Jealousy roared through her, making her stomach turn and her throat burn. The real question became: Did she trust Lawrence or not?
You have to trust him, she told herself as she made her way down the steps on wobbling heels. Help me trust him.
She feared, though, that all the self-talk and all the prayer in the world couldn’t make her do something she didn’t know how to do.
Lawrence chuckled at Natalie, the woman from the Three Rivers women’s association. She wanted him to bring some of the horses from Courage Reins to a family carnival the group was planning for the spring.
He’d told her he didn’t have the authority to say yes or no, but that he’d ask Pete. He liked Natalie and played golf with her brother from time to time. He wanted to support the women, and he made easy conversation with them while he waited for Andy to come out.
Movement caught his attention, and he found her coming toward them, her face a quivering mask of emotion. He couldn’t decipher how she felt as she neared and smoothed over her true feelings with a smile.
“Ladies, do you know Andy Larsen?” He drew her into his side, clearly claiming her as his. Every woman there catalogued the movement, Lawrence made sure of it. “Andy, these ladies are from the Three Rivers women’s association.” He named them all, pleased at his own memory.
“Well, let me know, Lawrence,” Natalie said. The ladies made themselves scarce after that, leaving Lawrence to practically drag Andy to her car.
“You okay?” he asked as they neared. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good,” she said. “I hope you weren’t planning to come for lunch.”
“Of course I was.” He leaned against her car, noticing the glassiness in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head and caught the tear as it fell from her eye. “Nothing. I just need to lie down. I feel sick.”
Lawrence had the sick feeling he’d done something wrong. But he didn’t know what. “I’ll follow you home. Make sure you’re okay.”
“No.” She reached for the door handle. “I’ll make it.”
“I can heat you up some of that canned soup you have in your cupboard.”
She managed a slight glare. “How do you know I have canned soup in my cupboard?”
He gave her slow grin. “Saw it last week.” Stepping away from the car, Lawrence pulled out his keys. “I’ll follow you home.”
She might have argued, but Lawrence didn’t quite hear it as he strode toward his truck. She could lock him out if he didn’t arrive close to the same time as her. Thankfully, Andy wasn’t the fastest driver in the world, and he pulled in right after her. She let him in the shop, but he sensed something was still off.
The door had barely closed when he asked, “Are you going to tell me what I did wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, bending to remove her heels. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He moved closer and took her into his arms. She came willingly, a good sign. “Then why were you cryin’ at the church?”
Embarrassment stole across her expression. “I don’t want to tell you.” She squirmed to get out of his grip, and he let her go. “It’s just something I need to work on,” she said. “It honestly has nothing to do with you.” She moved toward the stairs that led to her loft.
“Honestly?” he asked as he followed.
“Cross my heart,” she tossed over her shoulder. At the top of the stairs, she pushed into her living space, which consisted of the entire second floor of the building. Everything Andy touched had an air of sophistication about it, and the sitting room at the entrance of her loft was no exception. Lawrence barely knew how to exist in such a refined space, and he wondered what she thought of his simple, country cowboy cabin.
He also knew she owned this building, had inherited it from her daddy when he’d died. Andy had no debts, and a heap of success. Lawrence felt seven shades of inadequate standing in her loft.
Why now, he wasn’t sure. Last Sunday, he’d been okay. Fine, he’d shaken off the feelings of self-loathing and charmed his way into staying for lunch, a movie, and a passionate embrace that had ended too soon for his liking.
“You comin’?” she called from farther inside the loft. “I’m not making these pot pies by myself.”
He gave himself a mental and physical shake, removed his jacket and hung it on the antique iron coat rack, as if he could remove his shortcomings as easily, and followed her into the gourmet kitchen.
If she could pretend like she was fine, so could he.
“You like that Natalie Cooper?” Andy couldn’t help herself. She’d been stewing over the other women for the last hour since seeing Lawrence talking to her. While she drove home, while he asked her if she was okay, while the turkey pot pies browned and bubbled and baked.
He glanced up as if a gunshot had sounded. “What? Definitely not.” He stuffed a forkful of green beans—canned and heated in the microwave—into his mouth. His face reddened as he chewed and swallowed. “I mean, I like her just fine. She’s nice. But I’m not…you know. I don’t like her.”
Andy pushed her food around inside the pie shell. “What did she want?”
Lawrence stared at her for several moments past comfortable. Andy finally lifted her eyes to his. “What?”
“You think I was—” He set his fork down, his food forgotten. “Well, what exactly did you think, Andy?”
She didn’t like the resentment in his tone, the piercing slice of his gaze. Though he had every right to be upset, Andy wished he wasn’t. Wished she hadn’t said anything. Wished she didn’t automatically assume the worst about him.
“Nothing,” she tried, but Lawrence scoffed.
“You think I want to be with one of those women more than you.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “You think eventually I’ll cheat on you with one of them. Is that it?”
Helplessness made her stomach quake, her bottom lip tremble. “You’re awfully handsome,” she said. “And hardworking, and honest, and—”
“Are you tryin’ to pay me a compliment or tell me you don’t trust me?” He sat heavily in the chair again, his voice a mere ghost of itself, but his eyes as penetrating as ever.
Both, Andy thought, but kept the word contained in her mind. Thankfully.
Emboldened by her decision to start being more truthful with him—and herself—she looked at him. She put both her hands on one of his, wishing she could erase the anguished expression from his face.
“I—I want to be with you.” The admission rang with truth, though it wasn’t the one she needed to say.
“But you don’t trust me.” He kept his hand under hers in a fist, unwilling or unable to soften it and let her hold his hand.
She dropped her eyes to the table. The small table he could barely fold himself under without crowding her. The small table where she wanted to eat breakfast with him. And lunch. And dinner. The strength of her thoughts surprised her, and she didn’t know how to make them line up with the jealousy and bitterness she’d felt at the church.
“All right.” He slid his hand out from under hers. “I’m gonna head home.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t need to go.”
“I think I do, Andy.” He stood, and she couldn’t argue with the quiet strength in his voice. Couldn’t get up and follow him through the living room. Couldn’t make her voice say, “Don’t go. Stay and let’s talk about this.”
The door closed and she heard his cowboy boots clomp down her stairs. The old building shuddered as he left the shop, and Andy dropped her head into her hands. Why had she said anything? Or at least phrased it like, “Hey, what did Natalie Cooper want?” instead of making it an accusation.
Eyes brimming with tears, she set about cleaning up the remains of their lunch. She’d barely eaten two bites, and yet her stomach waged war against her. She’d felt like this for the whole holiday season last year. She didn’t think she could survive another one. To keep her hands as
busy as her mind, she moved from the eat-in kitchen into the living room and vacuumed the rugs she’d special-ordered from New York. She dusted the shelves holding the pictures of her and Mama. Tears trickled down her face while she completed the long overdue chore.
But this time, they didn’t belong to Mama.
This time, they trailed tracks down her cheeks for Lawrence.
She flung down the duster and rushed across the room and into the entryway. A sob choked her as she yanked open the door and flew down the stairs. Outside, her chest heaved. Lawrence’s truck was long gone. Of course it was. She’d been cleaning for a good twenty minutes.
She hated this feeling. This feeling of waiting for something to happen so she could stop feeling so anxious. Of constantly searching for him in crowds so she could either worry when he wasn’t there or relax when he was.
Andy didn’t know what to do, short of getting in her sedan and driving out to the ranch. But too many eyes and ears existed out there. Too much of an audience for her private business.
She returned to her loft and snatched her phone from the kitchen counter. Her fingers fumbled over the screen as she brought up Lawrence and pressed call.
It rang once. Twice. Three times. Her heart stalled its beat. He had to answer. Four rings. Why wasn’t he answering?
His voicemail picked up, a sore disappointment to the real timbre of his voice. She hung up, defeated. Familiar anxiety and worry and absolute tension gnawed at her until she shook with the effort it took not to collapse on the couch and cry.
Her phone buzzed before it rang, and she startled. Her hopes soared when she saw Lawrence’s face.
“Lawrence,” she breathed into the line.
“You called?”
“Please come back,” she blurted. “You can’t be far. Just…please come back.” She glanced into the kitchen, though she’d cleaned up his lunch. “You didn’t even finish eating.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” He didn’t sound like he was driving. Maybe he’d pulled over to call her. “That I didn’t get enough to eat?”
“That’s what I always worry about.” A nervous giggle escaped her mouth. “I know you can’t cook, and yes. I worry about what you eat everyday. I’m scared you’ll get tired of me really fast.” The floodgate on her insecurities and fears dropped. “And I’m absolutely terrified that I’ll never figure out how to trust you.”
She took a deep breath, the weight of her words out in the open, where he could possibly help shoulder them.
“Well,” he started. “I get along just fine in the food department. You realize I live next door to Juliette, right? And Chelsea and Kelly aren’t bad, either.” Something changed on his end of the line, because his voice sounded farther away when he said, “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of you, but we can talk about why you’d think so. If you want.”
A door closed; her building trembled. “And you do need to figure out how to trust me, Andy. I can’t really help you in that department.”
A knock sounded on her door, and she spun and crossed the distance to it in the time it took to breathe. She opened the door and lowered the phone when she found Lawrence on the other side.
“But I’ll try,” he said, stepping into her entryway and sweeping her into an embrace that felt like home.
Nervous energy punctuated every breath Andy took while she waited for the last customer of the day to make her selections. Lawrence had been waiting upstairs in her loft for twenty minutes. He said he didn’t mind, and he probably genuinely didn’t.
“I think I like this one.” Sandy twisted to look at the back of the jacket.
“It looks fabulous,” Andy said, smoothing her fingertips across Sandy’s shoulders. “Going somewhere special for Christmas this year?”
Sandy made a face. “Do I ever?”
Andy forced a laugh. “Christmas in Three Rivers isn’t the worst.”
“I know.” Sandy sighed. “I’m just…done here, you know?” She looked at Andy with such honesty, her heartstrings sang.
“You bought the pancake house, didn’t you?” Andy asked. “You can’t be done here now.”
Sandy shrugged out of the jacket and handed it to Andy. “I’ll take this and those jeans. And that reindeer sweater. My mother will love that.” She flashed a grin at Andy. “And no, I know. I’m not done bein’ in Three Rivers.” She turned and headed back into the dressing room for her own jacket. “Just done with the men here.”
Andy understood that more keenly than she’d like to admit. Once she’d ended things with Lawrence, the men she’d dated had been dull, brash, or just plain annoying. She rang up Sandy’s purchases and had them wrapped when the woman came out of the dressing room.
“Saw Lawrence’s truck outside,” she said as she added her signature to the receipt. “Am I keeping you from something?”
Andy took the slip of paper and tucked it in the till. She gave Sandy a warm smile. “Not at all. We’re just goin’ to dinner in a bit.”
Sandy took the bag with her new clothes, her own unassuming grin in place. “He’s a nice guy.”
“Yeah,” Andy agreed, beyond relieved when a rush of jealousy didn’t threaten to unseat her. “He is.”
“Well, Merry Christmas.” Sandy headed for the door, and Andy went with her. Once she’d given the proper holiday salutation, she locked the door and flipped the sign to closed. She should stay and clean up for the Saturday crowd. After all, only three weekends left to shop for Christmas.
But she could get up early. Right now, she wanted to see Lawrence, smell Lawrence, kiss Lawrence.
“Busy week?” Lawrence traced lazy circles on her upper arm as he cradled Andy in his embrace. It had been five long days without her, and now that he had her in his arms, he didn’t want to let her go.
“Not bad, actually,” she said, snuggling closer. “Thanks for dinner.”
“Mm.” He’d taken her out to dinner after asking her what she wanted. She’d said, “All the bread and pasta I can get.”
Since they’d gotten a later start on dinner, they’d missed the movie he’d been planning to take her to see. So now, they laid on her couch, a movie on but Lawrence wasn’t really watching it. He wondered if Andy was.
After last Sunday’s situation, he’d been thinking about how he could convince Andy he was trustworthy. He’d spoken true—he couldn’t really help her with that. She either believed he wanted to be with her and no one else, or she didn’t.
But he had thought he could tell her everything. Be one-hundred-percent honest about his life, lay open his soul, and see if she still wanted him.
The idea had kept him awake at night, and everyone from Juliette to Pete to his patients at Courage Reins had noticed.
Taking a deep breath, he reached for the remote. “You watchin’ this?”
“Not really.” She sat up and tossed him a guilty grin.
He switched off the TV and ran his hands over his face. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay.” She held perfectly still, her expression unreadable.
“Remember I said I left home when I was eighteen?”
“Yes.”
“I tried to start a business that failed. Cost my folks a lot of money. That’s one reason I can’t seem to go home and face them.” Familiar guilt coated Lawrence’s throat, but he swallowed it away. “Don’t have much of a head for business.”
She blinked at him. “All right.”
“Don’t you see?” He leaned forward. “You’re like, this successful businesswoman, and I couldn’t even hack it in the feed industry for more than a year.”
Andy sat there, an utterly perplexed look on her face. “I don’t get what that has to do with anything.”
“I have a lot of debt, that’s what.” He exhaled sharply. “Maybe this was a bad idea.” he studied the swirling pattern in her rug. “I just want to—I think we—” Why couldn’t he get his tongue to cooperate with his brain?
�
�I guess I just wanted you to know.” He didn’t add that if they were married, his debt would become her problem too. He didn’t want to scare Andy away with declarations and proposals too soon. And by the deer-in-the-headlights expression she now wore, he would if he said much more.
“How much debt?” she asked.
“Thousands,” he said darkly. “Doesn’t help that my ex-wife—” He sucked in the rest of the sentence, his body recoiling from the word—just like Andy’s was.
“Ex-wife?” she choked out. She got up and moved into the kitchen, where she filled a glass with water from the tap and gulped it. She leaned against the countertop a good twenty feet from him. “Tell me about her.”
Dread filled Lawrence from top to bottom. His legs felt like cement, his heart like dynamite. “I told you I’d done a lot of stupid things. That was one of them.”
“Getting married is stupid?”
“Most of the time, no. In my case, it was. Jenn—well, we were only married for two weeks before I had it annulled. But that was enough time to do a lifetime of financial damage.”
“Annulled?”
Lawrence didn’t like the pitch of Andy’s voice.
“Jenn wasn’t legally divorced when we got married,” he said, practically to himself. “She said it had gone through, but well, it hadn’t.” Luckily for him. “The charges she put on my credit card during our ‘marriage’ have been ordered to be paid back. But I’m still waiting for the first check.”
Andy folded her arms. “How long ago was this?”
“Five years. I bounced around Texas and Oklahoma for a while until I settled at Three Rivers.” Contentment ballooned in Lawrence’s chest. “I’m finally getting things together. But I still have some hurdles to overcome. And if you and I—” He cleared his throat, unwilling to say more.
“That’s why you were worried about me liking you,” she said, some of the stoniness on her face melting away. “Of you just being a horseman.”
Lawrence nodded, his voice too knotted to work.
“Well, don’t worry about that,” she said.
Christmas in Three Rivers: Three Rivers Ranch Romance Novella Collection Page 5
