When Brant opened his eyes again it was nearly nine thirty according to the clock radio by the bed. He blinked at the ceiling, trying to remember where he was, but then his hand encountered the soft body of a woman next to him and the memories came tumbling back. After waking Talulah earlier, he hadn’t planned on sleeping longer, since he normally got up by six. But last night had been anything except normal, and Talulah was partially right when she said his brothers could fill in for him—they could do that, at least for a while.
Careful not to wake her, he slid out of bed, went to the bathroom and pulled on his jeans, which he found in the hall. His shirt and boots were still in the bedroom, but he didn’t go back for them. It was already growing warm. He wanted to grab the AC unit from his truck and get it working so Talulah would be as comfortable as possible when the temperature rose today.
But he was so hungry as he started down the stairs that the scent of the ham and cheese croissants she’d made last night drew him to the kitchen.
As soon as he found them in the fridge, he put one in the microwave and, while he waited for it to heat up, felt his pockets for his phone.
It wasn’t there. He must’ve left it in his truck. His brothers were probably freaking out, wondering where he was, but he supposed a few more minutes without checking in wouldn’t change anything.
The croissant oozed a white cheese he’d never tasted before, but he loved it—so much that he put another one in the microwave while he walked outside to get the air conditioner. He was yawning and scratching his chest as he stepped off the porch when he caught sight of a familiar vehicle parked behind his truck. Charlie’s.
Brant froze. He’d completely forgotten that he’d told Charlie they’d play pool last night. “Damn it,” he muttered as his best friend climbed out of the Explorer he’d been driving for years.
“Really, Brant?” he said. “You can have almost any woman you want, and you have to sneak around with Talulah?”
Brant wished he hadn’t been so lackadaisical about putting on the rest of his clothes. He knew this didn’t look good. But he’d never dreamed he’d have to worry about being seen. Aunt Phoebe’s house was out in the country. Ellen was the only neighbor within half a mile, and she was out of town.
“Charlie, before you get too upset, let me take this inside,” he said. “Then you and I can go somewhere else and talk.”
“And say what?” he demanded.
Not since the canceled wedding had Brant seen Charlie so upset. The way he held his body—like a tightly coiled snake—and the venom in his voice was something Brant had never experienced. Charlie had always been fairly easygoing. “This isn’t what you think.”
“You didn’t fuck her? Because that’s all I care about.”
Brant wished he could answer that question the way Charlie wanted him to answer it. Given the concussion, he probably would’ve been in a similar state of undress even if he hadn’t had sex with Talulah. But he couldn’t deny it. That would be a blatant lie. “Can you lower your voice?” he asked. “She’s sleeping, and she doesn’t need to wake up to this.”
“You think I care if she’s sleeping?” he cried. “After what she did to me? After what you’ve both done to me?”
“Charlie, you and Talulah haven’t been together for fourteen years!”
“So that means you can move in on her? She was my fiancée, Brant. She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved!”
“It’s been fourteen years! You have to get over her.”
“Why?” he retorted. “So you can have her?”
“We’re not together. You’re jumping to the wrong conclusions.”
“I’m going by the obvious! And I can’t believe it. She just got back in town and you’re already sleeping with her.”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t come over here for that,” Brant said. “It just sort of...happened. I came over to let her borrow an air conditioner.” He gestured at his truck. “See that?”
“Yeah, I see it. If you came over to deliver it, why the hell is it still in your truck?”
“Because I hit my head! I had no plans to... I mean, I didn’t come over here with the intention of—”
“Getting her into bed?” he finished.
“Exactly!”
“Then why did you do it?”
This was going from bad to worse. Brant had to get Charlie away from Aunt Phoebe’s house before Talulah realized he was there. “Just...stay where you are for a second, okay? I’ll be right back. Then we can go somewhere else and talk, like I said before.”
Brant’s mind was buzzing as he grabbed the air conditioner and hauled it into the house. He wanted to carry it upstairs for Talulah. He figured she’d need it most in the bedroom, and the darn thing was heavy, probably too heavy for her to lift. But at least she’d have it in the house while he dealt with Charlie. He didn’t know how long it would take him to convince Charlie to calm down, but he could try to come back later—sneak over in the middle of the night if he had to.
Setting it in the living room, he whipped around to stride back out, only to find that Charlie had followed him in.
“Seriously? You feel that comfortable with her now?” Charlie asked. “You can just...come into her house whenever you want? As if you live here?”
Brant’s clothes were upstairs and his second croissant was in the microwave, but he was willing to leave both—even his boots. Charlie was too worked up. Brant didn’t want this to play out here, didn’t want to make Talulah feel the kind of panic and guilt he was feeling right now.
“Come on, Charlie, let’s go,” he said, but Charlie’s attention suddenly shifted to the stairs as they heard Talulah say, “What’s going on?”
“I can’t believe you’d come back to town and fuck my best friend,” he snapped. “How could you do that after what you did to me?”
Talulah had pulled on Brant’s T-shirt. It was backward—she must’ve grabbed it off the floor since her own clothes were in the bathroom—but the fact that it hit her mid-thigh made it obvious it wasn’t hers.
The second she realized they had company, she stretched the soft cotton down even lower. “I didn’t come back here for Brant. I came for my great aunt Phoebe’s funeral.”
“So that isn’t Brant’s shirt?”
She looked down. “I... I—” she started but couldn’t seem to come up with the rest of that sentence.
“Don’t bring Talulah into this, Charlie,” Brant said. “It’s me you’re mad at.”
“No, I’m mad at her, too. The last time I saw her, she was wearing my ring,” Charlie said. “I thought I’d be spending the rest of my life with her.”
“I sent the ring back to you,” Talulah said, “along with a check for the tuxedo rental and any other expenses my parents didn’t cover for the wedding.”
“You think this is about money?”
“I know it’s not. I’m just saying that I tried to make it right.”
“How can a few hundred dollars and returning the ring make what you did right?”
“Not right exactly,” she hedged, “but...the best I could do. I sent you an apology, too.”
“Yeah, I got your letter. For not intending to hurt me, you certainly did a damn fine job of it,” he scoffed as his eyes ran over her tousled hair, Brant’s T-shirt and her bare legs and feet. “So what are you these days? Some kind of whore?”
“Charlie, that’s enough!” Brant said, but those words acted like a match to a stick of dynamite—minus the long wick. The next thing he knew, his best friend took a swing at him, and it was so unexpected that Brant wasn’t able to dodge it entirely. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked after Charlie’s fist glanced off his cheekbone.
“What’s wrong with me?” Charlie echoed. “What’s wrong with you? I trusted you. You know how I’ve always felt about her.”
“I also know it’s been over for fourteen years!” Brant said, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. Charlie tried to hit him again, forcing Brant to defend himself.
Talulah cried out as they crashed into the wall and a picture fell while Brant was taking Charlie to the floor. From there, they wrestled with each other until Brant finally managed to pin him down.
Charlie was breathing so hard he could barely speak as he glared up into Brant’s face. “Get off me!”
“I’ll be happy to do that,” Brant said. “But...is this over?”
“It’s over,” Charlie muttered. “She’s not worth it. And neither are you. We’re done. Don’t ever call me again.”
“Charlie, will you calm down?”
Charlie’s stony expression didn’t change. “I said to get off me.”
Brant stood up slowly, in case Charlie started swinging again.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Charlie wiped his nose, discovered that it was bleeding and gave Brant a dirty look. “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you both.”
“Wait,” Brant said, but Charlie grabbed a lamp off the entry table and threw it down, causing it to shatter into a million pieces, before stomping out.
Talulah’s jaw had dropped, and her hand was covering her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Brant said. That was all he could get out before a loud bang drew him to the front window. He was barefoot, so he couldn’t reach the door because of the broken glass.
Charlie had rammed Brant’s brand-new Ford F-250 before peeling off.
“Did he just hit your truck?” Talulah asked.
Brant stretched his neck, watching a plume of dust fan out behind Charlie as he rocketed down the driveway. “Yeah.”
“How’d he know you were here?” She sounded confused, and he could understand why. She would have no way of knowing that Charlie had never gotten over her—that she’d moved on, but he hadn’t.
“I was supposed to play pool with him last night. When he didn’t hear from me, he probably started to look around.”
Her eyes widened. “But why would he look here?”
Because he knew she was back and staying at her great aunt’s place. Brant could easily imagine Charlie driving past the house—several times—even if he hadn’t been actively looking for anyone. But Brant didn’t volunteer that. He was too loyal to Charlie to make him sound like a stalker and too mad at himself for hurting his best friend. Somehow, Talulah hadn’t seemed off-limits eight hours ago. For one thing, he knew she’d never go back to Charlie, regardless of anything he did. And he’d seen their time together as a night no one would ever have to know about. He certainly hadn’t planned on this. “He probably looked everywhere.”
“Did he do much damage?” she asked, coming up to peer out the window with him.
“Hard to tell from here.” Brant didn’t want to go out and examine the damage, wasn’t quite ready to face it. He was still grappling with what had occurred.
“Are you okay?” she asked, but from the way she was hugging herself, he got the impression she was the one who was rattled.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” His cheek was tender. But it could’ve been a lot worse.
“He was bleeding,” she said, staring through the window at the now-empty drive. “Do you think he’ll be okay, too?”
“Physically? I’m sure he will. I tried not to hit him, especially in the face. I have no idea how he got a bloody nose.”
She turned away from the window. “I couldn’t tell you, either. It—it happened so fast.”
“It’s over now,” he said, hoping to reassure her.
She nodded as she stared at the broken lamp. The frame of the picture that’d fallen was cracked, but there’d been no glass in it. So that was good, at least. “Maybe I owe you an apology,” she muttered. “You probably weren’t thinking straight when you were in the shower last night. I should’ve said no.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. It was my fault.”
“You’d hit your head. You had a concussion.”
He touched her arm so she’d look up at him. “I knew what I was doing.”
“Still, that’s how we’ll have to play it,” she said, sounding more and more assured as she spoke. “It’s the only way we can play it. Or he’ll never forgive you.”
Brant remembered promising her he wouldn’t tell a soul. Now she was volunteering to be the fall guy? “What are you talking about? I’m not going to blame you. That wouldn’t be fair.”
She went to the kitchen and came back with a broom, which he took from her.
“You need to go put on some shoes first,” he said.
She didn’t argue. But neither did she go after her shoes. Stepping away from the glass, she found a chair. “I’m already a lost cause where Charlie and the rest of Coyote Canyon are concerned. But if you act as though you didn’t know what was going on, this shouldn’t affect you.”
“How do I act as if I didn’t know what was going on?” he asked.
“You just make a big deal of the concussion, say you were out of it.”
He grimaced. “No way. I’m not going to make it sound like you took advantage of me. That’s ridiculous!”
Her chest lifted as she drew a deep breath. “Then just...refuse to address it.”
“How will that solve anything?”
“I’ll have Jane spread the word that you had a concussion when you stayed over, and town gossip and conjecture will take care of the rest.”
“People will ask me about it.”
“And you’ll tell them you don’t remember what happened. You’re one of Coyote Canyon’s own. In their eyes, I’m already a pariah. Why not have it go this way?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
Raising her chin in a show of stubbornness, she held his gaze. “Do you want to lose your best friend?”
Squeezing his eyes closed, he rubbed his temples. “Of course not. But the truth is the truth. I was the one who asked you.”
“I hurt Charlie when I stood him up at the altar,” she said softly. “I don’t want to take his best friend away from him, too.”
Brant could see the logic in what she was saying. If she was never going back to Charlie, it didn’t matter if Charlie blamed her for this. Plus, she was only in town for a month, so the pain, for her, would be short-lived. But then he’d come out of this with no real consequences while she was made to look opportunistic and sexually aggressive—embarrassingly so.
He sighed as he touched the cut on his head from when he’d hit the low ceiling. “I hear what you’re saying. It just feels so creepy.”
“You can do it for Charlie, can’t you?”
“For Charlie, yes. But I’d benefit, too.”
“That’s okay. At this point, it’s about damage control. The punishment doesn’t have to be evenly distributed. So...are you in?”
Punishment. Last night shouldn’t have cost her anything. She didn’t owe Charlie her fidelity fourteen years after breaking off their relationship. But maybe this was her attempt to make up, at least a little, for what she’d done before. She was pushing him down the path that would hurt Charlie the least. But it was also the path that would hurt her the most.
He couldn’t help admiring her for trying to take the fall, but he also couldn’t accept her offer. “That won’t work, Talulah. Charlie, me, you...we’ll just have to deal with the truth.”