Willow in Bloom

by Victoria Pade

  “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.