okay, Cassie,” Tanner said quickly. “You don’t have to explain.” No, because he understood. The man she loved was dead, she had a new baby and she was faced with the knowledge that the home she’d lived in most of her life was about to be pulled from under her feet. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why she’d struggle to nurse her son.
She shrugged again and he was sure he saw moisture in her eyes before she blinked and turned toward the refrigerator. Half a minute later she returned to the table and sat down.
“Where’d you go this morning?” she asked and pushed a plate toward him.
“Ruthie’s,” he explained.
She nodded. “Ruthie Nevelson? She sent me a card when Oliver was born. Doug never visited her much. I guess you’re closer to her than he was.”
“I guess,” he said. “I always spent my summers with Ruthie once school was out. Doug was in the army by then.”
Cassie looked up and smiled. “My friend Lauren and I used to swipe oranges from her tree when we were kids. Funny,” she said and toyed with her sandwich. “We never saw you there. I mean, Crystal Point is a small town—you’d think we would have crossed paths at some point.”
We did.
But Tanner didn’t say it. Even though the memory was etched into his mind. At thirteen they’d met briefly. It was fourteen years later that he met her again. And by then she was Doug’s girlfriend and hadn’t remembered those few moments on the beach so many years earlier.
“I was usually hanging out with my friends,” he said, taking a sandwich and smiling. “No time for girls back then.”
“And now?” she asked, grinning slightly. “Is there someone in the picture?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “No one at the moment.”
“But there was?”
Another shrug. “For a while. It wasn’t all that serious.”
In truth, Tanner hadn’t ever been completely committed in a relationship. For a time, with Ash, he’d thought they might have a future. But it had faded quickly once they realized they were better as friends than lovers. It had ended over a year ago and he hadn’t been inclined to pursue anyone since.
“But you want to settle down eventually?”
“Eventually,” he replied and took a bite of the sandwich.
“In South Dakota? I mean, you’re settled there?”
He nodded. “Cedar Creek is a good town, with good people.”
“Like Crystal Point?” she asked.
“There are similarities,” he said. “Small towns tend to breed a certain kind of people.”
“I suppose they do.” She stared into her plate, and then spoke a little wistfully. “Doug didn’t share the same beliefs about small-town life. He never seemed happy here.”
“It just wasn’t his...fit,” Tanner said. “The military was his home.”
She nodded. “Maybe that’s why he found it so hard to come back. Even when he did he was always...” She stopped, paused, clearly thinking and not wanting to say too much. “He was always a little unsettled.”
Tanner knew that. And knew why. “He wasn’t the settle-down type, I guess.”
He quickly picked up the way her eyes shadowed. “That’s what he used to say about you.”
“I mean, he wasn’t the type to settle down to a life as a cane farmer.”
“I know what you meant,” she said, bristling, and pushed the plate forward. “I’m not completely blind to who he was.”
There was pain in her words and he gave himself a mental jab. “He did love you,” Tanner said and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Her eyes lost their luster, as if she was thinking, remembering. “Not enough to come home.” She stood and pushed the chair back. “I shouldn’t have said that. Doug’s gone. Wishing for him to be different is unfair.”
“Cassie, I didn’t mean to—”
“I need to run a few errands myself this afternoon,” she said through a deep breath. “I shouldn’t be too long.”
Tanner stood and looked at her half-eaten lunch. “I’ll finish in the garden while you’re gone if you like. And head off when you get back.”
“Fine,” she said and within seconds had wheeled the stroller from the room.
* * *
“What’s he like?”
Cassie raised her gaze toward her best friend Lauren and rocked Oliver in her arms.
He’s a gorgeous, sexy cowboy who makes my pulse race.
“He seems nice.”
Lauren’s brows shot up. “Seems nice?”
She shrugged again. “What do you want me to say? I hardly know Tanner.”
“Apart from what Doug told you?”
True. Only, everything Doug had said about his brother didn’t seem to match the man she’d come to know over the past twenty-four hours.
“Okay, maybe he’s not the brooding loner Doug made him out to be. Although I’m not going to make too many judgments after one day.”
Lauren nodded. “But he wants to be a part of Oliver’s life?”
“That’s what he said.”
“And he’s selling the house?”
Cassie drew in a breath. “That’s also what he said. There’s a large mortgage.”
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said after a long pause. “I know it isn’t what you’d hoped.”
“I knew it might come to this,” she said, hurting all over at the thought of losing her home, but determined to put on a brave face. “And it’s only a house. I’ll make a home for Oliver somewhere else.”
“You can stay with us,” Lauren offered. “You’ll always be welcome.”
Cassie blinked back the heat in her eyes. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Lauren said, clearly concerned. “You look pale and tired.”
“It’s just a headache,” she said and managed a smile.
She did have a headache. And a scratchy throat and a quickly growing lethargy. But she didn’t admit she was feeling increasingly unwell as the day progressed. Lauren’s fiancé was a doctor and her friend would have had her under the stethoscope in a heartbeat if Cassie said she was feeling ill.
“If you’re sure,” Lauren said, still looking concerned. “Just be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Cassie tapped her own chest. “I’m impervious to hurt,” she said with a wry grin. “Tough as nails, you know that.”
But she knew her friend didn’t believe it.
By the time Cassie bundled Oliver into the car and pulled into the driveway it was well past four o’clock. She noticed immediately how the once out-of-control bougainvillea vine was now three piles of tightly bound cuttings and what remained of the hedge had also been carefully clipped back. Plus, the lawn was mowed and the scent of fresh cut grass lingered in the air.
Tanner had been busy. In a matter of hours the front yard was transformed into a neat and tidy copy of what it had once been—before Doug’s death, before the bills had piled up and she’d taken leave