“Probably Hubert,” Nick said, trying to ignore the surprising jab of jealousy that shot through him.
“No, it wasn’t Grant. I called him and asked and he said he didn’t leave anything. And there’s really no reason for him to do something like that, because I broke things off with him last night.”
Nick looked at her sharply. “Why? I thought he was probably the man of your dreams, the well-off, respectable guy who could help you heal things over with your parents.”
“Nothing is going to heal things over with my parents,” she said with a fervency that surprised him. “I don’t want to heal things with my parents, and my breaking up with Grant had nothing to do with that. And it certainly had nothing to do with you.”
They’d reached the sandbox and Garrett stopped at the edge and looked at Courtney expectantly as he obviously needed help stepping over the lip of the sandy play area.
“Here you go, son,” Nick said and gently lifted the boy and placed him in the sandbox. Garrett smiled in delight and tried to grab Nick’s hat.
“Whoa.” Nick dodged the attempt. “Hat,” he said. “This is my hat, but I don’t think I want it filled with sand.”
“Hat.” Garrett parroted. “Toys.”
Courtney placed the sand toys into the box and then took a seat at the nearby picnic table while Nick lowered himself to the side of the sandbox and grabbed one of the shovels to start filling a pail.
Garrett grinned up at him and began to help by using another shovel. For a few minutes the two worked together, and when the pail was full, Nick emptied it and they began the game again.
It was surreal, playing in the sand with his son, a little human being he hadn’t known existed a day before. He marveled at the shape of Garrett’s meaty hands as he filled his bucket, the bright intelligence that sparked in his eyes, and he embraced the laughter that escaped each time Nick emptied the bucket.
“So, why did you break up with Grant?” he finally asked.
“Because I knew that he was looking for more than I could give him. Because I realized it wasn’t fair to lead him on when I didn’t have any real romantic feelings toward him. And just so you know, I’ll repeat it again—it absolutely had nothing to do with you.”
“Didn’t think it did.” Nick should have been ashamed by the sense of satisfaction that swept through him at her words. He knew it was wrong to not want her for himself, but also hate the idea of her being with anyone else.
As Garrett began to cover one of his chubby bare legs with sand, Nick started to cover his other one. Garrett started giggling, and the sound was infectious. Soon Courtney and Nick were laughing as well, and it felt good.
There had been nothing but tension between them since the moment he’d come back into town, and this moment of shared joy with their son filled his heart with a warmth he hadn’t felt since the death of his sister.
It didn’t last long, but as he and Courtney shared a last smile over Garrett’s head, for the first time since returning to Grady Gulch Nick felt as if he was where he belonged.
For just a brief, shining moment, he wanted to go back in time, back before Cherry had died, before he’d left Grady Gulch, back to the time when Courtney had been his.
He wanted to go back to those moments in the old Yates barn when he and Courtney had spun fantasies of love forever and building a family and supporting one another through good times and bad.
For just a brief moment he wanted it back, he wanted her back, and his need for her filled him up so much that he couldn’t think of anything to say when the laughter finally ended.
He spent the next thirty minutes focused on Garrett, playing in the sand, showing him how to fill the back of the plastic pickup truck with the white grains and then pretend to drive it around the sandbox. Garrett mimicked his actions, grinning at Nick with young pride.
“You like working at the café?” he finally asked to break the silence that had grown between them.
“Actually I do enjoy it,” she replied. “Oh, I don’t like the time I have to spend away from Garrett, but I like the people I work with and I absolutely adore Mary.”
He gave her a quick smile. “Everyone adores Mary. She’s one of the best things that ever happened to Grady Gulch.”
“She’s certainly been good to me. I showed up in the café with a suitcase and a sob story, and she helped me instantly.”
He didn’t want to think about that time in her life, that time when she’d had to have felt so alone.
“Now that I’m here I can make things easier for you,” Nick said. “Maybe you could cut down on some of your hours at the café.”
She shook her head. “I take care of myself. I don’t want you or any man taking care of me.” She raised her chin a notch. “I spent too many years letting my parents take care of me, and in my experience help always comes with strings attached. I’m doing fine, Nick. Garrett and I are doing just fine.”
He looked at her somberly, still fighting the crazy feelings that he knew he shouldn’t be feeling. “But you know that you can come to me for anything you need, anything Garrett might need. I intend to start paying child support immediately. You just tell me what you want, and I’ll pay each month until we work out the custody agreement.”
Her eyes once again darkened, as if she didn’t even want to think about a custody agreement. “Maybe a hundred dollars a month? It would help with the diapers.”
“We’ll make it three hundred a month. I’m sure he’s outgrowing his clothes with each minute that passes, and if he’s like his dad and his uncles, he probably has a healthy appetite. I’ll have a check ready for you tomorrow.”
He thought she was going to protest, but at that moment Garrett poured a bucket of sand over Nick’s head. Garrett’s laughter rode the air as Nick jumped up and pulled his hat off. “Hat,” Garrett said proudly.
Nick couldn’t help but see the smile that threatened at the corners of Courtney’s lush lips. He wanted to capture just one corner with his own mouth, feel that smile expand against his own.
“Courtney,” a voice called from the distance.
Both Nick and Courtney looked in the distance, where Abigail Swisher and her best friend Susan Mayfield headed toward them. Susan’s four-year-old daughter, Ella, ran ahead of them, obviously focused on the sandbox.
Courtney got up from the table and Nick brushed the sand from his hair and shoulders as the two women approached. “Nice to see you both,” Susan said.
“Garrett! What a big boy you’re getting to be,” Abigail exclaimed, her smile warm as she gazed at him. “And such a handsome young man.”
“Thanks, and he is growing like a weed,” Courtney agreed. “And now it’s time to get the big boy out of the sandbox so I can get to work.”
“I’ll get him,” Nick offered. “I already feel like I’ve been in a sandstorm.” He leaned forward and picked Garrett up in his arms.
He noticed Abigail staring with an unsettling intensity first at him and then at Garrett. He had a feeling by the end of the day there wouldn’t be anyone in town who didn’t know he was Garrett’s biological father.
Goodbyes were said, and together he and Courtney fell into step walking toward their vehicles. “I think the cat is out of the bag,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Abigail was giving me and Garrett the eye. By the time you get to the café, everyone in town will probably know I’m Garrett’s daddy.”
She shrugged her slender shoulders, and he couldn’t help but see the weight of her breasts shift with the movement. “At this point it doesn’t really matter. Sooner or later everyone was going to know anyway.”
“Does it bother you?” A tightness filled his chest.
“That you’re his father?”
“No, that everyone will know that we were seeing each other two years ago.”
They had reached her car. She held out her arms to take Garrett from him. “Kind of water under the bridge now, don’t you think?”
He watched as she carefully buckled Garrett into his car seat. As she straightened he realized he was standing too close to her. He could smell her intoxicating perfume, see the bright gold speckles in the depths of her green eyes, and again his desire to pull her into his arms, to kiss her lips hit him full force.
For an achingly long moment they remained frozen in place. He was vaguely aware of the heat emanating from her body, a heat he had wrapped himself in for seven wonderful months, a heat he wanted to pull against him this very minute.
She broke the mood, stepping sideways toward the driver door. “I’ve got to get going. Same time, same place tomorrow?” she asked.
He nodded and moved back so she could get into her car. As he watched her pull away, he told himself he was a fool. To want her. To try to recapture what he’d believed they’d once had.
Two years ago he hadn’t been enough for her, and nothing had changed to make him more acceptable since then. He was still just a cowboy rancher, only now he had a brother in jail, another brother who was a borderline alcoholic and a ranch that needed more than a little bit of TLC.
Funny, he knew she was bitter toward him for leaving without a backward glance, but despite his desire for her he realized he had more than a little bit of bitterness still gnawing inside him.
He still believed that eventually she’d date and marry a fine, successful and respectable man like Grant Hubert, a man who would be everything her parents had wanted for her. Eventually she’d be welcomed back into the fold of her mother and father, and that would only make things more difficult for him.
He got into his pickup and headed back in the direction of the ranch, a foul mood taking hold of him as he realized there was a part of him that was angry. He was mad that Courtney’s love for him in those seven months they had shared had never been real or strong enough for her to step out of the shadows beside him.
And even knowing that, what really irritated him was that he wanted what he could never have, the woman he’d thought had existed in the straw-scented stable of the old Yates barn, a woman who had only ever existed in his imagination.
* * *
Rusty was having a temper tantrum. The cook at the café rarely showed any emotion, but when he got angry it was a sight to see. He banged pans, cussed like a sailor and threatened anyone who dared enter the kitchen for any reason.
Courtney had no idea what had set him off this time, but she stood next to Mary at the counter, waiting until the storm passed. “I don’t know why you let him get away with this,” Courtney said softly to Mary. Thankfully the lunch rush had ended before Rusty had blown up.
Mary smiled. “I put up with him because he doesn’t do this often, he’s a great cook and hard worker. Plus today is the ten-year anniversary of the day he lost his wife and his son in a house fire.”
Courtney gasped in shock. “Oh, my God, I didn’t know.”
Mary nodded. “He doesn’t talk about it much. Apparently faulty wiring started a fire in the kitchen while his wife and little boy slept upstairs. Rusty was working nights at a diner and wasn’t home when the incident happened. By the time he got there the house was engulfed. It took half a dozen firemen to keep him from trying to enter the inferno to save his wife and little boy.”
A dark symphony of emotion rose up inside Courtney as she thought about the kind of loss Rusty had suffered in his life. “How old was his son?” she asked.
“Just about Garrett’s age,” Mary replied.
“I can’t imagine that, losing a loved one, losing a child like that,” Courtney said.
“Sometimes Rusty just needs to bang pots and pans and curse to vent a little of the sadness inside him. But he doesn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. It’s a tragic part of his life he doesn’t even like to talk about.”
Within a few minutes silence once again reigned in the kitchen, indicating that the storm had passed, at least inside the café. Outside, the gray clouds had delivered a light rain off and on since Courtney had gotten up that morning.
For the past week she and Nick had met in the park for his visits with Garrett, but this morning they’d met in her motel room because of the weather.
The park visits had been fun, and she’d been reminded of the carefree side of Nick. He’d wrestled with Garrett in the grass, pushed him on one of the baby swings and talked to him as if he was a grown-up.
Despite her tumultuous feelings about Nick even being in Garrett’s life, she couldn’t help the way her heart warmed when she saw him with Garrett. He would be a terrific father if he’d just stick around.
She’d forgotten about Nick’s innate gentleness. She knew his strength, both physical and mental. She’d seen him angry and knew he never backed down from a fight he considered right. Still, she’d definitely forgotten how his eyes could soften with love, how his touch could be as tender as butterfly wings, and as she saw him that way with Garrett it set up a deep yearning inside her.
She felt as if there had been no softness, no gentleness or true laughter in her life for the past two years. The last twenty-four months of her life had been all about survival, something her parents hadn’t taught her. She’d taught herself all she’d needed to know except how to spend time with Nick and Garrett in a motel room.
This morning the visit was uncomfortable. The setting had been far too intimate, the space too small, and she’d been too aware of Nick not just as Garrett’s father, but as a sexy man she’d once made love with.
She’d watched his arm muscles bulge as he lifted Garrett and remembered how those arms had felt around her. As he’d played patty-cake with Garrett, she’d remembered how Nick’s hands had felt sliding down her naked body, touching her with a fire that had made her gasp in delight. Definitely she preferred the outdoors for his parental visits.
Today she’d actually let him take Garrett to Sophie’s. It had been a leap of faith for her, to allow anyone to take her son anywhere without her. She felt a little guilty for calling to check in with Sophie, who had assured her that Garrett had arrived safe and sound.
It was just before the dinner rush began that Lizzy Wiles came in and took a seat at a table in Courtney’s section. “Can you take a short break?” she asked when Courtney stepped up to take her friend’s order.