“Charlotte.”
Fighting the grogginess, she shoved herself to a sitting position. How could she sleep! What if her baby needed her? What if she hadn’t heard h—
“It’s okay, Amy. She’s fine.”
The low, gentle voice threatened to lull her back to sleep, and she wiped at her eyes, clearing the last of the fogginess away. But what she saw made her think she was still dreaming.
Marshall…holding her daughter. A small smile on his handsome face, the tiny child in the crook of big, solid arms. Her emotions warred within her, the sight so amazing and heartbreaking at the same time.
Heartbreaking won.
She should’ve been your child. This should have been our life…
Amy fought the collapse of her chest and pushed the “should have beens” back into the dark closet of her heart. “H-how long have I been asleep?” She avidly remembered him coming upon her in a weak moment when she’d been tired and angry at the stupid stroller. How embarrassing to cry in front of him over something so ridiculous.
“Less than an hour.”
And he stayed? Why?
“She was getting a little antsy,” he said as if reading her mind. “You were pretty worn out, and I didn’t want her to wake you.”
So, you just picked her up and rocked a baby for an hour? And he looked so natural sitting there in the chair, her daughter’s small body protected within his arms.
Reality took hold along with a singeing of her cheeks, and she rushed over to relieve him of his undue burden.
Charlotte’s warm body nestled into hers, her little chin immediately rooting around her breast.
“She’s, uh, hungry.” If possible, her cheeks burned hotter as his gaze went to her chest.
Marshall’s eyes darkened and the heat raked from her cheeks to more intimate places.
He cleared his throat and stood. “I-I should be going.”
Amy didn’t quite know what to do about the muted gravel in his tone, or the way it ignited embers she’d thought long turned to ashes.
Heart pounding, she simply nodded and followed him to the door. “Thank you,” she remembered to say at the last minute.
Marshall turned and paused, blue eyes softening. “No problem.”
He ran a finger over Charlotte’s plump cheek. “We had a good talk.” His gaze rose to meet hers, the grin tipping his lips again. “Few things I needed to work out. She was a good listener.”
In his eyes, Amy read the war he was battling, the hurt, the questions. He had every right to be mad…or had he? There was still that comment he made about the ring…causing questions of her own she needed answered.
“Marshall—”
His warm fingers pressed gently against her lips.
A quiet, “Shhh,” escaped his. “It’s okay. We will talk, just not right now.”
His soap-musky scent whirled around her, making her dizzy, and with his fingers still pressed against her lips, she could only nod, and gulp.
His gaze dipped back down and the pressure in and around her breasts became more than apparent. When his attention returned to hers, his eyes were dark as a moonlit lake.
Then he did something she didn’t expect, didn’t imagine would ever happen again in her lifetime. He bent, and his lips grazed her forehead, paused, and then pressed a tender kiss to her heated skin.
Then he was gone.
Amy stood there in the open doorway, the small, annoyed mewing sounds from her daughter muffled by the thunderous pounding of her heart.
****
With a long-broom in one hand, Marshall flipped a chair over and set it seat down on the table Tulsa Blue had wiped down earlier. The jukebox played low in the background and the aroma of Gus’s special, after-hours brew filled the quiet honky tonk. He pushed the broom along the floor and repeated the closing exercise at the next table.
“You know, you’ve put a whole new spin on the Lonesome Cowboy moniker tonight.”
He glanced over his shoulder to find Keira, two mugs in hand, headed his way. “Excuse me?”
“They used to call you the Lonesome Cowboy because you’ve been working here so long. But you played lonesome on a whole new level tonight.”
Marshall frowned and accepted the mug of strong, black coffee, not planning to comment on the ridiculous statement. After a short, hot sip, he set the mug down and grabbed up another chair.
Keira obviously didn’t get the hint as she continued to stare at him expectantly.
The chair clunked onto the scarred table-top. With quick jerks, he swept out peanut shells and an old receipt from under the table. “Did you have a point?”
“You wanna talk about her?”
The concerned brown eyes of his longtime friend were too understanding and compassionate for him to handle at the moment, and he dropped his attention back to his task. “No.”
“Come on, Marsh. You’ve been sulking about ever since Amy showed up, and then tonight it’s been like you’re on another planet. You actually gave a Margarita to Big Ed for goodness sake.”
“He liked it, didn’t he?” he grumbled.
Her shoulder bumped his, and Keira’s throaty laughter trickled out. “Yeah, and thanks for that. I lost five bucks to Dad betting Big Ed would never touch the glass.”
His lips twitched thinking about how he covered his absent-mindedness by convincing the three-hundred-pound truck driver the women would come crawling over to him if they saw him drinking it.
Her tone sobered. “That’s the first glimmer of a smile I’ve seen on your face in a week.”
Marshall stopped and folded his arms over the end of the broom, dropping his chin on his knuckles. He opened his mouth to speak, but settled for a heavy sigh against his friend’s knowing stare.
She tucked the heavy blonde hair behind her ear and leaned back against a table. “Love’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
Narrowing his eyes, he took in her slouched shoulders and thin finger rimming the brim of the cup. “You hooked up with him again, didn’t you?”
“No.”
But the brush of a phantom hair from her cheek was her tell, and he knew it. This time the sigh was for her. “Josh’s a jerk, Keira.”
Her gaze darted to the kitchen door and then back, her voice a harsh whisper. “Hey, we’re not talking about me—it’s you who needs to get his head out of his ass and see what’s right in front of you.”
He leaned in and matched her low volume. “Seriously? This coming from you? The woman who’s hung up on a jerk who hooks up for a bit of tail, and then heads to the next rodeo before the bed is cold.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pushed off the table and came right up to his face. “But yeah, maybe Josh isn’t Mr. Perfect, but at least he admits he wants me. More than your sorry ass has done. I don’t blame Amy for—”
Marshall raised his hand between them in an attempt to stop her momentum before it took them both somewhere they didn’t want to go. After a few more seconds of heated stare-off, he dropped it.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight with you, Keira.” He was so damn tired of fighting—mostly with himself. It was like he was split in two and didn’t know how to pull himself back together again. Worse, he hated to admit out loud, “You’re right, okay? Happy now?”
She collected herself with a purse of her lips and eyed him up and down before letting out a heavy breath of her own. “No, I’m not.” Leaning back against the tabletop, she tilted a smile his way. “We’re really a pair, aren’t we?”
He chuckled and reached out a hand to chuck gently at her chin. “Yeah. Lonesome’s finest.”
“So, what are you gonna do about her?”
Marshall shook his head. Having been burned to ashes, he didn’t know if he had it in him to risk even going near that flame again. “God knows I’ve thought about it until my head hurts.” Not to mention his heart. “But, honestly, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Maybe you’re thinking too
hard. You know what Dad always says”—she twisted the end of an imaginary mustache—“‘Thinking can put more walls around a heart than cement.’”
Chapter Nine
Marshall rubbed gingerly at his thigh again; there’d be a bruise there the size of Texas by morning. He returned his hand to the steering wheel and turned the truck off Main Street and onto Route 66 out of Redemption.
If he didn’t get his head on straight, he’d get more than a hoof in the thigh next time. Even Chase had chewed him out for not having his head in the game. Guilt tipped his lips down; his buddy trusted him to ride the bulls for assessment, paid him for his expertise, and here he was acting like a greenhorn on his first circuit ride.
He needed to get Amy out of his head.
Focusing his attention back to the road before he ended up in a ditch, he slowed down when he noticed a car on the side of the road outside the old Johansson place. He grimaced at the For Sale sign in the front yard near the road. The Victorian Bed and Breakfast had been a booming little business in its day.
What a waste.
Marshall pulled up behind the blue Camry and jammed the gear shift into park. He grabbed his cell phone from the cubby in the dash and slid it into his pocket as he exited. The heat of the afternoon was bad enough in an air-conditioned vehicle, he didn’t want to imagine what it would be like for someone stuck on the side of the road for hours.
The low rumble of an idling engine told him there wasn’t anything wrong with the car, and there was no appearance of a cell phone being held to the head silhouetted though the rear window. So why pull over here?
Figuring he was there anyway, Marshall approached the driver’s side, but the occupant didn’t move or acknowledge his presence in any way. The sun’s rays on rich, reddish-brown hair caused his hand to pause as he reached to tap the glass. A quick glimpse of an occupied baby seat in the back confirmed his surprise.
Amy?
He followed through with the gentle knuckle rap against the window.
Hair fanned over the soft curve of her cheek as she spun toward him, her startled eyes wide for a moment before slowly closing in relief.
The window hummed down. “Marshall? What are you doing here…and scaring me half to death?”
A floral peach scent floated on the cool draft from the air conditioner, tightening his throat for a moment. He covered the lapse with a shrug. “I saw the car on the side of the road. Didn’t know it was you until I got here.” His agitation made his words come out harsher than he intended. “You should pay more attention. Any lunatic could’ve pulled up behind you, and you never would have known.”
She tossed a guilty look over her shoulder at the baby sleeping soundly in the backward-facing car carrier. “I should have been paying more attention,” she said almost to herself as her slim brows creased in concern. Then her frown turned toward the window.
“What are you doing here?”
The auburn strands danced slightly as she shook her head again, one hand settling on the steering wheel and the other on the gearshift. “Just fantasizing—old dreams die hard I guess.”
The last was muttered almost to herself before she glanced up with a small, self-conscious smile on her pretty face. His heart did a flip.
“I appreciate you stopping, but we’re fine.”
The whimsical look in her eyes dimmed for something more foreign than he remembered from her—resignation.
“You sure?” he asked.
With one last look at the bed and breakfast, she nodded with a half-sigh of, “Yeah, we’ll be fine,” almost to herself.
Don’t do it, Marsh. Let her go.
But he couldn’t, not when he knew exactly what that whimsical look had meant.
With a hand on the top of the car, he glanced over his shoulder to the empty house. The mantra continued, but this time his head wasn’t winning the battle.
“Wanna take a look around?”
The window stopped halfway up, and he almost laughed at her bright eyes widening as they ricocheted between him and the property.
“What? N-no…I can’t. There’s no one here. We can’t go traipsing around someone else’s property. Besides I don—”
Marshall grinned and opened the door for her. “I know the realtor. It won’t be an issue, I’m sure.”
Amy remained in her seat. “But Charlotte, I’d have to get the stroller and—”
He bent down to pull on the trunk release, careful not to touch the lean length of leg peeking out below a faded denim skirt. “You get the babe. I’ll grab the stroller.”
Uncertainty in her brow line was broken by a spark of excitement twitching her lips. His grin broadened when she followed him out and opened the back door.
Marshall went around to the trunk and pulled out the folded down stroller. He raised a brow and leaned it against the tire hub just as Amy backed out of the door with the baby carrier in hand.
Her chuckle at his expression echoed in his chest as she reached for the contraption.
“Believe me, it’s easier going up than down.” And she proved it with a simple press of the handle and quick snap of her arm. “See?”
He stepped back to let her mess with securing the carrier into the foreign device. As she bent over, his gaze was drawn to the curved backside covered by the faded denim.
Marshall blew out a slow breath and turned away from the dangerous thoughts popping into his brain.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked as she pushed the wheels into a straight position next to him. “I feel like we’re trespassing.”
“Would it help if I told you I know the owner, too? Trust me, he won’t mind you taking a look around.”
An excited glint touched her eyes. “I guess.”
He matched her shorter strides as they made their way down the long drive. “You guess? Haven’t you been wanting your own inn since before I even knew you?”
“Yes, but…” Her momentum slowed. “How did you—”
“You told me. That afternoon by Miller’s creek, remember?”
Amy remembered, all right. To hide the burning in her cheeks, she pushed the stroller forward and swallowed a gulp of warm air. That Marshall remembered her rambled musings, especially in light of the rest of that afternoon, surprised her. Her skin tingled and heated up with the memories of his solid arms around her, his damp chest pressed against hers and…
She choked back the unbidden visions. “This is, uh, still just a dream. I don’t know if I’d be able to afford a place like this. There’s Hank’s insurance policy, and maybe when the house sells…”
Tension turned the air crisp and tight, filling the small spaces left by the overt heat. Smart move, Amy. In trying to get out of one uncomfortable situation, she’d backed right into a worse one. How could she have brought Hank’s name up in front of Marshall?
“I…didn’t—”
His large hand waved it off, but he didn’t look at her, instead finding apparent interest in the garden gates to the left of the house.
“Do you know how long this place has been up for sale,” she asked quickly, reaching for a neutral topic. The fact that he was even here talking to her civilly was a miracle in itself, and she didn’t want to lose the tentative truce.
“Couple years.” Marshall pointed to where he had been looking over the gate. “The gardens extend to a little creek running over the back of the property. A gazebo is there, along with a set of swings and small bridged walkway over the stream. Was a pretty place back in its heyday.”
He continued the descriptive commentary right up to the porch steps. The boyish grin on his face, like he was holding his breath for a positive reaction from her, took her by surprise, stealing the breath from her lungs. But she didn’t even have a chance to catch up on that moment or reply before Marshall reached down, took a firm hold of the whole stroller and carried it safely up the six steps to the front of the veranda.
Following, she waited while he punched in the combination to the s
mall lockbox on the doorknob.
“How did you know the combination?”
“Uh, Lee-Ann, the real estate agent. She always uses the same code,” he answered quickly, pulling out the key.
“Well, that doesn’t seem too smart.”
“Small towns,” he muttered as he fiddled with the door and pushed it open.
A smile deepened his five o’clock shadow as he took off his Stetson and swept it forward before her. “Your castle awaits, m’lady.”
It was hard not to let her own smile falter until she walked passed him. The moment was bittersweet, reminding her of how Marshall used to be with her—always kind and courteous, often a little silly, so easy to be with—and so different from the sullen, angry man he appeared to have turned into.
Did I do that? Was it her fault he’d grown such a bitter side? Or was it just her who pulled that out of him?
Guilt took another bite out of her soul.
“Amy?”
Realizing she was blocking the doorway, she hid her remorse behind a push of the stroller across the hardwood entryway.
The musty smell of a home closed for a long time brushed her nostrils, but neither her guilt nor the staleness could subdue the excitement that caught at the carved maple front desk tucked into a little inlet beside a matching banister leading up to the second landing.
A step to the left took her to the doorway of a beautiful, bright salon; gray sheets covered furniture in front of a prominent fireplace and mantel built to be adorned for every holiday season.
Marshall’s arm came over her shoulder to point into the room.
“There’s a small alcove and breakfast room through that door.”
His cologne mingled with the heat of male. Her knees trembled and she wondered if this was wise; simply being in his presence for a few moments ignited all sorts of dormant feelings.
“And the dining area and kitchen are through the door to the right.”
“N-nice.” Ducking back, she grabbed a quick glimpse of her daughter to assure herself she still slept, and proceeded to the safety of another room. A large dining table that could seat at least twenty lay covered with a floral sheet; above, a chandelier graced with a kaleidoscope of candle-shaped lights was covered in a thick layer of dust. In the corner sat a couple saw horses with the crown molding laid across their chipped surface. A few tools sat amongst the sawdust and peanut shells scattered in the corner.
Honky Tonk Hearts Volume 2 Page 42