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A huge tree-shaped fountain, carved from native limestone, rose from the center of a grouping of curved buffet tables. Water bubbled up from the tree’s dome and flowed down over intricately carved leaves to tumble into a shallow pool below. Rimmed with vases of fresh-cut flowers that scented the air and strategically placed lighting, the pool and fountain created a spectacular centerpiece for the mouthwatering feast of hors d’oeuvres placed around it.
Above him, miniature lights had been strung along the steel beams that formed the glass roof, giving the ceiling the appearance of a star-filled sky. Urns and pots filled with lush tropical plants occupied every available nook, while tall Norfolk pines stood like sentinels at each of the three doorways. Along the outer walls of the building hung baskets filled with an assortment of flowers and vines, adding yet another splash of color and texture to the space.
Though impressed with Macy’s decorating skills, to truly enjoy it, Whit would have needed a hammock and about two hours alone. For a man who spent the majority of his time in the country, conducting one-sided conversations with horses, the press of people and the noise they created were almost more than he could bear.
Deciding that an evening at home with his conscience didn’t seem so bad after all, he began to ease his way down the wall, craning his neck as he searched for Macy, so he could make an appearance and split. Just as he spotted her, his hip bumped something solid and he made a wild grab to keep the object from falling.
“Hey!” Macy cried. “Careful with the merchandise.”
His smile sheepish, he righted what appeared to be an old garden gate. “Sorry, Mace,” he said, then glanced down at his hands and the rust that covered them. “Uh, you might want to have a talk with your supplier. Looks like he’s selling you inferior products.”
“Are you kidding me? Salvaged iron is the rage! This stuff flies out of the store faster than I can slap a price tag on it.”
Giving her a skeptical look, Whit squatted in front of the gate to examine it more closely. Though old and no longer functional, someone had given it new life by attaching glass jars to the scrolled iron that formed it. Secured by a fine-gauge wire, the jars held lighted votive candles and fresh-cut flowers.
Impressed by the ingenious use of material, Whit pushed his hands against his knees and stood. “Okay,” he conceded. “I have to admit that’s pretty darn clever.”
She lifted a brow. “It can be yours for a price.”
He sputtered a laugh. “And what would I do with a piece of foolishness like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, hiding a smile. “I suppose you could set it up on your patio and wow the ladies you entertain at home.”
“What ladies?” he asked wryly.
“My point exactly,” she said as she looped her arm through his and led him toward the crowd. “You need to get out more. Go places where you can meet single women your age.”
“Aw, Macy,” he complained. “Don’t start with me. You know how I am around women. Especially ones I don’t know.”
“Fine. Then we’ll find a woman you do know for you to talk to.”
He tugged her to a stop and lifted a brow. “I am. I’m talking to you.”
“A single woman,” she clarified.
He did a quick scan of the crowd, then shrugged. “Sorry, but it appears all the women here are either married or engaged.”
Macy snagged the arm of a woman who was passing by. “This one’s not.”
“Whoa,” the woman said, laughing as Macy hauled her back. “What am I not?”
“Married,” Macy replied. “Whit was complaining that every woman here was either married or engaged. I just proved him wrong.”
As the woman turned to look at Whit, resentment knotted in his gut when he discovered that out of all the available women in the room, Macy had chosen Melissa Jacobs to prove her point.
“I should have added widow to that list,” he muttered, then turned on his heel and walked away.
The next morning Whit was in the barn early, cleaning out the stalls. It was a hot, backbreaking job, but it suited his mood just fine as he had some steam to work off.
He couldn’t believe he’d run into Melissa the night before. The odds of seeing her twice in a two-week span, after successfully avoiding her for nearly seven years, had to be high.
But Whit’s luck had never been very good. Not where Melissa was concerned.
“I think you owe me an explanation.”
Startled by the voice, he snapped up his head to find Macy standing in the stall’s open doorway. That she was angry with him was obvious in the hands she held fisted against her hips.
With a frown, he resumed his shoveling. “For what?”
Dropping her hands, she marched toward him. “Don’t you play dumb with me, Whit Tanner. You know very well that you were rude to Melissa last night, and I want to know why.”
“No offense, Macy, but you’re not my mother.”
“A fact you should be grateful for,” she informed him. “If I was, I’d turn you over my knee and give you a spanking you wouldn’t soon forget.”
He snorted a breath. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she warned. “I’m about a hair away from snatching you bald-headed as it is.”
He stood the shovel up and braced an arm over the handle to peer at her. “Do you talk to Rory like that?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. I want an explanation, and I’m not leaving until I get one.”
To prove her point, she sat on a bale of hay and folded her arms across her chest. The clencher for Whit, though, was when she pursed her lips and lifted an expectant brow.
Grimacing, he shot the shovel blade beneath a pile of manure and scooped it up, planning to ignore her. He crossed to the wheelbarrow, dumped the manure, then repeated the process four more times. By the time he shot the shovel beneath the fifth pile, her steady gaze was burning a hole in his back and the heavy silence that stretched between them was screaming in his ears.
“Okay!” he said in frustration. “I left because I didn’t want to talk to her.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t. Period.” He scooped up manure, then turned to frown at her. “And you might as well go on home and irritate Rory for a while, because that’s the only explanation you’re going to get from me.”
Jutting her chin, she stood. “All right. I’ll go. But not before I have my say. Last night you insulted not only one of my guests, but one of my suppliers as well, and I think you owe her an apology.”
“If by supplier you mean Melissa, you’re crazy as a loon. She’s never worked a day in her life.”
“That just proves how little you know. I’ve bought a number of her creations, including the garden gate you tripped over.”
When he merely looked at her, she sagged her shoulders in frustration. “I know you’re shy around women, Whit. But you’re not a mean person. In fact, I can’t think of another man with a heart as soft as yours. That’s why it’s so hard for me to understand why you’d intentionally hurt a woman who has suffered such a tremendous loss, one who is struggling so hard to pull herself out of debt.”
“I did nothing but walk away. If that offended her, that’s her problem, not mine.”
“Her husband was your friend,” she reminded him stubbornly. “And from what Rory has told me, your best friend. If for no other reason than out of respect for Matt, I would think you could put aside whatever differences you might have with his wife, and offer her the kindness and support she needs and deserves.”
Macy may not have gotten the explanation or apology she thought she deserved from Whit, but she had succeeded in making him feel like a heel, a trait he didn’t feel he deserved.
Yeah, you do, his conscience argued. Macy was right. Matt was your friend. Your best friend. And friends take care of friends.
Scowling, Whit lifted a bale of hay high and heaved it onto the growing stack in the barn’s loft. “Matt was a friend, all right,” he muttered as he reached for another bale. “The minute I turned my back, he stole my girl.”
Your girl?
Yes, dammit, Whit thought angrily as he hefted the bale up. She might have been Matt’s girl first, but she’d broken things off with him and started dating Whit. And she’d still be Whit’s girl now, maybe even his wife, if Matt hadn’t stolen her away.
What did he do? Hold a gun to her head? Hog-tie and gag her? Surely, Matt isn’t the only one to blame.
His scowl deepening, Whit shoved the bale onto the stack. No, Melissa owned a part, as well. She’d made Whit fall in love with her. Even claimed to love him, too. Then, the minute he’d left town, she’d run off with his best friend.
There. You admitted it. Matt was your best friend. Y’all sure had some good times together. Remember the night the two of you stole a six-pack of beer out of Matt’s parents’ refrigerator and got drunk as skunks out by the lake?
Grimacing, Whit tugged off his work gloves. Yeah, he remembered that night, all right. And others, as well.
With a sigh, he sank onto a bale of hay and dropped his forehead to his hands, unable to stop the memories from surfacing.
Growing up, he and Matt had all but lived together, spending almost every waking hour in each other’s company. Before his mother had married Buck and was still working at the café in town, she had arranged for Whit to go home with Matt after school each day. He and Matt would play some ball, watch a little television, wrestle on the floor. His first black eye was courtesy of a left Matt had thrown that Whit hadn’t dodged in time.
Even after his mother and Buck had married and Whit had moved to Buck’s ranch, he and Matt had managed to continue their friendship. Matt was the one who had listened to all of Whit’s frustrations of living in the Tanner household. And it was Matt who had helped him devise the scheme the time he’d planned to run away.
And it was Matt who was the first to appear at the Tanner’s door the day Whit’s mother was killed in a car wreck.
He gulped back emotion as an image of Matt as he’d looked that day formed in his mind—standing on the porch, his hat in his hands, tears streaming down his face. Whit had needed Matt that day. Needed the comfort and strength his friend had offered as he’d faced the biggest tragedy of his life.
And he’d needed his friend in the days that had followed, when Whit had announced to Buck that he was moving out and Buck had refused to let him go. Since Buck had adopted Whit, by law he was Whit’s legal guardian. And there was no way Buck was going to let Whit leave when he represented a source of free labor for the Tanner ranch.
Matt had stood by Whit, with him, helping to make the intolerable tolerable. Without his friend, Whit wasn’t sure he would’ve survived those last few years he’d lived under Buck’s dominating rule.
Guilt tried to settle itself on his shoulders again, but he stubbornly shook it off. He wouldn’t feel badly for not helping Matt’s widow. He didn’t believe for a minute that Matt had left Melissa in the dire financial straits his family insisted she was in. Hell! Matt wasn’t an extravagant man. He might have come from money, but he was a good ol’ country boy with simple taste and simpler needs, same as Whit.
At least that was the kind of man Matt had been when he and Whit were still running around together. Had he changed that much over the years?
Whit dropped his hands to his thighs with a sigh of defeat. It didn’t matter if Matt had changed or not, he told himself as he pushed to his feet. Matt had been a friend, a good friend. And just as his conscience had reminded him, friends took care of friends.
Or, in this case, a friend’s family.
Melissa laced her fingers together to keep from wringing her hands as she trailed the trainer, watching as he threw his gear into the back of his truck. He was the third man she’d hired for the job in the same number of days and the third one to leave without so much as laying a hand on the horse.
“I know War Lord can be difficult,” she began uneasily.
“Difficult?” he repeated, then barked a laugh and climbed into his truck. “Lady, that horse isn’t difficult. He’s plumb crazy!”
“Please,” she begged. “Give him another chance. I’m sure he’ll settle down once he gets used to you.”
Heaving a sigh, the man braced his arm on the open window frame and leaned out. “Look, lady,” he said kindly. “That horse is never gonna amount to anything. You can’t even sell him for glue, what with him refusing to load into a trailer. If you want, I’ll put him down for you. No charge.”
Sickened by the suggestion, she stepped back, shaking her head. “N-no. I won’t put him down. I can’t.”
With a shrug, he pulled his arm inside. “It’s your nightmare.”
She watched him drive away, sure that he was taking with him her last hope of paying off her debts. She’d already contacted every trainer within a hundred-mile radius. There was no one left for her to call. It was all she could do to keep from sinking to the ground and crying like a baby.
But crying wouldn’t solve her problems. She’d shed enough tears over the past four months to know that crying wouldn’t get her out of the mess Matt had left her in. Aware of that, she squared her shoulders and turned for the house and the studio behind it.
Throughout her marriage to Matt, the studio had served as a refuge for her as well as a place for her to work. Today, more than ever, she needed the solace it offered. As she stepped inside, walls painted a soft, soothing blue seemed to wrap themselves around her and pull her in. Everything in the room, from the braided rag rug on the floor to the ceiling fan that stirred the air, she’d chosen herself. More, she’d purchased them with money she’d earned with her own two hands. And it was that feeling of independence, that sense of accomplishment, that carried her on to the worktable that stood on the far side of the room.
Stopping in front of the table, she ran a hand lightly over the edge of the half-finished frame she’d been working on prior to the trainer telling her he was quitting. The tiles of broken china that covered half the frame’s face were cool to the touch and rough with dried grout. A pile of unused tiles lay near at hand, waiting to be fitted into place.
Here was the familiar, she thought as she slid onto the stool. The sure. Everything else in her life might be in chaos, but in this one room was peace. Here she was in control.
With her mind already focusing in on the design, she selected a tile and set to work.
Whit gazed at the Lone Star flag painted on the roof of the horse barn as he drove past, wondering if Matt had painted the design himself or hired it done. In either case, he liked the tribute to their home state of Texas and wouldn’t mind having a similar one painted on the roof of his own barn.
Focusing his gaze back on the road, he drove the remaining distance to the house, turned off the engine, then sank back and simply stared, remembering the first time Matt had brought him to the house. Matt had been higher than a kite that day, excited about the prospect of living on his own for the first time.
But living on his own was all Matt had to be excited about, he thought wryly as the house hadn’t amounted to much back then. An inheritance from his granddaddy, the house had stood vacant for nearly a year before Matt had taken possession of it. Judging by its condition at the time, it had been neglected for a good deal longer than that. Grass had stood knee-high in the yard and loose panels of tin on the roof had flapped in the afternoon breeze, creating an eery sound. But as Matt had said when Whit had commented on the house’s poor condition, “Hell, it’s free! Who can complain about that?”
Whit certainly couldn’t…and hadn’t. At the time he’d still been living at the Bar-T under Buck’s rule and would’ve given his right arm to have a place to call his own, even if that place was in danger of collapse at any given moment.
But the house Whit sat in front of now held little resemblance to the one Matt had shown him that day. Fresh paint and a new roof had gone a long way toward improving its appearance. But there was another quality that increased its appeal. Something that could only be sensed, not seen.
Somewhere along the way, the house had become a home.
He could all but feel the warmth that emanated from it, smell the scent of fresh-baked bread wafting from the open windows. A swing suspended from the ceiling of the covered front porch swung lazily in the afternoon breeze, the pillows scattered along its back plump and inviting. Clay pots filled with bright geraniums edged the steps, while tall wicker planters holding lacy-leafed ferns welcomed guests from either side of the door.
He wanted to believe that Matt was responsible for the changes, just as he wanted to believe that Matt had painted the Lone Star flag on the barn roof. But he knew better. Matt was never one to fret much over appearances. He was just too darn lazy to put forth the effort. If left up to him, the house—as well as the barn—would have remained in the same condition as the day he had moved in.
That left only one person who could be responsible for the changes.
Melissa.
Which made Whit wonder if she was also the one responsible for the debts Matt had supposedly left behind. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine her requesting—maybe even demanding—that he remodel the house. More so than Matt, she had come from money and was used to having the best of everything. Her father’s home in Lampasas was nothing short of a mansion, complete with a live-in housekeeper, cook and full-time groundskeeper. For her to leave all that opulence and move into Matt’s house must have been a shock for her.
But from the looks of things, she hadn’t wasted any time bringing the house up to her standards.
Setting his jaw against the resentment that rose, he climbed down from his truck and strode to the front door, anxious to get his business with her over with and be on his way. He rapped his knuckles hard against the screen door, then waited. When no sound came from within, he glanced around, then headed for the rear of the house. A shed at the back of the yard caught his attention and made him stop and stare. He remembered the building from his first visit to Matt’s place as looking as if it was one strong wind away from collapse. Nothing at all like it appeared now.
The wood frame structure had been painted a soft, buttery yellow and trimmed out in a crisp, clean white. The glass in the two windows that faced the front gleamed in the afternoon sunshine and reflected images of the flowers that spilled from the window boxes suspended below them. Though the afternoon was hot, a Dutch-style door was propped open to catch the occasional breeze.
Drawn by the open doorway, curious, Whit crossed the yard to peer inside. Against the far wall, he found Melissa sitting with her back to him, her head bent over some unseen task. Since she didn’t appear to have heard his approach, he took a moment to look around.
The room was crowded with a wild assortment of items yet he sensed an order to the chaos. Shelving lined the two longest walls and held buckets of paint, tools and what looked to be jars filled with beads and buttons. A child’s playpen was angled into a far corner and stacked high with old, faded quilts. To his left, salvaged iron was propped against the wall, visual proof that Melissa had designed the gate he had tripped over at the grand opening, just as Macy had claimed.
Not liking the stab of guilt that accompanied the discovery, he scowled.
“Where do you get all this junk?”
Startled, Melissa spun on the stool, her eyes wide in alarm. They narrowed to slits when her gaze met his.
