Willow in Bloom

Willow did, with Tyler following behind.

“Excuse the mess,” he said in reference to the fact that lamps were on the floor rather than on tables, and chairs were in no particular arrangement. The only pieces of furniture that were situated with any sort of purpose were the long leather sofa—likely the source of the scent of the place—and a wide-screen television.

“Please, sit down,” he invited. “Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea?”

“No, thank you,” Willow responded. Her throat felt like the top of a drawstring bag with the ties cinched so tight she didn’t think she could get even liquids down.

She did sit on the couch, though. Hugging one end.

“I just wanted to let you know you’d been approved for an account with us and to bring you over our price lists and policies,” she announced, not sounding nearly as relaxed as he seemed to feel.

“Great. I appreciate that,” he said, joining her on the sofa at the opposite end, as if he were entertaining an insurance salesman.

Willow opened the file folder she was clutching in a white-knuckled grip, and pointed out a few details about special orders and delivery schedules. It didn’t take long, and once she’d finished, she realized she’d exhausted her excuse to be there.

“Maybe I will have that glass of iced tea, after all,” she said, to give herself more of a reason to linger and put into motion her plan to spend time with him.

“Sounds good to me, too,” he said.

“If you’re sure you’re up to it,” she added.

“I’m fine.”

All remnants of his nap had disappeared, and he seemed as awake and energized as ever, so she believed him.

“Can I help?” she asked as he stood.

“You can keep me company, but I think I can manage the pouring myself,” he joked.

Willow got to her feet, too, tagging along.

As she did, her gaze took a dip to his derriere, and she realized her own memory hadn’t done it justice.

But that was the last thing she needed to be thinking about, so she forced her eyes to behave, and made small talk to occupy her mind.

“When I was a teenager my job was to make our deliveries. Mr. Harris would have me come in as far as the living room while he signed the receipt. I’ve never seen the rest of the house, though.”

“I’ll give you the grand tour,” Tyler promised. “But be warned, there isn’t much to see. Before this I lived in a studio apartment, and I was only there when I wasn’t chasing rodeos. So I didn’t have a lot to bring with me to fill this place up.”

They went through a large, empty dining room before they passed under an archway to get to the kitchen. The very white kitchen. Walls, cupboards and appliances were all sterile, hospital white, and there wasn’t a single other color to break the almost blinding, institutional effect.

Apparently that fact wasn’t lost on Tyler. As he went to the refrigerator he said, “You just about need sunglasses in here.”

“Just about,” Willow agreed.

Tyler poured two glasses of iced tea and asked if Willow wanted sugar in hers. When she declined, he handed her one of the glasses and then they set out for the tour of the house.

He was right about there being nothing much to see. There were four bedrooms, three baths and a recreation room upstairs; another bathroom, a den and a library to go with the kitchen, living room and dining room downstairs. But room after room was bare, except for beds in two of the bedrooms, and a few unpacked boxes here and there.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you didn’t bring much with you,” she said as they returned to the living room. Tyler had pointed in the direction of the sofa with his chin, inviting Willow to sit down again.

“I know,” he said with a laugh that transported her back to that night in Tulsa, when they’d both done a lot of laughing and the sound of his deep, full-barreled chuckle had sent a skitter of delight along her spine. Just as it did now.

Then he added, “And I don’t have any idea where to start to furnish the place. Or where to even look for things in Black Arrow.”

“We actually have a furniture store. With some factory-manufactured things and some really nice hand-crafted pieces that folks around town make,” she informed him.

She knew this was a prime opening, but it took a moment of screwing up her courage to take advantage of it. “I’d be happy to go with you, show you where it is, give you my opinion—for what it’s worth.”

“I might just take you up on that. I could definitely use a woman’s advice when it comes to decorating.”

Not many men in Black Arrow thought of her as a woman. It pleased Willow to no end that Tyler did.

But she tried to contain her pleasure. She didn’t want to appear too eager.

“So where are you from?” she asked, changing the subject before she got carried away. And also because when she’d found out she was pregnant she’d realized she’d actually learned next to nothing about him that night in Tulsa, and thought it was time she did.

“I was born and raised in Wyoming,” he answered.

“Is that where your family is?”

“My folks died in a flood up there a few years back. That left only me and my brother, Brick. Brick is still riding the rodeo circuit, and since I bought this place we gave up the apartment we shared in Cheyenne. When he needs a place to stay off the road he’ll come here.”

“Your brother wasn’t ready to retire with you?” Willow asked.

“No. Neither was I, for that matter,” he added with that same regret he’d had in his voice the day before, when they’d talked about this.

“Then why did you?” Willow persisted, hoping he didn’t think she was prying. Even though she was.

Tyler didn’t answer right away. He took a drink of his iced tea and stared into the glass.

And the longer he hesitated, the more she began to worry that he did think she was prying, and didn’t like it.

But then he set his glass on the floor beside the sofa and raised his amazing green eyes to her. “You said you were at Friday’s rodeo in Tulsa. Well, that was my last good ride. On Saturday I got thrown. I landed on my head and ended up with a concussion that put me in a coma for fifteen days. Nobody was too sure I was going to come out of it or, if I did, whether I’d be okay. When I finally did regain consciousness the doctors said no more bronc bustin’. So that was it for me.”

“I’m sorry,” Willow said, because she could see what a blow that news had been to him. But for herself, she felt a strange sense of relief. She’d seen how dangerous what he did was, and the thought of her baby’s father doing it had apparently bothered her more than she’d realized.

“Luckily, I’d been socking away prize and endorsement money for a lot of years,” Tyler continued. “So I bought this place and came here to settle down.”

“How did you end up choosing Black Arrow for that?” she asked, since when she’d told him that fateful June night that this was where she lived, he’d never heard of it before.

Tyler laughed again and inclined his head in a way that made Willow think he was confused by the choice himself.

Then he confirmed that by saying, “I don’t know for sure how I chose Black Arrow. Here’s the thing, the concussion blanked out some of my memory. It left me with some holes. When it came time to pick a place to settle down, Black Arrow popped into my head. I’m pretty sure it’s connected to some other things I’ve forgotten, things I’m trying to remember, but one way or another, something about it just seemed right. Right enough so that I contacted a Realtor here and bought this place sight unseen.”

“You lost your memory?” Willow asked, seizing on that part of what he’d said because it was so vital to her.

“Not all of it. Mostly I’m blank about things that happened in the weeks just before the accident.”

“People, too?”

“Places I’d been, rodeos I’d ridden in, prizes I’d won, a commercial for cowboy hats that I did, and yes, people, too. Friends my brother tells me we spent time with I have no memory of having seen, people I’d just met, people I wish I hadn’t forgotten.”

Willow didn’t know exactly what that last part meant. “How could you wish you hadn’t forgotten someone if you’ve forgotten them?”

“It’s kind of like the way it was with Black Arrow. Almost like an itch I can’t reach. Something tells me things were important, but I don’t know why or what or who, and I just keep hoping something will happen to bring it all back. Or at least some of it.”

It was slowly sinking in that it wasn’t only her and their night together that he didn’t recall. That it wasn’t a matter of her being unmemorable or of him having so many one-night stands that they didn’t mean anything to him. She and their night together were a part of a bigger picture. A part of many things that he’d lost.

“So you actually have a medical condition?” she asked, just to have it confirmed.

“A part of the memory portion of my brain was damaged from the concussion and induced a limited amnesia, yes. I know it sounds incredible, but that’s what happened.”

I could tell him, Willow thought. Right now. I could tell him he’s already met me. On that Friday night before his accident. That we were together all night and that was where he heard about Black Arrow.

But would that bring it all back to him? she wondered. Or would it only seem like a story to him? Maybe not even a believable one, since she hadn’t mentioned it before now.

She had no way of knowing.

But what she might have was an opportunity, she thought suddenly. The opportunity to let him get to know her. The real her—Willow. Not the dressed-up, drinking, partying Wyla who had spent the night with him before she even knew him.

And if she used that opportunity to let him get to know the real her, maybe he would like her for who she was.

The idea appealed to her.

It was as if she could erase—at least temporarily—the one thing she’d done that she was most ashamed of. The one thing that gave the absolutely wrong impression of her and of the person she truly was.

It was almost like having a clean slate. For a little while, anyway. And at this point, she thought, she should take what she could get.

So she didn’t tell him that she was one of the people he’d forgotten. That they’d spent the night together in Tulsa. She held her tongue and allowed herself to take advantage of an opportunity that maybe fate had offered her. Instead of telling him anything, she said, “Are the headaches from the concussion?”

“Yeah. The doctors say they’ll probably go away eventually, and they are getting better. But still, when one hits, I’m in a world of hurt.”

“I should go then, and let you rest. You’re probably wiped out after you’ve had one.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her again.

But Willow was so relieved, so thrilled that she hadn’t been just one of many unnoteworthy one-night stands that she almost felt giddy, and she was afraid it might show if she didn’t get out of there.

So she set her glass on the floor, too, and stood. “No, really, I should be going.” Then she screwed up her courage for the second time and said, “But if you want, we could do some furniture shopping tomorrow evening. After I close up the store.”

He stood again, too, pausing to smile down at her as if he liked not only the suggestion, but what he saw, as well. And it did fluttery, feminine things to her insides.

“You’d do that for me?” he asked in a flirty tone she remembered well.

“Sure. Just consider me Black Arrow’s welcoming committee,” she flirted back, surprising herself by how easily she’d fallen into it.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

She wouldn’t have minded even if she didn’t have a secret agenda. “No, honestly, I don’t mind.”

“That would be great, then. I really need a couple of tables—like a coffee table and maybe a kitchen table. I’m sick of standing at the counter to eat.”

“Good. Then it’s a date.”

Why had she said that? She could have kicked herself.

“Not a date date,” she amended in a rush. “I wasn’t asking you out or anything. I mean I’m not coming on to—”

“I know,” he said, stopping her before she made things any worse. Then he leaned slightly forward and confided, “It would have been okay even if you were.”

Willow was not a person who blushed. She’d grown up with four brothers, after all. She would never have survived if she had been overly sensitive. But she could feel her cheeks heating and she didn’t seem to be able to stop it.

And worse yet, she knew he was seeing it because his agile mouth stretched into an amused grin.

Unlike her brothers, he didn’t say anything about it, however. “When’s closing time? I’ll meet you at your store.”

“Six. Closing time is at six,” she managed to reply.

“Maybe after we’re finished shopping I could buy you dinner. As payment for your decorating services.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“How about if I just want to?” he said, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“I guess that would be okay,” Willow conceded. “Nice, even.”

“Then it is a date.”

He was teasing her. She could see it in the sparkle in his eyes. In that quirk of his lips that let her know he was enjoying himself.

And then, from out of nowhere, Willow had a burst of memory from their night in Tulsa, and what hadn’t been clear in her mind before—how she’d gotten from the blues club to his room—became vivid.

It had started with a kiss. A good-night kiss he’d asked if he could have when he’d walked her outside after the club had closed and they were facing each other just the way they were at this moment. A simple good-night kiss that had lit a fire between them and gone on from there.

And in that instant Willow wondered if, were he to kiss her now, it would be as combustible.

But of course, he wasn’t going to kiss her.

She also knew it absolutely shouldn’t happen, even if it were a possibility. That she shouldn’t let it happen, since she was trying to amend the impression he would have of her if he could remember her.

But still she couldn’t help wondering…

“I’d better go,” she said more forcefully, heading for the front door. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Thanks for bringing the papers out,” he countered, following in her wake.

He reached the door in time to open it for her, and Willow went out onto the porch again, feeling oddly as if she’d just escaped something. Herself, probably.

“See you tomorrow,” she said as she kept on going down the porch steps to her truck.

“I’ll be there at six,” he called after her.

Willow missed the door handle on her first try and had to make a second attempt, hoping he didn’t realize why she was so flustered.

But it wasn’t a good sign that he was grinning again.

Be cool, she advised. Be cool.

Because Wyla would never have blushed or flubbed opening the car door, and Willow didn’t want to be a woman who did, either. She wanted to be smooth and self-confident and sure of herself, the way she had been that night in Tulsa.

The way she had been the first time Tyler had liked her.

That first time that he hadn’t just forgotten, that he actually had a medical reason for not remembering.

Which meant that he wasn’t a creep at all.

And that she wasn’t necessarily forgettable, either.

Chapter Three

“Hey.”

Willow looked up from the paperwork she was doing at her desk the next afternoon to see her oldest brother, Bram, standing in her office doorway.

“Hi,” she replied, setting down her pencil.

“Got a minute to spare for your favorite brother?”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“I already told you I didn’t rob that bank, Sheriff,” she joked.

Bram came in, closing the door behind him. “Don’t make fun,” he ordered.

But Willow knew he was only kidding. She and the rest of her brothers were proud of the fact that Bram was Black Arrow’s sheriff, and they’d made him aware of it.

Bram sat in one of the visitors chairs, leaned low in the seat and put his feet up on the corner of her desk.

“Anyone who puts their big clodhoppers up there has hell to pay with me,” Willow warned.

Bram was unperturbed. “Don’t make me come around there and give you a noogie to put you in your place.”

Noogies were what her brothers called it when they put her in a headlock and rubbed their knuckles on her skull.

His threat must have been more effective than hers because he grinned and left his feet where they were, and Willow didn’t do anything about it.

“Met Carl at the gas station last night,” her brother said then.

“Uh-huh.” Willow braced for what she knew was coming, since she’d already had this conversation with two of her other three brothers. Apparently Bram, Ashe and Logan had had breakfast this morning and discussed her, and if Jared hadn’t married and moved to Texas with his new wife, he would have been in the mix, too.

“Carl says something’s wrong with you,” Bram continued. “He thinks you’re sick or something.”

“And you reported it to the other Musketeers over breakfast,” Willow said. “Well, I’m not sick or anything. Just like I told Ashe and Logan when they called.”

But Bram wasn’t going to let it drop that easily. “Carl says he caught you sleeping at your desk. That you’re dragging your tail around here, and that you don’t even have the strength to move a feed sack.”

Willow had made a special call to her doctor to ask if it was all right for her to go on lifting the heavy bags of feed and grain that she’d always hoisted without a second thought before. The doctor had advised against it.

“I have the strength. I’m just trying to learn to delegate.”

Bram looked at her as if she were out of her mind.

“I know this comes as a surprise to you,” Willow said, “but I’m not a man. And I might want to have kids someday. Gloria always said I shouldn’t be lifting such heavy things or I was going to strain my insides, and I just thought maybe it was time to take that seriously.”

Bram laughed. “Right. You’re a delicate little daisy.” He was making fun.

“I didn’t say I was a delicate little daisy. But I’m also not one of the guys. And the guys around here can do the lifting. That’s what I pay them for.”

She hadn’t intended for that to come out so brusquely, but it had, and she hoped her brother might just let it pass.

No such luck.

“Geez! Don’t bite my head off,” he exclaimed. “That’s another thing Carl said—you’re not acting like yourself. I can see what he means. Touchy, touchy.”

Willow rolled her eyes.

“Carl says you’re always in the bathroom, and the other day when he came looking for you he was pretty sure you were in there throwing up.”

“Oh for crying out loud, I had the flu,” Willow said, as if it were nothing. “And what’s Carl doing counting how many times I’m in the bathroom?”

Bram ignored her question to ask one of his own. “Why didn’t you call one of us if you were sick?”

“Because I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself,” Willow said, exasperation ringing in her voice.

Her brother stared at her, his forehead creased in a frown, and Willow knew that she was not putting on a convincing defense.

She made a conscious effort to lighten her tone and said, “I appreciate that you care. You and the rest of the guys, and even Carl. But I can’t call you all every time I have a hangnail. I must have caught a bug of some kind, which was here and gone before it was worth talking about.”

“Are you sure?” Bram asked suspiciously.

“I’m positive. I’m fine.” Then Willow decided the best thing to do was to get him talking about something else, so she said, “Is that the only reason you came in here today?”

“No. I was coming in to talk to you anyway, and then I met Carl and he gave me another reason.”

“So what was the first reason?”

Bram went on staring at her for a moment longer, as if he wasn’t sure he should let her throw him off track.

Willow calmly waited him out, afraid that any more attempts to defend herself would be overkill and do more harm than good.

Apparently it worked, because he finally said, “I wanted to know if you’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around, or if you’ve had anybody asking questions about us.”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Some people say there’s a tall, skinny guy—homely with dirty brown hair—asking questions about our family.”

Willow shrugged. “That could be a lot of people we know. But no, I haven’t seen anyone fitting that description who we don’t know. Are you thinking this might be the same guy who broke into the newspaper office and set the fire at the town hall?”

Both were recent incidents that Willow knew Bram was investigating.

“Could be,” he answered noncommittally. “The guy is asking about Gloria and any kids or grandkids she might have had. Which brings me to my next point—have you gone through her room yet like I asked you to?”

Bram had been after Willow to do that for weeks now, ever since he’d been contacted by another stranger in town. Rand Colton, a visitor from Washington, D.C., had brought up the possibility that there might be a connection between his family and theirs. It had become Willow’s job to go through Gloria’s things to find out if there was any information their grandmother might have had about it. Willow knew Bram was particularly curious because on her deathbed, Gloria had implored him to find the truth, something he was still trying to figure out the meaning to. She couldn’t help wondering if this stranger had anything to do with that request.

“No, I haven’t gone through her room yet,” Willow admitted somewhat reluctantly. She was embarrassed at how long she’d been dragging her feet about it.

“I know it’s a tough thing to do,” Bram said, showing more understanding than he had about her not wanting to lift feed sacks. “Do you want me to do it?”

“No, I said I would and I will.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow,” she promised, knowing herself well enough to know that if she made a firm commitment she would follow through even though it was something she didn’t want to do.

Bram knew her, too, and didn’t need any further assurance. “Good. You may not find anything important or revealing, but we need to rule out the possibility. And who knows? There might be something up there that will help me figure out what’s going on.”

Willow nodded in spite of the knot her stomach twisted into at the prospect of going into her grandmother’s room, going through her things.

But her brother was satisfied.

Unfortunately, that meant he was ready to return to the previous subject.

“And you’re sure you’re okay?” he said.

“I’m sure. But if I come down with scurvy or rickets or green slime disease, you’ll be the first to know,” she joked, trying to cover up the uneasy feeling she had that her brother suspected the truth.

Bram gave her that hard stare again, but before it went on too long, there was a knock on the door. It opened at about the same time, and a strikingly pretty, blond-haired, blue-eyed head popped through the opening.

“It’s just me.”

“Me” was Jenna Elliot, and Willow saw her brother’s whole being light up instantly.

“Come on in,” Willow invited as Bram yanked his feet off her desk in a hurry and stood.

It didn’t take a genius to see how much he cared for Jenna, who had nursed their grandmother after the first stroke Gloria had suffered in July and gotten involved with Bram in the process.

“I got your message to meet you here,” Jenna said to Bram, her own face beaming with love for him in return.

To Willow, Bram said, “We’re going for coffee. Want to come with us?”

Coffee was the one thing that could make Willow nauseous even after the morning sickness had passed. Even the thought of it raised her gorge.