His First and Last (Ardent Springs #1)

by Terri Osburn

  The usually friendly expression on Mike’s face grew serious. “Then how old is Lorelei? I thought you were both about twenty-eight.”

  “She’s two months older than I am. Didn’t you see her date of birth when you hired her?”

  His eyes dropped to the table, unfocused. “I had her enter her own information into the computer.” Lifting his hat off the seat, Mike slid from the booth. “I need to go,” he said.

  “But what about your lunch?”

  “Tell Jeanne to cancel the order.”

  With no further explanation, the business owner charged out of the restaurant like a man on a mission, leaving Spencer to wonder if he’d said something wrong. What did Lorelei’s age matter to Mike? Then a thought occurred. Maybe Mike knew who Lorelei’s father was as well. Spencer’s mom, Lorelei’s mom, and Lowry had all gone to school together.

  The story Lorelei had been given was that her mom had gone on a spring break trip and had come back pregnant. No one knew the identity of the father, and the expectant mother’s story was that she didn’t remember a name. But maybe that wasn’t true.

  Spencer’s mother had lied to him. What if Lorelei’s mother had lied, too?

  “Jeanne!” he yelled, gaining the waitress’s attention where she stood behind the counter. “Cancel our orders.”

  “But they’re already cooking.”

  The waitress didn’t get a response, as Spencer charged through the door the same way Mike had.

  Lorelei had hoped Spencer might bring her lunch. She’d been thinking about him all day, replaying the night before in her mind, which only resulted in lots of squirming in her chair. She kept catching herself grinning like a fool while alphabetizing stacks of vendor invoices from earlier in the year. Trying to wipe the smile from her face only worked for minutes at a time. At this rate, her cheeks would be sore by the end of the day.

  Granny had told her to follow her heart, and right now her heart wanted nothing but Spencer. Though the bit about her mother growing bitter over her own choices still nagged at the back of her mind. What did that mean? From Lorelei’s earliest memory, her mother carried a sadness about her. There were moments, when she was playing with Lorelei and maybe forgot the rest of the world, when a genuine smile would split her face. But those memories were few and far between, faded by time.

  As a little girl, Lorelei didn’t know what depression was. She only knew her mom was always tired, and at some point she stopped getting out of bed. Eventually, Lorelei went to live with Granny and Pops and only saw her mother a couple times a month, if that. The memories of the drunken binges were the strongest, because they’d come at the end of her mother’s life. It had always struck Lorelei as ironic that the one day her mother stayed sober, for her daughter’s eleventh birthday, she’d been killed by a drunk driver.

  That was when Lorelei changed from the confused little girl who wanted nothing but to be with her mom, to the angry teen who didn’t care about anyone but herself. And the new version had stuck around for a long time. Stubborn to a fault, with a chip on her shoulder that should have been knocked off years before. The chip wasn’t completely gone, and likely never would be, but she was getting a second chance, and she’d be a moron to throw it away.

  Maybe if her mom had gotten a second chance, she’d still be around. Maybe she’d have found a man, one worth sticking around for, and forgotten that a stranger had knocked her up on a spring break trip. Then again, with Lorelei as a constant reminder, how could she ever have forgotten that fact?

  “You deserved better, Mom,” she said aloud. “You deserved so much better.”

  Lorelei finished with the March stack of invoices, set them aside to file, and then took a potty break. Spencer was clearly not coming, so she might as well grab the sandwich she’d brought for lunch from the fridge. But before she turned the corner into the hall, her phone started playing “Macho Man,” the ringtone that indicated Spencer was calling. He’d put the ringtone on himself, and she had yet to figure out how to change it. The infernal smartphone was sure as heck smarter than she was.

  “Hello,” she said in greeting. “Why haven’t you brought me lunch yet?”

  “Is Mike there?” Spencer asked, sounding out of breath. Had he really called her cell phone looking for her boss? After what they’d done last night, he couldn’t bother with so much as a “Hi, baby”?

  “No, he isn’t,” she ground out, tempted to hang up on him.

  “Has he called you in the last five minutes or so?”

  Now he was making her worry. “No. Why? Did something happen? Has there been an accident at a job site or something?”

  With a loud sigh, Spencer said, “Maybe I’m wrong then.”

  “Wrong about what?” Lorelei dropped into her desk chair. “Spencer, you’re not making any sense. What’s this about?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I ran into Mike at Tilly’s and asked if he remembered Doug Crawford.”

  “And did he?” That Spencer was still asking questions meant he might still give in and contact his aunt.

  “Yeah. He said Crawford didn’t talk much and spent a lot of time with my mom.”

  “We knew that. At least the part about being with your mom. What else did he say?”

  “Nothing. He asked how old I was, and then how old you are. When I told him, he said he had to go and left the diner.”

  “What do our ages have to do with anything?” When Spencer didn’t answer right away, she prodded, “What are you not telling me?”

  In a quiet voice, Spencer said, “I think he might know who your father is.”

  Lorelei sat up straighter. “That’s not possible. Mom was on a trip. No one knows who my father is.”

  “But what if that’s just what you were told?” She could almost see him lifting his cowboy hat to run a hand through his hair. “What if your mom lied like mine did?”

  There was no way. Lorelei’s mother was nothing like Spencer’s. She hadn’t been hateful and selfish. She’d been depressed, not evil.

  “She wouldn’t have done that.”

  After another hesitation, Spencer agreed. “You’re right. She wouldn’t have. I’m sure I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  And he’d put that same conclusion into her head now. What if there was someone a phone call away who could tell Lorelei who her father was?

  What if Granny had known all along?

  A stab that felt way too real pierced Lorelei’s heart. This was ridiculous. Her mother had taken a spring break trip to the Gulf two months before graduating high school and had gotten knocked up by some anonymous guy who hadn’t even given her his last name. No one had lied to Lorelei, especially not her own family.

  But what if . . . ?

  “Lor, you still there?” Spencer asked. “Hon, forget I said anything. It was stupid. I’m letting all this stuff with my mom cloud my judgment. Mike probably had an appointment he forgot about.”

  Lorelei knew Mike didn’t have any lunchtime appointments today. And he’d known her mom. They’d gone to school together. Maybe she’d confided in him and no one else. Maybe he could give her answers he didn’t know were secrets after all these years.

  “I’m fine,” she said. Lorelei didn’t want Spencer coming to check on her. If Mike did come back, she didn’t want anyone else around. “No worries. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

  If she’d ever had any hint of acting skills, Lorelei hoped they’d come through for her now.

  “You sure?” Spencer asked, sounding less than convinced.

  “Yes, I’m sure. I’ve got a stack of invoices to file, and I still need to eat lunch.” Staring unseeing at the papers on her desk, she added, “Do me a favor and grab the cookie trays from Snow’s, would you? I need to pick up some ingredients for tomorrow, and I’d rather not backtrack to the shop.”

  She also intended to wait for Mike to return to the office. The week before he’d given her a key so she could go without having to wait for him to lock up.
Today she would wait.

  “I can do that. But Lorelei?” Spencer said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Really.” Lorelei added extra cheer to her voice. “I have a call coming in on the office line. Talk to you later.”

  After Spencer said good-bye, Lorelei dropped the cell and stared at her computer screen. The image of Mike Lowry wearing a hard hat while standing next to his company truck stared back.

  “Do you know something I don’t know, Mr. Lowry?”

  “Yeah, I do,” said a voice from behind her. Lorelei spun in her chair to see her boss standing in the doorway twisting the brim of his cowboy hat between his fingers. “We need to talk.”

  Chapter 22

  It was a rare occasion in Lorelei Pratchett’s life when she was scared speechless. But Mike’s words had definitely done the trick.

  We need to talk.

  Was she about to find out that her dad was some loser she’d seen a million times growing up? Or maybe he was a musician who’d been playing at a crappy bar in Gulf Shores and seduced her country-bumpkin mother on a dare. Sadly, Lorelei couldn’t figure out which scenario she preferred. In fact, blissful ignorance was sounding better and better by the second.

  After hanging his hat on the coat rack in the back corner, Mike rolled his desk chair around the office until it was a few feet from Lorelei’s. He sat down with a resigned sigh, leaned his elbows on his knees, and stared at her for several seconds. Lorelei waited for him to blurt out the news. To spit it out so she could deal and move on.

  “Right,” Mike said, running his hands over his face. “Where do I start?”

  “I don’t know, but you need to start somewhere, because if what Spencer thinks is true and you don’t tell me soon, I’m going to lose my mind.”

  Mike sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “What day were you born?” he asked.

  “December 19, 1984,” she answered, biting her tongue as she fought for patience.

  “Damn,” her boss said, lifting his eyes toward the ceiling. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I put it on my paperwork when I started,” Lorelei replied. And then she realized he wasn’t talking to her. Everything went still as the air turned suffocating. He didn’t mean . . . No way. That would be crazy.

  Leaning forward again, Mike looked her straight in the eye. “Your mother was the love of my life. I want you to know that. She was my first love, my first, well, everything. And I was hers.”

  Frozen in place, Lorelei felt as if she’d lost touch with her body. There was nothing but a low rumble of emotions, as if they were all building into a giant wave that would crash over her any second.

  “I asked her to go with me to Nashville,” he continued. “She kept putting me off and wouldn’t give me an answer. Then, on graduation night, Donna turned me down. Said that if I was going to chase my dream, I’d have to do it without her.”

  “Why?” Lorelei whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Mike sprang from his chair. “She was scared, I guess. She’d never been away from your grandparents until that trip we all took during spring break down to the Gulf. Your grandmother hadn’t wanted her to go, but Donna was eighteen and went against her wishes. Hell, it was probably the first time in her life she’d ever defied her parents. I know your grandmother gave her a hard time about it when we got back. Made her feel really guilty.”

  As enlightening as this all was, Lorelei hadn’t been asking why her mother didn’t go with the father of her child.

  “I mean, why did you leave her to deal with a baby all by herself?” Lorelei’s voice gained strength as her anger grew. “You left her to deal with the censure and the dirty looks. The condemnation of the only people she’d ever known. And for what? To sing stupid little songs on back-alley stages?”

  Mike shook his head from side to side. “Lorelei, you have to believe me. I never knew. I had no idea she was pregnant when I left. I was so angry that Donna hadn’t been willing to go with me, I tried to put her out of my head. I didn’t write or call. And by the time I got over the hurt, it was too late.”

  “What do you mean, it was too late?”

  “It had been three or four years when I ran into someone we’d gone to school with at a bar in Printer’s Alley. She said Donna had a little girl.” Returning to his seat, he added, “I didn’t ask how old or who the dad was. I could hardly think, knowing she’d gone on with her life and I’d missed my chance to get her back.”

  Lorelei stayed silent, struggling to process what he was telling her. “Are you sure that you’re the one?” she asked, grasping at the slim chance that maybe her mother hadn’t lied to her. To everyone.

  “Your mother wasn’t some tramp who slept with any boy who passed by, and I won’t have you talking about her as if she were. I had a crush on her from freshman year on, but she was so quiet and shy. Always with her nose in a book, and I couldn’t get her to notice me. At the start of senior year, I knew I had to give it one more try, and by some miracle, she finally looked up from one of those books and gave me the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen to this day.” Shaking his head as if to drag himself out of the past, he said, “We were together every day after. Until I left for Nashville.”

  If Mike Lowry was the only boyfriend her mother ever had, then Granny must have known. How could her own grandmother look her in the eye and not tell her the truth? What kind of a person could do that?

  And then Lorelei remembered Granny’s nagging about her working for Mike. This must have been why. Because she knew.

  “I don’t know what to do with all of this,” she said, staring at the floor but seeing nothing. How was a person supposed to deal with meeting her father for the first time, let alone when that father also happened to be her boss? And what was the next move upon finding out your entire life was a lie? That the people she’d loved the most had kept something so important from her felt like being hit by a truck, then having the thing back up and run over her again.

  “I don’t know how to process it either,” Mike said. “I figured this out less than thirty minutes ago, and it still feels like some crazy dream.”

  Whether this was a dream or a nightmare, Lorelei wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she needed to talk to Granny. Mike was as much a victim in this as she had been, and they both deserved more answers. But she’d get her own first.

  Pulling her purse from beneath the desk, Lorelei headed for the door. “I need to go.”

  “You’re leaving?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah, I am,” she said.

  Spencer was thankful to have a clear schedule for the afternoon. He never should have called Lorelei with his crazy assumption. Lorelei never called him back to say that Mike had returned to the office and shared the life-changing news of who her father was. So he had to be wrong.

  This was his own mother’s fault. She’d turned his life into a bad soap opera, and now Spencer was trying to do the same to Lorelei. Shame washed over him at the memory of accusing her mother and grandparents of lying to her all these years. As if he’d wish that kind of hurt on anyone.

  It was time for a distraction. Something monotonous that would occupy his hands and let his mind relax. He needed time in his workshop. To feel the hum of the tools and watch the wood transform, as if whatever Spencer created had been trapped inside the whole time. If only he could shape his own life as easily.

  Remembering that Buford had left him a message that the oak he’d ordered had come in, Spencer headed that way. He could get started on two custom orders and maybe get ahead of schedule for once.

  As the bells chimed over the door, Spencer regretted his decision. Jebediah Winkle was standing at the counter talking to Buford, and the pair looked to be in the throes of a serious discussion. This was the last thing he wanted to get involved in today.

  Unfortunately, Buford saw him before he could cut and run.

  “Perfect timing, Spencer,” Buford said. “The ma
yor and I are talking about Lorelei’s idea for that fall festival.”

  Spencer cringed on the inside but kept his face as neutral as possible.

  “What about it?” he asked.

  The store owner pointed at his opponent with a cookie. “I was saying how I think it’s a good idea, at least better than anything we’ve come up with so far. Mayor Winkle doesn’t agree.”

  What a shocker. Jebediah Winkle didn’t like an idea that Lorelei proposed. If nothing else, the man was predictable.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t agree.”

  Buford raised a brow. “That’s exactly what you said.”

  “What’s your problem with a festival, Mayor?” It wasn’t as if Spencer was going to get out of this, so he might as well dive in. Maybe he could fend off Jebediah’s arguments now and save Lorelei the trouble next week.

  “There’s a lot of planning involved with an event of this size,” the mayor said.

  Spencer tilted his head. “We don’t know what size it’ll be. Lorelei hasn’t presented anything yet.”

  “It’s not as if this town is new to festivals, Spencer. We know the basics of what’s involved.”

  “That’s right,” Spencer said. “Which means we know exactly what it takes to put one on, and who the best people are in the community to carry it off.”

  “And you think one of those people is Lorelei Pratchett?”

  Losing his temper with the mayor would only make things more difficult. There had been plenty of enthusiasm when Lorelei suggested the festival as a possible fund-raising event, but Jebediah had a way of swaying people to his side of an argument. That’s how he’d unseated Buford and taken over running their little metropolis, and he would no doubt do the same to defeat any significant committee plans he didn’t like.

  “Lorelei came up with this idea on her own, Mayor Winkle. She’s been tasked with presenting a proposal to the committee and deserves the chance to do so. Nothing has been voted on, and there’s no reason to pass judgment until we’ve seen what she comes up with.”