Late Last Night (River Bend)

by Lilian Darcy

  “You? Embarrassed? When you were so confident the other night?”

  “That was sex. Apparently I’m pretty confident about sex. This is something else.”

  “It’s what, then?”

  He took in a breath, then let it out again. “My heart, Kate. My heart doesn’t want to sell the house, because my heart wants you in the house with me. After we’ve been on one date. One. Which makes it crazy and so I’m scared to say it.”

  She couldn’t speak.

  He growled after a moment, “You going to run a thousand miles, now?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “No?” He eased closer, and his arm came around her, pulling her close.

  “I’m not going to run.” She nestled into him, and breathed in the calm.

  “One date, and I want you to move in, and you’re not going to run?”

  “One date, and I want to say yes, and no, I’m not going to run. I’m—I’m very serene about it, Harrison. And very relieved. And happy. So happy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Yep. Yes.”

  They sat there in silence, contemplating the hugeness of it, and Kate felt so peaceful and right. They had their own little island in the middle of Main Street, their own little cocoon. A cocoon where they could kiss, and there was no one around to take any notice.

  “Life is weird, isn’t it?” Harrison finally said, after he’d kissed her boneless. “We’re both wiped. My eyes feel like they’re full of sand. My heart is aching for that girl and her family. But this has happened. And beyond everything else and what a terrible night it was, this at least is good. This is great. Amazing.”

  “I know. It seems wrong that we’re feeling this way. When I saw you out at the park tonight, with everything so tragic and wrong, just the sight of you made me take heart, made me calmer. You always do that for me.”

  “Always?”

  “Even when you’re stopping me on a traffic violation.”

  He traced the line of her lower lip with his thumb and drawled, “It’s gonna look bad if I have to do that again, you realize.”

  “Yes, Sheriff, I realize that all too well.”

  “You’d better come to grips with the statutes on these things.”

  “I might need some coaching from a man in uniform.”

  “I think that could be arranged.”

  “Intensive coaching. In several distinct areas.”

  “I’m happy to make myself available as often as you want.”

  It was another twelve minutes before he finally started the engine to drive away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  February, 2014

  “Could you sign off on this, Harrison? And that witness called back. We need to arrange a time to interview her.”

  Harrison looked at his watch and winced. Any more delays and he wouldn’t get home to Marietta until after the stores closed—specifically, after Sage Carrigan O’Dell’s chocolate store closed, and he would kick himself if he didn’t have chocolates and flowers for Kate when he walked in the door tonight. He’d already bought the flowers in Bozeman on a snatched lunch break, in case the florist in Marietta ran low. It had been known to happen.

  Last year, he’d been in the thick of a manslaughter investigation on Valentine’s Day and he’d arrived home empty-handed. Kate had met him at the kitchen door and welcomed him with a hug and not a word about his missing gift. He’d smelled good food in the oven, and there was music playing. Fifteen-year-old Laura and thirteen-year-old Adam had been sitting at the kitchen table, snacking on crackers and carrot sticks and home-made spinach dip while they did their homework, and the house had been warm and bright and snug.

  This year, his wonderful wife wasn’t going to miss out, he vowed.

  “I’ll sign, but I’m not calling the witness back tonight,” he told his deputy, and scrawled his name on the bottom of a report, before grabbing his jacket. “It can wait.”

  “Plans?” the deputy asked.

  “Plans,” he answered firmly, left the building and reached his pickup forty seconds later, at a run.

  He’d shifted to law enforcement in Bozeman four years ago, with Kate’s full approval. She was an amazing woman, the best wife. He needed those chocolates. Some people might think that the surprise Caribbean cruise and the card and flowers were enough, but after last year’s miss…

  And after more than seventeen years of marriage during which he’d felt the extent of his luck almost every single day, he never wanted Kate to be in any doubt about the solid, enduring, unswerving nature of his feelings. They’d flowered in tragic circumstances, but in a way this had only strengthened them faster. He and Kate had married within four months of prom night, so sure of their love that they hadn’t wanted to wait.

  Harrison had never known any reason to regret it.

  Driving across the Bozeman Pass, where the Interstate was banked with snow on both sides, he watched the speed needle creeping up because of his hurry to get home, and grinned to himself as he eased off the gas pedal. You could get yourself in trouble with the law when home beckoned too strong.

  Yeah, he still remembered. The stop sign, the speeding, the broken tail light, and the three pairs of glasses.

  The kids knew the story, too.

  They were teenagers now, and bratty occasionally, but he and Kate both knew they’d done a good job with their children, helped by the fact that both Laura and Adam loved to head out to the wilder open spaces of the MacCreadie ranch to let off steam. Melinda MacCreadie spoiled them very sweetly, and Rob taught them how to brand cattle, while triplet Jamie could have been a bad influence with his rodeo career, except that they’d seen his injuries a couple of times and hadn’t liked the look of them.

  Jamie was married, now, and his Australian wife reminded Harrison of his own Kate. Sassy and strong and sensible. A partner as well as a lover. A friend as well as a bride.

  “Don’t close your store, Sage,” he muttered out loud, and had to force himself not to let the needle creep up again.

  It would be touch and go, his arrival. What if she’d sold out, too, like the florist probably had? Did she usually close at five, or five-thirty? Maybe later, on Valentine’s Day? He couldn’t remember.

  He screeched into a parking space in front of Copper Mountain Chocolates at twenty-eight minutes after five, and saw a woman’s shadow just inside the door, reaching up to flip the sign.

  No. No!

  The figure paused. It was Sage, and she’d recognized him. She waited, then opened the door. “Hi, Sheriff Pearce.”

  He hadn’t been Sheriff Pearce for four years, but no one in Marietta ever seemed to consider that, not even Sage who was newly married to Sheriff O’Dell. She looked tired, and she had chocolate on her face.

  “Do you have anything left?”

  She smiled. “Well, only the expensive stuff.”

  “I want the expensive stuff,” he said firmly.

  “I’ll tell Kate you said so.”

  “Do that. I mean, she knows already, but a little repetition can’t hurt.”

  In a few minutes, he was on his way out to their five acres, where there were chickens for eggs, and two dogs for companionship, and a black and white cat who didn’t seem to realize his job was to keep the mice away. He somehow had the idea he was supposed to curl up in a ball and purr, instead. Not that any incessant spoiling from the kids could have given him that idea, or anything…

  Kate was waiting.

  Harrison opened the door and called her name and she appeared from dining area, where the table was set with gleaming china and silverware.

  For two.

  “Guess what I did?” she said.

  “What, honey?”

  “I had Jamie pick up the kids and take them out to the ranch for the night. That boy has settled down a lot, since he got married!”

  “Oh, you did, huh?” He put the chocolates, flowers and card on the table and swung her into his arms. “You must have known…”
<
br />   “Known what?”

  “That you’d have a cruise brochure to pore over.”

  “A cr - ? What?”

  “Do you think? The Caribbean? Over the school break in mid-April?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Do you mean it? That would be fabulous.”

  “Glad you said that, because I already have the tickets. It’s an apology for last year.”

  “What happened last year?”

  “Valentine’s Day? When I was so strapped I didn’t get you anything?”

  She shrugged in apology. “I probably shouldn’t tell you that I don’t even remember that. Or I might lose my cruise.”

  “You’re not losing your cruise,” he growled at her, hugging her closer. “Because I haven’t seen you in a swimsuit in a while, and I am very eager to remedy that situation.”

  “So the cruise is really for you,” she whispered as she stretched up to kiss him.

  “You got me,” he said, as he kissed her back.

  THE END

  If you enjoyed this story, keep reading for more from Lilian Darcy!

  An excerpt from

  Marry Me, Cowboy

  Lilian Darcy

  Copyright © 2013

  Jamie MacCreadie didn’t know how to talk to women.

  He was twenty-six years old. He had a mother, three sisters and an aunt he was close to, as well as a father and a brother, but apparently he still didn’t have a clue. When he was riding the adrenalin rush of a rodeo win, he thought he managed it pretty well. Or when he’d had a drink or two. Rest of the time, no, and to be honest it wasn’t a fault, as far as he was concerned. He just didn’t see the point of a whole lot of talking.

  Fortunately, a lot of women seemed not to mind. They carried the dialogue forward on their own, and accepted a lazy smile or a sideways glance as his part of the conversational bargain.

  Not Tegan Ash, though.

  She left him in no doubt about his shortcomings in this area. In fact, she was the one who’d first pointed it out, several months ago, in her cute, blunt Australian accent. “You know what your problem is, Jamie?”

  “Well… Do I have one?” He’d stayed calm and mild, knowing it would annoy her. He liked getting a rise out of her, truth to tell. She was the same age he was, and they were like grade school kids with each other, sometimes—immature in a way he didn’t think he was with other people. He was only like this with her.

  “You don’t know how to talk to women,” she’d said.

  She couldn’t stand him, and she was marrying his best friend.

  They were both watching Chet right now, Tegan’s long, lean, barrel-racer body as lazy as Jamie’s, leaning on the rodeo arena rail. Somehow she still managed to smell like a shower stall, even though she’d been around horses all day. There was a sweet, nutty scent in the air, sourced in her thick tumble of blond hair. It disturbed his peace of mind in a way he didn’t like to think about, and he shifted six inches along the rail so he wouldn’t be close enough to notice it any more.

  Chet was collecting his winner’s buckle for best all-around cowboy at the Nevada Spring Creek Stampede with the announcer’s voice booming, “Che-e-et Wyndham!” from the amplifiers, while the smell of dust and dung and horse feed and hot dogs wafted all around them.

  Jamie hadn’t been so lucky today, in the saddle bronc. No buckles for him. He made an effort with Tegan. “So, wedding tomorrow.”

  “You’d better show up.” Tegan flicked him a quick look. More like a glare, with those deep dragon-green eyes.

  She’d placed seventeenth in the barrel-racing, and she wasn’t happy. Her strong chin was stuck out stubbornly, above a smooth neck that disappeared down into a bling-covered western shirt. She had a mile-wide competitive streak that matched Jamie’s own, and it amused him sometimes because you wouldn’t have guessed it to look at her. He got a kick out of the contrast.

  But she’d kicked him in a different way, this time, implying he might be unreliable on Chet’s wedding day, of all days. She carried her poor opinion of him too far, and there was no call for it.

  “Like I wouldn’t show,” he said on a growl. “I’m the best man.”

  “Well, you don’t seem that thrilled about it.” The green eyes challenged him, and he looked quickly away.

  Yeah, he wasn’t thrilled. But not for the reason she probably thought—their dislike of each other.

  In fact, he didn’t know what was bothering him about Chet and Tegan getting married. This was a super-practical green card wedding so that Tegan could stay in the country and keep on with her barrel-racing career. It wasn’t some big, hot romance between the two of them that was going to disappear in a cloud of rodeo dust after the excitement wore off.

  That thing flashed into Jamie’s mind. The thing Chet had hit him with a couple of months ago when he was drunk – well, when they were both drunk, in fact. The thing Jamie didn’t like to think about, and that Chet didn’t even seem to remember, the next morning. Jamie always made his thoughts veer away from it, as he was doing now, not naming it in his head, not assigning it a value.

  It probably had nothing to do with his doubts about the wedding, anyhow.

  “You got a dress and everything?” he asked Tegan, to distract himself.

  “We’re going with rodeo-themed outfits. You have a western shirt you can wear, right? Black, if you can. I hate dresses.”

  Chet finished collecting his buckle and began ambling toward them, wearing the grin that came from relief because he wasn’t in plaster or a neck collar or a brace, as well as from knowing he’d banked a four-figure sum today. Jamie had earned a small part of that, because they team-roped together and had just squeaked into the money.

  “Still, you could wear a dress to your own wedding,” he said mildly.

  “Oh, because you like to see women in skirts they can’t walk in, and stress-fracture shoes?”

  “No, because it’s a wedding.”

  She glared at him again, but this time he met the look steady and full-on, and she was the one to chicken out first. Gotcha, Tegan, he thought, and watched as her fingers brushed in an uncertain way against her neck and some late afternoon sun etched the side of her jaw. Her cheeks had gone pink, and he couldn’t see her eyes anymore, just her lashes, which were so long and dark.

  Then Chet arrived and the whole atmosphere changed. He was still buzzy from the win, and Tegan met him more than halfway. “I can’t believe you got a buckle for today. When I saw you the first three seconds out of the chute on that bronc, I thought you’d never stick him for the full eight. As for the team-roping, that was pure dumb luck, baby! Neither of you earned it.”

  She punched Chet’s arm and he gave her a jittery hug and said, “What about you, tonight? What happened?”

  “I should have shaved more off that last turn. I’m so mad at myself.”

  As soon as horse-talk turned technical, Chet was in his element, and he always looked happier. He said, “Yeah, you should, but you had your foot stuck out so far, if you had shaved it, you would have kicked the barrel down.”

  “Okay, you’re probably right.” Tegan gave one of her grins – the goofy one that said she knew she’d stuffed up. She had several quite different ways of smiling, Jamie had noticed, depending on her state of mind. “I need to work on my stupid feet, don’t I?”

  “Let’s go spend some of this.” Chet flapped his wad of cash in the air.

  “Bachelor party,” Jamie said, then wished he hadn’t.

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  An excerpt from

  The Sweetest Thing

  Lilian Darcy

  Copyright © 2014

  “I’ll try to be quick,” Tully said. This wasn’t about her own worshipful love affair with all things chocolate, it was about finding a gift for Sugar, and she might as well be generous if this forgiveness thing was going to get off the ground.

  “Really, it’s fine,” the woman insis
ted. Hm, that tumble of copper-red hair…

  “You’re… one of the Carrigans,” Tully realized out loud, although she couldn’t come up with a name.

  “Yes. I’m Sage.” She looked surprised at being recognized – well, half-recognized – and clearly didn’t know Tully at all.

  “Sage. Right. Your sister Mattie was a couple of years ahead of me in school,” Tully explained. “And then Danielle was a couple of years below. And then there’s you, and…?” But she couldn’t remember.

  “Callan. Callie. She’s the youngest.”

  Sage still clearly didn’t know who she was talking to, so Tully quickly continued, “I’m Tully Morgan, Patty and Walter Morgan’s daughter.”

  It never felt like a lie.

  Sage’s face cleared. “Oh, of course! I know Patty, and I knew your dad, Walter, a little.”

  It never felt like a lie, even when she was telling it to people who knew the family.

  “You have a brother, too, right?” Sage went on. “David?”

  “Yes, in LA. We both live there, so Mom and Dad tend… tended… to come there to visit. I don’t feel like much of a Marietta native any more, I’m afraid. And then there’s my - ”

  A distressed exclamation sounded from the back room, saving Tully from her next familiar lie.

  My sister.

  “Sage?” the other female voice called. “Help! I can’t get this one out of the mold.”

  “Please browse all you want,” Sage said hurriedly. “And I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Oh, no rush.” Tully was quite sure she’d be able to browse for a good fifteen minutes in here before she grew too bored… or too hungry.

  In fact, there were some slivers of chocolate to sample in a little dish on the counter. She took one, and glimpsed a paradise made of dark sweetness and a tang of fig and pistachio, as it melted on her tongue. Did Sugar have the kind of palate that would appreciate chocolate like this? Mom said she’d given up smoking, finally, but less than a year ago.

  Maybe one of these pre-packaged and gorgeously gift-wrapped boxes, instead? They came in so many sizes, the choice confronted Tully with the murky ambivalence of her own feelings.