Their Child?

Chapter Two

That night, Tucker made a clear and calculated effort to get his sister-in-law, Molly, alone.

He had dinner with the family in the original central part of the Double T ranch house, where Tate and Molly and their twins made their home. After dinner, Tucker and Tate relaxed over a couple of snifters of good brandy while Molly went up to nurse the babies. Then the brothers joined her for the important job of putting the twins to bed.

There were baths first, followed by the intricate process of getting little feet and arms into clean diapers and snap-on sleeping shirts. Then came the singing. Tate and Molly sang their children a number of lullabies, Molly in her clear alto, Tate in his slightly off-key baritone.

Tucker, who thoroughly enjoyed his role of new uncle, chimed in on the songs where he remembered the words. He liked this whole family-life thing. A lot. As far as he was concerned, it was the smartest move his big brother had ever made, to get himself hooked up with Molly O’Dare.

By eight, at last, the babies were tucked into their cribs in the darkened nursery, their nanny watching over them from the small bedroom across the hall.

Tate announced what he usually announced about that time in the evening. “Got a few things to tie up downstairs.” Tucker’s brother had a study on the first floor at the front of the house. Tate kept close tabs on the family holdings at the big computer in there.

Molly moved into the circle of her husband’s arms for a fond, quick kiss and then Tate headed for the main staircase.

Tucker saw his opportunity and seized it. “Got a moment?”

Molly shrugged. “Sure. How ‘bout some coffee?”

“Lead me to it.” He fell in step behind her as she turned for the narrow back stairs that led to the family room and kitchen below.

At the table in the breakfast room, Molly poured him a mug of coffee, brewed herself a quick cup of herb tea and settled into the chair across from him. He watched her fiddle with her tea bag and tried to figure out how to begin.

Molly knew a lot about what went on in the Junction. She was not only the town’s first female mayor, she also ran her beauty salon, Prime Cut, as a place where all the women in town could gather to talk about things that most males of the species would never dare to think of. At the Cut, the lives and loves of the citizens of Tate’s Junction were dissected and analyzed freely and openly, with no-holds-barred.

“So what’s up?” Molly set her tea bag on the edge of her saucer.

Tucker decided he might as well just come right out with it. “Tell me everything you know about Lori Lee Billingsworth.”

His brother’s wife watched him over the rim of her cup as she sipped her tea. With great care, she set the cup down. “Taylor. Her last name is Taylor. She was married.”

“But she’s a widow now.”

Molly gave him a measuring look. “Lucky for you, right?”

“Molly, damn it. I could use a little help here.”

Tate’s wife wrapped her fingers with their long, shiny red fingernails around her teacup. “What’s this about? You had one sister and now you want to make it an even pair?”

Tucker gaped—and then shook his head. “Molly. You got a mouth on you.”

“So I’ve been told. Answer my question.”

“No,” he said, emphatically. “It’s not like that. This has got nothing at all to do with Lena. Lena and I, well, that was a long, long time ago.”

Molly wore the look of a doubting woman. She asked, each word sharp with suspicion, “Water under the bridge, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

He nodded. “Lena’s happy now. She loves Dirk. And you know what? I’m nothing but happy for her.”

“But you did love her. Once.”

Had he? Tucker wasn’t so sure. “I was crazy over her, yeah. But love? Hell. We were kids. She wanted a life right here, in town. She wanted for us to have that big wedding she’s going to have now and settle down here at the ranch house, where she was going to pop out two or three babies and do her best to help me spend Granddaddy’s money.”

“You’re still carrying a grudge against her.”

“No,” he said again, even more strongly than before. “I’m carrying no grudges. I’m telling you how it was, that’s all. Lena wanted a nice life, here in town. And I wanted out. Bad. We broke up—which made it possible for both of us to get what we wanted. It would have been a disaster, Lena and me. She knows it. I know it. End of story.”

Well, except for that one night…

Tucker had come home from college—where he was flunking just about every course and soon to drop out—to take Lena to her prom. The night before the dance, she’d told him it was over between them, that they wanted different things and it just wasn’t working.

He’d agreed with her. He’d been thinking it was time to move on for a while by then, but he hadn’t known how to tell her. Even now, he could remember the feeling of sweet relief that had flowed through him when she said she didn’t want to be his girl anymore.

And then she’d told him she couldn’t see any way out of the two of them going to the prom together. Tucker, figuring it was the least he could do to pay her back for handing him the freedom he’d been yearning for, had promised to take her.

That night, which he’d dreaded, ended up being pure magic.

They were breaking up and still…she wove a spell around him. He found himself long-gone in love with her, more than ever before. She knocked him out. She bowled him right over.

But now?

No. All that was over. All that was long ago. When he saw Lena now, he felt a vague sort of fondness. He liked her now. She was always smiling, a cheerful woman, all wrapped up in herself—but in a charming way. They were friends, though not close friends. When he saw her now, he found it impossible to think of her as the girl he’d held in his arms on that beautiful, unforgettable night.

Tucker leaned across the table toward his sister-in-law. “So what’s the story about Brody? Lori’s husband couldn’t have been his father—right?”

Molly sighed—and finally started talking. “No. The boy isn’t her husband’s. She married the husband—a dentist, an older guy—six or seven years ago, when Brody was two or three. Word is that nobody but Lori knows who Brody’s real father is.”

“Except for the father himself, right?”

Molly frowned. “Maybe not.”

“The kid’s father doesn’t even know that he’s a dad?”

“Tucker, how would I know? All I know is what people say.”

“And that’s what I want from you. What people say…”

Molly looked down into her teacup, and then back up at him. “Rumor has it some stranger came through town at the end of Lori’s senior year. Lori disappeared one night in May, in one of Heck’s cars. It wasn’t like her, to take off like that. You know how she was. The shy, quiet, one. Hardly dated. Heck got worried she’d been kidnapped or something. He had the police out looking for her. They found her way up at the North Fork of Cook Creek, parked right on the bank, staring out over the water, crying her little heart out. She claimed that she’d done nothing wrong—and that nothing had happened to her. She’d just driven around, that was all.

“But then, a couple of months later, when she turned up in the family way, everyone in town naturally assumed it must have happened that night she disappeared. They all figured she must have met someone, that he got her pregnant and then headed out, never to be seen or heard from again.”

“And when Heck found out she was pregnant, he packed her off to San Antonio.”

“That’s right. And she’s made herself a good life there, from what I’ve heard. She hardly ever comes home.”

Tucker got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. As he sipped, he turned and leaned on the long jut of counter that divided the breakfast room from the kitchen.

Molly said, in that way she had that cut right through the crap, “So. You got you a yen for your old girlfriend’s twin sister, Tucker? You thinkin’ you might like to try convincing her to come home a little more often—even to stay home?”

Tucker didn’t answer. There was no need. He could see in Molly’s eyes that she knew he did.

And he was.

“Daddy makes you crazy, huh?” Lena lay sprawled face-up on the bed in the upstairs room that had been Lori’s when they were growing up.

It was after dinner. Everyone else was downstairs watching Sunday night TV. Lena had hung around before going home to her cute little apartment on Oak Street. She’d wanted some one-on-one time with Lori.

Lori dropped to the side of the bed. “Yeah. Daddy does get to me. Sometimes. Like when he tries to override me with Brody.”

Lena kicked off her shoes and scooted farther up onto the mattress, grabbing a pillow and tucking it under her head. “You just never did accept the fact that you have to use your feminine wiles on Daddy.”

“Feminine wiles?” Lori made a gagging sound.

Lena giggled and slapped her lightly on the knee. “Stop that. There’s nothin’ the least wrong with a woman using what the good Lord gave her to smooth the way with the men in her life.”

“I am going to wisely withhold comment on that one.”

Lena rolled to her side and studied her sister. “I still can’t believe you went red—red.”

Lori smoothed a hand over her own hair. “Yeah. I kind of like it.”

Lena nodded. “Me, too. It looks real good.”

Lori made a threatening face. “Don’t you dare even consider going red, too.”

“But if it looks that good on you, just think how incredible it’s going to look on me.”

They both laughed at that one. And then Lori said, “Hey. Go for it.”

“I might. I just might…” Lena let out a long sigh, rolled to her back again and gazed up at the light fixture overhead. “Tucker was givin’ you looks today at the diner.” She rolled her head to face Lori again. “Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t notice.”

Lori had no idea what to say—and her pulse was racing, her stomach drawing into knots, the way it had been doing since she first ran into Tucker yesterday at the Gas’n Go…

Lena said, “Amazing.”

“What is?”

“Oh, just the way life can go sometimes.” She lifted her right hand and studied her manicure. “Tucker’s interested. Really interested. In you. I could tell.”

Lori tried a little teasing, hoping that would lead the subject elsewhere. “I’m surprised you noticed. You’ve got eyes only for Dirk.”

“It’s true.” Lena raised both arms in a lazy stretch. “Dirk is the center of my world and I couldn’t be happier about that.” She let her arms flutter down and folded her hands on her stomach. “But at the same time, true love has made me more observant. And since Tucker moved back to town, I’ve made it a point, I truly have, to make amends for the tacky way I treated him—you know, back when. Last winter, when Dirk decided to change his will to leave everything to me, I took him to Hogan and Bravo and had Tucker do the work. Tucker is Dirk’s and my own personal family attorney now and I like to think that he and I have become friends.”

“Good for you,” Lori said, for lack of anything better, hoping they could now leave the subject of Tucker Bravo behind.

But no. “You haven’t said what you think. About you and Tucker.”

“I don’t think anything. I haven’t seen him for years and years. I hardly know the guy.”

“Lori. Come on. I mean, it seemed to me by the way you looked at him at the diner that you maybe kind of like him, too—and don’t give me that huffy look. Okay, he was my boyfriend. But that was centuries ago. And it was pure puppy love, anyway. I know that now. It was nothing like I have with Dirk—and it’s not like I slept with Tucker or anything. I mean, that might be kind of icky. To think of you getting together with some guy I’d seen naked, but—”

“Lena.”

“Um?”

“That is altogether more information than I need to have.”

Lena gave her another light slap on the thigh. “Oh, come on. I know what you’re doin’. Acting all snooty to push me away. You’re just too…private. You always have been. Even for me, it’s tough to get through. And, as your twin, I should be the one who understands how your mind works. Lori Lee, you need to…open up a little.”

“Thank you for the input.”

“Oh, now, don’t go getting snippy on me. Look in your heart. You’ll see that what I’m telling you is true. And I miss you, gosh darn it. We don’t see you often enough. It’s like, since all that mess eleven years ago, you never want to come home.” What could Lori say to that? Not much, since it was true. Lena went on. “I swear, sometimes I think if Mama and I didn’t call you all the time, if we didn’t keep you up-to-date on what’s going on in town and stay on you until you come home now and then, we’d never see you at all.”

Lori caught her sister’s hand and twined their fingers together. “I know. I don’t visit often enough.” She said the words gently—and silently promised herself she’d make more of an effort to keep up the bond with her family.

Lena heaved a huge sigh. “You know what?” Lori squeezed her hand to let her know she was listening. “I never did apologize to Tucker about prom night. Did you?”

Lori blinked and felt her stomach squeezing tight all over again. She pulled her hand free of her sister’s. “I…when would I have done that?”

“Relax. I was just asking. And think about it. The poor man still believes he went to that prom with me. I mean, it’s not that big a deal, but still, one of these days one of us ought to tell him. When I look back on that night, I sometimes wonder what could possibly have been going through my mind, to do that to him.”

Lori remembered what had been going through Lena’s mind. She remembered with crystal clarity. Lena had told her. “You were mad. You were really steamed. You came home after breaking up with Tucker and you marched right up here to my room and shut the door and burst into tears. You said how you knew, you could tell, that Tucker was relieved to be getting rid of you. You said sometimes you hated being so perfect, you hated how everyone expected you to be so darn happy all the time. You said you almost wished you could be the mousy, shifty, shy one instead of me, how maybe then, folks wouldn’t expect so much of you.”

Lena gasped. “How rude. I didn’t.”

Lori nodded. “You did. Then you said you didn’t know how you were going to get through prom with a smile on your face, when all you really wanted to do was to scream and stomp your feet and tell Tucker off good and proper for not loving you enough to make you his bride and settle down in the Junction with you to live happily ever after. You said you were just sick. That you were just aching to stay home and watch old movies and eat a barrel of popcorn and have yourself a good long cry.”

Lena made a low sound in her throat. “Well, now you say all that, I kind of do remember—and then you said how you’d like to go to prom…”

Lori’s date, a friend, a fellow biology student, had come down with mono and had to beg off. And then there was the fact that Lori had had a secret crush on Tucker since long before he and Lena had started going out.

Lena smiled a musing smile. “Yeah. Once you said how much you’d like to go to prom, things kind of took their natural course, now didn’t they?” She giggled. “I’m still amazed at how well we pulled it off.”

Lori had to agree on that point. “Me, too.” For twins who’d always claimed they weren’t joined at the hip like most identicals, it was surprising how easily they’d each slipped into the other’s skin.

Lena said, “Even Daddy and Mama were fooled. Remember Daddy, snapping away, taking all those pictures of you in my dress, telling you how beautiful you looked, thinking the whole time he was talking to me?”

Lori couldn’t help grinning at the memory. “And you spent the night dragging around in my pajamas…”

Lena giggled some more. “Mama kept checking on me. She’d say, ‘Lori, sweetie, it’s not the end of the world to miss your prom.’ And then I’d let a few tears dribble down my cheeks and hang my head the way you used to do, all pitiful-like, and whisper, ‘Mama. Please. I’d prefer to be alone.’ And then you, what do you know? You went and got yourself crowned prom queen.”

“No. I got you crowned prom queen.”

Lena pretended to scowl. “I have to admit, I was just a teensy bit jealous when I learned I won—and I wasn’t even there to get that rhinestone crown on my head.”

“You? Jealous? Never.”

“And then you came home so late. It was practically dawn. I was pretty darn put out with you about that—about you going out with my boyfriend and having such a fine old time, you didn’t want to come home.”

Lori felt a deep and awful stillness within herself then—the stillness that came with telling too many lies, with spending too many years waiting for those lies to catch up with her. She’d been vague that night—or rather, that morning. She’d told Lena that she and Tucker had gone out for breakfast. Since Lena would never in a thousand lifetimes have imagined that Lori would go to a motel with Tucker, the lie had worked. Lena never questioned it.

Lena said, “It was a crazy time, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah. It sure was.” The night with Tucker had been like a world apart, the one special, enchanted evening when, at last, her every dream of being Tucker’s girl came true. And then she’d come home and looked at her twin and it hit her like a safe dropped on her from a tenth-story window: she’d betrayed her own sister. Even if Lena and Tucker were going their separate ways, it still felt to Lori like a line she’d had no right to cross.

But she had crossed it. And from that morning on, things only got worse. Tucker came to the door to beg Lena to take him back—because of the night before, Lori knew it.

Lena sent him away and told Lori, “It’s the best thing. And he knows it, too.”

By the next night, with all the turmoil inside her over the forbidden things she’d done and the lies she’d told everyone to cover those forbidden things up, she was a complete wreck.

“And then, the next night,” Lena said, eerily echoing the direction of Lori’s thoughts, “you took Daddy’s car and, pouf, you just disappeared.” Lena sent her a reproachful look. “You never did tell me what happened, with Brody’s dad that night. You never told me how you met him, how you—”

Lori put up a hand. “I can’t. Not right yet.”

That was another promise Lori had made herself. She was going to tell Lena the whole truth, too. But it only seemed right that she should tell Tucker first. Just as it only seemed right to wait until after the wedding to break the news to Tucker.

The wedding meant so much to Lena. If word got out beforehand that Tucker Bravo was Brody’s father, there was going to be talk. A lot of it. Lena’s big day would be thoroughly overshadowed.

Lori refused to let that happen. Tucker had gone all these years not knowing he was a dad. What difference could it make if he waited two weeks more?

“Did you hear yourself?” Lena let out a whoop. “You just said, not right yet. Lori darlin’, I do believe this is progress. Always before, you refused to tell me, period.”