To the One I Love: That Old Familiar FeelingAn Older ManCaught by a Cowboy

by Emilie Richards

  “What are you talking about?”

  She sat up, pulling the sheet higher to cover her breasts. “I left Geo because he didn’t want kids and I did. He said I’d be a lousy mom, and he was trying to spare me the heartache of failure.”

  “Geo was a jackass.”

  “I’ll give you that, but he was right about this one thing. Look at today. I organized the boys the way I’d organize a fleet of paralegals and law clerks. I parceled out chores like Simon Legree.”

  “Lacey, my kids would try the patience of a saint. They’re out of hand. I’m trying to get them under control, but there are only so many hours in the day. Everything you did today was great. It was absolutely perfect. They need discipline. They need somebody who’s organized, somebody who cares about the way they behave. Somebody in addition to me. They need somebody who sees them for what they are.”

  “Is there something wrong with your hearing? Listen!”

  The chanting was growing fainter, but it was still audible.

  Matt had the poor judgment to laugh. “Where’s your sense of humor?”

  She burst into tears.

  He was on her bed in a heartbeat, clutching the sheet around him. “Sweetheart…Lacey…” He put his arms around her. “I didn’t know you were serious. Are you serious?”

  “I can’t be their mother, Matt. Don’t ask me to try. This has to end right now. You and I—we’ve got something going, I know that. But now’s…” She hiccuped. “Now’s the time to stop—”

  “You’re all wrong. You’re tired, a little sunburned—”

  “I know what I’m talking about.” She tried to break away, but his arms tightened.

  “I love you,” he said into her hair. “It’s too late to talk about breaking away. I’ve loved you since you were a kid. It just went underground, but now it’s in full sunlight again. Honey, you can’t just walk away. You’ll learn to love the boys. I know you will. And they’ll love you. You’re exactly what they need. I—”

  “Ahoy! Ahoy the Ida Lee.” Lights from another boat shone through their porthole.

  Matt jumped away from Lacey and looked for his suit on the floor. He dropped his sheet and pulled it on. This time he was standing directly in the light, and she got a view she wouldn’t soon forget.

  “Somebody found us. Probably Skiff.” He turned. “We’ll finish this later.”

  “We’re already finished, Matt. You just refuse to believe it.”

  “We’ll finish this later!” He strode for the steps up to the deck. She watched him go before she got up herself and prepared to abandon ship, forever.

  Chapter 6

  Everyone living on Colman Key ate breakfast at Cissy’s Grill at least once a week. Casual tourists rarely found it or ventured through the door if they did. It was at best unpretentious, one room with a dozen tables and a bar behind which Cissy and her cooks flipped pancakes or burgers and chatted with potbellied fishermen in faded T-shirts and cutoffs. The linoleum was old and scarred, the walls were dotted with photographs of locals with their boats or stringers of fish.

  Cissy’s specialty was breakfast, and it wasn’t unusual to have to wait for a table. Today the Colman sisters grabbed one the moment Cissy herself came to clear it. She was a big woman with a hairline that was making its way north. Today she’d covered what was now a particularly high forehead with an Atlanta Braves cap turned backward. She winked at them and pointed to the blackboard where she’d scrawled the morning’s special.

  “Pineapple pancakes with chocolate chips,” Deanna read out loud. “I’m in.”

  “Yesterday’s special was coconut cakes with pecans,” Marti said. “I gained a pound just sniffing the air.”

  Lacey wasn’t really hungry. She hadn’t been hungry since Skiff rescued the motley crew of the Ida Lee from Treasure Island a week before. She ordered a poached egg and a slice of whole wheat toast, just to be sociable. Cissy ignored her and brought pancakes instead, with a side order of crisply fried bacon.

  “Eat,” Marti said. “You can afford to gain some more weight. Even Cissy noticed.”

  Two bites into the pancakes Lacey felt better. “I guess avoiding Matt takes more calories than I thought.” She grimaced and forked in another pine-appley bite.

  “When are you going to stop avoiding him?” Marti asked.

  “Hey, you have your problems, I have mine.” Lacey looked up, determined to change the subject. Her sisters had been up to a lot lately, enough to make them forget Lacey’s failed romance. Or at least, she hoped so.

  “How about your problems, Deanna? How’s the gorgeous cowboy who showed up on our doorstep?” she asked.

  The cowboy was Deanna’s ex-boss, owner of a Texas dude ranch. Deanna had been his cook before she came back to Florida for this reunion. Lacey supposed that her sister’s prowess in the kitchen was no surprise. Deanna had inherited Grammer’s talent.

  Deanna sighed. “He has a name. Porter Copely. Cope for short, remember? And I’m in absolutely no mood to talk about him. I have to be at his house in half an hour.”

  “I think he’s about the sexiest man to set his hand-tooled leather boots on Grammer’s doorstep,” Marti said. “And to think he came just for you.”

  “He has business in the area. Go back to your pancakes, pipsqueak,” Deanna said.

  Marti ignored her. “I mean, I saw him, myself. Drop dead gorgeous. Even the Stetson didn’t look out of place.”

  “I think we should concentrate on our big sister,” Deanna said.

  “We could talk about Marti and the reasons she keeps driving off to Tallahassee,” Lacey said. “And all the mysterious sleuthing she’s doing.”

  “We’re going to talk about you,” Deanna said. “Don’t change the subject. Here’s the thing. We’re tired of your long face. You miss Matt, but you’re doing everything you can to stay away from him. Now, what’s up?”

  “I’m a practical woman, and it’s an impractical relationship.”

  “I don’t get it,” Marti said. “You’re talking about staying right here and starting a law practice. All the preliminary research shows how much you’re needed. Ever since old Harold Carter passed on, people have had to drive over to the mainland to find a lawyer. How much better to have someone right here, someone who knows them, the way Harold did.”

  “That’s a law practice, not a relationship.”

  “It’s the twins, right?” Deanna said. “I’ve seen them at Wallace’s. I think they’re darling.”

  “Then you marry Matt. The twins would be right up your alley. You’d get into worse mischief than they could imagine, Miss Free Spirit. Together, the three of you would be invincible.”

  “Well, I think Matt’s the most delicious thing since chocolate mousse, but I’m not the one who’s in love with him,” Deanna said. “I might make a good aunt, though. Rambunctious little boys are just my style.”

  “Lacey, you’d be a great mom. Who would know that better than us?” Marti said, hand on Lacey’s arm. “Don’t sell yourself so short.”

  Lacey swallowed more than her pancakes. She wasn’t going to tell her sisters that every time a room got quiet she heard two little voices chanting “I hate Lacey.” She was well acquainted with Tinseltown. She knew “The End” before she saw it flashed on the silver screen.

  “I’m glad that hurricane out in the Gulf is going to miss us, aren’t you?” she said changing the subject again. “Hurricane Leslie. Just what we needed. With the problems they’ve been having with the drawbridge, the old thing’s been up more than it’s been down. Can you see trying to evacuate the whole key by boat? Thank goodness the storm turned.”

  “Leslie’s not nearly as evasive as you are,” Deanna said. “That’s for darned certain.”

  Matt waited for Lacey outside of Cissy’s. He leaned against the driver’s side door of a company pickup, arms folded, like a man with all the time in the world. The twins were at a church playgroup, and he had three full hours before he had to rescue their teache
r. His cell phone was ready, just in case.

  He watched the sisters stand, leave bills on the table, then stroll out the door. Marti first, then Deanna and finally, Lacey. No surprise she’d brought up the rear. She was a mother hen and two grown sisters were all the chicks she had right now. He wondered how she could be so blind to her own strengths. He wanted to throttle her ex for making her doubt herself. Hell, he wanted to throttle old Geo for the sheer fun of it. The man had been married to the woman Matt loved and treated her badly. That made him the enemy.

  Lacey looked up and saw him. The others saw him a moment later. Deanna gave a friendly wave, and Marti nodded, but she looked distinctly uncomfortable. Something about that look made his heart squeeze painfully.

  Lacey said something to them, then parted company and approached him.

  “If you all came together, your ride’s leaving without you,” he said.

  “Maybe you’ll drop me off. Or maybe I’ll walk.”

  “How’s the sale of the house going?”

  “It’s getting harder to scare away the competition. If we take down one more sign Darby’s going to hire a security guard. And Grammer hasn’t budged. She’s still talking about moving.”

  “Are you going to buy it?”

  “I’m still looking into things.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  She was dressed in white, and the ultra-feminine dress showed off a deepening tan. She didn’t look rested, though. She looked the way he felt. He hadn’t slept well since the night that Skiff dropped Lacey at her grandmother’s house. She had been exhausted after a whole day and evening on Treasure Island. They’d all been exhausted, but she had made her determination to rid herself of him perfectly clear.

  “I’ll call you,” he had told her.

  “Don’t, Matt,” she’d said. “There’s nothing left to say.”

  Of course he had left her countless messages since then, but apparently she believed her own words. Because she had never returned his calls.

  “Matt, there’s no point to this,” she said now. “I’ve gotten your messages, but I just don’t know what I can say that I haven’t said already.”

  “How about ‘I don’t love you, Matt and never will.’ Because that’s the only thing that will stop me from trying to see you.”

  She bit her bottom lip and didn’t reply.

  “What’s wrong? I’ve given you your speech on a silver platter, Lacey. I’ve made it easy for you. Just say it, and I’ll go. If I’ve misunderstood, if I’ve made a big deal out of the past for no good reason, just tell me and I’ll get out of your life.”

  She gave one quick shake of her head. Something shifted inside him. Not much, but maybe enough to let in a lone ray of sunshine.

  “Let’s try this, then.” He stepped closer and rested the back of one hand against her cheek for a moment. “How about, ‘Matt, I’m falling in love with you, and I’m confused and scared by it, so please give me a little time.’ Is that more like it?”

  “Don’t you understand? It’s not you, it’s me.”

  “No, it’s the boys.”

  “It’s really not.” She looked up at him. “It would be so easy just to say ‘Matt, your kids are brats and I don’t want them complicating my life.’ But it’s not really true. They’re little boys with a big hole in their lives. They need a loving mom, somebody who can overlook the bad behavior and focus on filling them up with hugs and kisses, homebaked cookies and handsewn quilts. Somebody who can’t wait to see them in the morning and hates to put them to bed at night. Somebody who—”

  “Stop right now before I lose my breakfast.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “That’s just ridiculous,” he said. “Plain stupid. What Disney movie did that come from? No, wait,” he held up his hand. “Disney doesn’t make those kind of movies. I’ve been to enough, I ought to know. The kids in today’s movies are like mine. Real kids. They have working moms whose patience is lapsing at the end of the day. Sometimes they have to let themselves into the house with their own key, and maybe they get home-baked cookies at Christmas, but the rest of the time they make out fine with the kind that come off the grocery store shelves. Heck, sometimes their parents even go off and leave them at home alone. Remember that movie?”

  She tried to interrupt but he rode right over her. “And when did sewing become a requirement for motherhood? Quilts? Sure, if that’s your hobby. But my great-aunt Minnie is a quilter, and the boys already have enough to last through an Alaskan childhood. So strike that as an issue.”

  “Matt, I—”

  “Let me finish! I love those kids. I adore them. But there are mornings when all I want to do is pull the pillow over my head and pretend I never had them. And evenings? You want to know about evenings? Most of the time I can hardly wait until they’re asleep. Because then I can finally sit and relax a little. I have never, in their entire little lives, hated to put them to bed at night!”

  She stared at him.

  “Does that make me a bad father?” he demanded.

  “You’re a great father, Matt. The best.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not a great mother. I mean I wouldn’t be a great mother, not even a good one. I don’t have what it takes. Don’t you get it? I’ll make their lives a living hell. Ours won’t be a happy home. I’m not going to do that to a kid, much less two. I’m not going to be a distant, punitive mother.”

  “Punitive? That’s lawyer talk.”

  “It means—”

  “I know what it means! You don’t have a punitive bone in your body.”

  Her lips were clamped in a straight line. He knew they were finished with the discussion. Nothing he had said had changed her mind.

  “Fine,” he said after the silence had stretched as far as it could go. “But let me tell you what I really think. I think you’re scared to death. I think that ex-husband of yours did a number on your head and now you’re afraid. That’s not the Lacey I remember. You were a take-charge lady. You saw a challenge and you couldn’t wait to meet it. That’s why we didn’t get married right out of high school. You needed to test yourself against the world, go to college and law school and measure yourself against your colleagues. But look at you now. You’re afraid to be who you really are, because Geo convinced you that that person’s just not good enough. You can tell yourself he’s wrong, but until you really believe it, you won’t be a good mother, because you won’t be yourself.”

  He turned back to his truck. “I’ve got to go. I’ll drop you at your grandmother’s.”

  “No, I’ll walk.”

  “Suit yourself.” He hoisted himself into his seat but he didn’t close the door. He leaned out for one more thought. “Looks like we’ll both be living on Colman Key, whether we like it or not. It’s a small island and we’ll run into each other. I wish you the best, but don’t make the mistake of thinking we’ll get past this and go on to be good friends someday. I don’t think we can afford to be friends. The cost is going to be too high. Let’s just agree we had an ongoing summer romance once upon a time, and call this relationship quits.”

  He slammed the door and backed out of his parking space before she could reply.

  Lacey couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been able to focus and do what needed to be done. She’d been well on her way to partner in her California firm for just that reason. Every emergency had landed on her desk. Every time a partner had needed something late at night, Lacey had been his first choice.

  Now, four days after her encounter with Matt she couldn’t remember from one shoe to the next why she was staring at her feet. She wandered Grammer’s house and accomplished nothing. She started toward the beach for a swim and ended up in the center of town gazing in shop windows at tiny bicycles and soccer balls. She shopped for books she didn’t need and bought one on gifted preschoolers. She couldn’t imagine why she had. She was pathetic.

  Today she was sitting in the Florida room staring out the window at
the gloomiest morning she could remember when Grammer joined her.

  “Have you heard?” Grammer asked.

  “Heard what?”

  “Leslie’s taken another turn.”

  “Who?”

  “Hurricane Leslie. She’s heading for us again, darling.” Grammer frowned. “You haven’t been watching the news, have you? Have you paid attention to anything that’s been going on around here?”

  “The last time I heard anything the hurricane was dithering out in the Gulf somewhere. I thought they said she was going inland way south of here.”

  “That was one prediction. There have been many.”

  “Why haven’t you mentioned it?” Lacey frowned. “Where have you been lately?”

  “I have a lot to do before I move out. I’ve been doing a million different things.”

  Lacey felt worse than she had. Not only was her attention span shot, but she’d left her poor grandmother with all the work. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been much help. I—”

  Grammer waved her hand. “Don’t be silly. You’ve done everything you can. It’s my house and my responsibility to see to it. But the hurricane’s something else indeed. John’s coming over in a little while to get the storm shutters in place.”

  Lacey’s mind was whirling. “Are we going to evacuate? Are they calling for evacuation?”

  “Evacuate?” Grammer laughed. “You really have been preoccupied. There was an accident last night. No one was hurt, but a boat nudged the bridge in the rain while the drawbridge was up and—”

  “It won’t go down,” Lacey finished. The slightest jolt always sent the drawbridge mechanism into lockdown—or lockup—mode. She rose. “What are you going to do?”

  “Leslie isn’t that large a storm. She’s been downgraded quite a bit. We can ride her out. We’ve done it before. John will put the shutters in place, help me move lawn furniture and pots inside. He’ll even stay if I ask him. We’ll be fine.”

  “Well, at least you’ll have our company for the worst of it.”