by Stacey Keith
Todd slid across the picnic bench opposite her. He watched Abigail gurgle while Maggie clapped her hands.
“Thanks for coming to Sawyer’s birthday,” he said. “You’re a damned good woman to take such an interest.”
Not woman enough to have children, she thought. Or to not scare off the one man I have feelings for.
Abigail managed to clap without Maggie’s help, which made her crow with delight.
Todd took his hat off, set it on the table and then ran his fingers through his hair.
“I heard a rumor,” he said.
“What rumor?”
“I heard you was datin’ that fella from up north. The one I met at the Regal.”
She flinched. As a wound, it hadn’t even had time to scab over yet. Now Todd wanted to go digging around in it? “People love to run their mouths in Cuervo, don’t they?”
“Is it true?” he asked. “’Cause I’d hate to think of you getting caught up with someone like him, Mags. Ain’t he that rich sombitch who owns a bunch of buildings and newspapers and shit?”
“Jake owns a lot of things,” she murmured.
“C’mon now. You know better. You got no business gettin’ with a fat cat like that, baby girl.”
His use of the old endearment brought back memories. Just a few. But only because everything inside her was already a raw pulpy mess.
“Is that any of your business?” she said.
“Rich folks ain’t like us, sugar. That Jake fella…he ain’t gonna stay. He ain’t the stayin’ kind. You deserve a hell of a lot better.”
“Oh, so you mean better than a cheating husband and a lousy ex-friend?”
Todd didn’t bat an eye. She’d always admired that about him, in a way. When he screwed up, which was often, he owned it. No excuses.
“You deserve way better than any one of us, me, Jake or Avery. That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. Look, you got a real way about you, Maggie. I can see why that rich fucker wants a sweet piece like you. But you need a man who’s gonna take care of you.”
She gave Abigail the teething ring and brushed her finger against her soft pink cheek, struck once again by the cruel irony of this not being her baby. Hers and Todd’s.
Looking across the table at Todd kept bringing back so many bittersweet memories. Maggie felt as though she were reliving them all at once. She’d met Todd the night of her eighteenth birthday. He’d come into town with the rodeo, tall and handsome and sweet-talking. All the girls were crazy about him.
The minute Maggie laid eyes on him, something told her they were destined to be together. She sought him out even before the bronc busting event was finished. From that night on, she gave him all the passion of a girl experiencing her first love.
Three years after that they were married. And now, practically a decade since they’d met, he was sitting in front of her giving “advice” about her love life.
Love was supposed to be forever. It was supposed to be the one constant in your life that never budged. Just like with bronc busting, Todd held on only as long as he needed in order to win. After the round was over, Todd was over, too. If Jake ever decided he was in, Maggie sensed that wild horses couldn’t drag him away. He might be slower to commit, but Jake’s commitment would mean something. Not that she would ever have a chance of knowing that now.
“I’m sorry, Todd, but we’re not friends,” she said. “Not the kind of friends who can give each other advice.”
A dark shadow moved across his face. “It’s worse than I thought then. This Jake’s really got his spurs dug in.”
“It’s not Jake.” She stood and handed him Abigail. “It’s not even what you did. It’s just the way things are now.”
Todd stood, with the baby in his arms. He wore the dashed expression of a man who’d come off a long hard trail ride hoping to find a home cooked meal and a friendly smile waiting for him. “I know you’ve still got feelings for me, same as I have for you. If that sombitch was out of the picture—”
“It wouldn’t change anything.” Maggie shouldered her purse and picked up her sandals. “I love your kids. But I’ll never love you again. That place inside me that used to have you in it? Nothing’s ever going to grow there again.”
* * * *
Jake was miserable. There was no getting around it.
His mom was right. He was no fucking good. He would have ruined Maggie’s life and let her down. He’d already let Mason down. There was no point in starting a relationship, no point in pretending he was worth loving.
It was probably why he was so short-tempered, impatient—an asshole to pretty much everyone, including the old lady who’d been sweet enough to let him come inside the drug store without a shirt on. He took a bag of three cotton tees, slapped them on the counter, and then scowled at her for trying to make idle conversation.
Real dick move.
He felt as though he were bleeding inside. As though he were drowning and Maggie was the only one who could bring him back to shore. Wasn’t liking someone supposed to make you feel better, not worse? Didn’t having billions of dollars save you from having to drive around looking for a goddamn T-shirt and breakfast?
Who he was, everything he stood for, had been stripped away from him here in Cuervo. Maybe Carmen was right about small towns. Every reason you left was the same fucking reason you came back again—so it could kick your ass twice.
He was in such a black mood, all the workmen at the Regal avoided him, even Pete. Eventually, Jake just hid in his car, making phone calls, doing business. He finalized a hotel deal in Paris that any other time might have cheered him. Today, nothing kept his mind from wandering back to Maggie or what he’d said to her last night.
How could a person feel this awful and not die from it? How did a person continue functioning when his mother was in hospice and his best buddy wasn’t talking to him and the whole world had come crashing down around his feet?
Every breath he took out here smelled like Maggie’s bakery, which reminded him of her. Fucking torture was what it was. He could even see the side of her building from here. Know what else is sad? I was falling in love with you, she’d told him last night.
No, this was too much. He had to find somewhere to work that wasn’t here. Jake started the car and drove around looking for anywhere that didn’t remind him of Maggie. If he were smart, he’d just get the hell out of Cuervo for a day or two. Come back when he had his head on straight again.
Screw this.
Jake grabbed his phone and sent the bat signal for Liam to fly down in the helicopter and pick him up. Hell, he could be in Dallas by dinnertime. Catch a workout, maybe go for a swim. Carmen said she had more drawings for the techpark. He could send her a message, too, let her know he was coming.
Jake was so wrapped up in thought he almost didn’t see Maggie sitting in the park with her cheating bastard of an ex-husband and the baby. Every muscle in Jake’s body went rigid. What was she even doing there with that asshole?
Before he could stop himself, Jake pulled over and angled the car behind a tree.
Boy, Maggie hadn’t waited long, had she? One bad night and she was off and running.
He cut the engine and just sat there. His heart scrabbled like a wild animal caught inside his chest, all teeth and claws.
If he didn’t care about her, why did he feel like this?
The word love floated through the back of his mind. He physically recoiled. Love was a trap. A lie. Love was the ultimate delusion. It kept you from thinking right. It was the opposite of rational.
He wasn’t in love with Maggie. He was just tired and needing a few nights in his own bed. This awful thing with his mother, his brother, with Mason, had thrown him off his game.
Jake started the car and drove off, leaving Maggie with her fake ass cowboy. He would prove he didn’t need her. He would pro
ve he didn’t need anybody.
Starting now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ten more laps.
Jake flip-turned and shoved off from the pool wall, leaning into his breaststroke. All he thought about was the muted sound of bubbles churning underwater, the silky way they slid over his skin. This is awesome, he told himself. He should have done it days ago before everything turned to shit.
One of the benefits of owning the top three floors of a residential penthouse in downtown Dallas was having an indoor pool. It meant you swam year-round.
He finished the ten laps, came up for air, and squeezed the water out of his eyes. Carmen de Boers stood at the far end of the room. For once she wasn’t wearing her “Dress for Success” business uniform for female executives. Her belted dress shorts showed off a lot of hard work at the gym.
Jake launched himself out of the water, seized a towel, and then padded over to her. Admiring Carmen’s legs should have given him a corresponding urge to see what else she had going on, but if he had to be honest, that urge wasn’t there. Carmen was a business associate. Sure, he wanted to prove to himself it wasn’t all about Maggie, but…maybe he’d just have to try harder.
“You’re back,” Carmen said, not bothering to hide her delight in seeing him. “Country life not doing it for you?”
“No restaurants, no coffee bars and no pools.” He rubbed his face with the towel and caught her eyeing him. Carmen, you naughty girl.
Again he tried to grab even a thread of interest and came up empty-handed.
“What else is going on?” she asked as they left the pool area and went into the living room. “How’s the Regal coming along?”
“Slowly. Like everything else in a small Texas town.” He walked to his bedroom, which was close enough for them to continue a conversation. He selected a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck and then returned to the living room where Carmen sat stiffly on the couch.
“Is this it then?” she asked with a peculiar smile. “Are you here for good or just here for a few days?”
Jake sat across from her and stretched his arms over the back of the couch. Like everything else in this room, the couch was sleek and masculine, the lighting recessed, the furniture minimalist. The black marble floor had a black-and-gold Aubusson carpet on it. A floating spiral staircase led to the dining room upstairs. His elaborate sixteenth-century fireplace, flanked on both sides by green-veined marble pillars, had been imported from a chateau in France.
Funny, all this and his mother had never set foot inside the place.
Being here should have soothed him. Why didn’t it?
“Pete Manford’s got this part of the restoration handled,” he said. “There really isn’t a lot for me to do until he gets all the crap out.” Jake glanced at the wall clock. Maggie would be locking up for the day, ready to take that sad excuse of a dog out for a walk.
He wished he hadn’t thought about Maggie.
Carmen seemed to be studying him. Waiting for something.
“May I ask you a personal question?” she said.
More fucking questions. He shrugged, trying to be a sport about it. Of course, this was Carmen he was talking to. She wasn’t laidback exactly, but she’d known him since forever. “The real reason you came back to Dallas this soon…how much of it had to do with that woman you’re seeing?”
He ran one hand over the back of his head. Well, at least it wasn’t a question about his family. Family stayed in a box and that box was closed. But talking about Maggie didn’t feel much better. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.” Carmen got up and went to the big floor-to-ceiling window overlooking North Harwood Drive. Since night had fallen, downtown Dallas had turned on all its vivid neon and twinkling lights and rectangular yellow office windows. “We’re friends, right?” she said. “We tell each other things.”
“What kind of things?” That I feel like shit? That I’ve been mauled by emotions I can’t control anymore?
She crossed her arms and leaned one shoulder against the window frame. “Have you ever given any thought to dating seriously? I mean, like, dating a serious person. Someone who travels in your same circles. Who understands the demands of business.”
Jake observed her rigid posture, her lack of inflection, her tense waiting. Was she suggesting what he thought she was suggesting? “I’m thirty-one years old,” he said. “Dating seriously has never really been an area of interest.”
“Yeah, but how many supermodels and actresses can you go out with before you get sick of it?” she asked, fingering the chunk of turquoise around her neck. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone you can rely on? I’m sure the cookie lady was fun, but you must’ve gotten bored or else you wouldn’t be here.”
There was no way this conversation was going to end well. Jake pushed off from the couch, found a pack of smokes inside a desk drawer and lit up. “Let’s just cut to the chase, Carmen. You must have something in mind. What is it?”
She turned toward him, her cheeks faintly pink, eyes luminous. He thought about the work they’d done together, restoring the old bank, an abandoned sugar mill, all the office buildings they’d collaborated on. They could say goodbye to that now.
Of course, that’s what love did. It ruined fucking everything.
He waited, feeling sick inside.
“Are you going to make me say it?” she asked, trying for coquettish and falling short. “Can’t you guess?”
Jake took a long drag and let the smoke plume out of his nostrils. “You mean you.”
Carmen slid the turquoise back and forth across its chain. “Does that sound so strange to you? We have lots in common, you know. And we have something that none of your hookups could ever have.”
If he didn’t know Carmen, he might not have noticed the nervous tightness at the corners of her mouth. He might not have heard the quick laugh that made him think, What can I do to stop this?
“What’s that?” he asked.
“We have friendship,” she said softly, walking up to him and touching his arm. “I’ve waited a long time, Jake. I’ve watched you bounce from woman to woman. But I always knew the day would come when you would see the value in having a woman who understands you. Who wants what you want. Who isn’t just after your money.”
That last one stung. Until Maggie, he’d always had a rich man’s paranoia about the women he dated. Does she want me or does she want my money?
But he couldn’t bear the raw, naked need blazing on Carmen’s face anymore. “Oh, Carmen. Why does it have to be like this?”
“Like what?”
He hated disappointing her. Not even his male ego—which no one had ever referred to as anemic—enjoyed this. But it was worse than that. It meant saying out loud the very thing he’d been fighting. It meant admitting the truth, even to himself.
“I’m in love with Maggie,” he said. Poor Maggie. I’m a terrible man to be loved by.
Oh, those were damning words. He felt stupid and obvious, afraid she might laugh. But seeing the shock on Carmen’s face made him wish he could take those words back. In that moment he knew he and Carmen would never be close again. Try as she might, she would never forgive him.
Carmen clasped her hands in front of her as though someone had just submitted a business proposal, which she was graciously considering. “I see.”
“I’m sorry, Carmen. You know how it is. These things just sort of happen, I guess.”
“Does she love you?”
Jake stubbed out his cigarette and immediately wanted another one. When had his smoking gotten so out of control? “I don’t know if she’s even talking to me, to tell you the truth. I was a real fucking asshole, not just to her but her whole family. Even Mason’s pissed at me.”
“So you mean to tell me you’re in love with someone you’re not even talking to?” C
armen stared at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Everything, he wanted to say. I’m such a mess, I couldn’t even tell Maggie that my mother’s dying. Hell, I couldn’t even tell her I had a mother.
Carmen trailed her fingers over the end table, clearly struggling to sort through her feelings. “Well, you’d better move fast if you want to save this thing with her.”
He looked up in surprise. “I want to fix it. I just don’t know how.”
She slid her purse off the table and hung the strap over her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
He followed her to the door and then opened it. Her eyes searched his for a moment, haunted in the way that Maggie’s were haunted. “I’m trying to do the right thing here,” she said. “It’s not your fault. Men never know what’s good for them. But if you want that woman, you’d better find a way to open up to her, Jake. She’s not going to put up with your bullshit the way I did.”
* * * *
After work, Maggie collected Gus and drove the four blocks to her parents’ house. She knew her dad would be there, tinkering away in the garage. And although she could scarcely admit it, maybe being there with her kind, imperturbable father, amidst the motor oil smells from her childhood, might bring her peace.
At this point, she’d do just about anything to stop thinking about Jake.
I used to like my life, she thought as she pulled up to the house and Gus scrabbled at the window to go see Grandma. At least she hadn’t been miserable. But then Jake came along and showed her everything that she’d been missing. And now, no matter how hard she tried, there was no unknowing that.
Every time the bell rang above the door at the bakery, she’d look up, hoping it was him. When would she learn? What would it take for her to finally accept the truth? Men left. That was what they did. They left you wanting them like you wanted your next breath. They left you with all the memories while they went on to the next new thing.
Gus did a flying leap out of the car when she opened the door and then went tearing across the grass toward the house. Deep breath, she told herself. Fake like you’re happy in case Mom is watching. Priscilla was like a bloodhound on the scent when it came to her girls. You had to step lively if you wanted to out-fox her.