by Nina Croft
That was so unfair. She’d never even seen Tanner slightly intoxicated. Probably because of his father. Unlike a lot of people in this town, including Jed’s son-in-law, who was hardly ever seen sober. She gritted her teeth.
Stay calm.
“Tanner does not have a drinking problem. In fact, he hardly—”
At that moment, there was a loud bang as the door crashed open. All the eyes across from her shifted to stare at something behind her, eyes widening in unison. She had a premonition of disaster as she slowly turned in her chair. And there he stood. Her “good” man.
She closed her eyes for a moment. Maybe when she opened them he would vanish. But no, he was still there.
He was dressed in oil-spattered jeans, a once-white wifebeater, now liberally stained with oil and grease. His hair was loose around his shoulders, and if she wasn’t mistaken—he was drunk.
How could he do this to her?
She’d never seen Tanner drunk before. He was usually quite abstemious. But he swayed slightly as he stood in the open doorway, his gaze slightly bloodshot as it fixed on her.
“Emily, baby.” He walked toward her with careful steps. “Emily, having-my-baby. Hah, new name. Fancy seeing you here,” he said. “I thought you were at home, too tired to see anyone.”
“Tanner. Go away. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
He carried on as if he hadn’t even heard her. “Then I spotted your car in the parking lot and I realized you must be here.” He smiled, spread out his hands. “So here I am to offer my support.” His gaze shifted from her to the board. “We’re going to get married.”
She pushed herself upright and turned to face him, trying to tell him with her eyes that he was not helping her cause. She suspected he was beyond picking up anything as subtle as a facial expression. Probably nothing less than real daggers would have any effect. Pity she hadn’t brought one. She could see her life as she knew it dissolving before her eyes. “Tanner, just shut up,” she muttered. “You’re not helping.”
Right at that moment, she hated everyone. Why couldn’t things go her way? Just for once. She jabbed him in the chest, but he was so hard and didn’t even flinch.
“You know Jed here came to see me earlier.”
She spun around and looked at Mr. Forrester. His eyes were narrowed on Tanner.
She swung back to face her fiancé. “I don’t care, Tanner.”
“Jed Forrester. Upstanding citizen of the town of Saddler Cove. I’m sorry Dwain’s dead.”
“Not here and not now, Tanner.”
“All you other good people,” he said as though he hadn’t heard her, “we’re going to have a baby. But Emily has agreed to be my wife. So fuck you all.”
Oh crap.
Did he have to do this now? Anytime for that matter.
He smiled and looked dreamy for a moment. Then opened his mouth again and spoiled it all. “Sensible Emily Towson has agreed to become my wife. Except she’s not actually that sensible.”
At the word sensible, something snapped inside her. She’d had enough. She was fed up with all of them. She wanted to scream and shout and stamp her feet.
Instead, she tugged at her beautiful engagement ring. It stuck on her knuckle—probably her fingers were swelling. Just one more thing going wrong in her life. Finally, she got it off. “You know what, Tanner? I’m feeling a little sensible after all.” She slammed the ring into his chest, and he fumbled for it. “Take your ring and go marry your goddamn hog.”
He stared down at it where it lay glinting on his palm. Then up at her. “Aw, Em, you don’t mean—”
“I do mean. I do. I’ve had enough. You can take your bad attitude and your ring and shove them—” She broke off. Probably just as well. She pushed him in the chest. “Just go. I can’t take any more of this right now.” She played her trump card. “It’s not good for the baby.”
Something flickered in his eyes. She’d gotten through to him at last. He glanced down at the ring. Back at her and then their surroundings. Then he gave a nod, whirled around, and strode out.
Her eyes pricked as the door closed behind her. And almost immediately she wanted to call him back.
Goddamn baby hormones.
She bit her lip, standing for a moment, then she turned and faced her accusers. They all appeared a little shell-shocked. She was guessing school board meetings didn’t usually come with quite this much drama. She wanted to shout at them as well. But more than that, she wanted to go home, crawl into bed, but definitely not with Tanner to hold her tight, and hide her head under the pillow.
She straightened her shoulders. Stiffened her spine, stared Jed Forrester in the eyes. “I am not immoral,” she said and followed Tanner out the door.
But when she got the parking lot, he was already gone. Ryan was leaning against her car. He straightened as she approached.
“I just want you to know: the offer is still—”
“Go away, Ryan,” she snapped. “I won’t ever marry you, so you might as well stop asking.”
“Why?”
She blew out her breath. “Because I’m in love with Tanner O’Connor.”
And what an absolutely appalling time to make that realization.
She was in love with Tanner, and that was probably going to ruin her life forever. Because he didn’t love her. He was too bitter and twisted to ever love anyone.
When she pulled up outside the house, Mimi was sitting on the swing on the front porch, swaying gently. Emily switched off the engine, got out, and slowly climbed the stairs. She felt pathetic, and tearful, and a failure, and probably sensible as well, which was the worst of all. She came to a halt in front of Mimi and sniffed.
“How did the meeting go?” Mimi asked.
“How did you know?”
“I phoned up Jed Forrester. His housekeeper told me that he was at a school board meeting. I guessed the rest.” She patted the seat beside her. “Sit down. From your woebegone expression, I’m guessing it didn’t go well.”
She sank down onto the cushions and stared at the sky. “It went awful. They’d already decided. I’m immoral.” She sniffed again, and a tear rolled over, and she wiped at it with her hand. “And they were horrible about Tanner, and I was defending him, and then he came in drunk and made an ass of himself.”
Mimi pursed her lips.
“I threw his ring at him and told him to marry his Harley. Then Ryan asked me to marry him. Again. But the worst thing. The absolutely worst thing was—” She drew a deep breath. “I realized I’m in love with Tanner.”
Mimi didn’t appear shocked. “Are you sure it’s love and not just infatuation?” she asked.
“No, it’s love. I mean, I am infatuated as well, how can I not be, he’s…” She gave a helpless shrug. “But I love him as well. I know people probably look at us and think we’re totally mismatched, but if you think about it, we’re opposite sides of the same puzzle. We’ve just learned to hide different pieces of ourselves.” She’d tucked her wild side away when her parents died, determined to keep herself “safe.” And Tanner had hidden his softer side behind a badass attitude because he’d been hurt so much in the past. “We fit.”
“‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,’” Mimi murmured.
Emily sniffed at the quote. It was so perfect. “Jane Eyre,” she said. “You’ve been playing the quote game with Josh.”
“That man is well-read.”
“So is Tanner. But it doesn’t matter, none of it does, because Tanner doesn’t love me. And he never will. Because I’m unlovable.” And with that she let her control go and burst into tears. Her grandmother’s arms wrapped around her and pulled Emily close, stroked her back as she cried. She smelled of horses and hay, and so familiar that Emily cried even harder, until her chest hurt and her eyes ached.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I never cry.”
“Well, it’s about time, then.”
Finally, the tears ran out and she pushed her
self up. “It’s the hormones, that’s all. I’m a big, horrible, hormonal mess.”
“Maybe a little. But maybe this has been a long time coming.”
“Really?”
“You’ve bottled everything up for a long time. Since you parents died. Maybe even longer. Since they went away and left you behind.”
“They had to go help people. They had a calling.”
“Hah. Nonsense. They had to go and have fun, travel the world, have exciting adventures.”
“I must have been an encumbrance.”
“You were a child. They should have waited to have you. Got it out of their systems, but you were…unexpected.”
So she’d been a mistake baby. That didn’t surprise her. “Seems to be a habit,” she said, patting her stomach.
“More than you know.”
What did she mean by that? She pulled back a little so she could look Mimi in the face.
Mimi sat back, picked up her glass from the table, and took a sip, handed it to Emily. “It’s only soda water.”
Emily drank. “Come on, Mimi. You can’t make statements like that and then leave me hanging.”
“When I was a lot younger than you—”
“How young?”
“Sixteen. When I was sixteen, I fell in love, and I got pregnant. Our parents decided that it should be kept quiet. I was sent away. I had the baby and he was adopted. I came back.”
There was a wealth of pain behind the simple words. “Oh, Mimi. I’m sorry. How sad. You must have been heartbroken.” She put a protective hand instinctively over her stomach. She couldn’t imagine giving her baby away. Never seeing her again. Couldn’t begin to understand the pressure Mimi must have been under as a young girl back then.
Mimi shrugged. “I won’t say I got over it. You don’t get over something like that. It shapes your life.”
“Couldn’t you have gotten married? Kept the baby. You were young but, if you were in love…”
“I was in love. I would have run away, anything. He was the more sensible, and he was right in the end. It wouldn’t have worked.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Believe me, I do.”
“The father? Is he still around?”
Mimi’s face tightened. “Oh yes. He’s still around.”
When she didn’t say anything further, Emily forced her brain to work. “Why did you phone Jed Forrester?” she asked.
Mimi’s eyes narrowed, and her nostrils flared. “That asshole. You know he went to see Tanner tonight?”
“He mentioned it at the meeting.”
“Tanner came here and told us afterward.”
That must have been how he knew she was out. What had Jed come to see him for? As far as she was aware, the two never spoke. Ever. “Told you what?”
“That Jed had come to see him and told him if he got rid of Josh, then he would look more favorably on your case.”
“What? Why?”
“Because Josh has been spending time with me. Jed called me a goddamned vulnerable widow. I want to rip his eyeballs out. How dare he abuse his power like that?”
It was slowly coming together in her head. “Okay, let me get this straight. Jed Forrester was the father of your baby?”
“Don’t look at me like that, Emily Towson. It was fifty years ago, he wasn’t the same back then, and he was such a handsome boy.”
She couldn’t get her head around it. “But Jed Forrester? He’s just so…”
“Sensible? Stick in the mud? Hypocritical?”
“All those things.” She pressed a finger to her forehead. Her headache had shifted, but her brain was sluggish. “So he wants rid of Josh because…”
“He wants me back, of course. He’s been pestering me for years. I told him he’d had his chance, but he sees me as some sort of redemption. A way of getting back what he lost.”
“Oh my God. You’ve got a more complicated love life than I do.”
She couldn’t get over it. Mimi had a baby. When she was sixteen. That would make him fifty-four now. Wow. “Do you know what happened to the baby?”
“No, but I’m hoping to find out. Which is something else I have to talk to Jed about. He needs to be prepared.”
“He can’t cause trouble for Josh, can he?”
“He’d better not try.”
“You like Josh, don’t you?”
“I do. But I doubt there’s a future for us. Josh needs to figure out what he wants out of life, before he’ll let anyone else close.”
He wasn’t the only one. She had a flashback to the hurt in Tanner’s eyes when she’d handed back his ring, and she had a weird feeling that she had let him down. Everyone had always looked down on him. Expecting the worst, and he’d just given them what they expected.
She scrubbed a hand over her face. “I’ve messed everything up. This is all my fault.”
“Actually,” Mimi said. “I think you had a little help along the way.”
“I wanted everything to be safe and nice. I was good. I did the right things. Everyone liked me. And now…I’m immoral.”
Mimi’s lips twitched. “Tell me something. If you’re so keen on safe and nice, why did you want Tanner O’Connor? Who is about as far from safe and nice as you can get?”
“He was a secret. A fantasy. He was never supposed to be real. And that’s your fault. You’re a meddling old lady.”
She smiled serenely. “I am.”
“But what do I do now? It’s a mess. How do I get Tanner to change? I know there’s a good person in there.”
“Perhaps before you start trying to change your fantasy man, you need to ask yourself a few questions. Do you think he needs to change? And do you actually want him to change? Into what? Ryan Forrester? Why would you ever want that?”
Why indeed?
She’d turned Ryan down because he’d said she was sensible. Which she was—or rather, she had been. But really, she’d been looking for an excuse, because she didn’t love him, and somewhere deep inside she knew she could never love him.
“You could no more be happy with Ryan Forrester than I could with his uncle.”
And Emily had a moment of blinding clarity. She loved Tanner. Not the man he could become, or the man he might have been had things been different. But the man he was now. She loved his edginess, his tattoos, his lovely long hair. His muscles and his bad boy attitude. She loved his music and even his Harley.
She loved how his eyes crinkled when he smiled. How he could play the piano with such emotion he made her heart ache. That he’d set up a scholarship so other children could get the chance to play. How he owned a pony because he couldn’t say no to his niece. Everything he’d done for Josh. There was so much to love about him.
“You were never meant for safe and nice,” Mimi said. “Perhaps it’s time to get over your parents’ deaths. You can’t keep everyone safe, however hard you try. All you can do is enjoy the time you do have with them.”
She was so right. “I love you,” she said.
“I know. So, what will you do about Tanner?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go and see him. Ask him for my ring back—I love that ring, and I can always sell it if worst comes to worst and I’m out on the street without a job.”
“I like your positive attitude.”
“And I’ll try and work out if there’s a chance he can come to love me. Because if not, we can’t get married. If I didn’t love him, then maybe it could work, but if he can’t love me back, it will be too painful. He can still be part of Sophie’s life.”
“Sophie?”
“It was Tanner’s mother’s name.”
“It’s pretty.”
At least she could see a way forward now. She might still lose her job, but the sense of hopelessness had vanished. And inside, excitement bubbled through her veins. A tension she hadn’t even known was her constant companion was easing its hold on her.
“You know what I’d like to do now?” she said.
> “No. Should I be worried?”
“I want to go for a ride.”
“What?”
“I want to ride Beauty.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
Mimi glanced down at her black pantsuit. “Perhaps you should go and change.”
“Nope.” She grinned. “And you know why not? Because that would be the sensible thing to do.”
And then she had to go see Tanner and fix this mess.
…
Tanner stood in the shadows and watched. He’d sobered up fast after she’d thrown him out of the meeting. Then he’d driven the bike cross-country to avoid the roads, but he’d had to see her. Had to apologize.
Christ, he’d messed up bad. He was a fucking idiot. The reason she hadn’t told him about the meeting was because she didn’t want him there. So, what had he done? Turned up drunk.
But she couldn’t not marry him. They were going to be a family.
It was still early; the sun hadn’t gone down yet as he pulled up at the gates. Leaving the bike there, he walked down the drive, needing to get his thoughts together. As he passed the barn, he heard voices out back. His stomach churned as he walked through, passing the horses in the stalls. He meant to make his presence known, but he stopped short at the sight of her. They were in the paddock out back, where Josh had had his first riding lesson. Emily was leading a horse with a glossy black coat and a star on her forehead. She stroked her and kissed her nose, and the horse nickered softly.
Mimi spoke, and Emily threw back her head and laughed. She looked happy. Earlier, in that horrible board room, in front of those judgmental people, none of whom were good enough to bow at her feet, she’d seemed so defeated. And he’d made things much, much worse for her. He hated himself for that. He knew he could never make her happy. But he had to try, because he couldn’t face losing her.
She moved around to stand by the horse’s side, and he realized what she meant to do.
He nearly stepped forward then. Should she be getting on a horse when she was pregnant? But he held himself still. Emily would never do anything to endanger her baby.
She swung easily into the saddle and leaned forward and patted the horse’s neck. Then they were moving. Walking at first, then a slow lope, and finally she broke into a canter. And she threw back her head and laughed again.