Crystal Green – Daddy in the Making (страница 4)

“What can I do?” Rita jabbed at a piece of ham with her fork. “I shouldn’t have done anything in the first place—except for running straight out of here when he bellied up to my table that night. I should’ve known—”

“Hey, you couldn’t have known.” As Vi leaned forward to rest a hand over Rita’s free one, her shoulder-length, dark red hair swung forward. “You were ready to move on after years of hating yourself for what happened with Kevin.”

“You weren’t happy when I told you about Conn after our … night.”

“I was being protective. But now there’s a baby involved, and that changes everything.”

Rita cradled her slightly curved tummy with her free hand. “That night, I should’ve just thought more about what it felt like when Kevin left. That would’ve stopped me from giving in to Conn.”

But she hadn’t been able to think about anything or anyone … except for the cowboy at her table, his eyes sparkling with fun, drawing her into their depths with “why not?” allure.

But, as she’d waited for him the day and night afterward, she’d found out “why not.” The minutes had ticked by to one hour … two … then to midnight. And still no Conn. The next morning had come, then passed, then the next and the next.

By that time, she knew she’d been had, and she’d closed up her heart tighter than ever, knowing that she was the only one she could depend on.

And then she’d missed her period, although Rita couldn’t and wouldn’t regret getting pregnant.

Maybe that was what life had in store for her. Always a great mother to the children she loved more than anything, but never a wife.

“You know what the most embarrassing part is?” Rita finally asked.

Violet swallowed her bite of burger. “What?”

A wounded laugh escaped. “There was something that kept needling at me, telling me that there was a really good reason he didn’t come back.”

“And there ended up being a good reason. Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that he didn’t reject you? That it had everything to do with circumstances beyond his control?”

Vi was wearing one of those looks filled with optimism. And why shouldn’t she? This weekend, she was going to marry millionaire Davis Jackson, her star-crossed lover from high school. They had been run through the gauntlet after Vi had come back to town after having lost her job on a city newspaper and returned to St. Valentine to lick her wounds. Davis had always loved her—the girl from the wrong side of the tracks—but Vi hadn’t been sure he was pursuing her again because of that or to get payback for how she had broken his heart. Now, though, everything was wedding marches and roses for her.

No, Rita didn’t feel nearly as positive as Vi.

“I’m just considering myself lucky to have escaped this one,” she said. “Conn is my cautionary tale.”

“For what could happen if you should ever let your guard down again and someone crushes you for real. I get it, Rita.”

“I mean, he didn’t return to St. Valentine to request my forgiveness or to sweep me off my feet again, right? And if he saw my stomach, he probably flipped.”

“You don’t know if he saw it?”

“I didn’t look at him to make sure while I was hightailing it out of the lobby.”

“You couldn’t bring yourself to see his reaction. I get that, too.” Vi sighed. “But if you left him in the dust like that, how can you be so sure just what he wants to do?”

What he wanted to do … A glimmer of the same excitement she’d felt that night—and even today when she’d first seen him—shimmered deep in Rita’s chest, where it felt as if something were struggling to come alive.

Why wouldn’t it just go away?

Vi leaned back in her seat, probably knowing Rita wouldn’t answer the rhetorical question. “Word has it that there was something in the air when you two laid eyes on each other this afternoon, you know.”

What did everyone else know? “And since when are you such a fan of gossip?”

Vi made a “touché” gesture. She’d suffered plenty of gossip herself, when her off-limits millionaire had flown in the face of everyone in town to court her.

A waitress came by, asking if they would like anything else. Rita requested a to-go container and the server left without dropping off a check. She knew Vi had it covered, since her parents owned the place, which had seen a spike in customers since Vi’s journalistic work had been featured in a “Tony Amati Mystery” story that had gotten some airtime on a national news magazine program last month. It was true that Vi and Davis, who owned the small-town newspaper, hadn’t been able to dig up much information about Tony lately, but that hadn’t stopped them from staying the course.

“To-go?” Vi asked. “You’re deserting me?”

“I’ll have to eat the rest after I pick up Kristy from preschool. She likes the little chunks of ham, anyway.”

Vi wasn’t letting this go. “So … that’s going to be it, then? You’re going back to the hotel, back to the bubble of your reception desk?”

“Safest place on earth.”

“Rita …”

She slumped in her seat. “Listen, I know that you’ve fallen in love and you just want everyone else to be as happy as you are. But I can’t do it again. I can’t have my pride and …” She rested a hand over her heart. “I can’t have it bruised again.” Then she put her hand on her tummy, rubbing it. “So, yes, I’m going back to the hotel to do some maintenance work after I pick up Kristy. And I’m going to hope that Conn Flannigan has already driven back home without knowing anything more than he needs to.”

Then she eased toward the edge of her booth seat, intending to get out. “The bottom line is that he doesn’t really remember what went on between us that night. That’s probably a blessing in disguise. I’m sure we both acted in a way we’d regret now, after the heat of the moment.”

“If that’s how you want it.”

Great—the guilt trip. But Rita was firm in her resolutions. That night four months ago, she’d rushed into something she’d never thought she would be going into again. But now, with some time and distance behind her, she really did think that she’d dodged a bullet. The hotel had been busier than ever, and Kristy needed a mother who was focused on her, not on hormonal desires and scatterbrained affairs.

“Rita?” Vi smiled sadly. “I’d give anything to see you and the kids happy.”

“All of us are just fine. We’ll be very happy.”

Rita just wanted to raise her daughter and this new child to be more than what she’d been known as in St. Valentine ever since Kevin had become a bitter, different man, then left her for the other woman she’d found out he’d been seeing while she was pregnant.

Yes, Rita was the hard-luck case. But she’d done a damned good job of raising Kristy in spite of that until—

No, she didn’t want to mull over Conn Flannigan again. Didn’t want her heart to ache with an agonizing heat just at the thought of him.

The waitress brought the to-go container, and Vi stayed seated as Rita grabbed her purse, sliding the strap over her shoulder.

“Someday,” Vi said, “you’re not going to be able to ignore how you feel, Rita. You found it real easy to fall in love when we were kids. I wish it could be just as easy for you nowadays.”

Rita’s pulse thudded in bruised rhythm, but just as she was about to buck up, the room suddenly went still, as if something had entered and caught everyone’s attention.

When Rita glanced toward the entrance, her throat was tight. Was it …?

Then she saw who had come in, and she relaxed, even though her heart jittered in her chest.

It wasn’t Conn, thank goodness. But it was a man in beaten jeans and a long-sleeved black Western shirt who had taken a seat at a table that was removed from everyone else. He left his black cowboy hat on, the better to shade a dark-eyed, stoic face that everyone in town hadn’t stopped talking about since he’d arrived months ago, only to settle just on the outskirts of town after getting a job on a nearby ranch and renting a cabin.

The Tony Amati look-alike—Jared Colton. And he was just as aloof as he’d been when he’d first arrived. He was a ringer for all the photos of Tony Amati hanging on the hotel and Queen of Hearts walls, and even though everyone had their own theories about how he was connected to the town founder, he was still a mystery that Vi and Davis had been trying to solve through their journalistic investigation and the published articles that had been picked up by some national outlets.

Rita didn’t mind him at all, seeing as he’d helped stir up interest in St. Valentine, which had been languishing after the kaolin mine had stopped producing “china clay” for things such as plastic, paints and paper. Jared and Tony had certainly pumped up tourism and given her more to do, so that she could forget about her cowboy.

“The cipher cometh,” Vi whispered across the table. She grabbed her iPad with one hand, polishing off the last fry on her plate with the other. “I’ve got work to do.”