Lori’s Little Secret

by Christine Rimmer

  She couldn’t help smiling—a quivery smile. But quivery or not, that smile felt good. Really good. In a bittersweet kind of way. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Another thing…”

  “Sure.”

  “Could you stay until soccer camp is over? He and I can handle Disneyland just between the two of us, I think.”

  Disneyland. She’d forgotten. And she’d been looking forward to it, too: to the three of them, on a family vacation…

  But no. They weren’t that kind of family. It wouldn’t be good for any of them to pretend that they were.

  He added, “And I need to start thinking about hiring someone to keep an eye on him during the day…”

  So many changes.

  None of them easy.

  And what about her own life? It would be vastly different with Brody living here in the Junction so much of the time. Vastly different in a scary, empty sort of way. She’d need to make some changes, start really looking into getting herself something worthwhile to do with her days…

  But not right this minute. Uh-uh. Right now, she needed to keep focused on this fragile new understanding between her and Tucker. They were building something here; they were taking their first baby steps as parents who would not also be husband and wife.

  She suggested, “He’s got friends on my mother’s street—Peter and the other boys. My mom might be willing to let him stay with her while you’re working. At least she might some days, anyway.”

  He almost smiled. “That’s a great idea.”

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow, if you’d like me to.”

  “I would. And will you stay, then, here at the ranch, until soccer camp is over?”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  Lori talked to her mother the next day. It went pretty well. Enid put on a little pressure, to get her to stay in town, to try to work things out with Tucker.

  But Lori held firm. She was leaving. And would her mother like to watch Brody during the day while he was staying with his father?

  “Oh, honey. Any time. You know that.”

  So it was arranged.

  After she got things worked out with Enid, Lori went to see her sister. Lena was not pleased.

  “Oh, that is crazy. That is just insane and disgusting and wrong. Honey, you love that man. You said so yourself two days ago…”

  Lori tried to explain. “He doesn’t trust me, not in his heart. And he’s still angry with me. I have totally and completely blown it with him and he’ll never forgive me.”

  “Oh, poo. Of course he’ll forgive you—eventually. Yeah, you did a real bad thing. You know it. He knows it. So now you’re both going to throw away your chance at a really good thing? Where’s the sense in that? I’ve got a mind to go have a little talk with Tucker Bravo.”

  “Lena. Please don’t.”

  “But honey. You love him.”

  “That’s right. I do. And I’m not going to marry him. It wouldn’t be good for me—or for Tucker, or for Brody—if I were to marry someone who resents me in his heart. Believe me, if I could make Tucker forgive me, I would. But you know I can’t. That’s up to him.”

  “Well, isn’t he the biggest fool in Texas? And I don’t see why you won’t just let me—”

  “Lena. No.”

  Lena argued some more. But in the end she promised to spare Tucker the sharp side of her tongue.

  The final week went by. Lori had several long talks with Brody. He seemed to be over his whining and sulking and moving on to acceptance that his mother was not going to marry his newfound dad.

  Lori and Tucker were gentle with each other—even friendly, in a cautious kind of way. By tacit agreement they steered clear of each other when Brody wasn’t around.

  And though she was still staying in his house and saw him every day, Lori missed him. So much. She missed his laughter and his kisses, his warm body close to hers in the dark hours of the night…

  By that final Saturday morning, as she packed her things to leave, she found she was almost grateful to be getting out; to be headed home where there would be no reminders of him. Home, she thought, and pictured her spacious Spanish-style house—and realized that it didn’t feel like home to her at all. Not anymore. Somehow, during her summer in the Junction, she’d slipped into thinking that home was right here again—where she’d grown up; where Tucker was.

  Henry came to mind. She remembered him—his goodness, his gentleness, his caring ways—with a soft, sad little smile. It had been bad, getting over losing him. And now she would have to find a way to get over Tucker.

  Neatly, she folded up the rest of her clothes. Jesse, who took care of the Double T garage and the fleet of Cadillacs the Bravo brothers owned, came upstairs and took her suitcases down and put them in the Lexus.

  Brody and Tucker came out to say goodbye. Lori hugged her son and told him she’d see him in a few weeks. She aimed a brave smile at Tucker, who stood a few feet away. “You guys have fun in Disneyland.”

  “We will. Love you, Mom.” For a sweet, too-brief moment, Brody’s young arms held her tight. Then he stepped back to stand by his father.

  They lingered in the driveway, side-by-side—the love her secret had lost her, and her only child—as she drove off. She looked once in the rearview mirror and saw them standing there. Her throat clutched and her lungs ached as if somehow she’d sucked in ground glass.

  After that one glance, she kept her eyes strictly front until she reached the bend in the driveway that obscured them from her view.

  Chapter Eighteen

  By the time Tucker and Brody got back from Disneyland a week and a day after Lori left for San Antonio, Tate’s Junction was abuzz.

  The story had leaked out at last—that Tucker Bravo was the father of Lori Billingsworth Taylor’s love child. At Molly’s salon, Prime Cut, all the ladies were talking.

  Emmie Lusk was aghast. “So that’s why she took that child and moved in at the ranch…”

  Betty Stoops clucked her tongue and announced in obvious disapproval, “All those years and we never even knew it.”

  Emmie shook her head. “And now, I hear she’s left town again. Just picked up and went back to San Antonio and left that little boy behind with Tucker.” Emmie paused to simper and sigh. “That Tucker is one handsome hunk of manliness, I will admit.” She scowled. “But what does he know about taking care of an impressionable child?”

  “Well,” Betty reminded them all, in the interest of fairness. “The boy is his son…”

  There were murmurs of reluctant agreement all around.

  Donetta Brewer, sitting in Molly’s styling chair, gave Tate’s wife a long look in the mirror. But Molly, who knew how to keep her mouth shut when nothing she said would make any difference anyway, only smiled pleasantly and snipped away at Donetta’s hair.

  “She’ll be back,” Donetta decreed. “She’ll be back, just wait and see.”

  Tucker wanted Lori back.

  He wanted her with him, at his side, day to day. He wanted his ring on her finger. He wanted her last name to be his name.

  He wanted her there in his bed, every night, all womanly softness and tender caresses and sweet, sexy sighs. He wanted the taste of her mouth and the tiny, pleading cries she made when he loved her. He wanted to look across the dinner table and find her blue eyes waiting, the corners of her sweet mouth lifting in a come-and-get-it smile.

  And damn, did he ever want her steady hand with Brody. With Lori gone, it became instantly obvious that, when it came to Brody, someone had be the tough one, the one who said “no,” now and then. That job now fell to Tucker. He made it a point to say no almost as often as he told his son yes.

  Brody did seem to take it well. In a way, Brody seemed happier and more relaxed, now he understood that his dad was the boss.

  Still. It had been a hell of a lot more fun showering him with presents, promising him the moon, and watching his eyes light up every time Tucker came home from work with a new and outrageously
expensive toy.

  Oh, yeah. Tucker missed Lori in a hundred ways.

  But to get her to come back to him, he had to forgive her. And he just couldn’t quite see his way clear to do that.

  Once or twice he’d considered calling her, faking it, telling her he loved her and he was over what she’d done.

  But it would have been a whopping lie and she would have caught him out in it eventually. He wasn’t over all the years she’d kept his son from him. He didn’t think he’d ever be. Every time he looked at Brody, the awareness of the truth she’d hid from him caused a hollow spot beneath his ribs, an emptiness carved out by the years he had lost, the years he hadn’t been there for Brody. Because of her.

  Okay, yeah. Maybe he did love her. Maybe he had no choice in that. He couldn’t stop himself from loving her. But there was a deep anger in the way he loved her, a bitter edge to his longing for her.

  Twice, Brody had called her from their hotel room in Anaheim. Tucker listened to his son chatter away, giving her blow-by-blow descriptions of all the rides and attractions—and he’d wanted to snatch the phone from Brody’s hands, to talk to her, tell her…

  What?

  He had to get past this. There was nothing to say.

  The minute they’d come in from the car on Sunday, Brody had called her again. Tucker forced himself to leave the room. There was no point in standing there, listening to Brody’s end of the conversation, furious and full of frustrated longing. It was better, he realized, just not to be there while Brody talked to her.

  The week crawled by. Enid took care of Brody Monday through Friday. She was kind to Tucker, inviting him in, offering him coffee or a cold drink. He always politely refused. To be in her house—the house where Lori had grown up—brought back old memories, vague remembrances of Lori as a teenager, when he’d hardly known she existed. She used to wear her hair pulled back, didn’t she? And she would smile at him, a hopeful, shy smile, when he came to see Lena.

  Looking back over those long-ago times, he felt so lonely, had such a grim sense of missed connections. She’d said she’d loved him, even then—or at least, she’d had a heavy-duty crush on him. What might have happened if he’d had the sense, then, to look twice?

  No. No point in what-ifs. And no way was he hanging out at Enid’s house. He’d drop Brody off at eight-thirty and pick him up at five and head straight for the ranch.

  Nights were the worst. With the workday over and Brody safely tucked into bed, Tucker was left alone, missing Lori, wanting to call her and demand that she come back to him, knowing such a stupid move would get him nowhere, fast.

  Friday night he joined his brother in Tate’s office for a whiskey and a little conversation. Big mistake. They’d barely poured their drinks and put their feet up when Tate started in on him, demanding to know what the hell was going on with Lori.

  “I thought you were planning to marry that woman. Hell, Tuck. What went wrong?”

  Tucker was just miserable enough by then to tell his brother everything—how he couldn’t forgive her for what she’d done, how he’d proposed anyway, but she’d turned him down. How she had some ridiculous idea that she couldn’t live with him and be happy until he could let go of his resentment toward her.

  Once the sad story was told, Tucker sat back, sipped his whiskey and waited for Tate to express a little brotherly sympathy. He waited for nothing.

  “What’s the deal?” Tate growled. “All of a sudden, you ain’t got the sense to spit downward? You better look back, little brother. Look back on your sorry self when you left this town. You couldn’t wait to shake the dust off your boots and get outta here. You say you would’ve stayed for Lori’s sake, if she’d only been straight with you? Well, all right. Maybe you would’ve. And in a month—maybe two—you would’ve been miserable. You were bound and determined to blow this town and get a good look at the world outside of Texas. Time would have come—and it wouldn’t have been long—when you would have been mad at that sweet woman for keepin’ you here.”

  Tucker tried to make his hardheaded brother see the light. “It’s not so much that she didn’t tell me at first, before she knew about Brody. It’s later. That’s what gets me. When she had my baby and she didn’t make the effort to—”

  Tate didn’t let him finish. “Okay. Say she’d tried harder to find you after Brody was born. What then?”

  Tucker sat up straighter. “I would have come home.”

  “Yeah? So? I’m not saying you wouldn’t have. You would have done right. I know that. You would have come home, married her, and settled down to play family man—when the last thing you were ready for back then was piles of dirty diapers and a young wife. How long d’you think that kind of marriage would have lasted?”

  “I would have—”

  Tate cut him off again. “Uh-uh, little brother. Things work out the way they work out. And if you look to the past with an honest eye, you’re gonna see that you would have been just as mad at her back then for saddling you with a family that you weren’t the least bit ready for, as you are now because she didn’t tell you that you have a son.”

  “Damn it, I—”

  “I’m not done yet. What’s the matter with you? That was then and this is now and now is what you should be worrying about.” Tate glowered and shook his head. “I thought you were smarter than this. I thought you knew that a man should never say no to the right woman’s love. You want my advice?”

  Tucker set down his half-full drink, lowered his boots to the floor and stood. “As a matter of fact, no.”

  “Too bad. You’re gettin’ it.”

  “Goodnight, Tate.”

  “I say get your butt to San Antonio.” Tate shouted after him as Tucker headed out the door. “Tell that woman you love her and beg her to come back to you!”

  So much for talking with Tate. Tucker wouldn’t make that mistake again any time soon.

  But the things Tate had said did kind of stick with him. They gnawed at him, all through that night and the sunny morning after. They made him remember a little more clearly the way he’d been back when, had him recalling that getting out of Tate’s Junction had been important to him once. Even after he fell head-over-heels for Lori disguised as Lena, even while he was telling himself that he would stay there in town with her, after all…

  Even then, the urge to get up and get out remained, pulling at him, laying within him the groundwork for regret if he had stayed. As it turned out, he’d left town anyway, with his heart broken.

  But was Tate right? Was there more to it than he was seeing?

  Was it just possible that, deeper even than heartbreak, there’d also been a certain anticipation? Yeah, he’d lost the woman he wanted. But he was also getting free of his mean old granddaddy; walking away from the town that called him the bastard Bravo boy behind his back.

  Saturday after lunch, Tucker went to his study. He played Spider Solitaire and continued to ponder what his brother had said.

  He’d been staring at his computer screen for maybe twenty minutes, when Brody appeared in the doorway to the front hall. He held up his bike helmet. “I’m gettin’ out for a while, Dad. Gonna ride my bike.”

  Tucker nodded, hardly glancing over. “Have fun.”

  “You bet.”

  Brody left. Tucker pulled up another game and went after it, all the while brooding on the painful points Tate had made. He couldn’t have said how long he sat there, recalling the past and his own part in it, finishing one game and bringing up the next. Maybe a half hour, maybe more.

  When the phone rang, he almost left it for Mrs. Haldana. And then he remembered that she’d taken the weekend off to visit her son and his family in Abilene. On the third ring he grabbed it.

  “Hello. This is Tucker.”

  “Omigod.” A woman’s voice, one he didn’t recognize. A breathless, scared-sounding voice. “Oh, Mr. Bravo…”

  “Who is this?”

  “Aileen Martino.”

  “Sorry. The n
ame doesn’t ring a bell…”

  “I live in town. But that doesn’t matter. I…Mr. Bravo. I’m out on the state road, at the foot of your driveway. Your son’s here with me. I’ve called an ambulance.”

  The bottom fell out of the world. All he could do was stupidly repeat, “An ambulance…”

  “Yes. Oh, I’m so sorry. Mr. Bravo, there’s been an accident…”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lori had just let herself in the house with her arms full of groceries, when she got Tucker’s call. She listened to what he had to tell her and asked a few pertinent questions. Once she had the answers she needed, she promised to be there as soon as she could.

  She hung up—and then she just stood there, leaning on the kitchen counter, trying to catch her breath.

  As soon as she felt she could walk without falling over, she considered the groceries. She should put them away. She began emptying the bags—and then, with a box of Wheat Thins in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other—she froze.

  Who cared about the groceries at time like this?

  She dropped the box and the loaf on the counter, grabbed her purse and her keys, went back out through the kitchen door to the garage and got in behind the wheel of the Lexus.

  She made it to the Junction in record time. Yes, she broke a few speed limits—more than a few, actually. But she arrived at Tate Memorial in one piece and without a single speeding ticket. It was a little after eight in the evening when she entered Brody’s room.

  “Mom! You’re here!” Her son was sitting up in bed, a cast on one arm and a cut on his swollen lip. Beneath the blankets, she could see the lumpy shape of a leg cast. He held out his good arm to her.

  She ran to him and he let her hug him. She did it gently, sucking in the dusty boy-smell of him, reveling in the feel of his arm squeezing her neck—and biting back grateful tears.