Talulah’s phone went off, waking her early Sunday morning. She yawned and stretched, and Brant began to stir, too, but she could tell he wasn’t eager to wake up when he covered his head with a pillow.
She wished she could do the same, wished she could fall back into the comfortable, warm, dreamless sleep she’d experienced since they’d made love. But the person blowing up her phone wouldn’t stop. As soon as her voice mail picked up, whoever it was would hang up and call again.
“Sounds like someone’s anxious to reach you,” Brant said with a yawn, shoving aside the pillow.
“Might be my mother. The time difference between here and Sierra Leone is so big she tends to call at odd hours. And Sunday is our day to catch up.” The last thing she wanted was to speak to her mother while she was naked in bed with Brant, though. “I’ll call her back.”
Rolling over, she got her phone from her purse on the nightstand to turn off the ringer, at least—but hesitated when she saw who’d been so determined to reach her. It was Paul.
He hadn’t called all day yesterday. What could he want this early in the morning? It was even an hour earlier in Seattle.
“Don’t tell me it’s Averil,” Brant said.
“No, but it’s not my mother.”
“Let me guess. Paul?”
“Yeah.”
“You going to answer it?”
She didn’t want to. She’d enjoyed the break. But... “It could be about the diner.”
“Wouldn’t he text you if it was an emergency?”
The way he’d behaved the last time he was upset with her, leading her to believe their business had no managerial support, didn’t give her a great deal of confidence that he’d go to the extra effort. She could already hear him justifying himself for not texting. “I tried to reach you. You wouldn’t pick up.”
“To be honest, I don’t know,” she told Brant.
He got out of bed. “I don’t mind if you feel you should take the call. I have to go to the bathroom, anyway.”
Just in case Paul needed to talk to her about an employee emergency, or a myriad of other potential problems, she hit the talk button. “Hello?”
“You couldn’t call me for once?” he demanded without preamble. “Not even to check on the diner?”
Damn it. This was more personal bullshit. “Paul, I’m half-asleep. Are you really going to start an argument at...what?” She checked the time on her phone. “Six in the morning? Five your time?”
“I’m up doing all the baking for our diner. Why shouldn’t you be up, too?”
He did have quite a bit of work to accomplish each morning, work they typically did together. But she was going to return the favor, and he knew it. “I’ll be handling all the baking on my own next month, won’t I?”
“Yeah, but I’ll be hiking with friends, not banging other women.”
Talulah squeezed her eyes closed. “I’m going to ignore that.” She cleared her throat as Brant came back to bed. “I’ve been preoccupied, I admit. There’s a lot going on here.”
“A lot going on? You call packing up your aunt’s junk on a Saturday a lot going on?”
“I didn’t pack yesterday. I spent the majority of my time with Jane. I don’t get to see her very often when I’m in Seattle. And then Averil showed up at my place last night. We talked until late.”
“Are you saying you’re no longer seeing Brant? That he isn’t part of what’s keeping you so busy?”
Paul knew she hadn’t talked to Averil, her former best friend, for fourteen years. It’d been a source of pain and loss all that time, since before he met her. And yet he didn’t care enough about that to let what she’d said even register. “Paul...”
“Are you still seeing him?” Paul said, raising his voice.
Talulah could tell Brant had heard, because he lifted his head from the pillow in sudden interest. “Paul, please,” she said.
“Answer the question,” Paul insisted.
She considered the implications of her response, how an admission could potentially impact the diner—their diner. But doing the right thing was more important than any business. She wanted to be fair and honest with Paul. “Yes.”
Brant was watching her closely as he slid up against the headboard.
“You’re sleeping with him,” Paul said as if he’d known it all along and yet couldn’t believe it.
Talulah gripped her phone tighter. “Paul, I never expected this to happen. I—”
“You know what? That’s it. As far as I’m concerned, you can go to hell,” he said and hung up.
Dropping her phone in her lap, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
Brant took her hand and kissed her fingers. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t open her eyes, but she nodded.
“I can’t believe you told him about us.”
“Should I have lied?” she asked miserably, finally looking over at him.
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Because...”
“It proves that you’re taking what’s happening between us seriously.”
But...should she? That was the question.
A knock sounded on Brant’s door. “Hey, Talulah!”
Shocked that anyone else knew she was in the room, Talulah turned to Brant for an explanation.
“It’s Miles,” he said, seemingly unconcerned.
“I know who it is. But how does he know I’m here?”
“Maybe he heard us talking. Or he went out to check on the cattle and saw your car behind the barn.”
In case Miles opened the door, she pulled the bedding higher before answering him. “Yes?”
“So many people have told me you can cook.”
“Um... I have a culinary degree,” she said. “I’d like to think I can cook.”
“Great. Any chance you’d consider making breakfast?”
“Whoa, Miles,” Brant said, but Talulah waved him off. The prospect of getting to know Brant’s brothers, of cooking them a meal, appealed to her, enough that she decided to put her most recent spat with Paul out of her mind. Whenever she was with Brant, she had a wonderful time. And they had only fourteen days left. Why let anything ruin it?
She’d just have to pick up the pieces of her life after that. “Sure,” she called back. “When do you want to eat?”
“Any time you’d be willing to leave Brant’s bed,” he said.
“It might be a while,” Brant called out, jumping into the conversation.
“If I can force myself,” Talulah said, joining in on the joke, “what do you want me to make?”
“We’ll eat anything,” Miles told her. “You choose.”
“If all you have in the fridge is a jug of milk, there might not be much I can do.”
“We’re pretty well-stocked,” Brant volunteered.
“So you’re supportive of this plan?” she said to him.
A boyish grin crept onto his face. “I’m starving.”
“Then I’ll see what I can do.” She got up and pulled on her panties along with one of Brant’s T-shirts, which came halfway to her knees, and opened the door.
“You’re going to do it?” Miles said when he saw her.
“I’m going to do it,” she confirmed and went down the hall to see what they had in the kitchen.
She found a package of English muffins on the counter, something she hadn’t expected them to have, which gave her an idea—as long as she could find the rest of the necessary ingredients.
Brant came into the kitchen a few minutes later, wearing only a pair of faded jeans and looking as sexy as she’d ever seen a man look. “Do we have everything you need?” he asked. “If not, I could run over to the Quick Mart at the gas station.”
The gas station would just have the basics, but the brothers had eggs, butter, Dijon mustard, lemon juice and cayenne pepper—everything she needed to make a good hollandaise sauce. “I’ve got it,” she said.
Brant scratched his chest. “What can I do to help?”
“Nothing, really,” she said as she measured various ingredients into a saucepan.
He came up behind her while she was using a fork in lieu of a wire whisk to mix the sauce, slid his arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck. “You look so damn good in my shirt. I can’t believe I didn’t try to keep you in bed a little longer.”
She leaned back into him. “You must like food as much as sex.”
“No way.”
“Well, you haven’t tasted my eggs benedict,” she said.
“I’ve tasted you. And nothing could be sweeter.” She got goose bumps as he pulled her earlobe into his mouth. But then he stepped away; they heard someone coming.
“Smells great in here.” Ranson stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her at the stove. “Well, damn. I didn’t realize we had so much company. Apparently, everyone who went to the lake yesterday got lucky. I can’t believe I missed out.”
Talulah could tell he was kidding, and she knew the joke involved her staying over, but she didn’t fully understand his meaning until Kurt walked in half a second later with a sleep-tousled Kate. Obviously, she’d spent the night, too.
“Oh, now I get it,” Talulah said. “We’re just missing Jane.”
Miles, who joined them a second later, had obviously heard them talking because he scowled when he said, “Jane thinks she’s too old for me.”
Brant mussed his brother’s hair. “Poor Miles, trying to overreach,” he said, and they all laughed.
To Brant, it felt perfectly natural to have Talulah at the house. She fit in well with his brothers and seemed to enjoy their jokes. They showed her no mercy, but she teased them right back, and there was plenty of laughter. It was definitely a plus that she loved to cook, because it created a direct path to their hearts. By the end of breakfast, when they were thanking her and telling her how delicious the meal had been, Brant could tell they really liked her in spite of being conditioned to think the worst because of Charlie.
He made his brothers clean up the kitchen, since he and Talulah had done the cooking. Claiming he and Talulah had prepared the meal was a bit of an overstatement, and they were quick to point that out. But he’d told them he’d ask her to bake another carrot cake if they let him off the hook, and that silenced all complaints.
“I actually made you two carrot cakes last week,” Talulah informed him as they walked back to his room.
“You did?” he said. “Are they at your place? If so, let’s go get ’em.”
“Sorry. I gave one to Ellen and the other to Averil.”
“You gave them both away?” he complained. “Why didn’t you give one to me? I was miserable without you.”
“I was trying to avoid starting something.”
Their situation was a problem. And he didn’t know what they were going to do about it. But not being with her while she was in town wasn’t an option, not if she was willing to be with him. “Then I was even luckier than I realized that Jane got you to the lake yesterday,” he said as he went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. “Who knows how many other cakes I might’ve missed?”
She grinned at him when he came back into the room. “So you want me for my cooking?”
He tugged off the T-shirt she was wearing and drew her bare chest up against his. “Among other things.”
She rose up on tiptoe to kiss him. “I’ll never forget the mean look on your face when you were in the truck yesterday. You were so mad I was there.”
He gave her a mock scowl. “I wasn’t mad, exactly. I was...feeling sorry for myself.”
“Because you’re used to getting what you want and didn’t think it was going to happen this time?”
He rested his forehead against hers. “Because I’m falling in love with you.” Those words slipped out so quickly, so easily and so unexpectedly that he caught his breath after he said them.
Her eyes widened. “You can’t mean that...”
He’d never made that declaration before, and yet he’d just done it with a woman who had such a strong fear of commitment he’d call it a phobia. What was wrong with him?
He considered taking the words back while he could, turning them into a joke or qualifying them in some way. But he felt how he felt. He’d dated enough women to know the difference. “I do,” he said. “I know you’re worried about what’s happened in the past and that it’ll happen again. But you’ve done all you can, Lu. You’ve warned me and warned me. I’ll take responsibility for myself from here on out.”
She shook her head. “You say that now...”
He gripped her shoulders. “I mean it. I want you badly enough to accept the risk. And that’s on me. So just...feel what you feel without holding back, at least for that reason, and maybe one day you’ll be able to say those words to me. If not, it’s okay. I only want to hear them if you truly mean it.”
“It’s too soon. I—”
“I know. You’re in a difficult situation, and I’m sorry.” He tucked her head under his chin as he embraced her. “So don’t even think about it. Not today. Let’s just have fun while we’re together.”
He felt her chest rise as she drew a deep breath. “Okay...”
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. If we go out, Averil will see us—or someone who knows her will see us and then tell her. I’m not ready for that, either.”
“That’s only if we stay in Coyote Canyon.”
When the tension left her body, he knew she felt some relief. Out of town she wouldn’t have to worry about Averil or Charlie or anyone else. They could have the day together without any of those concerns, and Brant thought that was important. “Where should we go?” she asked.
“Why don’t we go to your sister’s? I haven’t seen a newborn in ages.”
“Debbie would love that,” she said. “And I’ve been meaning to get back over there.”
“Today’s the day, then.” He let go of her and jerked his head toward the bathroom, which was steaming up because he’d left the water running for so long. “Would you like to use the shower first, or do you want me to?”
He knew giving her the choice to shower on her own would probably surprise her. But he didn’t want to take anything for granted, didn’t want to make her feel smothered or cornered. If he’d learned anything in all his years of ranching, it was that any kind of creature reacted best to a kind, patient, slow hand. Now that Talulah knew how he felt, it was even more important he give her the opportunity to come to him on her own, or not at all, and trust that he’d accept her choice without blaming or mistreating her.
What she did next proved to be a good sign. Maybe it was a small one, but it was the kind of thing he hoped to see more of. She took his hand, kissed his palm in the very center and drew him into the bathroom with her. “Why do we have to take turns?”
The level of emotion Talulah felt whenever she made love with Brant was greater than she’d ever experienced before. And yet she was afraid to put a label on it. An “I love you” would be a big deal, especially now that Brant had declared himself. It would make everything mutual, which would naturally constitute a commitment and maybe even lead to a future together—or at least an attempt to achieve that.
She had to be careful. What they had was too new to rely on it, for one thing. And there was still so much standing between them.
Besides, what she’d felt for other men had worn off over time—as soon as they began to get serious. That always marked the beginning of the end, an end that probably should’ve come more quickly than it did. Instead of breaking up, however, she’d talk herself into trying to make it work so she wouldn’t disappoint anyone, which meant that by the time she bolted, she created even more damage.
Would her relationship with Brant go down a similar path?
The water pounded down in the shower, and the muscles in Brant’s shoulders stood out like thick ropes beneath her fingers as he lifted her in his arms. When he drove inside her, she was surprised that their connection felt so unique on an emotional level.
Except this was a terrible time and place to fall in love, so she’d be stupid to allow it. Brant was also a very inconvenient choice. Averil would hate her. Paul would hate her. The future of the diner would be uncertain.
Why couldn’t she make things easy and feel more for Paul?
After Brant reached climax, he dropped his head on her shoulder, trying to catch his breath, but he didn’t put her down. Reluctant to separate, they stayed wrapped up in each other’s arms for several minutes, with her back to the slick tile and her legs around his narrow hips. “Please know that I will always let you leave me, without any blame or anger,” he said. “I just hope it doesn’t go that way.”
She kissed his temple. But she didn’t dare say anything. Words created expectations; she’d learned that the hard way. She’d never meant to hurt anybody, but she especially didn’t want to hurt him.