“And you resent it,” she guessed.
He flinched when she said that, but had to admit, that was the guy he used to be. “I expected to resent it, when I first realized what was happening, but I don’t. I really don’t. I kind of like it, as a matter of fact. Lately, I keep getting ideas to expand the place, make it better.” He shrugged. “Who’d have thought?”
“Yeah, who’d have thought.” She looked at him a little oddly for a long moment, and then quickly glanced at her phone. “God, we’ve been talking for an hour. I’ve gotta go.” She rose, slugged the rest of her coffee back and put the cup down.
He got up, too. “Coffee’s on the house,” he said.
“I pay my own way, Joey.” She fished a couple of singles out of her jeans and put them on the table. “It was...it was good to see you again.”
“It was fantastic to see you,” he said, feeling almost desperate. She couldn’t just leave. “Are you um…do you have a room somewhere? I’ve got the whole second floor, if you need—”
“No, I’m good.” She looked up at him, paused, nodded as if she’d made a decision. “I’m staying at the B and B.”
“B and B?”
“Yeah, um, Peabody’s? Out on Church Road?”
“Oh, the boarding house. Ida Mae’s place.” His spine sort of dissolved in relief. She wasn’t leaving…yet. “Okay, good. I’m glad you’re...sticking around for a while.”
She nodded. “So...yeah. I’ll probably, you know, see you.”
“Yeah, you will,” he said.
He was holding open the curtain by then, and she turned and walked across the bar, through the batwing doors and then right out the bigger doors to the outside.
Joey resisted the urge to jump up and click his heels. Hot damn, Emily Hawkins, right here in Big Falls.
All of the sudden, Joey McIntyre was the furthest thing from bored.
#
Joey McIntyre hadn’t changed a bit.
That was what she’d thought when she’d walked into the tacky cowboy saloon. Hot hometown honeys dripping from him like a rich widow’s jewelry. He’d always been a player. She oughtta know, he’d played her like a fiddle.
A willing, stupid, naive, starry-eyed fiddle. Yeah, that. Until he drove the bow right through her heart.
“Doesn’t matter.” She walked up to her van and unlocked it with the key fob. As always, before she got in, she took a second to love the thing. It was glossy black with dark burgundy swooshes. And there was a very Bat-signal-like logo on it, unless you looked close enough to notice it was a winged-V in a white oval. White lettering followed the curve, proclaiming it The VetMobile. She opened the door and got in, running a hand over the two-tone “pleather” seats that matched the paint job. Even the car seat in the back matched. You know, underneath its layer of crust, composed of Goldfish crumbs and apple juice.
There was no reason, she told herself, to believe was anything but what he’d always been—a spoiled, rich, self-centered playboy who didn’t have a care in the world for anybody but himself. Worse yet, he liked it that way.
She imagined his face when he’d first looked at her. God, he was still just as beautiful to her as he’d always been. The tall lanky frame, those long arms that used to wrap all the way around her and then some. And his sweet face, and chocolate brown eyes and little boy lashes. God she loved looking at that face of his. Always had.
That face could charm the moon out of the sky.
She started the van, flipped on the headlights, and then the heater. It was chilly tonight. And then she backed carefully out of the gaudy saloon’s parking lot and headed back onto the winding, narrow road. It turned into Main Street once it hit the village. She didn’t have to go that far, though, hanging a right onto Church Street, and then past the church little white church with the big red doors, and on up to the B and B—make that boarding house—where she was staying.
It was a pretty Victorian in a violet shade so subtle it seemed white at nighttime, and its elaborate trim work was decked out in pine green, minty pink, and baby blue. The sign that swung from a wrought iron holder had matching wood-trimmed edges, all scrolled like the trim on the house, and read Peabody’s Boarding House. Ida Mae Peabody’s holiday decorations were far more understated than most of the others in Big Falls. She had a single white electric candle in each window and a giant wreath on the front door. Period.
Emily shut off the van and hopped out. The front door swung open before she even reached it, and Ida Mae herself stood there, holding a cherub with burnt gold curls on her hip. But the angel quickly wriggled free and ran toward the porch steps. Emily reached them first, and scooped her up before she could fall.
Matilda didn’t even notice her brush with disaster.
“You’re supposed to be asleep, young lady!” Emily said, closing her eyes and just inhaling the smell of Tilda’s hair. The greatest smell in the known universe.
“I waked up!” Matilda said.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I had to see someone.”
“Was it Santa?”
“No, honey. It wasn’t Santa.”
Matilda pouted. “But we have to find him and tell him so he’ll be able to find me!”
“And we will. I promise.”
“Tomorrow?” Tilda asked.
“Yes,” she promised. “Tomorrow.”
Tilda hugged Emily’s neck a little tighter. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
Chapter Two
For the first night in two weeks, Emily’s dreams didn’t take her back to the pediatrician’s office the day everything changed.
Tonight, lying in a strange bed in a strange town, with her little girl sound asleep beside her, Emily’s dreams took her back a lot farther, to that big, fancy pool with the water that was always just the right temperature. It always had its chemicals perfectly balanced. The water was always the perfect azure blue, and algae wouldn’t dare try to invade. She knew all that because her father was the guy who kept it that way.
Emily’s father had been groundskeeper to billionaire RJR McIntyre since Emily could remember.
Taking midnight swims in the pool had been her own little bit of rebellion, she supposed.
She was floating there again, in her dream. Lying on her back while the cool water kissed her cheeks, staring up at the starry Texas sky and refusing to think about school or goals or anything at all.
And then his head blocked her view, leaning over and staring down at her.
She was so startled she went under, and came up sputtering, only to see Joey McIntyre with a look of terror in his eyes. “You okay?” he asked.
She pushed her hair and the water out of her face. “Fine. Were you about to jump in after me?”
“Only if I absolutely had to.”
Then she looked around. “Sorry about invading your pool without permission. I figured no one would mind, it being the middle of the night.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s not like I use it.”
She swam over to the marble steps to get out. He met her at the top holding out a towel, and she wrapped up in it. “It’s warm!”
“I turned on the heater. Sat over there and watched you for a few minutes while it baked.”
She frowned at him. “That’s kind of creepy, Joey.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been watching you every night. You and your friends. I think you guys get more use out of our pool than my whole family does.”
Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say something, then?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. You were having fun. I didn’t want to scare you away.” He nodded toward a little table, tucked in behind some rose bushes near the waterfall. “I have some wine coolers.”
“Congratulations.”
He smirked at her. “Come on, I thought it would be nice. We used to be friends. Gosh, we were like best friends from like, seven or so to fourteen. I don’t even know what happened after that. Why
did we stop hanging out?”
She shrugged. “You hit high school and realized you could have any girl you wanted because your last name is McIntyre and you’re passably good looking.”
“Passably?” He held a hand to his chest. Then he shook his head. “I think what happened was that you hit high school and realized you had the biggest brain in the building and could take every course in the place and still graduate early,” he said. “And you’re wrong about me. I couldn’t have any girl I wanted.”
He looked at her when he said that, and her cheeks got hot. She reached for the wine coolers. They were in an ice chest on the flagstone patio, and she pulled out two, handed him one, and twisted off her cap.
“You had your private school friends. They didn’t fit in with my crowd.”
“You didn’t have a crowd, unless you mean your books.” He shrugged. “How’s college going? You a Ph.D. yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You ever take a break from all that learning, Emily?”
She held his eyes. They were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen on a man, rich lustrous brown with thick, dark lashes. “That’s kind of what I’m doing out here. Taking a break. Floating and looking at the stars.”
“And drinking wine coolers with an old friend,” he said. He extended his arm, tapped the rim of his bottle against the rim of hers.
“How about you?” she asked. “What are you doing with your time?”
“Enjoying it, mostly,” he said. “Studying business so I can step into my father’s corporate universe and earn my inheritance.”
“Is that what you want to do, though? Or what your father wants you to do?”
He frowned at her like she was losing it. “It’s what he wants, and I’m more than happy to go along with it. I mean, look at the way we live.” He waved a hand at the opulence that surrounded them.
She nodded, took another long pull from the bottle.
“What about you, Em? Are you doing what you want or trying to live up to your dad’s expectations?”
She sighed heavily. “Sometimes I’m not so sure. I mean, I want to be a vet. I know that. But all this accelerated program, genius IQ stuff is...it’s starting to feel a little heavy to carry.”
“I get that. You’re the golden child. He talks about you like you’re gonna be president of the world in a year or two.”
“Yeah, that. It’s a lot to live up to.” She emptied her bottle, and without thinking, reached for another. “He doesn’t have much, though. I mean he’s a groundskeeper.”
“He’s our groundskeeper. That’s gotta be like the best job in the groundskeeping universe.”
“Arrogant much?”
“No, I didn’t mean...okay, I did. Dad loves him, you know that, right? And your dad, he’s an artist, too. I mean, look at this place.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” She started to get up.
He held up a hand. “Don’t, don’t go. I miss you, Emily. Life is...it’s getting all complicated. You’re right, my father is pushing me to do what he wants. I don’t fight him on it because I don’t have any better ideas. I don’t know what I want out of life.” He heaved a big sigh. “Mom and Dad are splitting up.”
She sat back down, stunned. “I’m sorry, Joey. That has to be hard on you.”
He nodded. “I just wish we could go back, you know, to when things were simple. Remember trying to catch the frogs down by the coy pond?”
“I remember you almost drowning in the coy pond, is what I remember,” she said.
He got all tense and looked away.
“You haven’t gone swimming since, have you Joey?”
He shook his head. “Water makes me feel…panicky.” Then he reached for his second wine cooler. “This stuff, on the other hand, seems to be taking the edge off my evening.”
“Mine too,” she said.
So they stayed up, and they drank the wine coolers, and they got stupid drunk, and they made out. And after that, they were together, every day and every night of that hot Texas summer.
#
Joey woke before the alarm went off and bounced out of bed, feeling eager for the day to come. He headed straight into the bathroom with a happy spring in his step, looked into the mirrored medicine cabinet door. The guy looking back at him wore a mile-wide grin. And when he tried to straighten his lips, they kept pulling right back up again.
Okay, no point fighting it. Emily was back, and he was ridiculously happy about it. Even though she’d been less than friendly last night, there was only one reason he could think of for her to be in town. Him.
And he was happy about that.
He probably oughtta be pissed. She’d disappeared without a word, after the most passionate ten-week romance that had ever existed in the known universe. But her father had died, right out of the blue. And everything had changed.
Henry Hawkins had worked for the McIntyres since Joey was just a little boy. Losing him was like losing a member of the family. And Emily, she didn’t even tell them herself. Just up and vanished, moved out of the cottage on his family’s estate, and took off without so much as a goodbye.
He’d damn near gone out of his mind worrying about her, especially when she wasn’t at the funeral.
Now he knew she had been. She could’ve at least talked to him. Something. Anything.
He’d got a postcard in the mail a week later. She’d gone back to New Mexico early, she wrote. Their summer fling had been fun. But he shouldn’t make anything out of it.
She’s broken his damn heart. Shattered it.
To be honest, he’d never really recovered. Maybe first loves were like that.
But she was back. Hot damn, she was back! And as much as he told himself he should be good and pissed at her with for walking away like she had, or at least cautious about setting himself up for another fall, he couldn’t feel anything but overjoyed. Maybe he was about to get a second chance with her.
He showered, and he shaved, and dressed in jeans and a western-style button down denim shirt. It was December, and even in Oklahoma, it could get downright chilly. Even snowed every now and then. He put on his best boots and headed down the stairs.
When he got to the bottom, he was greeted by heavenly scents of fresh-brewed coffee and Jason’s french toast. He hurried to the bottom and saw that his brothers were at the table closest to the giant Christmas tree, with heaping platters of deliciousness in between them. There was a third place set for him.
Jason looked his way with a grin. “Well now, little brother, you sure do look spit-shined this morning.”
“You shaved,” Rob noted.
Joey rubbed his baby-smooth chin and said, “It was starting to get itchy.” Something was up, no question about it, but the french toast was too much to resist, so he walked into the bear den, sat down and started filling his plate. The butter was already melting into each slice of toast. He stabbed four pieces and dropped them onto his plate, then thrust his fork into the sword fight going on over the sausage and emerged victorious with two patties as his prize.
“Rob tells me Emily Hawkins is in town,” Jason said.
“Yep.” Joey dumped real maple syrup over everything on his plate.
“How are you, uh...feeling about that?”
He had a mouthful of food, so he didn’t have to answer. Instead he gave a careless shrug and filled his coffee mug.
“Did you know she was coming?” Rob asked.
“Unh-uh,” he managed, and shook his head in case it was too french-toast muffled. Then he swallowed and followed up with a big gulp of hot coffee.
“You okay, Joe?” Jason asked. “Cause that girl did a number on you back then, the way I recall.”
Rob was nodding. “Our happy-go-lucky kid brother turned into a morose, short-tempered brooder for a while there.”
“A year,” Jason said. “Mom wanted to take you to a shrink.”
Joey rolled his eyes and stabbed another oversized bite. But when he brought his fork toward his
face, Jason put a hand on his wrist to stop him.
“You can talk to us, Joe. We know how it was. She was your first serious crush.”
“She wasn’t a crush.” Damn, he’d blurted that too fast. He set his fork down, leaned back in his chair, and gave each of his brothers a searching look. They watched intently, apparently expecting him to pour his heart out while sobbing into his breakfast at any second.
“You two are turning into a pair of snooping, meddling females. I think you’ve been spending too much with our recently-acquired sisters. I’m completely over that. It was more than four years ago.”
They sighed, sent each other knowing looks, but shrugged and surrendered.
His sense of relief was so immense, Joey thought he could’ve floated off the chair. So he ate some more, and they stopped asking questions. They talked about easy stuff, like Rob’s Holiday Ranch and his horses, three of which were carrying foals, and Kiley’s Christmas hayrides with free hot cocoa. She was selling blown-glass ornaments, holiday recipe books, and solar powered Christmas lights in the smaller barn, among other holiday items. She’d bought them in bulk, wholesale, for a song. He didn’t even want to know how she’d managed it. Turned out former con artists made great entrepreneurs.
When he’d tucked away all the food he could hold, Joey wiped his face with a napkin and said, “I’m glad you boys are here. You haven’t been doing a hell of a lot around this place, and I—”
“Yeah, I know,” Rob said. “I’m sorry.”
Jason nodded. “Me too, Joe. You’re taking on way more than your fair share, and we—”
“No, it’s fine. Fact is, I like running the place. I think it might be...I think it might be my thing. You know?”
His brothers sent surprised looks at each other.
“I want to buy you both out.” He pushed back his chair and got up. “But I haven’t yet, so I need you to step up until I do. Run the place for me so I can take tonight off?”
Oklahoma Starshine Page 2
