Kyle cocked an eyebrow at her. “If that was Jeff, he’s had an especially good sex change.”
She chuckled. “That’s his wife, Lorianna.”
“She seemed upset. Is she okay?”
“She’ll be fine.”
“Where’s he?”
“Home in Denver. He was too busy with the restaurant they recently opened to join her, and she wanted to see Victorian Days.”
“She doesn’t seem too impressed so far.”
“She hasn’t been yet. That’ll be tonight. And she’s working through a few...issues.”
“So she’s staying with you?”
“For a short time.” Until she could make a few decisions about her life—or Christmas arrived next week. Whichever came first. Olivia had agreed to provide a temporary safe haven where Lorianna could rest, relax and do some soul-searching under the guise of hanging out with a new friend.
Kyle scratched his head. “I didn’t mean to chase her off.”
“It’s okay. I’m sure she doesn’t mind.” She motioned at a chair. “Have a seat while I get you a cup of coffee.”
He didn’t say anything, but he seemed ill at ease as he waited, looking around at the Christmas tree in the other room, the garland running up her staircase railing and the other decorations and furniture. She guessed that he was wondering if this was how their house would have looked if they’d ended up together.
“Thanks,” he said when she brought him his cup. Then his gaze lowered to her belly and she guessed he was thinking about the baby. She and Brandon had made the announcement last week, so word was getting around. Obviously, he’d heard.
She slid the cream and sugar closer. She knew him so well—or used to—that she could’ve fixed his coffee for him, exactly the way he liked it. “So...what’s going on?”
His chest lifted as he took a deep breath. “Your mother came to see me last night.”
A jolt of concern went through her as she perched on the edge of her own seat. “She did? Why?”
He grimaced. “She asked me to help heal her family.”
Olivia clenched her jaw. “Let me guess—she’s worried about Noelle.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you’re here? To patch things up between my sister and me?”
“If I can.”
“That’s all in the past,” she said in a tone indicating they should leave it there.
“I realize that, but it hasn’t been forgotten, not if you and Noelle can’t be in the same room—not even at Christmas.”
Olivia stood and went to the counter to get her herbal tea. Why hadn’t her mother come to her about this? Nancy never faced what was bothering her head-on. Instead, she tried to ignore it or slip around it somehow, which irritated Olivia. “What happened wasn’t all your fault, Kyle,” she said.
“Still, I’m sorry for my part in it.”
“I know. You’ve apologized and...and I’ve forgiven you.”
“Have you?”
She shifted beneath his intense regard. “Yes.”
“Then maybe that’s the problem. She doesn’t understand how you can forgive me but not your own sister.”
Olivia couldn’t stifle a bitter laugh. “Because I know my sister! Does my mother think I don’t understand what Noelle did? How badly she wanted to steal you from me? How calculated she was in her approach? I mean...was there even a baby, Kyle?”
He sighed and rubbed his chin without answering.
“You can’t say for sure, can you? You don’t even know whether she was lying about that.”
“I saw the pregnancy test results. There was a baby. I’m just not sure if she miscarried, like she claims, or...”
“It says a lot that you’re still not sure, don’t you think?”
“Look, I understand your anger. Trust me, I can get angry over Noelle, too. But we can’t escape the past and hang on to it at the same time. Noelle is my ex. Of course I’m going to have complaints about her. We wouldn’t be divorced if we could get along. What upsets me is that your relationship with her—with your whole family—is compromised, even three years later, because of me. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to atone for what I did.”
“It’s not you who needs to atone! That’s the thing.”
“What we did takes two. I’m fully aware of that—and if I wasn’t, there’ve been plenty of people telling me,” he added drily.
She’d been one of them. “So what do you want me to do?”
“Give Noelle another chance. Let this Christmas be a fresh start.”
“I’d be a fool to trust her again! She would love nothing more than to do the same thing with Brandon.”
“He’d never make the same mistake I did.”
Fortunately, she could count on that. “I can’t believe you came to help my mother.”
“She wants to put her family back together. And I want the same thing, for you more than her. What good does it do to hold a grudge?”
“Who wouldn’t hold a grudge after what Noelle did?”
“That may be true, but it ended well.” He lowered his voice. “Look at what you’ve got. Look how happy you and Brandon are.”
He had a point. Without Noelle, she probably would’ve married Kyle herself, and then she would never have known what she was missing. Kyle was wonderful, but Brandon was more than she could have dreamed. At odd moments, she did feel gratitude for finding that kind of love.
“It would be easier to forgive her if she was even the slightest bit contrite,” she said. “Or if I had some hope that she wouldn’t stab me in the back again at the first opportunity.”
“She’s jealous of you. She wants what you have. Somehow, no matter what happens, no matter how hard she tries, you always end up better off.”
“And I’ve felt bad for her before. But I don’t anymore. She’s her own worst enemy.”
“I know it’s not easy to forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
It was almost impossible. Especially in this situation. Olivia wasn’t sure she was capable of such a magnanimous gesture, but Kyle seemed to be suggesting that he thought she was.
What if she could let go of her resentment? What if she could put her family back together again, allow them to look forward to holiday gatherings as they used to? For her parents’ sakes if not Noelle’s?
As enraging as it had been that her mother had supported Noelle through the whole painful debacle of her marriage to Kyle, in her heart Olivia understood why she’d behaved as she did. Nancy had known that her “good” daughter would be okay in the end. It was Noelle who worried her. Noelle screwed up so much she needed someone to be on her side when the rest of the world walked out.
“Damn it,” she grumbled.
“What?”
“You know what. But I’ll think about it.”
He nodded. “Thanks. I hate the fact that...that there are any residual negative effects of what I did, especially when it comes to you.”
He still loved her. Olivia could feel it. If she could wave some magic wand that would heal his heart and free him from regret, she would. So why couldn’t she feel the same way about her sister?
There were a lot of reasons. But she needed to overcome them. She had so much, Noelle so little.
“You’ll find someone else someday,” she whispered as she gave him a brief hug and walked him to the door.
“What was that all about?”
Olivia had just said goodbye to Kyle when Lorianna appeared, dressed in a robe and wearing a towel wrapped around her head.
“Nothing important. Aren’t you going to get dressed? There’s a Christmas shop down the street that might cheer you up.”
“I was going to ask if I could borrow a blow-dryer. I forgot mine.”
“Of course. There’s one under th
e sink in the master.”
“I’ll get it, but you really won’t tell me who that man was? Here I’ve been blubbering on and on about my problems—ever since I got up this morning—and you’re going to keep yours all to yourself?”
Olivia considered her new friend. Maybe it would help Lorianna to know that she wasn’t the only one trying to forgive someone for something painful. Maybe that was even the reason fate had brought them together. “You’ve been wondering if you can get over the fact that your husband’s been with someone else.”
“I don’t think I can,” she said, sounding adamant. “My heart is broken. My trust is destroyed.”
“Well, I’m trying to move beyond a hurtful situation, too. I’ve just got a little more perspective on it—thanks to the passage of time.”
Lorianna studied her more closely. “What kind of situation?”
Olivia smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want to finish getting ready first? Because it’s a long story.”
Lorianna pulled off the towel and fluffed her hair with her hands. “I’ll let it air-dry,” she said. “I’d rather hear this.”
One
RETURNING FOR HER sister’s wedding would’ve been difficult had it merely meant pretending to be a happy and supportive bridesmaid. But being in charge of the whole event? That added insult to the most heart-wrenching emotional injury Olivia Arnold had ever sustained.
As she drove back to Whiskey Creek for the first time since learning that Noelle would be marrying Kyle Houseman—the man she’d been dating herself until three months ago—she wished she’d had the nerve to refuse her parents. Noelle tried to beat Olivia at anything and everything she did. It had been that way since they were children.
But Olivia planned weddings for a living. She was also the family peacemaker, so it came naturally to try to forgive, to move on. And, as her mother had pointed out, she was the one who’d asked Kyle if they could take a “break” while she moved to Sacramento to build her business. She’d wanted one year to see if she could develop it into something spectacular in a bigger city before marrying Kyle and settling down in Whiskey Creek.
Given all that, how could she refuse to help? Especially when she could save her father so much money?
Despite her determination to soldier on through everything that was happening, an odd sense of panic welled up as she reached the edge of town. Pulling over just beyond the sign that said Welcome to Whiskey Creek, The Heart of Gold Country, she tried to get hold of herself but almost turned her Acura around. Within an hour, she could be home in Sacramento. She could hide away until this wedding was a distant memory and, if she was lucky, avoid her sister and new brother-in-law for a decade or two. Maybe by then she’d be able to face them without wanting to cry.
And why shouldn’t she turn back? If she stayed, the humiliation of the next few days would be as painful as the heartbreak. Whiskey Creek was a town of only two thousand people. Thanks to the fact that she and Kyle had been a couple for three years, and had separated so recently, she couldn’t possibly escape the whispers, the pitying looks or the condolences of the friends and neighbors who’d known her most of her life.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit!” Bumping her forehead against the steering wheel, she pictured Kyle kissing “the bride” and groaned at the disappointment and betrayal. Noelle had waited for just the right moment. When Olivia was in Sacramento, trying to experience something new before starting her life with Kyle. When he was alone and not coping well with the separation. Then she’d made her move. Olivia wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forgive her sister, especially since it was Olivia’s own tears and confidences that had armed Noelle. They’d never been particularly close, but they came from the same family and had lived under the same roof until Olivia relocated to Sacramento last February. That gave Noelle certain insights she wouldn’t otherwise have had.
But if she left, if she ran, her sister would know she was just as hurt today as she had been that terrible evening the horrible truth—that Kyle and Noelle had been seeing each other—came out. Why give Noelle the pleasure? Why confirm that her sister, younger by two years—which only made it worse—had finally landed the coup de grâce of their sibling rivalry?
“Ahhhhh!” She pounded the steering wheel with her fists this time, before hitting everything else in sight. Somehow, seeing her hometown looming ahead had destroyed her restraint. Rage seemed to be a monster growing in strength and power until it was bursting out of her chest—
A knock on the window interrupted her in midsob. She’d been so focused on her distress, on screaming and beating her dashboard, she hadn’t heard anyone approach.
Mortified to realize she had a witness to her behavior, she turned to see a tall, blond man dressed in a white T-shirt, khaki shorts and flip-flops. His mouth, tense with some emotion, made a slash in his face beneath a pair of mirrorlike sunglasses.
Oh, God... Despite those glasses, it wasn’t a cop, as she’d expected. Worse—it was Kyle’s stepbrother, Brandon Lucero. He was younger than Kyle by a year, which made him almost a year older than her, and he appeared to be...concerned. No doubt he thought she’d lost her mind.
He might as well have caught her with her pants down. It would’ve been less embarrassing. Her only consolation was that Brandon wasn’t likely to tell Kyle what he’d seen, even if he connected it to the upcoming wedding. There was no love lost between the two men. They’d lived together while in high school, after Kyle’s older sister had married and moved away and his father married Brandon’s mother. But that hadn’t made them friends.
Brandon waited to speak until she rolled down the window. “You okay?” he asked, his teeth a stark contrast to his golden tan.
After getting abusive with the interior of her innocent car, her right hand hurt so badly she was afraid she’d fractured it. She cradled it in her lap, hoping he wouldn’t notice the swelling, and wiped her other hand over her wet cheeks. This kind of behavior wasn’t like her.
“Don’t I look okay?” she countered as if she hadn’t just lost control.
“Babe.” He shook his head. “Tell me this has nothing to do with Kyle.”
She dabbed at her eyes, inadvertently smearing her mascara, which she wiped onto her white shorts. Cut low at the hips and high on the leg, they’d been purchased with one goal in mind—turning male heads. In her current situation, she needed the ego boost. But her pride in the body she’d worked so hard to slenderize and tone had gone out the window, along with her composure. What did it matter if she looked better than she ever had? Noelle was marrying the man Olivia thought would be her husband. “Would you believe I broke a nail?”
His biceps bulged, stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt as he folded his arms. “Not a chance. Want to try something else?”
“No. Who cares if you think I’m an idiot?” she grumbled as she pushed her long hair out of her face. “You’ve never liked me much to begin with.”
This seemed to surprise him. “What gave you that impression?”
“I don’t know.” She managed a facetious smirk. “Maybe the way you scowl every time you see me? Or, if you can’t avoid me, which is always your first choice, you just grunt so you don’t have to say hello?”
He scowled when she’d expected him to laugh. “Would you believe I was saving you from myself?”
“No.”
“I can be chivalrous when I want to be.”
“That’s definitely not an adjective I’d use to describe you. I’m sure all the women with broken hearts you’ve left behind would agree with me.”
His scowl darkened. “What women with broken hearts?”
She could’ve named a few. Some of them were acquaintances. He was a tempting challenge—few could refuse him. But he didn’t give her the chance to be more specific. He was still talking.
“I’m going to assume you’re angry or you wouldn’t have
said that. You’re obviously having a bad day.”
Ah, the understatement of the year. And since she had to face Kyle and Noelle as well as her parents in the next few minutes, her day was going to get worse.
“We had a class together, remember?” he added. “I took you to my junior prom. I’ve always liked you just fine.”
She couldn’t see his eyes, but she sensed that they were moving over her, taking inventory of what her clothes revealed. Instinctively she wanted to cover up. The only thing stopping her was the sure knowledge that doing so would draw more attention to her atypical attire. “And—” he grinned “—from what I can see so far, I’m going to like the new you even more.”
What had she been thinking when she’d put on this outfit? If Kyle didn’t regret what he’d done by now, a pair of short shorts and a low-cut blouse wouldn’t do the trick. It was too late to save what they’d had, anyway. It wasn’t as if she could take him back.
“I dressed in a weak moment,” she explained, her face burning. “I needed to feel attractive.”
“Mission accomplished.” He whistled. “You could stop traffic. You stopped me, didn’t you?”
She considered the amusement on his face. “I’m pretty sure you thought I was having engine trouble.”
“To be honest, I thought a bee had gotten into your car and you were under attack.”
“Thanks for the visual. That helps with the embarrassment. But it wasn’t that bad.”
His eyebrows rose above his sunglasses. “It was alarming. But back to your changed wardrobe. I don’t think showing that much skin is the best way to recover.” He scratched his smooth-shaven chin. “I mean... I’d hate to see you wind up with the wrong kind of guy. Again.”
“Kyle was the wrong kind of guy?” She was anxious to hear his justification for that statement. The general belief was that Brandon was the less reliable of the two. Kyle had attended UC Berkeley on an academic scholarship while getting a degree in electrical engineering. He’d started his own company manufacturing solar panels after that, which was currently making him rich. He was strong, kind, talented.
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