Yeah, right. That night in her bed said otherwise and she was smart enough to know it. He could lie through his teeth and claim it didn’t matter, but that wouldn’t change anything. Hell, he could already hear the sound of her chuckling disbelief. With one little peck on the cheek, one innocent little caress, she could prove him a liar.
He returned to Whispering Wind dreading the encounter they were bound to have. He imagined she was going to have plenty to say about him running out on her without a word. He could have avoided it for another twenty-four hours or so, but he saw little point to postponing the inevitable. If leaving town for an entire week hadn’t accomplished anything, another day’s delay could hardly matter.
He drove straight into town and strolled into the Starlight Diner as if he hadn’t even been away. Henrietta gave him a quick welcoming hug as she darted past him to pick up an order. To his confusion, there was no sign of Heather. His heart thudded dully as he considered the possibility that he’d finally gotten his way, that she had packed up and left town, taking his daughter with her. He didn’t like the unsettling feeling of loss stealing over him one bit.
He slid onto a stool to wait until Henrietta had time enough to talk. She eventually breezed past long enough to pour him a cup of coffee and deliver a piece of apple pie, but she was way too busy to linger. Finally, when he could no longer stand not knowing, he snagged her arm.
“Hey, where’s your help?” he asked, hoping he sounded no more than casually curious, rather than panicked. “I thought Heather would be working this time of day.”
Henrietta gave him a knowing look, then waited in what was obviously an attempt to drag out his torment. “She is usually, but she’s tied up this afternoon out at the fairgrounds.”
Not gone, he thought with a barely concealed sigh of relief, but out at the fairgrounds. Why? Henrietta escaped his grasp before he could demand an explanation. A sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach suggested he wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was.
When she finally paused again to refill his coffee cup, he looked her straight in the eye and asked, “Why is she at the fairgrounds?” He was pleased that he managed to sound calm and reasonable, even though his gut was churning.
“She’s overseeing the renovations,” Henrietta said as if it was common knowledge.
Renovations? What renovations? And why on earth would Heather be involved? Unfortunately it was clear that Henrietta wouldn’t be giving him any details, at least not for another hour or so until the dinner rush died down. He figured the only way to find out was to head for the fairgrounds himself.
He heard the hammering and the sound of rock music being played at full volume before he even made the last turn onto the property. However, he was not prepared for the sight that awaited him. Men were swarming all over the old barn, replacing boards, spreading paint over the parts that were finished.
And in the midst of them was Heather, looking frazzled and dusty and sexy as hell in a pair of denim shorts and a tank top with her wildly curling hair tugged through the back opening of a baseball cap in a makeshift ponytail. She waved distractedly when she saw him, then went right back to her conversation with that damnable cowboy, Joe Stevens.
Before Todd could react to that, he heard a squeal and then thirty pounds of unleashed energy crashed into his legs. He might have tumbled straight onto his butt if he hadn’t spotted Angel heading toward him at the very last second and braced himself for the impact. Well, at least one of the females in his life appeared glad to see him.
“Where you been?” she demanded, reaching out her arms to be picked up.
With a gesture that was becoming second nature, he scooped her into his arms, even as his gaze sought out her mother. Heather and Stevens had their heads bent over what looked like some sort of a sketch.
He felt a soft pat on his cheek and turned to meet his daughter’s gaze. She grinned in satisfaction at having captured his attention.
“Where you been?” she repeated with single-track determination.
“In New York.”
Her expression brightened with apparent recognition. “I been to New York.”
Todd grinned back. “You used to live in New York.”
Only after he’d said the words did the implication strike him. Used to live in New York, as if that was no longer true, as if she now lived in Whispering Wind. Had he already stopped thinking of them as just passing through? Was that why he’d balked earlier at calling an attorney in Laramie? Was that why his heart had sunk at not finding Heather where he’d expected her to be—at the diner?
“Sweetie, I need to talk to your mommy,” he said, putting Angel down. She promptly grabbed his hand, clearly not understanding his unspoken request for privacy.
“I go with you,” she announced.
Todd automatically slowed his impatient pace to match hers. He listened with only a fraction of his full attention as she chattered away, but when she said something about her mommy making a play, his gaze snapped toward her.
“What did you say?”
“Mommy’s making a play,” she repeated. “I gonna be in it. Sissy, too.”
Sweet heaven, Todd thought. That’s what this beehive of activity was all about. Heather had somehow gotten it into her head to do some sort of theatrical production out here. What was she thinking? Staging a play took time. She was going back to New York. Not once had she implied otherwise, despite his own nagging sense that he might be just as happy if she changed her mind. Who on earth was supposed to take over when she abandoned the project to go back to her real life?
Those weren’t questions Angel could possibly answer, so he stored them up for Heather, who seemed to have vanished, probably with Stevens, who seemed content to trail around after her like an adoring puppy.
Sure enough, he found the two of them at the back of the stage staring up, debating whether there was room enough to install concealed tracks for lighting.
“There isn’t,” Todd said emphatically, startling them both.
Heather frowned at him. “Since when did you become a lighting expert?”
“Since I had to have sound stages built out here for Megan’s television show,” he replied.
Her expression brightened as if he’d announced an expertise in electrical engineering. “Good. Then you can be in charge of getting this place professionally lit.”
Before he could respond to that, she was on the move again, Stevens trailing after her. Obviously she assumed Todd would fall into step with her plans in the same way.
“Heather!”
His bellow brought her to a halt. She turned slowly, tilting her head quizzically. “Yes?”
“We need to talk.” He leveled a look at the rancher. “Alone, if you don’t mind.”
Stevens regarded him with knowing amusement. “It’s up to Heather.”
Heather frowned, but finally said, “Okay, fine. Joe, go ahead and check on Parks and Grady. See if they think we need more paint. Those old boards are soaking it up like sponges. Henrietta said if we needed more to go ahead and get it and put it on her account.”
He nodded. “Will do.”
He took his own sweet time about leaving, though, Todd thought, as Joe paused to bend down to Angel’s level. “Short stuff, want to come with me?”
“Okay,” she said readily. “I ride on your shoulders?”
“You bet,” he said, hoisting her into position before finally going off and leaving Todd alone with Heather.
Todd didn’t care to examine the twinge that sight caused him. He focused all his attention on Heather, instead. “What the heck is going on around here?” he demanded.
“What does it look like?”
Chaos? Bad judgment? Danger? She wouldn’t like any of those answers. He settled for saying, “You don’t want to know.”
There was a quick flash of hurt in her eyes before she snapped back, “Thank you for your support. Now, if you’re just out here to criticize, I don’t have the time. I�
��ll see you around.”
She’d taken several brisk strides toward the door before he caught up with her, grasped her arm and whirled her around. Her gaze clashed with his, sparks flying.
“What is your problem?” she demanded.
“I just asked a simple question.”
“It didn’t sound simple to me. It sounded pretty darned close to an accusation that I was doing something wrong, something you might find a little messy or inconvenient, like sticking around town with your daughter a little too long for your comfort.”
Todd raked his hand through his hair in frustration. “I never said that. I—”
Heather cut him off. “No. You never do say exactly what’s on your mind these days, do you?”
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it?”
Todd drew in a deep breath and forced himself to inject a calmer note into his voice. Riling Heather had never been the way to get a straight answer out of her.
“Let’s back up a minute,” he suggested, wanting desperately to stick to the facts, because he had no idea what to do with the emotions he was feeling right this second. He gestured toward all the activity. “What’s going on? Angel says you’re making a play.”
To his dismay, she nodded. “That pretty much sums it up. Henrietta suggested I start a theater company while I’m here, then she showed me this place. I floated the idea by some people, it took off like a runaway freight train, and here we are.”
“Henrietta did this,” he said slowly. “This was all her idea?”
“Yep. She pointed out that all an actress really needs in order to work is a stage—it doesn’t really matter where it’s located. After all, it’s laughter and applause we crave, right? Or have you forgotten that?”
He ignored the jibe and lobbed one of his own. “You’ve lowered your sights quite a bit, then. I thought you had your heart set on Broadway.”
She shrugged with an indifference he didn’t buy for a second.
“Things change,” she said. “Goals shift. People adapt. You might want to keep that in mind. Of course, that is what you did, isn’t it?”
Todd heard the familiar note of censure and chose once again to ignore it. “We’re talking about you. How long is this supposed to keep you happy, Heather? Last I looked, you had a fairly short attention span.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You’ve said you intend to leave here. Will you stick around long enough to get the first play on stage? Or will you bail out the minute you and I settle this custody issue?”
It occurred to him then that that might be precisely why he was taking so long to reach an agreement with her. It fit with every other piece of evidence he’d discovered since his return. A part of him didn’t want her gone, no matter what sort of trouble her staying brought into his life. And maybe, just maybe, he’d been testing her to see if she would stay, if he mattered enough this time for her to stick around for the long haul.
She regarded him with a wry expression. “Since that doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon, it’s a moot point, don’t you think?”
Because he wasn’t one bit happy about what he suspected his less-than-honest motives to be, he said, “We could settle it today, if you’d just be reasonable.”
“Me? You’re the one who won’t give an inch.”
“For good reason.”
“Which you refuse to explain.”
He groaned. “Dammit, Heather. This is just another example of you acting on impulse without thinking things through.”
He could tell that the accusation stung, because of the renewed hurt that promptly registered in her eyes. But her chin went up and the sass in her voice didn’t falter when she shot back, “Well, if I’m such a screwup, I’m surprised you ever spent a minute with me. You won’t mind if I get back to work. This little play of mine might not matter to you, but it does to me. Contrary to your low opinion, when I start something, I like to see it through.”
This time when she stalked off, spine rigid, Todd didn’t try to stop her, partly because he didn’t know what else to say. He’d already bungled the past few minutes so badly he doubted she’d forgive him. Why was it he could negotiate with some of the most powerful, egocentric people in television without missing a beat, but when it came to carrying on a simple conversation with Heather, he managed to blow it?
Because the stakes were higher, he conceded. Business was just that, business. He might be one of the more dysfunctional men around when it came to relationships, but even he recognized that what he had—or didn’t have—with Heather mattered more. In fact, he was slowly becoming aware that it might be the only thing in his life that really mattered. That didn’t mean he had to like it.
Sighing, he set off to find her and apologize. Accusing her of being impulsive might be accurate, but it was a low blow, especially when that was one of the things that had drawn him to her in the first place. She was everything he wasn’t—carefree, spontaneous, emotionally connected. Acting impulsively wasn’t the sin he’d implied; it just went against his thoughtful—okay, plodding—nature. There were times when he envied her spontaneity, her ability to live life with a passion, seizing whatever chances came her way and making the most of them. The expression about turning lemons into lemonade could have been coined for her. He doubted she realized how much he admired that about her.
He found her sitting under a tree, drinking a soda while Angel sat nearby eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He lowered himself to sit beside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said eventually when she didn’t seem inclined to react to his presence.
“For?”
“Acting like a jerk.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Keep talking.”
“You just took me by surprise. I thought you intended to head back East. You keep telling me that’s the plan. It bothered me that you were jumping into this theater thing with both feet, getting a lot of people I care about all excited about something, when you might not follow through.”
“I don’t walk away from commitments,” she said pointedly.
Todd heard the unspoken accusation in her words and struck out with one of his own. “That’s not quite true.”
“Oh?”
“You walked away from me.”
“Only because you’d already gone,” she said, resting a hand against his cheek as if that might take the sting out of her words. “You left me the day you signed on permanently with Megan.”
“Not that again,” Todd said, impatiently removing her hand because her touch was too distracting. “I took that job to give us some financial stability. I’m not going to apologize for wanting to take care of you.”
“Who asked you to? We were doing fine, Todd. We weren’t starving or living on the streets.”
“It wasn’t enough. You deserved more.”
“Your choice. I didn’t need more.”
They had had the same argument a hundred times before she had walked out. They’d both been stubbornly entrenched in their positions. Obviously that hadn’t changed. It was also old news.
“We’ll never see eye to eye on this,” he said. “So there’s no point in discussing it.”
She regarded him with visible exasperation. “How many times have I heard that? When I won’t give in, you just cut off the discussion. How are we supposed to resolve anything if we don’t thrash it out, weigh all the arguments and options? Shouldn’t we at least listen to each other?”
He regarded her ruefully. “And then what?”
“Compromise?” she suggested. “I’ve heard it’s a great way to settle disputes.”
“Your idea of compromise is to talk until I give in,” he said.
“That’s certainly one way to go,” she conceded lightly. “Then again, who knows, you might eventually muster up an argument that gets me to change my mind.”
“Are we talking about career planning or custody now?”
“Your choice.
”
Suddenly the last thing he wanted to do was to discuss either topic. They were too complicated, too fraught with minefields. He turned his head slightly, captured her hand and pressed a kiss to the palm. “How about we don’t talk at all?”
“Now, there’s a solution,” she whispered, seemingly as eager as he to stop all the arguing. She leaned toward him as his mouth came down to cover hers.
The familiar swirl of urgent need and spinning senses took over then, pushing everything else aside. That had been their pattern, letting explosive chemistry solve what logic couldn’t. Unfortunately—then and now—when the slow, deep kisses or the magnificent sex ended, the deep-rooted complications were still there and, as far as Todd could tell, there wasn’t a realistic solution in sight.
After that kiss, Todd seemed to be in a much more agreeable frame of mind. Heather managed to talk him into bringing some of the experts from Megan’s production company out to the barn to consult on lighting and set design. But there was something else she wanted from him, something she feared he’d reject out of hand. She had to get him in exactly the right frame of mind before she tried any sneaky persuasive tactics on him.
“Come to dinner at my place when we finish here tonight,” she suggested. “We should be quitting in another half hour or so. I promise I can do better than peanut butter and jelly or macaroni and cheese.”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should fix those just for old times’ sake.”
Although there were certain aspects of old times she was hoping to re-create, those Spartan meals weren’t among them. “Leave dinner to me. About eight? Or have you gotten used to ranching hours out here? I can have dinner on the table earlier, but Angel will still be awake.”
“Eight is fine,” he said too quickly, as if the prospect of avoiding Angel appealed to him even more than the lateness of the dinner hour.
For once Heather ignored the reaction. She didn’t want to head down that particular path when she had a more immediate problem to resolve. She bounded up, pressed another kiss to his cheek, then called for Angel.
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