Sunflower Lane Page 26

  But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think—not until the first ice-cold shock of the news had settled into her brain.

  “Jake Tanner . . . are you sure, Laureen?” she finally asked her assistant, struggling to keep her voice calm and her face composed, as if she were talking about the chance of rain tonight or today’s ninety-nine-cent caramel brownie special at A Bun in the Oven bakery.

  “Jake Tanner?” Gloria shook her head skeptically. “That man hasn’t been back more than a handful of times in the past dozen years. Not since he first fell in love with rodeo.”

  Shoving the bolt of calico back on the shelf, she eyeballed Laureen as if trying to ascertain if the other woman knew what the hell she was talking about.

  “Well, I didn’t say I saw him.” Laureen Rowan glanced back and forth between Carly and Gloria, the small paper bag from Benson’s Drugstore containing her new red lipstick and a pack of sugarless gum still clutched in her hand. “But Deanna Mueller is positive she did. The second I stepped into Benson’s just now she rushed over in a big hurry to give me the scoop. Deanna was at the gas station filling up her minivan when Jake cruised by in his truck. She said there was a big dog leaning over his lap, its head hanging out the window. I never knew Jake to have a dog before, but Deanna insisted they were headed for Sage Ranch. Turned onto Squirrel Road right quick, she said. Deanna swears it was him. She told me, who else could it be, no one is as handsome as that Jake Tanner.”

  Tell me about it, Carly thought. A flush of heat raced through her body.

  “Well, duh. That’s for sure.” Gloria nodded knowingly. “That man is smokin’. And he’s all over the TV these days, between the rodeo coverage and those beer commercials of his.” Her bright little black pepper eyes brimmed with interest. “I know if I was a dozen or so years younger, I wouldn’t think twice about climbing between the sheets with him.”

  “Carly?” Laureen moved toward her boss in concern. “Hey. Are you all right?”

  It was only then that Carly realized she was biting her lip, her hands were clenched, and her neck felt as tight as a washrag twisted in the clothes dryer.

  “Sure. Fine,” she said airily, forcing her lips into a smile, casually pushing a thick strawberry blond curl back from her usually dreamy green eyes.

  “Well, you don’t look fine. You look like you’re going to fall down in a dead faint or something.” Laureen studied her carefully, her own round, pretty face worried. Forty-four and divorced, she was the proud mother of two mutts and three cats, all adopted from Lonesome Way’s overwhelmed shelter.

  Laureen didn’t know how to say no to a sad pair of feline or canine eyes. She had a heart as big as Montana and Wyoming combined. With chin-length white blond hair and hazel eyes she was still as pretty as she’d been in high school when she was named prom queen, but she’d gained twenty pounds since her divorce—and had convinced herself she was too fat to ever attract the attention of a man again. But still . . . Tonight she had a date with a rancher from the nearby town of Big Timber.

  A blind date that had been set up by her sister-in-law in Butte.

  Laureen had been insisting to Carly all week long that this was going to be her very last shot.

  No more dates, blind or otherwise. They never panned out, not a single one of ’em. If this guy didn’t call her back, Laureen was done.

  “Maybe you should sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water. There’s a bad flu going around Billings. Could be the bug made its way here and you caught it.”

  “No, I’m . . . okay. It’s just . . . I didn’t get much sleep last night. Emma kept waking up,” Carly lied.

  It was only a half lie, though. Her eighteen-month-old daughter had woken up several times after Carly put her to bed, but it had all happened long before Carly went to sleep for the night.

  A semi-lie is okay, she assured herself shakily. Especially in extreme circumstances. And Jake Tanner coming home to Lonesome Way—definitely an extreme circumstance.

  She felt her heart lurch. Memories burned through her, along with a sprinkling of guilt and a pinch of unease. That thick, longish, jet-black hair. All those rock-hard abs. The slow, sexy kisses trailing down her throat . . .

  The man had returned to his hometown only once since she had moved there from Boston nearly two years before—and even then he’d hit town for only a day. Which was one of the reasons she’d felt comfortable settling in Lonesome Way in the first place. Because Jake hardly ever came home. He’d told her as much that one night they’d spent together in Houston.

  And that’s what everybody always said.

  Jake Tanner was a roamer through and through.

  But his family was all here. His brothers, Rafe and Travis, along with their wives, Sophie and Mia, and their children.

  All of whom were Carly’s friends. Some of the nicest and best people she’d ever met. The last time Jake had come home—when Mia and Travis’s daughter, Zoey, was born a year ago—Carly had heard in advance that he was coming in for a day to meet his new niece and had made sure she and Emma lay low.

  Of course when she’d decided to move to Lonesome Way she’d always known Jake might drop into town on rare occasions for a visit, but most of the time she relegated that possibility into the far recesses of her mind as she savored her own sense of peace and delight with small-town life.

  “I bet he’s here for his niece’s birthday party.” Gloria’s dark head bobbed up and down. “Zoey Tanner turns one this weekend. I have it on good authority that Travis was none too happy when Jake said he wasn’t going to be able to make it to her party.”

  “You’re probably right,” Laureen said distractedly. She was digging out her new, very red lipstick from the drugstore bag and ripping at the packaging with her nails. “Everyone knows family means everything to the Tanners. Jake must’ve got wind Travis was pissed and changed his mind.”

  Panic whipped through Carly. She felt breathless and a little sick to her stomach. She and Emma were invited to Zoey’s party.

  If Jake was there, they wouldn’t be able to go.

  But that was the least of her problems. . . .

  She needed to get home. To hold her daughter. To think.

  But it was only four thirty and she didn’t normally close Carly’s Quilts until five. Gloria looked like she wasn’t going anywhere, not while this juicy topic of conversation was on the table. And Laureen—Laureen seemed to have forgotten all the urgency of her big date tonight as she drew a mirror out of her purse and began applying her new lipstick with the careful precision of a surgeon performing a lobotomy.

  Time to remind her about that date, Carly decided desperately.

  “I know you want to get ready for tonight, maybe get a manicure, wind down, or whatever, so maybe we’ll just close up early,” she began with what she hoped was a breezy smile. Moving briskly across the shop, she began folding bolts of gingham and calico left on the long table beside the shelves and gathering up pattern books the few customers of the day had been browsing through. “I want to go home and check on Emma, too—what with her getting up so much last night. Just to make sure she’s not coming down with something.”

  True enough. Emma had been restless last night. She probably sensed her daddy was headed to town, Carly thought wildly, knowing the thought was totally irrational. Nervousness flowed through her like a chill autumn wind sweeping down from the Crazy Mountains.

  Stop it. Pull yourself together. She gulped a couple of breaths and dug deep, searching for the hard-won serenity and sense of peace she’d worked so hard to achieve over the years.

  Her own childhood hadn’t exactly been a picnic—more like an odyssey of lonely confusion, uncertainty, and fear. But now, at thirty, all of that was behind her. She’d built a life here for herself and her daughter—a life that was solid and steady and filled with the warmth of this tight-knit community. Noth
ing was going to change that.

  She reminded herself that Jake didn’t know about Emma. He had no clue that he even had a daughter. Much less that she and Carly were living in Lonesome Way.

  He probably doesn’t even remember me, she thought, drawing a breath.

  Jake Tanner had women falling all over him in every town from here to Alaska. But he was the last man to ever want any ties, any family of his own, any kind of commitment—except to the rodeo life.

  He’d made all that very clear the one and only night they’d made love.

  What am I talking about? We didn’t make love. We had sex. Intense, incredible, rock-the-world and light-up-the-night-with-fireworks sex.

  It was the lone one-night stand of Carly’s entire life. She’d acted completely out of character. But then, she’d already downed two glasses of wine at the bar of that hotel in Houston and was sipping a third, trying to expunge her lying, psycho ex-boyfriend from her head, when she spotted him.

  Jake Tanner. In all his hot cowboy ruggedness. He’d seemed like the ideal candidate to eject Kevin Boyd from her brain for good.

  So when Jake glanced over from across the lobby, cocked an eyebrow, and grinned that sexy cowboy grin, she’d made the first impulsive move of her life.

  She’d downed the third glass of wine and gone for it.

  The next ten hours had been momentous in every way. But then, of course, there had been nothing. Zip. No phone call from him a day or two later, no maybe I’ll see you again sometime. Just nothing. Slam, bam, and . . .

  Of course, she’d known that was exactly how it would be. She’d counted on it, even. He’d made it clear over dinner in the hotel restaurant that he wasn’t the kind of man who was into long-term relationships or commitments or anything remotely hinting at permanence.

  And we both wanted it that way, she reminded herself, trying to thrust Jake Tanner and his sexy smile, lean, powerful body, and impossibly hunky muscles from her mind.

  That one night they’d spent together in his cushy Houston hotel suite had been, for her, all about rebound sex, pure and simple. They’d made crazed, incredible love all night long. And every bit of it had helped her to forget just a little more about her scumbag ex.

  She’d discovered only four months earlier that Kevin Boyd had lied to her. Not just once or twice, but the entire time they were together. It turned out Mr. Fancy Schmancy genius architect wasn’t divorced after all. And he wasn’t a good, upstanding guy, searching for a serious, stable relationship as he’d claimed.

  Just the opposite. He was married. With children! Three children, to be exact, one of them a two-month-old infant.

  Carly had gone numb with shock when she discovered the truth. Kevin was a player. A liar. An elegantly good-looking blond jerk with a high IQ and a talent for hiding his wedding ring.

  It had taken her long enough, but she’d finally started to grow suspicious and followed him one day when he left her apartment.

  She actually caught him with his family, after he’d told her he was headed to the airport and an out-of-town consultation with a new client.

  Watching in horror, her knees had sagged as Kevin hugged twin little boys who looked to be about eight or nine, scooped a pink-clad baby girl into his arms, and embraced a woman in a stunning Chanel suit. She’d grabbed onto a brick storefront for support as she watched them all bundle into an elevator in an exclusive doorman building that was not the place she’d thought was his home.

  It was definitely not the apartment where she’d spent countless nights in his king-sized bed, where dozens of designer suits, pairs of slacks, shirts, and polos hung in the walk-in closet. An apartment always stocked with gourmet food and wine and an extensive collection of antique clocks and timepieces, where expensive works of art hung on all the walls.

  And in that last huge fight with Kevin at her apartment in Boston she’d glimpsed a side of him she’d never seen before.

  The angry, snarling, bordering-on-violent side.

  Mr. Genius Architect didn’t even think what he’d done was wrong! Even when she’d forced him to admit to his lies, to admit he’d told his wife he was traveling on business all those days or nights he spent with Carly, he’d shouted at her, and then snatched up the crystal ballerina sculpture her college friend Sydney had given her for her birthday. Even as Carly screamed, “Don’t!” he hurled it at the brick wall behind the fireplace, shattering the exquisite dancer into a thousand shards.

  He’d screamed that everything he’d done had been for them—so they could be together without the financial messiness of a divorce.

  In shock, Carly had stared at the man she’d thought she knew. Listened to him try to gloss over his lies—all the things he’d said and done to make her believe that he was working tons of overtime at the office or conducting out-of-town meetings with clients.

  When all along he’d been home with his wife and kids.

  It was devastating to discover what an idiot she’d been. A naïve, gullible fool who’d swallowed hook, line, and sinker all his crap about the stresses of being an overworked, in-demand architect. She’d believed him when he claimed he couldn’t have dinner with her regularly or attend her friends’ parties—or even leave town for a romantic weekend getaway—because of a killer schedule and his boss being a demanding pain in the ass. She’d nearly thrown up when she learned there was a Mrs. Boyd—and a young family to boot.

  At first Carly had been sickened, but that had quickly turned to fury. Fury not just with Kevin but with herself. She’d concluded that either she was as dumb as a brick or she’d inherited her mother’s knack for picking losers. That making stupid romantic choices must run in her family, like allergies or cancer or freckles in other families.

  Bad romantic karma was in her genes.

  And she’d figured out one other thing—she wouldn’t have a chance of finding peace again until she found a way to exorcise that entire fiasco with Kevin from her head.

  So when she’d flown to Houston on business several months later and run smack-dab into Jake—tough, drop-dead sexy, rodeo champion Jake—whom she’d met briefly years before when they were both kids—she’d suddenly lost every single one of her brain cells and had done something stupid, something crazy, something she’d never done before in her life.

  One-night stands were so not her thing.

  Caution. Good sense. Those were her things.

  But that night . . . that one amazing night . . .

  There should have been no consequences, she’d thought faintly several weeks later when she stared at the results of her home pregnancy test.

  True, she’d gone off her birth control pills after the fiasco with Kevin, swearing she’d never get seriously involved with another man again—but she and Jake had used condoms that night.

  And yet . . .

  A baby had been growing inside her. Emma.

  Now a vivacious little blue-eyed charmer, eighteen months old—Emma was bright, active, and more precious to Carly than all the stars in the sky.

  From the instant she first saw her daughter, Carly had never, ever thought of Emma as anything but the most treasured gift in the world.

  So pull it together, she ordered herself again as she caught Gloria staring at her, while Laureen scooped up coffee cups from around the homey quilt shop with its walls of buttery warm yellow and its floors of burnished wood. If you don’t, the moment you get home, Madison might see something is wrong. And Emma could sense it.

  Emma’s daytime babysitter, Madison Hodge, was a smart, down-to-earth twenty-year-old who adored Emma just as much as Emma loved her. Carly didn’t know how she’d ever get by without Madison. A former pageant princess, this girl worked harder than anyone Carly knew. When she wasn’t babysitting Emma four days a week, she was working toward her online degree in childhood education and playing keyboard in a local country band at night.r />
  “Closing up early works great for me,” Laureen was drawling. “I can use the extra time. Maybe I can fit in a really intense workout and lose twenty-five pounds before eight o’clock. Ya think?”

  She headed toward the sink in the back of the shop, the cups hooked on her fingers. “This isn’t going to turn into anything, you know,” she called over her shoulder. “After tonight, I’m never going to hear from this guy again. He’s probably expecting a skinny girl. A size two. Or four. You watch, when he sees me, he’ll run fleeing into the night.”

  “Stop.” Carly managed to drag her thoughts from her own worries. “Don’t talk that way. You’re beautiful, Laureen. You’re stunning. And smart. And amazing.”

  “You’re my friend. You have to say that.”

  “Well, I think you could stand to lose a few pounds,” Gloria chimed in, sauntering toward the shop door. A grandmother of three teenagers, she was small and as skinny as a scrap of tree bark, and her bright orange sweater, the color of a ripe pumpkin, hung loosely on her wiry frame. “But some men think more pounds is just more to love. So you need to think positive. And hope this date of yours likes red lipstick, because that one you bought is awfully red. I’m just sayin’.”

  In typical Gloria fashion, she yanked open the door and was gone.

  For a moment there was dead silence. Laureen and Carly stared at each other.

  “Can you believe her?” Laureen finally gasped.

  “Don’t you dare pay any attention to a word she says,” Carly ordered.

  “Tell me the truth. Do you think the lipstick’s too red?” Laureen’s hazel eyes locked on Carly. The lipstick she’d carefully applied was full-on, red-carpet red, a lush, richly voluptuous color that looked bright and prettily vivid with her fair hair and creamy complexion.

  “No way. It’s perfect. Gloria’s just being Gloria. Go home. Primp. I mean it, Laureen. Drink a glass of wine, and have fun tonight. I’ll expect a full report tomorrow.”