes, Joel was a very nice man. It was too bad she wasn’t attracted to him. Not that it mattered. Once she was divorced and raising four small children on her own, there would be no time to date.
Mary Karen smoothed the front of her shirt with the flat of her hand. At least Joel still had options.
“So, will you?” she asked. “Marry again?”
Joel shrugged. “If I find the right woman. But she’ll have to love not just me, but my daughter as well. Chloe and I, we’re a package deal.”
“As it should be,” Mary Karen murmured almost to herself, thinking of her boys. “Any other way wouldn’t work.”
“Any other way would be out of the question.” Joel’s firm tone told her he’d given this matter a lot of thought. “Can you imagine what it’d be like to be a child growing up in a home with a stepparent who wished you weren’t there?”
“You’re right.” Mary Karen slanted a glance in Travis’s direction and sighed. “It would never work.”
Chapter Three
The sun hung low by the time Travis left the table. With Kate still tagging along, he wandered to the back of the large yard to check out the elk refuge. The familiar rugged landscape of green and brown with the mountains in the distance did little to soothe his jagged nerves. He couldn’t get the sadness in Mary Karen’s eyes out of his head.
It didn’t help knowing he was to blame. What had he been thinking? He should never have agreed to give Kate a lift to the party.
If the pediatrician weren’t glued to his hip he could be with Mary Karen right now. Assuring her that she had absolutely nothing to worry about. Confirming that once they completed the annulment papers, what happened in Vegas would forever stay in Vegas.
Oddly, Travis found the thought bittersweet. He remembered how close he’d felt to her the night they’d said their vows. A closeness that had more to do with their friendship and shared history than the mind-blowing sex.
Kate slipped her arm through his, yanking him from his reverie.
“It’s beautiful here.” Her eyes turned surprisingly somber.
“David and July do have a nice yard,” Travis agreed.
“I don’t mean just the yard—although it is lovely.” Kate slanted a sideways glance in his direction. “I mean Jackson Hole. It’s magnificent.”
Travis settled his gaze on the land he loved so much. While some people thought of his birthplace only as a place to ski, he knew that was only the tip of what Jackson Hole and the rest of Wyoming had to offer. He casually untangled his arm from Kate’s and hooked a boot in the lower rung of the fence. “There’s no place like this on earth. Leaving this state was the hardest thing I ever did.”
Kate lifted a dark brow. “Why did you?”
Although he’d been old enough to strike out on his own, he’d refused to walk away from his brothers and sisters. Which meant he had to go with them. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Kate wrapped her arms around herself as if suddenly chilled. “The feeling—that you don’t have a choice—is awful.”
Travis nodded.
“You went to school in Nebraska, right?”
“I did.” Travis spent almost a decade in Omaha. “Great education. Nice people. Awesome college football team. Still, those years seemed endless.”
“Medical school and residency are definitely not for the faint of heart,” Kate agreed.
Travis chuckled. “School was easy. It was everything else that was hard.”
Like the time his sister Margaret had been rushed to the hospital with appendicitis the morning of his Anatomy-Physiology final. She was still in surgery when he’d been called to the high school because his brother Zac had been suspended for fighting.
Kate’s gaze grew puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
He considered making a joke and changing the subject. That’s what he usually did when someone asked about his family or something related to his past. But for some reason, he felt like talking tonight. For it all to make sense, he had to start at the beginning.
“Shortly after I graduated from high school, my parents died in a car accident.” Without even realizing what he was doing, Travis dropped into the monotone he used whenever he spoke of his parents’ deaths. “Their will made it clear they wanted my uncle in Omaha to raise us if anything happened to them. But Len was a lot younger than my mom and still single. He wasn’t sure he was ready for the responsibility.”
“I’m sorry about your parents.” Sympathy filled Kate’s eyes. “Since you went to school in Nebraska, I assume your uncle finally came around?”
He nodded. “We convinced him that all he had to do was provide the house. My sister Margaret and I took full responsibility for our brothers and sisters.”
Travis settled his gaze on a herd of bison in the distance and tightened his fingers around the fence post. Prior to his parents’ deaths his life had revolved around girls, sports and school. Taking on so much responsibility at such a young age had been a huge change. But he’d seen no other option. “If Meg and I hadn’t agreed, Len wouldn’t have taken us in and our family would have been split up. My brothers and sisters would have been thrown into the foster-care system.”
Kate tilted her head. “How many siblings do you have?”
“Seven.”
“No way.”
The shock in her voice made him smile. He lifted a hand and pulled his fingers together in an almost-forgotten gesture. “Scout’s honor.”
Kate’s brows pulled together. “I can’t imagine how you made it through college and medical school while still fulfilling the promise you made to your uncle.”
Her interest appeared genuine, and he was discovering that talking to Kate kept him from noticing how close Mary Karen was sitting to Joel. Or how pretty M.K. looked with the sun hitting her hair.
“Travis?” Kate prompted.
He pulled his gaze back and focused on the woman at his side. “For starters, I lived at home. I studied while attending sporting events and dance recitals. Thankfully they were good kids. Challenging at times, but a little fire can be a good thing.” Travis’s lips lifted in a satisfied smile. “Not a slacker in the bunch.”
Kate glanced around. “Are any of them here tonight?”
“None of them live in Jackson Hole.” Leaving his family in Nebraska to set up practice back here had been hard. But, at that point, they’d all been adults and capable of making their own decision. Still, he hadn’t given up hope that they’d all one day find their way back home. “I’m hoping that will change. Even though we live hundreds of miles apart, we’re still close.”
A thoughtful look blanketed Kate’s face. “With such a successful parenting experience, I’m surprised you don’t want kids of your own.”
Travis shrugged and watched the sun slip behind a cloud. Until he’d been thrust into the father role, he hadn’t realized all that being a parent entailed. He’d felt overwhelmed. Inadequate. Even now he wondered if they’d grown into fine young men and women in spite of his efforts and countless rookie mistakes.
He pulled his attention back to Kate and found her staring. But not at him. “What’s so interesting?”
“Your ‘old friend’ and Joel Dennes,” Kate blurted out. “They sure seem to be hitting it off.”
