Chapter Two
She was such an idiot. So, so dumb.
Who flew halfway around the world without knowing they were wanted? What kind of an air-headed, naive idiot did that?
Evie pushed the coffee cup in front of her away, making cold coffee slosh toward the rim. She’d been sitting in this diner for several hours now, processing what had happened and what it meant.
All the time she’d been waiting at home in Australia, dreaming of the moment she and Troy could be together again, Troy had been having a good time with women wearing high-heeled cowboy boots and teeny-tiny pairs of cut-off jeans.
The realization still had the power to turn her stomach.
Every time she closed her eyes she could see the other woman’s fingernails pressing into the dark cotton of Troy’s shirt. She could see her leg snaked around his hips, and the way they’d been locked together, groin to groin.
Buckle bunnies, they were called. Women who considered it a stamp of honor to bag themselves a bull rider. Evie had never liked the term, but right now, she’d cheerfully scream it in the other woman’s face.
How many other bunnies had there been since Troy left her at Christmas? There was no way of knowing aside from asking Troy himself, but Evie’s gut told her the answer was somewhere between “a lot” and “infinity plus one”. Because Troy had always been a bit of a player. Women had always liked him, and he’d never been backward in taking what was on offer.
Meanwhile, she’d withdrawn most of her savings to make this dumbass impulsive trip because they were destined to be together and he’d finally seen her as she really was and their real life together was about to start.
Her own ridiculous Pollyanna-ish naivety was enough to make her want to barf.
The worst thing was her brother had warned her. She’d told him that she and Troy were together after Troy had flown back to the US, and Aaron’s face had gotten tight and disapproving. He’d told her he loved Troy like a brother, but the other man was a player, and Evie was buying trouble if she entered into a relationship with him. Evie had shut him down every time Aaron tried to bring up the subject after that, and she deliberately hadn’t told anyone in her family she was making this trip. She knew they’d been discussing her and Troy behind her back and she hadn’t wanted anyone to try to talk her out of this surprise visit.
More fool her.
The urge to cry hit her again, but she squeezed her eyes shut until it passed. She was pathetic enough, sitting here in a diner with her luggage, her broken heart on display for anyone and everyone to see. She wasn’t going to add crying into her cold coffee to the list.
Come on, Forrester. You need to get it together.
She wanted to shrug off the voice and keep wallowing in her shock and pain, but she knew it was right. She couldn’t sit here in the corner booth all night. The waitresses had been kind enough to mostly leave her alone, but at some point they were going to want her to move on so real customers could sit here.
Plus it was dark outside, and she needed to find someplace to sleep. It had been more than thirty hours since she’d been horizontal in a real bed, and she was starting to feel punch-drunk from fatigue.
She drew a hand over her face, pressing her fingers against her closed eyes for a brief moment. Then she sat up straighter and pulled out her phone. A quick search told her there was a budget motel one block away.
Okay, fine. That would do. She’d get a room, shower, force herself to eat something, then get some sleep. Tomorrow, she’d decide what to do about getting home, which was bound to present a whole new raft of challenges since she’d bought a super-saver ticket that didn’t allow for any changes without basically charging her for the whole flight all over again.
Awesome. Something else to look forward to.
She pulled out her wallet and smiled at the passing waitress.
“Excuse me, can you tell me how much I owe you?” she asked.
The older woman shook her peroxide-blonde head. “No charge. Not for you, sugar. You going to be okay?”
Wow. She must look really bad if a complete stranger was worried enough about her welfare to give her free coffee.
“I’m fine, thank you. And thank you for the coffee.”
“You look after yourself, you hear me?” the waitress said.
“I will. Thank you,” Evie said again.
Blanche DuBois might not have minded relying on the kindness of strangers, but it threatened to release the torrent of tears banked up inside Evie. Before that could happen, she wrangled her luggage and headed for the door. It was colder out now, spring only having just started to assert itself here in Oklahoma, but she couldn’t be bothered trying to find her coat in her suitcase. Instead, she called up the motel address on her phone and plugged it into a map app, then started following the directions.
Cars drove past on the wrong side of the road—for her, anyway—their headlights occasionally blinding her. Her case got stuck in a pothole in the sidewalk, jerking her to a halt, and she had to use all her body weight to pull it free. Finally, she saw the sign for the motel up ahead.
Her heart sank as she drew closer. If there was a line between “budget” and “sleazy dive,” this place straddled it, with a foot firmly in both camps. But she was not in a position to be picky. Her ticket home had her flying out of Santa Fe, because that was where Troy was supposed to be riding in two weeks’ time. Depending on how kind the airline was when she spoke to them tomorrow—and she wasn’t holding her breath on that one—there was a real chance she’d need what was left of her savings for a bus to New Mexico and accommodation for the next two weeks.
A fresh wave of self-disgust rolled over her. She was so much smarter than this. She’d aced every year of her Vet Science degree so far. She’d had her pick of internships when she’d sought a placement over summer. And yet when it came to Troy, she was like a five-year-old who still believed in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.
The door to reception was stiff and she had to push her shoulder into it to get it to swing open. A balding, middle-aged man looked up as she wheeled her case over the threshold. Evie managed to muster a polite smile from somewhere.
“Hello. I’m looking for a room for the night,” she said.
“Pretty busy, with the bull riders in town and all,” he said.
She grit her teeth when she felt her chin start to wobble.
Not here. You are not crying here.
“You don’t have anything?” she asked.
“Now, I didn’t say that. You’re lucky, we got one room left.”
Thank God.
“I’ll take it,” she said, already reaching for her wallet.
Five minutes later, she left reception and towed her suitcase across the parking lot to the block of rooms facing the freeway. The clerk had apologized for the road noise, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to have a door between her and the world so she could curl up in a ball and feel sorry for herself for a while.
She found her room, and fumbled with the key. She slid it into the lock, but before she’d had a chance to turn it, the door swung open. She frowned, then shrugged and went inside.
She didn’t think it was possible, but her heart sank even more as she took in her accommodation for the night. The pale brown carpet was threadbare and gray where years of guests had walked between the door and the bathroom. The bed looked uneven, as though maybe a leg was missing on one side. The curtain was minus a few hooks, the leading edge hanging uselessly. The walls were grubby with scuff marks, and there was a dark, ominous-looking patch on the ceiling in the corner.
“Who cares? It’s a roof over your head,” she reminded herself out loud.
She dumped her suitcase by the bed, then went back to shut the door. Which was when she discovered why it had swung open when she slid the key into the lock—the lock was broken. The cylinder spun uselessly, doing a full three-sixty as she turned the key. Without the lock engaged, all it took was a light tug on the handle to pull the door open.
Come on. Cut me a break here, Universe. Throw me a bone.
The lock continued to spin uselessly, and suddenly, it was all too much for Evie. Her shoulders curled forward, her chin found her chest, and tears burned their way up the back of her throat. Leaning her forehead against the door she couldn’t lock, she sobbed, her body literally wracked with misery.
After a few minutes, she made her way blindly to the bed, sinking onto the end. It shifted sharply beneath her weight, confirming her suspicion about the missing leg. It was more than enough to bring on another round of sobbing.
She howled like a big baby for five minutes, then she started to hiccup. She went into the bathroom to look for tissues and had to settle for toilet paper—the thin, nasty kind that was the opposite of absorbent. Returning to the end of the bed, she blew her nose and finally admitted a painful truth—the reason she was so angry with herself was because deep inside, in a secret corner of her heart and mind she’d chosen to ignore for the last few months, she’d known Troy didn’t feel the same way for her as she did for him.
He’d spent the night with her. He’d held her afterward. He’d said all the right things before he got on the plane to fly back to the US. But she was the one who’d initiated almost every contact ever since, and she was the one who’d done all the talking about when they’d see each other again.
With the painful clarity of twenty-twenty hindsight, she could see now that Troy had never been as into it as she had been. He’d probably planned on scaling back their emails and FaceTime calls, easing his way backward one step at a time until silly, lovestruck Evie finally got the message.
The realization made her toes curl.
She’d thought the moment back in the stadium had been the low point, but she’d been wrong. This moment, right now, was way lower, because she’d set herself up for this. She’d secretly known Troy didn’t want her the way she wanted him, but she’d thrown herself into this last-ditch effort to try to keep him anyway. And she’d failed, as she was always going to.
She flopped onto her back, weary and sad, her chest aching. Never had she wanted to be home more. But she wasn’t, she was stuck in this horrible motel room with its crappy broken door and wobbly bed and she had no idea how she was going to salvage the situation and she was so, so tired…
This time when the tears came she didn’t bother wiping them away, she simply let them slide from the corners of her eyes into her hair.
*
Tanner tapped his fingers against the steering wheel of his truck, frustrated by his own indecisiveness. Five minutes ago, he’d been on his way to get gas at the Texaco on the highway out of town when he’d spotted Troy Jensen’s Australian girlfriend trundling her suitcase across the parking lot of a sleazy roadside motel.
She’d walked with the dogged one-foot-in-front-of-the-other determination of someone close to the end of her reserves, her shoulders hunched, her blonde hair falling forward to mask her face.
He’d seen her stop in front of the second door from the end, then the traffic had taken him past the motel. He’d frowned his way through filling up his truck, then pulled onto the freeway and headed back into town, the whole while telling himself she was not his business and definitely not his responsibility.
He hadn’t been able to drive past the motel, however, and now he was sitting in the parking lot, staring at the closed door to her room, trying to decide what to do.
From what little he’d seen of her, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t welcome his intrusion in her life. She’d made it pretty clear back at the stadium she wanted to be alone to lick her wounds. He could respect that. No one wanted to be the object of pity.
But the fact remained that this was a seedy motel in a down-at-heel part of town, and Evie was a stranger who’d just landed in the country and been kicked in the teeth by someone she obviously had pretty strong feelings for.
Tanner had a sister. Leanne was older than him, and he didn’t phone her or see her nearly as much as he should, but the thought of her being in a similar situation made him twitchy as hell. Staring at the door to Evie’s room, he asked himself if he’d want someone to step in if his sister was in a similar predicament.
“God dammit,” Tanner ground out. Then he jerked the keys from the ignition and got out of the truck.
He strode to the door and knocked. There was a moment’s silence, then he heard Evie’s voice.
“Who is it?”
“Tanner Harding. Can I come in?”
A longer pause, then: “What do you want? How did you find me here?”
She sounded worried.
“I was driving past and saw you. This is a bad part of town.”
“No kidding.”
“Can I come in?” he asked again.
Even though she was on the other side of the door, he was pretty sure he heard her sigh.
“Sure. Just push it; the door is open.”
What? Was she nuts? Her room practically opened onto the highway. Anyone could just walk in.
He pushed the door, and sure enough, it opened.
“Are you crazy?” he said before he could stop himself. “Why isn’t this door locked?”
She was sitting on the end of a lopsided double bed, her hair limp, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. The gaze she lifted to him was glassy with fatigue and misery.
“It’s broken. And this is the last room available.” She shrugged, as if that explained everything.
“So you were going to sleep in a room with no lock on the door?” he asked, getting madder by the minute.
Back in the stadium, he’d thought she was sunny-natured and sweet. Now he was beginning to think she was dangerously naive, an innocent abroad.
“I was going to drag the bed across the door. Figured that way no one could get in without me noticing.”
It took him a second to work out she was trying to be funny. He gave her a hard look, then turned to grab her suitcase and heft her overnight bag onto his shoulder.
“Come on. You’re coming with me.” He didn’t wait for her to respond, simply headed out the door.
“Hey. Hang on a minute. Hey!”
He could hear her racing after him but his legs were a lot longer than hers and he was throwing her bags into the back of his truck by the time she caught up.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said, color striping the cheekbones of her too-pale face.
“You can’t stay here.”
She puffed out her cheeks as though she didn’t even know where to begin. “Are you kidding me? What makes you think that you, a total stranger, have the right to tell me I can’t sleep somewhere and commandeer my things and act like the boss of everyone in a ten-mile radius?”
She was really worked up, her body canted toward him, her chin jutting aggressively. She looked like an angry kitten. Because he wasn’t an idiot, he kept that observation to himself.
“This place is a dump. It’s in a dangerous part of town. Anyone with half a brain can see that,” he pointed out calmly.
She held her hand out. “Give me my bags back, please.”
“Why don’t you just get in the truck, and I’ll find you somewhere safer to stay?” he countered.
“You know what’s not safe? Getting into a car with someone I don’t know from a bar of soap.”
“You said Troy’s mentioned me. You’re completely safe with me.”
“Said no serial killer, ever. How about this, Mr. Overbearing Cowboy—give me my stuff back or I’ll call the police.”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, indicating her willingness to follow through with her threat. Sighing, he reached out and plucked it from her hand.
“Are you kidding me?” she said, her eyes wide with outrage.
Ignoring her, he flicked the screen to bring up the camera. Reversing it, he held the phone at arm’s length and took a quick shot of himself. Then he handed the phone back to her.
“Send that to someone you trust, along with my name and number, if that makes you feel safer.”
She stared at him, thrown by the offer. “You need to stop commandeering my things,” she told him, but some of the heat had gone out of her words.
“You need to quit being stubborn. It’s getting late and I need to ice my shoulder, so will you please just get in the truck?”
She opened her mouth, but before she could get a word out, the door to one of the nearest rooms opened and a group of men tumbled into the parking lot. Tanner could see at a glance they were drunk and riled up. Any second now, punches would be thrown.
“Evie, get in the truck,” he said, stepping in front of her, his eyes on the men as they squared up to each other and started trading insults.
“I don’t—”
The sound of glass smashing cut off whatever it was she’d been about to say, and he heard her scramble into his truck.
Smart lady.
He quickly circled to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. The receptionist had come out of his office to yell a warning, but half a dozen men were already rolling on the ground, doing their best to gouge out eyes and bloody noses. Tanner figured it was only a matter of minutes before the cops arrived, and he leaned on the horn to clear the way and shot out of the parking lot and onto the freeway with a spurt of gravel.
For a moment they were both silent as he changed lanes to position himself for the turnoff toward the city center. He glanced at her. She was staring straight ahead, her expression stony.
“You can thank me anytime,” he said, knowing it would get her goat.
Her full lips thinned for a second.
“Thank you,” she finally choked out. “You’re right, that would have been scary if I’d been on my own.”
“I’m taking you to my hotel,” he said.
She frowned. “Isn’t there somewhere else I can go?”
“Probably, but I know this place and it’s close.”
She was silent for a beat and he could feel her working her way up to something.
“I can’t afford a hotel. It has to be a motel,” she finally said.
He glanced at her, noting the pink in her cheeks. There’d been plenty of times he’d been stone-cold broke when he was younger, and he understood her embarrassment. But sometimes a person had to accept a little help when it was offered.
“I’ll cover your room. You can pay me back when you get home.”
She thought about it for a moment. “All right. Thank you. That’s very generous of you.”
“Pleasure, ma’am,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.
She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, and he figured she was trying to work out if he was making fun of her or not. He was, a little, because he knew it would irritate her. He’d rather see her ruffled and annoyed than glassy-eyed and numb.
He pulled into the garage beneath the hotel and parked in the first available slot. Evie was out the door before he had a chance to come and open it for her, but that didn’t really surprise him. She was hauling her bags out of the pickup tray when he joined her, struggling to get her suitcase over the side. He leaned over to get a grip on it.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
“You’re scratching up my paintwork,” he said, hauling the bag up and out of the tray.
“Oh. Sorry.” She frowned, then stood on her toes to inspect the inside of the tray.
Checking to see if she’d caused any damage, he guessed. She threw him a narrow-eyed look as she sank back onto her heels. He swallowed his smile as he hefted her overnight bag and started walking, well aware that the tray on his truck was beaten up by years of hard use. There was no way her case could have caused more damage than what was there already.
He could hear her following him, her suitcase wheels whirring against the concrete floor. He held the elevator door for her and she frowned when she saw the hotel logo emblazoned on the mirrored walls.
“Is this a Hilton?”
“Riders get a discount. I’ll make sure they look after you,” he told her.
Funny that he could tell what she was thinking when they’d only met a few hours ago.
“Oh. Good. Thanks.”
The elevator pinged and they stepped into the plush reception area. She glanced up at the glittering chandelier high above, a worried look on her face. He rested a hand on the small of her back and steered her toward the check-in desk before she could get cold feet. Her back was finely muscled and warm beneath his hand, and when he caught himself noticing he let his arm fall to his side.
“How can I help you, Mr. Harding?” the woman behind the desk asked with a bright smile.
He’d signed a poster for her son earlier today, and he gave her an acknowledging dip of his head.
“Evening. We’d like a single room, please, for Ms. Forrester here.”
The woman’s smile faded a little. “I’m so sorry, but we’re fully booked at the moment, Mr. Harding. But let me check if we’ve had any last-minute cancellations.”
She started tapping away at the computer terminal on the desk.
Evie sidled closer and spoke quietly. “It’s probably for the best, anyway, because I will be paying this place off for weeks if that chandelier is anything to go by. There must be somewhere cheaper nearby.”
She was so close he could smell her perfume, something fresh and bright.
“I’m sorry, but I was right, we’re booked solid—unless Ms. Forrester would like the penthouse suite?” the receptionist said. Evie was already shaking her head.
“No, thank you. I’ll find somewhere else. Thanks for trying, though.”
“I can call one of our sister hotels if you’d like, but I’m afraid you might find everyone else is full, too, because—”
“The bull riders are in town,” Evie said, her tone bone dry.
“Exactly.” The woman smiled at Tanner appreciatively. “We love our cowboys here in Oklahoma.”
“Appreciate your help,” Tanner told her, then he took Evie’s elbow and steered her back toward the elevator.
“Let me look on my phone. There must be someplace around here that won’t cost a fortune that has doors that lock and guests who don’t want to rearrange each other’s faces,” Evie said, whipping her phone from her pocket.
He swiped his room card through the elevator’s security reader and punched in the number for his floor. It took Evie a moment to register they were going up instead of down.
“Did you hit the wrong button?” she asked.
“No. You can stay with me for tonight, and we can work something else out tomorrow.”
Her mouth opened and shut a few times, but no words came out.
Finally, he’d found a way to stump her. Crossing his arms over his chest, he settled back to wait for Word War III to erupt.