Love in Troubled Times

by Gayle Riley

  Anthony was smiling the biggest smile that he had in a long time. He wanted his brother happy and he was, he wanted to be there for James and he was going to be. That was the only thing he wanted to make him happy. Things were going good so far and it was only going to get better from there.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing how things turn out coming back home. I guess we’ve come full circle. We left here and now we’re back here,” Anthony commented.

  “That’s how it usually goes, only this time it will be better than when we were growing up. there are a million things to do around here and if the three of us are happy that’s all that matters,” James told them.

  He looked at Anthony and looked at Carrie for a few minutes without saying anything. He could see that they were both happy, they were happy and he was happy for them. He knew that he was happy and his life would continue to be a good one, a busy one but a good one and he couldn’t wait to start the new adventures in life.

  “Congratulations on making the team again. I can’t believe I have a brother that’s going to the NBA. Well who’s now part of the NBA, when I see you on the television screen at a sport bar I can point you out and say hey I know that guy.” Anthony couldn’t wait for that moment to shine, giving his brother the spotlight yet again but he knew that he deserved it.

  Carrie was happy that they were there for each other, the way that family should be. She was tired but smiling, she couldn’t wait to see where life took the three of them. It was going to be a journey in a half but she was ready to take that journey with the two of them, wanting to see what new things were going to enter their lives.

  THE END

  Bonus 3 of 30

  Hard Tack, Hard Loving

  Description

  Nate Hawke returns to his hometown of Remlow Creek to remind himself of where he came from and of the simple joys of running an old town supply store surrounded by nature and horses as far as the eye can see. Whenever the fast-paced life of a New York businessman becomes too much of a grind, there is always escape. There is always the Creek.

  But when one of his homeward pilgrimages is disrupted by a one night stand from his city life turning up at the Creek too, the seductive allure of one world begins to bleed into his simpler country existence. Very pregnant but no less sensual than the last time Nate saw her. This golden-haired temptress draws in not only Nate, but his best friend Leo, showing them both that some loves are better shared.

  Chapter 1

  Nate returned to Remlow Creek early Monday morning. His glossy black car crunching over the dirt roads that constituted a fair number of the minor fairways of the little town. The sun rose over endless grass fields, ascending into a cloudless sky, pale blue and fringed by mountains. The driver, up front behind a glass privacy panel, of, guided the car along a curving path made from stones toward a large brick building with an attached stable. When it glided to a stop, there was no sound at all.

  Getting out and setting immaculately polished shoes on the red stone path, Nate rose to his full height, adjusted his cuffs, and leaned in by the driver’s side door to thank his driver, who nodded back, smiling. The car pulled away, painfully shiny and whirling with reflected sunlight Nate strode up the path toward his red brick home away from home. The large double doors opened to him, and the Hard Tack Supply Store ushered him inside, back into familiar, indeed ancestral, surroundings.

  A lot had changed here since Nate had first left the place. Not just changed, but updated. The original house had been standing for generations, repaired and rebuilt so many times that nothing of it now was from the Hard Tack’s initial construction. There were still the old rustic wood floors, old windows in cracked frames and poorly varnished interior furnishings. When Nate had left for the big city, that was what the Hard Tack had been— a small place in a small town. However, once he had inherited the place from his family, all that had changed.

  In truth, the Hawke family hadn’t had much use for the old house in quite a while. Their business interests were diversified to the point that they had moved out when Nate had been a boy, and Nate himself had only gone back there for vacations, or to see those who had stayed behind. By the time Nate had taken possession of the Hard Tack, it had filtered down in ownership through a series of uncles and cousins. He really had no need for the place himself, financial stability and his family’s business holdings making him well off to the point that he might no longer need to work a day in his life, if he so chose. But like his work, running a publishing house focused on seeking out new talents and allowing them to be heard, Nate found he still had something of a passion for the old home, and Remlow Creek’s small community.

  The Hard Tack offered something of an escape for Nate.

  For a while he could leave the confines of the big city, step outside of his office and into someplace, not simpler necessarily, just a little immersion into the communal politics of a small town could tell a man exactly how complicated places with populations in the triple digits could be-but different, in a way that Nate needed. He could breathe out there, and there was something to be said for running the store itself, the personal, hands-on skills needed to do that job a welcome change from the more restrained, thoughtful demands of his day job.

  Whenever life got to be too much, the Hard Tack was there to welcome him with open doors.

  Nate headed upstairs first, to the apartment found on the second floor where he had lived for some portion of his childhood. Once it had been largely bare, during the lean times when the Hawke family had been unable to afford much, but Nate had thrown money at the Hard Tack for months until it was more fit for living. Now, the floors and wallpaper had been completely redone, the floor plan changed to favor the large, open spaces that Nate preferred, given that he was the only person currently residing there, if only temporarily. The shop below had received the brunt of his renovations, new money flowing into the old town and transforming the Hard Tack’s storefront into something much easier to deal with, while still retaining the rustic atmosphere that Nate enjoyed so much.

  His bedroom was filled with new furnishings, a large oak closet holding a series of casual clothes that better suited Remlow Creek than the crisp black suit he had worn on the way down. Normally he would have changed before traveling, but last night had been a busy one.

  It had also been a fun one, no doubt about that. The bar he had attended had been filled with good times, laughter, and a particularly attractive raven-haired woman that Nate had spent his time with, pale skin wonderful in the nighttime dark, little red dress flowing around her as they got drunker and drunker together, and then closer and closer. He could still smell her perfume on his jacket, the scent of flowers clinging to his collar, reminding him of the softness of her body pressed against him, the sound of her voice rising in ecstasy.

  Ah, Mona…

  It was possible, Nate supposed as he pulled on a pair of jeans, that this was not her real name. Plenty of people, both women and men, went to bars like the one he had been at for the anonymity after all. The idea was somewhat troublesome, but Nate pushed it out of his mind with relative ease. It wasn’t like he would ever see the woman again, as fetching as she was. He finished dressing, throwing on a plaid shirt and a flashy buckled belt, the kind people in the South seemed to really appreciate, for reasons that Nate had yet to truly fathom. Now more appropriately clothed, he headed back downstairs, thinking wistfully of the taste of Mona’s lips against his, the way she had bounced in his lap with youthful energy. He was only thirty-three, but the rigors of his work sometimes made Nate feel unreasonably old. It had been nice, with that in mind, to be with some cute twenty-something again.

  Somehow, the floorboards at the bottom of the stairs retained their characteristic creak, despite having been replaced in their entirety. The sound was a familiar companion, had been with Nate through much of his childhood, there at every morning creeping down the stairs, teenage nights sneaking back into his room after being out far longer than he should
have, and now adult days spent occupying this space as a getaway from his life in the city. That sound signified home, to him.

  There were other noises too, issuing from within the main ground floor room that served as the shop floor, the sounds of someone moving within. Nate slipped around the corner and into the main room just in time to see a taller, lanky man slide into the seat behind the counter, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He rapped a rhythmic little series of taps against the lacquered wood, then shot Nate the finger-guns.

  “Morning, guy,” Leo said, grinning. Nate nodded as he passed, swinging around the side of the counter toward the back room, eyeing shelves as he went to see what needed restocking out front. Leo could be relied upon for much, but keeping the shelves filled with merchandise had never been one of them; Nate had always felt this was okay. The younger man was largely here for companionship, anyway.

  Leo was a transplant from New York in a more complete way that Nate himself was. Where Nate had the benefit of having grown up in Remlow Creek, Leo just liked being here, having been taken with Nate on one of the latter’s many trips out that way to spend some time running the store. Something in the rustic surrounds, the simplicity of purpose that went with life away from the big city, appealed to Leo on some deep level even beyond what Nate himself felt. After a few more trips tagging along with his friend, Leo eventually asked if he could simply set up shop in Remlow Creek full-time, running the Hard Tack while Nate was away.

  The idea had been a surprising one to hear, but it wasn’t exactly a bad one either.

  After all, Leo’s own business interests were largely self-sustaining, requiring little from the man himself in order to generate income. He could afford to sit out in a small town if he wished, providing basic ranch supplies to people he could come to know on a first-name basis and simply luxuriating in the open spaces and fresh air that one simply could not get in the confines of New York. As far as Nate knew, Leo had not told anybody here where he had come from. He had left the past in New York so that it was his own choice to what extent he would dip in and out of it. As a consequence of this, he hadn’t left Remlow Creek since he had first come to stay there, nearly two years earlier.

  He had simply walked away, as Nate never could have. It was very possible that Leo hadn’t even done so much as place a phone call to his family back home; they knew he was out here, but his suddenly newfound lifestyle apparently rubbed them the wrong way, such that neither party particularly desired to spend much time around the other. He had made a clean break with his past, and was now a fixture at the Hard Tack even as Nate flitted in and out. In some ways, he wished he could have some of Leo’s conviction regarding the place, but in others, well, Leo didn’t get to go off and have anonymous sex with cute girls in bars, now did he?

  This was not, however, because he wouldn’t be able to. Though Nate was thoroughly heterosexual, even he could recognize that Leo was, in a word, devastatingly handsome. At twenty-seven, he still harbored much of the energy of his youth, proud and leonine features sitting atop a body that bounded and gestured vibrantly when excited, ropes of muscle easily visible at every moment. His penchant for tight shirts and pants did little to make Nate, at thirty-three, feel any more secure. It was like he was sharing his shop with a younger, photo-negative version of himself. Even his blond hair contrasted with Nate’s own darker locks. Between the two of them, it was clear who the eye candy was.

  But then, Leo hadn’t spent the previous night with luscious little Mona in his lap, now had he?

  The morning passed them by, with Nate’s thoughts running roughly along that line for most of it. It was hard to keep his mind from straying back to the young woman he had slept with the night before. The tastes and sounds and sensations of her, her body, her voice, everything, filling his imagination from end to end, dragging Nate back into the recent past whenever he began to draw himself forward into the present. Stocking the shelves became a pleasant, drifting thing, less of a chore and more of an opportunity to fantasize. Talking with Leo became a distraction from that, and Nate found himself pausing noticeably when he should have been replying, letting sentences drop and words draw themselves out into silence without meaning to. Debauchery had not made him a good conversational partner.

  You’re never going to see me again after tonight, she had said. Fuck me however you want to…

  The words rang through Nate’s mind, the sheer freedom inherent in that anonymity threatening to make him blush; he really had done some things that night he would not have without the consequence-free atmosphere that Mona had made for them. Things had gotten wild, a previously unknown dominant streak running through him had surfaced and… well, suffice it to say that he knew he would be nervous if ever forced to recount the events of that night.

  As luck would have it, Nate would be put in a position of having to do this sooner than he would have thought.

  As evening settled over the quiet town— a few customers, not precisely the greatest business day the Hard Tack had ever had— and the sun moved past its zenith, a familiar face bustled through the double doors, clad in clothes easily more fashionable than anyone in town had ever seen before. Pegging her immediately for a newcomer, which was in itself no great feat since everyone knew everybody else already, Leo rose from the counter, smelling a sale. The distinctly feminine voice that filtered into the back room drew Nate’s attention, as did the slick sound of Leo’s voice; the man could certainly flirt, but Nate couldn’t imagine a one of the women in town who would appreciate that. The majority of them were married, something that Leo surely knew by now.

  Poking his head through the door to see who had come in, Nate blinked.

  “Mona?”

  Chapter 2

  “Hoo, man!” The woman’s eyes were wide, her hands flying upward into a vague, helpless gesture around her chest. “That is not my name! Hello! Stranger from last night, hi! Nice seeing you here. Again. Huh.”

  “That was an awkward series of words,” Leo said, an eyebrow raised.

  “Well, it’s an awkward situation,” Nate shrugged, looking into the eyes of the woman he had spent a great deal of time together naked with just a few hours earlier, and who had just confirmed that, in fact, he did not even know her name. That was one of the new facts he discovered about her then. As he took in her features again-blond hair dappled with brown, which had been done up in pigtails the night before. Achingly perfect big, blue eyes. Full lips and a prominent, round nose— Nate began to see more. She was, perhaps, older than he had taken her for in the bar; mid to late twenties, rather than early.

  She was also a good deal more pregnant than Nate remembered.

  Her large bust and prominent hips were neutral signifiers overall, but the swelling of her belly was a definite giveaway. Even beneath the baggy shirt she wore it bulged, the dark fabric creasing around the tight roundness of her stomach. Nate stared openly, a small voice at the back of his mind wondering how he could have missed that, before yet more voices, far more critical than the first, pointed out a series of reasons. He had been more than a little drunk, they had both stuck to dark corners, places where they could hide, where their anonymity could be maintained as much as possible.

  The truth was, at the time he hadn’t been terribly interested in noticing the fine details of her, beyond how good she felt on his dick.

  “What are you doing here? Actually, yesterday was my last day in New York for a while,” ‘Mona’ cut in, her words just slightly too fast, syllables jumbling with agitation borne of memories of last night. The two of them were still staring, a fact that Leo did not miss, and though it was plain to Nate that he wanted to say something, discretion proved the better part of valor for him, and the younger man quietly extracted himself from the room, not even bothering to make an excuse before doing so.

  “So, this is all one big coincidence?” Nate spoke into the silence that followed, but not before it had dragged on far too long for comfort.

  “I guess
so,” the woman he knew as Mona replied, shrugging. “My family was coming out this way so I figured I’d join ‘em for a vacation. What we did… well, that was my one last night on the town before I left. You know—”

  “Consequence free,” the pair of them said together, Nate nodding solemnly. Of course, he had taken more than a few such nights of revelry in his time, the opportunity to escape to the little town too much temptation to bear. He could hardly fault ‘Mona’ for doing the same, but he had never been in the situation of seeing one of his prior partners in the light of day before either, much less so different than they had been at night. His gaze kept straying to the woman’s abdomen, to the swelling there and what it represented; had he known last night, would he still have taken her back to his place?

  Yes. Nate found himself rather resolute that he would.

  “Well, it’s what happens. Did you enjoy yourself, at least?”

  She blushed at this, an expression that Nate found immediately, disarmingly fetching. For a moment, her gaze refused to meet his, sweet blue eyes darting along the hardwood floor, eventually making their way up Nate’s body and back to his face. Words seemed to pile up on her tongue, her lips pursing, the muscles around her mouth drawing tight as she considered what to say, then:

  “Oh yes. I think I can safely say that I did. Are you asking if I regretted it? I was out for fun, not self-destruction. You were a good time, man.”

  “Nate, and I’m glad.” He found himself smiling, for whatever reason, actually being in front of his anonymous hook-up again made him care about her opinion of their time together, the reality of her turning him somewhat needy. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a real name you’d like to share, Mona?”

  “Like to?” The woman winced. “No. Will I? Yeah. I’m Barbara.”

  “And what can I get you, Barbara?” Nate asked, noting that she had clearly been waiting for some form of laughter, laughter that would never come. Not from him, at least; evidently others in her life had not been so cautious. “Welcome to the Hard Tack, by the way.”