by Jo McNally
Why, indeed? She’d wanted Cole’s kiss more than anything she’d wanted in a very long time. Their two bodies had been perfect together, and the energy they’d generated was nearly combustible. She remembered the conflicted look on his face when he stepped back from her. The words he said. Bad idea. Was he right?
“Amanda, I’m not staying here forever. Cole and I have nothing in common other than a few seconds of weird chemistry. Besides, he has issues.” In the bar, she’d seen the darkness and pain in his eyes. The man carried a boatload of baggage.
Her cousin just laughed. “Hell, that makes you a perfect couple, since you have issues, too.”
“Ouch. Has anyone told you that pregnancy has made you mean?”
“More than once, actually.” Bree could picture her petite cousin tossing her blond hair over her shoulder. “But I prefer to call it ‘refreshing honesty.’ Look, you spent years running after some sort of security in money and fame that didn’t exist. You clawed after that beauty crown, then you clawed after that superstar husband. During the divorce, you clawed after that beachfront mansion you love so much, even though Damian begged you to let him have it. You’re clinging to a life that wouldn’t have saved your mother from dying, and certainly won’t bring her back. Cancer killed your mom, and money had nothing to do with it.”
Bree stopped rocking. For a few seconds she stopped breathing.
“Uh-oh, I did it again, didn’t I? Went too far? It’s the hormones, I swear...”
“No,” Bree said. “Not too far. A little blunt, but nothing you’ve said is untrue. Instead of security, LA only brought me false friendships and someone who wants to kill me.”
“Do you have any real friends there?”
She thought about it. There were women she’d had fun socializing with, that she’d once considered friends. But when her marriage imploded, so did those so-called friendships. People didn’t hesitate to ask her to plan their upscale events, but that made her the hired help. She was no longer a peer and rarely on a guest list.
“Bree?”
“Sorry. It’s just a little shocking to me that I can’t answer that question.”
“But you are making friends in North Carolina, aren’t you? Nell and Tammy and the hot farmer?”
She laughed. “Yes, I suppose I am. And I think they’re the types of friendships that might just last, although I don’t think I’d group the hot farmer in that circle.” She really needed to stop thinking of Cole as the hot farmer. It wasn’t helping. “But yes, I like the people here, and I think they like me, too.”
“Then what are you afraid of? If your heart tells you to kiss the hot farmer, then do it. Who knows what might happen? After all, look at me. One unexpected kiss at the kitchen sink, and here I am, knocked up and married with an adopted son and...” Bree heard some muffled conversation in the background. “And here comes my charming husband now. Yes, I’m warm enough out here on the balcony. No, I don’t need a blanket... Or a pillow... Or tea... I’m fine, Blake. Go get ready for your meeting and relax, for the love of God. The doctor said yesterday the baby’s not coming for another ten days or so... I’m talking to Bree... Hang on. My hubby wants to say hi...”
Blake’s deep voice came across the phone. “How are you, Bree? Do you need anything? Is everything okay down there?”
Blake Randall was a man who wanted to do everything for the people he cared about, and she considered herself fortunate that he cared about her.
“Everything’s fine, Blake. Really.”
“I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to your real life.”
She stood and walked to the porch railing, taking a deep breath and enjoying the perfume of summer blossoms. What exactly was her real life?
“Um...yeah, I guess.”
“Andrew called you last night, right? Your agent is going to leak the phony story?”
Andrew and Caroline McCormack had called her after dinner, laying out their plan to flush out the stalker. Her vanishing act hadn’t been enough to get him to make a mistake yet, and the new security cameras around her Malibu beach house hadn’t captured anyone sneaking around. It was as if he knew she wasn’t there. So they’d hatched a plan to bring him out in the open.
“Yes, she’ll leak it, but with a little more enthusiasm than I’d like. She’s thinking this is some kind of huge publicity boost for me, which is totally not the point.” When Sheila Silverstein heard about the plan to leak a story to the media about Bree needing a “rest” at an undisclosed rehab center in Utah, she’d leaped at it. Instead of being concerned that people would get the wrong idea and think Bree had a substance abuse problem, Sheila was gleeful that the media would jump to exactly that conclusion. Apparently everyone loved a comeback story, and she was convinced a stint in make-believe rehab was just what Bree needed to capture the limelight again.
“Oh, darling,” Sheila had told her last night, “it’s perfect! You know, that dancing show has been calling—it would work out beautifully for you to go there straight out of rehab...”
“Sheila, I’m not really going to rehab, remember? This story is a decoy.”
“Just let me take care of everything. I know just who to leak it to. Everyone will assume you’re at the Seventh Heaven center. The story will be off and running!”
“Don’t get carried away, Sheila. Just leak a little whisper that I might be recovering from exhaustion somewhere in Utah then sit back and do nothing. Don’t do any interviews. And do not book me on anything until this is over and we have a chance to talk.” The idea of going on television again sent a chill down her spine.
“Bree? Are you there?” Blake’s voice brought her back to the present.
“Sorry, Blake. I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning, so I’m a little out of it. Thanks again for everything.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re family. Here’s Amanda.”
“Hey, girl. So, about this hot farmer...”
“Stop calling him that!”
“Look, you’re restless and anxious and you need a diversion. Why not have a little fling with the guy next door?”
Somehow she couldn’t imagine having something as trivial as a fling with Cole Caldwell. She could see it going deeper, and darker, very quickly. She wasn’t sure she was ready for whatever secrets Cole was hiding in the shadowed corners of his life. She changed the subject to Amanda’s adopted son, Zach, and his excitement over the new baby. They ended the call without any more references to hot farmers.
But that didn’t stop her from thinking about one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EIGHT STEAMING BLUEBERRY pies covered Nell’s kitchen counter later that day. Bree put the last of the mixing bowls in the rack to dry, and the kitchen was neat as a pin after being Blueberry Pie Central for three hours. Nell was confident the pies would sell out quickly at the produce stand.
“But first,” she said with a sly smile, “let’s walk two of these over to Cole’s place. He has company today, and I know they love my pie.”
Bree was annoyed at the thought of visiting Cole, suspecting Nell was matchmaking again, but she forgot about that when she realized what Nell had said.
“Company?”
Nell nodded. “I saw the Jeep over there this morning. Some of the gang from Fort Bragg are here.”
“Men he served with?”
“And women sometimes, but usually it’s the three amigos—Juan, Jerome and Chris. He served with Chris on his second deployment. The others he met in the hospital and in therapy groups.”
“Therapy? For PTSD?” She was oddly relieved to think that he was getting professional help for those shadows that lingered even behind his rare smiles.
“Cole got impatient with the sessions and quit. Told me that working on the land heals him, but I’m not so sure. Having the boys v
isit him helps, though. It’s an unofficial support group, and they take care of each other.”
Bree had an overwhelming desire to meet the men Cole thought of as his friends, hoping they’d offer some clues to the pain she saw deep in his eyes. She picked up a pie and turned, but Nell stopped her.
“Before we go over there, you should know that these boys have more than just PTSD. Some of them have been hurt bad, lost limbs, been burned. You need to be prepared...”
“Nell, when I was Miss California, I visited burn units and VA hospitals all the time. I’m not saying it’s easy for me, but I won’t do anything embarrassing, I promise.”
“Okay then, let’s go.”
They walked out into the blazing heat of the day. Clouds scuttled along the horizon, and Bree wondered if they might see some cooling rain soon. Nell followed her gaze and shook her head.
“When this heat breaks, we’re going to have some dandy storms. And just when that old cow is getting ready to calve.” Every afternoon she and Nell would drive up into the cattle pasture in Nell’s small truck to check on Cole’s beef cows and their calves. A surly old cow named Trixie was huge with calf, and Nell thought she’d give birth in the next few days.
“Is the rain dangerous for the birth?”
“Not really. Animals have been born out in the elements since the beginning of time. It’s just inconvenient. Oh, look, the boys are on the porch.”
Bree glanced up and saw three men sitting in the shade. They were watching with interest as she and Nell walked up the driveway. Cole wasn’t with them. She pushed her hair behind her ear and smoothed her white cotton blouse. When they approached the porch, the guy with shoulder-length blond hair let out a low whistle.
“Miss Nell, you always bring us the best treats, but this takes the cake. You brought us an angel! An honest-to-goodness angel.”
The black man sitting at his side nodded. “That is one fine woman. Welcome to Casa Del Caldwell, Miss...?”
“This is Anna, boys,” Nell replied. Bree’s stride faltered. She kept forgetting about her alias. “And you all behave yourselves. She’s my guest and a special friend of Cole’s, and I expect you to treat her as such, you hear me?”
“Damn, Nell, she belongs to Cole?” The black man shook his head dramatically. “That boy’s so lucky he could fall into a pile of manure and still come out smelling like a rose!”
All three men stood when she and Nell reached the top step of the porch. The tall blond took the pie from Bree’s hands and opened the door for Nell to enter the house in front of him. He winked at Bree.
“Honey, you sit right here with the boys and don’t you go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
The man standing farthest away, who’d been silent so far, stepped forward. He was shorter than the others, but stocky and built like a tank. He extended his right hand to Bree.
Or what remained of his right hand. It was a scarred stump with only two misshapen fingers and a stub of a thumb. Burgundy scars twisted up his arm and covered half of his face. One ear was missing completely, and one eye was clearly blind, with the pupil a hazy white circle. His nose had been reconstructed and was serviceable, but flattened. His top lip wasn’t much more than a thin red line of scar tissue on the right side, but it was curled into a smile.
“Welcome, Miss Anna. My name’s Juan Ramirez.” His good eye was focused on her face, and she knew he was waiting to see how she would react. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the time she’d spent in those burn wards. She met his gaze with a smile, took his hand gently and shook it.
“Nice to meet you, Juan.”
“My friends just call me Ramirez, ma’am.”
“Okay, then. Ramirez it is.” Even beneath the thickened scars on his face, she could see him blushing.
She turned to the broad-shouldered black man at her side and extended her hand. She didn’t see any visible wounds until she felt her fingers grasping something solid. She was gripping a prosthetic hand. Beneath his long cargo shorts, his left foot was replaced with a high-tech metal prosthetic. Now it was her turn to blush.
“Sorry—would you rather we shook left hands instead?”
He shook his head, looking both amused and kind-hearted. “No, ma’am. As long as you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.” She swallowed and made sure to meet his eyes with a calm smile.
“My name’s Jerome Willis, ma’am.”
“It’s wonderful to meet you, Jerome.”
The tall blond returned from inside the house with Nell. Four longneck beer bottles dangled from the fingers of his left hand, and he extended his right. His sparkling blue eyes matched the sky perfectly, and his smile hinted strongly of mischief.
“Christopher Baldwin, ma’am. Glad to see Cole’s taste in women is as good as his taste in friends.”
Jerome and Ramirez laughed at that, rolling their eyes. Chris was clearly the class clown. He handed off the beers to his friends. She couldn’t see any visible wounds, and he made her blush bright red when he read her mind and started patting his hands up and down his body.
“No missing appendages. My perfect body is perfectly intact, except for a metal plate in my skull and the scrambled brain inside of it. But don’t you worry, darlin’, I’m not gonna go postal on you today.”
“Chris...” Nell scolded.
He laughed and held his hands up. “I’m kidding! The meds are doing their job and it’s all good, Nell.”
Bree turned to follow Nell down the porch steps, but Nell shook her head.
“Stay here with the boys, honey. Our work’s done for the day, and you deserve a little fun.”
“I think that’s a great idea. Right, boys?” Chris winked. “Cole’s girlfriend should definitely stay and have fun with us.” There was no threat in his loaded words.
Nell laughed and waved goodbye as she headed off down the long driveway.
“Whoa!” Bree objected. “I am not Cole’s girlfriend! We hardly know each other...”
“You mean you and me might have a chance?” Ramirez asked the question with a twinkle in his eye.
She returned his grin. “Well, you can try, Handsome, but I get awfully jealous and I’m sure there are girls all over you when you go out on the town.”
He nodded as the other men laughed. “I’ve got moves, baby. I’ve got moves.”
“I figured as much. I’d hate to go to jail for beating all those other women away from you. But I’m honestly not in the market, boys. Sorry.”
Jerome handed her a beer. She wasn’t much of a beer drinker, especially from the bottle. But she took a deep draught and raised the bottle in a silent toast, which they answered with looks of admiration. She glanced around the yard.
“Where’s your host?”
Chris shrugged. “He’s working, of course. He said something about moving a tree that fell on the edge of one of his fields. He said he didn’t need our help, so we let him go.”
They settled into easy conversation, punctuated with Chris’s irreverent jokes at everyone’s expense, including his own. When she didn’t balk at his bawdier stories, and shared a few of her own, the three men relaxed and treated her as one of the guys. She knew it was partially because they still thought she might be Cole’s girlfriend, but they also seemed to appreciate her humor and her acceptance of their visible and invisible scars.
As the conversation wore on, more bottles of beer made their way onto the porch. In a tangent she suspected was fairly common, the men started boasting of their battle scars and teasing each other, laughing and cursing with enthusiasm. Bree knew it was their way of trying to deal with their injuries.
“Ramirez, you lost an ear, man. I lost my leg! My leg!”
Jerome reached down and unfastened a buckle, and suddenly his prosthetic leg was in his hand. He sh
ook it to emphasize its metal presence. Curious, Bree reached out, and he gave it to her nonchalantly. “I can’t even compare myself to that idiot blade runner anymore, man, because he went crazy and killed his woman! And crazy is Chris’s thing, not mine!”
“Damn straight on that, bro.” Chris looked indignant. “Don’t you go stealing my crazy gig!”
Ramirez gave them a disgusted wave of his hand. “Shut up, the both of you. I’m scarred, you idiots. Chris, you look like a freakin’ Adonis, and Jerome, you can cover up the fake limbs with long pants and long sleeves. What am I supposed to do? Wear a blanket over my head?”
Bree emptied the beer she was holding and leaned back against the porch post, swinging her legs as she sat on the railing. The drink was refreshing, and she was having a shockingly good time. She tried to imagine her costars from Hot Hollywood Housewives sitting on a steamy Southern porch sharing cold beer with these earthy, damaged men, and she knew it never would have happened.
“So tell us, angel,” Chris said with a wink. “What scars are you hiding?”
She blinked and sat up straighter. This was a testosterone-fueled contest for laughs, and they respected her enough to let her join in. She wasn’t going to bring them down by talking about her stalker, or offend them by bemoaning her divorce from a wealthy superstar. So, with a completely innocent face, she braced Jerome’s fake leg upside down on her thigh, folded her hands over the foot, and rested her chin there.
“Boys, I have you all beat in the suffering department. After all, I’m the one who has to be Cole’s girlfriend!”
The last two words were fairly shouted, and the men howled in laughter. It was a tall tale, but since it was what they believed, the fact that she could joke about it left them all in hysterics. Chris was on his feet, applauding. Ramirez stood and bowed in defeat before sitting again. Jerome was wiping tears from his eyes.
Bree laughed, trying to ignore the rush of energy she felt when she said those words. Before she could consider what that meant, she heard a familiar voice.