“I wouldn’t call you Will, anyway. Anything else?”
“Once a guy I went out to dinner with tried to feed me a bite of potato salad and ended up with a full plate of food in his lap.”
“I won’t try to feed you. Anything else?”
“That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Specifically, anyway.”
“So I should just keep my distance.”
“Not too much distance,” she heard herself say before she realized she was going to.
It made Tyler smile a sexy smile that said he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Not too much distance. Got it,” he said, as if confirming a command. Then he said, “Is it safe to go in now?”
“I don’t know about safe, but I guess we probably should.”
Tyler got out of the truck and came around to open her door, taking the brownies from her but not offering her a hand to help her down.
It was a silly thing, since Willow didn’t need his help, but she felt a twinge of resentment toward her brothers for the omission that had surely come as a response to the no-touching rule.
Once she was out of the truck, Tyler closed the door but kept hold of the brownies.
“I can take those,” Willow assured him.
But he pulled them out of her reach. “I might need them as weapons.”
Willow laughed at his joke, but thought that he didn’t know how right he might be.
She led the way into the house without knocking or even calling hello. The living room was empty, but they could hear voices coming from the rear, and that’s where she headed.
Her aunt Alice was there with Jenna, Willow’s cousin Sky, plus her new sister-in-law Kerry and Kerry’s three-year-old daughter, Peggy, who was busy chasing an ice cube across the floor.
Willow introduced Tyler to her aunt, her cousin and Jenna, as well as to the woman her brother Jared had fallen in love with when Peggy had slipped into a drainage system he had been working on that summer. Jared had rescued the little girl, and he and Kerry had married soon after.
Tyler’s greetings from the women of the family were open and friendly as Alice took the brownies from him and Jenna got him a beer. But then Bram came in from the backyard and stopped dead in his tracks the minute he saw him.
“I didn’t know you were bringing someone, Willow,” he said without taking his eyes off Tyler.
It was not a warm welcome. Especially when it was accompanied by a scowl that would have been more fitting if Tyler had been holding them at gunpoint.
“I thought it would be a good way for Tyler to meet a lot of people at once,” she explained.
“Hello again,” Tyler interjected.
For a moment Bram just went on giving him a hard stare. Then, in a less than friendly tone, he said, “Tyler, isn’t it?” as if he wasn’t sure about the name.
“You know it is,” Jenna said with a scolding edge in her voice.
Still without taking his eyes off Tyler, Bram called over his shoulder, “Ashe. Jared. Logan. You want to come in here a minute? There’s someone who wants to meet you,” he said facetiously.
“Bram…”
Both Willow and Jenna said it at the same time. But part warning, part impatient tones that harmonized together didn’t faze the sheriff. He just went on pinning Tyler in place with cold eyes.
“It’s okay,” Tyler said, as if he wasn’t at all concerned about holding his own. “I do want to meet your brothers.”
Whether that was true or not, in came Willow’s other three brothers, to stand like a wall with Bram and bore into Tyler with their eyes.
“Tyler, these are my brothers,” Willow said with a sigh, pointing as she named them each in turn. “Guys, this is Tyler Chadwick. He just moved into the old Harris place.”
“And he’s our guest,” Jenna added pointedly.
None of them said so much as a hello. But again Tyler ignored their intimidating rudeness and stepped forward to shake their hands.
Each of her brothers hesitated before accepting, letting him know through the process that they were really only pacifying the women who were looking on.
But even that didn’t seem to disturb Tyler. He merely met their stares and waited them out, until each one of them shook his hand.
It was excruciating for Willow, and the moment all her brothers had complied, she stepped up and said, “Let’s go out back so you can meet my great-grandfather and my uncle and the rest of my cousins.”
“Okay,” Tyler agreed. Then, to her brothers, he said, “Nice to meet you all,” and stepped around them.
“Sorry about that,” Willow said under her breath when they’d left them behind.
“It’s pretty much what I expected. Except that I’m still in one piece. So don’t worry about it.”
Willow appreciated the levity he put into that, and had the urge to take his hand, to squeeze it in thanks. But of course she couldn’t do that, and again felt a twinge of resentment for having to refrain.
There were picnic tables set up out back where a large barbecue was already red-hot and ready to go.
The rest of Willow’s cousins were gathered not far from the barbecue, and since they were nearest to the back door, too, Willow led Tyler to them and performed those introductions first.
Unlike her brothers, Seth, Shane and Grey, and Jesse, the guest of honor, all offered Tyler a hand to shake and actually made congenial conversation before Willow urged him on to the picnic table where her uncle Thomas sat with George.
Both older men stayed seated when they approached, and Willow knew her uncle and her great-grandfather liked that Tyler called them each “sir” when she introduced him, and shook their hands, too.
They invited them to sit, and Willow’s cousin Jesse joined them, too.
But they hadn’t chatted for long when Bram came to stand at the end of the table and glare at Tyler.
“We need to talk about some private family business, so if you wouldn’t mind, you could go over and keep an eye on those burgers on the barbecue.”
“You can talk to me another time, Bram,” Willow said through clenched teeth, before Tyler could respond.
But Tyler still took her brother in stride. “That’s okay. I’m happy to help,” he said amiably, getting up from the picnic bench.
“Then I’ll help, too,” she said defiantly.
But as she tried to get up, her big brother laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “This is important.”
“Nothing’s that important.”
“This is.”
“It’s all right. I don’t mind,” Tyler assured her as he headed for the barbecue.
“When are you going to grow up?” Willow snapped at her brother out of frustration.
But Bram ignored the question and said, “I’ve filled Jesse in on what’s going on around here with Gloria’s letter and the deed. He’s on his way back to D.C., so he’s going to look into the trust fund and the property in Georgetown and report back.”
“Good,” Willow said to her cousin. “It should help for us to know what we’re dealing with.”
“I’m happy to help, too,” Jesse said, repeating Tyler’s words with an amused half smile.
Something suddenly seemed to tickle their great-grandfather, because his weathered face erupted in a knowing smile as he nodded his head sagely, as if he were belatedly approving of the plan.
Then he said to Jesse, “It’s good you’ll be looking for the answers. The raven who seeks will find the heart’s truth.”
Willow never knew quite what to say to those morsels of Comanche wisdom her great-grandfather spouted out of the blue.
But they were all spared the need to comment when her aunt Alice came out the back door and saw Tyler running the barbecue.
“Why is our guest doing the cooking?” she said loudly enough and in a sufficiently outraged tone that even Bram got to his feet in a hurry to take over.
“He looked like the best man for the job,” Bram said, with an underlying derogatory note in his voice.
Alice was having none of that, though. She said, “Mind your manners, Bram.” Then she hooked her arm through Tyler’s and brought him back to Willow’s side. “Guests of the Coltons don’t do the work around here. They just enjoy our company,” she proclaimed as she deposited Tyler on the picnic bench once more.
The remainder of the evening was uneventful, but not entirely pleasant. It was difficult to enjoy it when only Logan—the more laid-back and jovial of her brothers—made any friendly overtures to Tyler, while the rest of her siblings watched him like hawks ready to pounce on their prey. Her other relatives went out of their way to be hospitable to blunt the effect, but it still couldn’t completely compensate, and as soon as it was polite, Willow suggested she and Tyler say good-night and leave.
“I’m sorry for that,” she apologized for the second time as Tyler opened the truck door for her. “Every time I bring someone around them I hope they’ll have stopped the big brother routine. And tonight, since Bram and Jared are happily in love, I’d hoped that might lighten them up. But apparently not.”
“It’s okay,” Tyler said, as if it really was. Then he got behind the wheel, started the engine and drove away from the ranch.
The farther they got from it the more the tension of the evening seemed to ease. By the time they reached the Feed and Grain, Willow had relaxed enough to realize she wasn’t ready for her time with Tyler to come to an end yet. In fact, it was as if it hadn’t really begun.
So, when Tyler parked at the curb, she said, “Let me buy you a glass of lemonade to make up for this.”
“Deal,” he agreed without hesitation, making her feel instantly better about almost everything.
Willow had left all the windows in her apartment open to catch the cooling night air, so it was pleasant when they went inside. Unfortunately, or she might have had an excuse to take off her overblouse the way she was dying to.
But as it was, she merely poured two glasses of lemonade and they took them into the living room.
They sat together on the sofa as if it were a longstanding tradition. Both of them in the center. Not too close, but close enough so that Willow could smell the lingering scent of his aftershave.
“So you said every time you bring someone around your brothers you hope it will be better. How many every times have there been?” Tyler asked once they were settled and had tasted the lemonade.
“Three,” Willow answered, without having to calculate.
“Come on,” he said dubiously. “Only three?”
“Exactly three.”
“How can that be?”
“Pretty easily. Especially when the first guy who kissed me ended up not living it down for a week.”
“How did they manage that?” Tyler sounded amused and curious, but not disapproving in spite of the evening her brothers had just put him through.
“They caught us kissing behind the school—”
“Your first kiss?”
“My very first kiss.”
“And you were how old?”
“Fourteen. And to tell you the truth, I found out later that Herbie only kissed me on a dare even then. I was just too much of a tomboy for any guy to really be interested.”
“If this Herbie was only kissing you on a dare he deserved whatever your brothers dished out. Which was what?”
“Jared and Logan saw us and yanked Herbie away by the back of his shirt. Herbie landed on his rear end—embarrassed more than anything—and Jared and Logan just did the standard stay-away-from-our-sister tirade and let him go. But the next day in the locker room they got hold of Herbie and covered him from head to toe in drawings of lips. Drawings they made with permanent red ink markers. It took about a week for it to all wear off, and in the meantime Herbie had to walk around like that, the laughingstock of the school. It was like making him an advertisement for what would happen to any guy who came near me.”
“Okay,” Tyler said, laughing at the anecdote. “That was number one. What about number two?”
“Billy Shultz. I was seventeen. And he was new in town.”
“So he hadn’t been warned off by the Herbie incident.”
“Right. There was a reverse dance in December of my junior year of high school—that’s where the girls asked the guys. I knew no one else would go with me and I kind of liked Billy, so I thought I’d give it a try.”
“And get your second kiss?”
“Oh, no, it never got that far. Billy was holding my hand when we went into the diner for dinner before. Bram and Jared were there and saw us. They joined us—uninvited, and even after my every attempt to discourage them. They made sure Billy knew to keep his hands to himself, and wouldn’t leave us alone until Billy swore he would. Then they moved to the table next to ours.”
“So good old Billy could still be under their scrutiny.”
“Exactly. We tried to ignore them, but as we were eating, Billy offered me a bite of his potato salad.”
“And you took it.”
“It was just a bite of potato salad. It couldn’t have been more innocent,” Willow assured him.
“But Billy ended up with his food in his lap.”
“And I never got to the dance at all.”
“Or asked out by Billy Shultz again, either, I imagine.”
“Definitely not.”
“Which brings us to number three.”
That one was a little more painful, and it must have shown in her expression because before she’d said anything, Tyler put his nearly empty lemonade glass on the coffee table and took her hand, smoothing the back with tiny circles of his thumb.
“Number three wasn’t just kid stuff, was it?” he asked compassionately.
“No, it wasn’t. I was really…involved with Shawn.”
“‘Involved’ meaning in love?”
Willow nodded her head as she set her glass on the table, too, making sure not to pull her hand from the warmth of his because it felt so good to have it enveloped in that big, strong grasp.
“I met Shawn at the start of my senior year in college,” she explained. “I was away from home, and even though I was still more tomboy than femme fatale, Shawn seemed to see past that and asked me out anyway.”
“Good for Shawn.”
“And good for me. We dated all year and we were getting pretty serious so I thought I should bring him home over spring break to meet everyone. By then I thought we’d all grown up enough that my brothers might just accept him.”
“No such luck,” Tyler guessed.
“No such luck,” she confirmed. “That time they called it trial by fire.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Especially not for Shawn. My brothers said they just wanted to make sure he was man enough for me. I told Shawn he didn’t have to prove anything, but he wouldn’t listen. He was sure he could outsmart them—he was more brain than brawn, and I guess in a way he thought he was better than my brothers.”
“It’d be tough enough just being equal.”
“Exactly. And Shawn was…well, Shawn was good with books, but my brothers didn’t pass out a manual.”
“What was the trial by fire?”
“They took him camping. Without any supplies.”
“So he had to look for wood to make a fire—”
“Without matches,” Willow explained.
“And he had to hunt or fish or forage for food.”
“With bows and arrows.”
“And he had to sleep under the stars.”
“With only a single blanket, not even a sleeping bag. And they deserted him. Well, they didn’t really. They were keeping an eye on him, but kept out of sight, so poor Shawn thought he was on his own.”
Tyler grimaced. “Scared the guy pretty good, I’ll bet.”
“Terrified was the word Shawn used when they got him home the next day.”
“And instead of swearing never to fall for another of your brothers’ pranks, he dumped you?”
“He actually seemed to sort of blame me. I’d warned him not to go along with anything they wanted him to do, but somehow Shawn felt like I’d set him up. He said he didn’t want anything to do with someone who would bring him into a situation like that.”
“So much for outsmarting your brothers, too. But apparently good old Shawn wasn’t taking any of the responsibility, huh?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“But you really liked the guy and you were still sorry to have it end with him,” Tyler concluded. “And there hasn’t been anyone since then?”
“I came back to Black Arrow after I graduated. Back to where I’m the tomboy little sister of four brothers who are known to be tough on any man who looks at me twice.”
Tyler looked at her then, top to bottom to top again, with a split second pause when he came across her breasts both times. “Tomboy?” he repeated.
“Hard to change the image people have of you,” she said, as if that outward image hadn’t only recently been altered to intrigue him.
“Tomboy isn’t what I see,” he said, his voice suddenly lower, more intimate.
“What do you see?” she asked, flirting but also dying to know.
“I see a beautiful woman who mixes strength with softness, self-sufficiency with a tender heart, independence with consideration, brains and ability with sexiness that’s just under the surface waiting to be let out. In short, you can hold your own in a man’s world and among women.”
Willow liked that description a whole lot better than tomboy.
She also liked the way Tyler was still looking at her, with so much heat in his green eyes she could actually feel herself warming.
He was still holding her hand, only now he reached his free hand to tilt her chin so he could press his mouth to hers in a kiss that suddenly made the whole miserable night worth it. A kiss that instantly tightened her nipples and made her aware all over again of her new and improved breasts.
Tyler’s lips parted over hers and his tongue didn’t hesitate to pay a call, urging her to play, to dance, to match him game for game.
And that’s just what Willow did, losing herself in his kiss, in the wonderful spring-rain scent of him, in the warmth of his body all around her and the tingles of excitement he was setting off in his slow, sexy massage of her hand.
Those newly engorged breasts had a mind of their own and were craving at least the pressure of his chest against them. So much so that Willow reached her free arm around him, not quite pulling Tyler to her the way she wanted, but at least giving herself the opportunity to get a little nearer to him.
Tyler took the cue—or maybe it was just what he wanted, too, because he wrapped his arms around her and did what she hadn’t had the courage to do. He closed the space between their bodies by bringing her up against him so that her full breasts nudged his hard pectorals, setting off sparks of delight in Willow.
Every minute of the night she’d spent with him in Tulsa was vivid in her mind, and as good as it had felt, nothing had felt as good as the meeting of her breasts with his chest did now. It was as if her body had been only half-awake before and now was fully alive and aware of every tiny nuance.
And yearning for more than tiny nuances.
Yearning so much that she grew brave enough to pull Tyler’s shirt from his waistband so she could slip her own hands underneath to press her palms against his back.
An expanse so incredible it helped distract her as she relearned the satin-over-steel textures, as she rode the rise and fall of muscles and tendons, as she indulged in the hot sweetness of his bare skin.
He abandoned her mouth then, placing teasing kisses on her jawbone, down the side of her neck, even on her shoulder when he’d eased off her blouse.
The blouse fell naturally, finally freeing her the way she’d wanted to be free all evening, with only the tight tank top separating them.
Then Tyler reclaimed her mouth with his in an even more sensual, open kiss that she answered only too willingly as his hands traveled from her back to her shoulders and down her arms, pulling her even closer.
Willow ached for more, for him to touch more than her arms, and her body sent that message all on its own by arching back before she even realized she was going to.
That was when Tyler moved a hand to the side of her breast, hesitating, as if to give her the chance to stop him before he actually took the entire orb into his palm.
But stopping him was not on Willow’s mind. In fact, every inch of her was crying out for him not to be so cautious, so considerate, to get on with it before she went out of her mind with craving his touch.
Then he did get on with it. His hand eased forward, finally engulfing one of those oh-so-sensitive orbs.
Willow couldn’t help the moan that rumbled from her throat. She couldn’t help the even greater arch of her spine. She couldn’t help digging her fingers slightly into his back as a pleasure sharp enough to make her gasp rippled through her.
He didn’t waste much more time before he found his way underneath the tank top, and that only increased everything tenfold, making her writhe slightly as that powerful palm closed over her knotted nipple. As he kneaded her breast. As he teased it with fingers that explored her flesh, that traced around that hardened crest, that gently pinched and tugged and teased her until other parts of her body began to come to life, too. Parts much lower and much more secret. Parts that suddenly screamed for the attention of those wonderfully adept hands. Parts that screamed for more than that, for that glorious portion of him that had taken her to heights she’d never even known existed only months before.
But something about that intense desire for him to fill the aching need between her legs reminded her of the consequences of that other time when she’d lost control so completely with him. It reminded her that she had set a goal for herself, a goal of letting him get to know the real Willow.
And the real Willow wouldn’t have gone even as far as she already had, let alone any further.
“We should stop,” she breathed when reason prevailed and she managed to tear herself from his kiss.
Her request lacked conviction, but it was all Tyler needed to hear to slide his hand out from under her top and do exactly as she’d asked.
“Was I out of line?” he asked in a voice raspy enough to let her know he’d been wanting more, too.
“No,” she said through the haze of desire that was still coursing through her and labeling her a traitor to her own body. Then, in a firmer, more convincing tone, she added, “No! It’s just that I don’t want to move too fast.” This time, anyway, even though it was a little late for that policy to be put into effect.
“You’re probably right,” he said, agreeing without sounding convinced.
He stood then, taking a breath so deep she saw the rise and fall of his chest as he did. Then he held out his hand and said, “Come on, walk me to the door.”
Willow complied, grateful that he was taking her abrupt ending so amiably. And grateful, too, that he kept hold of her hand the whole way through the kitchen.
“I understand your first order from the Feed and Grain will be ready for delivery tomorrow,” she said as they reached the door, just to make conversation and buy herself a few more precious moments with him.
“Do you do the deliveries in person?” he asked with a mischievous smile and a voice full of insinuation.
“Not since I was seventeen.”
“You don’t even go along to supervise now and then?”
“Well, there are always exceptions,” she lied.
“You could come out to supervise and I could bring you back into town later, say, for dinner and maybe ice cream afterward.”
“Oh, well, if there’ll be ice cream…” she joked, as if that were the selling point when, in fact, the only selling point she needed was Tyler himself.
“So you’ll come?”
“You’ll have to be the last delivery of the day,” she warned.
“I’m fine with that,” he assured her, looking deep into her eyes.
“Then I guess I’ll be there,” Willow said, her voice suddenly soft and breathy.
Tyler kissed her again then, a tender kiss that was still so sexy it made her sparkle inside. But he left it at that one last kiss, squeezed her hand and then let himself out and closed the screen between them before he said, “Good night.”
“See you tomorrow.”
He only nodded in response, but she thought he took a last glance at her chest while he was at it.
It delighted her no end to think of sending him away longing for her, and she couldn’t suppress the smile on her face as she watched him go down the stairs.
But when she found herself in bed shortly afterward the tables were turned.
Because as she lay there in the dark, she remembered all too well what it had felt like to have his hands on her bare, ultrasensitive breasts.
And she discovered that she had a potent longing of her own to wrestle with.
A longing for Tyler to be lying there with her.
Kissing her again.
Touching her again.
Making love to her again.
Just the way he had in Tulsa…
Chapter Eight
Mondays were always hectic at the store, and to make matters worse, Carl was grumpy. It was Willow’s fault. First thing in the morning she’d asked him if he would do the delivery to Tyler after closing. Carl was not happy to make any delivery himself, and he certainly wasn’t thrilled to do one that late in the day. But Willow couldn’t get away before closing time, and she didn’t want to entrust the delivery truck to their high school driver overnight. So that left Carl, who agreed to do it, but not without grumbling.
Any other time Willow would have lost patience with it. But as it was, she was too glad that Tyler wanted to see her to care, so she just endured the grumbling.
When Carl began to load the truck at six she went upstairs to change. She was in a hurry, but still managed a quick shower before she put on the outfit she’d decided on earlier, when she’d been struggling to get down a piece of dry toast to help the morning sickness.
She didn’t want to look as if she’d done anything but come from work, so she opted for her favorite blue jeans and the new white wrap shirt that was held together by one simple tie at the right side of her waist. She thought the blouse softened and feminized the blue jeans, but still didn’t make it seem as if she’d taken any special pains just to make a feed delivery.
She did put on blush and mascara, though, and she twisted her hair into a roll at her crown, held there with the chopsticks, while spiky ends stuck out every which way.
When she judged herself presentable, she slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and rushed out of her bedroom.
But she got only as far as the living room before she stopped short.
Bram was sitting on her sofa.
“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, startled.
Bram had his feet on her coffee table, his arms stretched along the top of the back cushion, and the expression on his face was no happier than Carl’s had been through the last eight hours.
“Carl said you were up here getting ready to deliver feed with him,” Bram said, as if he were accusing her of a crime.
Willow had expected at least one of her brothers to show up today to grill her over Tyler and his presence at the barbecue the previous evening. When that hadn’t happened she’d hoped they might have just accepted it and opted to leave her alone about it.
She should have known better.
“Carl must be about loaded up by now,” she said, hinting that she didn’t want this to take long.
But Bram ignored the hint. He just stared at her and said, “So are you dating this Chadwick guy?”
Willow felt the tension build in her, but she tried to tamp it down. She also made a quick decision not to deny too much. After all, she’d wanted the ice broken between her brothers and Tyler, she’d wanted to lay some groundwork, and to pretend she and Tyler were merely friends now would not aid that cause.
With that in mind, she said, “I’ve seen him a couple of times and I’m getting to know him a little.” Okay, so that wasn’t an outright admission that they were dating, but it was still something.
It just didn’t fool her brother.
“Sounds like dating to me.”
So much for soft-pedaling.
Still, Willow returned Bram’s stare without backing down.
“You like this guy?” her brother asked, as if he couldn’t believe it.
Again Willow held her ground. “He’s nice. He’s interesting. He’s fun to be with. He’s—”
“You like him.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, Bram.”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On a lot of things,” her brother said vaguely. But apparently he didn’t want to expound on it, because then he said, “Carl says that he has to work late just so he can deliver you to this guy along with the feed order.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have had so much patience with Carl’s attitude.
“Carl doesn’t have any business complaining to you. I asked him to do this, I didn’t order him to, and he agreed. Plus I’m paying him double time.”
“To deliver you to Chadwick.”
“To deliver Tyler’s order to him. We’ve made after-hours deliveries before. It just so happens that I’m going along because I have dinner plans with Tyler and this kills two birds with one stone. It’s no big deal.”
“I don’t know about this, Will,” her brother said with a solemn shake of his head. And then, as if he just couldn’t resist telling her what was wrong with liking Tyler, after all, he said, “The guy just moved to town. We don’t know him or anything about him. He could have wives and kids in six other states.”
“He doesn’t.”
“How can you be sure? Because he told you he doesn’t?”
“He doesn’t.”
“We just don’t want to see you get in over your head with somebody and get hurt.”
Too late for the getting-in-over-her-head part. Maybe for the getting-hurt part, too, if things didn’t pan out.
But she didn’t say that.
She said, “We being you and Ashe and Logan and Jared.”
“Who else?”
Willow took a deep breath, then sighed, making an effort to hold on to her temper. “Look, I know you guys mean well. I know you care about me and you think you need to look out for me and protect me, but I’m going to say this one more time—I’m a big girl, Bram. I can take care of myself. You and Ashe and Jared and Logan have to stop. If I need your help, I’ll let you know. I’ll scream it from the rooftop. But unless I do that, please, please, please stop this big brother routine you guys have always done. Especially with other guys. Or I’m liable to end up your poor, lonely, pitiful spinster sister who comes to holiday dinners wearing Fruit Loop jewelry.”
That made him smile in spite of himself. “Fruit Loop jewelry?”
“That part got through to you, but you don’t care about the poor, lonely, pitiful spinster part?”
“Of course I care about it. But that’s not going to be you.”
“How isn’t it going to be me if you and Jared and Ashe and Logan scare off any guy who looks twice at me the way you’ve always done? I’m not a kid anymore, Bram. I’m a full-grown woman and I brought a perfectly nice man to a barbecue yesterday and my brothers treated him like he had a contagious disease he was about to infect me with. You have someone—you have Jenna. Jared has Kerry. Before long Ashe and Logan will have women in their lives. But what will I have if my brothers keep standing as a barrier between me and anyone of the opposite sex?”
Bram’s expression had wrinkled up into a frown again, this one darker than the last one. “Have you been talking to Jenna about this?”
“Why? Because she said the same thing? No, I haven’t been talking to Jenna about this. I don’t have to talk to anyone about this to feel the way I do. I love you guys, but sometimes…sometimes you smother me.”
For a long moment Bram stared at her with that familiar scowl, and she wasn’t too sure she hadn’t said too much. That she hadn’t hurt his feelings or made him mad.
But then he took a deep breath of his own and exhaled slowly. “So you want me—us—to butt out, is that it?”
“Butt out and be nice to people of the male persuasion who I might happen to bring around or be with when you meet me on the street. Is that asking so much?”
“Yes,” he said frankly. But then he added, “I guess we could try, though. A little. Except if we see you doing something we know is stupid. Then we’ll have to butt in.”
Too late for that, too. She’d already done the most stupid thing she could have done.
But she didn’t say that, either.
Instead she said, “All I’m asking at the moment is that you be polite and friendly to Tyler. I’m not doing anything stupid with him right now, I’m just getting to know him and letting him get to know me. No big deal.”
Bram didn’t look convinced.
But he did finally pull his feet off the coffee table and stand.
“You’re a big deal to us,” he said seriously.
“Well, I don’t want to be.”
“And we’re never going to stop looking out for you. But maybe we could back off some. Give you a little space with this guy, if that’s what you really want.”
“That’s what I really want.”
“But we’ll still be watching.”
Willow rolled her eyes and tried to be happy for even a small victory. “Of course you will be.”
Tyler was waiting for Willow and the delivery when they arrived at his ranch. He was dressed in work clothes that he’d obviously been in since morning, because his jeans and his chambray shirt were soiled, and his face was shadowed with a full day’s growth of beard.
The fact that he looked good to her in spite of it all let Willow know she was in trouble with this man. Well, more trouble than being pregnant by him.
But she tried not to think about the fact that even with him sweaty and dust-covered and bewhiskered, she could still have jumped his bones without a qualm.
Don’t move too fast, she told herself, recalling her own comment to him the night before, when she’d stopped him before they’d actually made love.
She knew it was good advice and that she needed to follow it. But one look at him was enough to do her in, and watching him hoist feed sacks out of the back of the truck alongside Carl, watching his impressive muscles tensing under the weight, watching his tight derriere as he bent over to pile the sacks inside the big red barn was enough to weaken her knees and her will at once.
“She used to help with this,” Carl pointed out crankily as they worked, hinting for her to lend a hand the way she would have several months earlier.
But Tyler said, “I wouldn’t let her even if she wanted to,” and that just left Carl to more grumbling.
Grumbling that continued right up until they were finished and Carl got back behind the wheel to drive off without so much as a goodbye to either of them.
But if Tyler noticed, he didn’t seem to care. He removed his work gloves and then his cowboy hat, wiping dampness from his brow with the back of his arm and settling his gaze on Willow as if for the first time.
“Hi,” he said in a tone that held an intimacy she was beginning to believe he reserved for her alone.
“Hi,” she answered the same way.
“Sorry about this,” he apologized, nodding down at himself to let her know he was referring to the way he looked. “I didn’t want to clean up and then get all dusty from the feed sacks again so I figured I’d have to wait to shower. Do you mind?”
“No,” she answered, not telling him she actually liked him all rugged and rustic and masculine.
“I promise I won’t take long. And I made you fresh squeezed lemonade for the wait.”
“Sounds good.”
Tyler motioned toward the house, and that was where they headed. He held the back door open for her when they reached it, following her up the three steps into the mud room, where he hung his hat on a hook just inside the door. Then he washed his hands in the laundry basin and they went into the kitchen.
He filled two glasses with ice and lemonade from a pitcher in the refrigerator, handing her one and then nearly guzzling his before he said, “Make yourself at home. Turn on the television or the radio if you want. Or sit on the porch swing—it’s shaded at this time of day and usually catches a breeze. Or whatever you feel like doing. I’ll be back before you can miss me.”
She doubted that, but she said, “Don’t rush. I’ll be fine.”
She watched him go, and wondered at herself for thinking he even looked great with hat-hair.
But then he was gone and she was left to her own devices.
Sitting on the porch swing had been the most appealing of his suggestions, so Willow headed for the front of the house.
But halfway through the living room the fireplace mantel caught her eye. Unlike when she’d been there previously, it was no longer bare, but was now lined with framed photographs. She made a detour to be nosy.
There were pictures of a couple on their wedding day, and from the dated look of it and the resemblance between Tyler and both the bride and the groom, Willow had no doubt it was a portrait of his parents.
There were a few other family photographs of vacations and horseplay, of graduations and other school events. One snapshot was obviously taken at Christmas, of Tyler and his brother in footed pajamas.
There were also pictures that chronicled Tyler’s and his brother’s careers in rodeo.
It was easy to tell Brick was Tyler’s brother because they looked so much alike, too. But Willow thought Tyler was the more handsome. There were shots of them riding bucking broncos and roping calves. There were photos of them celebrating victories with a wave of a hat in the air, with grins from ear to ear, with belt buckles held as trophies.
Tyler had loved what he’d done for a living before coming to Black Arrow. Before meeting her in Tulsa and taking that last ride. If he hadn’t already told her that she would only have had to look at those photographs to know.
And yet he seemed to have accepted the ending of it all with aplomb. With grace and good humor.
She thought that said a lot about him. About the kind of man he was. A lot that she liked.
And she wondered whether, if and when she told him about the baby she was carrying, he would react the same way. If, once the shock had passed, he would accept it and adapt. Embrace it the way he appeared to have embraced his new life here.
She hoped so.
But that was really all she could do—hope. Because while somewhere in his thinking he had to have always known his rodeo days would come to an end, he wasn’t likely to have planned for a woman he didn’t even remember having met announcing she was pregnant with his child.
And there was no way to gauge how anyone would react to that.
Fear caused Willow to press a protective hand to her stomach, as if to shield her unborn baby from any negative response. And she couldn’t help wondering if she would ever find the courage to actually tell Tyler at all.
“Hey, are you okay?”
Willow hadn’t heard Tyler come down the stairs and the sound of his voice startled her.
“Great, now I’ve scared you, too. I’m sorry,” he added, coming into the living room.
“It’s okay.” She quickly pulled her hand from her middle and put it in her pocket.
“Did my lemonade make you sick?”
“No, why?”
“You were holding your stomach.”
“I’m fine. I was just snooping and you caught me at it,” she said, as if that explained the hand pressed to her middle.
“It’s not snooping to look at pictures that are out on display.”
“They’re nice,” she said, to change the subject.
“Thanks.”
“But you look so happy in the rodeo ones I’m surprised you’ve adjusted so well to not being able to do it anymore.”
“Who says I’m well adjusted?” he joked.
“You’re not pouting.”
He laughed. “I’d get my rear end kicked if I was. Brick would never let me get away with that.”
“And you’re always in a good mood.”
“Maybe it’s the company I’m keepin’,” he answered with a half smile that dimpled his cheek.
She wanted to accept the compliment, but her pleasure in it was dampened when she began to wonder one more thing. She began to wonder for the first time if being with her would help his attitude so much if he knew the truth about her. If he knew that they’d met before, spent the night together, and she was leaving him in the dark about it, leaving his memory blank when she could fill it in.
She was afraid he wouldn’t be.
And worse yet, she was afraid that now, since she’d kept the truth from him, he might resent it when he realized it. When he realized that those good feelings she was helping him to have, those feelings she thought she might be arousing in him, were caused by someone who was essentially lying to him. Lying to him through omission if nothing else.
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You don’t have a drop of color in your cheeks. Maybe you should sit down,” he stated, taking a closer look at her.
“I think I just need food,” she said with forced brightness.
But apparently he bought it, because he just said, “Then we’d better get you some.”
Tyler took her glass and set it on a nearby table before he ushered her out the front door to his waiting truck.
But after he’d handed her up into the passenger side, closed the door and was headed around the front end, Willow had trouble shaking the anxious, foreboding sense she had.
Because the bottom line was that she’d deceived him the night they’d met, and she was deceiving him again now.
Which was hardly a good basis on which to begin a relationship.
And even noticing how wonderful Tyler looked all cleaned up and dressed in jeans and a pale-blue Western shirt didn’t help chase away her concerns about the course she’d embarked on with him.
And the very real possibility that it might all blow up in her face.
Dinner did nothing to calm Willow’s nerves.
Tyler took her to a local steak house that was packed to the brim, and no sooner had they walked in the door than she heard her name called.
She scanned the crowded restaurant and finally caught sight of who it was trying to get her attention.
And of all the people in Black Arrow who it could have been, she was not happy to find it was her brother Bram.
He and Jenna were sitting in the center of the place, and Willow and Tyler had no choice but to go over and say hello.
Which was when Bram invited them to join him and Jenna rather than waiting for another table to open up.
Willow and Tyler didn’t have much choice, so they took the two empty seats at the table and began what was essentially a grilling of Tyler by Bram.
It left Willow wishing her brother would have done more of what he’d done the previous evening, when all of her brothers had spent more time glaring at Tyler than talking to him. As it was, the meal couldn’t end soon enough for her.
“I think the ice cream is going to have to be my treat to make up for that,” she said when they finally got away from Bram the Interrogator and were back in Tyler’s truck, headed away from the restaurant. “I didn’t know my brother would be there tonight. I saw him just before I came to your place, but he didn’t say anything about going out for dinner.”
“It’s okay,” Tyler assured her, still in good humor and not nearly as ruffled as Willow was. “And the ice cream idea was mine, so I’m still buying. But what do you say we just get a pint to go and hide out at your apartment to eat it?”
“So we don’t risk running into any more of my brothers and having to spend the rest of our evening with them? Good idea.”
Tyler didn’t confirm or deny her assumption, he just drove to the local ice cream parlor, where they decided on chocolate mousse ice cream with swirls of peanut butter through it, and counted themselves lucky to have run into only three people Willow knew, none of them her brothers.
The ice cream was melting badly when they finally reached the Feed and Grain again, and since church choir practice had left no parking spots nearby, Tyler let Willow off right at the foot of the steps to her apartment, while he went in search of an opening farther away.
Willow was just glad to be back without any further encounters with her brothers, and climbed the stairs in a hurry to get her cold confection to the freezer.
She fumbled with her keys, keeping the dripping container away from her as she did.
Then she stepped into her kitchen.
It was dark by then and she reached for the light switch.
But before she could flip it on, a beefy arm came around her neck from behind, clamping back on her windpipe and yanking her up against an unyielding body.
The ice cream container hit the floor as she grasped the arm at her throat with both hands. But the man was stronger than she was, and even clawing at his arm to pull it away didn’t faze him.
“Just give me the documents and you won’t get hurt.”
His hot breath smelled of onions and cigarettes, and her stomach lurched.
Willow didn’t understand. Not what was going on. Not what he was saying. Nothing. She only struggled to breathe while her own pulse pounded like a jungle drum in her ears.
“I don’t know—” she barely managed to gasp.
“The inheritance. I heard you found the papers for it. I want them. Now.”
His voice was low and threatening. His arm was still tight across her throat. And Willow’s legs felt as if they might buckle at any moment.
“—don’t have them—”
The arm pressed harder, squeezing off her airway even more. “Don’t be stupid. Just tell me where they are.”
Tiny flickers of light flashed before her eyes and she thought she was going to pass out.
“—locked away…bank—”
There was pressure in her head. Ringing in her ears. Pain behind her eyes.
“Please…” she said as strongly as she could. “I can’t breathe.”
Then all at once something exploded behind her with a jolt that knocked her forward, free of the vice-like arm.
Willow gasped for breath, belatedly realizing that the man hadn’t just released her, that there was more going on.
She turned and found Tyler pinning the man to her kitchen floor, one knee in the middle of his back, one hand wrenching up on the arm that had been around her neck, his other hand pressing the man’s face into her linoleum.
“Are you all right?” Tyler demanded of her, his tone intense.
“I think so,” she said in a feeble, raspy voice.
“Then get your brother over here before I make this guy sorry he was ever born.”
The man was Kenny Randolph. Willow recognized him from the night she’d seen Bram talking to him after the carnival.
Once she’d called her brother, Tyler insisted she wait for Bram outside, where she was safe, while he kept Randolph restrained in her kitchen.
Bram and two of his deputies arrived fifteen minutes after her call. As the deputies went up to her apartment, Bram stayed with Willow, making sure she was all right and then asking what had happened.
Willow kept her arms wrapped around herself the whole time she gave her statement. It was the only way she could keep her hands from shaking, and she didn’t want her brother to see that they were.
Then the deputies brought Randolph out, followed close behind by Tyler, and as Bram helped to put Randolph in one of the patrol cars, Tyler joined Willow.
Without a word he enveloped her in his strong arms and pressed her head to his chest, apparently not caring what his actions might set off in her brother.
And at that moment Willow didn’t care, either.
She just let herself drink in the comfort of Tyler’s big, solid body, because that hug was exactly what she needed.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly, his breath a tiny gust in her hair.
“Thanks to you.”
“I came upstairs and couldn’t figure out why you hadn’t turned on a light. Then, just as I got to the screen door, I saw you. You and that son of a…that guy.”
“It’s a good thing we didn’t go in together,” she said, her cheek still pressed to his pectorals.
“Your place is pretty torn up. He must have been ransacking it for a while before we got there,” Tyler said, as if to warn her before she saw the place lighted.
“He was looking for something—documents I found the other day, which my grandmother left. We’ve inherited a trust fund and some sort of property in Washington, D.C., and he wanted the papers to prove it. He wanted me to hand them over to him. But I didn’t have them to give him. Bram took them to put in the safe at the bank.”
“Word leaked that you’d found the deed, but not that the papers were out of your hands, which was just what I was afraid of.”
It was Bram’s voice filling in that detail. He was close enough to have heard them talking, even though Willow hadn’t known her brother had rejoined them.
She didn’t want to leave Tyler’s arms, but she raised her head from his chest anyway and moved away from him.
And when she did she found her brother with a dark scowl on his face, whether because of the events of the evening or because of Tyler, she couldn’t be sure.
“That’s why I wanted you to come to my place to stay,” Bram added.
“At least you have him in custody now,” Willow reasoned. “Maybe you’ll be able to get to the bottom of everything else.”
Bram still didn’t look happy.
But even so he angled his gaze toward Tyler and said, “Thanks for doing what you did.”
Tyler waved it off as if he hadn’t done anything. “I’m just glad I was here.”
It didn’t seem as if Bram wanted to go quite that far. Instead he looked at Willow again and said, “You’d better come home with me. Your place is a wreck.”
Willow shook her head, thinking as she had when her brother had wanted her to stay with him before that her morning sickness would be a dead giveaway if she did. “The real danger is over. I’ll be fine here. But how did Randolph get in?”
“Through the back door to the store. Looks like he jimmied open the lock with a crowbar. One of my men boarded it up. We’ll have to get it fixed in the morning. But that’s another reason not to stay here tonight.”
Willow still wouldn’t agree, and with Kenny Randolph and both deputies waiting for him, Bram couldn’t argue for long. He finally had to concede.
“I’ll send a patrol car by here every twenty minutes all night long,” he said then. “But if you get nervous, just call and I’ll come get you.”
“I will,” she assured him, without much conviction.
Bram thanked Tyler again and left, but not without a backward glance at the two of them, as if he wasn’t any more pleased to be leaving Willow alone with Tyler than to be leaving her alone at all.
Once they had watched Bram and the deputies drive off, Tyler said, “Come on. I’ll help you clean up.”
Willow knew she should decline the offer. Tyler had done enough. But since the last thing she wanted was to go up to that apartment by herself, she said a simple, “Thanks,” of her own and led the way back up the stairs.
She was surprised to find herself reluctant to go in when she got to the landing, though. Suddenly she had a flash of what had happened, of stepping through the door and being grabbed from behind.
Maybe her fear showed on her face, because as she stood there staring at the door rather than going through it, Tyler took her hand and said, “It’s okay now, but let’s go in together, anyway.” And then he opened the screen and went in first.
In the commotion, Willow hadn’t realized just what a mess her apartment was. But that initial glance around shocked her.
The ice cream had opened when she’d dropped it, splattering everywhere and then melting into a puddle. Cupboard doors were open and shelves spilled their contents. Drawers were pulled completely out of their slots. Her pantry looked as if it had suffered an avalanche.
And apparently that was only the beginning, because when she looked out into the living room she could see furniture upturned, pillows and cushions everywhere, tables tossed aside, lamps on their sides on the floor, even one curtain rod pulled from the wall and left hanging at half-mast.
Again Tyler must have seen how overwhelmed she was, because he squeezed her hand and said, “It looks worse than it is. We’ll get it all put back together in no time.”
Then he let go of her, high-stepped over the debris in the kitchen and went into the living room to prove it by setting to work righting her sofa and replacing the cushions.
It still took Willow a moment to gather her wits, but when she finally did she started on the ice cream mess. When that was cleaned up she went on to replacing drawers and what was in them.
She moved as if through a haze, trying not to think about the stranger who had been in her apartment, who had gone through her things, who had terrified her. And before too long she and Tyler managed to do exactly what he’d promised—they’d put the place back together.
The only problem was that once that was finished Willow was left with the prospect of Tyler leaving. Of really being alone there.
And she realized that her brother had been right, it wasn’t a good thing.
“I don’t have any ice cream to offer, but would you like a glass of iced tea?” she said then, feebly looking for any excuse to get Tyler to stay a little longer.
“No, that’s okay. I’m not thirsty. But I am worrying about leaving you tonight.”
Willow laughed a small, uncertain laugh. “I’m worrying a little about that myself.”
“Why don’t I stay then? On the couch,” he was quick to add. “I know I’d feel a lot better.”
So would she. And while she knew she should decline that offer, too, she thought that under the unusual circumstances of the evening, maybe just this once she could admit to her own temporary weakness and give in to what would make her feel better, as well.
“Would you hate that a lot?” she asked with a small smile.
“Sleeping on your couch? I’ve slept in worse places. And to tell you the truth, I don’t see myself resting if I’m not here tonight.”
“Then I’m going to take you up on it,” she confessed.
“Good.”
His smile showed his relief, and Willow was sure he had no ulterior motives.
“I even think I have a pair of Logan’s pajama bottoms. He spent a few nights here when his place was being painted, and left them,” she said, going to the hall closet for those and for bedding to make up the sofa.
She felt relieved, too, to know Tyler would be there. It was just that the idea of it, of Tyler being right outside her bedroom door all night long, made her feel other things, too. Especially when she began to think about him taking off his clothes.
About him being in nothing but the pajama bottoms.
Right outside her bedroom door.
All night long.
Then something hot and sparkling kicked up in the pit of her stomach to go with the relief.
“You can change in the bathroom,” she told him as she finished with the couch, trying to keep her mind off the image of him undressing.
Tyler took the pajama bottoms into the other room, and as he did Willow put some effort into getting a grip on herself.
The best thing to do, she decided, was to get ready for bed as if this were no big deal, say a fast good-night and get to sleep as quickly as possible.
So, while Tyler was in the bathroom, she went into her bedroom.
Oversize T-shirts were what she ordinarily slept in. Plain, sexless T-shirts. She didn’t own anything else. So that was what she yanked on over her head.
Then she brushed her hair to free it of the tangles it had gathered in her tussle with Kenny Randolph, and added a short terry-cloth bathrobe she cinched at the waist—also plain and completely unsexy.
No chance of Tyler thinking she wanted to seduce him, she concluded after a glance in the mirror.
And that was good, because she didn’t want to seduce him.
Although she was having trouble not thinking about how blissful it had been when he’d joined her outside earlier tonight and held her in his arms. Or how nice it would be to have him do it again…
“Are you decent?” she called through the closed bedroom door.
“Decent,” he confirmed from the living room.
Willow went out there, bracing herself for that first sight of him.
But even preparation didn’t help.
Because there he was, in only the baggy pajama bottoms, his upper half bare. And that flat stomach, that hard-muscled chest, those broad shoulders were too glorious a sight not to admire. Not to want to reach out and touch.
“Are you all set out here?” she asked in a voice left weak from that one glimpse of him.
“I think so,” he answered.
She thought he was being very careful not to look below her chin.
“I’m usually up pretty early, so I can wake you anytime you want.”
“Whenever you get up is fine. I don’t have a time clock to punch.”
“Okay. Well. I should probably say good-night.”
Tyler agreed with a tilt of his chin. But he didn’t merely stand there. He took her hand much as he had earlier and said, “I’ll walk you to your door.”
Willow laughed at that. “You’d better. Look what happens when you don’t. Bad guys pop out at me from the shadows.”
He ushered her to the bedroom door, facing her when they got there, looking down into her eyes.
“Thanks for a nice night,” he joked, as if this were a normal ending to a normal evening.
“Sure,” she joked back.
“It’s the most excitement I’ve had since I quit rodeoing.”
“That was my plan.”
He grinned on only the dimpled side. “So this was all just for my entertainment?”
“It was.”
“I always like a girl full of surprises.”
“Oh, I hope so,” she heard herself say before she realized she was going to.
But in the spirit of their teasing banter Tyler didn’t seem to have any inclination how much she meant that.
He just went on looking into her eyes, drawing her into the emerald-green depths of his and warming her to her toes.
Then he leaned forward and kissed her. Chastely. With their bodies still far apart, only their lips meeting.
It was sweet that he was being so conscientious, so considerate. But Willow wanted more. She needed more.
It was as if the scare of the earlier hours had left her hovering somewhere inside herself, and Tyler alone could bring her out again, bring her to life. If only he would go back to treating her like a flesh and blood woman.
Almost on their own her hands went to his neck. His strong, thick neck. Pulling him slightly nearer and deepening the kiss herself.
Deepening it so much that Tyler got the message and wrapped his arms around her as if something inside him had finally been unleashed, too, and he couldn’t refrain from enfolding her in that embrace, from pulling her closer still so that she was pressed against him the way she wanted to be.
But it was only a moment before he stopped kissing her so he could look into her face once more, into her eyes, as if to be sure he was reading her signals right.
His question showed only in the lifting of his eyebrows, but she knew what he was thinking. That she’d stopped things between them the night before because she didn’t want them to move too fast. Yet here they were, almost instantly picking up where they’d left off, with passion ready to erupt all over again.
She thought about the wisdom of letting this go further as she looked back up at his amazingly handsome face, as she ran her fingertips along his cheek and dipped one into that crease that made it so distinctive.
And while she knew she’d kept that passion from finding completion the previous night because she’d thought that the real Willow wouldn’t go as far as making love with Tyler, she now thought that when she was with him the real Willow was different than she’d ever been before. That she was part old Willow and part Wyla. And this new Willow she’d become wanted too badly to make love with him to deny herself.
So all she did was smile. A small smile that answered that questioning arch of his eyebrows. That let him know that tonight she wouldn’t stop anything.
“You’re sure?” he asked anyway.
She nodded.
And that was all the go-ahead he needed.
He kissed her again, but this time it was an eager kiss as lips relaxed and parted. One kiss turned into two, into three, awakening a hunger in Willow that seemed to have been waiting just below the surface since that night in Tulsa all those weeks ago. A hunger that had been reawakened the previous evening and was now full and intense.
She let her hands go from Tyler’s neck to his back, losing herself in the feel of power kept in check. In the feel of that strong back bending to her will.
He deserted her mouth to kiss her neck, and his breath against her skin was warm and soft before he reclaimed her mouth with lips parted farther still. He sent his tongue to fence with hers, and she met his every thrust with a gleeful parry of her own.
She loved the smell of him. The clean scent of his skin and his aftershave mingling.
She loved the feel of his skin. Silk over steel.
She loved the feel of his big hands on her, too. Holding her. Rubbing her back. Kneading it the way she longed for him to knead her oh-so-engorged breasts. Caressing it in a way that soothed, that adored, that aroused.
He looped his arm under hers and took her shoulder in his hand from behind, using his biceps to raise her arm. The sleeves of her T-shirt and robe fell away. And then somehow he had her robe untied and he slipped it off, leaving it to fall at her feet on the hall floor.
He held her hand in his and took her into the bedroom, where the lamp on the nightstand lent a faint, milky glow.
Willow wished she were wearing something more enticing than her plain white T-shirt, and in the hopes of adding even just a hint of allure, she moved to turn off the light.
But Tyler stopped her, pulling her back with him onto the bed.
“I want to see you.”
As with times before, it was a small thing. But knowing he couldn’t care less about what she was wearing, that he found her enticing and alluring all on her own, did wonders for Willow. She clamped her arms around his neck and smiled up at him, knowing all the more that she wanted him.
He kissed her again then. As softly, as tenderly as the first time, and yet with a new depth that made everything inside her stand up and take notice.
Everything inside her and her nipples, too, as they hardened into tight kernels of yearning, crying out for his attention.
But from that moment on Tyler anticipated her every want, her every need. No sooner was she struck by the urge to have his hand on her breast than Tyler did exactly that—first on the outside of her T-shirt and then underneath it, gifting her with the glory of his naked touch.
No sooner did she crave the freedom of being without any barriers between them than he slipped her T-shirt off, looking down at her as if she were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen as he shucked the pajama bottoms and allowed her the view of him in all his tumescent magnificence.
Magnificence that made her glad the light was on, that made her lose all inhibitions, all self-consciousness when she realized how much of an effect she was having on him. When she began to revel in the sight of chiseled muscles, taut tendons and pure masculine perfection.
Their kisses grew more than hungry. They grew urgent and openmouthed as his hands turned her breasts into mounds of pleasure so intense it was nearly too much to bear.
Then his mouth began a purposeful descent. To kiss her chin. To kiss the hollow of her throat. To flick the very tip of his tongue against the sharp ridge of her collarbone. To touch it again to the spot between her breasts before he finally reached one straining orb.
He took it into the hot moist cove of his mouth, teasing her nipple. Circling it. Flicking at it. Teasing and tormenting until he made her spine arch with delight. With yearning. With the craving for even more.
Willow’s hands had been traveling, too. Exploring his carved and cut back, his Herculean shoulders, his exceptional chest, even his taut derriere. But now, as desire coursed through her, a new brazenness took hold and she reached for that long, hard staff that proved how much he wanted her.
This time it was Tyler whose spine arched, who gave a ragged moan that let her know she wasn’t the only one lost in the sensations of the flesh, in the pleasure.
Pleasure he offered her more of when his hand trailed south, too. When he reached between her legs to find the core of her and drive her to a new frenzy until she thought she might explode if she didn’t have him inside her.
And that, too, Tyler seemed to know.
He deserted her for just a moment then, returning sheathed to lie on his back and pull her on top of him, guiding her hips, slipping fully into that waiting home that seemed fashioned for him alone.
Then he eased her into a sitting position.
“Let me see you,” he said again, his voice deep and raspy.
His hands on her hips once more helped her, raising her up and down. Slowly. Rhythmically. Showing her how to ride before increasing the speed, the energy, the force. Until their bodies moved in unison, melded into one, straining, striving for the same thing. For that culmination that felt to Willow like a blown-glass bubble bursting open to rain glittering gold all through her, suspending them both in that instant of exquisite bliss that snatched her breath and his, that stopped the world from turning and time from passing until all that glittering gold began to settle like tiny sparkling stars drifting to earth.
And when they were both spent, Tyler pulled her down to him, holding her, pressing her head to his chest where she could hear his heart pounding in unison with hers.
They stayed that way for a long while. Speaking only with bodies that met and meshed as if one began where the other ended.
Then Tyler reached to turn off the bedside lamp and they rolled together to their sides, arms and legs entwined, Willow’s forehead against his chest, his chin atop her head.
And that was how they remained as exhaustion began to weigh them down. As they both drifted to sleep.
With their baby snuggled safely, secretly, between them.
And Willow knowing that she truly wasn’t the same person she’d been before she met Tyler that night in Tulsa.
Chapter Nine
In the heat of the moment the night before, Willow had forgotten about the morning sickness. But like clockwork, at 5:00 a.m. it hit. And waking up in Tyler’s arms didn’t keep it at bay.
The best she could do was ease herself away from him and out of the bed without waking him, and then run like crazy for the bathroom.
Ordinarily, once the first wave passed she went back to bed and tried to get a little more sleep. But she was afraid she’d disturb Tyler if she did, so she picked up her bathrobe from the hall floor, put it on and curled up in the wing chair near the living room window to watch the sunrise.
And to think about what she was going to do now.
Making love with Tyler again was a big step. It changed things. It somehow made not telling him about Tulsa seem less acceptable.
Besides, if her goal had been to get him to like her for who she really was, that seemed to have been accomplished. After all, he liked her well enough to ask to see her repeatedly. He liked her enough to kiss her. To do more than kiss her. He liked her enough to fight off Kenny Randolph. To help her clean the mess the other man had left. To stay the night so she’d feel safe.
He liked her enough to make love to her.
To make love to her the way he’d made love to her as Wyla.
He even seemed to like her enough to stick around after meeting her brothers.
It seemed that all of that was proof that she hadn’t merely been a one-night stand for him. That she hadn’t been someone he’d been attracted to because of a supershort slinky dress, a pair of spike-heeled shoes, and hair and makeup that had transformed her into something she wasn’t.
And since, after getting to know each other, they’d ended up in exactly the same place they had that one night, she thought that must surely mean that one night hadn’t merely been a fluke.
Besides, now that she knew Tyler better, that really did seem unlikely. After all, he was a stand-up guy. He was kind and compassionate and considerate and caring, on top of being fun to be with and interesting and brave enough not to be cowed by her brothers or an intruder.
That night they’d been together in Tulsa might have been purely a night of wild abandon, of passion. Of potent physical attraction. But now it seemed as if there was more between them.
At least there was more on Willow’s side.
She didn’t want to admit it, but she had feelings for Tyler. Feelings she refused to put a name to. Feelings she was trying hard to keep boxed up until she knew what was going to happen.
But even realizing she had to be cautious couldn’t stop her from hoping that all the time Tyler had wanted to spend with her, the attraction he seemed to have for her, were signs that there was more on his side, too. Maybe even feelings that would match her own.
Yet whether or not that was the case, she was suddenly convinced that the time had come to tell him the truth. About Tulsa. And about the consequences of that night together.
Not that it was going to be easy, and the morning’s second lurch of her stomach warned her it wasn’t a chore she was eager to perform.
But it was still something she had to do.
She’d already been carrying his baby for two months without him knowing it. She’d already pushed the envelope by not filling in his memory about Tulsa. Now there was no way out of it. She had to be honest with him. Open with him. She had to tell him. To explain it all.
And then she’d just have to keep her fingers crossed that after some inevitable shock, he would accept it. That he might even be happy about it.
That maybe they could go on from there.
Although she was afraid to think about where she actually might want to go from there.
But one thing she was pretty sure about.
If she told Tyler about Tulsa and the baby, and he turned his back on her, it was going to hurt more than anything had ever hurt before.
It was 6:30 when Tyler woke up to find himself alone in Willow’s bed.
He doubted that she’d left for work yet, and thought she was probably just letting him sleep while she showered or dressed or made breakfast.
But he started wondering if he might be able to lure her back to bed, and with that in mind, he got up, pulled on the pajama bottoms she’d lent him and went in search of her.
He was surprised at where he found her, though.
She wasn’t showering or dressing or making breakfast. She was in a chair in the living room, her feet tucked underneath her, her head against the chair’s wing back, sound asleep.
He couldn’t figure out why she would have left the bed—and him—to sleep sitting up in a chair. But it worried him a little. Maybe she’d been regretting that they’d made love.
If that were the case he wasn’t sure he wanted to face what might be recriminations without his pants on. So he decided to exchange the pajama bottoms for his jeans, making sure to be quiet so he didn’t wake her until he was ready.
Off went the pajamas, tossed over the arm of the sofa, before he reached for his jeans, which were folded neatly on the end table. Then he sat on the couch, still made up as his makeshift bed, and began to pull on his retrieved denims.
But as he did he caught sight of Willow again, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
She was sleeping so peacefully. With her mouth open just the slightest bit, as if she might be about to blow out birthday candles. Her long, dark eyelashes rested against her cheeks and the morning sunshine coming through the window dusted her skin in a pale glow.
But something about the way she looked, bathed in that early sunshine, caused what felt like a brain blip in him.
A brain blip that started to flash images through his mind.
Images of Willow.
But not Willow.
Images of her sleeping the way she was now, but not sitting up in a chair.
In a bed.
On the pillow next to him.
But not in her bed. Not on the pillows he’d just left behind.
Not here.
In a hotel room.
Willow.
But not Willow?
The same long, silky black hair framing the same face. The same high, broad cheekbones. The same satin-smooth, flawless skin. The same full, luscious lips.
Willow?
Wyla…
That was her name! Wyla! The name of the woman he’d spent that night in Tulsa with. The name of the mystery woman.
Wyla.
Willow.
It all came back to him suddenly. That night. Meeting the beautiful, raven-haired woman at the blues club.
Her friend had introduced her as Wyla. Wyla from Black Arrow. Then her friend had left them alone.
They’d hit it off. Instantly. It had been as if they’d known each other all their lives—that was how comfortable he’d felt with her.
She’d had a lot to drink.
He’d kissed her.
He’d wanted to never stop kissing her.
One thing had led to another and they’d ended up in his hotel suite. In his bed. For a wild night of love-making like nothing he’d ever experienced before.
At dawn, as the first daylight had flooded across the bed, he’d slowly come awake to find her on the pillow next to his. Still sleeping.
For a long while he’d watched her. Then he’d roused her with teasing kisses and made love to her once more. Sweet, playful love that had worn them out all over again.
But while he’d slept that second time, she’d disappeared.
She’d slipped out of bed just the way she’d slipped out of bed this morning.
But he hadn’t found her sitting up in another room. He hadn’t been able to find her anywhere in the hotel. He hadn’t been able to find her at all.
And he’d been so preoccupied with thoughts of her, with thoughts of where she might have gone, so preoccupied with looking into the crowded arena where the rodeo was being held in hopes of spotting her in the stands, that he hadn’t been concentrating the way he should have been on his ride.
So preoccupied that he’d been thrown from that horse.
Wyla…
Willow.
His memory rushed back just the way he’d believed it would if he ever found the mystery woman.
His mystery woman…
Willow.
He’d figured if he met up with the mystery woman again and one look at her didn’t bring back his memory, at least she would recognize him and tell him who she was. She would fill in that gap that he’d so badly wanted filled.
But Willow hadn’t done that.
Why the hell hadn’t she?
How could she not have?
Thoughts of luring her back to bed evaporated, and Tyler plunged his feet into his boots, feeling as if he’d been sucker-punched, and not too sure what to do about it.
He was tempted to storm out of there, to leave her in the dust, full of questions the way she’d left him that morning in Tulsa. The way she’d left him full of questions ever since, knowing everything and telling him nothing.
But tempted or not, he couldn’t leave. Not before he found out what was going on. What game she was playing. And why.
He took a deep breath, knowing he needed to get some control over himself, over his temper, before he woke her and confronted her.
But, as if his anger had infused the air in the room and sounded an alarm for her, Willow opened her eyes just then.
She blinked, looking disoriented.
Then she noticed him sitting on the sofa.
Surprise and maybe a touch of embarrassment ran across her face briefly, chased away by a soft, warm smile.
“Hi,” she said, so sweetly it was difficult to believe it was only a front for whatever it was she had up her sleeve.
Tyler couldn’t sit still. He lunged to his feet and faced her as he would have anyone who had set out to make a fool of him.
“Why didn’t you tell me from the start? The first day? At the store?”
Willow’s smile faded and her expression grew confused. But only slightly. Then she looked more panicked than anything.
“Yeah, that’s right, my memory is back. Wyla.”
She hadn’t had much color in her face before, but what little there had been drained out of it.
“Oh.” That was all she seemed able to manage by way of a comment. Then she followed it up with, “When?”
“Just now. Watching you sleep in the sun. I watched you that next morning in Tulsa, too. Before you walked out without a word and left me thinking about how I was going to find you instead of paying attention to what I was doing on the back of that bucking bronco that day.”
The stab of his words made her flinch almost imperceptibly.
She lowered her feet to the floor and sat up straight in the chair, not cowering from Tyler’s looming stance in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her apology sounding as if it was heartfelt, yet still not enough to soothe Tyler.
She must have seen that in him because she went on to explain. “I’d never in my life spent the night with someone I’d just met. I’d only ever slept with one other person, period. When I woke up later that morning and you were still sleeping, I couldn’t believe what I’d done, and my first instinct was to just get out of there so I didn’t have to face you. I was operating on pure reflex, Tyler. Please try to understand. I didn’t mean to do anything to hurt you. I was just so ashamed of myself.”
“So ashamed of yourself that when I walked into the Feed and Grain last week and you realized I didn’t remember you, you figured you’d just go on leaving me in the dark so you could pretend it never happened?”
“I couldn’t pretend it never happened,” she said under her breath.
“So what were you doing? Just playing me?”
“I wasn’t playing you.”
“Then what the hell were you doing?” he shouted.
“I was just so shaken to see you again. And then I was shocked when I figured out that you didn’t even recognize me. I mean, I knew I looked different. That night in Tulsa my friend Becky had fixed me up like I’d never been fixed up before. The hair, the makeup, the dress… And then she’d introduced me as Wyla—that was her nickname for me. But still I hadn’t thought I was so different that you wouldn’t even know me. And then, when it sank in that you really didn’t remember me—before I found out about the amnesia—it was such a blow to think that I’d just been a one-night stand. Someone you’d picked up in a bar the way you’d probably picked up so many women that you couldn’t even remember them all… Well, that was so humiliating I just couldn’t make myself say anything.”
“And then when you found out about the fall and the amnesia?” he demanded. “What was the excuse then?”
She flinched again at the verbal jab.
In a small, quiet voice, she said, “Then I decided that I wanted to see if I could get you to like me as Willow. As who I really am rather than as Becky’s creation-for-a-night. I thought that by my not telling you, you’d have a chance to get to know me and I’d have a chance to get to know you.”
“And that was so damn important you figured it was all right to leave me grasping at straws, trying to get my memory back?”
“I didn’t know that was what you were doing. I thought you had pretty much accepted the memory problem.”
Okay, so maybe he hadn’t actually let her in on the fact that he’d been searching for the mystery woman in hopes of retrieving his memory, too. But at that moment he was too angry to take any of the blame onto himself.
“You should have told me we’d met before. That we’d spent the night together. All you would have had to do after that was tell me that night had been a lark for you. That you wanted me to get to know you on your own terms. What the hell would have been wrong with that?”
“I know that seems reasonable enough. But I had so much riding on you liking me.”
“What does that mean? What did you have riding on it?”
She looked away from him as if she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes, and he saw her cheeks color.
He also saw strain pull her features, and it made him wonder why it was so vital that he like her. What it could be that seemed to cause a new shame.
And then it struck him.
There was really only one thing he could think of.
“You got pregnant that night,” he said, more to himself than to her.
She still didn’t look at him. But she nodded her head. Just once.
“Oh my—”
“I couldn’t just blurt it all out when you didn’t even know who I was,” she said quietly, still staring out the window rather than at him. “You didn’t remember me. Or that night. How could I—”
“You’re pregnant? You’re really pregnant?” His own disbelief made his voice loud enough to echo through the house.
Willow swallowed hard. “I have the morning sickness to prove it,” she said, making a feeble attempt at a joke.
Tyler jammed his fingers into his hair, ending up with his forehead in his palm as he shook his head, trying hard to absorb all this.
“You should have told me. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he repeated, again more to himself than to her, feeling as if he were having a bad dream.
“Believe me, I wish I’d had a chapter in Miss Manners that told me what to do. But I didn’t. If there wasn’t a baby, maybe it would have been easier. Maybe then I could have just said, Hey, remember me? But the baby put a whole different spin on it. I couldn’t just casually remind you of that night and then say, Oh, and by the way, I ended up pregnant. The whole subject, the whole situation was delicate, and I just thought that maybe I could ease you into it. Either into remembering me and that night in Tulsa, or at least into liking me a little, knowing me a little, before you got the whole thing sprung on you.”
“So you were only thinking of me,” he said facetiously.
“I told you, I didn’t know how to handle it! I don’t know who would.”
The rise and fall in her voice revealed her frustration. But Tyler was too buried in his own mire to feel sympathy for her. In fact, this whole thing had hit him like a ton of bricks, and he didn’t know what to think, what to feel, how else to react.
He stood and grabbed his shirt. “I have to get out of here.”
Willow finally looked at him again, with doe eyes full of fear and confusion and disappointment and disillusionment—all things that only added to what he couldn’t deal with at that moment.
He could only say, “I’m not walking out on you or turning my back on you or the baby, or anything like that. I just need some air. Some time to sort through this whole thing. Then I’ll be in touch.”
He’d be in touch….
That sounded bad.
But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t get over the fact that she’d lied to him this entire time. That she’d strung him along.
That she was pregnant on top of everything else.
And he knew that anything more he said might make matters worse.
So he didn’t say anything at all.
And neither did Willow.
In fact, she didn’t even go on looking at him.
Instead, she turned her head away again.
And Tyler had the sense that she’d closed the door on him even before he’d left.
Chapter Ten
Hours later, Willow was still sitting in the chair by the window. Still wearing only her bathrobe. Still feeling sick enough to warrant having called downstairs to the Feed and Grain to tell Carl she wasn’t going to work today.
But by then her illness was less morning sickness and more heartsickness.
And the last thing she needed was for her brother Bram to come up the stairs from the store and let himself and Jenna into her apartment just after noon.
“Willow? Carl says you’re up here sick. Is that true?” Bram called even before he’d found her in the chair.
“Just a little under the weather,” she answered, as her brother and her friend came into the living room.
Jenna didn’t hesitate to cross to her, sitting on the window ledge and immediately pressing a hand to her forehead.
“No fever,” she announced as she went on to take Willow’s pulse.
“I’ll be all right,” Willow assured them. “A day of rest and I’ll be good as new.”
Bram frowned down at her, but seemed to have too many things on his own mind to delve any more deeply into her health problems. Instead he began going from window to door to window, making notes and talking as he went.
“Those lousy state police let Kenny Randolph get away from them,” he said, agitation ringing in his tone. “Looks like he was headed west, probably back to California, but I don’t like that he’s on the loose again. And since I know it won’t do any good to try to get you to stay with me until Randolph gets picked up, I’m sending one of my deputies over here later to put heavy-duty bolts on your windows and doors. On the windows and doors downstairs, too.”
Willow was too distraught to care much about Kenny Randolph. “He knows I don’t have the papers. I doubt he’ll come back here,” she said.
“I talked to Rand Colton this morning and told him about Randolph breaking in. He had me contact his father, Joe Colton. Joe and Graham Colton are brothers, and Rand thinks that since we’re apparently dealing with someone with a connection to Graham, Joe might be able to get to the bottom of this whole thing quicker than Rand could. He may be right, because when I called Joe Colton he guaranteed me he’d start an investigation of his own, beginning with having a talk with his brother.”
“Good,” Willow said, as Bram passed from the bedrooms through the living room and on into the kitchen.
In the silent pause after Bram announced that he needed a glass of water, Jenna whispered, “Are you having your normal morning sickness or is something more wrong?”
“Something more is wrong, but it isn’t with the baby,” Willow whispered back. “Tyler regained his memory.”
“And he’s not happy that you didn’t tell him who you were before?” Jenna guessed.
“Not happy is putting it mildly.”
“Did you tell him about the baby, too?”
Willow nodded. “He wasn’t happy about that, either. He said he had to get out of here and that’s what he did.”
“Prenatal vitamins? What the…” Bram’s voice interrupted their quiet talk as he stepped into the archway that connected the living room and the kitchen. He had in his hand the telltale bottle Willow had put in the cupboard above the sink. The same cupboard where she kept the water glasses, so she’d see the vitamins and remember to take them.
“Are these yours?” her brother asked.
Willow wondered if maybe she was just being punished all the way around today.
Jenna gave her a concerned, panicked look, and suddenly Willow didn’t have the energy to fight the inevitable any longer. “Yes, they’re mine,” she admitted.
“You’re pregnant?” Bram said, even more loudly and more shocked sounding than Tyler.
“Yes.”
“How? Who?”
“I think you know how, Bram,” Jenna said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
It didn’t work.
“Who? When?” Bram amended.
Jenna was holding Willow’s hand, lending her support as Bram came to stand in much the same place Tyler had that morning.
But all the support in the world didn’t matter when, as if she were helping Willow by answering for her, Jenna said, “Tyler Chadwick is the father.”
Willow cringed. “Oh, you shouldn’t have told him,” she nearly moaned.
“I thought you were coming clean,” Jenna said apologetically.
“Tyler Chadwick?” Bram repeated venomously. “He’s only been in town a couple of weeks.”
Jenna looked to Willow, cautious now.
But Willow merely shrugged, letting her friend know she might as well tell the rest.
With that go-ahead, Jenna said, “They met in Tulsa. In June.” She went on to explain it all to Bram, while Willow wished she could crawl into a hole and never come out.
By the time Jenna had finished, Bram’s balled-up fists were on his hips. “Son of a—”
“Please,” Willow said then, recognizing the signs that her brother was about to go into protective mode. “Just leave it alone, Bram.”
“Leave it alone? I’m not leaving anything alone. You’re pregnant, for crying out loud. And this guy—”
“This guy nothing,” Willow said, somehow finding a surge of strength to put some force into her voice. “The baby is mine. I made the decision to have it, to raise it, on my own. And that’s all there is to it. What happens—or doesn’t happen—between Tyler and me is only between Tyler and me, and I want you to stay out of it.”
Apparently a lifetime of Willow pussyfooting around her brothers hadn’t prepared Bram for the bluntness in her tone, because he just stood there, staring at her with an even more shocked look on his face.
But Willow knew the moment had come for her to finally take a firm stand, and now that she’d begun she was going to stick to it.
“You’re a good brother, Bram,” she said. “But this is my business and my business alone. I’ve handled it up to now and I’ll go on handling whatever happens from here on. Just be happy that you’re going to be an uncle and forget about everything else.”
“Forget about everything else?” he parroted, as if she were asking for the moon.
“Yes,” Willow said decisively. “It’s time you accept that I’m a grown woman. That I can take care of myself and that this is my life.”
“If you’ve gone and let yourself get pregnant without being married, you haven’t taken such good care of yourself up till now.”
“Bram!” Jenna cried.
“Well it’s true, isn’t it? And what about this guy? He has responsibility here. What’s he going to do about it?”
“I’ll say it again—that’s my business, not yours,” Willow stated in a deadly calm tone. “I mean it, Bram. You’re not my champion and I want you to stay completely, totally out of this. You’re Switzerland. You’re neutral. And I’m not kidding.”
But apparently even taking a stand didn’t have any effect on her brother.
Because, much as Tyler had done earlier, he merely turned on his heel and walked out of the apartment, leaving both Jenna and Willow in his wake.
For a long while Tyler just plain didn’t know what to do with himself. He paced and paced some more. He showered and shaved. He got dressed for the day. Then he paced all over again.
He couldn’t eat, not breakfast or lunch. He wasn’t hungry. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t work or even watch television.
And he couldn’t think about anything but Willow.
Willow being his mystery woman. Willow keeping that information from him. Willow pregnant.
In the last two months since the fall in Tulsa, he’d pictured a hundred times how meeting up with his mystery woman might play out. About how he’d feel. About where it might lead.
But never had he imagined that it would tick him off.
Of course, he hadn’t imagined that it would involve his mystery woman being pregnant, either.
Not that that was what had him hot under the collar. That wasn’t even something he could really fathom yet.
It was Willow’s deception he was honed in on. Willow’s deception that he just couldn’t seem to get past.
Sick of pacing the house, Tyler kicked open the screen door and went out onto the front porch, hiking a foot up on the top of the railing and leaning his elbow on his upraised thigh.
He wished he had someone to hash this out with, to be his sounding board. But he didn’t want to call his brother. He didn’t want to admit to Brick that he’d been had—because that’s what this felt like.
He knew Brick had thought all along that he should give up on his obsession with finding his mystery woman. That he should just move on with his life and forget about her. Now Tyler didn’t want to run even the small risk that Brick would say I told you so, and that meant Tyler couldn’t talk to him.
He was on his own. But it was driving him a little crazy.
A slight breeze set the porch swing swaying and the creak of the chains that held it made Tyler have another flash of memory, this one not of things he’d forgotten, but of only a few days ago. Of sitting on that porch swing with Willow.
He glanced over his shoulder at the swing, half expecting to see her there.
Half wanting to see her there.
And that gave him pause.
He was furious with her. How could he be wishing she was there with him?
But he was. If he looked deep inside himself, if he looked beyond the anger and outrage, he was still wishing she were there.
His thoughts about his brother’s point of view popped back into his head. But with a slightly different twist.
Brick had thought Tyler should give up on his drive to find his mystery woman. But what if what he gave up on was his anger over the way it had finally happened? What if the anger was what he let go of?
Then what?
Tyler thought about that. Seriously.
Letting go of the anger was easier said than done. Letting go of his injured pride was easier said than done, too.
But staying mad, nursing his injured pride, didn’t seem like a wise choice for the long run.
And what would he have left when that anger and injured pride died of natural causes?
Not Willow, that was for sure.
And he realized that not having Willow in his life was not a scenario he liked.
She shouldn’t have done what she did. She shouldn’t have pretended they didn’t know each other. She shouldn’t have left him floundering for something that she held in the palm of her hand.
But what had she said in explanation of it all?
That she’d been confused herself. That she’d felt humiliated to think he hadn’t remembered her or that night they’d spent together in Tulsa.
It must have been terrible for her, he admitted then, to have come face-to-face with him and not have him know who she was. It must have been insulting and demoralizing. Made even worse by the fact that she was pregnant by a person who didn’t so much as recall having ever met her before.
Now that he thought about it, it was amazing she hadn’t thrown something at him.
But she hadn’t. Not Willow. She hadn’t struck out at him at all.
Instead she’d opted for using the unusual circum stances of his amnesia to the best advantage. She’d used them to let him get to know her.
And what had he gotten to know about her? he asked himself.
Not that she was ordinarily secretive and deceitful, that was for sure.
Until this morning he’d believed she was kind and compassionate and honest and aboveboard. In fact, he’d seen for himself that she was all those things. Along with being pleasant and even-tempered. With being beautiful and fun to be with and sexy and everything he’d always wanted in a woman.
Had he been wrong?
His injured pride wanted to think he had been. That he’d been wrong about her and wronged by her.
But again he couldn’t help thinking that she might have used the unusual circumstances she’d been faced with to the best advantage. After all, because of what she’d done, they’d been allowed to get to know each other in a natural way. Without the shadow of that night they’d spent together. Without the pressure of him knowing there was going to be a baby because of it.
Now that he considered that, it occurred to him that might have been pretty smart of her. Certainly it had left him more free than he would have felt had she told him the whole thing from the get-go.
So maybe leaving him in the dark hadn’t been such a bad choice. Maybe it had actually given him an unfettered opportunity he wouldn’t have had otherwise. An opportunity, just as she’d said, to learn who she really was. To like her for who she really was.
To more than like her…
Yeah, he did more than like her, he admitted to himself. In fact, what he felt about her was a lot more than liking.
But could he forgive her?
Maybe a better question was how could he not forgive her? he thought as he finally began to calm down and think straight.
Nothing terrible had come from her not letting him know they’d had that night in Tulsa. The only terrible thing that could come of it was if he did hold it against her. If he let it destroy what had started between them twice now.
And it would be his fault if he let that happen.
So he wasn’t going to.
He wasn’t going to go against what he really wanted, deep down, beneath the impulses of his anger and injured pride.
Because what he really wanted was Willow.
And he needed to see her, to tell her, to work this whole thing out with her, he realized.
Which was just what he was going to do.
If she’d still let him after he’d deserted her this morning.
Tyler pushed off the porch railing and backtracked to close his front door.
But by the time he’d done that and turned to head for his truck, two other trucks and the sheriff’s car were coming up the drive from the main road.
And before he knew it, he was facing all four of Willow’s brothers.
The possibility of one of Bram’s deputies showing up to put bolts on her doors and windows finally got Willow out of the chair by the window about an hour after she’d dispatched Jenna to find Bram and keep him from whatever it was he’d bounded out of the apartment to do.
Willow still felt as if she’d been run over by a truck, but she managed to take a quick shower and shampoo her hair.
Neither the warmth of the shower spray or of the hair dryer she’d used afterward made her feel any better, and as she wrapped a towel around herself and tucked in one corner to hold it on until she picked out something to wear, she wondered if she would ever feel good again.
Then she opened the bathroom door and stepped into her bedroom, stopping in her tracks the moment she caught sight of Tyler. Sitting on the edge of the bed they’d mussed up together.
“Tyler,” she said, sounding as stunned as she felt and not welcoming at all.
She raised a hand to the top of her towel, as if just the fact that he was there might cause it to spontaneously fall off.
“Hear me out before you tell me to hit the road, will you?” he said.
As a matter of fact she was half tempted to tell him just that. In the hours since he’d left she’d been so miserable she’d thought a lot about the advantages of being on her own. Of really having and raising her baby by herself. Of not having to deal with any men at all. And she wasn’t too sure that wasn’t preferable. At least then she couldn’t be disappointed and hurt the way she’d been this morning.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded, still considering asking him to go.
“I came up the stairs from the store.”
“Alone?”
“If you mean did your brothers make me come here with a gun to my back, they didn’t. They showed up at my place, but they were too late. I’d already made up my mind what I wanted.”
Willow angled her chin upward. “And what is it that you want?” she asked with a challenge in her tone.
“You,” he said without hesitation.
“Was that why you had to get out of here in such a hurry earlier?” she asked none too nicely.
“I know that wasn’t the best thing I could have done. But you have to admit I’d had a couple of pretty big blows to deal with.”
“And you dealt with them by walking out.”
“Only for a little while. Can’t we look at it as a cooling off period that didn’t take too long? Just a breather?”
“Did you cool off?”
“I did.”
He got up from the bed and came to stand in front of her. He didn’t touch her, but she could feel the heat of his big body, and that went a lot further in soothing her than the shower or the hair dryer had.
Although she still wasn’t sure she was happy that was the case.
“I not only cooled off,” Tyler added, “but I realized a few things, too.”
“Like what?”
“Like even though I still wish you would have told me the minute I walked into the Feed and Grain that we’d had that night in Tulsa together, you used my lack of memory to both our advantages. And even though I was really mad that you didn’t tell me, I wasn’t as mad at you as I would be at myself if I lost you over this. Plus I’m in love with you and I want you, and I wouldn’t want to live the rest of my life without you.”
It would have been so easy to believe all of that. But Willow couldn’t help thinking about Bram having stormed out of there himself. Apparently he’d rounded up the rest of her brothers to confront Tyler, no doubt to force him to do the right thing by their unwed, pregnant sister. Which meant it was possible her brothers had orchestrated Tyler’s presence here and dictated what he was to say to her to convince her he’d come on his own.
“How much did my brothers influence your realizations?”
“I told you, they were too late. I’d made up my mind before they ever got there.”
“Sure you did. And there’s probably not a mark on you.”
Tyler yanked open the snaps that held his shirtfront closed and shed it just as quickly. “Take a look for yourself. No bruises.”
He’d bared his magnificent chest, and one look at it stirred memories of the previous night, of running her hands all over his steely pectorals and iron-hard stomach. Of using his broad shoulder as the perfect pillow.
And she felt her will weaken.
Then he reached for the button on the waistband of his jeans, and Willow knew she wouldn’t be able to resist him if he stripped down completely, the way he seemed intent on doing. So she stopped him.
“Okay, so no brute force was used. That just means you were smart enough to agree to what they wanted before fists flew.”
“What that means is that I let them know I was on my way to propose to you, and if that’s what they’d come to talk to me about they’d wasted their time.”
Willow tore her eyes from his chest, fighting cravings for him and working hard to hold on to reason.
Then she shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
Tyler’s eyebrows arched in disbelief. “What don’t you believe?”
“That you’re here because you want to be. That my brothers didn’t have a hand in it. That you’re over your shock and anger already and want to live happily ever after as if this were some dumb fairy tale.”
“Why not? You set out to let me get to know you. To see if I would like you the way you really are. Didn’t I show you every step of the way that that’s exactly what happened? Why else would I have kept coming back for more? Even in the face of your brothers’ opposition I still stuck around, still wanted to see you.”
“You didn’t want to see me this morning,” she reminded him.
“Even people who love each other get ticked off, Willow. But it passes and the love is still there to stay. That’s what I figured out today—that even though I was mad, I still loved you. I still wanted you. Underneath it all, I still wanted you,” he repeated, enunciating each word slowly as if to help it sink in. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with your brothers or anything they did or said this afternoon.”
“Or maybe you just think the same way they do and you’re saying all of this because of the baby.”
He closed his eyes and gave a little chuckle. “The baby,” he breathed, as if he’d forgotten about it. “That doesn’t even seem real to me yet. I’d be here, doing this same thing, saying these same things, even if there wasn’t a baby.”
Again Willow shook her head. It all seemed too good to be true, and she was afraid of buying into it.
Tyler took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “Listen to me. I couldn’t remember that night in Tulsa, and still it made such an impact on me that I moved lock, stock and barrel to Black Arrow just on the off chance that I might meet up with you again. And even though I didn’t recognize you when I did move here, even though I was still looking for my mystery woman, I couldn’t resist you. That was all before I knew about the baby. Before I knew about anything. And in spite of everything. I fell in love with you in Tulsa. I fell in love with Wyla. And then, in Black Arrow, I fell in love with Willow. Wyla, Willow, they’re both you! And I fell in love with every part of you. Every part of who you are. Crazy, madly in love with you. And if you’ll let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it to you. One baby or two or three or a dozen, one brother or two or three or four brothers notwithstanding, I’m in love with you.”
Willow searched his eyes, thinking about all he’d said. Thinking about that night they’d spent together in Tulsa and about this time they’d had together since Tyler had been in Black Arrow. Thinking about all she’d learned about the kind of man he was.
And the combination of what ran through her mind and what she saw in those deep emerald eyes gave her a sudden insight and knowledge that he wasn’t just saying any of that. He wasn’t doing what he was doing because her brothers had pressured or intimidated him into it. He wasn’t a man who said what he didn’t mean. He wasn’t a man who could be pressured or intimidated. He wasn’t a man who did what he didn’t want to do.
Yes, he was a man who would do the right thing, but that didn’t necessarily mean marriage, and it certainly didn’t require a declaration of love. He could just have come back here and offered to help her out financially, told her he wanted to be a part of the baby’s life. That would have been the right thing, too.
So she had a realization of her own—that if Tyler was here telling her he loved her, then he must love her.
And it was a good thing, because she felt the same way he did. She loved him. And she couldn’t let any thing stand in the way of their being together.
“I love you, Willow,” Tyler said then, as if he knew she needed to it hear it again.
This time she didn’t shake her head. “Be careful, because I just might hold you to it,” she said, testing.
“Good. Hold me to it. And say you’ll marry me. That you’ll let me have what I came here to find—my mystery woman.”
“I don’t know how mysterious I am.”
“You’ve already been two different people since I’ve known you. That’s pretty mysterious. So say you’ll marry me.”
“You’re sure my brothers didn’t threaten you with your life to make an honest woman of me?”
“Do you want to track them down and ask them?”
She didn’t. “Just tell me the truth.”
“The truth is that they did not threaten me and they didn’t get the chance to tell me to make an honest woman of you because I cut them off at the pass by letting them know what I was up to. Now say you’ll marry me.”
Willow pretended to think about it even though she’d already made up her mind. “Okay, yes, I’ll marry you,” she finally said.
His smile was a full grin just before he kissed her, claiming her with his mouth as he wrapped his arms around her to pull her to him.
It was a deep kiss that went on and on, leaving Willow breathless and watery kneed and forgetful of all that had ever gone wrong between them as her nipples hardened against her towel, against the iron wall of his naked chest.
Then Tyler eased the kiss into shorter, teasing, playful nips instead. And between those playful kisses he said, “You know, I got out of bed this morning and went looking for you, to bring you back to it. If the morning sickness is over and you’re up to it…” He glanced at the still unmade bed.
“The morning sickness is definitely over.” And so was the heartsickness, leaving Willow feeling better than she ever had in her life. “But we could have one of Bram’s deputies here to play handyman any minute.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because I warned your brothers not to disturb us.”
“You warned them?”
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
“Because ordinarily it’s my brothers who do the warning.”
“Well, this time it was me.”
“Hmm. And were you so sure of yourself or of me that you knew ahead of time that we’d need privacy?”
“Neither. I just said I wasn’t letting you up for air until you agreed to be my wife. No matter what it took or how long.”
“And they accepted that?”
Tyler’s smile was one-sided and cocky. “I don’t think we’ll be having any more problems with your brothers. By the time we all left my place we ended up understanding each other pretty well and agreeing that I won’t stick my nose into their affairs if they don’t stick their noses into ours.”
“And you came out of that alive?” she said with a laugh.
“You tell me,” he urged provocatively, pulsing his hips against her to let her know just how alive he was.
Then he swept her up in his arms and swung her onto the bed, leaving her towel behind and joining her on the mattress.
They made love right there and then, in broad daylight and without any inhibitions. And as Tyler explored every inch of her with wondrous hands and his magical mouth, as he aroused and cherished her—pausing with care at her middle, where their child was just beginning to grow—Willow felt a new abandon. A new freedom.
Because she knew that for the first time Tyler was making love to her as a complete woman. A person he knew and wanted.
And she loved him all the more for that.
A love that rocketed her into sensual space and set her soaring as their bodies united and formed one, sending them both into a climax so spectacular there could be no doubts left that they were meant to be together.
And when they’d settled back to earth, back to reality, and Tyler had rolled them to their sides so his weight atop her wasn’t too much for her or their baby, he said again, “I love you, Willow. With all my heart.”
“I love you with all my heart, too.”
“Are there any more secrets you’re keeping from me?”
She smiled. “No big ones. But what kind of a mystery woman would I be if I didn’t have a few small ones?”
“You’re going to keep me guessing just a little my whole life, aren’t you?”
“Just a little.”
But apparently it was all right, because Tyler gave a contented smile and closed his eyes just before he kissed her again, softly and full of a love Willow basked in.
And as she did she couldn’t help thinking once more of her great-grandfather’s words—that willows were meant to blossom and bloom during the brightest of midnights.
Or the brightest of afternoons.
Because as she lay in Tyler’s arms, that was exactly how she felt—bright and happy and in full bloom.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Victoria Pade for her contribution to THE COLTONS series.
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