скачать книгу бесплатно
She smiled a little bit. Underneath the party boy exterior, Owen Brody just might have a nice streak in him.
She walked slowly through the house, pausing to look at familiar family photos. She was even in a couple of the snapshots with Chloe from their college days. They looked so happy and carefree. Hard to believe that little more than a day ago, she’d still been happy. But that emotion seemed so far away now.
Shaking her head at the self-pity that was threatening to consume her whole, she headed out onto the porch and the heat of the day. She stopped short when she saw her car parked in the graveled area between the house and the barn. Part of her sorrow gave way to guilt. While she was sleeping the morning away, Owen had already gotten her tires fixed and brought her car back to the ranch. She scanned the area but didn’t see him. No doubt he was already out riding on the back forty somewhere, doing whatever ranchers did every day.
Despite still feeling shaky, she descended the steps and started walking. The day was quite warm, but she didn’t care. Though she spent most of her time indoors working, there was something therapeutic about getting out in the sunshine under a wide blue sky. It almost made her believe things weren’t so bad.
But they were.
She walked the length of the driveway and back. When she approached the house, Roscoe and Cletus, the Brodys’ two lovable basset hounds, came ambling around the corner of the porch.
“Hey, guys,” she said as she sank onto the front steps and proceeded to scratch them both under their chins. “You’re just as handsome as ever.”
“Why, thank you.”
She jumped at the sound of Owen’s voice. The dogs jumped, too, probably because she had. She glanced up to where Owen stood at the corner of the porch. “You made me scare the dogs.”
“Sorry. But I was taught to thank someone when they pay me a compliment.”
She shook her head. “Nice to see your ego is still intact.”
“Ouch.”
She laughed a little at his mock affront, something she wouldn’t have thought possible that morning. She ought to thank him for that moment of reprieve, but she didn’t want to focus on why she’d thought she might never laugh or even smile again. Instead, she nodded toward her car. “Thanks for getting the tires fixed so quickly. How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m perfectly capable of paying my own bills.”
“I’m sure you are. Still, I don’t think fixing a couple of flats is going to send me to the poorhouse.” With that he tapped the brim of his cowboy hat and headed toward the barn.
As he walked away, she noticed how nice he looked in those worn jeans. No wonder he didn’t have trouble finding women.
Oh, my God! She was looking at Owen’s butt. Owen, as in Chloe’s little brother Owen. The kid who’d once waited on her and Chloe outside Chloe’s room and doused them with a supersoaker, the guy who had earned the nickname Horndog Brody.
She jerked her gaze away, suddenly wondering if she was mentally deficient. First she nearly married a guy who was already married. And now, little more than a day after she found out she’d nearly become an unwitting bigamist, she was ogling her best friend’s brother’s ass.
Unsettled, she went back inside, but instantly felt at a loss for what to do. She was normally hawking wedding gowns, veils and tiaras, everything to make a bride feel like a princess on her special day. Now the idea of even stepping foot into her store made her stomach turn. She knew she’d have to find a way to get past that. She had too much invested in the shop, and she couldn’t leave Katrina in the lurch for too long.
Her heart stuttered when she realized her own fairy-tale gown still hung in the back of the shop. After weeks of admiring it every day, she knew she never wanted to see it again. She grabbed her phone and called Katrina.
“Hey, sweetie,” Katrina answered. “How are you doing?”
It was a miracle Linnea had remembered to even call Katrina the day before to let her know she was going out of town for a few days. In fact, she’d been an hour out of Dallas before it dawned on her.
“I’m out of bed, which is more than I thought I’d accomplish today. How are things going there?”
“Fine. Don’t worry about the shop, okay?”
“Listen, I need you to do something for me.”
“Name it.”
“Sell my dress.”
“What?”
“My dress. I don’t want it to be there when I get back. Mark it at a price that moves it fast.”
Katrina hesitated before responding, “Are you sure? You love that dress.”
“I loved Michael, too, and look what that got me.” She realized how sharp her response had been as soon as it left her mouth. “I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s a reminder of what a fool I am.”
“You’re not a fool. I was standing on the outside and didn’t see any red flags, either.”
Linnea knew that should make her feel better, but it didn’t. “Has he called there looking for me?”
“A few times, but don’t worry about that. I took care of it.”
Something about the tone of Katrina’s voice sounded as though more was going on. “What do you mean, you took care of it?”
“Well, he came by, demanding to know where you were. I may have told him to leave, and if he came back I was going to call the cops and report him for stalking.”
Linnea’s mouth dropped open. “You didn’t?”
“I did, and I’d do it again. I might be small, but I will mess up anyone who hurts my friends.”
Despite everything, Linnea smiled. “Have I told you lately that you’re awesome?”
“No, and you should do that more often.”
“You’re right. I’ll make a note of that.”
Katrina laughed, and it lifted Linnea’s spirits some. They plummeted, however, when after she ended the call, she pulled up all the pre-wedding photos stored in her phone and started deleting them. With each one, it felt more and more as though the past six months of her life had been a waste. Despite what she’d told Katrina, she paused on the main photo of her gorgeous wedding gown. Yes, it was just a dress, but it had embodied her happiness, all her hopes and dreams for the future. Michael had robbed her of all that with his lies.
She hesitated with her finger over the last photo of the dress. As soon as she hit the Delete button, everything she’d planned for with such excitement would be well and truly gone. Fresh tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks as she hit the button.
Chapter Three (#ulink_cfca0d94-f088-57d5-923a-ca52c5fa4611)
Owen was still in a foul mood when he reached the house. He was covered in mud literally from head to toe, thanks to a calf that had given him the slip. And because Linnea was visiting, he was going to have to wear the mud all the way through the house, probably dropping globs from the back door to the bathroom.
He took his boots off outside the back door and stepped into the house. As he passed from the mudroom into the kitchen, he nearly collided with Linnea. He reached out on instinct but managed to catch himself before he actually touched her.
Linnea took a step back and eyed him. “What on earth?”
“Another glamorous day in the life of a rancher.” As if to punctuate his words, a blob of mud dropped off his arm onto the floor.
She motioned him back into the appropriately named mudroom. “Take off those clothes, and I’ll put them in the wash.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Trying to get me out of my clothes?”
She rolled her eyes, and that’s when he saw that her eyes were red as though she’d been crying again. He didn’t know what had happened, but he didn’t like seeing her so upset. He dated around, yeah, but he tried not to make any woman cry.
“Don’t be such a twit,” she said as she ushered him out of the kitchen. “Just dump those muddy things in there, and then I’ll turn my back as you head through the house.”
He turned around and retraced his steps. “Getting bossed around by a woman. It’s like Chloe never left.”
“I suppose if I wasn’t here, you’d just track mud through the house like an animal.”
He unzipped his jeans and shoved them down his legs. “No, I’d strip like I’m doing now and walk through the house stark naked.”
“Oh.”
He laughed a little at her startled reaction. When he was down to his boxers, he headed for the kitchen. “Hide your eyes.”
“The coast is clear.”
When he stepped into the kitchen, he smiled at how rigidly she stood with her back to him. “No peeking.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to burn my corneas.”
“I’m that hot, huh?”
“Oh, good grief. Will you just get out of here?”
This time, he chuckled where she could hear him before heading to the bathroom.
* * *
LINNEA DIDN’T DARE turn around until she heard the water in the shower start running. She relaxed and headed for the mudroom, wondering why Owen’s teasing had unnerved her so much. He’d always been a flirt, but he and Garrett had been more like brothers to her than anything else. They were actually the closest thing she’d ever had to brothers. But when she’d listened as he dropped his filthy clothes on the floor and walked into the kitchen behind her, she’d had to fight the urge to peek.
She shook her head, chalking it up to how mixed up she’d felt since Danielle Benson dropped her information bomb right in the middle of Linnea’s life.
When she picked up the dirty jeans and shirt, they felt as if they had ten pounds of mud caked onto them. What did he do, mud-wrestle a cow? She added the once white socks to the pile and was strangely grateful not to find a pair of underwear. At least she hadn’t been standing in the same room with her best friend’s buck-naked brother.
Unless he went commando.
Oh, good grief, why had that image popped into her head? She didn’t need to think about whether or not Owen Brody wore underwear every time she looked at him.
She took the clothes into the laundry room and washed some of the mud out in the utility sink, thinking the whole time that perhaps she needed to shove her head under the cold stream of water, too.
She waited until she heard the shower turn off before starting the washing machine, then returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later, Owen walked back into the kitchen, this time clean and fully clothed. His dark hair was still wet, and something about that look caused a funny little flutter inside her.
She turned her gaze back to the countertop in front of her, wishing she could speed time up until she felt normal again, when her heart didn’t feel as if it’d been stomped and when she wasn’t having strange thoughts about Owen, whom she’d known since he was fourteen. Granted, he was twice that now, had grown into a man’s body, but she still shouldn’t even notice things like that. Especially when she’d been about to marry another man she’d loved very much. Probably part of her did still love Michael even if she hated him, too. You weren’t supposed to be able to just turn love off and on like a light switch, right?
She mentally shook her head. This was probably just some sort of coping mechanism, her subconscious trying to find someone to make her feel good in the aftermath of being so horribly wronged by the man who had claimed he loved her.
“What are you doing?” Owen’s voice pulled her from her rambling self-diagnosis.
“Cooking dinner.”
“You don’t have to do that. The chili wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“No, it was fine. I just...needed something to do.”
Owen leaned a hip against the opposite end of the counter. “You okay?”
He sounded hesitant, as though he wasn’t used to asking people about their feelings. He was a guy. Of course he wasn’t making a habit of in-depth conversations about feelings.
“Fine. Just wanted something to occupy my mind.” She was saved from having to explain any further when Garrett walked in.
“It smells great in here. Hasn’t smelled this good since Chloe left.”
Linnea shifted her gaze to Owen and Chloe’s big brother. “I doubt that. I had a bowl of the chili. It was actually quite tasty.”
“Why, thank you,” Owen said, drawing her gaze back to him.
“You made the chili?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’m good at more than riding a horse.”
“That’s not what I hear from the girls you’ve dated,” Garrett said.
Owen slugged his brother in the arm. “Since when do you even talk to girls? You have longer conversations with the cattle.”
Linnea managed to smile at the same brotherly poking at each other that she’d witnessed from the moment she’d met Chloe’s family. It was a small comfort that some things didn’t change. But then, some things did.
She tore her gaze away, ostensibly to refocus on the food preparation. But it was really to blink new tears into submission. She was so sick of crying, of how it made her feel even worse. She wanted to be the person again who could laugh at Owen and Garrett’s antics, who could move through her day without feeling as though her emotions were riding a seesaw.
When she heard Chloe and Wyatt arrive, followed shortly thereafter by Chloe’s dad, she forcibly shoved away her sadness. There was time enough later for it to leak out when she was alone.
Chloe came over and gave her a one-armed hug. “You shouldn’t have done this,” she said so no one else could hear her.
“I needed to. A gal can only cry so much before she feels like her head is going to pop off.” Not that she didn’t expect more tears to visit her later that night, or in the days ahead, no matter that she wanted to be done with them.
“Okay, then. What can I do to help?”
“Start pouring drinks.”
A few minutes later, they all sat down to the dinner she’d prepared, lasagna with salads and garlic bread.
“This is great, Lin,” Chloe said.
“Yeah, way better than when Wyatt tried to cook for us when he was staying here,” Owen added.
“Oh, the frozen chicken episode,” Linnea said as she glanced across the table at Wyatt. “Heard all about that.”
Wyatt shook his head. “Y’all are never going to let me live that down, are you?”
