Читать книгу The Texan's Little Secret - Barbara Daille White - Страница 11
ОглавлениеKim set her plate down but didn’t take a seat. “I forgot napkins. Be right back.”
“Get some extra,” Carly called after her. She gritted her teeth and scooted onto one of the benches. Luke settled opposite as if she’d invited him to join her. “What’s this? I told you, you don’t need to make nice with the boss’s daughter.”
“I learned that lesson already,” he said in a low tone. “I was nice to you once. You threw that in my face.”
Was he trying to imply she had been the one at fault years ago? “Then I can’t image why you want to sit here. Couldn’t you find a seat anywhere else?”
“Could have. But I’m too polite to walk off in the middle of a conversation.” He paused, as if waiting for her to pounce on the statement. But she’d already made her point about his walking away from her. When she said nothing, he went on, “To tell you the truth, it’s a surprise to me, too, seeing you here, considering you don’t make a habit of attending the barbecue.”
“I try never to do the expected.”
He nodded. “Some things never change. I guess you wouldn’t be here now, either, if not for coming home to take care of your daddy.”
He sat looking at her. She stared back into those eyes that had once fascinated her. Such a unique shade of golden brown. The same amber hue as a jar of dark honey, so warm and sweet and—
Darn. She lowered her hands beneath the edge of the table and curled her fingers into fists. She had handled seeing Luke again. She could sit here pretending to have a polite conversation in front of her family. But she sure didn’t need long-forgotten memories sneaking up on her, hitting her when she was least prepared for them.
“Since we’re on the subject of surprises,” he added, “I have to say it was strange I never ran into you at any of the rodeos.”
“So sorry to disappoint you. Did you think I’d follow your career so I could hound your heels, like the rest of your buckle bunnies?”
He grinned. “You must’ve followed something, if you knew about them.”
“How could I not know?” she asked, keeping her tone as honey-sweet as his eyes. “Even the wannabe champs on the circuit have their admirers.”
And Luke had been so much more than a wannabe. A bull-riding champion, one of the youngest on record, with one of the best records in rodeo. “I kept track of you, all right. For exactly the opposite reason—to know when and where you’d be competing so I could head off in the opposite direction.”
“Then it must’ve made things easier for you when I quit rodeoing.”
“I couldn’t have cared less.” Liar. His decision might have sent a shockwave through the rodeo community, but it had sure made her life less...stressed. Until she’d found out he had taken a job at the Roughneck. “But I’ll bet it made my daddy happy to know he could have you working for him.”
To her annoyance, he grinned. “I reckon it did. I’ll tell you what’s making him happy right now. Having you around again. The rest of the family likes it, too.”
And you, Luke? Her throat tightened as she held back the question. She had no desire to think about anything happening between them. She had already spent too much time thinking about what might have been, about what she once could have had but had lost.
Her throat tightening even more at the thought, she looked over her shoulder. Her so-called best friend stood near the drinks table, hanging out with Lizzie and Savannah. Great. Kim was keeping her distance. Giving her time alone with Luke. Just what she didn’t want.
Reluctantly, almost feeling his gaze on her, she turned back. “I told you the other day, I’m only here temporarily. Just while my family needs me.”
He nodded. “Guess you’re eager to get back home. I hear you’re still living down in Houston.”
Was he keeping tabs on her? She swallowed her irritation and fought to keep her tone polite. There were too many people around for her to respond the way she really wanted to. “After college, I wanted to stay on. I like it there.” Double liar.
“What’s the attraction that’s got you keeping yourself way down there?”
“It’s only a couple of hours away. I’ve got a job. I’m in sales for a company that manufactures Western wear. It’s small, family-owned, like the Peach Pit.”
“You couldn’t get me to live in the big city. Besides, you don’t miss your folks?”
“Of course I do.”
“You don’t visit often.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t love my family. When Lizzie had...a health scare a few months back, I was here on the double. But I’m happy to have a life of my own, away from the ranch.”
How many more lies could she tell in one conversation? She wasn’t happy in Houston. Far from it. But she had fought for the choice to go to school there...just as she had fought to stay. It was easier than coming home and facing everything. Her childhood. Her history. Luke.
He would never know any of that. She would tell him one truth, though. “It’s a nice feeling, knowing I can take care of myself.”
He paused with the last bite of barbecued beef sandwich halfway to his mouth, then nodded. “I can understand that. I want my daughter to feel the same way—once she grows up, that is.”
Another topic she had no desire to deal with. “I’m happy to be independent.”
His eyebrows rose. “Is that what you call cutting yourself off from family?”
“What do you know about my relationship with my family? It’s been a long time since the days I used to share my troubles with you.” All too aware of the crowd around them, she forced a smile. “And I didn’t cut myself off. I learned how to live on my own. That’s something no one can take away from me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he said softly.
Though he smiled, too, her heart skipped a beat at his suddenly bleak expression.
Unable to meet his eyes, she pushed a stray olive around on her plate with a fork and inhaled an uneven breath. She couldn’t handle seeing that unexpected touch of vulnerability in Luke’s face. She didn’t want to dwell on what had happened in his life once he’d walked away from her. Most of all, she couldn’t bear even to think about his grief over the wife he had lost or his love for the little girl he shared with that other woman.
To her relief, Kim finally returned to the table, bringing the napkins she’d supposedly needed. To her even greater relief, Luke grabbed his plate and cup.
“Take my seat,” he said. “I’ve got to be getting home.”
He nodded at them both.
Watching him walk away set off a familiar ache in the pit of her stomach.
Kim slid into the seat Luke had left. Carly welcomed the distraction, though Kim’s eyes already held questions. She would want to know what she’d missed. Carly couldn’t fault her for that. When it came to Luke, Kim had been in on the ground floor of Carly’s grand plan.
In senior year, she and Kim had both considered it a real coup for her to have snagged an “older” man, just on the verge of twenty-one compared to their eighteen. Obviously, despite knowing how hurt she had been over the breakup, her best friend believed she still had a thing for Luke.
“And, so...?” Kim prompted.
Carly shrugged. Under cover of the talk all around them, she lowered her voice and reported, “He sat. He ate. He departed. That was the extent of our big reunion, and that’s all it’s ever going to be.”
“Come on, Carly, you can’t be immune to the guy. He’s twice as hot as he was when you went with him.”
“And any interest I had in Luke Nobel cooled to sub-zero temperatures back then. It’s not like he meant a lot to me, anyhow,” she fibbed. “You know I only went out with him in the first place to try to get my dad off my back.” That had been her intention anyhow.
Too bad she had sabotaged herself.
No matter how strongly she’d objected, with graduation on the horizon, Brock had grown more adamant than ever about her taking her place at Baron Energies. At a desk job.
She had acted out, doing the worst thing she could think of—the only thing she could think of at the time—to make Brock Baron change his mind. She had dated Luke Nobel. Being an “older man” and living in a poor part of town earned an automatic two strikes against him—at least on her daddy’s list of high standards.
Yes, the perfect plan...
“But then you never told your dad anything about Luke,” Kim said. “You never told your family or anybody but me. Why not?”
Carly shrugged. For some strange reason, after her first date with Luke, her feelings about flaunting him in front of Brock and her family had done a one-eighty. “I didn’t need him for leverage anymore. I decided to get a backbone and stand up for myself, instead. I told Daddy point-blank I just had no interest in a job at Baron Energies. Then I flashed my acceptance letter from Houston at him and informed him I would be leaving town.”
Kim gasped. “You never told me that, either. How did he react?”
“As if I’d tossed a cow pie down in front of him.”
“You probably broke his heart. You should’ve listened to me about drinking and drugs. Those would’ve had your dad changing his mind altogether about wanting you on the payroll.”
And just look who he had on his payroll now.
Carly choked on a laugh. “As if you really meant the suggestions seriously.”
“You know I didn’t.” Kim sighed. “Well, I’m sorry it didn’t turn into the romance of the century. But even if you never told anyone, after all, I guess going out with Luke was better than my alternatives.”
If she only knew.
But how could she tell Kim the truth? She couldn’t explain, even to her own satisfaction, why she had suddenly felt the need to keep Luke all to herself. Instead, she had sworn Kim to silence.
Still, typical teen that she was back then, she couldn’t keep from sharing developments with her best friend.
Day by day, she had filled in every little detail of her first big romance...until the part where she and Luke slept together.
* * *
THREE LONG, LONG DAYS after the barbecue, Luke sat at the bar of the Longhorn, the local saloon. He took a deep, satisfying swallow of beer from the mug in front of him.
His mom had gone to her usual Monday-night get-together with her cronies, bringing Rosie along. The ladies all claimed to take their card games seriously, but he suspected the women paid more attention to dessert and his daughter than they did to their poker hands.
He thought about the endless weekend, starting with Friday and the barbecue he never should have gone to. Not when he knew Carly Baron was back on the Roughneck and would be there, too.
On Saturday, he’d kept busy with his men, handling the backbreaking job of clearing brush. The hard labor kept his body moving, and working with a couple of cowhands who always had their mouths in gear kept him from thinking thoughts he shouldn’t. He’d chosen to work side-by-side with those men for that very reason.
On Sunday...well, that was a mite tougher. If the Longhorn had been open, he might’ve stopped in for a brew and some company to distract him. Instead, he’d spent the slow summer afternoon with his mom and Rosie, his two-year-old daughter, who were his first choice of company, anyhow.
At least, Rosie was, always. His mom, not so much. Not when he had something on his mind. When he had worries, he also had all he could do to keep them from her sharp eyes. Somehow, yesterday, he had managed to get by without getting the third degree about anything.
And today, he’d cleared his mind of Carly again.
He intended to keep it cleared.
He breathed a sigh of relief at his own determination, took a last slug of his beer and set the empty mug back on the bar.
“Fill you up again?” the bartender asked.
Luke nodded, then watched the man walk away with the mug.
“Good service,” commented the guy a couple of stools to his right. He wore dress pants and too-shiny shoes. “Hope it stays that quick.”
“It won’t once the crowd gets here,” Luke told him. Between the locals, whose Monday-morning quarterbacking usually lasted through the evening, and the city slickers like the one next to him, who liked to live life rough in the ’burbs, the bar wouldn’t be quiet for long.
He glanced into the wall-length mirror lined with liquor bottles. It reflected most of the room as well as the Longhorn’s double glass doors, which had just opened to admit a couple of females. Familiar females. The one he took note of was hot and blonde and loaded for bear, judging by her expression when she caught his reflection in the glass.
So much for clearing his mind of Carly Baron.
“You sound like a regular,” the guy next to him said.
“I stop in once in a while.” For two or three beers, his limit. He’d come tonight more to get away from his empty house and his own thoughts than to have a brew. And now look where that idea had gotten him.
Carly wore jeans that hugged her hips and a shirt of some shimmery fabric. With every little move she made, the shirt caught the glow from the neon advertisements hung around the barroom. He tried not to follow the flashes of light in the mirror as she and her friend Kim sauntered across the sawdust-covered floor to seats at the far end of the bar.
The guy to his right gave a low whistle. “Now, there’s a real babe.”
Luke clamped his jaw shut.
Once, Carly had meant everything to him. But that was years ago, before she’d accused him of using her to get ahead. Before she’d joined the ranks of folks who didn’t believe he could succeed on his own.
Yeah, at the barbecue, Carly had hit the mark with her crack about making nice with the boss’s daughter. He had gone out of his way to talk with her, the way he stayed friendly with all Brock Baron’s kids.
But, more to the point, the truth was, he’d chatted her up to show himself he could do it and walk away again. To prove she didn’t mean anything to him anymore. And he’d done exactly that, hadn’t he? She was just another woman to him now, right?
A few people occupied stools between him and the women, but he could still see her in the mirror, her blond hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, almost reaching the waistband of those snug jeans of hers. All too aware of his own jeans suddenly hugging tight, he shifted on his stool.
The bartender dropped off his second beer. Luke clamped his fingers around the mug. As he nursed the drink along, a steady trickle of folks filled up the rest of the space between him and the two women and overflowed onto the dance floor. Somebody fed the jukebox in one corner. In another corner, a crowd began to gather around the mechanical bull.
Over the buzz of conversation, Carly’s laugh rang out. He’d have recognized it anywhere.
“Sounds as good as she looks,” said the guy near him. “You know her?”
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t mind an introduction—”
Luke narrowed his eyes.
“But, uh, I’m not asking,” the other man said in a rush. “I can see that would be a waste of my time.”
Luke took a long, hard swallow from his mug. Irritation, like the guy to his right, had begun to grate on him. He wanted nothing to do with Carly.
But he needed his job to provide for Rosie and Mom.
Beer mug in hand, he rose from his bar stool.
Time to go make nice with the boss’s daughter.
* * *
IN THE LONGHORN’S ladies’ room, Carly sidled past the crowd of chattering women primping at the long counter. She found a spot halfway down the room. But as she stared into the cloudy mirror, she wasn’t seeing her reflection.
Instead, she saw Luke the day he had come to the Roughneck years ago.
He’d looked so good in his worn jeans and white shirt, so tanned and fit and strong. For a moment, that overrode her concern at seeing him on the ranch. For another moment, she couldn’t fight the tremor of excitement and disbelief running through her. Couldn’t tamp down the rush of joy at knowing he was hers.
Only a few days earlier, they had made love for the first time.
Blinking, she looked away from the mirror. As she pulled her hairbrush from her bag, someone touched her back. She moved aside, thinking it was another woman trying get by in the tight space. Instead, the touch came again.
She turned to find Kim close behind her.
“Hey.” The women around them made enough noise to cover the sound of a gunshot. Still, Kim stepped closer and muttered, “Let’s go for a walk outside.”
Carly laughed. “Kim Healy, gangster’s moll. What do you want to do, get me out in the parking lot so your boys can fit me up for cement shoes?”
Kim leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Luke’s here.”
“Is he?” She projected indifference. Heck, she pretended ignorance. The minute they had stepped into the Longhorn, she had seen those unmistakable wide shoulders and that sandy hair. “So?”
“So, I need some air.”
Kim led the way out of the room. Instead of going back to the main room, they went down the hall to the emergency exit at the end.
Outside, they walked a few feet along the side of the building. Carly settled on the low stone wall and reached behind it to pick up a couple of pebbles. “The Southwestern landscaping will come in handy for you. Don’t you have to fill my pockets with stones?”
“Carly.” She didn’t need to look to see Kim’s worried expression. “What’s going on?”
A few yards away, the Longhorn’s door swung open. Music and laughter swelled into the night.
As Kim settled on the wall beside her, Carly sighed. This conversation wasn’t going to be to her liking, she could tell.
“Inside,” Kim said, “I turned to say something to Sandra, turned back again and you were gone. So I went looking for you. Because you need to talk to me. And I’m done with sitting back and waiting for you to get to that conclusion. That’s what’s going on. Come on, girl, it’s me. Your BFF.” She gave Carly a nudge. “You do remember we’re best friends forever, right?”
“Yes, I do.” Tears made her eyes sting. “I don’t know where to start, Kim.”
“How about with the week before you and Luke had the fight?”
Now she did turn her head.
In the light of the streetlamp, Kim’s set jaw and grim expression matched her flat tone. But the glow in her friend’s eyes didn’t come from the lamplight.
“You knew something was up?”
Raising her brows, Kim looked at her without speaking.
“Sorry.” Carly stared into the distance, where the lights couldn’t breach the darkness. “There was a lot going on that week. And then, when Luke and I broke up, I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.”
“You fell to pieces,” her friend said gently. “You were good for nothing the rest of that summer, till you went away to school. And I’m worried it might happen again.”
She snapped her head in Kim’s direction. “Don’t worry. There’s not a chance of that.”
“Well, at least at this point, you’ve only started to crumble around the edges. Just enough for a BFF to notice.”
Carly gave a strangled laugh.
“You slept with Luke, didn’t you?”
Her breath caught at Kim’s outright question. At her spot-on guess. But then, Kim was no dummy and never had been. And Lord only knew, she had probably picked up dozens of clues in that one short week to tell her something momentous had happened in her best friend’s life.
Momentous, all right.
Who knew so much could have come from her one and only time with Luke?
Who knew she could have been so naive? So stupid?
“Sorry, Kim. I... It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell you back then. I just needed some time.” Time to hold her secret excitement close to her heart, the way Luke had held her close to his. “I almost couldn’t believe it had happened.” She gave a derisive laugh worthy of Brock Baron. “I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s the way I felt.”
Special. She’d felt special when she was with Luke. As if she finally stood out from the crowd. Finally meant something to someone who wasn’t connected to her by birth or a promise between best friends. “But before I could convince myself it was real...it was over.”
“You wouldn’t have slept with the guy if you didn’t care about him, Carly. And I know how much you did. When you broke up, I let you slide with the excuse you were going off to college and didn’t want to get tied down. But I didn’t fall for it, even then. What really happened?”
The door to the Longhorn opened. A lone customer turned to go to a motorcycle parked at the opposite end of the building.
Just like that, Luke had turned and walked away from her, too. And, like the customer who revved his engine and tore out of the parking lot, he never looked back.
She swallowed. “I slept with him,” she said evenly, flushing with embarrassment over her stupidity but determined to tell Kim the truth. This part of it. “I slept with him, and three days later he showed up on the ranch. My dad was looking for wranglers, and Luke planned to use me to try and get a job at the Roughneck.”
“He wouldn’t.” Kim sounded as stunned as she had felt at the time.
“He would. I confronted him, and he didn’t deny it.” Despite her struggle to keep her words even, she could hear the strain in her voice. “He didn’t even answer me. He just turned and left the ranch.”
The door to the Longhorn opened again. A small group of women spilled out of the bar and headed toward them, laughing and lurching and passing them by with farewell waves.
She and Kim waved back.
Another woman trailed behind them, walking steadily and flashing a key ring. “Don’t worry. I’m the designated driver.”
“Good deal,” Kim said.
They sat watching the women make their unsteady way down the length of the building, trailing bursts of screechy laughter behind them. Carly felt grateful for the din. She had more to share with Kim. But not here. Not now. “Time to get back inside.” She stood. “We wouldn’t want Luke thinking the sight of him scared me away.”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
Carly led the way back to the bar.
She hooked her thumbs into her belt loops. Her stomach felt calm, her nerves steady. She was a woman ready to take on the world—and Luke Nobel.
She wasn’t at all like the naive teenager of her early college days who had spent weeks in the bathroom of her dorm, dealing with morning sickness.
