Miranda cocked her head, listening. “I think they’re here.”
Brenna bounded up from the couch and went to the window, peering through the blinds. “Ooh, yup, they are! Yay!”
Everyone got to their feet, waiting for the newcomers to enter the lodge. Dane was first, grinning. “Guess who I found hanging out at the airport?”
He moved aside.
A smiling, rosy-faced Beth Ann entered the lodge, dressed in a heavy cable-knit sweater, jeans, and boots. Her long blond hair was pulled into two braids that hung over her shoulder, and she looked happy but exhausted. Behind her, Colt came in, a thick growth of hair on his chin and his normally short hair shaggy under his knit cap.
Brenna squealed. “Oh wow. You both went full mountain man!”
“Thanks, honey,” Beth Ann drawled, but went forward to hug Brenna. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Hugs and handshakes were exchanged, and to Elise’s surprise, she got a hug from Beth Ann as well. The woman was still beautiful, despite having dirty braids, a face devoid of makeup, and wind-chapped cheeks. They sat down on one of the couches and Brenna retrieved beers from the fridge while Grant went out to grab pizzas.
Colt’s hand immediately went to Beth Ann’s knee, possessive. “So.” He glanced at Miranda and Dane, who took over the couch Elise had been sitting on. She moved to a nearby chair and took a beer from Brenna as she passed them out. “What’d we miss?” Colt asked.
“Nope,” Miranda said. “We get to ask you guys about your trip first. How was Alaska?”
“Cold,” Beth Ann said, putting her fingers on her cheeks. “This place feels like an oven right now. A warm, delicious oven. It was fun, though.”
“Did you learn a lot about the outdoors?” Miranda asked.
Beth Ann’s cheeks flamed even brighter. “Some.”
“We spent our time well,” Colt drawled. “Not much of it outdoors, though.”
“Ew,” said Miranda. “Tell me no more or I’m going to have all kinds of disturbing visuals.”
Dane grinned and pulled his fiancée closer to him. “I keep telling Mir that we need to go up to the cabin for our honeymoon, but she keeps telling me no.”
She poked Dane in the ribs. “If I want to rough it, all I have to do is go home, Mister I Don’t Like Electricity.”
He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “True.”
Colt gave Beth Ann another devouring look and then began to talk about their vacation, and Elise felt her heart squeeze. She was surrounded by all kinds of happy couples and here she was, alone.
Beth Ann and Colt chatted about Alaska for a while, and Pop eventually made it in to greet his son and daughter-in-law with bear hugs, and Grant came back with pizza, and they all ate and drank beer. It was a fun, cozy little impromptu party.
“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Beth Ann said to Elise with a smile. “Not that I’m not happy to see you.”
“I’m actually going to rent a storefront on Main Street,” Elise told her. “Set up my own photography studio nearby so we can do our pinup shoots.”
Beth Ann gave a girlish squeal of excitement. “That’s wonderful! I kept thinking about doing pinups as a business when we were on our honeymoon. I loved the shots we did and I think it’d be so fun to do more!”
Elise smiled. “Me too.”
Colt glanced around. “So, am I missing something here? Where’s the new guy?”
Miranda shot Elise an uncomfortable look.
Her face flushed hot. Rome. So even Colt had noticed he was missing. She got up and headed to the kitchen to avoid a painful conversation, even as she heard Brenna casually say, “Oh, he bailed on us. Grant was being a dick.”
“Oh no,” Beth Ann murmured.
Oh yes, Elise wanted to say, but she kept heading firmly toward the sanctuary of the kitchen. Once there, she began to clean up, throwing away paper plates and rinsing out beer bottles for recycling. Sadness threatened to overwhelm her. If it weren’t for everyone thinking that she needed protecting from the world, Rome would be here. Why did everyone think she was so fragile that she couldn’t make decisions on her own? Why did they have to run off a man who desperately needed a home and a place to call his own, and a family of his own?
Rome was lonely. She knew that now that she’d talked to Jericho and put all the pieces together. He’d had no one and nothing he could depend on, and Grant had made him leave it all behind again. Frustration at her brother welled up and she closed her eyes, willing herself to calm down.
The truth was, she was filled with envy.
Three couples were out in the living room, laughing and talking and leaning on each other, having a great time. They’d each go home tonight and cuddle in the other person’s arms, content in their love and the fact that life was wonderful and secure.
Meanwhile, Elise would go home to an empty bed and Rome would be . . . she didn’t know. Wherever he could find a roof over his head.
Heart aching, she pulled out her phone and checked it for the millionth time. No messages. Are you there? she sent. I miss you and I want to talk to you. It’s so important. Please.
He didn’t respond. He never did. It was like he’d taken his word to Grant at heart. After that wonderful weekend in Galveston, he’d cut all ties with her. She’d even tried calling him from Brenna’s phone, just to see if he’d answer it. But he didn’t. Rome had truly left everyone in Bluebonnet behind for good.
Elise had to think of a way to get him to respond. Somehow.
• • •
In the next week that passed, she kept herself busy so as not to feel the aching loneliness and hurt of Rome’s abandonment. Did he miss her like she missed him? Sometimes she wondered. If it was so easy for him to cut her off and cease all communication with her, maybe she’d misread things entirely. She didn’t know what to do.
So, she worked.
Upon Grant’s suggestion, she moved temporarily into the extra cabin at the ranch. She’d have to vacate it in a month or so when they found a new instructor to take Rome’s spot, but until then, Grant explained, she could live there rent-free and not have to worry about living quarters while she set up her business. She spent her time cashing out some money from her savings, purchasing equipment and furniture for her storefront, and renovating the inside of the small building. She had a sign made and purchased advertisements in local newspapers to run in a few weeks, and took photos. When she wasn’t taking photos, she was printing them, framing them, and hanging them on the wall to display to customers. In the window, she’d put one of Brenna’s playful pinup photos, and one of the engagement shots that she’d finally gotten done. Both Grant and Brenna were laughing in the picture and looked so incredibly adorable. She’d also done photos of Beth Ann and Colt and then Miranda and Dane, all free of charge as long as she got to hang them on her shop wall.
And she checked her phone every thirty seconds, hoping with each buzz that it was Rome. That he was looking for her because he was coming home and coming back to her.
But it was never him.
• • •
“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed to Beth Ann, Miranda, and Brenna over breakfast. They all sat at the big kitchen table at the Daughtry Ranch, ready to head out for a day of painting. Miranda had liked the new paint job on Elise’s little studio so much that she wanted to paint the kids’ books section of the library to make it more inviting, so the girls had volunteered to help out. It’d be fun with a few friends, and Elise had been looking forward to it . . .
Except she was getting desperate to hear back from Rome. She’d dreamed about him last night, terrible dreams of abandonment and prison, and she’d woken up with her heart pounding and tears in her eyes . . . and in a foul mood.
“And you tried calling?” Miranda asked. “What about email?”
“Daily calls,” Elise said. “It sounds psychotic, I know. The longer he ignores me, the more I wonder if it was all in my head how things were betw
een us.”
“Nope,” Brenna said, pointing a cereal spoon at Elise. “I saw the way he looked at you. It was like how Grant looks at me. Or like how Dane looks at, you know, anything vaguely muddy and camping related.”
Miranda snorted. “Thanks.”
“Honey, I don’t know what happened, but maybe he doesn’t want you to contact him because he wants to move on?” Beth Ann suggested in a gentle voice.
She’d thought about that, too, and discarded the idea. “But he wants to move on for the wrong reasons,” Elise protested. “Doesn’t he at least deserve to give ‘us’ another chance if he knows the truth?”
Miranda patted her hand sympathetically. “You would think so, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, there’s one way to make a man come running,” Beth Ann mused. “The ‘p’ word.”
The table was quiet for a moment.
“Perpes?” Brenna asked, all fake innocence. Miranda snorted another laugh.
Beth Ann gave Brenna a quelling look. “Pregnancy.”
“Lie to him?” Elise choked on the words, thinking of Rome’s reaction. “Won’t he be furious?”
“He will be until you confess the truth and then give him a chance to correct the situation,” Brenna said with a wink. “You know, tell him he can really make you pregnant.”
“It sounds like a terrible plan,” Elise murmured, wiping her mouth with a napkin, no longer hungry. She wasn’t pregnant. She’d gotten her period just last week . . . but Rome wouldn’t know that.
God, could she be that evil and lie to him just to flush him out? Would he forgive her?
Then again, what did she have to lose? If he grew mad and refused to talk to her again . . . she’d be exactly where she was.
Elise considered it all day. That night, lying in bed—Rome’s bed, her mind noted—she picked up her phone, steeled herself, and texted him.
• • •
Rome nursed a bottle of beer in a shithole bar off the highway. He’d been at this shithole every night this week, mostly since the TV in his equally shitty motel room was broken, and the entire place smelled vaguely like musty sweat socks. Still, it was only twenty-two dollars a night, and since he was doing under-the-table construction for about forty dollars a day, he couldn’t complain.
It was a living. Kind of.
A woman at the far end of the bar was giving him a few hot glances, but he ignored her. She looked nothing like Elise. He’d never had a type before, but now he could officially say that if he ever showed interest in another woman, she’d have to have long, silky brown hair that fell over one side of her face, and a shy gaze that made him feel like he was a fucking king instead of some asshole convict who couldn’t get a real job outside of flipping burgers.
Then again, with the economy the way it was, he couldn’t even get a job flipping burgers. Now he was having to compete with people with degrees and college students for that sort of thing. If you were going to hire someone to prep your fries, did you want the guy with the bachelors in liberal arts, or the guy who served four years in Huntsville? It was a no-brainer, and he’d had no luck finding a job—any job—for days.
He’d driven his motorcycle aimlessly through a few towns, looking for a cheap motel and any place that seemed to be hiring . . . and ran across a bunch of guys standing around in front of a corner store early one morning. He recognized that kind of grouping. All the people who couldn’t get hired at normal, decent-earning jobs? They stood in front of a corner store and waited for someone to come by and offer a low-paying, back-breaking crap job that would offer money under the table and off the records. It was horrible work and it paid shit.
But it was work.
The next morning, Rome had stood with the guys and they’d gotten work, all right. Some rich bigwig building himself a lake house wanted construction on the cheap, so Rome found himself hauling lumber across the site, moving stonework to lay a ridiculous quartz-stone walkway to the gazebo, and returning to his shit motel room every night, exhausted. He’d eat something off the dollar menu at the nearest drive-thru, shower, and then collapse into bed.
Rome had done this sort of lifestyle before. Hell, he’d done it for two years before passing through Bluebonnet. He told himself he could do it again, but for some reason . . . it was different now.
Now, it felt like torture.
He knew what he was missing now. He knew what it was like to have a job with decent friends (well, excepting Grant) and buddies who weren’t looking at you wondering if you were going to somehow score them their next hit. To have his own roof over his head and a place where he belonged and could earn a decent wage.
He knew what it was like to wake up next to a woman you couldn’t get enough of, a woman who adored you back, and hold her close. To kiss her and make love to her and think that maybe, just maybe, the world held a little hope after all.
Rome shook his head and took another long pull on his beer. Now he was just getting all maudlin.
His phone buzzed and he internally winced. The only person who texted him was Elise.
He’d thought—hoped, really—that once he left, she’d be hurt enough to internalize his leaving for a few weeks. That’d give him enough time to make the mental break, he hoped, and not feel every day like he was the world’s biggest douche bag.
But she texted him every day, wanting to talk to him. Wanting to know if he was okay. Just wanting him, in general.
And part of him was upset that she didn’t seem to be paying attention to his grand plan of “love her and leave her.” She didn’t seem to realize that he’d dumped her for her own good, because she constantly called, just trying to reach out to him.
The other part of him secretly liked that she hadn’t given up on him. So many people often did. Even though he never answered her, it made him feel a little better inside to know that she was out there, waiting for him.
Which was shitty of him, of course. He’d set her free to find someone new. Someone better than him. Someone she deserved. His hand clenched tight on his beer bottle. Not that he wanted any asshole touching her . . . other than him.
Yeah, he was pretty messed up.
He didn’t pick up his phone to read the message, though. He delayed checking it, so when he got back to his place—his decrepit motel room—he could savor it, mentally imagining her beautiful mouth forming the words. Just thinking about her, and knowing she was out there thinking about him, made his chest ache all over again. Damn it, he missed her.
For the first time in years, he hadn’t felt lonely when he was with her. He hadn’t felt completely, utterly adrift. She’d accepted him for being nothing more than a broke, tattooed and pierced guy that rode a beat-up Harley, and she’d loved him. For a moment, he was fiercely glad that he’d never given Grant Markham an excuse to tell Elise who he really was. He didn’t want to see that love in her eyes flicker out and fade as soon as she realized he was an ex-con.
So Rome finished his beer, paid his tab, and headed out. He swung a leg over his bike, and hesitated. His phone pressed against him in his back pocket, reminding him of the text waiting for him. It called to him. Unable to wait, he pulled his phone out and clicked on the screen, her message lighting up.
I’m pregnant.
Fierce joy shot through him, followed by a gut-wrenching twist of horror. Oh god.
He’d ruined her life.
Shoving his phone into his jacket pocket, Rome turned his bike onto the highway, heading in the opposite direction of his hotel and straight toward the tiny town of Bluebonnet.
SEVENTEEN
A few hours later, Rome pulled into the parking lot of the bed-and-breakfast. It was past midnight, and the lights were off. He didn’t care. He needed to talk to Elise, and she deserved more than a text. He’d been going over everything in his mind.
Somehow, some way, he’d make this right for her . . . no matter what she decided. He’d support her no matter what, even if her answer was just to slap him across the face.
The door to the bed-and-breakfast was locked, and for a moment, Rome was confounded. Why was he locked out? Emily never locked the damn place. He hammered on the door, then held his finger down on the doorbell. He was not waiting until morning to talk to Elise.
A minute later, a light came on. Rome heard footsteps coming up to the door, and his entire body tensed, waiting.
He wasn’t prepared to see his brother Jericho standing there in the doorway with a sleepy look on his face, dressed in nothing but a pair of flannel boxers and a white T-shirt.
J gave him a tired smile. “Hey, man. You need a room?”
“Who is it?” A voice behind Jericho called, and a second later, a tousled Emily came to his side, pulling her robe closed. She looked surprised to see Rome, and then her face turned crimson as she touched a hand to her messy hair. “Oh, hi.”
All right, clearly his brother was hooking up with cute Emily. He’d figure that out . . . later. Right now all that mattered was Elise. “I need to talk to Elise. Can you wake her up and let her know that I’m here?”
Emily gave him a confused look, yawning. “She’s not here anymore.”
His heart stopped for a second. Had she gone back home to her parents? Had he somehow missed that text? Was there no chance of seeing her tonight? “She’s not?”
“Nope. Right now I’m guest-free.” She looked up at Jericho and her cheeks pinked all over again. “Um. Sort of. Anyhow.” Her eyes focused on Rome. “She’s living out at the Daughtry Ranch right now. Something about a spare cabin.”
A grin shot over his face. “Great. Thanks.” He turned and hustled down the stairs.
“See ya, bro,” Jericho drawled, a laugh in his voice. “Don’t forget to write.”
He shot his brother the finger as he hauled ass back onto his bike.
Elise was still in town.
Actually, she was sleeping in his old bed. The thought made him hard, and he quelled it, turning his bike onto the farm road that led to the Daughtry Ranch. Now was not the time to have a fucking boner. Now was the time to be thinking about babies and responsibilities and what the hell they were going to do.
The Virgin's Guide to Misbehaving Page 24
