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As the women talked wedding preparations, the men discussed Cadillacs. Evidently, Tate, who owned a fleet of them, was buying a new one from Heck. Dirk was contributing his expert advice.
Tucker sat silent, as did Lori and Brody, the three of them outsiders in the two current topics of conversation—looking right at each other, but too far apart to start up a conversation of their own.
Which was just fine with Lori. What would she say to him? Talking to him, making meaningless chitchat, seemed so evil and wrong when there was Brody right beside her, the son he didn’t even know he had.
Tucker kept sending her glances—and she kept glancing back.
Well, how could she help it? Unless she stared at the table, he sat square in her line of sight.
Every time he caught her eye, she would picture herself standing straight up in that booth and announcing, Okay. All right. The truth is, it was me, on prom night eleven years ago. Me and not Lena. You made love to me. And it’s not some stranger, like everyone thinks, who’s Brody’s dad. It’s you, Tucker. Brody’s your son.
Of course, she did no such thing. But the urge to do it was there, and it was powerful. It burned beneath her skin. It was that scary, exhilarating feeling you get standing on the edge of a cliff, wondering, what would it be like?
To stretch out your arms and slowly fall forward, to let yourself soar right off the edge…
The waitress—not Molly’s mother, Dixie, who had worked at the diner since long before Lori left town, but was apparently off that day—brought the food. Though her stomach seemed tied in a series of permanent knots, Lori had never been so grateful to see a cheeseburger in her life. It gave her something to do, something to look at—other than Tucker’s velvety-brown eyes and handsome face.
Brody took a couple of bites of his grilled cheese sandwich and then set the sandwich down. “So where’s Fargo?” he asked Tucker, loudly, turning in his seat, causing the parallel conversations of Cadillacs and weddings to stop.
Heck laughed. “Fargo.” He frowned. “The boy mean that ugly mutt of yours, Tucker?”
Tucker nodded. “‘Fraid so—and Brody, Fargo’s not welcome at church, or here at the diner. I haven’t got a clue why not. He loves a good sermon as much as the next dog.”
“His table manners aren’t so hot,” suggested Tate.
“I sure liked that dog,” said Brody, sending Lori a calculating glance.
“Kid wants a dog,” Heck said to Lori, as if she hadn’t already figured that out for herself.
She looked at her father. “Got it.” It came out too sharp. Between the state of her nerves after ten minutes of sitting straight across from Tucker, and the way her father always made her feel as if she wasn’t quite the mother she ought to be…
Well, she was getting a little bit edgy.
Her dad spoke gently—and with clear reproach. “Now, Lori-girl, a boy should have a dog.”
“Yeah,” said Brody eagerly, and launched into the arguments all kids have ready when it comes to getting a pet. “I’m ten now. I’m old enough. Like I said, I could take care of everything, Mom. I’d feed him and walk him and clean up all his messes. You wouldn’t have to do anything.”
Lori set down her fork without eating the bite of potato salad at the end of it. She sent her father a narrow-eyed, not-another-word kind of glance and she told her son, “Brody. We’ll discuss it. Later.”
“But, Mom, I—”
“Later.”
Brody got the message. At last. He picked up his sandwich and dutifully bit into it.
There was a moment or two of awkward silence. Then the men went back to their talk of fancy cars and Lena returned to the subject closest to her heart—her upcoming wedding.
“I just cannot believe that it’s almost here. All our planning and hard work, and in two weeks from yesterday, I’ll be walking down the aisle at last…”
Heck stopped talking Cadillacs long enough to remark, “‘Bout damn time, too. My checkbook can’t take too much more of this.”
Lena laughed her bright, bubbly laugh. “Oh, Daddy. Just you wait. I’m gonna make you so proud.”
“You already do, baby. You always have.”
Lori looked down at her barely touched food and knew there was no way she could eat another bite. The conversation ebbed and flowed around her—and she didn’t want to look up.
But she couldn’t stare at her plate forever.
She lifted her gaze.
And found Tucker waiting, looking right at her.
The corner of his beautifully shaped mouth quirked up, a half smile that was also, somehow a question.
She felt the answering smile lift the edges of her own mouth.
This couldn’t be happening.
And yet, somehow, impossibly, it was.
Tucker Bravo was flirting with her.
Chapter Two
That night, Tucker made a clear and calculated effort to get his sister-in-law, Molly, alone.
He had dinner with the family in the original central part of the Double T ranch house, where Tate and Molly and their twins made their home. After dinner, Tucker and Tate relaxed over a couple of snifters of good brandy while Molly went up to nurse the babies. Then the brothers joined her for the important job of putting the twins to bed.
There were baths first, followed by the intricate process of getting little feet and arms into clean diapers and snap-on sleeping shirts. Then came the singing. Tate and Molly sang their children a number of lullabies, Molly in her clear alto, Tate in his slightly off-key baritone.
Tucker, who thoroughly enjoyed his role of new uncle, chimed in on the songs where he remembered the words. He liked this whole family-life thing. A lot. As far as he was concerned, it was the smartest move his big brother had ever made, to get himself hooked up with Molly O’Dare.
By eight, at last, the babies were tucked into their cribs in the darkened nursery, their nanny watching over them from the small bedroom across the hall.
Tate announced what he usually announced about that time in the evening. “Got a few things to tie up downstairs.” Tucker’s brother had a study on the first floor at the front of the house. Tate kept close tabs on the family holdings at the big computer in there.
Molly moved into the circle of her husband’s arms for a fond, quick kiss and then Tate headed for the main staircase.
Tucker saw his opportunity and seized it. “Got a moment?”
Molly shrugged. “Sure. How ‘bout some coffee?”
“Lead me to it.” He fell in step behind her as she turned for the narrow back stairs that led to the family room and kitchen below.
At the table in the breakfast room, Molly poured him a mug of coffee, brewed herself a quick cup of herb tea and settled into the chair across from him. He watched her fiddle with her tea bag and tried to figure out how to begin.
Molly knew a lot about what went on in the Junction. She was not only the town’s first female mayor, she also ran her beauty salon, Prime Cut, as a place where all the women in town could gather to talk about things that most males of the species would never dare to think of. At the Cut, the lives and loves of the citizens of Tate’s Junction were dissected and analyzed freely and openly, with no-holds-barred.
“So what’s up?” Molly set her tea bag on the edge of her saucer.
Tucker decided he might as well just come right out with it. “Tell me everything you know about Lori Lee Billingsworth.”
His brother’s wife watched him over the rim of her cup as she sipped her tea. With great care, she set the cup down. “Taylor. Her last name is Taylor. She was married.”
“But she’s a widow now.”
Molly gave him a measuring look. “Lucky for you, right?”
“Molly, damn it. I could use a little help here.”
Tate’s wife wrapped her fingers with their long, shiny red fingernails around her teacup. “What’s this about? You had one sister and now you want to make it an even pair?”
Tucker gaped—and then shook his head. “Molly. You got a mouth on you.”
“So I’ve been told. Answer my question.”
“No,” he said, emphatically. “It’s not like that. This has got nothing at all to do with Lena. Lena and I, well, that was a long, long time ago.”
Molly wore the look of a doubting woman. She asked, each word sharp with suspicion, “Water under the bridge, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
He nodded. “Lena’s happy now. She loves Dirk. And you know what? I’m nothing but happy for her.”
“But you did love her. Once.”
Had he? Tucker wasn’t so sure. “I was crazy over her, yeah. But love? Hell. We were kids. She wanted a life right here, in town. She wanted for us to have that big wedding she’s going to have now and settle down here at the ranch house, where she was going to pop out two or three babies and do her best to help me spend Granddaddy’s money.”
“You’re still carrying a grudge against her.”
“No,” he said again, even more strongly than before. “I’m carrying no grudges. I’m telling you how it was, that’s all. Lena wanted a nice life, here in town. And I wanted out. Bad. We broke up—which made it possible for both of us to get what we wanted. It would have been a disaster, Lena and me. She knows it. I know it. End of story.”
Well, except for that one night…
Tucker had come home from college—where he was flunking just about every course and soon to drop out—to take Lena to her prom. The night before the dance, she’d told him it was over between them, that they wanted different things and it just wasn’t working.
He’d agreed with her. He’d been thinking it was time to move on for a while by then, but he hadn’t known how to tell her. Even now, he could remember the feeling of sweet relief that had flowed through him when she said she didn’t want to be his girl anymore.
And then she’d told him she couldn’t see any way out of the two of them going to the prom together. Tucker, figuring it was the least he could do to pay her back for handing him the freedom he’d been yearning for, had promised to take her.
That night, which he’d dreaded, ended up being pure magic.
They were breaking up and still…she wove a spell around him. He found himself long-gone in love with her, more than ever before. She knocked him out. She bowled him right over.
But now?
No. All that was over. All that was long ago. When he saw Lena now, he felt a vague sort of fondness. He liked her now. She was always smiling, a cheerful woman, all wrapped up in herself—but in a charming way. They were friends, though not close friends. When he saw her now, he found it impossible to think of her as the girl he’d held in his arms on that beautiful, unforgettable night.
Tucker leaned across the table toward his sister-in-law. “So what’s the story about Brody? Lori’s husband couldn’t have been his father—right?”
Molly sighed—and finally started talking. “No. The boy isn’t her husband’s. She married the husband—a dentist, an older guy—six or seven years ago, when Brody was two or three. Word is that nobody but Lori knows who Brody’s real father is.”
“Except for the father himself, right?”
Molly frowned. “Maybe not.”
“The kid’s father doesn’t even know that he’s a dad?”
“Tucker, how would I know? All I know is what people say.”
“And that’s what I want from you. What people say…”
Molly looked down into her teacup, and then back up at him. “Rumor has it some stranger came through town at the end of Lori’s senior year. Lori disappeared one night in May, in one of Heck’s cars. It wasn’t like her, to take off like that. You know how she was. The shy, quiet, one. Hardly dated. Heck got worried she’d been kidnapped or something. He had the police out looking for her. They found her way up at the North Fork of Cook Creek, parked right on the bank, staring out over the water, crying her little heart out. She claimed that she’d done nothing wrong—and that nothing had happened to her. She’d just driven around, that was all.
“But then, a couple of months later, when she turned up in the family way, everyone in town naturally assumed it must have happened that night she disappeared. They all figured she must have met someone, that he got her pregnant and then headed out, never to be seen or heard from again.”
“And when Heck found out she was pregnant, he packed her off to San Antonio.”
“That’s right. And she’s made herself a good life there, from what I’ve heard. She hardly ever comes home.”
Tucker got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. As he sipped, he turned and leaned on the long jut of counter that divided the breakfast room from the kitchen.
Molly said, in that way she had that cut right through the crap, “So. You got you a yen for your old girlfriend’s twin sister, Tucker? You thinkin’ you might like to try convincing her to come home a little more often—even to stay home?”
Tucker didn’t answer. There was no need. He could see in Molly’s eyes that she knew he did.
And he was.
“Daddy makes you crazy, huh?” Lena lay sprawled face-up on the bed in the upstairs room that had been Lori’s when they were growing up.
It was after dinner. Everyone else was downstairs watching Sunday night TV. Lena had hung around before going home to her cute little apartment on Oak Street. She’d wanted some one-on-one time with Lori.
Lori dropped to the side of the bed. “Yeah. Daddy does get to me. Sometimes. Like when he tries to override me with Brody.”
Lena kicked off her shoes and scooted farther up onto the mattress, grabbing a pillow and tucking it under her head. “You just never did accept the fact that you have to use your feminine wiles on Daddy.”
“Feminine wiles?” Lori made a gagging sound.
Lena giggled and slapped her lightly on the knee. “Stop that. There’s nothin’ the least wrong with a woman using what the good Lord gave her to smooth the way with the men in her life.”
“I am going to wisely withhold comment on that one.”
Lena rolled to her side and studied her sister. “I still can’t believe you went red—red.”
Lori smoothed a hand over her own hair. “Yeah. I kind of like it.”
Lena nodded. “Me, too. It looks real good.”
Lori made a threatening face. “Don’t you dare even consider going red, too.”
