Carly
Carly Beauchamp, you little brat, you’ve been home for three weeks. When were you going to call me?” My best friend, Jess, stands in the middle of the aisle of O’Grady’s, one hand on her cart handle, the other on her hip. I know every shade of her expressions, and the wrinkles in her seashell-pink lipstick tell me she’s put out.
One more thing to feel guilty about; I’ve been avoiding her. And my whole high school posse. “Dang, Jess, you’re in maternity tops already?” I stop my cart beside her.
She’s wearing leggings, a blousy top, and blingy sandals. “Don’t you change the subject.” She points a dragon-red nail at me. “You owe me all the poop, and you’re going to give it, right now.”
“Jeez, Jess, right here in the aisle?”
“Ha, ha. I’m serious.” She gives my basket a stern look. “You got ice cream in there?”
“No, but—”
“Then follow me.” She marches down the aisle, heading for the deli section, where there are tables for those wanting a quick sandwich.
“Make mine iced tea, will you?”
“No coffee?” She arches a threaded brow. “I think I just felt the earth move. If you’d have asked for decaf, I’d be really worried.”
I thought about calling Jess, more than once. But something held me back. When she fishes money from her wallet, her wedding ring flashes in the lights, and I suddenly understand why. She and I have more in common than she knows, but instead of feeling closer, I feel like there’s a wall ten feet high between us, tagged all over with “unmarried” in spray paint.
I park my basket beside a table, then go back for hers. By the time I sit, she’s there with drinks. She slides in the other side and squints at me. “You look different. What’s going on?”
My stomach clenches. I may not have been sure before, but I know now, down to the ground—I’m not telling her about the baby. It’s not that I worry she’d tell; she wouldn’t. Not on purpose, anyway. It’s not that I’d think she’d judge; she wouldn’t.
It’s that Jess is living the life I’d planned. The life we’d all planned, back in high school. I’m now on a different path.
And if I’m having this much of a problem telling Jess, how in happy hell am I going to tell the whole town? There’s something that’s been bothering me like a sticker in my sock, poke-poke-poking me. Maybe this isn’t about what the town will think about me. It’s about what I think of myself. Am I hanging on to the town sweetheart title because I want to go back to the old Carly?
No. Not the bad parts, anyway. I don’t want to be the stereotypical country girl, up on the seat of a cowboy’s truck. I have my own opinions, my own beliefs.
But Austin didn’t force me into that role; he never knew it was a role—because I never told him. I’m going to need to spend some time thinking about that.
But right now, Jess is waiting for an answer. I know when she finds out about the baby, she’ll see my holding back as a betrayal. And, God knows, I could use a friend. I open my mouth to try to push out the words, then close it when I realize the words wouldn’t get through that wall. It just doesn’t feel right. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, Jess. I’ve been running like crazy, trying to catch up at the diner.”
“I hear Austin is coming in for breakfast some days. How weird is that?” She takes a sip of coffee.
“Not too bad, actually. We talked, and decided the town was too small for us not to be in the same room together.” I hold up a hand. “Do. Not. Say. It.” Jess was on team “Austin forever.”
She sets her cup down. “Okay then, I want to hear all about your trip. Every single detail. Was it fun, being on the circuit again? Did you run into Austin there, too? What was it like, riding the motorcycle? Dish, Carly. I’m living vicariously here.”
“Why? Your life looks pretty exciting from where I’m sitting.”
She pats her six-month belly. “Hon, trust me. By your third baby, the excitement has worn off. I just got Caleb out of diapers, and now I get to start all over.” She blows her bangs off her forehead.
“But being married must be great.” I sigh.
She rolls her eyes. “Just more underwear to wash. Don’t get me wrong. I love the man to death. I do. But it’s bad enough picking up after kids all day. If I have to pick up one more wet towel of his, I’m heading for the knife drawer, I swear to God.”
I don’t know what my face looks like, but it makes her laugh. “Carly, that is married life. You have brief flashes of greatness, long stretches of everyday, and the occasional knock-down-drag-out.”
I don’t want to believe that would have happened to Austin and me (my dream Austin—not the real one). Maybe I’ve been unrealistic all these years. But especially now, the grass looks greener on the married side of the fence.
“I’m telling you, Carly, motherhood can drive you to an early grave. The diapers, the whining, the clean-ups. The constant neediness of kids. Do you know I haven’t had a private trip to the bathroom in seven years?”
She leans in, a glint in her eye. “But enough of my boring life. Tell me everything.”
I tell her, embellishing the motorcycling and the fun parts, skipping the Austin-in-the-truck details.
After a half hour, I tell her Nana’s waiting for her groceries and we part, her to the cashier, me back to the shopping. I stop in the cereal aisle, trying to decide between the real Nutty Buddies or the generic.
Jess makes motherhood sound like indentured servitude…and she has a husband to help. Did I make the right decision? What if I get six months into being a mom, and I flat-out can’t handle it? Yeah, there’s Nana and Papaw, but they’re elderly. I can’t expect them to—I freeze. Something’s happened. Something between a twitch and a butterfly brush below my stomach. What the…I put my hand there, but nothing else happens.
My heart fills first, then my eyes.
Is that you, Bean?
My jitters melt away. I don’t care how hard motherhood is. I can’t wait to see my baby. The world settles on its axis, and I know down to my soul that I’ve made the right decision.
You and me, kid.
* * *
Austin
I take one last look around my old bedroom. Sad that it only took two trips to the truck to pull out anything I’ll want at the homestead house. But what’s left hurts too much to have it underfoot: Carly’s Rodeo Queen sash, photos, tickets to the movies, school yearbooks. I look down at the shoebox of winner’s buckles on my bed. I know where they are, if I need them. Better to focus on making a future than to haul around the past. I turn off the light and head out.
A chair squeaks in the office as I pass. Troy is tapping away at a laptop. “All you do is work.”
He leans back in the chair and puts his hands behind his head and stretches. “You sound like my wife. I’ve still got to take care of business.”
“Whatever you say. Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“They went into town.”
He looks pathetic. Sleep-deprived and ragged around the edges. “Can you take a break? I could use some help.”
He frowns. “Does it involve wire stretchers?”
“Are you kidding? I’m not letting you anywhere near a potential weapon. Follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
I don’t answer until we’re buckled in my truck and up to speed. “To move my stuff out of my apartment in town.”
“Shit. More grunt work.” He leans his arm on the open window. “Now I remember why I left this place. Nothing but grunt work.”
“Just doing my part to turn you into a man, brother.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? If I’m not a hair-on-fire bronc rider, I’ve got no balls?”
“Just saying.”
He reaches over and slaps the back of my head. “Just because some of us were born with a brain bigger than a walnut, isn’t any reason to be jealous.”
I pull onto the town square.
“I do kinda miss this funky town.” He points. “Remember when we got banned from the Civic for putting horny toads under the girl’s seats at the Saturday matinee?”
“It was worth it to see the girls scream.” Carly hadn’t, though. She’d gathered as many as she could, to keep them from getting trampled in the stampede. I take the turn and cruise past the Chestnut Creek Café.
Troy checks it out. “Weird to think that you guys are broken up. So used to seeing you together.”
“Weird on this side, too.” My heart squeezes to a small hard fist. That has to stop happening sometime, doesn’t it?
“You going to start dating someone else?”
I can’t imagine it. “Someday.” I turn right off the square, and down the alley behind the shops. “Here we are.”
Troy eyes the old wooden stairs that lead to the apartment over the store. “You didn’t tell me it was on the second floor.”
I turn off the ignition, turn to him, and wink. “Not bad for a walnut brain, huh?”
We grab empty boxes from the truck bed, and he grumbles all the way up the stairs.
When I open the door, I catch a tiny hint of her perfume, then it’s gone. The big room has always held only the basics: an end table, card table, and chairs. And a bed. The rumpled sheets lay where we kicked them off, the last time we were here. The vise in my chest ratchets down. Wish I could step back in time. I’da done things so different.
“How the hell are we going to get that bed down the stairs?”
“Same way it came up.” I slap him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, this time we’ll have gravity on our side.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll start in the kitchen.”
Might as well do the hard part first. I peel a trash bag off the roll, step to the bed, and hold my breath while I tear the sheets off. If I reacted to stale perfume, the smell of these sheets would probably take me to my knees. I dump them in the trash bag, pull the drawstring closed, and toss the bag to the door. The rest should be less lethal.
In an hour, everything is loaded in the back of the pickup and we’re on our way out of town. I wouldn’t trade my past for anything, but that’s gone now. It’s time to buckle down and get to work on the rest of my life.
I’ve looked around, but rodeoing isn’t great experience for many jobs that pay more than chasing cows. And I don’t want to work under some other man’s thumb, if I can help it.
Hey, I have a financial expert riding shotgun. I’ve got nothing to lose but a little pride, and if I don’t like his advice, I can always ignore it. “Why do you say I shouldn’t go into the rough-stock business?”
“I never said you shouldn’t. I said Dad shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Dad’s at retirement age. That’s not a time to take risks. He needs to be in low-interest, low-risk investments.” He glances at me. “The time for taking risks is when you’re your age.”
The clouds of worry that have been sitting on my head lighten a bit. “No one better at risk than a rough-stock rider.”
“Yeah, you’ve got the opposite problem. You can’t just jump in. You have to consider the risk, and put thresholds into place to minimize it.”
“Okay, so tell me.”
We talk business until I pull into the dooryard of the homestead house, questions and ideas dancing in my head.
Troy steps out of the truck, grabs a box from the bed, and looks up at the porch. “I’ve always loved this old house.”
“It’s going to be even better when I’m done with it.” I pull out another box and head for the stairs.
“What are you planning?”
We walk inside. “Put that down and I’ll show you.” I take him on a tour, pointing out what I’ll refurbish, and what gets replaced entirely. I end in the kitchen. “This room has to be totally gutted. Old-fashioned may be in, until you try to cook on fifty-year-old appliances. I’m going to sell this stuff to an antique dealer. They’ve got some great stuff out there now, like a kitchen faucet that looks like an old hand pump, hammered copper sinks, stuff like that.”
Troy leans in the doorway. “This all sounds great, but it’s going to cost a fortune.”
“I’m going to do the work I can myself, to save money. I’ve got nothing but time.”
He looks around the room. “You know, Mom and Dad are great to put me up, but Mom tiptoes around with a worried look, like I’m a hand grenade without the pin. Dad tries to act normal around me, but can’t, quite.”
“Totally get that. Part of the reason I moved out.”
“How about I move out here, with you?”
I’m beyond surprised. First, I figured his banishment was short-term—like a week, short. Second, he’s not exactly the “roughing it” type. Both of which show me that I’m not the only “lost boy” in the Davis clan. “What the hell happened between you and Darcy?”
He walks over and, hands in pockets, stares out the window over the sink for a minute. Probably deciding if he can trust me far enough to tell me. He doesn’t turn. “It started out about the kids.”
Their two kids, Natalia and Nate, are six and eight. Or wait, is it seven and nine? I see them only a couple times a year, so it’s hard to keep track.
“You know Nate’s always been crazy for the rodeo.” He shoots me a laser glare. “Which I totally blame you for.”
“Me? He’s never even seen me ride.”
“Tell me. He bugs the crap out of me to take him. He follows your rodeos on the internet. And you did buy him a rope and that roping dummy, last birthday.”
A coal of pride warms my chest. “Well, what’s wrong with him doing a little mutton-busting? There’s worse things.”
“Not according to Darcy. If she had her way, his school uniform would be made of bubble wrap.”
Yeah, I forgot. Public schools aren’t good enough for Darcy’s kids.
He shrugs. “But really, it’s more than that. The crack opened between us a long time ago, but I didn’t see it until I fell smack into it.”
“Y’all always looked like the perfect couple from the outside.”
“So did you and Carly.”
“Ah, tit for tat.”
“Yeah, and it’s your turn.” He crosses his arms.
I feel like we’re crossing something else, here. The gulf between us, maybe. Well, looks like we’re going to share the same doghouse, so I tell him. Not the pregnant part. I give him the important part. “She got tired of waiting. She dumped me. Forever.”
“Ah, bullshit. She’ll be back.”
“See? That’s where everyone was wrong. Especially me.” I shake my head. “Stupidity cost the best thing that ever happened to me.”
He gives me the side-eye. “Why not go prostrate yourself? Grovel? Beg for forgiveness? Carly’s a good-hearted girl. She’ll give you another chance.”
“It’s more complicated than that. She’s changed. Seems like neither of us have any more chances to give.”
“So, she finally realized what I always knew. You’re a cur dog.”
I glance over. “You’d better smile when you say that.”
“I’m as out of smiles as Carly is chances.” A muscle works in his jaw. “So how about me moving in?”
I want to know more about him and Darcy, and about how long he’s banished for, but I’ve pushed enough. For now. “Well, I don’t know.” I hike my butt onto the counter. “How about some bartering?”
When his eyes narrow, I know he’s remembering when I traded him my BB gun for his arrowhead collection. I forgot to tell him the seals were cracked. “What?”
“You help me write a plan for my business, and you can have the master bedroom.” No way I could stay in that room anyway. That was going to be Tig’s and my bedroom.
He thinks a minute, looking for a catch. “You throw in Wi-Fi, and you’ve got a deal.”
“And I might need your help with some of the repairs around here.”
“You always were a negotiator. Maybe you’ll make a good horse trader yet.”
We meet in the middle of the room and shake on it. “Now, let’s get the rest of this stuff unpacked.”
He raises his hands. “Not part of the deal, bro.”
I shrug. “Your choice. Walk three miles to the house, or help me, then we’ll go get your stuff.”
He sighs. “Told you. Unforgiven is nothing but grunt work.”
* * *
Carly
I swipe curls and a drip of sweat out of my eye, then go back to flipping burgers. Fish took the afternoon off to testify for a friend in a custody battle. The other cook doesn’t come in until three, so I’m it for the lunch hour rush.
Business has been better than usual. My guess is that Dusty Banks, down at the Lunch Box Café, raised his prices again. I just hope our business doesn’t fall off with my news.
“Table six said their french fries were cold.” Lorelei pushes a plate of fries through the window.
“Crap, fries!” I pull up the fryer basket, and hot grease spatters my hand. A little dark, but they’ll have to do. I throw salt on them and leave them to drain. I reach under the counter and lift the five-gallon jar of hamburger dill chips to refill that bin.
“Order up.” Sassy stuffs a ticket on the crowded wheel.
“Buggers in a basket, I’ll never catch up,” I mutter.
“Scoot over.” A deep voice comes from behind me.
I turn to see Danny Jorgensen, my wholesaler, pulling an apron over his head.
“Get out. I can’t let you help. It’s against my insurance codicils.”
He bumps my hip with his. Actually, his hip hits my waist. He’s a huge Swede, with blue eyes and white-blond hair. He would look at home behind a horse-drawn plow in Wisconsin. “You can tell them I overpowered you. Go on, read the orders to me.”
“You know how to cook?”
“I know how to sew buttons on, clean house, and change a diaper. My mother believed that a man needed to be able to do anything.”
“Wow. A unicorn.” I want to argue, but I’m too tired. I have a hard time getting through a normal day, much less an on-your-feet/stressed-out/grease-fest like this one. “You are an angel, Danny. I owe you a huge order.”
“You’re going to need one, at this rate.” He drops a basket of onion rings, then preps the plates like a pro, and slides burgers onto the buns.
I carry them to the window, dump the cold fries, and hand Lorelei a fresh plate of them.
She eyes it. “Well, they’re hot, anyway.” She slides all the plates onto a tray, then tips her head at Danny, and mouths He wants to ask you out and swishes away.
I glare at her back and start reading off orders.
I’ve only been out with one guy in my life, and that was a natural progression…Do I want to go out with Danny? With anyone? I can’t imagine it. But I’ve got to find a way to ease into my future somehow. Not to get involved—I don’t see that happening—but to go out on a date. It would be a start.
An hour later, the order wheel is almost empty, and I swear we’ve fed two-thirds of the town. “Okay, Jorgensen, you’re fired.” I turn, and he’s right there, smiling, a plate of fish and chips in his hand.
“Here. And don’t tell me you already ate, because I know it’d be a lie.”
I can feel my ears get hot. Am I that transparent?
He looks down at me. “You look pale. Why don’t you sit down to eat that?”
“Only if you let me fix you something. Even angels have to eat sometime.”
He steps to the grill and lifts a plate full of triple cheeseburger, with fries falling off the edge. “Already did.”
I put my head through the window. Lorelei is chatting with April Hollister, who works at the drugstore. “Hey, Lorelei, will you hold the fort for ten, so I can eat?”
She winks. “You take all the time you want, Carly.”
I shoot her a laser glare, then lead Danny to my office. His shoulders barely fit through the door, and the chair disappears beneath him. He balances his plate on his knee until I clear a spot on my desk. “Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry.”
His gaze lands on me and sticks. I hold myself still, though inside, I’m squirming like a kid who needs to go to the bathroom. I know male interest when I see it.
I push another pile of paper to the side so I can put down my plate. “Thanks so much for helping. Seriously. I was in trouble.”
“It was my pleasure. It’s not often I get to rescue a damsel in distress.”
That rankles. I was in a bind but I’m hardly the distressed damsel type. “Eat. You earned it.” Finally, his tractor-beam gaze slides away, and I can move.
There’s no room in here. There’s no air. He takes it all up.
We eat in silence for a few.
He pats his mouth with his napkin, a prissy move for such a big man. “I wondered if you’d like to go to the movies with me one night. Either at the Civic, or in Albuquerque.”
Danny’s a good guy. He’s polite, makes a good living, and is good-looking. Then there’s Bean. It’s going to need a daddy.
God, am I that calculating? That cold, looking at a guy for what he can offer me? No. I get to decide who I’m to become. If I go out on a date, it’ll be because I’m interested in a man. I can recite all the reasons why I should be interested, but the fact is, right or wrong, I’m not ready.
“I’m sorry, Danny. I’m—”
“Not over Austin.” He shakes his head.
“Oh, I’m over Austin. I’m just not ready to date yet.” Until my secret is out, Bean has made dating a bit…sticky.
His white-blond eyebrows furrow. “I get that. But I reserve the right to ask again, later.”
“Fair enough.” I dip a forkful of fish in my tartar sauce. “Friends?”
He smiles at me. “For now.”
I smile back. Maybe, given enough perspective, I can be fair to him, myself, and my baby. After all, my dreams haven’t changed: a man I love in bed beside me every night, our kids sleeping down the hall. All I need to do is find the guy who matches the picture in my head.
It’d be easier if that picture still didn’t look a lot like Austin.