License to Love Series:Trilogy (Contemporary Western Cowboy Romance)

by Rose, Amelia

  He rolled up on one arm. “I could always help, you know.”

  “Ha!” She leaned around the corner of the bathroom door as she laughed. “If your form of helping means that, then I’ll be fifteen extra minutes later than usual.”

  She winked at him and then started the shower, knowing that before too long he would be in there to join her. It had been a week and a half since they had sat together in the graveyard and he had told her his fear of having a family, and Alyssa had to admit that those days had been some of the best she’d had in a long time.

  Starting the water, she stepped over to the mirror as the water began to get warm. They had spent every night together, and it felt like she was part of a family again. No more nights spent alone in the darkness. At night they ate dinner together with Shad and Clara. However the huge house was empty now except for them. After the court date last week, Shad had decided that Clara needed a break, so he’d taken them out of town, not telling anyone where they’d gone.

  Alyssa had gotten a handwritten note, explaining everything and asking if she and Woody would handle some of the pre-wedding things. They’d all been fairly fun things like the menu tasting at the caterers and the wine sampling at one of the local vineyards. Alyssa knew that they would recheck her findings when they came back, and she was good with that. For now, it gave her something to do besides working on her writing, and she was grateful for that.

  The water was turned up as hot as she could stand it, and she stood under the full spray, sighing as the tension in her muscles unknotted. Moving her head from side to side, she rubbed the nape of her neck. Lately she’d been having a lot of headaches and sinus issues and she knew that the break from sitting at her desk all day would do her good. Maybe it would help her to get some of her energy back as well, but she imagined that would return as soon as Woody let it.

  Without meaning to, she let out a loud bark of laughter that echoed loudly against the tiled walls. She lathered her hair and smiled under the cascade of soap and water when she heard the glass door to the shower slide back and Woody stepped in behind her.

  “What were you laughing at?” he asked.

  “Hmmm?” she sighed as she leaned into him and felt his member pressing into her backside. “Oh, nothing…just trying to think of where my energy might have run off to.”

  “I can’t imagine,” he whispered as he reached around and lightly tweaked her nipple.

  She swatted at his hands, playfully.

  “Can’t you see I’m trying to get clean here?” she asked, laughing yet again, knowing that she would not be able to hold out against his persuasiveness much longer.

  “There’s a lot of cleaning we can do in fifteen minutes.” He told her before he turned her around, leaning in to kiss her under the falling water as his hands slipped down and cupped her bare butt, pulling her even closer. She decided that she couldn’t have agreed more.

  *

  Alyssa tucked her hair behind her ears as they got out at the caterer’s place. Because of Woody’s help this morning in the shower she hadn’t any extra time to fix her hair properly. Part of that issue was also that the nearest caterer was an hour or more away in Lawton, so it wasn’t like they could just jump in the car and go. They pulled into the parking lot exactly at the appointment time, and Alyssa almost jumped out of the car and raced up the steps to the small building. She hated the feeling of being late, it always made her a bit on edge.

  Woody, however, didn’t even seem to notice as he casually slipped up beside her and put his hand on her back. This mere motion settled her nerves and helped her to relax, and she decided that she would rather have flyaway hair and be a few minutes late than miss out on any time spent with him.

  When they entered, they were immediately greeted by a tall thin woman with dark hair that was slicked back away from her face in a pony tail. Her chin and nose were very sharp and angular and her hair only worked to accentuate this stark thinness. Alyssa had always thought of caterers as plump happy people who loved food, but this woman looked as if she hadn’t eaten a decent meal in years.

  “Hello. I’m Claudia, and you must be the Brandt party,” she said as she held out her thin hand, giving each of them a firm quick shake.

  “Yes, that’s us. We’re here for Shad and Clara since they couldn’t make it,” Alyssa clarified. But before she could speak, the caterer was already motioning for them to follow her as she led them back to a small table in a secluded area.

  “Ms. Roberts called and told me of the situation yesterday,” Claudia said as she handed them two tasting menus. Alyssa could hear the distaste in her voice, and knew that she did not appreciate having to work with substitutes for the client. “These are the menu options that she had narrowed down.”

  “How does this work?” Woody asked, speaking up for the first time since they walked into the building. Claudia turned and lavished him with a very welcoming smile. Alyssa felt her ears heat up, and it took her a moment to realize that the anger she was feeling was directly tied to jealousy. It was a fairly foreign concept to her after all these years, but it flared back up just the same.

  “I will bring out the appetizers and salad options first, followed by the main course and side dish options,” Claudia explained as part of her repetitive speech. “Each portion will be a small size, just enough for a taste really. You will have a scorecard sheet in which to label where you rank the dish in the lineup.”

  “That’s interesting,” Alyssa commented.

  Claudia looked at her briefly and then turned back to Woody. “I’ll be out with the first round, if you need anything, just let me know,” she told him, her voice dripping with false sweetness.

  Woody looked over at Alyssa and smiled one of those soft, lazy smiles that lit up his eyes with amusement.

  “Thank you,” Alyssa managed through partially gritted teeth. Part of her wanted to smack this woman for daring to hit on someone who was obviously there with a date, but the rest of her wanted to shake Woody for finding this so amusing.

  Claudia sighed and walked off when Woody didn’t respond.

  “The nerve...” Alyssa muttered under her breath as she watched her leave. A bark of laughter from Woody’s side of the table caused her to jump in her chair. “I’m glad someone thinks it’s funny.” She scolded him, but he only continued to chuckle, his laughter softening her anger until she finally conceded and began laughing with him.

  After that she began to relax and the menu tasting actually went fairly smoothly for the first few samples. However, when they brought out the tray for the main menu items, Alyssa felt her stomach beginning to churn.

  “I’m sorry. Where’s the restroom?” she asked Claudia.

  “Just by the front door on your left,” Claudia told her as she set down the tray.

  “Thanks.” Alyssa managed to say before turning and heading toward the bathroom as quickly as possible. She hoped that she wasn’t drawing too much attention, but suddenly it felt as if she was going to be sick.

  Probably all of those spices in the bell pepper bisque, she thought. She had never been good with spicy food.

  When she got to the bathroom, she splashed some water on her face and took a few deep breaths. A few moments later the feeling passed and her stomach quieted its grumble and settled completely. Taking a couple of paper towels from the dispenser, she patted her face dry and went back to the table.

  “Sorry about that. The spices from the soup got to me,” Alyssa said when she got back to the table.

  “Not a problem, just be sure to mark it off the menu,” Woody told her smiling weakly. “Actually, I wanted to talk with you about something else while we were here,” he confessed, his tone taking on a slightly more serious note.

  “Oh, yeah?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.

  “Yeah,” he responded as he sat his glass down and looked at her. “I’ve been spending an awful lot of time at Shad’s in that makeshift apartment.”

  “I’ve noticed,” She
said, struggling to keep her voice from cracking. Was he trying to say that he wanted some space? Was he tired of being with her all the time? Her insecurities were suddenly struggling to overtake her normally calm demeanor. In just a few short weeks, this man had come to mean so much to her. Surely he wasn’t pulling away now.

  “No, I didn’t mean that,” he said, reaching across the table and taking her hand in his as he realized her interpretation. “What I meant was what if you spent a lot more time at my house?”

  Alyssa could feel her eyes widen, and her chest heaved a small sigh of relief. “You mean, you want to upgrade from the small apartment to a whole house?” she asked, her voice still a little shaky.

  “I know we both have our own ghosts to deal with and this is new territory for us, but I would love it if you would stay with me for at least a little while,” he responded. “Clara said you weren’t in any hurry to go home.”

  It was true. She hadn’t felt as alive and connected to anyone as she had in the last month, and she knew that if she were to go home now it would be devastatingly lonely. She’d even looked into renting out the property until she was certain she wanted to sell.

  She took a deep breath as he looked at her. “Of course.”

  “Good,” he smiled, “because I was thinking that we could move your stuff over there tomorrow. Shad and Clara are supposed to be back in town the day after so...”

  She joined in on his smile. “So when they come back they should have a house to themselves,” she finished.

  *

  Alyssa was folding the last bag of clean laundry and putting it into the bag when she fell sideways. She reached out an arm and steadied herself against the dresser, but it took her several seconds to catch her breath.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she tried to remember where she had packed up her medicine bag. When she felt a little steadier on her feet, she made her way over to the red bag on the counter and opened it, pulling out a black satchel. Inside was a digital thermometer that she set and placed under her tongue to check her temperature.

  She’d been feeling a little under the weather for a few days now, headaches, tension, the upset stomach yesterday, and the almost fainting today. It felt like she was coming down with something, but even as she wondered what was wrong, the thermometer beeped. She did a double take a moment later when she looked at the readout and realized that she was actually a little below normal.

  Just in case, she decided to go to the pharmacy and get some cold medicine. Her mother had always insisted that it was better to get out in front of the illness, and that was exactly what she intended to do.

  Thirty minutes later she set the bags down on the counter next to the medicine satchel and pulled out a series of boxes. The last box she pulled out was a purple and white EPT box. Her hands shook a little as she lifted it out of the plastic. She’d been told by several doctors that she could never get pregnant, and although she and Kyle had tried for years her dream had never come to fruition.

  But in her gut she knew that something wasn’t right, and she knew that those symptoms could add up to pregnancy. She’d been denying it for a couple of days now but the truth was she couldn’t even remember her last period. It had been a month since she and Woody had first been together.

  She acknowledged that two and two equaled four. But if she was pregnant that could very well signal the end of her relationship with Woody. She knew exactly how he felt about kids. For a moment she continued to stare at the box not sure if she actually wanted to know the answer.

  Before she could over think it, she tore into the wrapping and pulled the test out. A few moments later she set the test on the counter in the bathroom. It said that there would not be results for at least five minutes, and she didn’t want to be one of those women who paced around the bathroom waiting. Instead she decided to go to the kitchen and get something to drink.

  She walked into the large kitchen and went directly to the refrigerator. She had seen some juice in there earlier. As she bent into the coolness of the fridge, she noticed the movement from the corner of her eye and she pulled back just as the door swung shut.

  “Hey! What the hell!” she exclaimed as she jumped back. That was when she realized that it was Charles Sanders standing there. Without pausing a moment longer she stumbled back against the counter and grabbed for a knife, lunging out blindly as he advanced on her.

  The knife was short, nothing more than a paring knife really, but it managed to clip his shirt and sink lightly into his side. Blood covered her hand, and made the knife slip out of her hand and clatter across the tiled floor.

  She turned and started to run back down the hallway, but a searing pain shot through her side, and she collapsed on the floor. The last image she saw was Charles standing over her smiling, and then the world faded down into darkness.

  Chapter 8

  The phone rang out across the shop. At first Woody ignored it, but after ten continuous rings he climbed out from under the green Tahoe he was working on and went to the phone.

  “What’s the emergency?” he asked, his voice spiking with frustration at the unknown caller. He’d been trying to get the engine put back together on that thing for an hour and the frustration was driving him crazy.

  “Thank God I finally got a hold of you!” Melinda’s voice rang out clearly on the other line. “Charles escaped from his psych evaluation earlier today. I called and gave Shad a head’s up but right now I’m headed to the farm. I don’t think he’ll come after you. Clara was his obsession after all, but I wanted to warn you. Alyssa is staying with you, right?”

  For a moment Woody couldn’t speak. He tried to force out words, but there was nothing but a dry crack where his voice would have been. “Alyssa’s at the farm, packing up the last of her stuff.”

  There was a brief silence on the other end, and then Melinda spoke up. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she told him, trying to keep her voice calm. But after all of these years of her working as mother hen to the brothers, he recognized when she thought that it was going to be something bad and tried to change the outcome for them. This was definitely one of those times.

  He dropped the phone on the desk and ran to the car. If Melinda was driving from town it would take her longer to get to the farm than it would him. He started the car and stomped on the gas simultaneously. In less than a minute, he was barreling down the road towards the farm.

  Please be okay, please be okay.

  He kept chanting it to himself over and over again as he sped up the farm’s driveway. As soon as the car was in park, he jumped out and ran into the house not even taking the time to shut the car door.

  “Alyssa!” Woody yelled, flinging open the kitchen door. His shoe slipped on something, and it took him a moment to process that there was a good amount of blood on the floor. It was smeared and halfway across the room on the floor was a small knife.

  Frantic thoughts started to race through his mind, but he pushed them aside and ran down the hall to her apartment. “Alyssa, are you here?!” he called out into the empty room, waiting for a response. Everything within him prayed that she would answer him.

  But after a couple of moments of frantic searching throughout the house without a response, he began to experience a heavy sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something was not right. He walked carefully from room to room, looking for a clue as to what might have happened.

  When he went into the bathroom, he noticed a pregnancy test lying on the counter. Confused, he picked it up.

  Why would Alyssa be running a pregnancy test if she wasn’t able to get pregnant he asked himself. However when he looked down at the test he saw that it was one of the digital readouts, and the word PREGNANT was flashing across the screen in large bold letters.

  He coughed, blinked, and then looked at the test again, his mind trying desperately to wrap itself around everything that had just happened. If this test was in fact Alyssa’s, then that meant that she was pregnant and possibly k
idnapped. For a moment the world stopped and he could hear nothing but the whooshing of his heart. He shook his head and looked back down at the test again, unsure as to what he had just seen but the readout was still the same.

  “Where are you?” he asked the stale air of the apartment. He might not have been sure of what happened, but he knew one thing with absolute certainty, he was going to get her back.

  “It’s looking very much like she might have been here when Charles Sanders came by,” a voice behind him startled him. “There are signs of a struggle and we can’t find Alyssa at all.”

  Melinda’s voice had caught him off guard. He turned to face her while at the same time shoving the test into his pocket. The last thing he needed right now was for Melinda to question him about the possibility of Alyssa being pregnant.

  “And the blood in the kitchen…?” his voice trailed off.

  “We’re testing it. We’ll know soon enough whether or not it’s hers.” Woody nodded his head, but his train of thought was already ten steps ahead. The knife that was in the kitchen was still there, which meant that it was most likely used for self-defense. That was the rationale he was going to cling to.

  Melinda was still talking, but Woody’s brain had turned what she was saying into background noise. The only thing he could hear now was the roar of his blood racing through his veins. He was already trying to think of places in the area he would go if he were injured and on the run.

  “Since we can’t find Alyssa’s car, we’re assuming that he took it and left the other car here. But you need to go home and check to see, if you don’t hear from her. Let me worry about everything else,” Melinda finished and touched his arm.

  “What about Shad and Clara?” he asked.

  “As soon as I let them know that Sanders had escaped Shad said that they were dropping off the grid. I don’t expect to hear from them for the immediate future. As soon as I do, I’ll let them know about Alyssa.”

  Woody felt his head nod in agreement, but it was as if he were watching it from outside his body. As he walked to the car, the other deputies and crime scene people gave him a wide berth. He could feel them staring at him but he didn’t care. It took every bit of energy to put one foot in front of the other as he walked to his car.