by Linda Kage
She bubbled out an incredulous laugh. “My God, you stood up to the most powerful man in Tommy Creek and tried to convince him you’d impregnated his eighteen-year-old daughter. I still can’t decide if you’re the bravest person I ever met or the craziest. But you did it, just because you knew I wanted your help.” She wiped a sudden dampness off her cheeks. “And I knew you’d help me if I asked. I took advantage of your kindness. I used you, and I’m horrified by my actions.”
He shook his head, frowning. “No, it was my decision, Jo Ellen. You didn’t trick, or force, or pressure, or cajole me in any way. And technically, you never even asked. I straight up volunteered.”
“But you’re naturally so giving and helpful. And I was selfish. Deep inside, I knew you would sacrifice everything to help me. Because that’s just who you are.”
He stared at her a solid ten seconds before he shook his head. “You’re wrong. If I saw a car stuck in the ditch, yeah, I’d pull over to give them a hand. But this was my entire future on the line. I was prepared to become a father, possibly a husband…” He paused to glance meaningfully at her, making her stomach grow tight and warm. “I wouldn’t have done that for just any stranger on the side of the road. Hell, I wouldn’t have done it for Emma Leigh if it had been her instead of you.”
His words left her breathless and bewildered. “But…” She frowned, confused. “What?”
“There’s only one reason I lied to you about us having sex because I wanted to take Untermeyer’s place. I wanted to be with you, no one else. And if claiming your baby was the only way to get you, I was fully prepared—even eager—to do just that.”
With no idea how to answer, she stared at him, stunned. Even Emma Leigh’s words earlier this evening couldn’t prepare her for this.
To shock her further, he added, “I was crazy in love with you in high school, and you broke my heart the day you hooked up with someone else our sophomore year. Then you broke it again when you promised me you’d dump him the night we kissed and go out with me instead, because the next morning, you forgot all about me.”
Chapter Thirteen
Jo Ellen had never quite known what to do about Cooper Gerhardt. He’d been so helpful to her and expected nothing in return. Through the years, she’d constantly wavered between wanting to apologize, repay him, and thank him for what he’d done. Now that confusion had just magnified by a hundred.
Silence filled the cab of his truck as she digested his words. Unable to speak, barely able to breathe, she pressed her hand to her chest as if to force her stunned heart to keep beating. He’d carried a torch for her all the way through high school, and she hadn’t even suspected. It didn’t seem real.
A minute passed. He kept the engine running, waiting for her to respond or leave. But she didn’t push out of his truck; she just sat there like an idiot. And she didn’t respond. She wanted to; knew she should reply. But for the life of her, she didn’t know what to say. Thank you sounded lame. Sorry wouldn’t do at all, because she wasn’t sorry; she was downright flattered, which scared the life out of her. But she couldn’t say that because, well…she just couldn’t.
So the silence stretched on before he cleared his throat. “It’s getting late. You should probably go.”
She winced, feeling dismissed. Rejected. Nodding, she shoved on her door handle, escaping as fast as she could, humiliated for lingering in his presence when he’d clearly wanted her gone.
After a brief, stiff farewell wave from each party, she shut his door and dashed to her car. Like a gentleman, he waited, keeping his headlights focused on her Kia Optima so she could see to dig her keys from her purse and climb into her driver’s seat. He didn’t back away until she’d depressed her brake to reverse from her parking spot.
When she made it home, her parents’ house was dark. She snuck in, pausing at the back door and trying to remember making out with him there, but only vague, blurry images dashed through her head.
Sleep didn’t come until much later, and even when she dropped off, her rest wasn’t easy. She woke early and crawled into her old thinking spot, sitting on the cushioned window seat in her childhood bedroom. Chewing on her thumbnail, she watched the Texas sunrise over the horizon. A strip of brilliant orange broke into the dismal gray clouds, slowly growing thicker and turning the air above it more cyan with each dawning minute.
And as the sky became clearer, so did her thoughts.
Her stomach worked into knots as she decided Cooper hadn’t been dismissing her at all last night. The considerate man had probably been trying to give her an out; worried his confession had made her uncomfortable, which it had. It was all so surreal, though, and too flattering to believe. She liked the idea of him being crazy in love with her so much it scared her and knocked the breath straight from her lungs. She had just needed to escape, to…to digest.
But as she grew more and more certain he’d only been thoughtful, the worse she felt for fleeing without even responding to his big declaration.
Okay, so it hadn’t been a declaration of current love, but past childhood love, ten years gone by. There was certainly no way he still felt any of those emotions these days. But that by no means excused her from reacting so hideously wrong.
Jo Ellen thunked her head back against the wall of the window box, wishing she had better social skills at dealing with admissions of childhood crushes. Put her in a crowded room full of rich socialites and she could keep them chatting for hours, praising themselves for all their life-accomplishments. But stick her in a truck with a single farm boy expressing his affection and she became a brainless nimrod.
A muffled wail through the wall from Emma Leigh’s room made her lift her face and glance in that direction. The Thornbrockmores were definitely awake. After a couple seconds, the baby’s cry ceased. The muffled voice of her sister followed by Branson’s deeper tone stirred a strong emotion through Jo Ellen’s chest, reminding her once again what her sister now had and she did not. It also reminded her of something else Cooper had said the night before.
Do you ever wonder what she would’ve been like?
She set her hand on her stomach. He’d asked her about her baby, which made her feel strangely connected to Cooper, and also made her want to repair whatever riff she’d created between them. He had talked with her about something no one else had even attempted.
Pulling her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her cheek atop a kneecap. The sun was almost fully over the horizon now, a bright ball of hope that had her sitting up straight and making a firm decision.
Cooper had invited her to his farm with Emma Leigh and Branson last night, so she intended to accept. She still wasn’t sure what she’d say to him, but maybe—if things went her way—her very presence would let him know she hadn’t meant anything disparaging by ditching out on him last night. She would find a way to pay him back for every nice thing he’d ever done for her.
* * * *
Nearly twelve hours later, Jo Ellen had changed her mind a dozen times about whether she should go to Cooper’s farm with Em and Branson or not. She’d spent the morning at the hospital, oohing and awing over the new baby. After playing with Brand in the waiting room, she’d finally gotten to hold Dex and Lexi’s infant, who could already breathe on his own. Little Clayton Glen was so light he’d felt like a bag of marshmallows in her arms.
Determined not to feel envious of everyone with their new babies, she laughed and smiled with the two couples as they talked about their birthing experiences. After a nice lunch at her parents’ farm, she’d spent the rest of the afternoon with more family, smiling and laughing yet again with cousins, aunts and uncles, all the while growing antsier and more restless as the day wore on.
Emma Leigh had contacted Cooper and set up their farm tour to take place directly after supper. With the days wearing on so long, it was still daylight when Jo Ellen drove her hybrid toward the Gerhardt farm. Emma Leigh and Bran were right behind her when she left, whil
e their son stayed behind with Grandma and Grandpa Rawlings.
Branson had offered Jo Ellen a ride over, but she’d said no thank you; she didn’t want him and Emma to feel as if they had to leave early in case Cooper didn’t appreciate her presence. But she declined under the guise that Emma might have to dash off if her breasts grew too full; Jo Ellen could take Em home and Bran could stay longer if he so desired.
When Jo Ellen parked in front of Cooper’s childhood farmhouse, however, she realized the second car in their caravan had disappeared from her rearview mirror. Dear God, where had Emma Leigh gone? She was going to kill her sister for this.
She sat in the driver’s seat, her heart thumping hard in her chest, too scared to climb out and face Cooper alone. Around her, farm life abounded. The worn two-story white house looked as if it could use another coat of paint, while the barn appeared as red as it had probably been the day it was built. She loved the Gerhardt’s traditional barn. Not a lot of folks had honest-to-God barns in this area and the Gerhardt’s was as much a rarity as it was useful to them.
A handful of chickens grazing in the front yard caught her attention. Charmed, Jo Ellen watched them pecking for bugs in the grass until she caught movement out of the corner of her eye when someone emerged from the vegetable garden.
Cooper’s mother clutched an armful of freshly picked cucumbers and butternut squash to her chest as she slowly hobbled toward Jo Ellen’s car.
Jo Ellen pushed open her door, suddenly glad she’d dressed in jean shorts and a sleeveless blouse because the heat wave that enveloped her didn’t seem to recognize the term personal space. The hot day climbed all over her, suffocating her, and making her skin damp within moments.
“There you are,” Loren called. For having such a large, tall son, she was frightfully short and seemed even frailer by the way she stooped her shoulders. “I hope my chocolate chip cookies didn’t cool off too much; they should still be warm and gooey for you, dear.”
Jo Ellen’s face brightened and she hurried forward to relieve the older woman of her load. “You made us cookies? Loren, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Course I made you cookies. Cooper told me how much you liked them—Oh, no. Don’t go taking those, Jo Ellen. I just picked them, haven’t washed ‘em yet. They’ll get you all dirty.”
“I don’t mind. Honestly.”
Loren ignored Jo Ellen’s outstretched arms and continued toward the house. With a sigh and rueful smile, Jo Ellen fell into step behind Cooper’s mother, stuffing her empty, useless hands into her pockets.
“Cooper hasn’t made it back from feeding the cattle yet, but we can still sit and have us a nice glass of iced tea and eat cookies until he gets home.”
Immensely relieved she didn’t have to face him right off the bat, Jo Ellen’s shoulders relaxed. “That sounds great to me. Emma Leigh should be along any minute too. I swore her car was right behind mine when I left the house. She’s must’ve forgotten something at Mom and Dad’s and had to go back for it.”
“As I recall, that twin of yours was late for everything.”
With a chuckle, Jo Ellen followed Loren into the house. The smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies immediately filled her nostrils, and her mouth watered.
“Help yourself.” Loren offered her a cookie and seat at the table.
Cooper’s mother had an easy manner; she came up with conversational topics without any help from Jo Ellen whose brain felt too fried with tension to think up something to talk about. Four cookies and half a cup of iced tea later, the older woman had talked her into accepting a bundle of fresh vegetables from her garden.
“Let me wash these off and find you a bag.” As Loren pushed to her feet, Jo Ellen cringed, wishing she could somehow make the older woman sit down and relax. She seemed perpetually on the go.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
But Loren had already disappeared into a back pantry. As Cooper’s mother rustled around, searching shelves, Jo Ellen glanced at the plate of beckoning cookies. Feeling her butt grow bigger just looking at them, she popped to her feet and hurried into the Gerhardt’s living room to avoid further temptation.
As she found herself alone in the front room, impatiently waiting for her sister to finally arrive, a totally different kind of temptation surrounded her. Cooper Thaddeus Gerhardt. His brown eyes stared at her from a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree angle. Pictures of him took up a good portion of the family photographs, in all ages of school from kindergarten to his senior graduation. Other pictures of who-she-assumed were his two older sisters also adorned the walls and fireplace, as did portraits of Loren’s grandchildren. But Jo Ellen’s attention kept landing on shots of Cooper. His image made her skin feel tight and extra warm.
One of his sisters looked more like him than the other did. Jo Ellen didn’t even know her name. Both girls had been much older than him and had moved off when he was young, but that was the extent of her knowledge about his siblings.
She veered back to study his senior picture. In the past ten years, he’d certainly filled out in all the right places. Now, he was solid and bulky and yet still appeared as if he didn’t own an ounce of fat.
When she heard an approaching engine outside, she gave a guilty lurch, unreasonably afraid she’d been caught ogling his photograph. The motor didn’t sound like Emma Leigh’s car, but Jo Ellen hoped against hope anyway as she wandered to the window and peeked out the blinds to spot a two-seater UTV pull up to the side of the house. With its bed loaded with toolboxes, the small vehicle hid under a thick layer of red dust. And behind the steering wheel sat temptation himself.
Her pulse lurched.
Unable to stop herself, she lifted the space a little wider in the window blinds and craned her head to see him better. For a moment, she lost sight of him as he drove around a corner. Then the engine of his UTV stopped and the cadence of boot heels striking against the Gerhardts’ concrete patio echoed through the front screen door, their rhythm telling her he was sauntering at a leisurely pace. Her stomach churned in anticipation.
Unexpectedly interested to catch her first glimpse of him for the day, she pressed closer to the window—the glass almost smashing her nose against the blinds—just as he stepped into her line of sight.
Even knowing how well he’d turned out, her mouth simply dropped. “Well, God bless Texas.”
In a dark t-shirt, dirty boots, a beat up straw cowboy hat, and greasy denim jeans held up by a huge belt buckle, he personified the perfect farm boy, the perfect man actually. Lust pooled warm and fluid in her limbs.
He paused, and Jo Ellen had to stand on her tiptoes and winch her neck just a little more awkwardly to continue seeing him. He took off his hat, revealing a head full of damp blond hair matted to his head. Helpless to control her eyes, she licked her lips as her gaze wandered south. My, oh my, but the man knew how to wear a pair of jeans.
With his hat off, he palmed the crown and used the back of his forearm to wipe at his sweaty face. Then he did the unthinkable. He paused at a water pump, which looked as if it might connect to an old-time, hand-dug well. Then he set his hat aside and pumped the lever a handful of times, the muscles in his arms and back bunching and shifting under his tight shirt. When water gushed from the spigot, he leaned down to stick his head under the stream.
Jo Ellen pressed her hand against her chest, hoping she didn’t have a heart attack before he was done because there was no way she wanted to miss the rest of this show.
The cool well water sluicing over his heated body made a slight steam rise around him and as wet cloth plastered itself to his torso. He drenched his hair, making it a shade darker than its usual light blond. After rinsing, he shifted his face around to the flow and opened his mouth, welcoming a nice, hearty drink.
Never in her life had Jo Ellen thought a man getting a mere drink of water could look so intoxicating. She watched his throat work as he swallowed. Then his eyes closed as he finished and he lowered his head to the spray agai
n, obviously relishing his rinse down.
“Oh, Emma Leigh,” she whispered to her absent twin. “You are missing the view of a lifetime.”
It was a wonder every female with a heartbeat didn’t pant after Cooper Gerhardt, begging to bear his babies. A frown puckered her brow. And here, his eyes had been set on her in high school; her of all people. The idea made no sense. She was nothing special. Why had this fine specimen of male beauty even spent a second glance in her direction?
And yet, he swore he had, which caused a bloom of possessiveness to fill her. A part of that hottie out there belonged to her. Years ago, he’d given his heart to her. She liked that concept. Too much; so much it intimidated her.
If she could induce a raging jerk like Travis Untermeyer to dump her like yesterday’s news, no way could she keep a man as perfect at Cooper Gerhardt. He’d discover all her faults and eventually leave her too, except Cooper’s abandonment would hurt a million times worse than being abandoned by Travis. It would completely crush what little confidence she’d accumulated over the past ten years. She didn’t know if she could give so much of her faith, her love, her control to any man again, no matter how good he looked all wet and steamy. He’d only break her.
Unknowingly arguing his own case, Cooper promptly peeled his soaking wet shirt off as soon as the water slowed to a drip from the spigot. When he commenced to wringing it dry, Jo Ellen let out a whimper. His newly exposed muscles worked, flexing and shifting under his taut, golden skin, and he seemed to use every one of them to twist his discarded shirt into a tight rope and squeeze the water out.
“Here’s a bag full of vegetables to take with you, dear,” Loren said as she hobbled into the room.
A squeak of alarm escaped Jo Ellen. She whirled from the window and quickly clamped her mouth shut, her face scorching hot as she flashed Cooper’s mother a small guilt-ridden smile.
