“She was.” He didn’t exactly spew forth any details, but she wondered if Jodi had gotten jealous.
Even if Riley and Jodi don’t agree on everything right now...
That’s what Daniel had said, so maybe that meant he’d witnessed some of Jodi’s displeasure.
“Anyway, Jodi’s not staying at my house. She took a room at the Bluebonnet Inn.” He rotated his shoulder a little, maybe silently telling her that he’d distanced himself from Jodi because he hadn’t wanted to be tempted into having sex.
But Claire wasn’t fond of this filling-in-the-blanks stuff. “So, Jodi’s planning on staying in town?”
“For a day or two, I think. She’s got some work to do. And so do you.” He tipped his head to the bathroom, where Livvy was no doubt—no doubt—just on the other side, listening to their every word. Claire just hoped after her friend’s piss-poor warning that she wasn’t saying the wrong words.
“I’ll be in touch,” Riley said, and he headed out.
Claire shut the door, huffed, but before the huff was even out of her mouth, Livvy was out of the bathroom. She wasn’t wearing mile-high heels today, but she teetered toward her as if she were, making Claire briefly wonder if Livvy had permanently altered her arches.
Livvy opened her mouth to say something but then glanced back at Ethan. She motioned for Claire to follow her into the kitchen. Oh, no. Since she figured Livvy wasn’t there to delve into the juicy details of her latest date, privacy was needed for a different reason. A reason that went along with that cryptic warning.
“Uh, has Lucky McCord called you?” Livvy asked the moment they were in the kitchen.
Claire did throw her hands in the air. “Riley asked me the same thing. Why would Lucky call me?”
The way that Livvy screwed up her mouth, Claire knew this was something she wasn’t going to like. “I ran into Lucky at a bar last night,” Livvy explained. “And we sort of...”
Claire held up her hands for a different reason. “I don’t need to hear the details of that. I don’t want them in my head because Lucky’s like a brother to me.”
“Funny that you mentioned that because Lucky said you were like a sister to him.” She went to the fridge, helped herself to some wine. From the bottle.
“How did you and Lucky get on the subject of me? And why did you tell me not to say a word?”
“Riley called him this morning, and I was still there.” Livvy stopped, smiled. “Don’t you think Lucky looks like one of those hot actors who stars in those action movies?”
Heck, she might as well keep her hands in the air. “What does that have to do with Riley calling him?”
“Nothing. It’s just that it also came up in conversation.”
“That must have been some morning chat. Lucky’s sibling-esque feelings for me. His movie-star looks.” Claire took the bottle from her and got in her face. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Well, Riley called because he was mad. He thought Lucky was Ethan’s father.”
“What?” Since she’d practically burst her own eardrums with that shout, Claire peeked into the living room to make sure she hadn’t woken Ethan. Thankfully she hadn’t. “Why would he think that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it came from Daniel?”
Probably. After all, Daniel had been over there because he’d met Jodi. “What did Lucky tell Riley?”
“That’s where the sister part came in. He said he didn’t think of you that way.” Livvy took back the wine. “Has Riley asked you again about Ethan’s father?”
“In a roundabout way. But I can tell he wants me to fess up.”
“A lot of people want you to fess up. Don’t you think it’s time?”
“No.” And that wasn’t up for debate. “If I tell them...tell Riley,” Claire corrected, “it won’t make things easier between us. He’s got a girlfriend, Livvy.”
Livvy made a sound that could have meant a dozen different things, but since this was Livvy, it meant something important. “What else did Riley and Lucky talk about?”
“Well, Lucky didn’t put the call on speaker, mind you, so I didn’t hear everything.” Which meant she’d heard enough.
“What?” Claire pressed.
Claire had never seen a clearer example of hemming and hawing. “Lucky called Riley a turd-head and told Riley that you were in love with him.” Livvy said that last handful of words faster than some people ripped off bandages.
Despite the speed of Livvy’s speech, Claire had no trouble hearing it. “Lucky said I was in love with him?”
“No, he said you were in love with Riley.”
Holy moly. That required her to sit down. “It’s not true,” Claire managed to say.
But Riley wouldn’t believe that. He would think she was in love with him, and that would send him running. That’s what his visit had been about. He was putting some distance between them.
Livvy handed her the bottle. “Drink up. I’ll get the ice cream from the freezer.”
Wine and ice cream. Livvy was bringing out the big guns, and Claire wasn’t sure it was at all necessary. “I’m not going to cry,” she insisted, but her eyes seemed to have a different notion about that.
Livvy had made it back to her with two spoons and a quart of double-fudge rocky road before the first tear slid down Claire’s cheek.
“This is so stupid.” Claire fought those tears and sort of won the battle, but she didn’t win the battle going on in her heart. “I mean, it’s not as if Riley was mine to lose.”
“Yeah, he was.” Livvy handed Claire the spoon piled high with ice cream. “It doesn’t have to make sense. Childhood crushes are like that. They’ll always be yours.”
“But that’s just it. I chose Daniel. I had a list.”
“A list you wrote when you were a child. That was then. This is now. You had no idea that Daniel would grow up to be a dickweed.”
“He’s not. That’s just it. Despite his flaws, he loves me. I have no doubts about that.”
“Ah, got it.” Livvy talked around the ice cream in her mouth. “You’re afraid no one else will ever love you.” She didn’t wait for Claire to consider it. And confirm it. “Daddy issues again. Your daddy did a Houdini, and now you want to reward Daniel because he wasn’t like your dad. He stuck around, and he loves you. Still not a reason he can’t have the dickweed label.”
Maybe not. But Claire had never wanted to be an old maid. Heck, she’d really wanted that picket-fence life, and Daniel might have been her only shot at getting it.
Livvy nudged her with her elbow. “Want me to go into town, find Riley’s girlfriend and start a fight with her or something?”
“No.” And Claire couldn’t say it fast enough. “You’re staying away from her. So am I, and if Riley and she hook up again, then it’s just something I have to accept. Besides, she could probably take us both in a bar fight.”
Even though she was about the same size as Claire, Jodi looked a lot tougher.
There was a scratching sound at the back door, and Claire didn’t have to guess who or what it was. The cat. Since she was running low on milk, she dumped some of the ice cream in a saucer.
“Got a new friend?” Livvy asked, following her to the door. “Whoa,” Livvy shrieked when she saw the animal.
“That’s what Ethan named her. It,” she corrected since Claire still didn’t know if it was male or female.
Livvy studied the cat for a couple of moments, actually cringed. “Well, Whoa looks as if he cooks meth. And he brought a friend.”
Claire hadn’t noticed the second cat until she put down the saucer, and the gray tabby came running toward it. This one was nothing like Whoa and actually looked and sounded like a real cat.
“I think it’s Whoa’s girlfriend,” Livvy remarked.
The newcomer did indeed sidle up to Whoa, and just the sight of the pair caused Claire’s eyes to water again.
“Oh, honey.” Livvy dragged Claire into her arms for one of those nipple-bruising hugs. “You know what we need? A girls’ night out. Let’s plan that for tomorrow night. You get a sitter, and I’ll swing by and pick you up.”
Claire nodded, mainly because she didn’t want to explain to Livvy that there was no way she wanted to go out and party. Her party meter was at zero. Plus, it was short notice for a sitter. In the morning she’d call Livvy and tell her that it was a no go.
“We should get to work,” Claire said, moving away from her.
She took her laptop from the living room, and since Ethan was still sleeping, she led Livvy toward the makeshift nursery that Claire had been using as a makeshift office. They went well with her makeshift life.
Which was exactly the reminder she needed that no one liked a whiner.
“Uh, how’s the box sorting going?” Livvy asked, the question prompted by the fact that she had to step around a half-dozen boxes to get in the room. There was another half dozen inside.
“I think the boxes are breeding. I found more in the attic behind an old chest of drawers. There were other small boxes inside the drawers.”
Livvy sank down next to one, pulling up her long legs in a lotus position, and she started rummaging through the nearest box. “Any sign of that letter yet?”
“None. I’m beginning to think Gran threw it away. Still, I’ll keep looking. It might be in one of these boxes or somewhere else in the house.”
“Maybe it’s in this.” Livvy dragged a book from the bottom of the box. “Bet there are some naughty details in there. Always did love your gran’s sense of adventure.”
Claire’s heart and stomach dropped. She snatched the book from Livvy.
“No. It’s my mother’s journal,” Claire managed to say.
“She left a journal? Have you read it? Oh, God. You’ve read it, haven’t you?”
“Just two words.” Claire opened to the first page so Livvy could see those two words, and then she turned that very page back so she could see it again for herself.
The two words were indeed still there.
Fucking kid.
The next words weren’t any better. Words like miserable, swollen. Hell.
“Fudge.” Livvy again. “You’re sure you actually want to read that?”
Claire wasn’t sure at all, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing just that. The entry on the first page was dated, and Claire quickly did the math. Her mother would have been eighteen, and after just a few lines, she realized this wasn’t the journal of a normal teenager.
“‘The baby moved today,’” Claire read aloud. She looked at Livvy. “She wrote this when she was pregnant with me.”
“You’re sure you want to read that?” Livvy repeated.
It had become a moth-to-flame moment, and Claire frantically skimmed through the next passage.
Rocky broke up with me. The bastard. He didn’t even tell me to my face. He just disappeared. What kind of sick bastard does that? Here, I’m carrying his brat kid and he leaves me here in this shit-hole.
Rocky. That was the first time Claire had ever heard her father’s name. And it might just be a nickname. It was stupid, but she latched onto that little piece of information as if it were gold.
Rocky-somebody was her father.
“Claire,” Livvy tried again. “You’re crying. Girl, you need to put that away.”
Claire intended to do just that, but she read the next line before she could stop herself.
Tomorrow, I’m getting rid of this kid.
Oh. God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
Claire slammed the journal shut and tossed it into the box marked Trash. She was already feeling raw and bruised, and nothing written on those pages would help. They certainly wouldn’t help her understand why her mother had run out on her.
Or why those words still crushed her heart after all this time.
Her mother clearly hadn’t ended the pregnancy, but the fact that she’d even considered it nearly brought Claire to her knees.
“Still up for that girls’ night out?” Claire asked.
Livvy nodded. “You bet. Set up a babysitter for Ethan, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow night. And wear something slutty.” She hooked her arm around Claire. “You, my friend, are having sex with the hottest cowboy we can find.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RILEY ACTUALLY FELT HUMAN. Well, close to human anyway. If he discounted the constant throb in his shoulder, the twinges in his knee, the continuing flashbacks and the crappy feeling he had about how he’d left things with Claire the day before.
So, maybe not that human after all, now that he’d taken inventory.
But at least he had showered, and there were some muscles aching that should be aching. The kind of muscles that got worked by herding horses from the corral to one of the pastures. He hadn’t done any heavy lifting—none had been required, and it wasn’t possible yet anyway. However, he had twisted and turned more in the saddle than was probably good for his shoulder.
Tomorrow morning he would probably have to take that human feeling down yet another notch when those aching muscles turned stiff. Still, he’d done the job and hadn’t violated a man-rule by doing it half-assed.
Not bad for someone who hadn’t done real ranch work in more than a decade.
He heard the women, Della and Stella. They weren’t quiet women and were even louder since they’d gotten back from their forced vacation. The extra volume was probably to teach him a lesson for trying to make a go of his recovery on his own. Neither had been pleased about that, and Della had let him know that she’d been flat-out insulted. She would have been far more than insulted if she’d seen the mess he had for a shoulder.
She would have been worried.
Stella, too. And that’s the reason Riley had demanded they stay away for a while. They still had to see him in pain, but he was getting some home-cooked meals as a trade-off.
Riley followed the sounds of their voices as he made his way to the kitchen. They were gossiping about Trisha and a bad waxing experience she’d had at a salon up in Austin while Johnny Cash and June Carter blared out a duet about pepper sprouts on the radio.
He didn’t want to ask about Trisha, especially didn’t want to ask what she’d had waxed, but Riley hoped that meant she was back in Austin for good. He didn’t want her unveiling that new wax job for him with another surprise visit.
While he was hoping, he added that maybe Jodi had left, too. After the way things had played out, she probably wouldn’t have stopped by the house to say goodbye. Heck, she was probably already off on another adventure.
Riley only had one pang that he wasn’t on an adventure, too. All right, there were two pangs, but they were slightly overshadowed by the smell of heaven.
Chocolate-chip cookies.
Or rather tookies.
Riley laughed at the reminder of Ethan. Then he cursed himself for the way the kid, and the kid’s mom, just kept popping into his head.
“Well, lookie here,” Della said when Riley strolled into the kitchen. She stopped stirring whatever she was cooking and made a show of ogling him. “Did a movie star just come walking in the kitchen?”
It wasn’t party clothes, but Riley had managed to button up his shirt, tuck it in and put on a belt, all with minimal grunting and wincing. The cowboy boots, however, had required some grunts. They took more tugging and pulling than the combat boots he’d been living in.
“He’s joining the other movie star,” Stella remarked.
Riley wasn’t sure what she was making, but she was punching a basketball-size wad of dough with her fists. She could have knocked out Mike Tyson wi
th the force she was putting behind those wallops.
Riley glanced around to see what Stella meant by that other-movie-star comment, and he spotted Logan at the table. A rare sighting indeed, and he was using the kitchen table to do some paperwork on the horse shipment they’d just received. But heck, Logan did sort of look like a movie star in his Texas tuxedo. He’d probably just come from a meeting or was headed to one.
Della plucked a cookie right from the baking sheet that she’d just taken out of the oven and handed it to Riley on the down low as if trying to hide it from her sister and Logan. One bite of it, and it was like being transported back to his childhood. Suddenly, he was six years old again, not a care in the world, and with Della sneaking him cookies while Stella and his mom pretended not to notice.
The sisters weren’t gray haired then, and they’d been young, only in their late thirties, but at the time Riley had thought they were old. The first cookie Della had sneaked him was as good as this last one.
Ethan would have loved every bite.
The thought just jumped in his head, causing the childhood memories to vanish. Riley was back to being thirty-one again, feeling partly human, but he still had his cookie. It was warm, gooey and perfect.
“Are you going somewhere?” Logan asked, glancing up from his paperwork.
Riley shrugged, finished off the cookie. “Thought I might go to Calhoun’s Pub.”
The three froze, looked at him as if he’d just announced a solo expedition to Antarctica.
“You’re sure you’re up to that?” Della asked. “You looked tuckered out when you came in from dealing with those new horses.”
“I am tuckered out.” Though he hated using that word, tuckered. “But I thought I could use a cold beer, maybe see some old friends.”
Again more of those stares.
“I’m not really asking permission,” Riley finally said when the staring continued and then the concerned looks kicked in. But he stopped. Maybe he didn’t need to ask for permission, but he sure needed some information. And some keys. “I need to use a vehicle. What’s in the garage?”
Texas on My Mind Page 11