“We’re not finished this conversation,” Sky warned.
Caleb ignored her as he picked up his beer and gestured his friend toward a table far away from the bar and his interfering and opinionated sister.
* * *
Caleb and Joe ordered a platter of nachos with their second round of drinks, but before the food was delivered, Joe’s phone beeped.
He opened the screen and checked the message, then abruptly decided: “I’ve gotta go.”
“Is everything okay?” Caleb asked him.
“Yeah. It’s just, uh—” the tips of Joe’s ears turned red as he dropped his voice and confided “—Delia’s order from Victoria’s Secret came today.”
“Go.” Caleb waved him away. “Have fun.”
His friend grinned as he tossed money on the table to cover his beer. “Oh, I will.”
A few minutes later, the waitress delivered his nachos. “Can I get you another drink?” she offered.
“A Coke,” he decided, because it was a long drive back to the ranch.
“Coming right up,” she promised.
He picked up a chip laden with spicy ground beef and melted cheese, and popped it into his mouth.
“I thought that was your truck outside,” his father said, taking the seat Joe had recently vacated.
“What are you doing in town?” Caleb asked.
“I had something to deliver.”
He pondered the deliberately vague response as he nudged the platter of nachos toward his father.
Dave shook his head. “I don’t want to spoil my dinner.”
“This is my dinner,” Caleb said, munching on another chip.
“Are you going to be around this weekend or are you planning to jet off to New York City again?”
“Does everyone know that’s where I went last weekend?”
“Not because you told anyone you were going—or why,” his father remarked.
“I’m twenty-seven years old,” Caleb reminded him. “I didn’t think I needed your permission to take a weekend trip—or that you’d be interested in my reasons.”
“Because you went to see that Blake girl?” his father guessed.
“If you mean Brielle, then yes. And she’s a Channing.”
Dave shook his head. “Don’t kid yourself, son. Channings and Blakes are one and the same in this town. And I thought—I hoped—your relationship with her was in the past.”
“Do you really want to get into this now?” Caleb challenged.
“No,” his father decided. “I only wanted to make sure you were available to come for dinner on Saturday.”
“Is it a special occasion?” he asked, wondering if he might have forgotten someone’s birthday. Between his siblings and cousins and all the recent additions to the family, it was getting hard to keep track of them.
“Not a special occasion, really. I just thought we should have a family dinner.” Dave cleared his throat. “The whole family.”
“You’ve invited Ashley,” Caleb realized.
“I have,” his father confirmed. “And her mother.”
He couldn’t resist the opportunity to get in a dig of his own. “Oh, you mean the other Blake girl?”
His father flushed. “I’m not asking for your approval or your forgiveness.”
“That’s good. Because I don’t think I could offer either.”
“I’m sure you think me being with another woman was somehow disloyal to your mom—”
“Actually, my irritation has nothing to do with mom and everything to do with the fact that you went ballistic when you found out that I’d married Brielle.”
“Because you got her pregnant.”
Caleb pointed a finger at his dad and said, “Pot.” Then he turned his hand to gesture to himself. “Kettle. And interesting note,” he added. “Only one of us did the right thing.”
“Valerie never told me that she was pregnant,” Dave said in his defense. “And anyway, that’s in the past.”
“Did I hit a little too close to home?” Caleb taunted.
“I’m not proud of what I did,” his father acknowledged. “But I don’t want Ashley to pay the price for my mistakes.”
“What do you want?”
“Only for you to show up for the meal and be polite to your half sister and her mother.”
“I can do that,” Caleb said, because he’d never take his conflict with his father out on Ashley or Valerie. And because he was admittedly curious to get to know the sister he’d only recently learned was his.
“Thank you.” Dave rose to his feet then. “Now I’d better get home before I’m late for dinner.”
On his way out, he passed his other son coming in.
“What is this? Family night at the bar and grill?” Caleb asked as Liam joined him.
“So it would seem,” his brother agreed. “What was Dad doing here?”
“He saw my truck and stopped by to invite me to the big family dinner on Saturday.”
“I still can’t believe, after everything he’s said about the Blake family over the years, that the first woman he bangs after Mom dies is a Blake,” Liam remarked.
Caleb winced. “Please. I don’t want that image in my head.”
“I’m just saying—it’s more than a little hypocritical.”
He nodded his agreement.
Liam stole a nacho and dipped it into the cup of salsa. “You don’t think he’s in love with her? Valerie, I mean.”
This time Caleb shook his head. “I don’t think he would have let her disappear from his life if he’d been in love with her.”
“You let Brielle go,” his brother noted.
“That was a completely different situation,” he said.
“Was it?”
Because he didn’t want to do an autopsy on a relationship he was hoping to revive, he turned back to the topic of the family dinner. “Are you bringing the soon-to-be wife and kids on Saturday?”
“Of course,” Liam said. “Macy will be a neutral buffer and the triplets are always a great icebreaker.
“And I checked with Kate to make sure Reid was coming, too,” his brother continued. “I figured it can’t hurt to have the sheriff on hand.”
* * *
“How was the family dinner?” Brielle asked, when Caleb called her the day after the big event.
“You mean the family disaster?”
She winced sympathetically. “That bad?”
“The only good thing was Martina’s fried chicken with mashed potatoes and creamed corn.”
“Yum,” she said.
“Everyone agreed it was delicious,” he said. “Except for Ashley who, it turns out, is a vegetarian.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “As the food was being passed around the table, Valerie reminded my dad that Ashley doesn’t eat meat—to which he replied that chicken isn’t meat, it’s poultry.”
“So he tried to be accommodating,” she noted, willing to give him credit for the effort.
“And failed miserably,” Caleb said. “Ashley pushed her potatoes and corn around on her plate but barely ate anything.”
“The whole situation must have been overwhelming for her.”
“And it wasn’t even the whole family,” he said. “Macy stayed home with Ava, who had a snuffly nose. And Reid didn’t make it because he was called out to the scene of a collision on the highway.”
Still, Brie had always been a little intimidated by Caleb’s father, so she imagined her young cousin had probably felt as if she was in the midst of a lions’ den. Knowing that the king of the beasts was her father wasn’t likely to have eased her apprehension.
“But you could tell Ashley was eager for the meal to be over, because as soon as the dishes were cleared away, she asked if she
could see Mystery’s foal.”
“And I bet you were the first to offer to take her out to the barn,” Brie guessed.
“I think we all wanted an excuse to escape the tension-filled dining room,” he confided. “But I was closest to the door.”
She chuckled. “I’m sure that wasn’t an accident.”
“It wasn’t,” he agreed. “And anyway, I’m glad I got some one-on-one time with her. Ashley’s a bright and interesting kid.”
“Of course she is—she’s a Blake,” Brie teased, tongue-in-cheek.
“She’s also a Gilmore,” he reminded her. “Though I get the impression she isn’t exactly thrilled about that.”
“Can you blame her for feeling conflicted?”
“No,” he acknowledged. “I guess I was just hoping it would be easier for her, because then I could believe it will be easier for our child.”
“It will be easier for our child, because we’ll both be in his or her corner from day one,” she pointed out to him.
“Speaking of...how are you feeling?” he asked.
“Pregnant,” she said brightly.
“How does pregnant feel?”
“Tired all the time, with sore breasts and occasional bouts of nausea.”
“So why do you sound so happy?” he wondered aloud.
“Because I am happy,” she said. “Because every time I want to throw up, I’m reminded that there’s a baby growing inside me. Our baby.”
And more than three weeks after she’d taken the test, it still gave Brie a thrill every time she thought about the tiny life in her womb.
But the thrill was almost always followed by a twinge, as she remembered that she’d been down this road once before—and it had not ended happily. She was taking care of herself: eating healthy (most of the time) and exercising moderately. But it was still early days, and she didn’t want to make too many plans or look too far ahead, just in case.
Was it her fault, then, she wondered, that there was blood on her panties when she got home after school on Wednesday afternoon?
Chapter Eleven
Brie surveyed the contents of her refrigerator, contemplating her options. Did she want leftover pasta from the previous night, half a bowl of sad-looking salad, a single slice of pizza or some kind of Chinese food of indeterminate age and origin?
She’d decided on the pizza and salad when the doorbell rang. Closing the door of the fridge with her hip, she set the food on the counter and went to check the security camera.
“Caleb?” She immediately yanked open the door to let him in. “Ohmygod—what are you doing here?”
“Lily called me from the hospital last night.”
Though the revelation was news to Brie, it probably shouldn’t have surprised her. “I wish she hadn’t done that.”
“I’m glad she did,” he told her. “Especially since you didn’t let me know what was going on.”
“Because I didn’t know what was going on,” she explained. “And I didn’t want you to worry when there was probably nothing to worry about and nothing you could do, anyway.”
“I wish I could have been there with you,” he said. “I was on my way to the airport when she called the second time to tell me that you were being released.”
“And you still flew twenty-five hundred miles,” she noted. “Why? To hold my hand?”
He linked their fingers together now, then lifted her hand and touched his lips to the back of it. “Worth the trip.”
She managed a smiled. “I’m okay,” she assured him. “The baby’s okay. It was just a little bit of spotting that the doctor said isn’t anything to worry about in the early stages of pregnancy.”
But there had been a moment—not of worry but of sheer and complete panic—when she saw the blood and thought it was happening again. That she was going to lose another baby.
The fear had been so strong and real, she’d barely been able to breathe. She’d wanted him then, wished he could be there with her, because she knew he would understand everything she was feeling without having to say a word.
Instead, she’d called Lily, because her friend was at work at the museum, only an eight-minute subway ride away.
Lily had rushed home and then summoned an Uber to take them to Kings County Hospital. She’d stayed with Brie the whole time while she waited to see a doctor, had another test to confirm her pregnancy, then a physical exam. Brie didn’t know when her friend would have found the time to call Caleb—unless it was when she’d left the room to call Grace. And though she thought jumping on a plane was an overreaction to the situation, she appreciated that he wanted to be there for her.
Still, she felt compelled to protest. “If your instinct is to fly halfway across the country every time I freak out, you could spend a lot of time in the air over the next seven-and-a-half months.”
“Then I guess I better start collecting frequent flyer points.”
She tried to smile, but her lips trembled rather than curved and her eyes filled with tears.
He pulled her into his arms, tucking her head against his chest. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I was so scared,” she admitted.
“And I wasn’t here.”
“Talking to you might have helped,” she said. “I should have called you—I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“This long-distance thing really sucks,” he grumbled.
She could only nod.
And then, realizing that they were still standing in the entranceway, she extricated herself from his embrace and closed the door.
“I was just thinking about my options for dinner,” Brie said, leading the way to the kitchen.
He glanced at the salad and single slice of pizza on the counter. “I hope you were thinking about something better than that.”
“I didn’t feel up to cooking,” she admitted.
“Do you feel up to going out?”
“I’m a little tired but even more hungry, so yes, we can go out.”
“Last time I was here, you mentioned there was an Italian place close by.”
She put the pizza and salad back in the fridge. “It’s as if you read my mind.”
“Should we ask Grace and Lily to join us?” he asked, as they were on their way to Nonna’s Kitchen.
She shook her head. “It’s Thursday.”
“They don’t eat dinner on Thursday?”
“Lily is at the museum until ten on Thursdays and Grace usually stays in Manhattan to have dinner with her parents.”
“Then I guess we only need a table for two.”
* * *
“How long are you planning to stay this time?” Brie asked, when they were seated inside the restaurant.
“I was in such a hurry to get here, I booked a one-way ticket,” he told her.
“So you can hang out for a few days?” she asked hopefully.
“Do you want me to?”
“Well, it doesn’t make sense to come all this way just to turn around and go back again,” she pointed out.
“You want me to stay,” he realized, unable to hold back the smile that curved his lips. “You missed me.”
“I’ve thought about you some,” she acknowledged. “But I don’t know that I’d say I missed you.”
“Well, I missed you,” he said.
She seemed surprised by his admission. “You did?”
“I know it’s crazy. We’ve spent a total of four days together over the past two months, but I think about you all the time and wish we could be together every day.”
And when Lily had called, when he’d thought that Brielle might lose their baby, he’d felt as if he’d been cut off at the knees. Having been through that emotional trauma once before, he knew how scared she’d been—because he’d felt the same way.
He’d got the s
econd call, assuring him that it was a false alarm and that both Brie and their baby were fine, when he was on his way to the airport. He could have turned around and gone home, but the need to see her, to hold her, to reassure both of them, was stronger than everything else.
Because as much as he hoped and believed this pregnancy was a second chance for them together, he knew that losing their baby would end all of their hopes and dreams.
By the time they left the restaurant, he could tell that Brie was wiped out. In addition to the physical toll the pregnancy was taking on her body, he guessed that she was mentally and emotionally exhausted.
“Did you want to watch a movie or something?” she asked, when they got back to the house.
“You don’t have to entertain me,” he told her. “Just give me a pillow and blanket so I can crash, then you can do the same.”
“I can get you a pillow and blanket...or you can share my bed tonight, if you want.
“I’m not suggesting anything other than sleeping,” she hastened to add. “But my mattress is probably more comfortable than the sofa, and you won’t be awakened by Grace and Lily when they head out to work in the morning.”
“I guess you have to work tomorrow, too.”
“I was planning to go in,” she said. “But my plans changed when a handsome cowboy showed up at my door.”
His brows lifted. “You’re going to play hooky?”
“I’m taking a personal day.”
“Is that what teachers call it when they play hooky?”
She nudged him with her elbow. “I already emailed my principal so that she could call in a sub to cover my class.”
“So what are our plans for tomorrow?” he asked.
“For starters, sleeping in.”
* * *
They did sleep in.
And then they went into Manhattan because Brielle wanted to show Caleb the trees in Central Park in all the glory of their fall colors.
This time, they got off the subway on Fifth Avenue to approach the park from a different direction. It was, he realized, a major shopping hub. Not touristy shops, like on Broadway, but high-end retail outlets—including Tiffany’s.
One Night with the Cowboy Page 13
