Chapter Twelve
“I’m not going back to Mom’s,” Janine said. “Absolutely not.”
“I talked to her. She understands better now.”
“You had no right.” She stared at him. “Who asked you to interfere?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You came here asking for my help. Which is what you’ve got.”
“I just wanted a place to stay.”
“You’ve got one. With your mom,” he pointed out.
She shook her head. “I’m not going back to my mom’s. But I’m clearly not welcome here, so—”
He took her hand. “Janine, you’ve had a rough week. A really, really rough week. You expected your mom to be there for you, and she wasn’t. But she is now. And it’ll all be OK.”
Janine looked anguished. “I can’t stay with her. She hates me.”
“She hates what she thought you did,” he corrected. “She loves you. She’s going to love your baby.”
“Is she?”
“When you lost our baby, we weren’t the only ones who grieved,” he reminded her. “Your mom wants you. Really, she does. And you’d be much happier in Bozeman than you would be here,” he added gently. “You hated it here before. Marietta hasn’t changed.”
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
He looked at the power suit she was wearing—something totally unsuitable for a small town in a Montana winter. She was a city girl through and through. “Really?”
She shrugged, realizing what he was getting at. “So I like nice clothes.”
“It’s not just about the clothes. It’s about the difference between a small town and a city. It’s about the people.”
“You don’t want me here.” She started to cry.
The woman he’d fallen in love with had been tough, and she definitely hadn’t been manipulative. Either Janine really had changed in the last year, or this was hormones taking over and making her act out of character. He had to force himself to be patient. “My life’s different now.” He paused. “I believe you met my neighbor this morning.”
“Oh, the mousy little thing with a stutter. Yes. I don’t know why she came round. She didn’t leave a message.”
Mousy little thing with a stutter? That so wasn’t who Stacey was. And that one catty comment tried his patience to breaking point. He dropped Janine’s hand as if it had burned him. “Stacey’s a good friend.”
“What?” Janine stared at him, and her eyes went wide as she saw the expression on his face and clearly jumped to the right conclusion. “You’re kidding. You and her? She’s not your type.”
Oh, but she was. “I think,” he said, “this conversation had better stop right now, for both our sakes. And I’m driving you to Bozeman tomorrow.” And he’d change the locks on his apartment. He wasn’t risking a situation like this happening ever, ever again.
*
The next morning, Stacey was about to drive off to school when she saw Tyler walk out of their apartment block, with Janine next to him.
Except neither of them looked very happy.
They weren’t holding hands, and they didn’t look as if they were walking right next to the love of their life.
Forget it and move on, she told herself sharply. This is none of your business, Stacey Allman.
Except she could see Tyler’s mouth moving—and she could lip-read everything he was saying.
This was bad. It was the equivalent of eavesdropping. Nothing good would come of it, she knew.
But she couldn’t stop herself doing it.
“We can’t go back,” he was saying. “I’m sorry. It was over between us more than a year ago. You made that very clear.”
Stacey glanced at Janine.
“I made a mistake. I was wrong. Let me come back. I’ll change.”
“You weren’t happy when you were with me before,” Tyler said.
“Because we lost the baby,” Janine protested. “This time, I’ll make more of an effort.”
“That’s the whole point.” He raked his hand through his hair. “If you really wanted to be with me, you wouldn’t need to make an effort.”
Stacey stared at them. So Janine wanted him back, but Tyler didn’t want her back?
And then they both turned the corner and Stacey couldn’t lip-read anymore.
She stayed where she was for a moment, her mind whirling. So had she got it all wrong? Was Janine not actually the love of Tyler’s life? But, in that case, why was Janine staying with Tyler in Marietta?
Then again, Tyler had come to the school to talk to her, but she hadn’t heard him out; thinking that he wanted Janine, she’d pushed him away. He’d said that he’d texted her—and, although she’d never actually received a text, it didn’t mean that he hadn’t sent it in the first place.
So maybe the conclusion she’d jumped to—that he’d dumped her, the second his ex came back, but hadn’t bothered telling her—was completely wrong.
And in that case she owed him an apology.
If it wasn’t too late.
*
Tyler’s car wasn’t in the parking lot that evening.
Or on Friday morning.
Maybe Tyler and Janine had had a heart-to-heart in the car, wherever they’d been traveling, and had made it up.
Stacey went to school as usual, and kept a smile on her face all day; and even though she ended up in a meeting with a seriously difficult parent, she kept her cool and fought in her student’s corner.
That evening, there was a knock at her door. She answered it to discover Tyler standing on her doorstep, looking bone-deep weary, and her heart went out to him. Even though he’d hurt her, he was clearly upset about something and it just wasn’t in her to shove him away. “Are you OK?” she asked.
“Thank you for asking. Probably not,” he said.
“I take it Janine’s not with you?” she asked carefully.
“She’s in Bozeman, with her mom. And these are for you.” He took his hands from behind his back and handed her the most gorgeous bouquet of deep red roses.
“But…”
“It’s to say sorry,” he said. “I did try to talk to you, but not hard enough.”
“I need to say sorry, too—because I didn’t let you talk to me. Come in,” she said. “I don’t have any beer, but I can pour you a glass of wine.”
“Thanks. I could really do with it,” he said.
She poured them both a glass of wine, then put the flowers in water. “Have you eaten?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Neither have I. Go sit down. Dinner will be ten minutes.” Thankfully she had a bag of stir-fry veg in the fridge, along with a pack of chicken tenders, and she always kept a packet of noodles, and a jar of stir-fry sauce in her cupboard.
Ten minutes later, she served them both a plate of stir-fry. “Sorry, I don’t have any fortune cookies.”
“I think mine would say ‘you need to try harder’,” Tyler said apologetically. “When you didn’t reply to my original text, I should’ve realized that something was wrong and followed it up with a second text, or just called you.”
“And I think mine would say ‘don’t jump to conclusions and being hearing-impaired doesn’t mean you can’t listen, just that you can’t always hear’,” she said, equally apologetic.
“So can we talk?” he asked.
She nodded. “I think we need to.”
He dragged in a breath. “I had no idea Janine was going to turn up. I didn’t even realize she still had a key to the apartment—and, just so we’re clear, I changed all the furniture the month after she made it obvious she wasn’t coming back. Including the bed.”
“You didn’t need to tell me that,” she said, “but thank you.” And it did feel better to know that the bed she’d shared with Tyler wasn’t the bed he’d once shared with the love of his life.
He sighed. “I know you’re not a gossip, and I’m not either—but I’m going to have to break Janine’s confidence.”
“You don’t have to—” she began.
“Oh, but I do,” he said, “because you need to know the full story about what she was doing here in the first place. When she left me, she took a job in Billings, running a big hotel. She ended up falling for the guy who owned the chain. And then she fell pregnant.”
Remembering that Janine had lost the baby she’d made with Tyler, Stacey reached over to squeeze his hand. “It must have been hard for you to hear that.”
“It was,” he agreed, “but what made it worse was that the guy had lied to her about being separated from his wife. When she told him about the baby, he told her to get rid of it.”
Stacey winced. “Did he know she’d lost your baby?”
“I have no idea—and I’m not sure it would’ve made a difference if he did,” Tyler said.
“Poor Janine—that’s horrible.”
“So she walked out of her job,” he said, “and went back to her mom in Bozeman. Except…” He grimaced. “Let’s just say her mom had been in the same place as the other guy’s wife, and Janine’s news rubbed her up the wrong way. So Janine came here because she didn’t know what else to do.”
Alone and pregnant, rejected by her family… Stacey’s heart went out to the other woman. “Poor Janine. I’m glad she had you to lean on.” And she meant it.
“I wanted to tell you as soon as I realized that Janine had turned up here,” he said, “so you wouldn’t get the wrong idea and think that Janine and I… Well.”
She bit her lip. “Sorry. I kind of jumped to conclusions.”
“Janine said you’d called round. She didn’t know about you and me at that point,” he said, “so I’m guessing she might’ve given you the wrong impression.”
“It might not’ve been deliberate. But she was only wearing your shirt, so I assumed…” Stacey grimaced. “I still should’ve talked to you about it. But you told me she was the love of your life, so I thought I was doing the right thing in stepping back. Letting you be with the woman you loved, instead of standing in your way.”
“Janine was once the love of my life,” he corrected, “but if I’m really honest with myself our relationship was heading for the rocks even before she lost the baby. When we broke up, it hurt. A lot. So it took me a long time to move on.” He looked straight at her. “But I did move on. I met you.”
“We haven’t been together very long,” she said.
“I know, but it’s long enough for me to know.”
“I thought you wanted Janine back.”
He shook his head. “Even if I had, I would never have just gone back to her without saying a word to you.” He paused. “Is that what someone did to you in the past?”
She winced. “No, but if you want the truth I’ve been dumped the day after I took someone home to meet my parents. More than once. None of them could cope with my father.”
Tyler smiled. “I’m not scared of your father.”
“I’m not entirely sure he’s going to like you,” she admitted, “even if he ever does get back on speaking terms with me.”
“Then we’ll both have to put our egos aside and put you first,” he said, “and that’s exactly what I’ll tell him.”
“I’ll have the emergency first aid kit on standby,” she said dryly. “So what’s happened to Janine? Where is she now?”
“I talked to her mom,” Tyler said. “I made her realize that Janine really needed her—and also that Janine isn’t the type to mess around with another woman’s husband. And then Marie kind of calmed down and agreed to be there for her.”
“But Janine didn’t want to go to her mom’s?”
“How did you guess?”
“I kind of eavesdropped,” she admitted. “I was in my car the other morning when you both came into the parking lot.”
He frowned. “So how is it possible to eavesdrop on a conversation outdoors, from the inside of a car on the other side of the parking lot?”
“I can lip-read,” she said. “It wasn’t something I consciously learned to do, but it got me through school before my hearing problem was diagnosed.”
“So how much did you hear?” he asked.
“Just that she wanted to stay, but you said it had been over a long time ago.” She paused. “And then you turned the corner so I couldn’t see your faces anymore. End of conversation.”
“What you missed,” he said, “is me telling Janine that I’d found someone else. Someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And I was sorry that she was going through such a tough time, but I wasn’t the one for her.”
Hope bloomed inside her. So was Tyler saying that she was the one he wanted?
He reached over to take her hand. “So I drove her back to Bozeman. She wasn’t happy, and she mouthed off at her mom. There was a lot of talking, and I had to smooth ruffled feathers on both sides and make them talk to each other. It was so late by the time I thought it was safe me for me leave them on their own that her mom insisted I stay the night. And I knew it was way too late for me to call you and talk to you, so I stayed—and I bought apology flowers from the city before I came home.”
“You didn’t need the flowers,” she said, “and you did try to talk to me. You sent me the text. It just never got to me.”
“And because of that you ended up hurt,” he said. “I feel bad about that.”
“But it wasn’t your fault. You’re not the kind of man who goes round hurting people, and if I wasn’t so du—”
“You are absolutely not dumb,” he cut in. “But you’ve had your confidence cut from under you a few times. I can understand why you leapt to that conclusion.”
“And Janine’s beautiful.”
“It’s not all about the way someone looks,” he said, “and I happen to think that a certain small, curvy special-needs teacher with unruly dark-blonde hair, grey-blue eyes, and a mouth that makes my pulse rate speed up is very beautiful indeed.”
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”
“I know.” He came round to her side of the table, scooped her up, sat down in her chair, and settled her on his lap. “Stacey Allman, I know it’s been really fast, but I’ve fallen in love with you. It’s everything about you. You’re kind, you’re honest, you’re clever, and you make my world a better place.”
She stared at him. He loved her? Really?
The question must’ve been written all over her face, because he said softly, “I love you. I think I have ever since the moment you rescued me from the smoke alarm—you didn’t laugh at me, you didn’t make me feel bad, and you just calmly sorted things out and showed me how to do it right. And then I noticed how cute you were. And the more time I spent talking to you, the more time I wanted to spend with you. It’s everything about you.”
She stroked his face. “I love you, too. I thought you were way out of my league.”
He kissed her. “Never.”
“You skate like an angel and I’m completely uncoordinated.”
“You bake like an angel and I drop eggs,” he countered. “It’s fine. Between us we cover all the bases. We’re two different halves of the same whole.”
She thought about it. And she realized he was right. “The same whole.”
He stole another kiss. “So. You and me. We’re good?”
“We’re good,” she said. “Apart from one thing. It’s the Bake-Off final tomorrow.”
He sighed. “My cake is going to be completely terrible, because I haven’t practiced baking—apart from that one cake we made last weekend.”
“I thought Janine might help you.”
“She doesn’t cook, any more than I do,” he said.
“We could do a practice run tonight,” she said, “but you look all in.”
“I am,” he admitted, “and I can’t do a practice tomorrow morning because I need to show my face at work. I’ve called in so many favors from my team this week, I’m really going to have to give them all a special bonus with their paycheck this month to say thanks and that I appreciate them having my back.”
The fact he was thoughtful enough to recognize that he’d expected a lot from his team meant that they wouldn’t expect a bonus—they would’ve helped him anyway because they appreciated him, Stacey thought.
“The Bake-Off’s all about raising money, not baking perfect cakes,” she said.
“Yeah. I’ll wing it,” he said. “I have your recipe.”
“I’ll add some notes to remind you what to do if something goes skewy,” she said. “And I’ll make sure Jane McCullough puts that copy on your table.”
“Thank you.”
She kissed him. “You know what I think you need now?”
“What?”
“A bath,” she said. “And an early night.”
He smiled. “If that’s an offer… Yes, please.”