Cowboy Country. Linda Lael Miller
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with a water chaser, had made her head stop pounding.
She hadn’t been able to manage coffee, though, or even herbal tea.
Breakfast? Forget about it.
Her stomach was still pretty iffy.
So she’d fed Winston, taken a shower and gotten dressed for the day, choosing faux-alligator flats, black pants and a rather prim-looking white shirt over her usual: jeans, T-shirt and Western boots. She applied makeup—without blusher, she’d have had no color at all—and even put her hair up in a sort of twisty do she hoped looked casually elegant, then donned her one and only pair of gold posts.
She wanted to look...well, businesslike. A woman of substance and good sense.
But she’d settle for looking sober.
Tricia breezed in at nine-fifteen, wearing sandals and a soft green maternity sundress and carrying two mega-size cups of coffee from the take-out place down the street. She glowed like a woman who’d spent the night enjoying great sex with her adoring husband.
Carolyn felt a stab of envy. Great work, if you could get it.
Casting a glance at Carolyn before she set the cups on the display counter, Tricia smiled warmly, taking in the slacks and the shoes and the fussy shirt.
“Well, look at you,” she observed finally. “All dressed up like somebody about to head over to the bank and ask for a big loan. Or apply for membership in a country club.”
Carolyn sighed, and the truth escaped her in a rush. “I think I was trying to change my identity,” she said. The scent of the coffee, usually so appealing, made her stomach do a slow tumble backward. “Become somebody else. Lapse into permanent obscurity, disappear forever. Create my own one-woman witness protection program.”
Tricia laughed. “You’ve got it bad,” she said forthrightly. “And I’m not talking about the flu, here.”
Carolyn’s cheeks burned, and she felt her chin ratchet up a notch. “If you mean the hangover, thanks for reminding me. I already feel like four kinds of a fool, after everything that happened last night.”
Tricia picked up one of the cups and held it out, and Carolyn shook her head, swallowed hard.
“You had a little too much wine,” Tricia said gently, with a shrug in her tone. “It’s no big deal, Carolyn—we’ve all done that at one time or another. And if you do have a hangover—your word, not mine—it doesn’t show.” She paused while she went behind the counter and stuck her purse into its usual cubbyhole. Then, straightening, she went on. “I was referring, my prickly friend, to the bare-socket electricity arcing between you and Brody all evening. I’m surprised all our hair didn’t stand on end, and our skeletons didn’t show through our skin.”
Carolyn had to laugh, though the sound was hoarse and it hurt her throat coming out. “That was visual,” she said. “And what an imagination you have, Tricia Creed. If there was anything ‘arcing’ between Brody and me, it was hostility.”
“Sure,” Tricia agreed smoothly, and a little too readily, fussing with a display of sachet packets beside the cash register. Unless a tour bus came through unexpectedly, they probably wouldn’t be very busy that day, and Carolyn’s heart sank at the prospect of long hours spent making work where none existed.
“I’ll check for internet orders,” Carolyn said, desperate to change the course of their conversation before it meandered any deeper into Brody Territory. They kept the shop computer in their small office, a converted bedroom, off the living room. “Maybe we’ve sold a few more aprons online.”
“Maybe,” Tricia said, shooting another glance at Carolyn as she was about to turn and walk away. Then she came right out with it. “How come you didn’t mention signing up for cyberdates to me, but Kim knew?”
Carolyn wanted to lie, but she simply couldn’t. Not to Tricia, one of the first real friends she’d ever had. “I wasn’t planning on telling anybody,” she admitted ruefully, folding her arms. “Kim and I were upstairs, having lunch, and this message just popped up on my laptop screen.” She drew in a breath, huffed it out again. “That website—Friendly Faces, I mean—is a little scary. The thing talks. If the computer is on, and a message comes in, it just pipes right up with the news. ‘Somebody likes you!’” She threw her arms out wide, let her hands slap against her sides. “When that happened, Kim was onto my secret and I had no choice but to explain.”
Tricia smiled. “Relax,” she said. “It’s a new world. Lots of people connect online before they meet in person.”
“Easy for you to say,” Carolyn pointed out. “You don’t have to resort to desperate measures—you’re already married.”
Tricia gave a dreamy sigh. “Yes,” she said. “I am most definitely married.”
Carolyn barely kept from rolling her eyes.
Tricia came back from the land of hearts and flowers and cartoon birds swooping around with ribbons in their beaks and studied Carolyn with slightly narrowed eyes. “I just have one question,” she said.
“Of course you do,” Carolyn said, resigned. This was the troublesome thing about friendships—they opened up all these private places a person liked to keep hidden.
“Why go online and meet strangers when the perfect man is right in front of you?”
Carolyn pretended to look around the surrounding area in search of this “perfect man” of Tricia’s. Arched her eyebrows in feigned confusion and set her hands on her hips. “He is? I don’t see him.”
“You know I’m talking about Brody,” Tricia replied, going all twinkly and flushed again. She might have been talking about Brody, but it was a good bet she was thinking about Conner.
Carolyn reminded herself that Tricia meant well, just as Kim did. She was being prickly with her friend, and she regretted it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?” Tricia wanted to know.
“I might have been a little snappish.”
“And I might have been meddling,” Tricia said. Another long pause followed, then she added, “Was it really so bad, whatever happened between you and Brody?”
Carolyn opened her mouth, closed it again, stumped for an answer.
Tricia touched Carolyn’s arm. “There I go, meddling again.”
“Could we not talk about Brody, please?” Carolyn asked, after a long time. She realized she was hugging herself with both arms, as though a cold wind had blown through the shop and chilled her to the bone.
“Of course,” Tricia said, her eyes filling. “Of course.”
Carolyn turned on her heel and marched off to the bedroom-office, keeping her spine straight.
Was it really so bad, whatever happened between you and Brody?
Yes, answered some voice within Carolyn, too deep to be uttered aloud. He was the first man I ever dared to love. I gave Brody Creed everything I had, everything I was and ever planned to be. I thought he was different from all the others—Mom, the social workers, the foster families—so I trusted him. In the end, though, he threw me away, just like they did. He left and I watched the road for him for months, hoping and praying he’d come back, and he stayed gone.
So much for hope and prayer. When had either one of them ever done her any good at all?
Reaching the office, Carolyn booted up the computer, only to be rewarded with an all-too-familiar greeting as soon as she went online.
“Somebody likes you!”
“Imagine that,” she muttered.
Why was this happening? She hadn’t signed on to Friendly Faces through this computer; she’d used the laptop upstairs.