At the Hitching Post’s first official wedding reception the month before, Shay had helped serve. But at the Garland family wedding on Saturday, she had attended as a guest. Layne would have, too, if not for her bout with the flu.
“Jane looked elegant, of course,” Shay said. “We knew she would. And Pete was his usual hunky self.” As she rattled off details about the ceremony and reception, Layne smiled and nodded and attempted to keep her thoughts from straying to the paper products aisle. “And through it all,” Shay continued, “you’d have thought Jed was the hero of the hour.”
“Did somebody say ‘hero’?”
Layne jumped. She hadn’t heard either Jason or Scott come up behind her. “Shay’s talking about Jed Garland.”
“He’s so happy about all his granddaughters getting engaged,” Shay said.
“I hear he had a hand in that,” Jason said. “Or so he tells me.”
“Well, if he didn’t,” Layne said, “there has to be some wedding magic in the air around the Hitching Post.”
Abruptly, Shay hefted her small basket. “I’d better get home and drop these off with my grandmother before I head in to work. Grandma Mo wants to see you one day soon, Scott.” She tousled Scott’s hair, gave Layne a smile, and nodded farewell to Jason.
As Shay walked away, Layne thought about what she had said a few minutes ago.
Looks like you and Jason are a matched set again.
She hadn’t liked hearing that. She hadn’t liked knowing how much she wished it were true. How could she have gone from wanting nothing to do with him, to having thoughts like this?
Jill let out a squawk and began to wriggle in her carrier in the front seat of the grocery cart. Layne popped the pacifier into the baby’s mouth. “I’ve got the cereal. We’re done. But we’d better speed things up at the checkout if we want to make it home in time for me to feed the baby.”
“Speed them up?” Jason exhaled heavily and plopped the paper towels into the cart. “I’ve been running up and down aisles after Scott. I don’t know how you do it with two of them and only one of you.”
“I manage. Normally, my shopping wouldn’t take this long, but we had a lot of extra food to buy.”
“Told you Scott and I cleaned out the cupboards.” He frowned. “You look about ready to drop.”
“I’m tired,” she admitted. Even as she spoke, she felt more of her energy draining away.
“All right, then let’s get you back home.” He took the cart from her and went in the direction of the checkout counter.
While she was grateful not to have to push the heavy cart, she missed having it to hold on to. With the way she felt now, she needed it to prop herself up. Slowly, she followed Jason and the kids down the aisle.
No matter what she had said to Shay about Jason leaving soon, this everyday trip to the store had left her daydreaming of what it would be like to have him stay. Of what their life might have been like if he had never left. Their few days together had offered her a taste, a tease, the tiniest bit of temptation. But along with the daydreams had come a fear big enough to eclipse all the pleasure she had felt.
She was getting too comfortable with Jason again. Becoming too involved. Being reminded much too poignantly of the boy she used to love.
The boy who had stopped loving her.
* * *
JASON GRIPPED THE steering wheel and listened to the wail of the baby in the backseat of his pickup truck. Somehow, in the small space the noise sounded magnified. As the noise increased, the truck windows seemed to shiver.
Across the cab, Layne’s gaze met his.
Earlier, as they had left her apartment for the grocery store, she had pointed out the kids’ car seats near the front door. She had strapped both Scott and Jill into those seats for the ride to the L-G. Now she had just finished settling the baby again for the ride home. Or tried to anyway.
Jill’s screech rose a notch. He’d have sworn his eardrums rattled.
“She’s hungry. I’ll have to feed her here,” Layne announced. She opened the passenger door and returned to the backseat.
Though he tried to ease his stranglehold on the steering wheel, he could think of nothing else to do with his hands. Or of anywhere else to direct his gaze. With the truck in Park in the middle of the L-G’s lot, he couldn’t pretend a need to keep his eyes on the road.
He shot a couple of quick glances into the rearview mirror to check on Scott. The boy sat running one of his toy cars along the restraining bar of his car seat.
“Could you get me a cloth from the diaper bag?” Layne asked.
He began to reach across the front seat for the bag, forgetting for a moment that he was strapped in place as securely as Scott was fastened into his car seat. He thumbed open the clasp of his seat belt and grabbed the bag. A second later, he reached back over the bench seat and held out the cloth to Layne.
“Thanks,” she said. “Sorry about this.”
Not as sorry as he was.
In the past few days, every time she’d fed the baby, he had found a reason to move away—checking something on the stove, helping Scott with his motorway, flipping through the television channels at lightning speed.
He wasn’t a man given to analyzing his emotions, but it had been obvious those previous incidents involved physical responses to the thought of seeing Layne half-undressed. Now...
Now his reactions came from somewhere deeper, from something more, from knowing he couldn’t look at the woman he’d once loved and watch her nurse a baby that wasn’t his. And that was his own damned fault, because he could have watched her with his own child. But he had walked away from the chance. Had given up that right.
“I don’t think we’ll be long,” Layne said. “My Jill’s a quick eater when she’s hungry. Aren’t you, sweetie? And Jason...” A hint of amusement laced her tone. “You can turn around now.”
“I’m adjusting the heater,” he said, hoping she believed him. A second later, he turned halfway and settled back against the driver’s door.
She had draped the cloth loosely over the baby, shielding her from the sun streaming in the truck’s window and from the gaze of any shoppers in the L-G’s parking lot.
“She’s a good eater as well as a quick one, huh?” he asked.
“Yes. Almost as good as you and Scott.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Then you’ll really be looking at some grocery bills soon, won’t you?” When he saw the frown lines between her eyes, his smile slid away.
No, he wasn’t a man to analyze emotions, yet he could tell in his gut something wasn’t right. No matter how much she denied it, she was hurting for money, and being off from her job had only made things worse. Her situation—her current situation—had nothing to do with him. But who knew how things would have turned out if he’d stuck around.
He had plenty to answer for from the past. Maybe he’d been wrong to walk away years ago. To give up all those chances.
Now he just wanted the opportunity to make something right.
Chapter Seven
Layne glanced across the kids’ room to the crib, where Jill slept peacefully in the same position she had curled into a half hour earlier.
She had already emptied the contents of the kids’ hamper into the laundry basket now balanced against her hip. Not wanting to wake her daughter, she almost tiptoed from the room and down the hall.
When she reached the entrance to the living room, she paused. At the scene inside the room, her chest squeezed tight as if she had just sprinted down the hallway and couldn’t catch her breath.
Her son knelt on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. One of his favorite storybooks lay open in front of him on the table. Jason sat on the couch behind Scott, leaning over his shoulder. As they focused on the pages, both the
ir faces wore the identical expression of concentrated interest. She had seen that once before, noting that anyone looking at them would assume they were related, would probably realize they were father and son. But no one could guess the two of them had met only days ago.
Her eyes misted. She blinked the moisture away. She couldn’t let these few days weaken her resolve.
Years ago, she had seen the end of her marriage to Jason coming. There was no way she could avoid or deny it. Worse, she had known their relationship was a mistake from the start.
Both her relationships had been mistakes.
She had married for all the wrong reasons, the first time because she was wildly in love with her high-school sweetheart but too young to understand permanent didn’t mean perfect. The second time, she wanted to provide a father for the child Jason had walked away from. Not once but twice, she had put her faith in men who couldn’t be trusted.
It wasn’t enough that she had failed herself with her bad choices. She had failed her children, too. And if she had learned one thing from the experiences, it was never to let herself fall for a man again.
Especially a man who had already made one fall hurt so much.
Across the room, Jason pointed over Scott’s shoulder to the book. “What’s that?”
“A baby cow.”
“And what does a baby cow say?”
“Moo-oo-oo.” Scott laughed. “Moo-oo-oo. That’s em-mm-mm.”
“You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”
Her son nodded. “Yep. Mommy says. And Mommy says a baby cow drinks milk. Em-mm-mm. Milk. Like Jill drinks milk.”
Seeing Jason’s now-frozen expression, Layne couldn’t hold back a laugh that verged on a sob. She had caught that same uneasy look on his face when she’d had to feed Jill in the truck. She couldn’t blame his awkwardness on the fact he hadn’t been here after Scott’s birth—not when she had seen and heard how uncomfortable other men often felt at being around a nursing mom in public. But all the same, she wished he had been there for her son.
At her laugh, Jason had looked up and glanced in her direction. Frowning, he rose from the couch and crossed the room. He reached out to take the laundry basket from her. “Where do you want this?”
She would have argued but suspected that wouldn’t do her any good. And she didn’t have the energy. She gestured toward the kitchen. “There’s a washer and dryer in a closet in there. Scott, we’ll be right back.” She followed Jason into the kitchen and gestured to the closet door. “You can just set it down there, thanks.”
“There’s a washer and a dryer in that closet?” he asked, sounding as if he didn’t believe her.
“Yes.” She moved past him and opened the door to show him the stacked appliances. “No running to the coin laundry, the way we had to do when we were married.”
“That’s a real shame.”
He went perfectly still as if he had blurted the words without thinking.
For that matter, so had she, not stopping to recall what happened all those times they had gone to the laundry together. Once she loaded the washing machine and fed it the required detergent and coins, she and Jason would move to the table used for folding clothes. He would lift her up to sit on the edge of the table, then move in close for a kiss.
At the thought, her legs suddenly trembled. She took her usual seat at the kitchen table and looked across at the chair he had been using since he’d come back home...back to town. The chair where he’d plopped his Stetson after he’d carried in the sacks of groceries for her.
He had done so much for her and the kids in these past few days. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—be in his debt. Somehow, she would need to find ways to pay him back. She looked past him toward the closet. “I’ll be washing shirts and sweaters after lunch if you want to add anything to the load.”
After a moment, he said, “No need to trouble yourself.”
“It’s no trouble. I’m running the washer anyway.”
“I thought you’d gone to get some rest.”
“I did rest. For a while. I’m getting as bad as Jill with her nap times. I need to stop resting so much and get back on my feet.”
The way I’d done after you left.
She couldn’t let herself forget that.
Abruptly, he crossed to the chair and picked up his Stetson. “You know, it’s almost time for lunch. How about I grab something for us from SugarPie’s?”
“But you just bought all those groceries. I didn’t want you to pay for them to begin with.” Even as she said the words, she almost cringed. Her voice sounded too high, her tone too sharp, laced with feelings she couldn’t identify. She only hoped Jason hadn’t heard the difference, too.
He grabbed the pen and notepad she kept on the counter near the phone. “Right now, I could do with one of Sugar’s sub sandwiches. Let’s go see what Scott wants.”
Obviously, he was in a big hurry to leave. Before she could blink, he had gone through the doorway into the living room. As she stared after him, she struggled to make sense of her feelings.
Was she annoyed at him for wanting some distance? Or upset with herself for not wanting him to go?
* * *
THE FIRST PERSON Jason spotted at SugarPie’s was none other than Jed Garland. There were only a few booths in the place, most of them still unoccupied. Jed sat sprawled comfortably in the last one in the row as if he were a king surveying his kingdom—as the folks in town had always thought of him. Anybody with a problem or a question, anyone looking for a favor or a good turn, knew they would get what they needed from Jed.
The hefty gray-haired woman nearly filling the seat across from him owned both the sandwich shop and the bakery that shared the same building. She wasn’t queen of Cowboy Creek, but in her own way, Sugar Conway could hold court, too.
Jed gave him a regal wave. Sugar glanced over her shoulder.
He headed their way.
As he approached the booth, Sugar looked him up and down. “Well, here’s the man of the hour,” she proclaimed with her Southern twang, making him wonder just what Jed had said to her about him. “I’ve kept your seat warm for you.” She eased sideways from behind the tabletop and waved him toward the bench.
“I’m not staying long.” He took the vacant seat. “Just going to order some sandwiches to take home...that is, take back to Layne’s.”
“And how is she doing?”
“Much better.” He paused. This was Layne’s employer. “She’s still not too steady on her feet, though. I can’t see her carrying trays for a while.”
“Oh, you can’t, huh?” Sugar rested her hands on the edge of the table. He swore he heard wood groan from the weight. “I don’t know what you can see or what you plan to do.” She had leaned closer and lowered her already soft voice. Her drawl sounded more pronounced. “But I’ll tell you this. Layne’s a good girl, and she’s been through a hard time these past few years. A very hard time, mostly thanks to you.”
He met her gaze as steadily as he could. “You’re blaming everything that’s happened to her on me.” But why wouldn’t she? Hadn’t he come close to doing that himself?
“I blame you for leaving her and your baby.” She shook her head sadly. “After that day you two were in here, so happy about having Scott on the way, I can’t believe you walked out on her.”
“I didn’t...” But he did.
Across the table, Jed held up a palm. “Maybe Jason ought to place his order before you get too busy with the lunchtime crowd.”
“Good idea.” Jason had slid the note Layne had given him into his shirt pocket. He fished it out now, recited what she had written for herself and Scott, and added his own sandwich to the order.
Without bothering to take the note or to write anything on her order pad, Sugar nodded and stomped away.
&nb
sp; He exhaled in a huff. “I don’t know what she meant about keeping my seat warm,” he said, trying to laugh off his own uneasiness. “To me, it sounded more like putting me in the hot seat.”
“You ought to be used to that, considering you got yourself into it often enough with Layne.”
“Yeah.” He forced a laugh. “Between that and the doghouse, never a dull moment.”
Never a lack of clean clothes, either, thanks to those frequent trips to the laundry. All these years later, even her mention of the place had him breathing hard. He rubbed his forehead, as if he could erase the memories.
“She is feeling better,” he assured Jed. She would have to be, if she was up to doing laundry, wouldn’t she?
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. I’ll be out of her hair soon and over at the Hitching Post. Once she’s past the point of needing a caretaker.” No matter what she said about getting back on her feet, he wasn’t leaving until he was sure she wouldn’t have a relapse.
Unfortunately, he’d gone well past the point of needing to back off himself. They had too many memories between them, had set themselves up for too many situations they needed to tiptoe around. One false step, and all his plans would blow up in his face. And the longer he stayed near her, the greater his chances of that.
“I don’t think it’s so much a caretaker she needs,” Jed said. “But a young mother like Layne, on her own with two kids, it’s a hard life. She does need someone to give her a hand.”
“Yeah.” He fiddled with the napkin holder set to one side of the table. “What’s up with her baby’s father? Who was it she married?” If she had married the man. He realized he didn’t know even that for sure.
“Terry Johansen.”
He remembered Johansen from high school, a tall thin guy interested only in computer games and the school chess club. Layne could have done better.
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