All right. That was one way of getting over the awkwardness. She was just as forthright as his brothers.
“I wish I were kidding,” he said. “I had some business at the Hervy Ranch about a half hour away in July—”
“I know. You were dealing with livestock. You told me that right before you talked me into...”
She pressed her lips together, color rising in her cheeks. A buzz skimmed his belly at just the mention of what had gone on between them, even though this wasn’t the time or place for it.
The important thing was that he’d done more than just had sex with her. She was someone he’d talked to around the time of his accident, although he didn’t know how long they had chatted before getting to the bedroom. If she could just give him more details about their time together, maybe that would kick-start his brain and he could piece together more of what had happened before and just after the accident.
She shot him a slanted look. “Why the hell wouldn’t you know when we...” She lowered her voice, glancing around. Discovering that the lobby had emptied, she added, “Were together?”
Here it went.
“When I left St. Valentine,” he said, “I got in an accident on the way to my appointment. Enough of one to send me in an ambulance to the hospital.”
She raised her eyebrows. On her face he saw shock...until her gaze softened for a vulnerable moment.
“An accident?” she asked.
“That’s right. And afterward I didn’t remember where I was, who I was... My brothers and mom were there to help me put things together. Most things, anyway. I’ve got holes right where a lot of my memory used to be.”
She just kept watching him, her gaze finally going from soft and gray to unreadable and cool.
Then she laughed softly, and it wasn’t a funny laugh. Her gaze was sad now.
“This is a joke, right?” she asked.
“No.” What kind of psychotic would approach her again just to lay a line like this on her?
“Whatever it is, it’s not funny at all.”
Conn started to assure her that he was deadly serious, but she had already abandoned her stack of papers and rounded the desk corner, her body fully revealed now.
As he laid eyes on her slightly swelling stomach pressing against her skirt, he froze, unable to follow her.
* * *
Rita Niles never looked back at him. She just blindly headed for the hallway, then the closed door to the tearoom, hoping he wouldn’t see where she’d gone.
Conn Flannigan, the man she’d put so much hope in, even after one night. Dumbly, naively, regretfully.
She calmly opened the door, but as soon as she was in the empty kitchen, she leaned on a stainless-steel counter, dizzy, her pulse so loud in her ears, so wild in her chest, that she almost slumped to the floor.
But not quite, because she’d promised herself that nobody was ever going to do this to her again. Not after what her ex-fiancé, Kevin, had done to her. And definitely not after she’d dropped her guard during a wonderful night of seduction with this cowboy, finally believing that she’d been wrong about love all these years.
She rubbed the curve of her belly, fighting the tears.
Conn Flannigan.
When she’d seen him in the lobby today, it’d shocked her right down to her toes, her body tingling in places that should’ve been smart enough to go numb after she thought she’d been left high and dry by him. But, with him standing there, with his thick, black hair that curled up at the ends, with his shining blue eyes, with every inch of lean, tall cowboy in a Western shirt, jeans and boots, she’d come alive in very dangerous ways.
And it was happening now, too, as that night filtered back to her.
She’d been sitting in the Queen of Hearts Saloon, resigned to hours of drudge work ahead of her at the hotel. She’d been in threadbare jeans, an untucked blouse, with her hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail, yet when he’d walked in, she was the only one he’d looked at.
And that look... Even now, she shivered from the intensity of what it’d done to her—breathing fire under and over her skin, sizzling through her until it consumed every inch. She could’ve even sworn that time had stopped for both of them, could’ve sworn that every one of his cells was vibrating just as hard as hers were.
If she had the capacity to believe in love at first sight, she might have said that she fell in love with him then and there. Maybe, in those first few crazy moments she’d gotten the closest to love she would ever get again.
He’d ambled right over, offering to buy Rita dinner, sweet-talking her until her knees went to jelly. She’d never clicked so quickly with anyone, flirted so easily, not even with Kevin, who’d taken the slow route with her during days of high school dances and after-graduation dates. But Conn?
That night—that damned magic night—it’d felt as if Conn had been the man she should’ve held out for all along.
He’d walked her back to the hotel, and much to her surprise, she’d found herself forgetting every lesson she’d learned. Her body overtaking her mind, she’d invited him in, first to the lobby. Then, when she’d resigned herself to ditching her all-night work shift, she’d clandestinely invited him to an empty room a floor below her own quarters in the hotel.
She’d been lost in him so deeply that she’d thought...
Well, she’d thought that things could be different this time. Thought that she’d somehow wonderfully crossed a line she’d drawn years ago after Kevin had left her and their daughter.
It’d been that good with Conn, and that was why she hated him—because he’d seemed to be the answer for her. Because he’d made her body and soul agonize for so many nights afterward.
Now, Rita rested her hand on the baby growing inside of her. Ridiculous. She’d been ridiculous to think that one night might change everything, especially for a person who’d spent a long while shuttering herself away, slat by slat, until she looked at the world only through the cracks.
But...
For one night, it really had been that good.
He hadn’t checked in to the hotel, so she’d never gotten his contact information. Besides, he’d told her he was going to be back, so she hadn’t asked for a phone number, an address. He’d taken her necklace in a playful moment, saying he would return it to her that night when he returned for more, almost as if it were a vow.
She’d believed in him.
Believed and been abandoned.
But, she thought, he’d had amnesia.
She started to laugh—a crazy, cracked-at-the-edges laugh that trailed into the threat of more tears as she leaned her head down on her arms, which still rested on the kitchen counter.
Amnesia. How stupid did he think she was?
As she stifled another sob, doubt crept into her. What if...
No. Amnesia was so far out of the question that she shouldn’t believe it.
Still, the doubts stayed with her, even as she heard footsteps outside the kitchen door. She put on her “boss face,” straightening up, swiping at her cheeks and finding a few stray tears, then walked toward the entrance to the tea room, just as Margery Wilmore busted through the hallway door.
She had a plump chest and was motherly and gray-haired. “How’s my Rita doing?”
“Right as rain.” Rita glanced at her watch. “Tea prep already?”
“Like clockwork.” The older woman sent Rita a concerned look. “You okay, honey?”
Rita nodded. Margery was a carryover from the days when Rita’s mom used to run the hotel, back before she and Dad had passed on. When Rita had taken over at the age of twenty-three, Margery had “kindly” tried to offer all kinds of advice, even though Rita had been working at the hotel since she was old enough to carry out orders, raised to take over operations one day. Now, ten years later, Margery still hovered, casting a suspicious eye at Rita’s tummy when she’d started showing recently.
But didn’t everyone hover in their own ways? After Kevin, Rita h
ad sort of become St. Valentine’s pet project. The town screwup who’d been saving up to go to college for years after graduation—and wouldn’t you know it? She’d actually earned a business scholarship but had given it up when she’d gotten preggers.
A pregnancy had been out of character for her, the straight-A student. And, even more off-putting to a lot of folks around here, after Kevin had left her and she had proudly set out to be a single parent, she had refused interference or unwanted advice from everyone who “knew better” in a town where traditional family values ruled.
Now, she was going for another round of out-of-wedlock parenthood.
“You’re running yourself ragged,” Margery said, resting a hand on Rita’s cheek to test her temperature.
Rita deftly shied away. “I’m just fine.”
The older woman clucked her tongue. “You and your stubbornness. Someday it’s all going to catch up to you, especially raising Kristy alone.”
That’s right—Margery knew best. How could Rita have forgotten?
Her cell phone rang, and gratefully, she went into the empty hallway and answered, not caring who was on the other end. When she heard the voice of her best friend, Violet, she almost cheered.
Too bad Vi’s actual words didn’t have the same effect on her.
“Is it true?” she asked.
Rita wouldn’t play dumb. “You already heard?”
“Small town. Grapevine. Newspaper reporter. Go figure.”
Gossip traveled at the speed of light in St. Valentine, but it wasn’t as if Rita had never been its subject before.
“He just showed up, Vi. Out of nowhere.”
“Want to talk about it over some lunch?”
They agreed to meet in ten minutes at the Queen of Hearts Saloon, which belonged to Vi’s family. Rita went to the lobby, taking care to scan it before she entered.
No sign of the cowboy.
Relieved—was that the word she was looking for?—she crossed the lobby, telling her desk clerk that she was going on lunch break, then feeling the girl’s eyes on her. And why not, when Janelle had probably seen Conn Flannigan in here with the necklace and heard some of their conversation while she’d been straightening the brochures?
Head held high, Rita tried her best not to feel like the town screwup once again as she left the hotel, wondering if Conn Flannigan was outside.
Wondering if she was going to be able to avoid telling him just who the father of her unborn baby was.
Chapter Two
“I wish he’d just stayed away,” Rita told Vi as she sat across from her at the Queen of Hearts in an out-of-the-way corner booth where the low-volume country songs on the jukebox were even more muted. The wagon wheel light fixtures hovered overhead, and a bunch of regulars ate burgers and drank beer at the bar, surrounded by sepia-hued pictures of the town during its early days.
“It sounds to me like he really does have amnesia.” Vi’s brown eyes reflected sympathy. Even though she was on lunch break from the small-town-reporter’s desk, she had an iPad next to her, ready to catch any breaking news should it come their way. “It’d be a good reason for him to come back here, retracing his steps before his accident. And he’d have no idea how ticked off you’d be. Besides, who goes around telling stories like that unless they’re true?”
Rita hadn’t touched her chef’s salad yet, but Vi was munching away on her fries. She’d been there for the morning after when Rita had still been on cloud nine after her night with Conn. But Vi had also seen the aftermath and how it’d decimated a newfound confidence for Rita that had lasted less than twenty-four hours before she’d felt the shame of supposedly being lied to and left behind once again.
“So what’re you going to do?” Vi asked, dipping a fry in catsup.
“What can I do?” Rita jabbed at a piece of ham with her fork. “I shouldn’t have done anything in the first place—except for running straight out of here when he bellied up to my table that night. I should’ve known—”
“Hey, you couldn’t have known.” As Vi leaned forward to rest a hand over Rita’s free one, her shoulder-length, dark red hair swung forward. “You were ready to move on after years of hating yourself for what happened with Kevin.”
“You weren’t happy when I told you about Conn after our...night.”
“I was being protective. But now there’s a baby involved, and that changes everything.”
Rita cradled her slightly curved tummy with her free hand. “That night, I should’ve just thought more about what it felt like when Kevin left. That would’ve stopped me from giving in to Conn.”
But she hadn’t been able to think about anything or anyone...except for the cowboy at her table, his eyes sparkling with fun, drawing her into their depths with “why not?” allure.
But, as she’d waited for him the day and night afterward, she’d found out “why not.” The minutes had ticked by to one hour...two...then to midnight. And still no Conn. The next morning had come, then passed, then the next and the next.
By that time, she knew she’d been had, and she’d closed up her heart tighter than ever, knowing that she was the only one she could depend on.
And then she’d missed her period, although Rita couldn’t and wouldn’t regret getting pregnant.
Maybe that was what life had in store for her. Always a great mother to the children she loved more than anything, but never a wife.
“You know what the most embarrassing part is?” Rita finally asked.
Violet swallowed her bite of burger. “What?”
A wounded laugh escaped. “There was something that kept needling at me, telling me that there was a really good reason he didn’t come back.”
“And there ended up being a good reason. Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that he didn’t reject you? That it had everything to do with circumstances beyond his control?”
Vi was wearing one of those looks filled with optimism. And why shouldn’t she? This weekend, she was going to marry millionaire Davis Jackson, her star-crossed lover from high school. They had been run through the gauntlet after Vi had come back to town after having lost her job on a city newspaper and returned to St. Valentine to lick her wounds. Davis had always loved her—the girl from the wrong side of the tracks—but Vi hadn’t been sure he was pursuing her again because of that or to get payback for how she had broken his heart. Now, though, everything was wedding marches and roses for her.
No, Rita didn’t feel nearly as positive as Vi.
“I’m just considering myself lucky to have escaped this one,” she said. “Conn is my cautionary tale.”
“For what could happen if you should ever let your guard down again and someone crushes you for real. I get it, Rita.”
“I mean, he didn’t return to St. Valentine to request my forgiveness or to sweep me off my feet again, right? And if he saw my stomach, he probably flipped.”
“You don’t know if he saw it?”
“I didn’t look at him to make sure while I was hightailing it out of the lobby.”
“You couldn’t bring yourself to see his reaction. I get that, too.” Vi sighed. “But if you left him in the dust like that, how can you be so sure just what he wants to do?”
What he wanted to do... A glimmer of the same excitement she’d felt that night—and even today when she’d first seen him—shimmered deep in Rita’s chest, where it felt as if something were struggling to come alive.
Why wouldn’t it just go away?
Vi leaned back in her seat, probably knowing Rita wouldn’t answer the rhetorical question. “Word has it that there was something in the air when you two laid eyes on each other this afternoon, you know.”
What did everyone else know? “And since when are you such a fan of gossip?”
Vi made a “touché” gesture. She’d suffered plenty of gossip herself, when her off-limits millionaire had flown in the face of everyone in town to court her.
A waitress came by, asking if they would like an
ything else. Rita requested a to-go container and the server left without dropping off a check. She knew Vi had it covered, since her parents owned the place, which had seen a spike in customers since Vi’s journalistic work had been featured in a “Tony Amati Mystery” story that had gotten some airtime on a national news magazine program last month. It was true that Vi and Davis, who owned the small-town newspaper, hadn’t been able to dig up much information about Tony lately, but that hadn’t stopped them from staying the course.
“To-go?” Vi asked. “You’re deserting me?”
“I’ll have to eat the rest after I pick up Kristy from preschool. She likes the little chunks of ham, anyway.”
Vi wasn’t letting this go. “So...that’s going to be it, then? You’re going back to the hotel, back to the bubble of your reception desk?”
“Safest place on earth.”
“Rita...”
She slumped in her seat. “Listen, I know that you’ve fallen in love and you just want everyone else to be as happy as you are. But I can’t do it again. I can’t have my pride and...” She rested a hand over her heart. “I can’t have it bruised again.” Then she put her hand on her tummy, rubbing it. “So, yes, I’m going back to the hotel to do some maintenance work after I pick up Kristy. And I’m going to hope that Conn Flannigan has already driven back home without knowing anything more than he needs to.”
Then she eased toward the edge of her booth seat, intending to get out. “The bottom line is that he doesn’t really remember what went on between us that night. That’s probably a blessing in disguise. I’m sure we both acted in a way we’d regret now, after the heat of the moment.”
“If that’s how you want it.”
Great—the guilt trip. But Rita was firm in her resolutions. That night four months ago, she’d rushed into something she’d never thought she would be going into again. But now, with some time and distance behind her, she really did think that she’d dodged a bullet. The hotel had been busier than ever, and Kristy needed a mother who was focused on her, not on hormonal desires and scatterbrained affairs.
“Rita?” Vi smiled sadly. “I’d give anything to see you and the kids happy.”
Daddy in the Making Page 2
