His First and Last (Ardent Springs #1) (25 page)

“First of all,” Lorelei said, “he’s not a boy. And second, what kind of a question is that?”

“You hurt him once. And he’s been through a lot more in the ensuing years than getting over teenage heartbreak. After what he learned yesterday, I can’t believe you’d take advantage of him like this.”

She
took advantage of
him
? Really?

“Your high opinion of me is flattering.” Lorelei put the mug back in the cupboard. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Don’t you walk away from me, missy.” Granny blocked her path out of the kitchen. “Are you staying here for good?”

Lorelei chewed the inside of her cheek. This was the question she wasn’t ready to answer. Could she settle into a life in Ardent Springs? Admittedly, the town hadn’t been unbearable since she’d been home, but it hadn’t even been a month yet. It could get worse. It would probably get worse.

“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. The most honest answer she had.

“Then you better figure it out. Spencer loves you, and he always has. I know you love him. I can see it every time you’re in the same room together.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

Granny threw her hands in the air. “There you go again, making every gosh darn thing more complicated than it needs to be. Your grandfather was always right about that.” Slamming her hands onto her
hips, she said, “Your grandfather loved that boy, too. Told me before he died he could go in peace knowing you had a good man to take care of you.”

That admission hit like a blow. “I never knew that,” she whispered.

“I suppose I should have told you, but I didn’t want you staying here out of guilt or obligation. You’d have turned out bitter and angry, and I watched what that did to your mother.” The steam seemed to go out of her as Granny’s shoulders fell. “I couldn’t watch the same happen to you.”

“Why was Mama so bitter?” Lorelei asked, a question she’d never had the guts to mutter aloud. Deep down, she’d always believed her own existence to be her mother’s greatest regret.

Granny shook her head. “Your mother made some choices she couldn’t live with, but didn’t have the courage to change.”

“What?” Lorelei asked. “Like the choice of having me?”

“Don’t ever say that again, young lady. Your mother’s mistakes were plenty, but you were not one of them.” Taking Lorelei’s hands, her voice gentled. “You’re getting a second chance at something a lot of folks never find at all. This time around, follow your heart. That’s the only way you’re ever going to be happy.”

Squeezing the older woman’s hands, Lorelei asked, “What if I don’t know what my heart is telling me to do?”

“You’ll know,” Granny said. “You’ll know.” Turning back to her paper, she added, “And next time, tell me when you’re leaving the house. I nearly had a heart attack last night until I figured out where you were.”

Lorelei took a step toward the stairs, then stopped. “Last night?”

“I heard a noise. Must have been you shutting the door on your way out.” Glancing over her glasses once more, she said, “You’re lucky I didn’t come down there and drag you back. Don’t think I didn’t consider it.”

Trying to calculate how quickly they’d gotten naked and how much her grandmother would have seen, Lorelei sent up a silent prayer of thanks that Granny had stayed in the house. “No more sneaking around,” she said, giving Granny’s shoulders a hug. “I do love you, you know.”

“Yes,” Granny said, patting her arm, “I know. Now go take a shower. You smell like sex.”

Lorelei nearly choked on her tongue hearing such a statement from her grandmother. The mortification kept her silent and carried her up the stairs as fast as her feet would go.

Chapter 21

Spencer felt extremely pleased with his current lot in life. He had a name and a face for his father, and Lorelei was back in his arms. As far as windfalls went, a man couldn’t ask for much more. It would have been nice to know more about his dad, but he’d meant every word he’d said to Lorelei the night before. He would not invade the man’s family. Maybe someday he’d reach out and see if someone reached back, but for now he’d be content with what he had, which was a lot more than he’d ever dreamed would come his way.

“You’re looking chipper this morning,” Mike Lowry said, stopping near Spencer’s table in Tilly’s Diner. “Have a good weekend?”

Spencer had stopped for lunch, but he hadn’t been seated long enough to order his food yet. The mention of the weekend widened his smile. “Best weekend I’ve had in a while. How about you?”

Mike nodded. “Not bad, but probably not as good as yours.” Rubbing his chin, he added, “Lorelei was looking chipper herself this morning.”

Now things were getting awkward. If Lorelei didn’t want Rosie to know they were back together, or whatever she’d call it, then no one else could know either.

“I guess the chipper thing is going around.” Pointing to the seat across from him, he asked, “Want to sit down?”

“I can do that.” Mike dropped onto the red vinyl and placed his black cowboy hat upside down on the seat next to him.

Jeanne returned to the table, took their orders, and then left the men alone once more. With the news about his father, Spencer had done some math to figure out who might have been around at the time Doug Crawford was in Ardent Springs. He may not be ready to reach out to Texas, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious to learn something. By his calculations, Mike would have still been in town.

“When did you head down to Nashville?” he asked, hoping his new lunch companion wouldn’t consider him nosy.

Mike crossed his arms on the table. “Thirty-one years ago this month, as a matter of fact.” Shaking his head, he added, “No wonder it feels like a lifetime ago.”

So Spencer’s math
was
right. “You went to school with my mom, didn’t you?”

“Paula was in my history class.” He tapped his temple. “Or maybe it was English.”

“Do you remember when they built the bridge out on Franklin?” he asked, aware that his questions were all over the place, but impatient to get to the point.

With confusion in his eyes, Mike answered, “Sure. I was part of the crew. Are you going somewhere with this?”

Flashing an apologetic smile, Spencer said, “Yeah, I am. Do you remember a guy named Doug Crawford? He wasn’t a local, but I understand he might have come to town to help with the construction.”

“I remember Doug. He was a good guy. Didn’t talk much, but I know he spent a lot of his off time with your mom.”

Spencer’s heart kicked like an angry mule. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten lucky on the first shot.

“Do you remember anything else about him?” Spencer asked. “Did he mention his family at all?”

Mike shook his head. “Like I said, he didn’t talk much. I get the sense this isn’t idle curiosity.”

Tugging his wallet from his back pocket, Spencer drew out the picture. “Does that look like the man you remember?” There was no need to reveal the truth if they weren’t talking about the same person.

Squinting a bit, Mike pulled the photo his way. “It’s been a long time, but the eyes look the same.” As if a revelation hit, his head shot up. “Same as your eyes. What is Doug Crawford to you?”

Spencer felt odd saying the words. “He’s my father. I found out yesterday.”

“You didn’t know?”

“My mother always said
she
didn’t know. She claimed it could have been any number of guys and they were all worthless, so I wasn’t missing anything.”

Mike handed the picture back. “How old are you? I thought Doug left town before I did.”

“I’ll be thirty-one next February,” Spencer answered. “I guess Mom must have been pregnant with me when you left.”

The usually friendly expression on Mike’s face grew serious. “Then how old is Lorelei? I thought you were both about twenty-eight.”

“She’s two months older than I am. Didn’t you see her date of birth when you hired her?”

His eyes dropped to the table, unfocused. “I had her enter her own information into the computer.” Lifting his hat off the seat, Mike slid from the booth. “I need to go,” he said.

“But what about your lunch?”

“Tell Jeanne to cancel the order.”

With no further explanation, the business owner charged out of the restaurant like a man on a mission, leaving Spencer to wonder if he’d said something wrong. What did Lorelei’s age matter to Mike? Then a thought occurred. Maybe Mike knew who Lorelei’s father was as well. Spencer’s mom, Lorelei’s mom, and Lowry had all gone to school together.

The story Lorelei had been given was that her mom had gone on a spring break trip and had come back pregnant. No one knew the identity of the father, and the expectant mother’s story was that she didn’t remember a name. But maybe that wasn’t true.

Spencer’s mother had lied to him. What if Lorelei’s mother had lied, too?

“Jeanne!” he yelled, gaining the waitress’s attention where she stood behind the counter. “Cancel our orders.”

“But they’re already cooking.”

The waitress didn’t get a response, as Spencer charged through the door the same way Mike had.

Lorelei had hoped Spencer might bring her lunch. She’d been thinking about him all day, replaying the night before in her mind, which only resulted in lots of squirming in her chair. She kept catching herself grinning like a fool while alphabetizing stacks of vendor invoices from earlier in the year. Trying to wipe the smile from her face only worked for minutes at a time. At this rate, her cheeks would be sore by the end of the day.

Granny had told her to follow her heart, and right now her heart wanted nothing but Spencer. Though the bit about her mother growing bitter over her own choices still nagged at the back of her mind. What did that mean? From Lorelei’s earliest memory, her mother carried a sadness about her. There were moments, when she was playing with Lorelei and maybe forgot the rest of the world, when a genuine smile
would split her face. But those memories were few and far between, faded by time.

As a little girl, Lorelei didn’t know what depression was. She only knew her mom was always tired, and at some point she stopped getting out of bed. Eventually, Lorelei went to live with Granny and Pops and only saw her mother a couple times a month, if that. The memories of the drunken binges were the strongest, because they’d come at the end of her mother’s life. It had always struck Lorelei as ironic that the one day her mother stayed sober, for her daughter’s eleventh birthday, she’d been killed by a drunk driver.

That was when Lorelei changed from the confused little girl who wanted nothing but to be with her mom, to the angry teen who didn’t care about anyone but herself. And the new version had stuck around for a long time. Stubborn to a fault, with a chip on her shoulder that should have been knocked off years before. The chip wasn’t completely gone, and likely never would be, but she
was
getting a second chance, and she’d be a moron to throw it away.

Maybe if her mom had gotten a second chance, she’d still be around. Maybe she’d have found a man, one worth sticking around for, and forgotten that a stranger had knocked her up on a spring break trip. Then again, with Lorelei as a constant reminder, how could she ever have forgotten that fact?

“You deserved better, Mom,” she said aloud. “You deserved so much better.”

Lorelei finished with the March stack of invoices, set them aside to file, and then took a potty break. Spencer was clearly not coming, so she might as well grab the sandwich she’d brought for lunch from the fridge. But before she turned the corner into the hall, her phone started playing “Macho Man,” the ringtone that indicated Spencer was calling. He’d put the ringtone on himself, and she had yet to figure out how to change it. The infernal smartphone was sure as heck smarter than she was.

“Hello,” she said in greeting. “Why haven’t you brought me lunch yet?”

“Is Mike there?” Spencer asked, sounding out of breath. Had he really called
her
cell phone looking for her boss? After what they’d done last night, he couldn’t bother with so much as a “Hi, baby”?

“No, he isn’t,” she ground out, tempted to hang up on him.

“Has he called you in the last five minutes or so?”

Now he was making her worry. “No. Why? Did something happen? Has there been an accident at a job site or something?”

With a loud sigh, Spencer said, “Maybe I’m wrong then.”

“Wrong about what?” Lorelei dropped into her desk chair. “Spencer, you’re not making any sense. What’s this about?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I ran into Mike at Tilly’s and asked if he remembered Doug Crawford.”

“And did he?” That Spencer was still asking questions meant he might still give in and contact his aunt.

“Yeah. He said Crawford didn’t talk much and spent a lot of time with my mom.”

“We knew that. At least the part about being with your mom. What else did he say?”

“Nothing. He asked how old I was, and then how old you are. When I told him, he said he had to go and left the diner.”

“What do our ages have to do with anything?” When Spencer didn’t answer right away, she prodded, “What are you not telling me?”

In a quiet voice, Spencer said, “I think he might know who your father is.”