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The pot was over a hundred dollars.
“You wanna just fold and get this over with?” Luke smiled as he raised the bidding one more time.
Blake didn’t bat an eye. He was sitting on a full house ace/deuce. The only way Luke was going to beat that was with a miracle. Looking up, Blake gazed past his opponent to the bare window behind him. In the daylight they’d be able to see the river out there. Tonight there was nothing but darkness.
And…movement?
Someone was out there.
Blake tipped the corners of his cards again. Glanced over beyond the archway leading to a threadbare living room…and saw a woman slip quietly around the corner from the hall.
He tossed in four one-dollar chips. Noted the jack and king of spades Luke flipped over, tossed in his two aces, still face down, and asked, “What in hell’s she doing here?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara’s first book was a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award. Her subsequent work has earned her finalist status for the National Readers’ Choice Award and the Holt Medallion, plus another two RITA® Award nominations. A prolific writer, she has more than forty novels and three novellas published. To reach Tara, write to her at PO Box 133584, Mesa, Arizona 85216, USA or through her website, www.tarataylorquinn.com.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to River Bluff, Texas! There are all kinds of great folks here for you to meet. From cowboys to single mums to entrepreneurs, secret babies, planned babies and another man’s baby, you’ll get it all in this small Texas town.
The five authors in this series have brought you many, many love stories over the years, but the stories here in River Bluff are a little different. Oh, you’ll still have the great characters you won’t want to leave behind, the gripping stories and the wealth of emotion. But in River Bluff you also get something new.
Think sisterhood – in a male version! This is a group of five guys, most of whom have known each other all their lives, who are bonded together through life’s ups and downs. They get together to play poker every week and they’re friends.
In the months ahead you’ll meet Cole – he’s a bit jaded because of a broken marriage, but he’s feisty and fun to be around. Then there’s Jake. He’s the motorcycle-riding bad boy we all want to meet in a dark alley. And Brady Carrick. Brady’s been everywhere and done most things, from professional football to professional gambling. Now he wants to come home. Luke, one of my favourites, is just back from military service overseas. He has some hard truths coming his way, but I can’t be with him and not love him.
And here, you get to meet Blake. Older than the rest of the Wild Bunch, Blake is the one everyone looks up to. But he has a secret, a burden he must bear, and while he thinks it makes him weak, he’s going to find out just how strong he really is.
My sister writers and I hope you’ll love the town and the people of River Bluff, Texas as much as we do!
Tara Taylor Quinn
TARA TAYLOR QUINN
For Tim. Welcome to my world.
PROLOGUE
July 2005
COW MANURE HAD NEVER smelled so sweet, Blake Smith thought, inhaling deeply. Squinting against the bright July morning sun, he glanced down the thin metal steps to the tarmac, scanning the people waiting at the small airport just outside San Antonio.
There weren’t many of them.
Four years was a long time.
But a three-and-a-half-year-old child should be easy to spot. He looked for a head covered with blond curls.
Or maybe her hair was brown.
Or maybe she was a he.
And yet no matter how many possibilities he considered, no small child appeared.
His uncle, then? Alan wouldn’t miss this. Not on his life…
What did it mean that Blake couldn’t pick out the big frame and ruddy face of the man who’d raised him ever since his parents had been killed in a car accident when he was seven?
Determined to hold on to the sweet anticipation that had sustained him during his eighteen-hour journey from the Middle East back to Texas, Blake renewed his search. Most of all, he sought the face of the woman whose memory had kept him alive these past forty-seven months, two weeks and three days.
The only person he really needed to see right now, after four grueling years of captivity as the hostage of political terrorists.
Annie.
His heart’s rhythm settled—and then immediately sped again as he spotted the beautiful face of his beloved wife. At last. With shaky knees, he hurried to meet her.
Annie had come for him.
CHAPTER ONE
October 2007
THE COWBOY PUSHED HIS HAT down low.
Everyone knew that thirty-four-year-old Luke Chisum, of the renowned Circle C Ranch, shifted his hat every time he had a good hand.
Lifting the corners of his two cards just enough to see the pair of aces, Blake dropped his thirty-three-year-old silver dollar on top of them and threw in two one-dollar chips—the mandatory flop bet. His buddy Cole Lawry, seated to his left, gave him a long look.
Cole studied the ten and queen of spades and two of diamonds faceup on the table, took one more look at Blake and folded.
Brady Carrick, ex-Cowboy football player, didn’t look at anyone. His face impassive as always, he pushed his cards toward the middle of the table. Brady’d had a hard time of it after an injury had caused him to take early retirement, and he’d headed off to Las Vegas, only returning to River Bluff fifteen months before—a year after Blake had made it home.
The younger man had come home blaming himself for the suicide death of a rodeo cowboy in Vegas—something to do with a wager. Having just met him, Blake had stayed out of most of the conversation revolving around the incident, except to say that Brady shouldn’t take the guilt of someone else’s mistakes on his own shoulders.
Verne Chandler, a sometimes player with the Wild Bunch, lived in the decrepit, now closed Wild Card Saloon. The older man had moved in to stay after his sister died, leaving the place to her young son. It was there, in the back apartment, that the five-member Wild Bunch—a group of unmarried guys, most of whom had been friends on and off since high school—held their weekly Texas Hold’em games. Hunched over now in the wheelchair he’d taken to a few months before, Verne wasn’t looking so good. Though he was only in his early sixties, the wrinkles on his face seemed to be the result of about ninety years of hard living.
River Bluff’s male version of the town gossip, Harry Knutson, also tossed in his pair of cards. As did Hap Jones, Luke’s foreman and guest for the evening.
Ron Hayward called Blake’s bet, just as Blake had known he would. Ron was more of an ass than a poker player, a nice enough guy who didn’t know his own weaknesses. Put Ron on a construction site, and he was gifted. Cole, who worked for Ron, could testify to that. But let the owner of Hayward Construction join them at the poker table, and he stood out in a less impressive way. If there was a bet on the table, Ron played—whether he had a worthy hand or not. It made him a waste.
Luke, the dealer of the hand, dropped his army dog tag on top of his cards, added his two dollars to the pot and raised them two. Blake and Ron followed suit. Luke dealt the turn. An ace of spades.
Blake threw in two more chips. And then, when Luke’s raise came back to him, threw in another four.
Ron had spent twenty dollars before he folded.
“It’s just you and me, buddy,” Luke said with a grin, making a show out of dealing the river, the third in the series of deals per hand.
A two of clubs.
Blake tossed in eight bucks. Luke raised him another four. He pushed out another eight. Luke called his eight and raised him four again.
The pot was over a hundred dollars.
Back when Verne’s sister had been alive, this run-down and lifeless place had been pristine. Both out front, where saloon customers came in droves, and back here in the apartment, where Jake Chandler, Verne’s nephew and the absentee member of the Wild Bunch, had grown up far too quickly.
“You wanna just strip off your shorts and get this over with?” Luke smiled as he raised the bidding one more time.
Blake didn’t strip for anyone. Besides, he was sitting on a full house ace-deuce. The only way Luke was going to beat that was with a miracle. A jack and king of spades facedown in front of him.
Luke was no fool. But the chances of Blake sitting on double aces were slim. Glancing up, Blake looked past his opponent to the bare window behind him. In the daylight they’d be able to see the river. Tonight there was nothing but darkness.
And…movement?
Someone was out there.
Luke bounced his dog tag on the table and grinned as it landed on his closest stack of chips. He’d perfected that move eons ago, before most of the guys had left for college. Blake, having come to the Wild Bunch late, invited by his then-brother-in-law, Cole, when he’d married Cole’s sister, Annie, had been hearing about this particular talent for years.
Blake tipped the corners of his cards again. Glanced beyond the archway leading to a threadbare living room, and saw a woman slip quietly around the corner from the hall.
He tossed in four one-dollar chips. Noting the jack and king of spades Luke flipped over, he tossed in his two aces, still facedown, and leaned over to Cole.
“What in hell’s she doing here?” His whisper sounded far too angry for the question it pretended to be. If Cole needed to see his sister, he knew enough not to do so anywhere near Blake. That was their agreement.
And since Blake was the only one of the bunch who didn’t live in River Bluff, he didn’t think it was asking too much of his best friend to keep that agreement. Cole had plenty of time to see his sister when Blake was safely thirty miles away in San Antonio.
“She needs to talk to you.”
Blake froze at Cole’s response. Then muttered, “She’s here to see me?”
There was razzing going on among the others. Blake was aware of Luke good-naturedly stacking up his win. A sore winner. Verne was sipping straight from an open bottle of whiskey. Harry had found an avid listener in Ron, who seemed to have a need to know every gritty detail about whatever drama Harry was sharing, courtesy of his hairdresser wife.
Blake thought of the Lincoln Continental he had parked outside. Wondering how best to get there.
“Please just hear her out, Blake.” Cole’s voice was still low, but a note of urgency had crept in. “You know I wouldn’t ask you without a good reason.”
Blake did know that.
And he couldn’t imagine a reason good enough to justify another conversation with the woman he’d once loved more than life.
“I think she’s crazy, man.” Cole’s whisper was clipped. “Going to get herself in a mess of trouble. The only thing I could do was get her to talk to you first.”
“You could have given me some warning,” he muttered, buying himself some time to figure a way out of there.
Raising an eyebrow, Cole challenged, “Are you saying you’d have come if I’d warned you?”
It was Blake’s turn to deal—the cards were on the table.
With one last glance at Cole, however, he stood up. “I’m out.”
ANNIE DIDN’T NEED TO witness the exchange between her brother and her ex-husband to know that she was a fool for being there. The expression on Blake’s face when he’d noticed her had been enough.
“Cole didn’t explain?” she asked, as the man she’d spent two years weeping over came barreling out of the back room.
Blake was not pleased. But he smelled as good as ever. It wasn’t just aftershave—though he was wearing the stuff she’d started buying for him when they were first dating—and it wasn’t the shampoo or soap. Both of which she’d used for years. It was just him.
He looked damn good, too. Even with the frown and his tight, straight lips. Annie hadn’t seen him in almost two years—not since the day she’d met him at the airport.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I thought you stopped at eleven. At least Cole said…” Her words trailed off.
She could not respond to this man—not to his anger, and not to his sex appeal. Most particularly not to that.
“We stop when we’re ready.”
His slacks and polo shirt fit his long, lean body to perfection. This was his casual attire. More often, she’d seen him in suits.
Or nothing.
Her lips were dry. “Do you need to get back, then? Cole said you were hosting tonight.”
His gaze rested on her face for a brief second and then moved away. She felt as if she’d been slapped. “That just means that I bring the food and drinks and pick the game.”
“I thought you always played Texas Hold’em.”
He stared at her openly. Even small talk didn’t seem safe with this man.
“There are lots of ways to play,” he said succinctly. “Limit, no limit, tournament…” His voice trailed off, and she knew her time was up.
“You got a minute to talk?”
His eyes narrowed and he studied Annie as if contemplating the aftermath of a particularly bad car accident. You can’t stand what you’re seeing, but you can’t look away, either.
He didn’t answer her. But neither did he walk away, and she knew Blake Smith well enough to know that leaving was something he would do without a second thought, if he felt so inclined.
Laughter burst through the archway.
“Can we go outside?” she asked. Darkness might make this easier.
Still silent, Blake followed her out. She couldn’t hear his footsteps, but she could feel him behind her—staring holes through her back.
If not for promising her brother she’d talk to Blake, she’d be the one eager to disappear. But she’d made up her mind on how to proceed with her life, and she couldn’t do it without Cole’s support.
He’d made it clear he’d give that support only on the condition that she speak with Blake.
“Ask Blake for his help” was actually what her brother had said. But that was a small detail she didn’t need to concern herself with. She’d say the words, Blake would walk away, and she could move on to the next step of the rest of her life.
With Cole’s support.
“Cole says you’re crazy.”
Blake’s words interrupted Annie’s thoughts. Obliterated her confidence in fact. It seemed as if he’d always had the ability to make her doubt herself. It was something she wasn’t crazy about in him.
Probably the only thing she wasn’t crazy about in him. And it wasn’t even his fault.
The rest of it—his long absences, his inability to be there when she needed him— she understood. She just hadn’t been able to live with it.
Or him.
“My little brother has always had a problem with exaggeration,” she said now.
“So what’s this about?”
Right to the point. That was Blake. No “How you been these past two years?” No “You’re looking good.” She knew better than to even hope to get an “It’s good to see you.”
It wasn’t good.
For either of them.
Seeing him hurt. A lot. Far more than she’d expected, and she’d had a glass of wine and a big hug from her best friend, Becky Howard, to prepare herself before she’d set out on tonight’s mission.
“I’m going to have a baby.”
The startling words got her firmly back on track. She’d identified her goal, and for the first time in her life she felt absolutely, completely sure about the decision she’d made.
“Why do I need to know this?” His words were cold; the tone of his voice spoke volumes.
Blake wasn’t just angry, he was hurting, too. Damn Cole for insisting on this. As big as his heart was, sometimes Annie’s brother just didn’t know when to stop believing in things that could never be.
“The only way Cole would agree to stop trying to talk me out of this was if I asked you to be the father.”
THE COOL AIR WAS SUPPOSED to have cleared his mind. But Blake’s thoughts were fuzzy, and there was a very loud humming in his brain.
“So…you aren’t pregnant?” He could feel a headache coming on.
“Not yet.”
There was no reason for him to be relieved at the news. No need to care.
The cords at the base of his neck loosened just a little, and he tried to think.
“But you plan to be.”
“I’m determined to have a child, yes.”
Blake eyed his ex-wife as well as he could in the darkness. Was Cole right? Had she lost her mind?
Thoughts of the baby she’d lost surfaced. The child that for four long years, Blake had imagined himself raising. Along with the thoughts came the sharp pain that lived in his chest most of the time. While he’d grown somewhat used to the discomfort, its sting was much worse when he thought about Annie suffering from it, too.
“You can’t bring back what’s been taken from you, Annie.”
“I have absolutely no plan to try.” Her words were tough enough. The vigor in her tone gave him a hint of the determination she was holding in check.
Life should never have done this to her. She didn’t deserve it.
He was to blame.
“I don’t want to spend my life alone, Blake. I’m lonely, and I’m missing something important. I want to be a mother, and I believe I can be a good one.”
“Of course you’d be a good mother.” Blake was scrambling to make sense of all of this—to be a good friend to Cole, and to extricate himself as rapidly as possible. “You more or less became Cole’s mother when you were barely thirteen, and he turned out great.”
She blinked and looked up at Blake, as if he’d surprised her. Her curly hair was longer than it had been when they were married, longer than it had been when she’d met his flight in San Antonio two years ago.
Had she expected him to tear her to ribbons? To hate her for choosing to stay with the husband she’d married two years after Blake’s disappearance when he’d been presumed dead, instead of coming back home with him?
“I’ve had the magic.” Her words were soft, but her gaze was steady as she continued to look him in the eye. He felt as if he’d been kicked when he realized she was speaking of him. “I took the risk and trusted that marrying the love of my life would be enough, and then I crashed so hard I was afraid I wouldn’t ever recover.”
This was why he couldn’t be around her. Couldn’t even see her. Did she think he didn’t know all this? That he didn’t torture himself with the same knowledge every time he thought about her? Four years of captivity had been a cakewalk compared to the pain he had suffered daily since his return home.
“And I’ve played it safe, too,” she continued, as if completely unaware of the hell going on inside of him. “After you, I married a man I’d known all my life—one who’d loved me for most of it. I chose security and reliability over passion. And I not only ended up still just as unhappy, but I hurt someone else horribly. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life.”
They had that in common.
“I’m not going for strike three, Blake. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a family of my own.”
She’d clearly given her future a lot of thought. And she made a good point.
Her idea might be crazy, but Annie was not.
“So…will you be the father?” She was good for her word. She’d told Cole she’d pose the question and she had.
“What do you plan to do when I say no?”
“I’ve already started looking around.”
“For a sperm bank?” Was that how these things were done?
Annie’s head dropped—something that had happened a little too often during their time together. And always when she was suffering from the low self-esteem, the doubts, that had plagued her since her father’s death.
But what did her father’s suicide have to do with this?
“I can’t take that chance,” she said, quietly but firmly. And then she looked up. “I’ll have to know the man,” she said adamantly. “I’ll have to know that he’s emotionally strong.”
Blake could understand. He really could. But… “Annie, you can’t just go up to a man on the street and ask him to give you a baby. In the first place, you have to think of him, too. What role is he going to play? And do you want the father of your child to be someone who’d be willing to father a child and then walk away?”
The problems with her plan were numerous, coming at him from all directions.
“Are you planning to use artificial insemination?” he asked before she could respond to his first set of objections. “Because I don’t think you’re the kind of woman to have casual sex with a man and then walk away. And even if you were, you’d have to hope he either had a very understanding significant other or that he was completely unattached. And that he would remain unattached for the length of time it took to get you pregnant. Because your chances of getting pregnant on one try are pretty slim…
“And what if he does have a wife or partner? What if she decides she wants to have a part in raising his child?”
Annie shaking her head brought him back to reality. This was none of his business.
He didn’t care what she did. He hoped she’d be safe. Happy. And that was all.
“I’ve had a legal contract drawn up that will cover all of those eventualities and more,” she said. “I’m going to do this, Blake.”
He could see that she was. And that scared him.
He turned to go.
“What should I tell Cole, when he asks me what you said?”
“Tell him I’ll think about it.”
It wasn’t the response he’d wanted to give. He just needed some time—and a good night’s sleep—to figure out how to be a friend to Cole and also stay as far away from Annie and her plans as he possibly could.
Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d be able to suggest a safe, healthy and relatively innocuous replacement for himself.
But one thing was certain. He and Annie were not going to make another baby together.
CHAPTER TWO
THURSDAY MORNING, exactly eight hours after she’d watched Blake get into his seven-year-old Lincoln Continental and drive away, Annie wasn’t concentrating well. She’d held on to his uncle’s car after Alan Smith—having heard the news that Blake was presumed dead—had had a fatal heart attack. And then she’d sold the trading company the two men had operated together, but she hadn’t spent a dime of the proceeds—almost as if some part of her had known, even after she’d married Roger, that Blake was still alive.
And if that was true, if she had known, marrying Roger had been the act of a coward. And a weak, disloyal thing to do.
At least she’d had a nest egg—and a car—to give Blake upon his difficult return home two years before.
Now, she wished he’d sell the damn car. Let go of the past. Let go, period.
Blake was the most controlled and logical human being she’d ever met. Just once, she’d like to hear him yell at the top of his lungs.
Positively Alive! Annie looked at the column heading on her computer screen. Her focus had to be on the future and not on a past she couldn’t change. And for the next hour, her future contained the column that was promised to the River’s Run editor and publisher, Mike Bailey, her boss, by ten o’clock.
The readers of River’s Run, the local five-days-a-week newspaper, would be expecting Annie’s weekly tidbit on living positively. She could talk about taking control of your life, about being a doer rather than a victim. She could even tell them about the baby she was going to have.