by Cindi Myers
“I know, but Clay wants to be careful. You know how people around here are.” She smiled. “It’s sweet, really. I think he’s trying to protect me.”
Taylor crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right, you two having to sneak around.”
“It’ll be all right. Once summer gets here, we won’t have to be so secretive. By then…well, maybe it’s too soon to get my hopes up, but if we married…”
“It’s that serious?”
Mindy nodded. “I think it is. I know we just started seeing each other, but…” She sighed. “Everything seems so…so right when we’re together, you know?”
Taylor didn’t know. Sure, she’d had moments with Dylan when she’d felt more complete, more content, than she ever had with anyone else. But that didn’t mean they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together. Did it?
“What about you and Dylan?” Mindy asked.
Taylor blinked. At first she thought Mindy was asking if she and Dylan had plans to marry. “I don’t think—” she began.
“I thought you were going to see him Friday,” Mindy said.
“Oh. Oh, yes. I saw him.”
“What did you do?” Mindy grinned. “Or is that a secret?”
“No secret. We went to the old drive-in.”
Mindy raised her eyebrows. “Was this another fantasy?”
Taylor nodded. “Another wild rumor that circulated about us in high school.”
Mindy laughed. “Don’t you two ever feel like making love in a bed?”
Taylor stared at her friend. Before now she hadn’t realized that she and Dylan had yet to have sex in any conventional setting. Maybe a bed was too…real. Too everyday. They were re-creating fantasy here. Something wonderful and not made to last.
“What about Saturday? Did you see him?”
She took a drink of her soda. Dylan had asked to see her Saturday, but she’d refused. Friday night’s encounter had been so powerful, so…moving. She’d needed time to absorb those feelings. “We’ve agreed not to see too much of each other. It makes things too…too complicated.”
Mindy frowned. “I think you’re falling for him and you don’t want to admit how hard it’s going to be when you leave for England.”
She looked away. Maybe that was part of it. All the more reason to back off as much as she could now. “I knew what I was getting into when I started this,” she said. “I can handle it.” Though she’d never imagined the emotions she felt when she was with Dylan would be so powerful.
Mindy leaned over and put her hand on Taylor’s. “You don’t always have to be so tough, you know.” She smiled and stood. “Thanks for listening. I’d better go get something to eat while I still have a chance.”
When Taylor was alone again, she tried to finish her lunch, but her stomach was in a turmoil. What did Mindy mean, she didn’t have to be so tough? Of course she did. She never would have made it this far if she hadn’t learned to look out for herself and to protect her feelings. It was the only way to survive life relatively unscathed.
DYLAN SPENT HIS LUNCH hour Monday dropping off ads at the newspaper and arranging for five thousand leaflets to be printed and distributed by Friday. He had barely fifteen minutes for lunch but decided to stop by his house for a sandwich rather than swinging by Danny’s or one of the new fast-food joints at the south end of town. One of the benefits of being your own boss was that you could be late returning from lunch and no one made much of a fuss. He didn’t have any appointments this afternoon and his new secretary, Anita, would handle the phones.
He unlocked the back door and let himself into the kitchen, the quiet of the house descending around him like a cloak. The clock above the stove ticked loudly and the ice-maker rattled as it dumped a load of fresh cubes. The silence seemed out of place here. When he was growing up, Dylan was sure the house had never been like this.
Maybe he’d get a dog. A Lab or a golden retriever who would run to greet him whenever he arrived home.
He made a sandwich and carried it and a glass of milk into his dad’s old office. Dylan’s office now. A card table filled in for the desk he hadn’t bought yet, though the rest of the room was substantially unchanged from the days his dad had lived here. The ten-point buck he’d shot in South Texas still hung on the wall over the built-in bookcases that held his dad’s collection of Zane Grey novels and bound issues of Texas Highways.
Dylan sat on an old kitchen chair behind the card-table desk and sorted through his mail. Junk. Junk. Bill, flyer, junk. He took a closer look at the flyer and grinned. “Elect Jes Ramirez for School Board Position Six,” it read.
“Let the games begin,” he said, thinking of his own flyers that would go in the mail at the end of the week.
He told himself it didn’t matter if he won this race or not, but a voice in his head immediately named him a liar. So, okay, he really wanted this. He wanted the people in this town to know his name. To think of him as somebody. To say, “There goes Sam Gates’s son. His father would be proud.”
Sam would have been proud to see Dylan’s name on a ballot. He’d have been first in line to cast his vote, too. Dylan could be thankful for that certainty. He knew too many men, and women, too, who shriveled with regret when their parents were gone, because they hadn’t mended fences or had drifted apart. Dylan and his father had remained close their whole lives together.
Dylan’s only regret was that his mom and dad hadn’t lived longer, to see everything their children had become.
Donna was living in Houston, married to a petroleum engineer, with a beautiful little boy and another one on the way. Debby taught elementary school in a Dallas suburb and was engaged to a doctor.
Then there was Dylan, the oldest and still unattached, living in the house they’d grown up in, where every room seemed to be waiting for a family to fill it.
Of all the things he’d come back to Cedar Creek to find, family was key. The family of his past and the family of his future. Here, he was sure he’d find a woman and settle down to raise his children. Someone who had roots as deep as his own. Someone who could make his home her home.
And then Taylor had sauntered into their class reunion and shattered that idyllic vision with one look from her brown eyes. She didn’t want a home. She wasn’t interested in settling down. She didn’t fit at all with his picture of the future, yet when he was with her, none of that mattered.
He wanted her with him. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. Next year. The fact that it couldn’t happen didn’t make him want it any less.
Worse, he was afraid Taylor had ruined him for anyone else. Would a woman who married him and settled down to raise his children do a striptease at a deserted drive-in, then let him take her from behind on the hood of her car? Would the kind of woman who devoted herself to local politics and small town life strip naked in the front seat of his truck or leave him trembling with need in a high school shower? Could any ordinary woman make him feel the extraordinary things Taylor had made him feel?
He pushed aside the remains of his lunch and leaned back in his chair. He was screwed any way he looked at it. And not in a good way. Taylor had messed with his body and now she was messing with his mind.
He could ask her to stay, of course. But no, he couldn’t do that. She deserved her happiness more than anyone and if she thought she couldn’t find it here, she was probably right. Hadn’t he always thought she was too wild and exotic for this dusty old town? She needed something more. Something even he couldn’t give her.
He felt weighed down with sadness at the thought, but he determined not to show it. As long as he and Taylor were together, he’d squeeze every last drop of enjoyment from the moment and give every bit of pleasure he could to her. He’d have time for mourning later, when she was far away, where she couldn’t see what she’d done to him.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Taylor stopped by Dylan’s office. She told herself she was here on business, to discuss his plans to speak to her class.
But she could have done that over the phone. Deep down, in a part of herself she didn’t want to examine too closely, she wanted to see him again. Four days apart was too much. She wanted to see his eyes light up when she walked into the room, to bask in the warmth of his smile, to feel his arms around her.
She found the office easily enough and stood on the sidewalk, admiring the gold lettering on the front door: Dylan M. Gates, Attorney-At-Law. Inside, she found a simply decorated office with a few potted plants, leather chairs and wildlife prints on the wall. The office was subdued and masculine, like the man who worked here. A smiling Anita Brandtley stood to greet her. “Ms. Reed, it’s so good to see you again.”
“Hi, Anita. Dylan told me he’d hired you.” She gave her former student a hug. “Are you enjoying the job?”
“I love it. Dylan’s so easygoing. Let me tell him you’re here.” She reached for the phone.
“I don’t want to disturb him.” In fact, now that she was here, she was wondering about the wisdom of visiting Dylan in a place so closely tied to his public identity. Seeing this side of him added too much information to her picture of him. The more she knew about him, the more difficult it was to keep him confined in her mind to the role of fantasy lover.
“It’s no bother. I know he’ll want to see you.”
While she waited for Dylan to come out, she studied the pictures on the wall. In addition to the wildlife prints, he’d hung photographs of himself and his family. She admired what looked like an enlarged family photo showing Dylan and Sam standing on the end of a wharf, a string of fish between them. Dylan looked nineteen or twenty, a younger copy of the silver-haired man beside him, who must have been in his fifties. Anyone would have known immediately they were father and son, from the way each stood with hips slightly cocked, to the unabashed grin each wore.
She studied Sam’s face more closely, noting the way lines fanned out from his eyes and the creases on either side of his mouth. Is this what Dylan would look like when he was older? Is this the face his wife would see across from her at the breakfast table every day? An invisible hand squeezed her heart at the thought.
“Taylor! What a nice surprise.”
She turned and saw Dylan crossing the office toward her, arms outstretched. He pulled her close in a quick hug, then stepped back, the same grin she’d seen in the photo fixed on her now. “What brings you downtown this afternoon?”
“I wanted to see where you work.” She looked around them. “Very nice.”
“Come on back into my office. I’ve got something to show you.” He put a hand at her back and steered her toward the room at the back of the suite. A massive desk took up most of the space, though there was room for a bookcase and two side chairs.
He strode to the desk and picked up a handful of bumper stickers and thrust one at her. “These just came in. What do you think?”
She looked down at the sticker and smiled. “‘Dylan Gets It Done.’” She laughed. “It looks good. People will remember it.”
“Let’s hope they remember to write my name in on the ballot, too.”
He dropped the stickers back on the desk and nodded to the stacks of paperwork there. “I can’t believe how fast this is taking off. Troy has me booked to speak to every group in town, from the League of Women Voters and the Kiwanis to the Junior Leaguers and the New Neighbors Club.”
“You’ll wow them all with your charm,” she said. “I hope you can squeeze me into your schedule.”
He grinned wolfishly. “I always have room for you.”
She looked away, suppressing a grin. “I was referring to my class. Remember, you promised to speak to them about your father and his book.”
“I haven’t forgotten. Just tell me when you want me and I’ll be there.”
Was it coincidence that he’d chosen those words? Or was it only her one-track mind that made her think of wanting him in a physical way? “How does Tuesday, a week from now, sound?”
He glanced at the planner open on his desk. “I have to speak to the Rotary luncheon that day. But Wednesday’s open.”
“Wednesday it is, then.”
“How’s the project going?” he asked.
“It’s going great. I haven’t seen students this excited about an assignment in a long time.” She settled into one of the leather chairs across from his desk and he lowered himself into the other. “They’ve already come up with a list of places to film and people to interview. Dale will be the cameraman, Berk the producer, Jessica, Patrice and Owen Rodriguez were picked to be the on-camera reporters, and Randy Padgett and Sue Hartsell are in charge of editing. Others in the class will help with promotion, write scripts and research background. I’m really proud of them.”
“They sound like a great bunch of kids. I could use that kind of organization on my campaign.”
“Hey, anytime you want help, just ask.”
“How about next Saturday evening?” He picked up a handful of bumper stickers. “Troy wants to organize an envelope stuffing party. We need all the manpower we can get.”
“I’ll let the students know. I’m sure some of them will want to help.”
They sat across from each other, both smiling, attraction building in the sudden stillness like an electrical current. Taylor watched his eyes darken and shifted her gaze from the wanting she saw there. Her own eyes probably gave her away. She would have thought by now she’d be past this heated edginess she felt every time he was near. She wasn’t an adolescent fighting raging hormones, but a grown woman who had plenty of other things to think about besides sex.
Except when she was with Dylan. Then she was never far from anticipating being in his arms again.
“I see homecoming is next Friday. Are you going?”
The question startled her into looking at him again. “Funny you should ask. Alyson Michaels stopped me in the hall yesterday and asked if the two of us would like to chaperone the Homecoming Dance.”
“For real?” He grinned. “I’d love that. At least I think I would. What does a chaperone do, exactly?”
“We have to go to the dance and be on the lookout for troublemakers—you know, any students who might be drinking too much or doing drugs. The kids aren’t allowed to leave the dance and come back in, so we watch for that.” She smiled. “It’s a pretty tame crowd, really. It’s considered a plum duty.”
He nodded. “I’d love to take you to the Homecoming Dance.” His voice softened. “I never got the chance before.”
Did you want to? He sounded as if he had, but that led to the question of why he hadn’t asked her to the dance when they were both students. She was working up the courage to voice this question when the intercom buzzed. “Mr. Sommers is here. He says he needs to speak to you about the campaign,” Anita said.
Dylan stood and punched the intercom button. “Send him in.”
Troy burst into the room, waving a sheaf of papers. “I’ve got you booked all over town, buddy,” he crowed. “There won’t be anyone in town who doesn’t know you’re running for school board and once they meet you, they’re all going to want to vote for you.” He stopped short in front of the desk. “Well, hello, Taylor. How are you?”
“Fine, Troy. And you?”
His grin broadened. “Great. I guess you heard I’m heading up the campaign here for our boy.”
Behind Troy’s back, Dylan winced. Troy turned to him. “I stopped by the printers and they’re already at work on those flyers. We’ll do this mailing and then an even bigger one closer to the campaign. We’ll need to round up some volunteers to stuff envelopes.”
He nodded. “I can do that.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Who’s paying for all this? Mailings are expensive.”
“Don’t worry. You’ve had a number of donors come forward to help out with the costs.” Troy winked at Taylor. “Dyl is too modest. He doesn’t understand how many people want to see him succeed at this. And this is only the first step.” He dropped the papers onto the desk. “Today the
school board. Tomorrow—U.S. Senate.”
Hearing this proclamation about anyone else, Taylor would have been skeptical. But she had no doubt Dylan could go as far as he wanted in politics—or anything else. Who wouldn’t vote for a smart, handsome, honest, hardworking man like him? Though it was sexist to say so, he’d get any number of female votes on the basis of his smile alone.
“Not everyone is thrilled that I’m running for office.” Dylan picked up the latest edition of the Cedar Creek Clarion and folded it back to the editorial page.
Troy snatched the paper from his hand and frowned at it. “I’d hardly call one letter to the editor an outcry against you. And consider the source.”
“Who is it? Let me see.” Taylor reached for the paper. A letter headed. “Gates Campaign A Cheap Publicity Ploy?” was signed by city councilman Darrell Spivey. She pictured the aging city councilman. He’d been a fixture in town politics for so long he’d become both a symbol and a caricature of Cedar Creek government. “Why should he care whether you run for school board or not?” she asked.
“Spivey has his knickers in a twist because he heard about your class’s plan to study Dylan’s daddy’s book,” Troy explained. “There are some things in that book that aren’t very flattering to Spivey’s old man.”
Taylor’s stomach churned. “Dylan, I’m sorry—”
He took the paper from her and tossed it aside. “It’s not your fault. He’s just a bitter old man. I can ignore him.”
“Believe me, most people will,” Troy said. “Now, there are a few more things we need to go over…”
While Troy and Dylan discussed campaign strategy, Taylor fidgeted in her chair and fought the sadness knotting in her chest. She could see Dylan succeeding in the years ahead, but she was missing from that picture. She’d be in England or California or somewhere far away, living her own life.
What kind of life would she have? Would her “experiment” to get Dylan out of her system be successful? Would she finally find the right man for her?
