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“That’s what I’m figuring, too. Besides, I don’t care what the doctors or anyone else say, I think I’ll know her when I see her. I just feel it in my gut.”
Brick didn’t comment on that, either. He didn’t have to. They’d had this conversation a dozen times in the last two months, and Tyler knew his brother thought he had just gone a little crazy in response to an unwanted life change. He also knew that in many ways Brick was merely humoring him, figuring he’d come to his senses eventually.
But Brick did look on the bright side. “Well, one way or another, that pull you felt to Black Arrow landed you a nice piece of property. If nothin’ else, maybe fate was planting that seed to get you where you were meant to go.”
“So when are you comin’ to stay awhile?”
“You miss me. Admit it, you really miss me,” Brick goaded.
“Yeah, I miss all that snoring and snortin’ you do in your sleep every night,” Tyler countered facetiously, when in truth he did miss his brother. Not only had they shared a bedroom their entire growing up years, but since they’d left home to follow the rodeo circuit they’d rarely been apart.
But Tyler knew there was no way he’d ever live it down if he admitted that he actually did miss Brick.
“I’ll be there the weekend after next,” his brother said in answer to his question. “And don’t go thinkin’ I’ll be able to recognize the mystery woman if we come across her, either, because I keep tellin’ you that I didn’t so much as cast her a glance before I left you with her in that bar. I was too tired to think straight that night.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before.”
“I just wish to hell I’d made you come back to the room with me instead of leaving you there. Then maybe you wouldn’t have still been thinkin’ about her the next day and you wouldn’t have been distracted and—”
“We all get dealt our own hand, little brother, and that was mine,” Tyler said in answer to the suddenly serious tone Brick had taken.
“Yeah, well, still and all—”
“Still and all nothin’. Things happen the way they’re supposed to happen.” Whether it’s easy to understand or cope with or not.
Tyler heard the sound of a knock on his brother’s motel room door just before Brick said, “That’s the guys.”
“Headin’ out for a real breakfast,” Tyler added, knowing the routine well himself. And suffering a terrible pang not to be a part of it anymore.
But he didn’t let it sound in his voice. He made sure to seem upbeat. “You better get goin’ or they’ll leave you behind. I just wanted to wish you luck on your ride tonight. Let me know how you do.”
Brick wasn’t as good at hiding his feelings. His voice echoed with sadness. “You know I will. Talk to you later.”
“Talk to you later,” Tyler answered. Then he pushed the button to disconnect the call, and set his cordless phone on the planked floor of his front porch.
“Damn,” he muttered to himself, weathering the fresh surge of sorrow that flooded through him.
But things were the way they were, he reminded himself. They couldn’t be changed, and pining for what used to be, for what might have been if only, didn’t help anything. He needed to look to the positives, not the negatives.
Like the fact that he was now the owner of this ranch and had a home of his own.
Like the fact that even if it was sooner than he’d planned, this was still the life he and Brick had always talked about having when they were ready to throw in the towel on bronc busting.
Like the fact that Black Arrow was a nice, quiet town full of friendly people.
People like Willow Colton.
Willow Colton whose legs went on for miles, whose tight body couldn’t have been better proportioned, and whose breasts were just the right size to fit into a man’s hands….
Tyler knew what his brother would say about Willow Colton if he saw her. Brick would say, “Who needs a mystery woman when there’s a flesh and blood woman like Willow Colton?”
But Brick didn’t understand what was going on inside Tyler over his mystery woman.
Hell, Tyler didn’t understand it himself.
He just knew there was something pushing him to find her. And maybe to find that part of himself that he’d lost in the process.
And he didn’t think he could rest until he did.
Even if he was having trouble getting that image of Miss Feed and Grain out of his head.
Even if he was looking forward to seeing her again more than he wanted to.
No, his mystery woman was like lost pages in a book he just had to finish, and until he figured out who she was, he was damn sure not starting up anything with anyone else.
Not even a woman with pale dove-gray eyes that seemed to haunt him.
Because no matter how much that might be the case, those pale-gray eyes didn’t haunt him as much as that gap his mystery woman had left.
And he was all about filling that gap.
Willow hadn’t slept much the night before, which didn’t help her fatigue. But even feeling more tired than usual, she was at no risk of falling asleep at her desk the way she had on Tuesday. The same thoughts that had kept her awake until the wee hours of the morning kept her adrenaline level high through Wednesday.
Tyler Chadwick was on her mind. Tyler Chadwick and the predicament she was in.
Not that Tyler and her predicament had been far from her thoughts at any point in the two months before this. But since he’d walked into her life again nearly twenty-four hours ago, she had been completely incapable of thinking about anything else.
She also hadn’t been able to stop asking herself the same two questions—how could he have forgotten her, and how could he have forgotten their night together?
It was just so awful to think that he had.
She wasn’t proud of what she’d done in Tulsa. In fact, she’d been ashamed of herself. Spending the night with someone she’d just met in a club? That was definitely a first. And a last.
But it was as if something had snapped in her in June.
It hadn’t been easy growing up with four older brothers. Four very protective older brothers. But since Willow had been out on her own, running the Feed and Grain, one or another of her brothers was at her side every time she turned around. Watching over her to the point where she felt as if she were being stalked by her own family.
She’d tried talking to them, reasoning with them, letting them know she wasn’t doing anything even remotely dangerous and that they did not need to take turns becoming her ever-present guardians.
But no sooner had she given that lecture than there they were again. Just checking in with her, they said.
Until, finally, Willow had thought she might explode.
She’d known if she didn’t get away from them for a while she was going to lose her temper and say things that would hurt their feelings. And she didn’t want that.
So Willow had called her friend Becky Lindstrom in Tulsa and taken her up on her repeated request for Willow to visit.
Just for a week. A week of rest and relaxation, with no brothers looking over her shoulder every minute. That’s all it was supposed to be. That’s all it was.
Until Friday.
Friday night when she knew her week was at an end and she had to go back to Black Arrow, back to four brothers who couldn’t leave her alone.
Just the thought of that had left her feeling the need to go a little wild. To cut loose one last time before she went back. To get out and do something she wouldn’t do at home. To be someone besides a person with four brothers who seemed to need to keep her in a velvet cage.
So, on their way home from an afternoon at the rodeo that was passing through Tulsa at the time, Willow had confided her feelings to Becky.
Becky had embraced the idea with a vengeance. A night on the town. Just the two of them. Kicking up their heels.
Becky had reveled in the free hand to make Willow over. To doll her up in a way Willow never got dolled up. To transform her into a new woman.
No jeans.
No T-shirts or flannels.
No practical shoes.
No braided hair.
Becky had loaned Willow a slinky, strapless red dress that fit every inch of the few inches it covered like a second skin.
Spike-heeled shoes had gone with it, but Becky hadn’t stopped at merely outfitting Willow. She’d also played beauty shop with Willow’s hair, with makeup Willow never wore, with perfume and lipstick that were the finishing touches that turned everyday Willow Colton into exotic Wyla and made her feel truly like a different person.
Out on the town.
Nightclubbing.
And that’s where Willow had met Tyler Chadwick. At a blues club.
She and Becky had recognized him from the rodeo earlier in the evening. He was one of the bronco riders. The drop-dead gorgeous bronco rider with the derriere to die for. The one who had won.
By that time, Becky had had enough champagne to lower all her inhibitions, and she’d suggested they invite him to join them.
Willow, who had been feeling no pain herself, hadn’t put up too much of a fight.
“Just don’t let him know we know who he is,” Becky had whispered to Willow before leaving their table. “He’ll get a swelled head if he thinks we think he’s somebody.”
And that’s how it had happened.
Tyler Chadwick had taken them up on the offer and joined them.
But from the minute he sat down, his focus had been on Willow.
Or actually, on Wyla.
Becky hadn’t minded. Not long after it had become clear that Tyler Chadwick preferred Willow, another man had begun to show an interest in Becky, and she’d gone to sit at the bar with him, leaving Willow and Tyler alone.
Wyla and Tyler.
Which was when Willow had discovered that her new Wyla persona could be quite a flirt.
And not only that, she could be coy and cute and coquettish, too.
She could even be sexy.
It had all seemed innocent enough. It had been Wyla doing it, not her. Wyla who was laughing that high-pitched laugh. Wyla who was putting her hand on Tyler’s arm. Wyla who was drinking so much champagne…
It wasn’t completely clear in Willow’s mind how she’d gone from that innocent flirtation in the bar to Tyler Chadwick’s room in the hotel next door. But that was where she’d ended up. In the suite he and his brother were sharing, because of some glitch in their reservation that had upgraded them.
Which meant that he had a bedroom to himself.
A bedroom in which he and Willow—Wyla—had had a wild night of passion.
Mindless passion, as Willow’s head had been filled only with thoughts of Tyler Chadwick and all he was doing to her that made her feel so, so good.
So, so unlike herself.
So unlike herself that after a second round of love-making just after the sun had come up, when Tyler had fallen asleep again, she hadn’t been able to believe what she’d done.
It wasn’t merely uncharacteristic behavior. It was complete insanity.
And while Tyler still slept, Willow—and she had been Willow again by then—had dressed at record speed and slipped out of that hotel room, out of that hotel and into a cab, putting that night and Tyler Chadwick behind her.
Which was exactly where she intended to leave them. Forever.
Then she’d missed her period.
At first she’d thought it was just stress, but when she’d begun to have some very odd symptoms that couldn’t have been stress-related she’d had to entertain the possibility that something else was going on.
Pregnancy.
She’d actually passed out cold in the doctor’s office when her worst fear was confirmed.
And then she’d come to and cried. Sobbed. Right in front of the doctor.
That had caused the doctor to talk about alternatives if she didn’t want the child, which had made Willow cry all the harder.
“Alternatives? I don’t have any alternatives,” she’d wailed.
But by the time she’d returned to Black Arrow that night she’d thought about the alternatives the doctor had laid out for her and she’d known she couldn’t choose any of them. This was her baby and she was going to have it, raise it, love it.
She just didn’t know anything else.
She didn’t know how she was going to have and raise a child alone.
She didn’t know how she was going to tell her brothers.
She didn’t know what they were going to do when she did.
